Bigger Than We Knew--March 4, 2026

Bigger Than We Knew--March 4, 2026

"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him." (John 3:16-17)

The world is a big place.  There's no way around it.

Sure, astronomers and cosmologists will tell us that even other planets within our solar system are even bigger, not to mention our sun... or other stars which dwarf the sun by comparison... or whole galaxies. But on the human scale, at the frame of reference from which you and I live, the world is indeed a very big place.

And, while we are on the subject, the world is also a pretty diverse place as well.  It's not just big--it's full of astonishing variety.  We don't live in a monolithic place where everything is all vanilla-flavored or one shade of gray in coloring. There are bitter flavors like black coffee and beer, sweet flavors like fresh peaches and raspberries, sour flavors like limes, and salty ones like feta cheese or fresh-baked pretzels.  There is a whole spectrum of colors (including quite a few that our eyes cannot even see, but which other animals can!), and there is an orchestra of sound all around us, too.  Don't even get me started on people: we come in a host of shades and skin tones, speaking a myriad languages, from countless cultures and places, with all sorts of personalities, preferences, interests, and loves. Our families look as different as our faces, and our stories are as varied as our settings. Oh--and there are a lot of us.  Billions, in fact.  All of these details remind us that the world is a big and manifold place.

And it is that particular world, in all its vastness and variety, that God loves.  That is worth saying and sitting with, because we often assume that God's love is more selective, or God's palate more picky, than John's Gospel would have us believe.  These words, which many of us heard this past Sunday, are among some of the most well-known in the whole of the Bible, and yet I have a sneaking suspicion that they are they are words we often struggle to truly take seriously. We keep wanting to add fine print, asterisks, conditions, or exceptions to the vast breadth of "the world" which God loves to somehow make it smaller or narrower, but the Gospel insists on a wideness that embraces the whole thing. People we like, and people we deem our enemies.  People who share our faith in God, and people who do not.  People who are "like us," and people who are startlingly different. So there is no authentic version of the Christian faith in which we get to say it is "God's plan" to destroy certain people, or in which we can write off anybody as "outside the scope of God's care." God's love is as big as the world, John insists--even though that means admitting it is bigger than we knew.

That's crucial for us to take seriously, because it redefines how we see every other person on Planet Earth, no matter how much they are like us or unlike us, and no matter whether we have our own personal animosities between us.  These verses insist on two truths we cannot ignore, no matter how much they complicate our view of the world: one is that God actually loves the WHOLE world, and the second is that God's world-embracing love takes a certain shape--namely, that God's Son has come "not to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." God's love looks like rescue rather than wrath. God's love looks like a cross rather than conquest.  God's love looks like the embrace, even of God's enemies, rather their annihilation. If you know that song that King George sings in the musical Hamilton, "You'll Be Back," we're supposed to recognize the absurdity of the lyric, "And when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love." We're supposed to understand that's not how love works--that's not what you do when you love others. When God shows the world the depth of divine love, God doesn't send an army or an aerial bombardment as the means of God's compassion.  God sends the Son, explicitly NOT to condemn but to save. And that Son's way of embodying love looks like dying at our hands rather than killing or condemnation.

So, maybe the question for this day is whether we will dare to hear these familiar words of John 3:16-17 and actually let them shape our perspective and our action.  Will we choose to see the world--and all the people in it, whether we meet them face to face today or hear their stories from across oceans on the news--the way God does, which is to say, with a love that was bigger than we knew?

Lord God, stretch our vision to match the size of your love.

Letting Go of Our "Rightness"--March 3, 2026

Letting Go of Our "Rightness"--March 3, 2026

"Nicodemus said to [Jesus], 'How can these things be?' Jesus answered him, 'Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not understand these things? Very truly, I tell you, we speak of what we know and testify to what we have seen, yet you do not receive our testimony. If I have told you about earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?'" (John 3:9-12)

I think one of the hardest things for me to realize--and to accept--about this life of faith is that none of us will have all the answers, no matter how faithful we think we are, no matter how pious, how smart, how studious, or how virtuous we imagine ourselves to be.  That's especially hard for me at especially because I'm a pastor, who has been extensively trained in things like theology and biblical texts, and I don't want to admit that those things will still not give me all the puzzle pieces. And on top of that, I think all of us at some level seek for answers, for truth, and for meaning from our faith in God.  And if it turns out that we are not guaranteed we'll be right all the time, we may wonder why we even bother with this faith of ours. Nobody likes to be wrong, and nobody even wants to admit they don't have it all figured out--but it sure seems like following Jesus is going to strip away our masks of "rightness" and compel us to admit how often we just cannot understand God's ways in the world.

This, you might say, is another cost of following Jesus rather than staying in our own little bubbles of personal spirituality and self-help.  If we keep Jesus at arm's length, we can delude ourselves into thinking we have all the answers figured out and all the mysteries of God resolved.  But if we let Jesus draw us in close, we'll discover--like Nicodemus--how much we don't really know after all.  The theologian and former Bishop N.T. Wright once said that he expects when he gets to glory, he'll find out that at least one-third of everything he has believed and taught will turn out to be wrong; he just doesn't know which one-third it is.  And while we can certainly quibble about percentages (I am prepared to admit that a whole lot more of what I think may turn out to be wrong), I think there is something honest, and therefore brave, about Wright's admission.  It's hard to face the reality that we don't have all the answers, and that along with that truth, there are likely a good number of things we think we are right about, which we will learn are at some point are actually incorrect. If our reason for clinging to religion is that we think it promises us unquestionable certainty and rightness, Jesus has some bad news for us.

This section of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, brings that into sharp focus. Nicodemus entered this conversation with Jesus at night fancying himself an Answers Guy. He was a member of the Pharisees--a group within first-century Judaism that was diligent in reading the Scriptures, dedicated to living out the commandments, and zealous in seeking God's will. On top of that, he was a teacher and a leader among that group--he would have had some of the most extensive and thorough religious education, and would have learned from the most learned minds of his faith tradition.  But he gets barely a few sentences into a conversation with Jesus, when Jesus starts taking all he thought he knew and turning it upside down and inside out.  All the answers he thought he had, packaged and ready to dole out to people who came to him seeking The Truth, and here, Jesus comes along and blows them all away like the wind scattering dry leaves.  If Nicodemus is going to continue at all with listening to Jesus, he is going to have to let go, not only of the answers he was sure he had, but of his illusion of "rightness."  You've got to give him credit, I suppose--at least Nicodemus doesn't go running out the door with his ears plugged when Jesus starts knocking over his theological house of cards.

But that begs the question: what about us?  Are we only interested in following Jesus or listening to him if he promises always to reinforce what we already believe about God or want to be true--or are we willing to let him turn our old perspectives upside down and reveal where we have been wrong... possibly about things we have believed for a very long time and about topics that are very important to us (like God)?  That's a tall order.  But ultimately it is worth it, as costly and scary as it may be.  It is worth it to let Jesus rearrange our understanding. It is worth it to admit we've gotten it wrong, so that we can learn and see things anew.  It is worth it to face the possibility that we've wanted to force God into our preconceived notions and boxes rather than letting the Spirit elude our grasp and slide out of every leash we try and put God into.  It is worth it to give up not so much control, but the illusion of control that we have been clinging onto so tightly.  All those things are worth it because they come as we are pulled closer to Jesus. And being where Jesus is? That turns out to be the best possible place to be.

Lord Jesus, draw us close to you, even if it means letting go and leaving behind the answers we thought we had figured out.

The Life We Are Given--March 2, 2026

The Life We Are Given--March 2, 2026

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] "Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." (John 3:7-8)

Quick reminder: you didn't earn your own birth. It was given to you.

So when Jesus uses the language of being "born from above" or "born of the Spirit" to describe how we come to participate in God's "kingdom" or "reign," guess what? That's a gift, too. Sharing life with God isn't something you apply for, achieve, or earn your way into. It's not a reward, a graduation, or an accomplishment. It's a gift from beginning to end, just like our lives are. You can't earn your own birth--you are given it, primarily from a mother who does the labor, maybe with partial supporting credit for the doctors, nurses, or midwives on the scene, and the intangible support of everybody else who isn't pushing but is pacing, waiting, or wringing their hands in the hospital lobby. But you know as well as I do that the one being born doesn't "work" to accomplish the birth--only to receive it. And to hear Jesus tell it, even our coming to faith is a gift of the God who births us into that kind of trust. As surely as our own lives were first given to us by the mothers whose labor brought us into the world, our identity as children of God is a gift made possible by the Spirit's gift, rather than our achievement.

That's a big deal to take seriously, because it completely reframes the way we are used to thinking about the start of our lives of faith. So much of American religious-speak makes it sound like our accomplishment: "Have you been born again?" becomes a question loaded with ominous accusation, probing into whether we've done enough, or prayed the right prayer, said the right words, or believed the correct list of theological propositions to earn a certain status. So much of Respectable Religion in our culture takes the phrase "born again" and completely misses the point of how being born actually works: it's a gift made possible by someone else's labor, and initiated by someone else's choice to love you into being. In other words, it's not something you can brag about--only something you can be grateful for.

Whether it was Nicodemus in the first century in this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday, or the official faces of Respectable Religion in the twenty-first century, we still keep trying to make our relationships with God into something we can brag about or puff ourselves up over. If I've been "born again" and it's my accomplishment, then I can look down on all the people who haven't checked the same boxes I have, and I can use that checklist as a gate to keep out others who don't measure up. If being "born of the Spirit" is something I made happen, then I have grounds to justify my arrogance and treat everybody else like they're unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable to God. But if--as the metaphor of birth itself certainly implies--this whole notion of being "born from above" is a gift of a gracious God, then all of a sudden the playing field is leveled, and I don't get to look down on anybody. I'm just a recipient of new life by grace, the same as the rest of us. And there's no earning on my part--it's all been God's labor and the Spirit's movement.

How will it affect the way we see other people with that in mind? How might it help us to love people without looking down on them or puffing ourselves up? And how might we be moved simply to gratitude to the Spirit for having birthed us, rather than comparing ourselves or our spiritual status to someone else? It seems to me that all of that comparison and judgment ends up being just an obstacle that gets in the way of genuine love--think of how much more freely we can move without those hindrances today.

O Spirit of God, we give you thanks for having born us into faith--enable us to see that as your gift rather than our accomplishment, so that we can love like you.

Could All Mean All?--February 27, 2026

Could All Mean All?--February 27, 2026

"And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man's sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man's trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ. Therefore just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification for all. For just as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's disobedience the many will be made righteous." [Romans 5:16-19]

Let me propose a rule of thumb for our talk about God: if we are forced to choose between our tidy, systematized, and orderly theological categories on the one hand, and the Gospel on the other hand, pick the Gospel.

Even if it that means it messes up our categories. We'll have plenty of time to sort out the mess, but we had better not let go of the Gospel.

Or maybe, more accurately, God won't allow the Gospel to let go of us.

This passage is one of those times when systematic theologians get antsy. You can tell it because they start squirming in their seats, or they start furrowing their brows and raising their hands to speak because they are so fast to want to insert some caveat or fine print. Paul's loose talk of free gifts that really are free gifts makes them sweat. And Paul's cavalier way of saying that "all" will be justified makes them nervous, because they want to protest that it simply can't mean everybody is accepted by God in the end.

And so, over twenty centuries of history, we Christians have either avoided spending too much time on passages like this (lest people get the "wrong idea" that God is letting even <gasp!> the riff-raff into the party), or the systematicians with their tidy categories try and inoculate listeners from such pearl-clutching notions as a redemption that is bigger than we imagined possible. You'll hear a lot of, "Well, I know it looks like Paul says that all are justified, but that clearly can't be what he means, because that messes up Bullet Points 1, 2, and 3 of my theology, and we can't let that happen!" or You'll hear, "Paul doesn't really mean that as 'many' as were caught up in Adam's sin are also the same 'many' who are now made righteous! They must be different groups of 'many.' Yeah, that's it!"

Or, again, sometimes you'll hear a bit of asterisked fine print to this "free gift*" notion that says, "Well, the *gift is *theoretically available to anybody, but in order to *claim your prize, here is the stack of theological paperwork you must do in order to receive the prize and have it applied to your account, including the proper prayer you must pray in order to activate it, the correct statement of faith and the evidence of sufficient intensity of your faith, possible financial records of how much you have given to the church to back up your faith, and of course, an adequate score on your theology exam to prove you believe the correct things about the free gift."

Some caveat like that has to be added by the neat-and-tidy-category people of the Respectable Religious Crowd in order to make Paul's claims here more palatable, or at least so they can be shoehorned into their existing boxes. The effect of that, of course, is that it basically means you have to fudge one of the key words in Paul's sentence, "Just as one man's trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man's act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all." So, you'll either hear that "all" can't really mean "all," or "justification and life" can't really mean "justification and life." Something must be conditional! And of course, that means the gift isn't really a free gift, either.

So how do we deal with the audacity of this passage, then, that sure sounds like it imagines God giving away restored relationship with him and life in Christ to everybody, all around? Maybe we don't have to resolve the tension. Maybe we don't have to make it go away, any more than you make the tension go away for the strings on a guitar or a piano. Maybe the tension is how it makes music.

In other words, instead of trying some way to water down Paul's words or to make them say something he has not chosen to say here, what if we just let his message of sheer, undiluted Gospel sit with us... and do their work on us? What if we let them sing in us? And what if we dared to be joyful at the prospect that God just might have it in mind to bring life to everybody, everywhere, just because that's the way God loves? Paul, after all, seems to think that what he is saying is good news, not bad news, and certainly nothing to get our faces scowling and our hands fidgety about.  Paul is convinced that all the world--even in the midst of our own hostility toward God and deadness in sins--has been loved by the God who raises the dead.  Robert Farrar Capon once put it this way: "The word of the Gospel–after all those centuries of trying to lift yourself into heaven by worrying about the perfection of your bootstraps–suddenly turned out to be a flat announcement that the saved were home before they started…Grace has to be drunk straight: no water, no ice, and certainly no ginger ale; neither goodness, nor badness, not the flowers that bloom in the spring of super spirituality could be allowed to enter into the case."  And that is something worth celebrating, not running from.

What difference might it make then, today, if we look out at the world--starting on our block and radiating out to our town, our country, our little blue planet, and even the whole universe, too--and dare to imagine that God is intent on bringing life to every part of us that is dead, completely as a free gift? What if God intends to gather everybody--like, literally everybody, into the found family of God? How would we treat the strangers we meet, then? How would we treat the people who we already know we disagree with or differ from? How would we care about their well-being, even if it didn't directly look like it affected our own?

What would happen if we just steeped, like tea, in the hot water of the Gospel's claim that God in Christ has acted to bring "life for all"? Could we dare to believe that for the living God, all really does mean all?

O God beyond our understanding, let us love you more than our theologies... and let us be ready to be stretched wide by the presence of your indwelling love.

Even More Really Real--February 26, 2026

Even More Really Real--February 26, 2026

"But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many." (Romans 5:15)

"Much more surely..." he says.  What a notion.

You know, as many times as I have heard and read these words from Romans (including this past Sunday when I heard them again, as many other did, in worship), I don't think that phrase struck me before, really.  "Much more surely," Paul says, "have the grace of God and the gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many." What's going on here?

Well, for starters, that phrase sounds like it is the second half of a longer train of thought... because it is.  The beginning of the sentence starts with the impact of sin in the world through our ancestral progenitors, calling back to the old story of Adam from the early chapters of Genesis.  "If the many died through the one man's trespass," he begins, before concluding, "much more surely..." that the grace of God has abounded just as far and wide as the effects of sin.  Paul's point is to say that however broadly death and sin have infected the world, God's gift of grace through Jesus is just as big and expansive.  There is no place that sin and death have spread that Christ's life-giving grace does not also reach.

Now, that by itself is a pretty powerful claim, and it is worth letting that sink in for a minute. Paul himself says that as many people have been affected by the reverberating impact of sin are also as many as have been recipients of the grace of God because of Jesus. There is no place where sin still holds on that grace cannot get to.  There no place that death can run that grace does not have higher jurisdiction.  And that means there is really no such thing as "falling from grace," despite the use of that phrase over the generations.  You simply cannot "fall from grace"--at least, not in the sense of ever having messed up so badly into the gravitational grip of sin that you are beyond the reach of God's freely given grace to raise us back up to new life.   Paul insists that wherever sin and death skulk, grace has already staked a claim there, too, because of Christ.

But that's not all.  This is where I just can't get over that phrase, "much more surely."  Because the thrust of that phrase is to say that grace isn't merely equal in impact with sin and death--grace's effectiveness is even more certain than what sin and death have wrought on the world.  Grace isn't just wishful thinking or a pipe dream about how nice it would be if only God were so generous and unconditionally loving.  It is a certainty--even more certain than the effects of sin and death on the world.

And, to be clear, sin is pretty obviously real and "out there" in the world.  The old line says that "the doctrine of sin is the one theological claim that can be demonstrated just by reading the news or looking out the window without having the Bible to back it up."  In other words, we would know about the truth of sin and the reality of death even if we didn't have Bible verses telling us about them.  Our daily routines are full of evidence of our crooked actions, inverted values, casual cruelties, habitual greed, and seemingly endless ability to make things into idols.  And our lives are constantly touched by the reality of death, from the loss of loved ones and friends to the death toll on the news from war zones and disasters.  If there is anything we can verify as real concerns in the real world, sin and death should be them.  And yet, Paul says, for however sure we think we are about sin and death and their power, "much more surely" has the grace of God abounded. If life experience tells us that sin and death are real, Paul says that grace is even more really real. You can count on it, even more certainly that you already know about sin's pull and death's grip. The gracious gift of God to bring life is even more sure, according to the apostle, than death's power to hold us down.

Now, if Paul is right (and I'm willing to wager that he is), that changes everything about how we face the world.  A great deal of our lives right now are shaped, not only by death, but by our fear of death.  Our fear of what a stranger might do to us leads us to see any unfamiliar face as a possible threat rather than a neighbor. Our fear of not having enough of what we need for life leads us to hoard things.  Our fear of the unknown (and our assumption that whatever is unknown is automatically dangerous) leads us to put up walls in our lives and view everyone outside them as hostile.  Death, it turns out, has a lot of power over us even beyond its capacity to stop our hearts and cut us off from loved ones--it has the ability to suck the joy out of our lives while we are living and replacing it with fear!  But that's why Paul's point is so important.  Because grace's power "much more surely" abounds, we don't need to treat death like it gets the last word. Because grace is even more fundamentally real than sin and death are, we don't have to let death infect us with fear or taint our vision to see everything as a threat.  Because grace is more dependable than even what seemed the utter certainty of death, we don't have to let ourselves waste our lives being afraid of death.  It doesn't get the last word.  We no longer have to treat sin and selfishness as though they are inevitable and that we "have to" give into them--we don't.  We no longer have to let death make us afraid of everyone and everything.  Those realities are not as solid, not as firm, not as fundamental, as the truth of God's grace in Jesus Christ.

The only question left, really, is whether we will live like it is true.

Lord Jesus, give us the bravery and boldness in our faith to trust your grace more solidly than we fear the power of sin and death over us.

Instead of an Empire--February 25, 2026

Instead of an Empire--February 25, 2026

“Again, the devil took [Jesus] to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Jesus said to him, ‘Away with you, Satan! for it is written, Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him.’ Then the devil left him, and suddenly angels came and waited on him. (Matthew 4:8-11)

The end doesn't justify the means for Jesus.  It's not just about the destination--the journey you take to get there (and what you will and won't do along the way) matters. 

That's the long and the short of it. We Christians do indeed confess that Jesus is Lord of Lords and King of Kings and the very Son of God... but he isn't willing to play the devil's game to skip the cross and grab a crown. In fact, Jesus makes it pretty clear that whatever his "kingdom" actually looks like, it isn't the sort of kingdom, empire, or government that the world is used to. Jesus isn't interested in setting up a kingdom, a nation, or God forbid an empire in his name--he's just not. He isn't looking for government to help "make religion big," or coercing subjects to grovel at this feet.  And he's certainly not interested in what the world calls "greatness" and "splendor" at the cost of avoiding the cross.

That's really what's at stake here in this final scene from the temptation story in Matthew's Gospel that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship: it's whether Jesus will take the path of suffering love and servant-leadership that inevitably leads to a cross, or whether Jesus will look for a detour and follow the route of every king, Caesar, pharaoh, or emperor before and since, that sells out for power. It is a question of whether Jesus will try to be a king like the world recognizes kings, or whether he will subvert the whole notion of power by laying down his life, even at the hands of the empire, on a cross.

Sometimes, I think we get this confused, and we end up treating the cross like it's an unfortunate mistake or an unnecessary detour, as if things would have just been better if Jesus could have been crowned king and ruled in place of Herod, and the story would have had a nice happy ending. But that makes the mistake of thinking that God's Reign is just one more kingdom or government, like any other, that operates through coercion, domination, and force. That's where the devil makes a critical mistake, honestly--he seems to think [or at least he wants Jesus to think] that Jesus' kind of kingship will look like the thrones, palaces, and armies of every other kingdom, and that Jesus would be willing to pay whatever price necessary--even bowing down to worship the Accuser himself--in order to achieve that goal. But that's not what Jesus has come for--there is no kingdom that can be separated from the way of the cross. The Reign of God will never be the entity crucifying its enemies or dominating them into submission--God's reign will always be willing to bear a cross in love for those enemies, and to lay down life for their good. That's how Jesus' kind of kingdom works: the basin and the towel, not the scepter and the sword. Always.

I'm reminded of a line from the great 20th century missiologist and theologian Lesslie Newbigin, who put it this way: "The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross." In the wilderness, the Tempter compels a choice from Jesus--which sort of kingdom is he pursuing? Is Jesus building an empire, with himself at the top, compelling obedience at the point of a sword and conquering all who dissent, or is Jesus creating a new kind of community where the last are put first and the greatest take the roles of servants? The devil bets hard that Jesus will fall for making himself a new Caesar, Herod, or Pharaoh--and he loses. Jesus says no, knowing, however that the choice is also the choice to be willing to go to a cross as the crucified one, rather than as the executioner. He will not settle for being one more king like all the others, and he certainly won't bend the knee to Satan in order to do it. Instead of an empire, Jesus shows us the Reign of God in the way he welcomes people to his table (or invites himself to theirs!), the way he touches the untouchable, forgives the unforgivable, sees the ones treated as invisible, and answers evil with good.

We need to be clear about this, because to be totally honest, for an awful lot of Christian history, we've gotten this part wrong... and we're still getting it wrong in so many circles of Respectable Religion. By the end of this week, it will be the anniversary of the Edict of Thessalonica, the official proclamation, made on Feb. 27-28, 380AD, that made Christianity [in particular the kind described by the Nicene Creed] the official religion of the Empire--and more to the point, punished with death those who strayed from that official doctrine. The Emperor Theodosius no longer just permitted Christianity--he pledged to kill those who didn't fit "orthodoxy," and from there on it's been damnably easy for us to kill people or grab for political power while telling ourselves we're doing it in the name of Jesus. As 20th century writer Jacques Ellul put it, “When Satan offers to give him all the kingdoms of the earth, Jesus refuses, but the church accepts.” And we've been doing it ever since.

We still live in a culture where it dangerously tempting to try and force the way of Jesus into the mechanism of the state, the crown, and the scepter. We always tell ourselves we have the best of intentions, and we use the talk of wanting to be a "godly nation," but that's exactly the point at which we have fallen for Satan's trick where Jesus doesn't. There is no way to build an empire, a kingdom, a nation, or a government and make it a "Christian" one, any more than you can have a "Christian" kind of nuclear missile or a Jesus-endorsed genocide. Jesus isn't after those kinds of empires and kingdoms--he is seeking after us, to gather us into a new kind of humanity that includes people of all nations, tribes, languages, and lands. Until we understand that, we'll always keep falling for the devil's same old snake-oil sales-pitch where Jesus knew to say "No."

So maybe that's where we need to land for today: in our own time and place, we're still called to echo Jesus' "No" to the attempt to wed the Reign of God to the ways of Empire. We're still called to say "No" to grabbing for political influence or governmental power in the name of building an empire, a kingdom, or a nation "for him." Jesus had that option and chose against it--we would do well to trust that he knows what he's doing. Today we are called into something better than one more empire in a long line of empires--we are gathered into the community of the One who reigns from a cross.

Lord Jesus, teach us to echo your No to the temptation of building empires and acquiring glory, so that we can say Yes to your Reign of self-giving cruciform love.

Without Bodyguards--February 24, 2026

Without Bodyguards--February 24, 2026

Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down, for it is written,
 ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’
  and ‘On their hands they will bear you up,
 so that you will not dash your foot against a stone.’ ”
Jesus said to him, “Again it is written, ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test.’ ” (Matthew 4:5-7)

What's so bad about angels?  Why would it be sinful or wicked to call on them for help?

Well, of course, there's nothing bad about angels, and there's nothing wrong with receiving their assistance. By the end of this story in Matthew's Gospel, actually, angels will in fact show up and tend to Jesus' needs--you might recall that curious little detail from hearing this story last Sunday.

So what's going on here?  Asking for help from God's holy angels seems like a pious and holy thing to do, and the Tempter even has a couple of Bible verses to back up his proposal to Jesus, quoting from the psalms about the angels being there to keep Jesus from even stubbing his toe or "dashing your foot against a stone." (This, it would seem, is an important reminder to all of us that we don't settle our theological differences by resorting to a game of "Who Has The Most Bible Verses To Lob At The Other Side?" and neither do we say, "If you can rip a verse out of context to use as justification, you can do anything you like.")

Jesus is wise enough to know that this subtle suggestion from Satan is not merely about the abstract question of whether he (or any of us) can receive help in our struggles from God or the heavenly host.  The point isn't, "Hypothetically speaking, couldn't you call on an angel to save your life if you were falling from a great height, like, say... the top of the Temple?  Asking for a friend..." The issue is whether Jesus will abuse his status as divine Son of God to protect himself, to keep himself safe, and to insulate his privileges from outside threat.  Will Jesus take advantage of his position for self-interest, self-security, and self-preservation, or will he willingly surrender those privileges... including calling in the angel armies if he does something reckless like jumping off the top of the Temple?

Well, of course, you and I know that Jesus won't take that bait.  If the devil can quote from the Psalms to entice Jesus, Jesus can quote from the Torah right back to reject the offer.  But this was never about just having a battle over Bible verses.  Jesus understands that this gets deep down to the question of who God is and how God's Reign operates in the world. Does God intend to rule like the Roman emperors, maximizing privileges for themselves and commanding conquering armies to do their dirty work, or does God endure suffering without armor alongside us in our suffering?  Does God use the status of being God in self-serving ways, or is God fundamentally self-giving?  And for Jesus, who has come to embody the Reign of God for us, will he use his position for his own advantage, or will he enter into the danger of this world without angelic bodyguards?  Will he be a comfortable king or a suffering servant--and what will his choice say about the character of the God whom Jesus represents?

And that's just it: Jesus understands that his vocation is to reveal the character of God in his own actions, words, and priorities.  And at the heart of this temptation is the question of what God is like--does God see power and privilege as something to be exploited and milked for maximum benefit and self-interest, or does God choose selfless love that seeks the well-being of others? Is God like a human king who bends the rules to suit his own interests, make a fortune from being in power, and puff up his own insecure ego, or does God forgo special privileges and instead seek the well-being of the people in God's care? Jesus clearly chooses the second as his own way of being in the world, and rejects the first as something literally diabolical.  Jesus sees--and shows us once again--that "Me and My Interests First" is not simply a bad policy; it is downright devilish and anti-Christ. This is what I mean if you've heard me say that "Me-and-My-Group-First is the national motto of hell."

When you see it play out in this scene from Matthew's gospel, it's all rather clear that this is the stand Jesus is taking. The hard part, of course, is realizing that if we have been drawn to Jesus and walk in his footsteps, then we are also called to the same posture in the world.  If Jesus has refused to use his position and privilege for his own gain, then we cannot endorse that way of life or practice it, either.  And in fact, the New Testament makes that very point explicit elsewhere.  In Paul's letter to the Philippians, he says precisely this: 

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, assuming human likeness. And being found in appearance as a human, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death—even death on a cross." (Philippians 2:3-8)

For the apostle Paul who wrote those words to the Philippians (possibly quoting an even earlier poem or hymn they all knew), the connection was clear. Because Jesus refused to use the privileges of his status for his own interests, we are not supposed to cling to our privileges, either.  Because Jesus didn't abuse his position for his own advantage, we do not take advantage of our positions in life, either.  Rather, our call is to seek the good of others, because that is how Jesus used his life--and in so doing, he revealed that's the character of God.

That's our calling today, if we dare to acknowledge that we are following after Jesus and patterning our lives on his.  You and I may not be dared to jump off the top of the Temple (or any other tall buildings today) but we are constantly tempted to seek our own self-interest and exploit our privileges for our own benefit.  Jesus has already exposed that as an anti-Christ way of living in the world.  He will give us the courage and strength to say no to those possibilities when they come, so that we can say yes to the way of Jesus.

The angels were never the problem here--the question was always about whether Jesus would take the bait of seeking his own self-interest rather than living in God's self-giving love.

Lord Jesus, enable us to give ourselves away in this day, as you have first given yourself away for us.