Love Gives Clarity--September 9, 2026

Love Gives Clarity--September 9, 2026

"Owe no one anything, except to love one another, for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. The commandments, 'You shall not commit adultery; you shall not murder; you shall not steal; you shall not covet,' and any other commandment, are summed up in this word, 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself'.” (Romans 13:8-9)

It really is all about love.

Maybe that seems obvious, given these words from Paul's letter to the Romans, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, but let's be clear about it.  The apostle says (and he is echoing Jesus on this point, as well) that the whole of ancient Israel's laws and commandments are really about loving our neighbors, which turns out to be the concrete form of loving God.  Like former Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry would often say, "If it's not about love, it's not about God."  That's really a huge claim.

After all, there are all sorts of other things people get hung up on in religious circles, aren't there?  Should we sing all the verses of the hymns on Sunday?  What color are the vestments: green, blue, red, or white?  Which translation of the Bible are we reading out of? Is there a guitar and a screen or an organ and a hymnal?  Then let's zoom out from Sunday services to things like the color of the church carpet or the latest complaint about the church newsletter.  Or we argue over whether Christians can dance, get tattoos, or drink alcohol.  We debate about who can or cannot be a leader in the church and what their families can look like.  We disagree about which political party we should vote for, and we can be terribly mean in the comments section on social media, too.  Quite often, too, these days, Christians are more often known for angling for political power and influence, justifying whatever will give them more leverage, and condemning people who don't fit in their mold.  There are a lot of things, in other words, that we spend time and energy on that sure don't seem to be about love.

So there is something helpful and clarifying about hearing it straight from the apostle's pen, so to speak, that our whole lives really are meant to be about love--and love as a verb, rather than a merely emotional state.  We are called to act in ways that do good for those around us, knowing that "neighbor" is not a geographic category limited to people who live on my street or in my town, but anyone whom God sends across my path.  These words of Paul's have a way helping us to see why other rules and commandments are there in the first place--not as a list of arbitrary hoops to jump through in order to win God's approval, but as concrete practices embodying love.  The reason we do not kill is that we are called to love our neighbor, which would preclude taking their lives.  The reason we are taught not to cheat on our spouses is that is clearly a failure to love them faithfully.  The reason we commit not to stealing from others is that theft harms the person from whom we would steal, and love does no harm to a neighbor.  Love, in other words, is not first and foremost about feeling a certain way toward someone, but about acting in ways that seek their well-being.

And yeah, Paul's point is that this kind of love is really what God has intended for human beings all along: that we would live with one another in ways that lift each other up, work for the common good, and seek the interests of others. That's what we are made for, and that's the life we are still invited into.  And for all the ways we sometimes overcomplicate things, it really is just that simple.

Now, of course, "simple" is not the same as "easy."  Nobody is claiming that it is always (or even often) easy to love our neighbors, or that we get it right on a regular basis.  But that doesn't mean the directions are unclear.  If we really did have to juggle the commandment to love alongside rules about the color of the carpet and the proper number of candles to light and appropriate dress code and... and... and... and so on, we might say that it is just plain impossible to keep all the expectations straight.  But if Paul is right (and let's grant him that, shall we?) and all of God's commandments really are about expressing love for neighbors, then at least we know what we are aiming for.  It's all about love, and it always has been.  There is something beautifully freeing about that realization.  God isn't looking to make things complicated in order to judge us based on how well we handle a challenge. God has only ever intended for us to live in ways that are shaped by love--in our words and our actions, our thoughts and our choices--because love is God's own character as well.

What might we do differently in this day if we take it seriously that the whole Christian life has always been about love?  What things would we stop fussing over, and what things might we care more about?  What things would no longer be priorities for us, and what might become all the more urgent?  

Now... can we stop talking about these questions as hypothetical "what-if" scenarios, and simply hear what Paul says to us? The one who loves another has fulfilled the law.  Yep.  That will give us clarity.

Let us love.

Lord Jesus, enable us to see and live clearly with your kind of love as our vision for life.

Walking Temples--September 8, 2026

Walking Temples--September 8, 2026

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you, if two of you agree on earth about anything you ask, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them.” (Matthew 18:18-20)

There is no single place--no unique spot on the map--where Christians have to go in order to meet Jesus. There is no "X" to mark the one and only place where access to God is granted, and there is no building, shrine, cathedral, or chapel in which the Spirit is confined like a bird in a cage.  The radical claim of Jesus is that he chooses to be present among us--wherever his followers are assembled in his name.  We don't have a particular brick-and-mortar building to which we all must go and make a pilgrimage. We are, so to speak, walking temples. 

We should acknowledge how different that is from a lot of the other experiences of our lives.  For many things in our lives, especially those of great importance and significance, you have to go a particular place in order to access the thing you are seeking.  If you want to see Niagara Falls, you have to go there, to the place on the Niagara River where the land drops and the waters of Lake Erie empty into the waters of Lake Ontario.  If you want to see the Washington Monument, you have to go to a particular spot on the National Mall in Washington D.C.  And if you want to see Stonehenge, well, you will need to get yourself across an ocean to Salisbury in England.  Some places in the world are like that--you have to go to one specific place to see the thing in all its glory.

The ancient world had its share of wonders like that, too: if you wanted to go see the Colossus, you had to go to Rhodes.  The Great Library of Alexandria was only available in--you guessed it--Alexandria, and even then only before the great fire.  The Sphinx of Egypt was only viewable in Egypt, too.  A great many ancient religions had a similar sense of place.  If you wanted to worship Zeus, you went to a local temple of Zeus. If you wanted to worship Artemis, you went to a shrine in her honor (or you might have gone to the really impressive statue dedicated to Artemis in Ephesus, which was particularly impressive).  Even ancient Judaism had a single Temple in much of its history, located in Jerusalem, which was designated as THE place where rightful worship of God was to be conducted and proper sacrifices were to be offered.

So when Jesus comes along and says, "Where two or three are gathered in my name, I am there among them," it's a pretty bold claim.  Jesus is saying that his community works differently than the pagan religions of Zeus, Apollo, Artemis, and all the rest.  He is saying that access to him is different from going to see the Great Sphinx or visiting Niagara Falls.  He is saying that there is not a solitary, unique building where his followers have to go in order to be in his presence. The meeting point isn't a where, but a who.  To be in the community of Jesus' followers is to be in the presence of Jesus, no matter where we happen to be.

But, of course, that begs the question: how can Jesus be present in all sorts of places?  What is it we should be looking for to know we are in his presence?  After all, I would know if I was at Niagara Falls because I'd see the water, feel the spray, and hear the thundering sound of the falling water.  If I were at the Washington Monument, I would see the top of the obelisk.  The reason nobody says, "Wherever two people who like waterfalls meet, Niagara Falls is there among them," is that it's obviously not true--the most you can get from a bunch of waterfall enthusiasts is that they will tell stories about waterfalls they have been to, or maybe some pictures and commemorative postcards.  But Jesus' claim is something stronger: that where his community of disciples is, he is.  You don't have to be in a church building, or within a certain radius of a steeple.  You don't have to be standing under a large wall-mounted cross or have candles lit.  There doesn't need to be organ music playing or a praise chorus repeating in the background.  Just wherever Jesus' followers gather in community, he is in our midst.  But... how would we know it?  How can we tell?

Well, not to be sentimental about it, but I would venture that at least part of the answer is love.  What binds us together as the Christian community is love--first and foremost Jesus' love for us, and then through us for one another.  That does not require being in a particular spot on earth.  It does not depend on being in church building, shrine, or cathedral.  We become the living conduit, the human river, so to speak, through which Christ's love flows, first into us and then beyond us.  But the Christian community--unlike sports teams, social clubs, cultural groups, or ethnicities and tribes--is formed and bound together by Jesus' claim on us, not our sameness, likeminded-ness, or common background.  We can gather as Jesus' disciples, from whatever places, stories, languages, and experiences we have come, because Jesus' love is what draws us.  And that is real and true whether it is three people praying in a church meeting room, a hundred people in a Sunday morning worship service, a dozen volunteers feeding neighbors in a free community meal, one friend visiting another in a hospital, or Revelation's vision of a multitude of people too large and numerous to count. You can't bring Niagara Falls everywhere, but you can find Christ's love in all places, and that's the calling card of Christ's own presence.

We don't have to wait until Sunday to meet up with Jesus.  We will recognize him anywhere on the map where his kind of love is present, making us into walking temples wherever we go.

Lord Jesus be present among us, and help us to see you in our midst.

On Removing Splinters--September 7, 2026

On Removing Splinters--September 7, 2026

[Jesus said:] "If your brother or sister sins against you, go and point out that fault when the two of you are alone. If you are listened to, you have regained that one. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If that person refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." (Matthew 18:15-17)

Telling the truth about what happened is a form of loving your neighbor. So is listening to the truth being told.

It is important, in this age of ours where things like "facts" are debated, where we seem to have having an increasingly hard time even agreeing about the reality we live in, and where sources of information are regularly questioned on their reliability, to say that Jesus values truth-telling. Jesus is convinced that "the truth" is a thing, a real, solid thing, and that it is possible to live without fear of hearing the truth being told, but in fact that we could be set free by the truth (see John 8:31 and following on that point).

That includes the truths about ourselves that we have a hard time facing. And it includes the truths about when others have wronged us as well. This is something we need to be clear about, because we sometimes get confused about how forgiveness and truth-telling relate. Christians are forgiveness people--at least we are supposed to be--and that is not up for debate. But often, we treat being "forgiveness people" as meaning we are "don't-talk-about-what-happened" people, and we tell ourselves that's what "forgive and forget" means. None of that is correct.

Jesus, however, shows us--in fact, he lays out a model for life in community for us--that forgiveness does not short-circuit truth-telling, nor does forgiveness mean that we can sweep under the rug when someone is wronged. The initial wound can heal--so long as it is given the chance to air out and not kept covered up to get gangrene. The real trouble comes in our lives together when we experience a wrong done to us and then just bury it deep down, or feel pressured not to mention it (because some religious person has told us that's what "forgiveness" means), or tell ourselves we must have deserved the wrong done to us. Now we've got a wound--or maybe even a splinter, so to speak--in the relationship between us, and by leaving it there and pretending everything is fine, the wound will only get infected, and the pain will only continue. Your body can heal from a splinter--your finger will take just a few days to be good as new--but removing the splinter is what allows it to heal rightly.

And the same between us: if I am wronged, it is important--vital, even!--to be able to say it out loud, and to go to the person who has wronged me, so that we can deal with it. After all, it is certainly possible that I have also wronged the other person and am not aware of it, or it is possible that the other person doesn't realize the gravity of how I have been hurt. It is possible that the other person knows exactly what he or she did, but is still working up the courage to be able to speak with you about it and needs you to be able to say it out loud in order to acknowledge the elephant in the room. It is possible that I will only be able to heal when I have said out loud to the other person, "This happened--and this is not okay," with the same focus as taking the tweezers to the splinter. And then, once that has been said, I can say freely, "You are forgiven--I will not weaponize the past against you, and I will not come seeking personal revenge."

Jesus' approach is much like this: if I am wronged by someone else (and presumably if I feel safe having a one-on-one conversation with this person, depending on what the nature of the wrong has been), I will go to them and will say out loud what has happened. We will acknowledge the elephant in the room--that is, after all, the only way you can eventually deal with it and ask it to dance.

Saying it out loud to the other person is not being "unkind" or "unloving" or "nitpicking" or "unforgiving." Saying it out loud is part of loving your neighbor--even the neighbor who wrongs you--because it shows sufficient respect to your neighbor that you do not treat him or her with kid gloves, but honor them enough to be real with them. Saying, "This hurt me," or "When you did that, it wounded me," is not unloving or grudge-bearing--it is the beginning of taking the tweezers to the splinter between you both. Taking that splinter out by acknowledging it is there doesn't guarantee you will become best friends by next week, but no true healing will happen so long as it is left there unaddressed.

And, of course, in another teaching of Jesus, the other side of the equation is addressed, too: if I am in the middle of my daily routine--or even if I am about to bring my offering to God!--and I realize that I have wronged someone else, I should stop what I am doing, be the grown-up, and own my actions to begin to make things right. In other words, I will tell the truth, even when it is an uncomfortable truth, or an admission of my failings. Telling the truth is an act of love for the neighbor--whether the neighbor is some I have wronged, or someone who has wronged me. In either case, we need the honesty in order to get the splinter out.

And to hear Jesus tell it, that honesty is so important to Jesus, it even supersedes acts of religious devotion like bringing your offering to God. God doesn't need your money as much as God wants you and your neighbor to deal with the wound between you. Jesus values the truth-telling that makes reconciliation possible more than our offering checks, tithes, sacrifices, and prayers.

On a day like today, we need to remember that, especially because we are followers of Jesus. Truth-telling is a form of loving your neighbor. And listening to the truth being told--taking the time for it, bearing the pain of it, enduring the implications of it--is a form of loving your neighbor.

Today, let us be people who are capable of such love--the love that is expressed by honesty.

Lord Jesus, you who are our Truth, and who sets us free in your truth, give us the courage and love to tell the truth when we have been wronged or been the offenders, and give us the passion to take the time to listen to truths being told, even when they make us squirm.

Threat or Promise?--September 4, 2026

Threat or Promise?--September 4, 2026

[Jesus said:] “For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” (Matthew 16:27-28)

I know: all this talk of "repaying" people for their deeds sounds rather ominous, like a mob boss promising a vendetta on all his opponents.  You almost can't help but hear these verses, which many of us already heard in worship this past Sunday, in the voice of Marlon Brando's "Don Corleone" character from The Godfather, said with the same quiet menace as the phrase, "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse."

And yes, at first blush, this sounds like a naked threat on the lips of Jesus.  "The Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done," Jesus says. That sentence sure sounds like it is meant to scare us straight or fill us with dread.  And while we are on the subject, it also seems to throw a monkey wrench into a Lutheran's theology that we are saved by grace through faith "apart from works of the law," doesn't it?  Isn't Jesus baldly saying that he is doling out punishments and rewards like a mafioso based on whether they have done enough and shown adequate loyalty?

Well, maybe... but it's worth remembering who it is that says these words... and what other surprises he keeps up his sleeve when it comes to talk about giving out payments or rewards.  For example, this is the same Jesus who, just a few chapters later into Matthew's Gospel, will tell a story about a landowner who pays all the employees the same full daily wage even though most of them have only worked a few hours--or even one hour--and does so under the conviction that this is "whatever is right" to pay them. It is very clearly a story in which we expect bigger rewards for greater work, but in which the repayment is still on the basis of grace, ensuring that everyone can feed their families tomorrow from the wages they received today.  In other words, when Jesus starts talking about "repaying" people might actually look like in God's kingdom, he reserves the right to be more generous than anybody expected.  In the economy of Jesus, even "repaying" people skews toward grace.  That doesn't mean our actions don't matter or that there are no consequences for our rotten choices, but it does mean that Jesus gets to decide what "repayment" looks like, not us.  And he has tipped his hand to the possibility that he is no stingy Scrooge.  

For that matter, Jesus is also the One who insists that his followers refuse to "repay evil with evil," but rather to answer evil with good.  He even grounds that policy in the character of God, insisting in Matthew's version of the Sermon on the Mount that the One Jesus calls "Father" gives the good gifts of sun and rain to not only the righteous and deserving but also to the unrighteous and unworthy.  Luke's telling has Jesus say, that God is "merciful to the wicked and the ungrateful" as well.  In other words, Jesus seems to believe that God's own character is one that leans toward grace rather than spite.  Whatever it means to "repay everyone," the one doing the repaying has an established reputation for surprising us with goodness, and for not fitting within our expectations of what anybody "deserves." Jesus' words, I suspect, are more a promise than a threat. Ultimately, the Divine Accounting Department is outside of our control, and we are not needed for overseeing payroll on Jesus' behalf.

And I think that is really the thrust of these words at the conclusion of the passage.  Jesus has been talking throughout this section about the call to follow him even at great cost: we are called, like him, to take up our crosses, to lose what we thought was valuable, and perhaps even to surrender our lives.  It will look like are utter fools who have bet on the wrong horse, Jesus concedes.  And there is no avoiding that reality: to follow Jesus will put us on a course in life that the world thinks is either stupid or subversive, and it will reject us accordingly.  But don't you worry, Jesus seems to be saying: the world doesn't render the final verdict.  Jesus does.  And even if the world thinks we have wasted our lives by following Jesus and his way of generosity, love, gentleness, and peaceableness, Jesus doesn't think any of it is a waste.  And he is the one in the position to put things right.  There is nothing that the world can take away that Jesus is not perfectly capable of restoring to us, and there is nothing we give up for the sake of following Jesus that he is not willing to provide in his own way and time.  Jesus is not threatening to "get even" with us in these verses, but promising us that the world's verdict is not the last word.  His will be, and he is generous.

This passage, then, is not meant to tell us that in the end, the Rules of the Game change and we end up being saved or damned based on whether we did enough good or pious dees, but rather to say that when the world calls us losers, weaklings, and stupid people for following Jesus' way of self-giving and suffering love, we don't have to be afraid that the world gets the final say.  "Don't you worry," Jesus insists, "I will make sure you are taken care of. Nothing you lose in this life cannot be restored in my time and way. You will not be at a loss forever."  He means these words as a promise, not a threat.

So we face this day ahead, not in the fear that if we don't do enough we'll be kicked out of the club or damned to hell, but in the confidence that there is nothing we can lose that Jesus is not perfecting willing and able to provide.  We face the day with the promise that the world's verdict is not the one with authority, and that God's is the one that really counts in the end.

How will we live, then, knowing whose opinion really counts... and whose doesn't?  What will we spend our day, our energy, our love, and our resources on, knowing that Jesus gets the final say over the meaning of our lives?  And how can we be at peace knowing that Jesus' way of "repaying" is always surprisingly generous?

Lord Jesus, ground us in your promise, and set us free from our fears.

Playing to Lose--September 3, 2026

Playing to Lose--September 3, 2026

"Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?'" (Matthew 16:24-26)

Okay, a quick refresher, in case you're ever invited to my house for game night: the point of the game Uno is to get rid of your cards first.

Every so often when our kids were younger and we would get the family around the dinner table for game night, we would have to remind everybody (myself included sometimes) about how the game of the night works. Some games are about acquisition--you try to get as much as you can for yourself--a higher score of points for bigger words in Scrabble, a larger portfolio of investments and money in Monopoly, or even the whole deck of cards if you are playing War. A lot of games are like that--they are about getting... taking... accumulating. It can be easy, if you are used to playing those kinds of games, to just let that become your default mindset for every game, and then, without thinking, you end up stuck with a pile of cards in a game like Uno, and then it dawns on you--this is a different sort of game entirely.

It does take a certain amount of un-learning to play Uno, and other games like it, because we can get stuck in the mindset that winning always looks like "getting."

And maybe we have the same problem when we actually take the time to listen to Jesus, especially in a passage like this one, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. Because Jesus is convinced that being his follower means un-learning what the world has taught us about the "point" of life. Over against all the other voices loudly telling us that the point of life is to get as much as possible for yourself, and to look as tough and strong and threatening as possible in order to keep what you have taken, Jesus says that our kind of winning looks like, well, losing. Our kind of winning is Uno-winning--the victory that comes in giving yourself away. Our kind of triumph looks like a cross--not in crucifying or destroying our enemies, but in Jesus being crucified at the hands of his enemies and praying for their forgiveness as he bleeds out. To the world around, that looks like nonsense--but to followers of Jesus, it is the key to life.

Of course, the stakes are so much higher than a game. If I forget how to play Uno on family game night, the only danger is that one of my kids gets to say "Uno" before I do, and maybe they get bragging rights. But in life--oh, dear ones, the stakes are so much higher. It really is a question of what we orient our lives toward. It really is a question of whether we think the goal, the meaning, and the purpose of life is looking like a "winner," on the world's terms, or whether we see God's upside-down power and beauty in slf-giving love.

This feels to me like it should be already a settled subject. This talk about "taking up your cross" to follow is so essential to Jesus' teaching that it seems to me like every churchgoer, every Christian, everyone who has ever sat in a pew before or read from one of the Gospels before, should "get" that much. It is so very very fundamental that I really find myself getting frustrated and disappointed when other self-described disciples of Jesus speak and act in ways that run counter to this. And what saddens me--what truly disheartens me on an almost daily basis lately--is how frequently people I know, people with who I have prayed, people who name the name of Jesus and confess him as Lord alongside me, in their very next breath will say and do things that are mired in the "Me-First," "I-Need-To-Look-Like-A-Winner" mentality. I find myself grieved, more often than I would like to admit, over how easy it is for church folk to fall into using the language of "We've got to be tougher--we've got to show others how strong and powerful we are." I lament how often I see church folk smiling approvingly at (or liking and sharing on social media) the kind of angry bluster that peddles fear of "those people" who they think are a threat to our comfortable position... or who feel the need to make threats like, "There's a storm coming... and one day, we are going to rise up and take back what's ours!" while thinking they can baptize that thinking and call it holy.

That isn't the way of Jesus. It is the opposite. It is quite literally anti-Christ.

And to be honest, if I didn't already know Jesus better (from actually reading the gospels), if that kind of angry, boastful, saber-rattling attitude was my first introduction to people who called themselves followers of Jesus, I wouldn't want anything to do with Jesus, with his story, or with is followers. To be perfectly frank, it is religious people who talk about coercively "taking their country back for God" (whatever that means) that make it harder for me to be a Christian in this time and place. It's not some imaginary threat of atheists coming to take away my ability to pray... it's not some ominous "them" who are ominously coming to hurt the Bible or hurt God. It's not, as I also sometimes hear, weak or cowardly churches who are the problem by not being "tough" enough (again, whatever that means). No, if I can lay all my cards on the table here (so, "Uno!", I guess), what makes it hardest for me to be a Christian in this moment of history in this particular culture are religious people who shout about wanting to look like winners, rather than actually listening to Jesus himself saying, "Losing is the key to winning. Take up your cross. Let go of the rest."

Today, then, I need to ask--both for you to hold me accountable, and for each of us to commit to listening to Jesus again with open ears--that we allow Jesus to help us un-learn the garbage we've been taught about how life is supposed to work, and instead to learn his path. Help keep me honest, and when I slide back into the attitude that is centered on Me-and-My-Group-First, or on fear of losing a comfortable position, and on looking like a "winner," I ask you to smack me upside the head in love and call me back to take up a cross rather than to take up arms.

It will be hard sometimes for us to live this way, over against the other voices. It will feel like swimming upstream. It will look like we are giving all of our cards away when everyone else is playing to keep theirs. They will say we are playing to lose. The question to ask, though, is simply this: who knows best how this game called Life works? Maybe we should trust that Jesus knows what he's talking about. Maybe the point of life all along has always been about giving ourselves away in love.

I dare say it's worth a try. Help keep me honest about it.

Lord Jesus, turn us around when we are aimed in the wrong direction, and help us to unlearn the old ways of living our lives, to be pointed in your orientation toward self-giving love.

Refusing the Emperor's Offer--September 2, 2026

Refusing the Emperor's Offer--September 2, 2026

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." (Romans 12:21)

You can really learn a lot from a wicked space sorcerer, if you're willing to pay attention in the right ways.

Okay, I'm going to lay my late-twentieth-century-sci-fi-nerd cards on the table and share a Star Wars anecdote. You don't have to have ever seen one of the twelve-and-counting Star Wars movies to follow this, I don't think. But just to bring everybody up to speed, the ominous villains of the Star Wars movies are the evil Galactic Empire, headed most famously by the iconically masked enforcer Darth Vader, and above Vader himself, the mysterious berobed Emperor Palpatine. The Emperor is not only politically powerful (he is the Emperor, after all), but is a master of the ways of the Dark Side of the Force, which gives him seemingly magical powers like shooting lightning out of his hand, telekinesis, mind manipulation, and a host of other tricks up his long black sleeve.

Emperor Palpatine is particularly dangerous because he is willing to play the long game--he doesn't just think of immediate gratification or short-term wins, but strategizes for bigger victories even if they take years or decades to accomplish. He is insidious that way, and I think that's part of what makes the Emperor one of the all-time great movie villains.

But most insidious of all, I think--and this is where there is a lesson to be learned for us non-Jedi folks--is that the Emperor is most interested in getting his opponents to give into hatred--to "turn to the Dark side," as they say in that Galaxy Far Far Away--which allows them to become his minions. The Emperor wins if he gets good people to accept the ways of evil, even if he doesn't kill them. The Emperor wins by getting his enemies to allow themselves to fight him on his terms--to use hatred and anger as their means of attacking him. Because once they do that, they have already given him the victory. There's even a climactic scene in The Return of the Jedi where the hero, Luke Skywalker, is finally facing down the menacing Darth Vader, and while the Emperor watches the battle of clashing light sabers, he starts encouraging Luke to kill Vader--and to use his hatred to do it.

That's the master stroke--and I can remember as a kid seeing that scene and having it blow my mind. Why would the head villain be telling the good guy to kill the second-worst bad guy? Why would the Emperor be willing to sacrifice his fearsome apprentice, Vader, to the hero we have spent three movies rooting for? Because he knows that getting the hero to use hatred, fear, and anger means the hero becomes a tool of the Dark Side. Losing Vader but getting a new recruit with even stronger powers would be a strategic win for the Emperor, and so he cheers Luke on to kill Vader, and to let the hatred flow through him, to feel the power of that hatred, and to channel the power of his fears.

And it almost works.

This, I believe, is the biggest danger to our souls here in the real world, too--to be so fiercely opposed to the ones we see as "enemies" that we are willing to resort to hatred, fear, and anger to fight them. When we think we are fighting for good but allow ourselves to use evil as the means to accomplish it, we have already given the battle to the powers of evil. And the powers of evil in the real world are at least as smart as the ones from Hollywood blockbusters--the Emperor is only that clever because real people in the real world have experienced that same cunning pull of evil.

That's why it is such a vital move that Paul makes when he tells the Roman Christians, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." In this concluding verse from the passage many of us heard on Sunday, he's not merely saying, "You need to out-muscle evil with your sheer brute force," but rather he's saying, "Don't let evil infect you so that you do evil things in the name of doing good." It's about refusing to accept evil as a means. It's about refusing to allow hatred, fear, greed, and selfish ambition to become natural to us. It's about refusing to resort to rottenness as a means to winning--because we know that once we have given in on that point, we have already lost the battle that really counts. The Emperor knows that in the Star Wars movies, and so he knows it is a long-game win if he can get Luke to kill Vader by giving into hatred. And the powers of evil right now know the same is true--if they can get us to be ok with hatred, to accept a strategy of fear, and to be willing to win at the cost of our character, then evil has already won.

That's also why the early church was so unswervingly committed to a policy of loving their enemies, from the days of Jesus himself on throughout the New Testament and early church (somewhere along the way this was forgotten or silenced, but that's probably a conversation for another day's devotion). The idea of loving enemies doesn't mean you help your enemies do evil things, but it does mean that you won't do evil things to them as a way of fighting their evil. It means we will tell the truth, so far as we know it, even when it may make people squirm--but we will not tell lies as a way of getting ahead. It means we will advocate for what we think is right, but we will not sell out for the sake of getting power or influence. It means we may disagree with people, but we will not allow ourselves to hate them. It means we may speak directly and argue passionately for what we think is right, but with the willingness to be shown where we are wrong, rather than to ignore anything that doesn't already reinforce what we want to be true. It means we can own where we think we are right, but also that we be willing to let others show us where we have failed or fallen short. It means refusing to turn some group of people into scapegoats for others to be afraid of, and instead seeking the good of all. And it means once and for all being done with Me-and-My-Group-First thinking that is used to justify hating anybody who falls outside the boundary lines. It means that every day, we are Luke Skywalker, having to make the choice of whether we will resort to evil means as a way of winning, or whether we will be wise enough to know that option smells of sulfur and would actually make us tools of evil itself.

All of that is what Paul has in mind when he writes, both to those first-century Christians and to us reading over their shoulders two millennia later, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." The moment we tell ourselves it's OK to nurse a little hatred or sell our integrity for the sake of personal or political advantage, we have already let evil win. So don't let yourself play the game by the rules evil has handed you. You do not have to accept those terms. None of us has to listen to the Emperor's smiling lies.

You and I, we are free--free to love.

Lord Jesus, give us both the wisdom and the courage to know how to say NO to the strategies and tactics of evil, and instead to say YES to your path, all our days.

Recovering Our Reputations--September 1, 2026

Recovering Our Reputations--September 1, 2026

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God, for it is written, 'Vengeance is mine; I will repay, says the Lord.' Instead, 'if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them something to drink, for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their heads'." (Romans 12:17-20)

For at least the first several centuries of our history, this was a pretty good summary of what Christians were known for: refusing to answer evil with evil, giving up the right to revenge, seeking the good of all (not just our own little group), and striving to live in peace with all people.  I wonder (or maybe I have a pretty good hunch I'm afraid of confirming it) what we are known for today.

These words which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship continue a reading from Paul's letter to the Romans in which he has been sketching out a picture of "authentic love" (Rom 12:9, which organizes this whole passage).  And right off the bat it is clear in today's verses that the Christian understanding of love is NOT just for people who are in my "in-group" or even people who are neutral toward me.  A Christian understanding of love seeks not only what is good for fellow disciples of Jesus, but also neighbors... and strangers... and even enemies.  And here is the apostle Paul, in the midst of a letter that he is using to make a good first impression with his readers in Rome whom he has not yet met in person, just laying it out there without blushing or apologizing for it: we Christians do not answer evil with more evil, and we do not "get back" or "get even," even with those who have done us great harm.

It seems from the way Paul writes that this is such an obvious and clear element of the Christian life that he doesn't think he has to make a case for why we wouldn't seek revenge or hit back against those who have hit us first (or hit them "pre-emptively" because we are afraid of being hit first).  He doesn't soft-pedal this teaching or have to give a long, drawn-out defense of why this is the Christian position.  It just seems so wholly consistent with the calling to love and the model of Jesus' own kind of love that all Paul has to do is to say it once.  We don't answer evil with evil. We don't seek only our own good, but what all will recognize as being noble and virtuous.  We don't get revenge. And instead, we live in peace with everyone as fully as we are able to.

For what it's worth, this passage is not an exception or an outlier in the New Testament, either, but shows up in multiple places in Paul's letters as well as in First Peter, in the examples of Christians retold in Acts, and of course repeatedly in the Gospels on Jesus' lips (and in his actions).  But not only that, in the first several hundred years of Christian history, we have evidence both from the writings of Christian leaders and those of outside witnesses living in the Empire that the church was known significantly for its refusal to return violence for violence or evil for evil, and instead had a positive reputation for taking care of all, not only their own in-group members.  In the middle of the second century, maybe just fifty years after ink from the latest books of the New Testament had finished drying, Justin Martyr wrote of his fellow Christians, "We used to hate and destroy one another and refused to associate with people of another race or country. Now, because of Christ, we live together with such people and pray for our enemies."  Another early Christian writing from about the same time period, the Didache, literally begins with a quote of Jesus' teaching to bless those who curse you and pray for your enemies in its opening sentences. Even in the fourth century, the Roman Emperor Julian ("the Apostate"), who hated Christians and wanted to restore Rome to a supposed earlier golden age of "greatness" had to admit that we Christians, whom he referred to as "impious Galileans," were known for caring not only for their own poor but for the poor who did not share their faith in Christ. Further examples abound--all of which is to say that in the first few centuries, for whatever other things might have been true about Christians, we did have a reputation for love that included strangers and enemies, rather than just looking out for "Me and My Group First."  That much in indisputable, from both Christian writers and our most severe critics of the time.

So we cannot avoid the question we began with today: what are we Christians known for at this point in history, in our time and place?  I ask it because I have a hunch that many in the watching world do not see the same commitment to love enemies, seek the common good, and to reject fighting evil with more evil.  In our day, plenty of loud religious voices would have us believe that being Christian means only looking out for "Me and My Group First," that it is foolishness to do good to people outside those lines, and weakness to love those who are our enemies. In our time, those talking heads say we look like "losers" if we don't hit back, or even hit first (to show 'em that we mean business!).  The trouble is that the New Testament itself calls us to a different way--one in which we refuse to get even and we actively seek a good bigger than just our own.  That's what love was always supposed to look like for us.  It is, for that matter, what we were known for in those first several centuries, too.  It is only in later days that Christians have become publicly identified with the same meanness, violence, and selfishness as the empires of the day.  It is only in our own time when Respectable Religious Voices could say, "Christians are not obligated to care about outsiders, strangers, foreigners, or enemies" without being laughed off the stage. But here we are.

What would it take for us to be known once again for being people of Christ-like love?  What kinds of changes would you and I have to make in our own lives, our choices, and our actions so that what was said of our older siblings in the late Roman Empire could be said of us?  What would you and I do differently in this day, we wanted to leave the impression that disciples of Jesus seek the good of all, refuse to answer evil with evil, and strive for peace in our communities and world?

I bet the answers to those questions are not difficult to think of.  The only real question is whether we are willing to do them, and to let them become our way of life.