These Dense Disciples--May 20, 2026

These Dense Disciples--May 20, 2026

So when they had come together, they asked [Jesus], “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…” (Acts 1:6-7)

To me it is always reassuring to see that even the hand-picked followers of Jesus didn't "get it," and that he was willing not to hold that against them. 

It's not that I like to gloat in the failures of others, but rather that it says there is hope for me, someone who so often doesn't "get it" either. This is one of those moments. Here are the apostles whom Jesus is about to send out into the whole world with the news of God's Reign and of the resurrection of Jesus, and they still miss the point of what Jesus is all about. It would be enough to make me worry, if I were Jesus, whether I was making a wise move leaving the movement in the hands of these largely thick-headed followers.

What's the issue? Well, the disciples have seen Jesus throughout his whole ministry, and not once did Jesus indicate that he was about to overthrow the Romans in a violent revolt,  stage a coup against Herod, take the crown for himself, build an army for God, "take back their country for the Lord," or even impress people with his own glorious power. And beyond that, they have heard Jesus say that the way he would bring about the kingdom was through his death and resurrection, not in spite of it. But the disciples just want everyone else to see that they backed a winner—that they bet on the right horse. The disciples want Jesus to show power as they know power and kingdoms as they know kingdoms, and they are thinking that maybe now, this is their moment to "restore the kingdom to Israel." Now, they think, they'll get their rewards. Now, they'll get their heavenly prizes. Now, they'll get… and then they fill in the blank with their wildest dreams.

Or, maybe they won't get those things, after all, because Jesus just isn't interested in declaring a war of armies with Rome. And Jesus isn't interested in making himself a king like Herod or a governor like Pilate. Jesus has bigger fish to fry—but the way Jesus will go about his work will not look like it is very impressive at all. He is about to leave the work of the Kingdom in the hands of these same former fishermen and tax collectors who just don't get it for so much of the time. No, Peter, there will be no Inaugural Ball. No, James and John, there will be no fire or lightning called down from the sky to show people who's boss. No, Matthew and Andrew, we will not be marching our soldiers and parading our tanks down the streets to strike fear in the heart of our enemies. No, we will let the when and the how and the where of the Kingdom of God be left in the hands of God. God will reign over all things when all is said and done, Jesus seems to say, but it will be on God's terms, not ours. And God seems surprisingly crafty at picking the terms that we least expect—and even that most offend us.

Jesus just isn't interested in "taking his country back for God" with weapons and wealth, but instead inaugurates God's Reign in the self-giving love of a cross and empty tomb. And now, despite the fact that his followers still don't get it, he entrusts them--including us!--to embody that Reign by speaking the truth, welcoming the left out, and healing the broken. Peter and the gang have been tempted to envision a swelling army in shiny armor and flaming angel swords, and Jesus has in mind something closer to the Island of Misfit Toys. No, children, it's not up to you to tell God how or when or where to "restore the Kingdom." It is all so much intriguing, if also comically misguided, theorizing from these disciples. If they'd have been listening to Jesus at all up to this point, they might have even heard the strange-sounding news that the Kingdom was already breaking out among them like a holy rash.

And yet... it is precisely among these trigger-happy, foot-in-mouthed disciples who seem like failures for a fair amount of the time that Jesus knows the Spirit will come. He doesn't hold back their past [or present] misunderstandings against them, but chooses still to work with this dense bunch of disicples. Despite the fact that they disappoint at every turn—and in truth, so do we—Jesus does not think it's too much work for the Spirit to handle. As much as it is hard for us to be the waiting ones in life, when the word from Jesus is to be patient. But perhaps it is also true that Jesus is doing a good bit of waiting, too—that he is the one patient with these disciples, refusing to give up on them even when it seems they've not been listening much at all, and that Jesus is waiting alongside us until we are ready to receive what he has to give. The Spirit will be poured out on these dense disciples soon enough when he speaks these words that many of us heard this past Sunday, and Jesus is willing to be patient with this band so that they will be ready for the gift.

In this day, too, our hope is in the same patient, unresentful Christ, who bears with our questions that sound foolish—and often reflect the fact that we've not been paying much attention at all to Jesus. Our hope is that the same Jesus who refused to scrap his whole mission when the disciples still didn't get it (even after the resurrection and forty days' worth of "convincing proofs") is the same Lord over us. We may be stumbling through the process of discerning just what Jesus is up to among us and in us, and yet the story Luke gives us is of the risen Jesus as one who can bear with our rather slow learning curve. Jesus' vision and work will not be held back by our bumbling in the big picture, and yet Jesus is also able to wait with us, to wait alongside us, to wait for us to let our ears and eyes finally be opened to what he has been saying and showing us all along. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the rise of a political party to wield power for the truly religious people. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the protection of one country at the expense of all others. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like me getting a cushy, luxurious life while others are left starving and ignored. No, children, the Kingdom will not even be reducible to higher attendance and offerings at my local congregation. Jesus just plain has bigger fish to fry than any of those. But even though we keep missing the point about what it is Jesus intends to do among us and through us, we get an assurance in this story that the risen Jesus bears with us in all our comically-misguided theorizing and will continue to pour out the Spirit to drench us in the power and presence of the Kingdom of God. Yes, even on a day like today.

Good Lord, you bear with us better than we can bear with ourselves. Give us not only the peace of knowing your patience with us, but also then give us open ears and eyes to recognize the Kingdom you are unleashing, the Kingdom you brought near in Jesus, the Kingdom you bring to the world even through the likes of us as we share your Word, your love, and your ways. We ask it in the name of your patient Way, Jesus.

What Jesus Prays For--May 19, 2026

What Jesus Prays For--May 19, 2026

[Jesus prayed:] "All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:10-11)

Being allowed into someone else's prayer life is a profoundly personal experience.  Even more than reading someone's favorite book, listening to their current playlist, or even sneaking a peek at their diary, when you know what someone else is praying about, you get a pretty clear glimpse of their soul. We reveal our deepest hopes, name our greatest needs, confess our most potent fears, and offer up our strongest loves in prayer. 

It's true of you and me, and it's true of Jesus, too.  That is to say, we learn something remarkable about Jesus by overhearing what he prays for, as we are getting the chance to do with these words from John 17 which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Here in what is often called Jesus' "high priestly prayer" Jesus brings to the One he calls "Father" and "Abba" his deep concern for... us, of all people.  Jesus prays in this moment, maybe mere minutes from heading to the garden in which he will meet the lynch-mob and religious police who will arrest him and then send him to the Romans for torture and execution, and yet John our narrator here wants us to see that Jesus isn't concerned about his own comfort or safety, but rather the ongoing community of his followers... who have also become his friends.  And by the end of the whole prayer, Jesus has even included "those who will come to believe" in his concern, which means that you and I were on Jesus' mind as he stared down the shadow of the cross.

Just that reality by itself is amazing to me.  In a time when so many other Big Deals and So-and-Sos seem to care only about their own interests, saving their own skin, or managing their own fortunes, Jesus is more concerned about the likes of us. Rather than angling for a way to protect himself, duck responsibility, or burnish his own reputation, Jesus seeks our well-being before his own. That kind of love is mind-boggling.

But once we get a bit deeper, there is even more to surprise us about Jesus' prayer life. And that's because what Jesus prays for on our behalf might not align with our personal wish-lists or expectations.  You don't hear Jesus praying for "health, wealth, and prosperity" for his followers. You don't hear any talk of helping us get more power or prestige, and there's not a whiff of asking for divine assistance in "taking back their country for God" or working the levers of political power.  Jesus isn't launching an empire or seeking financial success for his disciples.  And given how many of Jesus' followers ended up giving up their lives as his witnesses, it seems that Jesus doesn't even prioritize our physical comfort and security in his prayer life, either.  Instead, Jesus prays that we, his followers would be "one" in the same manner of unity that Jesus himself and the Father are One.

Now, that's saying something.  For church nerds who know about the backstory of the ancient Creeds, that's a gobsmacking claim.  Classically, Christians have professed that Jesus, who is God the Son, is "of one Being with the Father," and in fact is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God."  To be as "one" as the Father and the Son is the kind of unity you have with your own thoughts and actions, or the overlap between you and your words, or you and your own image in the mirror.  Christians confess, following the lead of John the Gospel Writer, that Jesus is the very Word of God, which is to say that Jesus is God's chosen and clearest self-expression.  So the same way that the Father is one with the Son, that's what Jesus now prays for us his followers to be.  He prays for our unity, our being bound together in love, and for our fully and mutually shared life in community.

Wow.  That's what's on Jesus' heart on his last night with his disciples.  He prays for us to be held together in love, the same way God's own Being is comprised of the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. How different that is from the way we are sometimes tempted to think of ourselves--as isolated individuals, or even like customers of church who come and go as we please and take our business elsewhere if we find a product we like just a smidge better.  It is easy in our day and age to think of ourselves as individual audience members when we come to worship, and to imagine that we have no need to interact with the other people around us. After all, if we are just like moviegoers in a theater, I expect everyone else to keep to themselves so I can enjoy the latest Marvel movie or romantic comedy.  Sometimes we let ourselves believe that's what we are in church--just individual ticket-holders who share nothing in common, necessarily, with the people next to us.  But Jesus' prayer life says differently.  He prays for us to be more than random strangers who happen to gather in the same building on Sunday morning.  He prays for us to be held together even more closely than a family, held by the relentless love of God that embraces us even when we are at our worst. We cannot avoid sharing life with one another--our joys, our sorrows, our struggles, and our successes, because we are being prayed into the same kind of loving unity that holds God's own triune life together.  For us there is never the option of saying to another, "I don't have to care about you."  We belong to one another as fully and completely as God the Son and God the Father belong to each other.  

Sounds like we are in this for the long haul.

Today, how might it change our approach to interacting with each other to take Jesus' prayer life seriously, and to see our connection with each other as something Jesus thought was so important that he prayed about it more than saving his own life on the way to the cross?  How might we be changed by realizing what Jesus prays for?

Lord Jesus, let us be shaped by your own prayer, and bind us together in love with one another.

Quality and Quantity--May 18, 2026

Quality and Quantity--May 18, 2026

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that that Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:1-3)

Let's face it--as a species, we humans tend to be suckers for quantity over quality. Or at least, we tend to focus on "how much" of something we will get, rather than "how good" the something is which we are getting.

As Exhibit A, let me offer the vast abundance of all-you-can-eat buffets across our fair land, which all advertise in one way or another that they offer a "great deal" on their food, because they promise you can get a large quantity of food for relatively little money. And I will not dispute their math at all--indeed, you can get a lot of food at your average all-you-can-eat-buffet, and spend relatively less than you would at many sit-down restaurants. But whether that is a "great deal" or not, in truth, depends in the end on whether it is of greater value to have a lot of mediocre food, or a sensible amount of very, very good food. In other words, the question is whether we should be so focused on defining worth in terms of quantity (how much) rather than quality (how good) in the first place.

As Exhibit B, let me offer a brilliantly funny line from an early episode of the quirky sitcom, "The Good Place." Kristen Bell's character is talking with Ted Danson's character about how popular frozen yogurt places are in their neighborhood, even though they both admit they prefer the richer taste of good old-fashioned ice cream. And Danson's character Michael says, "There's something so human about taking something and ruining it just a little bit so that you can have more of it." There's something spot on about that, isn't there? We reach for quantity rather than quality.

Surely plenty of other examples abound, all of which would confirm the dictum of a writing teacher I recall from high school, who said, "Sometimes more isn't better; sometimes more is just more."

So here's why I wanted us to spend a moment owning our tendency to define "good" in terms of "increased quantity" rather than "higher quality." It turns out that when Jesus himself talks about the kind of life he has come to give us, it is more about a certain quality, while we have all just been taught somewhere along the way only to think of it in terms of quantity. We hear the phrase "eternal life" and tend to assume that it essentially means "more" of life--that is, life basically like what we know now, but for years and years and years and so on--when Jesus actually talks about a different (better, you could say) quality of life when it is lived in God. But we get hung up on quantity and just assume that the whole point of what we call "eternal life" is just getting an infinitely long supply of minutes to live, like we have just arrived at the Chinese buffet of existence and can have as many helpings of sweet and sour chicken with fluorescent orange sauce as we would like.

But for a moment, humor me. Let's actually look at how the text reads here in John 17. Before we bring any of our baggage or assumptions to how understand "eternal life," let's hear how Jesus describes it. (We won't even have to get bogged down in the weeds of the Greek today--suffice it to say that the word translated "eternal" here in the New Testament is the Greek word "aiōnos," which means in a woodenly literal sense, "of the age" or "of the ages," in which case we still have to figure out what "life of the ages" means to Jesus.) Here's what Jesus says: "And this is eternal life--that they may know you..." Huh. How about that. It is a kind of life, a quality of life, a set of circumstances, that Jesus has in mind. And it is profoundly relational. You know--like belonging in a family.

Honestly, if Jesus had wanted to stress that this thing called "eternal life" was a quantity thing more than a quality thing, you would have expected him to say something like, "And this is eternal life--living, for a long, long time..." or "And this is eternal life: an infinite number of years of the same ol', same ol'..." For that matter, if Jesus' primary concern were streets of gold or gates of pearl, or getting to go fishing up at your favorite fishing spot, or free sports cars and fancy mansions, this would have been a place to mention any of those. Jesus doesn't describe the life that is eternal in terms of stuff, or time, or the endless shrimp cocktails on the lido deck. It is about the kind of life lived knowing the One who is Love, the One by whom we are already fully known. The life we call "eternal" is about relationship, and the way that relationship changes everything else. This is the life that Jesus gives us.

When John the gospel writer gives us Jesus' words saying, "This is eternal life--that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent," it isn't simply "knowing" in the sense of facial recognition or name recall. Knowing someone isn't really just about putting a face with a name, but about the other sharing some of their own self with you, and inviting you to share your own self back. To "know" another person is to let your soul touch theirs. That's probably why, after all, a favorite biblical euphemism for procreation is "to know" someone, as in "Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived a son..." He didn't just recognize her face.

The life that is eternal is, at least as the Gospels themselves describe it, first and foremost a particular kind of life--a quality, you could say. Sure, part of that quality is that is no longer confined by the grip of death. But it's not just an infinite loop of more, more, more, like an all-you-can-eat-buffet of Being. It's about a life worth living--a quality that takes shape by knowing the One who knows us. What we call "eternal life," then, is really a life "lived within God," so to speak--a life where my being touches right up against God's, so that I come to see everything through the light of God's own presence, like a lens. And to see everything in light of God is to see everything around me as a gift of grace, every person around me as bearing the face of Christ, every moment I live as a precious treasure I did not earn, and each day as an opportunity to share in God's kind of self-giving love. To "know God" means, too, that I come to realize that I am known by God already... and beloved all the while. It is not that God is still forming an opinion of me, waiting to see how I turn out, or whether I'll do enough good in my life to win a spot in the club, but rather knowing that God sees me precisely as I am and says, "You are mine." That frees me from all the stupid game playing we do in this life trying to impress others, to find some other connections that will make us feel acceptable, or to puff ourselves up. Knowing God frees me to see that I am beloved... and so is the person next to me, whether I like them myself or not. Knowing God means knowing that God loves both me and my enemy, the people I like as well as the people I can't stand, and that changes how I use this life, with every breath I get.

Funny how we get all excited about what a great deal it is to pay $5.99 for repeat trips to a buffet that we will end up regretting after we eat, but we overlook the sheer goodness of a home-cooked meal made by someone who loves you enough to know what you like and don't like on your plate, and who gives it to you for free. That's us, though--suckers for quantity over quality.

Perhaps, just for a change, we might skip the buffet and listen to Jesus on this one today, and embrace the life that is eternal in quality--the life lived knowing God in Christ.

Lord Jesus, you give us life--not just in minutes, years, and decades, but in beauty, justice, grace, and truth. Grant us to live in this "eternal" life you make possible, right here and right now.

A World Put Right--May 15, 2026

A World Put Right--May 15, 2026

[Paul said to the crowd in Athens:] "...While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31)

The Christian faith hangs on the resurrection, but maybe not only in the ways we are used to. As Paul tells it, the resurrection of Jesus is the "assurance" that grounds our faith's story. In other words, Paul would say to us, the reason there is a Christian faith at all is that Jesus is alive again. Without Jesus being raised from the dead, we might as well all go home or pick from one of the other choices in the buffet of religions out there.

Okay, so far, so good. Jesus' resurrection is the lynchpin of our faith, the keystone that holds everything else in place--that sounds pretty much like standard Christian theology. But just what is it that Jesus' resurrection assures us of? Paul talks about the resurrection as though it is a guarantee of something wider and bigger, but what is that "something"? We might expect it to be something like this: "Jesus was raised from the dead, and therefore I know that I will go to heaven when I die." That is quite often how we use the resurrection. And that's not incorrect; elsewhere the New Testament does make that kind of move--that Jesus' resurrection is a confirmation that we, too, will be raised to new and unending life beyond the grip of death. But what's interesting to me is that this is not the move Paul makes here. He sees the resurrection of Jesus as an assurance of something more, something bigger than just a "me-and-Jesus" thing or a "I-get-to-go-to-heaven-when-I-die" thing. Paul talks about the resurrection as the assurance that God will put the world right again. The world is to be governed in righteousness, which in Greek is the same word as justice; and in fact, it will be governed by the same one who was raised from the dead. It will be governed by the risen and living Jesus, who teaches us what righteousness--that is, justice--really looks like.

And Jesus gives us some surprising pictures in his life and ministry and teachings of what "righteousness"/"justice" is: it looks like laborers who get paid all the same amount ("what is right," according to the parable in Matthew 20); it look like a blessing on the poor in spirit, the grieving, the meek, and the peacemakers; it looks like food for the hungry, clothing for the naked, and compassion and visitation for the sick and imprisoned (in the parable about "the least of these" in Matthew 25, note that the ones who do these things are judged to be "righteous"); and Jesus even says that it looks more like the tax collectors and prostitutes who turned their allegiance to Jesus when they heard him rather than the professional holy people of the day. Jesus, in other words, gives us a picture of "righteousness" throughout his life, and this seems to be a vision of the way he will govern and judge the world at that appointed day. And Paul says to us, you know it's true because Jesus is alive again. This is all part of what the resurrection means. It is not just a stamp on my ticket to heaven for those lucky or smart enough to get in while the getting was good. The resurrection confirms that Jesus' understanding of what it means to be "righteous" or to do "justice" is in fact God's understanding of righteousness and justice. The resurrection is a sign that Rome's rule is not permanent, and that the powers of the day will not last, no matter how much they bluster. The resurrection confirms Jesus' agenda as well as his authority.

That is a much bigger picture than we might be used to. We are used to pulling out the resurrection of Jesus and dusting it off once a year on Easter Sunday, or at All Saints' Day, or at a funeral. We are used to saying that the resurrection of Jesus is my personal proof that there is life after death. And while it means at least that much, Paul calls us to see so much more that is a part of God's vision. God's raising of Jesus is also our assurance that God will not let the world remain broken. The resurrection is our keystone for a whole new way of life that no longer has to live as though death is the biggest thing in town. The resurrection is the key for us no longer letting scarcity and fear dictate my life--so I no longer need to hoard for myself at the expense of my neighbor, and so I no longer need to seek to kill my enemy (before he kills me!) out of crippling fear. If the power of death really has been broken, then we do not have to live as though it is still the cock of the walk here and now, either. The resurrection of Jesus grounds not only our hope of heaven, but our way on earth, too, as God's strange people.

I wonder how that would change the ways we invite people to know about Jesus. We might not try and sell our religion to people as a ticket to heaven as much as we might speak his call to a new allegiance and a new movement in life. We might not just say, "Believe in Jesus now, and you'll get all kinds of neat bonuses after death," but instead, "Be a part of Jesus' community now, and you'll get a taste of what his rule over all creation will be like when he rules the world in his own merciful kind of justice." or "Being a disciple of Jesus lets us recognize that he has the authority to mean it when he tells us our sins are forgiven." The resurrection is our assurance as Christians--but it turns out to assure a much bigger web of things than we might have first recognized. Because of the resurrection, we have hope for a world put right. 

Christ is risen--he is risen indeed.

Risen and Living Lord, just when we think we have you figured out and understand what your life means for us, you open up our vision to see more than we had bargained for. Your life and your way, though, are always more than we had bargained for, since they are such precious and free gifts. So open up our vision again, as wide as you dare to, and then open our mouths to share the Good News of your reign with all today.

The Un-Gilded God--May 14, 2026

The Un-Gilded God--May 14, 2026

[Paul continued to say to the people in Athens:] "For ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we, too, are his offspring.’ Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals." (Acts 17:28-29)

To hear the New Testament tell it (especially the apostle Paul!), once you start making gold or silver statues as objects of devotion, it's a sure sign you have lost sight of the real and living God.  Instead, the scandalous claim of the Gospel is that the true God was willing to be made visible and tangible, not as a sculpture in precious metals, but in the flesh and blood of humanity--in Jesus himself.

Here in these verses from Acts 17, which continue through a passage many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, Paul the Apostle is speaking to the crowd gathered at the Areopagus in Athens and he's trying to make a connection with them.  We saw yesterday that he affirmed how all humanity is created by the same one living God, and how all people are ultimately a part of the same human family.  We also saw how Paul tried to get his foot in the door with this audience by latching onto one particular altar he had seen, among the many shrines, statues, and temples to a whole pantheon of deities, which was dedicated "to an unknown god." Paul saw that as his entry point and says here now, "Well, what you all have been worshipping just in case to hedge your bets as an unknown god, I have come to make known to you." And his hope is eventually to get to tell the story of the God of Israel and how this God was now being made known in Jesus of Nazareth.

But along the way, Paul is also going to have to raise the potentially unpopular, but very necessary, claim that the real and living God cannot be reduced to a human-made image, and that God will not share divine glory with statues, monuments, or idols.  This, by the way, is not a new idea that Paul has invented, but of course, a pretty core claim of the Hebrew Scriptures/Old Testament as well.  Going all the way back to the actual Ten Commandments, God pretty clearly insisted that the ancient Israelites were to have "no graven images," for any purpose--not to represent their God, not to honor their kings in statue form, and not even to mint their coins.  The temptation is always too great to start to give our allegiance to the object, the symbol, or the figurehead, rather than to the living God.  From there on, God is sternly opposed to the making of statues, idols, and other such images, whether it's the golden calf in the wilderness while Moses is upon Mount Sinai, or the Philistines' statue of their god Dagon that mysteriously falls over in the presence of the Ark of the Covenant, or Nebuchadnezzar's big golden statue of himself that he demands his subjects bow down to (which lands three young men in the fiery furnace for their civil disobedience). Even the coins of the Roman empire, which had Caesar's image on them, had to be exchanged for non-idolatrous coins, in order to be used in the Temple!

All of that is to say, the Scriptures are pretty well unified on the point that you don't ever want to go messing with religious ceremonies and carved statues of anybody--not your king, not your emperor, not your national (or imperial) symbols, and not your god/God. It's just a bad idea--we are always going to be tempted either to give our allegiance to something or someone that is not God, or to end up attempting to tame and domesticate God by reducing the divine to an object we can control and manipulate (whoever has access to the statues of your gods is thought to have access to the gods themselves, right?).  So for Paul, walking through a city that was full of both shrines to the classical gods and goddesses of Greece and Rome but also full of statues to Caesar and the Empire itself, this was an important point to be clear about.  It probably landed like a slap in the face to hear Paul say that the real and living God wasn't like gold or silver or marble, even though there were also certainly some Greek philosophers who would have surely agreed that he was right. So, why would Paul, after trying so hard to make a friendly connection to his audience, all of a sudden take such a sharp stance about God not being like precious metals or stones?

I think ultimately for Paul, it's because the claim of both Israel's story and the story of Jesus is that God has chosen to be revealed in humanity rather than in frozen poses of statues or imperial monuments meant to project strength.  The authentic God is always the un-gilded God. Even before the commandment against "graven images" in the Ten Commandments and the Torah, there is the claim of the creation story that we human beings ourselves are the image of God.  Right there in Genesis 1, God chooses to make humankind in God's own image. So it's not that that God is unknowable or too mysterious or too self-important to be expressed in some form--it's that we human beings are made to be that reflection of God's character.  A statue will never do--it will always be inert and indifferent.  A sculpture cannot love, cannot suffer for you, cannot comfort you, and cannot bleed for you.  The truly scandalous claim of both Testaments is that God is more knowable through the face of a fragile human being than a masterfully carved sculpture or a statue covered in gold.  All too often, statues are meant to impress, to intimidate, or to dazzle spectators; the living God doesn't need to do any of that, but instead chooses to relate to us through the flesh-and-blood fragility of human beings.

And that is precisely what will allow Paul to make the connection to Jesus--who is as utterly human as any of us, and yet who brings us face to face with the living God.  And that's really what Paul has come to say--both to the ancient Athenians and to us.  God doesn't stay off in some distant heaven, unknowable and unrelatable, but has chosen to come close in the humanity of Jesus.  If we were looking for God to come off as impressive and intimidating like a giant statue, we have been looking in the wrong place all along. God chooses to meet us in places that seem too lowly for a respectable deity--among the poor and the hungry, in the face of the sick and the foreigner, among the imprisoned and the outcast, and with the last, the least, and the left behind.  God chooses, ultimately, to be revealed in the fragile flesh and blood of Jesus, nailed to a cross in what looks like utter defeat and weakness. The reason the Bible consistently warns against falling for gold and silver statues is that we keep getting duped to give our allegiance to those signs of supposed strength when God was always wanting to be known in the commonness of our own humanity.

If that's true--and again, it seems pretty clear that the whole thrust of the Scriptures points in this direction--then you and I, in all of our fragile and finite human-ness, might just be the best way to connect someone else with God.  We don't need to "wow" people with special effects, dazzle them with technological spectacles, or impress people with monuments. We just bring our own ordinary human selves into conversation with other people, as they are and as we are, trusting that we are made in the image of God, and so are they.  If our best goal and highest hopes for this day are simply to help people be connected to God, that might be all it takes.  You are enough.

Lord God, use us today to bring someone else into deeper connection with you, and help us to be drawn more closely to you through the people you send across your path today.

God's Grand Family Reunion--May 13, 2026

God's Grand Family Reunion--May 13, 2026

Paul stood in front of the Areopagus and said, “Athenians, I see how extremely spiritual you are in every way.  For as I went through the city and looked carefully at the objects of your worship, I found among them an altar with the inscription, ‘To an unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, he who is Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in shrines made by human hands, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mortals life and breath and all things. From one ancestor he made all peoples to inhabit the whole earth, and he allotted the times of their existence and the boundaries of the places where they would live, so that they would search for God and perhaps fumble about for him and find him—though indeed he is not far from each one of us..." (Acts 17:22-27)

We've been talking all year about how the church is like a "found family"--a community that includes people from every language, background, culture, nation, and ethnicity. That might seem impossible, futile, or at least uncomfortable--like cramming too many people into an elevator or forcing folks who have nothing in common to all of a sudden be roommates. But to hear Paul tell it, especially in this passage from Acts that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, we are only being reunited into the family we were always already a part of.  The claim of the Gospel is that all human beings belong to a common family, and when God gathers us together in Christ, we are really only being brought back into the united family of humanity that we were always meant to be.  To be a Christian, then, isn't like being on an airplane with other passengers you have nothing in common with except a common destination of heaven; it's being brought to the family reunion in which all people everywhere have a place at the table.

This is a really big deal to let sink in, because sometimes we let ourselves be divided along lines of culture, language, or ethnicity as though those differences are more fundamental that our common humanity.  It is terribly easy to get swept up in a "Me and My Group First!" mentality that supposes the people who share my language, skin color, cultural traditions, or perspective are more important to God than those outside it.  It's easy to believe that we are supposed to look out for the interests of "Me and My Group First!" because "that's how the world is." After all, plenty of loud voices at a host of different podiums have told us so, right? But... Paul's speech here to the people of Athens begs to differ. He says that's how the world isn't, because we belong already from our creation to a common human family that binds us together into one more powerfully and more essentially than the differences which are often exploited to drive us apart.

In fact, from Paul's perspective, all human beings are doubly bound to a common human family--first, because God made us all, and secondarily from that, because God made us all from one common ancestor.  That flies in the face of many centuries' worth of pseudo-scientific racism which taught that various people groups were irreconcilably too different and came from different origins, and therefore, that one group could be ranked against another to determine who was "superior." An awful lot of terrible things have been done in human history, much of it far more recent than we care to admit, and were undergirded by the false theological claim that different tribes, cultures, or racial groups were not really all one underneath. And terrible things are still done, often with supposed religious justification, by the logic of "Me and My Group First." Paul rejects all of that as nonsense, because all human beings are members of one human family.  On that basis, the Good News of Jesus is meant to be shared with all people, even with all the ways we are different from one another.

Sometimes we can get so insulated inside our own little homogenous bubbles of "people like me" that we forget about the existence of folks who speak, dress, think, and live differently from us.  Or we can become so comfortable only ever interacting with folks who are "like us" that we start to see anybody else as a threat, a danger, or as an enemy in competition with me for the things I want.  The New Testament says a loud NO to that way of thinking, and instead reminds us that we Christ-followers are simply in on the early stages of God's grand design to host a family reunion for people of "every nation, of all tribes and peoples and languages," as the book of Revelation says it.  And the first followers of Jesus made the pivotal and faithful choice to follow the Spirit's direction to reach out and invite everyone they met to come to that family reunion and belong in the community of disciples in the present, not just in the future. Surely it was tempting at some points to think, "What if we only invited people who we already like, or already have things in common with?" Surely it meant choosing the often more difficult path of making accommodations with one another to hold space for people who didn't all speak Hebrew, or didn't all eat the same foods, or didn't grow up with the same customs.  But the early church of the New Testament era was convinced, as Paul's words here remind us, that the unity we find in Jesus is not a novelty but a return to the unity that all people have already by virtue of belonging to the one gigantic human family tree and as beings all made by the same one living God.

When we take seriously the Scriptures' claim that all people everywhere belong to a common human family, and that God's intention is to reach all of us with the love and news of Jesus, we can no longer accept the faulty "Me and My Group First" mindset that pretends the lines we draw between "us" and "them" are more important that the embrace of God around all of us. It just doesn't hold up.  And instead, we can see ourselves, like Paul, on the invitation committee of God's Grand Family Reunion everywhere we go--reaching out to anybody and everybody we meet, no matter where they have come from, how they dress, what language they speak, or what else makes them different from us.  Paul is convinced that anybody you ever meet is already in some sense a part of the family--sometimes folks just need to hear that invitation to belong.

Who might you be led to speak a word of welcome and love to today?

Lord God, help us both to hear your assurance of our belonging in your family, and to speak it to others you are inviting to the party.

Jesus Knows...and Still Loves--May 12, 2026

Jesus Knows...and Still Loves--May 12, 2026

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live." (John 14:18-19)

Without even knowing their context, these words of Jesus are absolutely a beautiful promise. It is certainly a great comfort to hear Jesus tell his followers that he will neither abandon them nor let death get the last word over them.

But when you realize that he makes that blanket promise knowing he is talking to people who will all abandon him and leave him to face death alone in order to save their own skins, it becomes a declaration of unfathomable grace.

These words, which were part of the Gospel reading for many this past Sunday, come from Jesus' last words to his inner circle of disciples on the night in which he was betrayed. This is the night many Christians recount each year in Holy Week as Maundy Thursday, and as John's Gospel tells it, is the night Jesus washed his disciples' feet, well aware that he was also washing the feet of his betrayer. This is the night we remember as Jesus' last supper with his disciples, in which Jesus tells his disciples [as Matthew tells the story], "You will all become deserters because of me this night." And in that scene, when Simon Peter insists he would never abandon Jesus, Jesus tells Peter that before the night is out, he'll have denied him three times. This is the same night when, John's Gospel later insists, "Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him," still steps forward into the danger when the lynch mob and the temple police come, in order to protect the very disciples who will bail out on him and scatter in mere minutes.

And, of course, they do. Jesus' community of disciples--those who have become like a found family to him in their time together--do abandon him. To Jesus, it almost had to feel like being orphaned--losing the ones who had been his circle of support and love, all in a blur of their fear. The gospels, for all the different details they recount about that night, all insist that Jesus knows ahead of time where things are going. And yet, not only does he go through with it anyway, but he promises his disciples not to do to them what they are about to do to him. "I will not leave you orphaned," has a very different ring to it when you know the one saying it is fully aware he is about to be abandoned... and that he's saying it to the very same ones who will abandon him. "Because I live, you will live," hits our ears with different power when you realize Jesus is saying it to people who are about to leave Jesus to die in order to try and save their own lives. Jesus knows... and still loves.

This is what the Christian faith is really all about, though, isn't it? It's always been about God's love as we see it in Jesus, and that love simply will not let our failures set the terms for our relationship with God. Jesus will not let the disciples' impending desertion hold him back from sticking it out with them. He will not let the trouble and death they give him over to be the way he treats them. He will not hold their sins against them. And this story makes it clear that Jesus doesn't forgive sins in the abstract, as hypothetically possible infringements of celestial rules, but as one who knows personally what it is like to be hurt by those sins.

That also means that Jesus' teaching [and the teaching of numerous voices across the New Testament] not to return evil for evil has also been tried in the crucible of real-life experience. This is an important thing to note, because sometimes people will dismiss Jesus' teaching about loving your enemies and doing good to those who persecute you as a bunch of naive wishful thinking from someone stuck in an ivory tower. If you assume Jesus never had to actually put his money where his mouth is, you can give yourself permission to ignore those teachings about not seeking revenge and write Jesus off as someone who doesn't know how things are in "the real world." But when you realize that the Jesus who preaches against scorekeeping and bean-counting in the Sermon on the Mount is the same one who lives out that same kind of love when his closest friends abandon him, it is all the more compelling. Jesus never calls his followers to do something he hasn't done already first--and he calls us to a love that doesn't keep score because he has loved us the same way, all the way to a cross.

Today, hear Jesus' words as spoken to you, and for you: he does not abandon us or leave us orphaned, no matter what we do or how we flake out on him. And at the same time, hear Jesus' silence where we might be tempted to insert guilt-trips or passive-aggressive jabs: Jesus doesn't say to his disciples, "I won't leave you or forsake you... unlike SOME people around here are about to do to me." He knows, but he doesn't weaponize that knowledge against them... or us. There is love spoken where we have not earned it, and silence where others might condescendingly scold. This, dear ones, is how we are loved.

This, dear ones, is the love we step into on this new day.

Lord Jesus, enable us to love as you have loved us first--beyond our failings, our fickleness, and our faithlessness.