Another Divine Jailbreak--August 26, 2026

Another Divine Jailbreak--August 26, 2026

[Jesus continued his reply to Peter] " And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." (Matthew 16:18)

Jesus and his community are in the business of busting people out of captivity to death.

That's probably not the usual way we talk about the mission of the church, but it's actually pretty close to the sense of what Jesus says here in this passage that many of us heard again this past Sunday in worship, which we've also been re-examining in our devotions this week.  For all the mission statements and slogans that congregations, focus groups, and consultants put together in order to energize churches, Jesus has his own take here. We are empowered by God to set people free from the grip of death like an organized resistance movement breaking prisoners out of their jail cells.  We are like a strike team sneaking into the armored stronghold of an enemy power to rescue those who have been wrongly detained and held captive.  And Jesus says that this enemy power--Death itself--won't be able to thwart us or keep its victims behind bars.

So often, we settle for so much less in our vision of the church's mission and purpose.  We talk about having lively programming and fun children's activities, or about increasing brand recognition of our church's name in the community. Or maybe we just lament what seems to be a lessened public influence that Christians have in the wider culture, and we think that our job is to help the church to exert more leverage and have more "pull" in society.  But Jesus pictures something more urgent, more vital, and more radical, honestly.  We are a part of God's insurgency against the power of death itself.

Maybe we need to back up a bit here to make sense of that claim, because it does sound more dramatic than our typical ways of talking about the church.  There are two important details I want to focus on here in this verse from Matthew.  The first is the word "Hades." Earlier translations might have rendered it as "hell," but that's really a different word Jesus uses elsewhere, and even that doesn't exactly mean what popular culture tends to assume it means.  The word "Hades," however, is the Greek word for the realm of the dead.  Think of it as "the underworld." Not so much a place of punishment or reward, but just the place where the dead go. In the Greek sense (and remember, the Gospels were first written in Greek), Hades holds the dead in its grip like they are its captives.  When you die and go to the Hades, you can't break out and get back to the realm of the living.  It's like you are imprisoned in its fortifications or detained within its walls.  

And that brings us to the other word we need to talk about: "gates." Again, the imagery here is sort of like a prison door, or a barred access that is meant to hold people in.  Picture it almost like an ancient fort or castle where enemy prisoners are held indefinitely.  In other words, gates are not offensive weapons; they are defensive tools used for keeping your captives incarcerated.  So the whole sentence has Jesus saying to Peter that his assembly of people, his community of disciples, his "church," will go toe-to-toe against the powers of death, and those fortress gates won't be able to hold us in.  You get the idea that we are sent as covert operatives into the heart of the Enemy Territory of Death in order to infiltrate it and then lead an escape plan, setting everybody free.  And Jesus says we will be successful--even the gates of death themselves won't be able to stop the Jesus movement from breaking people out and setting people loose.

The Eastern Orthodox branch of the Christian family tree speak and talks like this pretty frequently, actually.  Jesus is often depicted in icons of the resurrection breaking two elderly figures, a man and a woman, out of chains from an underground chamber beneath the cross.  They are supposed to be Adam and Eve, and the visual idea is that in Jesus' resurrection, he sets free all of humanity that is held captive to the power of death.  Jesus' resurrection is like busting into the Enemy Fortress of Death and opening all the doors, breaking all the bars, and releasing all the prisoners.  And in that sense, then, our calling as the community of Jesus, the "church," is simply to continue with the evacuation of Fort Grave.  It's another divine jailbreak, releasing captives and setting people free--in other words, just the kind of thing that Jesus himself had said he had come to do (see, for example, his quoting of Isaiah 61 in his hometown sermon in Nazareth, back in Luke 4).

The stakes, in other words, are so much bigger than we usually realize.  We aren't just here to drum up new members for our religious club, recruit volunteers to lead our committees, or increase our numbers to keep our institution stable.  We are here, empowered by the God of resurrection to help break people out of death's prison.  We are here as active resistance against the powers of the grave.  We are here, putting explosives on the locks and sawing through the iron bars, as Jesus sets humanity free from the clutches of, well, Hades.  We are here alongside Jesus subverting and undermining the power of death to hold humanity in its grip.

That's so much bigger than just keeping our social club going, isn't it?  It is daunting, but also compelling.  If we are here just to have a group to share our vaguely religious hobby with, that's not worth giving our lives to.  But if we are a part of God's underground resistance community looking to bring down the tyranny of death?  Well, that is something I want to be a part of.  That's the adventure of a lifetime.

How could you and I live this day with that sense of the importance of our words, our actions, our love, and our witness?  How could our choices in this day help pull people out of the grip of death, and into new life?  How might Jesus use us to set people free? How could we be a part of another divine jailbreak today?

Lord Jesus, use us to be a part of your work setting the world free from captivity to death.

With Jesus-Tinged Lenses--August 25, 2026

With Jesus-Tinged Lenses--August 25, 2026

Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”  And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven."  (Matthew 16:16-17)

"Good news, Pete!  You didn't do it on your own!"

That sounds like sort of a backhanded compliment, doesn't it? 

When Jesus had asked his disciples the critical question, "Who do you say that I am?" Peter had taken the bold, audacious step of declaring, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God!" And for once, Peter's shoot-from-the-hip approach paid off.  He was right!  Maybe none of the other disciples had realized it yet, or maybe they were too afraid of being wrong to risk saying it out loud. But for whatever reason, Peter took the gamble and shouted his belief: Jesus is the Messiah, and indeed, the very Son of God.

And Jesus' immediate response, at least as Matthew tells the tale, is to say, essentially, "You get it!  You really do get it! But you didn't figure this one out by your own cleverness or spiritual insight, because you never would have gotten it on your own--God showed it to you."  So much for earning a gold star for a right answer, huh?

But of course, that's part of the whole point.  Recognizing who Jesus is never was a matter of getting a correct answer on a theology exam.  This was never a test, and Peter doesn't have to worry about getting a passing grade.  This was about allowing God to help him see what was right in front of him all along, but which his own perception wouldn't have understood apart from God's grace directing and expanding his vision.  If we thought that Jesus asked questions in order to determine who was smart enough to earn their way into heaven, Jesus releases us from that error in thinking by telling Peter that the only reason he came to recognize Jesus' identity as the Son of God was that God had already enabled him to see it.  The Christian life, in other words, is not about learning the right religious facts in order to secure ourselves a spot in the Kingdom as a reward. Rather, it's about letting God give us the vision to see God's presence in the unexpected and ordinary humanity of Jesus.  And from there, with Jesus-tinged lenses, we see the whole world differently.

This is a hard thing for many of us to accept, to be honest.  Some part of us would rather have a religion in which we have to get a certain score on a test to prove our worth, get a passing grade (or maybe even a big A-plus from the teacher!), and then tell ourselves we have earned our spot on the ol' Heavenly Honor Roll because we knew enough right answers.  Some part of us wants to be able to say we achieved our salvation because we figured out the right answer to the Big Question, "What is Jesus' secret identity?" and therefore win the prize.  And along the same lines, we want to be able to draw rigid lines between us "insiders" who have acquired our spot on the Good List by our spiritual smarts and right answers and those lost and forlorn "outsiders" who weren't bright enough to arrive at the correct response.  But if even Peter doesn't arrive at the truth about Jesus by his own insight or wits, then surely we don't, either.  We are going to have to accept that even realizing who Jesus is and placing our faith in him has to be a gift of God, one we wouldn't have arrived at on our own.

Today's verses, which many of us also heard in worship this past Sunday, compel us to recognize that our whole relationship with Jesus is only possible by God's grace, from beginning to end.  We Lutherans are famous for reciting the scriptural motto, "We're saved by grace through faith!" but sometimes we try to sneak the old transactional logic of earning in the back door through that last word "faith." Sometimes we take that phrase to mean, "We're saved because we believed the correct facts about Jesus, and in return, God has awarded us a spot in heaven for our correctly held doctrine." Or it becomes, "Did you pray to accept Jesus as the Christ/Messiah, and to recognize him as your Lord and Savior?" or "Can you recite the Creed by memory?"  The particular credentials might change, but the same scheme is underneath it all: to find some way, some angle, to see our being saved as something we earned--if not by our list of good deeds or acts of piety, then by the correctness of our theology or the strength of our faith.  But Jesus pulls all of that apart like he's unraveling a thread: even Peter's core confession, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!" turns out to have been something Peter had to be shown rather than something he deduced like a geometric proof or a logical syllogism.  Yes, we are saved by grace through faith... but Jesus would tell us that even our faith turns out to be a gift of grace.  Even coming to recognize who Jesus is, we'll see one day, was always made possible because God revealed it to us, not that we sleuthed out the answer on our own.  There's no way around it: everything in our entire lives of faith comes as a gift, even that faith itself.

When we take that seriously, we can stop trying to make salvation into a prize or a spot on the Heavenly Honor Roll and instead receive it as a gift.  And from there, we are freed from trying to draw lines between "good" people who were clever enough to figure out the right answer and "bad" people who got a big red X marked on their papers for wrong answers. Instead, we'll see that we, too, have only come to see the truth about Jesus because God has opened our eyes and pointed us in the right direction... and maybe that God is using us to help point to Jesus for someone else.

How could that happen today?  How might God use you to help someone else recognize that Jesus is the One we've been waiting for all along?  How might you be a part of someone else's story of coming to confess, "You are the Messiah--the Son of the Living God!"?

Lord Jesus, give us the vision not only to see you rightly, but to see the movement of grace enabling us to trust in you.  And let us be instruments that can help others come to faith in you as well.

We Speak With Our Lives--August 24, 2026

We Speak With Our Lives--August 24, 2026

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)

This isn't meant to be a "gotcha" question on a history exam or a particularly tricky Daily Double on the Jeopardy! game show.  It's a question of orientation--and of reorientation.

When Jesus asks his disciples who they really think he is, this isn't a pop quiz out of the blue. He's not threatening to expel them from Disciple School if they get it wrong or smite anybody who doesn't recite the Apostles' Creed word for word as their response. This is one of those clarifying questions that compels his disciples to stop and ask themselves, "Just what do we think is going on here?  Who is this Jesus, really, and why have we turned our lives upside-down to follow him?"

After all, there are plenty of folks who have listened to Jesus from the periphery like spiritual tourists and decided they have no obligation to stick around.  There have been crowds hoping to get to see a miracle, or to have a wonder worked for their sick loved ones. There have been people who got a free lunch on the day with the loaves and fishes and are hanging around Jesus like an extended entourage hoping for more freebies.  And to be sure, there are some folks who have just been captivated by Jesus' teaching and find him to be a lovely and inspirational voice to listen to whenever they need a little spiritual "pick-me-up."  And basically, Jesus is nudging his disciples to say out loud what they think they are doing here.  "What is this, anyway, guys?  Are you like students auditing a class?  Are you fair-weather fans?  Are you prepared to let me change your lives?"

I think that's the real issue here, both in Jesus' question and implicit in Peter's answer.  If Jesus is only a nice rabbi, then you can take his suggestions when you like them and ignore them when you don't.  If he's just an interesting teacher of spiritual truths, you can listen in your spare time and then continue about your daily and weekly business unchanged.   If Jesus is just one guy offering his opinions, then you are free to agree or disagree with him as you like.  Jesus can be a sort of religious buffet, then.  You might like the talk of heaven and eternal life, but not so much the part about loving your neighbor.  You might agree with his position on not being so strict with the food rules, but then not like his instructions about loving your enemies.  You might be excited every time he mentions the "kingdom of God," only to back off when he insists he hasn't come to conquer like Caesar but rather to serve and wash feet.  If Jesus is just one ordinary fella giving suggestions, then we can walk away the moment he says something we don't like.

But if Peter is right--and Jesus' response (which we'll get to in greater depth tomorrow) certainly indicates that he is--then Jesus can't be ignored or shrugged off.  If Jesus really is God's "chosen" (the word "Messiah" means "anointed" and hearkens back to the way the new king would be anointed with oil as a sign of being chosen by God to be the next king to shepherd the people) then Jesus doesn't merely represent his own opinions, but the perspective of God.  You know how sometimes on a TV broadcast, there will be a voiceover indicating that "the comments and views expressed by individual commentators do not necessarily reflect the views of the network"?  Well, if Jesus is God's Messiah, then we can't say that about Jesus.  If Jesus is "the Son of the living God," as Peter declares, then what Jesus says is what God says.  

That means that "love your enemies" is not just one person's random opinion... but God's policy toward enemies.  And it means Jesus' unlikely announcement of blessing on the poor, the meek, the harassed, and the merciful come with God's authority.  It means that the inverted order where the greatest become the servants of all and the last are put first is actually God's way of rearranging the world.  If Jesus really is God's Son and promised Messiah, then we don't get to ignore the things Jesus says that overturn our preferred way of life.  To confess, as Peter does, that Jesus is the Christ, will mean that we can't dismiss the parts of Jesus' message, actions, and choices that make us squirm.  The way he welcomes outcasts and notorious "sinners" to his table is God's welcome.  The prayer of forgiveness for his executioners is God's forgiveness for them.  The choice to die for the sake of the world but not to kill for it is also God's choice.  All of that comes along with Peter's exclamation about who Jesus really is.

That's the question we have to wrestle with, too, then. Who do we say that Jesus is? And once we understand the implication of naming Jesus, like Peter does, the Son of God and Messiah, will we dare to confess the same?  Will we take the words of the creed seriously when we speak them Sunday by Sunday and declare as a congregation that we "believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God" if we understand that it means we can no longer treat him as an interested religious voice or harmless teacher of spiritual truths? Will we also see that every day of our lives is the place where we reveal what we truly believe about Jesus?

After all, if we have mouthed the words of the Creed on Sunday but then refused to answer evil with good on Monday, we're saying with our actions that we don't really consider Jesus authoritative in our lives.  If we call Jesus "the Christ" in worship but then spend our work week trying to dominate and exploit other people rather than serving them, we reveal we don't mean what we say. If we refer to Jesus as "Lord" but are more invested in our own "greatness" than in lifting up the lowly and feeding neighbors, we're admitting that we don't really take Jesus seriously. Even more than with our churchly formulations, we speak with our lives.  We confess our faith with our priorities, choices, and actions, as much as with our tongues.

So... what will we say about Jesus, both in our words and in our lives, in this new day?

Lord Jesus, let our whole selves confess you as Messiah, Savior, and Son of God, not only with our mouths, but with our actions.

Because God Is Not Pie--August 21, 2026

Because God Is Not Pie--August 21, 2026

"May God be gracious to us and bless us, and make his face to shine up on us, that your way may be known up on earth, and your saving power among all nations. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. Let the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you judge the peoples with equity and guide the nations upon earth. Let the peoples praise you, O God; let all the peoples praise you. The earth has yielded its increase; God, our God, has blessed us. May God continue to bless us; let all the ends of the earth revere him." [Psalm 67:1-7]

Sometimes on my day off I go down to one of my favorite spots by the river, and I am reminded that the world in which I live is not only filled with human beings, but with all kinds of creatures who are quite different from me.  I sit on a bench or walk down a trail, both of which are artifacts of human skill and invention. But then I see butterflies landing on the milkweed, or herons fishing at the bank and then taking to the air with their vast wings stretched wide, or the splash of a frog jumping into the water as I get closer... and I am reminded that I am not alone in that beautiful place.  There is abundance and beauty available to me in that spot, but it is also available to any other person who happens along the Maumee River, and it is also open to all the creatures large and small who make that place their home as well.  It is mine to enjoy, but not just mine.

Quite often we forget that about this world and the God who has crated it. We humans cut trees and clear paths and maybe even make some signs with the names we have given to this or that hillside, this or that river, this or that forest. But none of them are solely our spaces. We share the woods with the gnats, the birds, and the deer that live in them, like we share the river with the fish and the geese and the snails, like we share this beautiful blue-and-green-and-brown planet with all creatures and all people on it. This world is our home, yours and mine, but only a fool would think it is ours alone. It is not our private possession, and it never has been.

The ancient poet who wrote the song that we call Psalm 67 (although one wonders if at some point it had a catchier title attached to it) sees that it is much the same with God. The Creator of all things can indeed be called "our God," but that doesn't make God ours alone. In fact, as many heard this past Sunday (this was the appointed psalm for this past Sunday) the old songwriter says, this same one God guides all nations and reigns with justice for all peoples. The psalmist calls out for God to bless not just one nation, but all of them, and to bring salvation to all the peoples of the earth as well. Because of that, the poet calls on all nations to praise this one God, and to sing with joy. God is "our God" the same way my parents are "mine"--that is to say, not exclusively, because my brother can call them "his" just a surely as I can. My parents, in that sense, are mine, but not mine alone. Like the Earth is my home, but not mine solely, the God in whom I find a home is not my private possession.

Knowing that--and letting it sink in--does something to us. I think a lot of the time we operate with the (false) assumption that God belongs to one group, one ethnicity, one culture, one nation, or one political party. We end up treating God like a possession, a mascot, or a genie who lives in our lamp, rather than the Sovereign over all creation. We have a way of thinking God is only ever interested in helping Me-and-My-Group, or that God doesn't give good things to people whose language, skin color, culture, or lifestyles are different from our own. After all, we think, WE are God's people... and therefore, anybody who isn't part of OUR group cannot belong in the scope of God's care.

We are wrong.

It can be uncomfortable--threatening, even--to consider that God loves me but not ONLY me... and that God is not only working for the well-being of folks with my demographics, but also for people half a world away living in sub-Saharan Africa... and in mainland China... and in Central America. Part of our problem is that we tend to assume that God is a commodity in limited supply, like pie. And if someone else gets a bigger piece of the pie than I have, I feel insecure... or afraid... or threatened. But that's not how it works with an infinite God!

Sure, with the finite resources of other people in our lives, yes, there are limits. There is a certain inescapable zero-sum quality to your available time and energy and effort in this life, and it is the same with every other person you meet. Yes, to some degree, you and I have to choose who and what gets our time, our focus, our care, and our selves--the time you spend with your friend is time you can't spend at work... and the time you spend with your kids or your parents is time you can't spend with your book club or your drinking buddies (depending on your social calendar). Yes, for all of us, we have to make choices about who and what are most important to us, and whom we give the limited resource of time to. But that's decidedly NOT how it is with God. God, who is both outside of our experience of time and infinite in being, doesn't run out of love. God is not a scarce resource, such that I need to feel threatened when I realize that God loves and blesses you. God can be "my God" while at the same time being yours, and in fact, God reserves the right to love and bless and provide for ALL of us--all nations, all peoples, all languages, tribes, tongues, and cultures. And when we realize that God is not a zero-sum reality, I don't have to get possessive about God's goodness--I can in fact rejoice when God does good things for others, even when it doesn't directly benefit me.

We have been fed for too long the faulty theology that turns God into a private commodity. We have been told to pray for God to bless our land, our country, our state, our community, with the unspoken request for God not to bless those outside the imaginary lines we have drawn. But here are these ancient words, sung for centuries before even Jesus' birth, that remind us that God has always been invested in bringing the whole world more fully to life--that includes me, but it doesn't end with me. That includes my land, but it isn't just mine. That includes my society, but not only them. Because it turns out that life itself doesn't have to be thought of as a limited supply--when God blesses someone else with abundant life, it doesn't take it away from me. It just means the world has come a little more fully alive. That's good no matter what or where it happens.

Dr. King once famously said that "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere," and that is true. But so is the opposite--any place and any time where justice is done, where mercy is shown, where someone is brought more fully to life, it is good news for all creation. And instead of being upset or territorial or childishly possessive with God, maybe we can actually listen to these words from the Scriptures and learn to rejoice at every good thing, not just the ones that directly affect me. Maybe we can see, like the herons and the geese teach me when I go down to the river, that God's goodness is ours... but not ours alone. And instead of feeling threatened or impoverished by that truth (as though it meant someone was going to "take" some of our share of God's goodness), we can rejoice all the more to know that God's goodness is showered over all creation. Any goodness, any kindness, any blessing, any grace, shown to anyone, is something we can rejoice over--because we are connected to all the world which God loves, and over which God reigns in goodness, justice, and mercy.

Today, maybe it's worth taking an honest look at the ways each of us gets caught up in trying to make God our private possession, rather than being moved to awe and joy to know God loves and does good for all peoples, everywhere. Maybe we can be both humbled and exalted to know that God is our God, but not ours alone. God, after all, is not pie.

Lord God, help us to see that you were never our private possession, and instead allow us to rejoice over your goodness everywhere and at all times.

Mercy All Around--August 20, 2026

Mercy All Around--August 20, 2026

"Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so also they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." (Romans 11:30-32)

In the last chapter of the whodunnit, you finally find out the identity of the culprit, the details of their clever plot, and the underlying reason for their scheme.  The detective, whether Miss Marples, Hercule Poirot, Sherlock Holmes, or a modern cinematic invention like Benoit Blanc from the Knives Out movies, finally unravels the motive for whatever elaborate ploy the criminal mastermind devised over the course of the story. We find out which clues were red herrings meant to misdirect us, which details were important all along, and, of course, the real question driving us to get to the last page:  why?  Why did the killer do it?  What was the purpose behind the conspiracy?  What was the motive for the caper?  And, of course, a good mystery writer can keep you guessing all the way until the final reveal. And once the "why" has been answered with a "because," readers of good mysteries typically find themselves satisfied, now able to see connections they had missed before, recognize the reasons for the twists and turns, and relish how the whole plot drove toward that one inexorable conclusion.

Well, in a manner of speaking, Paul has been doing the same thing here in this section of his letter to the Romans, spun out over the course of three whole chapters (ch. 9 through 11) as he reflects on what was surely a pretty thorny theological mystery.  The question was this:  If Jesus really is the long-awaited Messiah of Israel promised to the descendants of Abraham and Sarah from long ago, and if by and large most of those descendants (the people of the Jewish faith in which Paul himself had been raised) had rejected that claim, then what on earth was God up to?  Did God not see that rejection coming?  Did God make a mistake and somehow incorrectly assume that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob would recognize Jesus as the Messiah, only to get it colossally wrong when the mob called for his crucifixion?  Or, was God giving up on those people because they rejected Jesus, and no longer going to keep the ancient promises to love and bless them forever?  What was really going on?

It really was a pretty frustrating puzzle, especially in the first century when Christianity was still very much figuring itself out and discerning whether it was a movement within Judaism (like the Pharisees, Sadducees, Zealots, or Essenes) or something new and different.  At first, when the church was mostly made up of Jewish believers, with just a few Gentile (non-Jewish) newcomers, it was easy to treat those outsiders as exceptions, but still to say that Christianity was "aimed" at reaching only people within Judaism.  But as more and more Gentiles came to faith and wanted to be followers of Jesus, the question became more and more pressing: what was God doing here?  Why would God allow so many of the covenant people to miss the One they'd been waiting for?  And what did it mean for them--was their hope, blessedness, and salvation now rescinded because they didn't believe in Jesus?  

Neither option sounded very appealing, theologically: one seemed to be saying that God was not intelligent enough to realize that Jesus would be rejected by so many of his own people, and the other sounded like it was saying that the promises of the covenant were not reliable if God was just going to break off relationship with the covenant people who had rejected Jesus.  Neither seemed to "fit" with the character of God revealed in the Scriptures, who is portrayed as knowing us better than we know ourselves and also deeply faithful in keeping promises, even in the face of our unfaithfulness.

Paul spends three chapters raising the issue, framing the question, offering data from Scripture, presenting premises, and building toward what we hope will be a whodunnit-style unmasking like the end of an episode of Scooby Doo. And finally at the end of what we call Chapter Eleven in the Letter to the Romans, Paul comes to a conclusion.  Addressing the largely Gentile audience of the Christians in Rome, he says this:

"Just as you were once disobedient to God but have now received mercy because of their disobedience, so also they have now been disobedient in order that, by the mercy shown to you, they also may now receive mercy. For God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all."

These Gentile/outsider Christians hearing his letter see that prior to their coming to faith in Jesus, they had been pointed away from God and estranged from God's goodness in their old devotion to the gods of the empire like Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Jupiter, Artemis, Mars, and even Caesar himself.  But God showed mercy to them and had pulled them into the divine embrace as they had heard the news about Jesus and God's love that went to a cross for them.  And how had those Gentile Christians come to hear about Jesus in the first place? Well, in many cases, it had been that when traveling apostles like Paul had come to their towns, they had first gone to bring the message to the Jewish community in the local synagogue and were often met with rejection there, which led the apostles to spread the news to everyone else, too.  In other words, the Gentile "outsiders" came to hear about Jesus typically because the message had first been rejected by the "insiders." Paul sees this as a bit of divine jiujitsu: God used the rejection of the gospel by one group to become the vehicle that leads to the inclusion of outsiders in the gospel's embrace.  Like Jesus' story about the guests to the wedding banquet who refuse to come to the party, leading the host to find other guests who will come even if they are poor, sick, homeless, or underdressed, Paul says that the "disobedience" of the religious insiders (rejecting the news about Jesus) is the thing that leads to the "mercy" shown to the religious outsiders.

But wait--that's not the only reveal!  Like a clever mystery wrapped inside an enigma, or a plot with a double-twist in the final pages, Paul keeps going.  He says that since the rejection of the Gospel by so many of the ancient covenant people led to the inclusion of the Gentiles, God will now also be able to include those who have rejected Jesus on the same terms.  The Gentiles had formerly been turned away from God but had been drawn close to God through the Gospel, and so in the very same motion, God can choose to show mercy on the covenant people who have rejected Jesus and still drawn them into God's love yet. That's the ultimate reveal at the end of this long and twisty section of Romans: "God has imprisoned all in disobedience so that he may be merciful to all." 

The goal, Paul says, all along, from God's perspective, has been to "be merciful to all." It may have taken a great many unexpected plot twists and curve balls to get there, but that has been God's grand design all along. God's motive in allowing history to unfold the way it has, including the manifold rejection of Jesus and the surprising embrace of outcasts and outsiders, has been to hand out mercy all around.  To all.  Religious "insiders" secretly covering over their hypocrisy and impious "outsiders" who were pointed completely the wrong way.  The ancient covenant people who had still managed to miss the Messiah when he came into their midst, and the brand-new still-dripping-wet-from-their-baptism-yesterday Gentile newbies who were still learning the story of Jesus.  The folks who had been keeping kosher all their lives but who couldn't bring themselves to believe in a crucified Christ, and the ones who had been sacrificing goats to Zeus the other day before hearing a new story that changed their lives.  God's real motivation all along--throughout the entire course of biblical and world history--has been to show mercy to everybody in the end.  That's the destination Paul sees everything driving toward, even when it took a winding path to get there.

That might surprise us if we have been picturing God as primarily an angry and vengeful executioner looking for any excuse to lob a lightning bolt at sinners. But like you experience when you get to the end of a mystery story and see how all the threads and all the clues had been there all along, in a sense, it is no surprise that the God of the Bible intends to show mercy to all.  That seems to be God's modus operandi all throughout the Scriptures: always pushing the boundaries wider, always reaching out to include the unworthy and unacceptable, always extending grace to sinners and providing grace for the mess-ups.  Here in these verses Paul just comes out and says that this is not a curious fluke that crops up in a couple of places in the Scriptures, but rather this has been God's design all along.  The whole goal has been to show mercy to all, by God's design.

When you see it laid out that way, it is both a startling surprise and also somehow the most natural thing in the world, you know?  And when we take Paul's claim seriously it shapes our understanding for how we live out our lives of faith, too.  The whole goal, always, is for ways to show mercy.  God's intention is to reach everybody.  God's design is to show all of us the truth that none of us can earn our way into God's good graces, so that when God's love does reach everybody we won't be foolish enough to think it was something we had to achieve.  

Maybe it takes a while to reach that conclusion, but that's how a good story works. Like making our way through the plot twists of a mystery novel, we eventually come to the big reveal at the end. God has been leading the whole human saga to the place where God could show mercy all around.

You and I have just gotten a two-thousand-year-old spoiler about the last page of The Story: Paul says it has all been leading to mercy for all, all along.

How will that change the way you see every face who crosses your path today?

Lord God, prepare our hearts for your surprising mercy and the breadth of its reach.

Despite Our Flip-Floppery--August 19, 2026

Despite Our Flip-Floppery--August 19, 2026

"For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." (Romans 11:29)

One of the most exhausting things about parenting for me is how frequently and yet unpredictably children change their minds. I think it's a human thing, and children are unapologetically, undeniably human, but it can be particularly difficult to be a grown-up and deciding how much flip-flopping the family can abide with.

It's the ever-changing wish lists for Christmas or birthday presents, and the things they said they wanted last week may not be the things that capture their interest this week, much less by the time Christmas rolls around.

It's the fussiness about foods, where the dinner they loved last time you made it all of a sudden they don't like this time (or say they don't like).

It's the cliquishness of friendships as they get older--the person who was their seemingly close friend last month might now no longer be talking with them because the winds changed about who is "cool" or what off-hand comment got said in the hallway at school.

It's the flightiness of following trends, where the brand or style of clothes that "everyone" was wearing last season is no longer popular, as a new look becomes all the rage.

My guess is you've lived through some or all of those, and maybe some more of your own, whether from when you were the kid or you were the grown-up. The bottom line is that we human beings are notorious for un-choosing what we have previously chosen, even when we say things like, "I won't change my mind about THIS--I swear it!" Every discarded toy, unworn clothes left in a drawer, uneaten meal left on the plate, and broken friendship is a testament to how fickle our kind can be. We may grow out of the worst of it as we become adults, but that impulse is always inside us.

God, however, does not unchoose what or who is chosen. God may well reveal in time that a lot more or wider circle of people end up being included in the "chosen," but God doesn't flip-flop and un-call those who are called or de-gift a gift already given. There are no "givesies-backsies" with God. Or, to borrow the apostle's more polished way of saying it in the verse that many of us heard this past Sunday, "The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable."

In Paul's mind as he is writing this particular line to the church in Rome, he's talking about the ancient covenant people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--a group of whom Paul himself was a member, as he points out elsewhere, "a Hebrew born of Hebrews." (Now, this would be a good moment to note that for Paul the Apostle and the whole of the New Testament, "Israel" isn't the modern nation-state, which of course, wasn't created until 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II, but of all the collective community of the covenant people who traced their story through the tribes of Israel and the Torah-way-of-life. When Paul talks about God being faithful to "Israel" that is NOT a blanket assertion that everything the modern nation-state of Israel, or any other nation-state, does is endorsed with a divine stamp of approval. Even in the Old Testament periods when there was a king and a kingdom, God always reserved the right to critique, judge, and challenge the decisions of the government or the nation as a whole. Just so we are clear.) In Paul's mind, he's trying to assert that God hasn't given up on the collective people of Israel even though the crowds and Religious Leaders in Judea rejected Jesus and handed him over to the Romans to be crucified. Paul is saying, "Even though we have rejected God (or God's Messiah), God does not reject us." It's a declaration of assurance that God's promise and claim can be counted on, despite the frequent flakiness and flip-floppery of our choices as humans. Paul is decidedly NOT saying that God approves of everything the "chosen" ones do, but almost the opposite: that God can still choose and call people even when God is NOT happy with their choices. God can still correct, redirect, and challenge those whom God chooses, even while they remain "chosen."

Now, in our day and time, the context in our minds may be different, but the claim is the same. We can count on God's love not to end or run out on us, because God's calling and gifts are irrevocable. God's mind doesn't change to un-love us, un-choose us, or un-claim us, unlike the childishly flighty hate-it-love-it-hate-it ways we often do things. God never shouts, "I don't love you!" in a fit of momentary anger just to be spiteful. And God never abandons us because we've fallen out of style or lost popularity. So when we dare to tell someone else, "You are beloved of God," it is not, like the day's weather forecast, gasoline prices, or a stock quote, just a snapshot in time that's only true for the moment. It is a promise you can stake a life on. It is a statement about God's unchanging choice for us, not our unreliable flakiness.

Of course, God's unwavering choice for us doesn't mean God is obligated to endorse our most rotten impulses and selfish choices. Just as we said that God's persistent calling of the ancient people of Israel that Paul talked about doesn't mean that God must support any given action by the government of the modern nation-state of Israel (or any other country or administration, just so we're clear), God can still claim us and correct us. God can still say "I love you" while also not signing off on our pet bigotries, habits of greed, structures and systems of injustice, and our impulse for violence and revenge. God's love for us doesn't end just because we are hot messes who keep adding to the messiness, nor does God's love prevent God from saying "No!" to our crooked and cruel ways. Both can be true.

Today, then, it's worth holding onto two truths--you can carry one in each pocket. On the one hand, when we say you are beloved of God, know that you can take that to the bank like an ironclad promise. God will not back out, rethink, or undo the choice to love you, claim you, and give grace to you. On the other hand, it's important to remember that just because God loves me doesn't mean every idea, impulse, or action I do get a divine thumbs up. You and I are forever beloved, but always correctable. We are unchangingly claimed by God, but that claim will keep changing us as we grow, mature, and deepen our own Christ-like love. Hold those two together as we face the world today.

Lord Jesus, assure us of your unshakable love, and continue to point us in your direction.

The Lord Who Listens--August 18, 2026

The Lord Who Listens--August 18, 2026

“Jesus left that place and went away to the district of Tyre and Sidon. Just then a Canaanite woman from that region came out and started shouting, ‘Have mercy on me, Lord, Son of David; my daughter is tormented by a demon.’ But he did not answer her at all. And his disciples came and urged him, saying, ‘Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us.’ He answered, ‘I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.’ But she came and knelt before him, saying, ‘Lord, help me.’ He answered, ‘It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.’ She said, ‘Yes, Lord, yet even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.’ Then Jesus answered her, ‘Woman, great is your faith! Let it be done for your as you wish.’ And her daughter was healed instantly.’” (Matthew 15:21-28)

Let me tell you one reason I love Jesus: he listens.

That by itself—the act of listening—is a radical, and powerful, act. And to be truthful, it is unexpected, really, for someone in a position of power and authority. Most powerful people—kings, pharaohs, Roman governors, high priests, and presidents—have a way of thinking themselves to be the be-all, end-all, and to be the final word on any given subject. They have no need to listen to those who are “beneath” them, after all. Most people in authority—well-educated scribes and Sadducees, Pharisees and royalty-approved prophets, well-respected pastors, preachers, and rabbis, scholars, and so-called “experts”—are the same, too. They figure that they are “in the know” already and therefore must be right in their conclusions on any given subject. You tell yourself you don’t need to listen to anybody else if you let political power and intellectual authority go to your head.

And Jesus, by all accounts in the Gospels, is someone who has the Right to claim both Power and Authority. For whatever other details they envisioned, one thing the ancient prophets of Israel all agreed on was that the promised coming Messiah would command power and authority. The great and future descendant of King David would carry the old David’s mantle of wisdom and strength, and in that case, everybody would have expected the Messiah to be powerful and bold when he made official pronouncements. Everybody would have expected the Messiah to speak like he was the final word on the subject, and therefore that there was no real need to listen to anybody else. The Gospel-writers are clear that they are all convinced that Jesus is none other than the Messiah—the anointed rightful ruler of God’s people Israel—and therefore you could imagine someone saying, “Jesus is the Messiah: he doesn’t need to listen to anybody. He’s the king, after all.”

But wonder of wonders, even though every other person with power and authority we have known has a way of getting enclosed in an echo chamber where all they can hear are their own powerful, authoritative words, Jesus is different. Jesus listens.

And listening, genuinely listening to someone else, is a radical, courageous, world-changing act. And it is much harder than simply making loud, blustering pronouncements with your ears covered; much harder than we give it credit for, usually.  This is the surprising difference about the kind of reign Jesus brings: he listens. 

It is always easier to deal with messy situations by simply declaring that you are right and reciting a list of pre-learned talking points to back yourself up, than it is to actually listen to someone else, wherever the conversation may take you both.

It is always easier to just stick to the accepted conventional wisdom that everyone expects you to agree with, than to let Mercy move you to pause… to be still… and to hear someone else where they are at.

And this is where Jesus is different—and where Jesus shows us an entirely different way of being the Messiah than we ever expected from any other Power or Authority. Jesus owns his power and authority… by listening.

This story is one of those case in point moments. The conventional wisdom of the day is that Messiahs don’t have to listen to anybody, especially not outsiders of no standing, no power, no authority, and no leverage. And yet here is this blessedly persistent woman—who is first warned, and then given an explanation, and who yet persists in speaking to Jesus nevertheless.

Jesus could have pulled rank. He could have said, “Look, lady, I decide who I heal and who I don’t, and you can’t tell me what to do.” We have all known voices of Power and Authority who sound like that, who simply decree they don’t have to listen to anybody outside their own echo chamber.

Jesus could have insisted he had come to help only Israel First—in fact, he sort of gives this one-off comment that suggests he would be well within his “rights” only to care for people of the “in-group” of fellow Jews like Jesus himself and his disciples. We have all known voices of Power and Authority like that, too, who are so damned obsessed (and yes, I mean that literally—it is a “damnable” obsession) with looking out for their own self-interest that they will not even consider the needs of someone outside their own group or their own agenda.

Jesus could have just appealed to his having the “right” theological answer and made an Official Statement declaring his rightness. After all, yes, it was possible to read the Prophets of Israel’s past and to conclude that the Messiah’s official mission was only to gather in the “lost sheep of Israel.” Jesus could have just left it with his Official Statement and declared that helping any outsiders (and this woman is an outsider—living outside Israel in the district of Tyre and Sidon, and from Canaanite ancestry) was sliding into mission creep, and he just couldn’t help. Jesus could have said, “Sorry, lady, I know your child didn’t choose to be an outsider, and I know that there’s nothing she did to deserve this rotten turn, but hey, I am only here to help the citizens of Judea, and not Gentiles. I’m not here to look out for the interests of Canaanites—only the Kosher people.” We have all known voices of Power and Authority who said as much to the Canaanite women and their children in our own day. “Nothing personal, but I’m just not here to help the likes of… YOU,” they say, insisting at the same time that it’s nothing personal, and that they are just following the letter of their official duty to look out for their own first. We have all known voices of Power and Authority who take their need to sound right and orthodox and turn it into an idol of pride without noticing it has become a golden calf right under their noses.

And even though Jesus appears to head down each of those paths at the start of this story, it turns out that Jesus—like a fox—has a way of leaving false trails, too, as signs of ways he could have gone, but didn’t.

Most importantly—and most powerfully and most authoritatively of all—Jesus never stops listening. In all of this story, Jesus never stops listening to the woman on her own terms. He even keeps the conversation going when all of Jesus’ would-be advisors (the disciples) say that he should end the discussion and just leave the woman alone. He engages in the back-and-forth with her, almost winking as he pushes back on her replies, to see what she really thinks and what she thinks she has come for. Jesus keeps listening, even though this woman, as a “Canaanite,” was born to the wrong group of people in the wrong place. Jesus keeps listening, when every other voice of Power and Authority would just call it a day, dust off their hands, and say, “I’ve made my decision. There’s no help for you. That settles it.”

Jesus keeps listening. And there is the wonder—there is the shocking moment of this story. Honestly, by the fifteenth chapter here in Matthew’s Gospel, it’s already abundantly clear that Jesus CAN do miracles and wonders. He has been casting out demons practically from day one, and he has even shown evidence of healing people from a distance with a simple word, too. All of that is established.

What is surprising here is that Jesus listens to this woman when he had reason to ignore her, and when the majority opinion of his inner circle would have been saying, “She’s too demanding. She’s being rude. She’s refusing to stay in her place. She’s acting like she’s entitled…” What is surprising is that Jesus, even though this anonymous woman has no leverage, no credentials, no pull, and nothing she can offer Jesus in return, stops to consider the needs of a young girl who has been put in a situation of desperation that she never asked for or chose for herself. To all the other voices of Power and Authority, this young woman’s daughter is a nobody, and therefore, she is expendable. Who cares what happens to her, right? For that matter, if Jesus had stuck with taking a hard line against this foreigner woman and told her a decisive, unyielding NO, it might have boosted Jesus’ favorability ratings with the Pharisees back in Judea, and might have increased Jesus’ popularity in the next round of Galilean polls.

But still Jesus listens.

And because he listens, he acts. He heals the woman’s daughter—creating a miracle that never would have happened if Jesus had been a Messiah like every other voice of Power and Authority in history. Any standard-model Messiah would have silenced the woman and walked the other way with an indifferent shrug. Any lesser savior would have said, “Look, I’ll consider her case with heart,” and then just blew her off anyway. Any other Lord would have said, “Since you can’t do anything FOR me, you don’t MATTER to me,” and would have basked in the sound of his own voice as he made the pronouncement.

But because Jesus listens, the second wonder—the actual healing—can happen. The girl, who was a faceless nobody as far as anybody else could tell, is made well. The woman, who was ignorable at best and an “unworthy foreigner”—one of “the dogs,” even!—at worst, is listened to and extended the same level of respect and honor that 1st century society only reserved for men of the right class and standing. Because Jesus listens, the old lines are erased, old walls are broken down, and it becomes clear that Jesus’ messianic mission is wider than anybody had guessed up until that moment.

Jesus listens, and all of a sudden, everything is different—yes, for this woman, and yes, for her innocent daughter, caught up in a dire situation she did not choose, but for all of us. I am an outsider in the story of the people of God—and a Gentile like me can only say I get to belong in the great Story of God’s grace because this Jesus has shown grace to an outsider, a foreigner, like me. I only belong in this community we call the Church because this same Jesus has a way of widening the circle and crossing boundaries, even if there was an orthodox “right” answer that Jesus could have recited to shut the door on me.

This is why I love Jesus. He listens.

Look, dear friends, we are going to continue to face situations—maybe even daily—where it will be easy simply to retreat to reciting the talking points we have learned before, the “right” answers that conveniently reinforce what we already think. It will be tempting in those moments, when we run into a voice like this Canaanite woman’s that challenges our neat-and-tidy correctness, to ignore them, or to un-friend them on social media, to refuse to listen because we have told ourselves we already HAVE the right answers, and to dismiss people who complicate our picture of the world because they are expendable to us. It is always easier in this life to make pronouncements that we have told ourselves are already the “right” answers and stay in the echo chamber where we only ever even hear things we already agree with, than it will be to take the time and let someone complicate our world… by listening to them.

But this Jesus, whom we say we love, he does the hard thing. Jesus listens. And that makes all the difference.

Be one who listens today, too.

Lord Jesus, when we are quick to shout out our final answers, stop us up short and make us to listen where you speak, so that your Mercy may grow wider than we ever dared imagine.