Paul, Gandalf, and Sojourner--October 23, 2026

Paul, Gandalf, and Sojourner--October 23, 2026

"...and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath." (1 Thessalonians 1:10)

Maybe we could say it just this simply: even if we don't know all of what is in ahead of us, we know the One who is coming to walk beside us.

I don't mean to be glib or offer tidy, pat answers, but I do think that assurance is important. There is a great deal we don't know about the future, and there are plenty of frightening things we may well have to face in our lifetimes--but we have not been abandoned to face them alone. We are looking for Jesus, who has already gone through death itself, and he will accompany us to bring us through whatever fraught and fearful turns may come our way in life. And if Jesus has already endured the worst and scariest thing we can imagine by staring down death and swallowed up by the grave before bursting it open through the other side, then whatever else crosses our path cannot be worse. We cannot face anything more threatening or destructive than what Jesus has already endured in Friday's cross, Saturday's tomb, and Sunday morning's rolled stone. He has even endured the experience of being "godforsaken," if we are to take the cry from the cross echoing Psalm 22 at face value, which means that Jesus has even experienced whatever we think we mean by the "wrath of God." And having faced all of that already, and been raised up to life again to come to be with us, then whatever else this day may bring is a lesser challenge by comparison.

I say all this, not to belittle those challenges or the struggles we face every day, nor to minimize the troubles of the world which erupt into our awareness every time we turn on the news or read the front page, but precisely because those things are so large and intimidating. Only if we have the assurance like the one we are given in this verse from First Thessalonians (which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday) can we look the troubles of this life squarely in the eye without melting in fear. Without the promised presence of Jesus, we will always look for rose-colored lenses to see the sorrow and pain of the world, or for a way to stick our heads in the ground like the proverbial ostrich to avoid having to deal with it. But exactly because our hope is in Jesus who comes to face the future with us, we can keep our eyes open to all of it without flinching.

Christians, then, should be the most realistic people in the world. We should be the ones willing to see real problems in all their messy complexity without having to cross our fingers, massage the data, or resort to wishful thinking. We should be the ones in society most honestly, openly, and bravely talking about things like war and poverty, disease and hunger, environmental damage and racial injustice, because we are convinced that the risen Jesus is present with us to face and respond to all of them. Our faith is not that Jesus will "beam us out" of the world's problems like some sort of spiritual Star Trek transporter device, but that Jesus will be with us as we face them, whatever it is that comes to us in our lives or our part of the world's history.

I suspect you may know that poignant exchange from The Lord of the Rings in which Frodo, already weary from having to carry the One Ring on his journey to destroy it, laments to his companion Gandalf, "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened," and to which Gandalf responds, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." J. R. R. Tolkein was a man of deep faith, and you can hear the way that faith shaped his writing. He would remind us, I suspect, along with Paul here in his letter to the Thessalonians, that while we cannot guess all the travail and turmoil that await us in the time to come, we do have the ability to choose, with our eyes wide open, how we will face whatever comes. And because we are convinced we have Christ to face it all with us, we do not have to be paralyzed with fear. We can endure it, work to relieve suffering in the midst of it, and be faithful witnesses through all of it, because the risen Jesus is at our side.

I am reminded, too, of that great insight of Sojourner Truth, who said, "If the Lord comes and burns--as you say he will--I am not going away; I am going to stay here and stand the fire, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! And Jesus will walk with me through the fire and keep me from harm." That's what Paul is talking about here. We have a confidence because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has already endured for our sake that we can stare down whatever other troubles come to this world in all of our lives. We don't have to look for an escape hatch, a rocket ship to Mars, or a hill of dirt to stick our heads into--we can face it all, because we do it with Jesus who promises to abide with us having already come through death himself.

That's the way we face this day... and the next day, and the third day, too. Let's go.

Lord Jesus, be with us today and help us to see you in our midst as we respond to the real troubles and pains of the world and our fears of the future.

In Ordinary Ways--October 22, 2026

In Ordinary Ways--October 22, 2026

"For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God." (1 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

When you are the real deal, you don't need to toot your own horn or make a big to-do about your own greatness.  People will know who you are and what you are like from seeing your actions in the world. You won't need to advertise or run a PR campaign--your reputation will precede you, as they say.

That much is clear here from these ongoing verses in the reading many of us heard this past Sunday from Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonica, as he commends these Christians for a faith that is so obvious he doesn't have to bring it up on his travels.  Paul says here that as he has been traveling from place to place all throughout modern-day Greece and even further around other congregations he visited, the Christians he meets in all those places already know the witness of First Church of Thessalonica.  Paul says here, "I don't even have to talk you up to the other churches around, because they already know about your faith in God and how you received the Good News!"  What a beautiful and powerful thing to be said about someone--what a witness one must be that nobody needs to generate extra "buzz" or "hype" about them, because their real and authentic self is compelling enough as it is.

I am often reminded of a line of the late Margaret Thatcher, who once said that being powerful is like being an elegant lady--if you have tell someone you are, you aren't.  The apostle might have said, similarly, "If you have to tell people you have strong faith, you don't." Or put conversely, when you do have living and authentic faith in God, you won't have to try to persuade people about how devout you are.  People will already know.  They will have seen it in your actions, heard it in your words, and experienced it from the way you carry yourself in the world.

And more to the point, when we are grounded by trust in God's love for us, we realize we don't have anything to prove to anybody else.  We no longer have to waste time, energy, effort, or breath in trying to persuade people about how pious or virtuous or religious we are, because we know that it doesn't matter what other people think.  And we know that God's love for us isn't awarded like a blue ribbon based on our piety or performance, but is given out as a gift of grace.  And when you know you are loved already as you are, you don't have to make a fuss projecting a reputation or creating a public persona to impress.  You can simply be who you are, becuase you know whose you are.

What if it really is that simple?  What if we didn't have to spend any time at all hoping to get noticed for our church attendance, acts of service, faithful insights, or discipline in prayer--but we just did the kind of things that followers of Jesus do, without drawing attention to them?  What if, in a culture where it feels like everything is documented and photo-edited to be put on display in social media feeds, we were just willing to practice our faith in ordinary ways every day, and to let that be enough?

I think we would feel a whole lot freer.  And I suspect our witness would be a great deal more compelling, just by being ourselves.

Lord Jesus, free us from the worry of what other people think of us, so that we can simply and honestly follow you with our lives.

Becoming Who We Are--October 21, 2026

Becoming Who We Are--October 21, 2026

"For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia." (1 Thessalonians 1:4-7)

You know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. At least our mothers used to say it to keep us from getting too upset at younger siblings when they were going through a copycat phase. And with marginal success, it pacified us as children to think that young Jonny or Mary was imitating you because he or liked you so well and was trying to win your approval.

For the Christian community, however, imitation isn't ever supposed to be about flattering anybody--it is about training spiritual muscles to move in a certain way. It is about learning how to walk the Christian walk--learning how to live the strange new life that Jesus was pioneering, a life of generosity, hospitality, courage, patience, and love. It is about letting Christ be seen in you... and in me, when other see us, and when we look in the mirror.

See, for us Christians, rules have never really done the trick. And truth be told, that's not a Christians-only thing--it's really more of a human thing. You can bark all the rules you want at us, but we have a hard time really keeping them. Sometimes, that's because we're little stinkers who look for loopholes or deliberately cross the line. But sometimes it's because we don't really know what a certain commandment or rule really means. Take "Love your neighbor," for example. Is that a command to feel a certain way toward other people? How big is the radius extending out from me to tell me who counts as my neighbor (we have a particularly hard time with that one, and we seem to keep wanting to re-ask it, because we never like how broad his answer is)? What kind of actions count as "love"--do I actually have to do something for my neighbor, or is it enough just to not actively seek to harm my neighbor? And what about when "loving" is not the same as "being nice"--like when love means confronting a neighbor? How do I know what love really means? You can see pretty quickly with even a seemingly simple, no-brainer kind of commandment that it can be hard to know what a rule really means, or how anybody should actually apply a vague principle like "you should always do the most loving thing." Who gets to say what "the most loving thing" is?

The earliest followers of Jesus knew this all too well, and so we have never relied all that heavily on "rules" for our shared life in the found family of God. We have always learned the particular steps of our walk by walking with others and imitating--copying, to be honest--the kinds of moves and actions we've seen in other faithful saints. The same way you learn to play basketball, not by merely reading the rule book and learning that you're not supposed to run with the ball, for example, but by actually practicing the skills of dribbling, shooting, and blocking, Christians learn to become who we are by practicing alongside other disciples. We watch how they hold the ball. We learn to put our hands in the positions they use. We train our bodies to move the way theirs do. We imitate them, in other words. And as we imitate others who imitate Christ, we just might catch a glimpse of Christ in our own reflection, too.

So when we starting asking questions like, "What does it really mean to love my neighbor?" we find the answer in the real-life examples of Jesus, of Paul, of Mary, of disciples over the ages like Francis of Assisi and Saint Lucia, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom, or Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, or Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin, or Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa. Even more to the point, we see the answer in the lives of people we actually have met and seen with our own eyes, like your father, or my favorite Sunday School teacher, or the people you know whose faith and love are just so compelling that you can't help but keep an eye on them. We imitate those fellow followers, past and present, whose actions have been informed by the disciples who went before them, going back in a chain of imitation all the way back to Jesus and his first band of followers. We learn what it looks like love our neighbor by watching and trying it ourselves--seeing how the saints of 1930s Europe practiced real hospitality by hiding Jewish families from the Gestapo, as well as how people welcome strangers and practice mercy in 2026 America. We learn what love looks like when we hear the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, and when we see saints around us giving up their time and energy to serve at the weekly meal in a forgotten neighborhood of the city or feeding neighbors in their own back yard.

We know the cold sterility of rules alone cannot make us into the kind of people we are meant to be--but we can have our spiritual muscles trained and toned as we imitate the motions we have seen in faithful disciples before us. That is how our revolution keeps its momentum--we don't handout rule books to memorize while you're toweling off at the font after baptism and say, "Go for it. See you in heaven if you can figure these out." We keep learning from each other, letting the actions of faithful saints before us and around us teach our arms and legs and hearts how to move.

Today, think of those faithful followers of Jesus you have known--those whose generosity, or humility, or extravagant love, or deep courage have captivated you--and let them be guides along the way as we get another chance today to live deeper into reflecting Christ for the world.

Lord Jesus, train my arms, my legs, my hands, my feet, and my heart--and use the lives of others around me as guides and mentors, training my whole self in the ways of your movement.

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.