Beyond Great... to Good--June 30, 2025

Beyond Great... to Good--June 30, 2025

"When the days drew near for him to be taken up, [Jesus] set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of the Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, "Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village." [Luke 9:51-56]

When I was a kid, I don't think I appreciated the deep theology of our standard table grace. Most of the time in the Bond house growing up , the default dinner-time meal prayer was this well-known couplet:

"God is great; God is good.

Let us thank him for our food. Amen"

To be honest, as a kid, I pretty much dismissed this poem-prayer. And not just because of the forced not-quite-rhyme of "good" and "food" which looks more like a rhyme on paper than it is when you actually speak the words. It seemed like the word "good" was just there to be one half of a bad rhyme--I assumed it wasn't saying anything that wasn't already covered by the first phrase, "God is GREAT." If anything, saying God is "good" after already saying God is "great" seemed to my childhood ears like a letdown. Children have a way of hearing "great" as meaning just about the same as "good," but in all capital letters. A mom might ask her children how their days were, and if one answers, "Good..." it's practically like saying, "Eh, so-so;" but if the kids answer, "Great!" well then, that's like the same as "good" but cranked up to eleven on the dial. At least for me as a kid, I assumed that "great" and "good" were like "run" and "walk"--one was just the more intense version of the other.

I don't think that anymore. And I don't think the composer of that dinner time prayer meant it that way, either.

To say God is "great" is usually a statement about God's power, God's might, God's ability, or God's "big-ness." The One who speaks to the chaos and calls out "Let there be light!" is, in a word, "great." The One who parts seas, defeats Pharaoh, stretches out the sky like an artist's canvas, and commands lightning, fire, and whirlwind--these are the calling cards of a deity who is "great."

But Christians are convinced that God is not just big, not just powerful, not just strong... but that God is also compassionate, also merciful, also just, also generous. That is to say, from the perspective of the New Testament, one cannot say that God is "great" without also saying that God is "good." We do not simply worship power for the sake of power, and we do not praise powerful things in God's universe simply because they are powerful. "Greatness" in the sense of divine power is never fully realized without "goodness" in this God's character--a character that uses power to raise up the lowly, to embrace the outcast, to welcome the lonely, to bind up the brokenhearted, and to fill the hungry with good things. This is the character of the One who calls us to be his disciples, not merely a celestial tyrant.  My childhood table prayer was trying to tell me all along that God is both--not just powerful enough to make a world that brings forth life that sustains other life, but that God is kind enough to continue to feed stinkers like me with daily bread as part of a vast creation of abundance for all. God is not only great--God is also good. We might even go as far as to say that without that goodness, great isn't great--it is terrible and terrifying.

Well, I've been ruminating on my old table prayer because of this scene with Jesus and his disciples in Luke's Gospel that was appointed for this past Sunday in many congregations. It's barely even a story--it's notable, really, for what doesn't happen, rather than for what does transpire between verses 51 and 56. Jesus and his disciples are on the way toward the cross that awaits Jesus in Jerusalem, and on the way, they are going to look for a room for the night in a Samaritan village. That by itself would have been the scandalous headline for anybody in first century Judea--right off the bat, Jesus is violating a whole mess of rules by entering the territory of "those people." And making it even more shocking is that Jesus casts himself as the traveler, the stranger needing assistance, by entering into Samaritan territory. He makes himself vulnerable to whatever sneers, mistreatment, and shunning the locals would show to a Judean like him. Jesus puts himself at risk, making himself open their inevitable questions, "Who said you were allowed to cross into OUR territory?" "What official permission do you have to be in OUR land, you... foreigner?" If we nowadays have a hard enough time hearing Jesus' teaching that we should welcome the stranger and the foreigner into our midst, how much harder is it for us to take it in that Jesus made himself the foreigner in this episode, asking for welcome and vulnerable enough to bear being turned away? That by itself is enough to rile us up, I suspect.

But that's really just the beginning. Because once Jesus is rejected by this village of Samaritans (who seem to be upset that Jesus doesn't want to just blend in to their Samaritan culture while he is staying with them, but insists on holding on to his Jewish heritage and its orientation toward Jerusalem), the scene unfolds as a question of "greatness" versus "goodness."

James and John are upset that Jesus has been treated so disrespectfully. After all, if their rabbi is insulted and his reputation is besmirched, well, their social standing as his followers is lowered, too. They can't let this insult stand! They must get back! They must get revenge! They must call down heavenly retribution--commanding fire to come down from heaven to smite and punish these unworthy, inhospitable no-good Samarians! The moment feeds their world impulses--James and John get to indulge their prejudices against "those Samaritans," to nurse their bloodthirsty grudge-keeping, and to focus all on their own social standing, all at once. So of course, asking Jesus permission to summon divine wrath on the village that will not welcome the foreigner (Jesus), James and John think they are doing Jesus a favor and also boosting their own credibility and reputations, too, at the same time.

You and I know perfectly well what is going on in James and John's minds. They are convinced that they must respond to this slight against their rabbi with a show of their--whoops, they meant to say, of Jesus'--greatness. They think that this is a moment to intimidate and threaten and punish, because they think that's what "greatness" is. They think that the way to make people respect you is to make them fear you first. They think of power only in terms of firepower to destroy, and they can only assume that Jesus will not allow these stingy, unwelcoming Samaritans to go unpunished. You and I can tell all of that is going on inside James and John's heads, because the same undercurrent is there in our heads, too.

Ours is a time when James and John's attitude is upheld as an example--more than that, it is often seen as the only choice! Someone has insulted or slighted you? Well, you must not only do the same back to them, but with more firepower! They said something you didn't like? Or worse yet--they said something critical of what you think? Well then--it's an all-out war! We respond with both barrels blazing, and before long, we tell ourselves that for the sake of our honor, our reputation, and the name of our own "greatness", they must be stopped! Before long, we are itching to call down fire from the sky, too, to zap everyone we think has insulted us, criticized us, or poked a hole in the little bubble we were living in. Yeah, ours is a time and place where the default assumption seems to be that a reputation of "greatness" is all that matters, and God forbid anybody else ever laugh at you, belittle you, or not be impressed by you. James and John and their wish to call down an impressive show of "great" and furious fire from heaven for the sake of their reputations would fit in right at home among us, wouldn't they?

But, as you can see from Jesus' response, Jesus himself is always wonderfully, blessedly, out of step with the prevailing attitudes of the day, whether James and John or their 21st century counterparts. Jesus is not nearly so concerned with his reputation, or whether others have treated him respectfully or even kindly. Jesus will not return their evil back at them. And so as if it were not scandalous enough that Jesus has allowed himself to be placed in the role of needy foreigner asking--and being denied!--permission to stay, on top of that, Jesus refuses to retaliate with heavenly fire as punishment. He lets himself be rejected, because Jesus is not simply "great" in terms of power--he is "good" as well. And Jesus' goodness means the refusal to respond to unkindness with more unkindness. He will not give in to nursing a grudge or perpetuating hostility. He doesn't answer a slight with even so much as crude name-calling, much less divine wrath. That is because Jesus is good. Even if James and John are right that the Samaritans have insulted Jesus with their rejection, even if they have the biblical precedent of Elijah calling down fire and Elisha unleashing violent powers on those who insulted him (see the story of the she-bears in 2 Kings 2:23-25), and even if James and John are right that Jesus will look like a laughingstock for not zapping "those Samaritans," Jesus will not give in to their needy impulse to be feared or intimidating.

To me, this episode is one of those moments that reveals both Jesus' greatness and his goodness, and how they are woven together as one. The way Luke tells it, it's not that Jesus couldn't call down fire from heaven to zap the people who refuse to welcome him when he is the foreigner who is turned away. It's that Jesus could but will not use firepower to return evil for evil. It's that Jesus is less concerned with "saving face" or "getting even" or "looking smart and tough" than he is with the well-being, even of the very people who wouldn't give him the time of day. Jesus doesn't need to call down fire on those who have declared themselves his enemies to show his greatness. His greatness is intertwined with his goodness, and his goodness is poured out even on the people who refused to take him in when he crossed into their territory as a foreigner. This is how Jesus' power works--in the world-turning strength of love that is more concerned for the other, even the hostile other, than for its own reputation.  And if we are going to be disciples of this kind of Lord, we will also be called away from our need to "get even" or "look tough" or obliterate our enemies, because Jesus doesn't answer evil with more evil or rottenness with more rottenness. 

Ultimately, what all of the writers of the New Testament are trying to say about Jesus is that he is worth our worship, devotion, and allegiance, not because he has made us afraid of getting zapped, but because he is willing to bear being rejected himself with grace rather than bitterness. Jesus is great, and there is no doubt about that--the stories of Lazarus walking from the tomb, the hungry thousands fed, and the storm stilled, all speak to Jesus' powerful greatness. But the biblical writers don't think greatness by itself is all that great in the end. Being "great"--in the sense of having power--isn't worthy of giving your life to unless it also includes being "good" in the sense of love that sacrifices its own reputation for the well-being of the other.  That kind of rabbi is precisely who we have in Jesus--it is worth being his disciples because he is not merely "great" in the world's language, but "good."

In this life, it is not the truly "great" who worry and fuss and mutter about being seen as a laughingstock or weak in anybody else's eyes. True greatness and true power simply do not waste their energy or attention on impressing anybody. In this life, the only real greatness and the only power worth pursuing are caught up inseparably with being genuinely good--with a love that pours itself out even for the stingy stinkers who won't open their doors for a travelling foreigner rabbi passing through their midst.

My family's childhood dinner prayer was trying to teach me that all along, and I just blew it off as a forced rhyme. But no, no, no--the Gospel hangs on the truth that Jesus is not simply "great" in terms of raw power, but he is "good" in terms of love that refuses to return evil for evil, snub for snub, hate for hate.

Today is a day for us as disciples to follow in the footsteps of this same Jesus, who is not merely great... but also good.

Dear Jesus, grant us the courage to love as you do, without regard for whether anybody else thinks we are great, but only for reflecting the goodness we have known in you.

Following the God Who Seeks--June 27, 2025

Following the God Who Seeks--June 27, 2025

"I was ready to be sought out by those who did not ask,
to be found by those who did not seek me.
I said, 'Here I am, here I am,'
to a nation that did not call on my name.
I held out my hands all day long
to a rebellious people,
who walk in a way that is not good,
following their own devices...." [Isaiah 65:1-2]

So, here's a true confession from the pastor: to this day, I can't read these words without wrinkling up my face to keep from tearing up and squinting my eyes to keep them from watering.

It's hard for me to read these words, even now, even as an adult, and to let it sink in that they depict God as the brokenhearted one, standing alone with arms held open to welcome home angry and wayward runaways. It is difficult--but utterly necessary--to come to see the One we often think of as Almighty and All-Powerful in such a vulnerable position, offering love to people who outright reject it or just walk on by. And yet... here it is, right in the Scriptures (and in what Christians often call the Old Testament, which church folks tend to caricature as "the parts where God is mean and cranky, at that!). Here is the Strong One willing to look weak. Here is the Eternal One left standing alone "all day long" because no one would receive the free gift being offered. There are hidden costs to God for the willingness to go on loving us, even when God's love is unrequited.

This the God we have been called to follow; this is the Lord whose disciples we are. And as an old line I read once put it, "a disciple is someone who follows after God, who of course, was already seeking us out."  That's important to remember as we hear these words again, as many of us did this past Sunday in worship.  God is the One running after us, holding out open arms for all the times we have gone astray, gotten lost, or turned somewhere else.

So when Jesus comes on the scene centuries after these words from what we call Isaiah 65 were first spoken, and he tells a story about a man whose runaway son comes back from being lost in the far country, Jesus isn't inventing something out of whole cloth. He is saying what the prophets before him dared the people to imagine: that God is the One hiking up the divine robes to run out to meet us, that God is the One with prodigal, reckless love to welcome back the lost ones, and that God has always been the One holding open hands all day long for us. The prophets like Isaiah were telling us what Jesus reaffirmed: that God's enduring love comes at the price for God of growing weary with heartache and disappointment every day that we don't come back home, and every time we shrug off the gift of grace in search of some lesser god. And these voices from the Scriptures remind us that God has always been willing to be that One with open arms, even at the pain of breaking God's own heart.

This passage from Isaiah hits even harder when you realize the ones to whom God is speaking here in this passage. The people "who did not seek me" and who "did not call on my name" aren't some pagan Gentile people, like you might think at first blush. This word from the prophet isn't aimed at "outsiders," but at the prophet's own people--the people of Israel and Judah. The people who prided themselves on being descended from the line of Jacob and his sons, who knew all the right religious rules, and who kept the commandments and the covenant, these are the people who nevertheless weren't really seeking the God who was seeking after them.

That's a stark reminder for us modern-day Respectable Religious Folks as well. It's all too easy to pat ourselves on the back for having the "right" religious answers and projecting the appropriately "pious" image, only to hear God say back, "But you have missed that I was actually holding my arms out to you, and you walked on by without realizing it." It's all too easy to get so focused on the trappings of "playing church" that we miss the Love that has been waiting there all along for us, calling out to us, "Here I am!" I'm reminded a little bit of that passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, where a storyteller imagines Jesus coming back to earth during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, only for the Grand Inquistor to tell Jesus that "the Church" can do a better job of being in charge and that Jesus' presence will only mess things up, and that therefore, he'll burn Jesus at the stake "for having dared to come and trouble us in our work." It's a scathing bit of satire against Organized Religion at our worst, but in its own way, it's making the same point as Isaiah 65 here. We can think we've got all the right religious answers and still miss the very presence of the living God standing with arms wide open to embrace us. It's a testament, then, both to how dense and self-righteous we Respectable Religious Folks can be sometimes... and how far God's enduring love will go to reach us anyway.

Today may be a day, then, to pause and look honestly at ourselves to see if maybe we've let the trappings of our own religiosity keep us from seeing the presence of the living God right at our side, reaching out to us right now. And even if we do realize that we, like the pious people of Isaiah's day, have missed out on recognizing God's love with open arms for us, there is a word of hope. God's enduring love keeps those arms open, so that even now we can find ourselves embraced again no matter how many times we have walked right on past with a shrug of indifference.

Today is a day to look up from whatever has distracted us to see that God has been willing to risk being heartbroken and rejected for our sake, and maybe that will send us running back into those wide arms of mercy.

Lord God, help us to hear your voice that has been calling out to us even when we wouldn't listen. Help us to step into the embrace you have risked offering to us all along.

The Old Labels Don't Stick--June 26, 2025

The Old Labels Don't Stick--June 26, 2025

"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise." [Gal. 3:27-29]

Just to be clear--we don't lose our gender, our eye color, music preferences, or national background when we become a part of the community of Christ. Disciples don't lose those categories that are often used to define us; rather, those categories lose their definitiveness. They lose their power--if we dare to believe it--to keep us divided from each other and to set us against each other.

The critical thing is to ask, "What most deeply defines me?" And once I realize that the promise we call "the Gospel" says that God's calling me beloved transcends any other category, label, or division, then I can own my particularity and see you, in all your different particularities, as beloved, too, without me feeling threatened or afraid. The Gospel works out that change in our hearts, even while we are still half-afraid. But like I say, it starts with daring to believe the claim of the New Testament--that the most definitive thing about us is God's calling us beloved, without pretending the other particulars of me aren't there.

So, for example, under my roof and in my immediate family, I'm still a white male of English and German ancestry who grew up going to art museums and orchestra concerts rather than bull riding or NASCAR races. I have straight brown hair, bad eyes, and skin that burns pink in the summer sun, and I could never do a chin-up to save my life. My son and my daughter have curly dark hair and dark brown skin, and better basketball skills in middle school than I will ever have. We do not share DNA. But we have staked our lives on the claim that it is love that makes us belong to one another rather than common ethnicity, appearance, or shared physical agility. Our family is not bound by the set of conditions any of us were born with, but it is sort of a daily gamble that a promise of always-love is powerful enough to hold together people who otherwise are quite different in many ways. And yet at the same time, we don't pretend that we those differences are not there; we cannot. At some point in our lives, something had to change in our hearts that broke open the old mental picture that family was primarily about passing on your genes, and a new picture, a new kind of understanding of "family" came into my awareness. Everything now is bet on the promise that love can make someone belong even if the traits we call "natural" or "inborn" are quite different from one another.

The disciples of Jesus are a part of a very similar gamble. It is something of an experiment that has been going on for two thousand years, and we keep having to re-consider whether there is some label or category out there that is stronger than the promise of God, or God's claim, "You are beloved," is powerful enough to hold together any other difference, label, or category. We don't forget or deny the things that make each of us who we are, not any more than I pretend my son's curly hair was my contribution to his identity. To be a Christian, then, is not to pretend that we are all the same, but that the things that make us different are not more essential, not more fundamental, than the claim of God which says simply, "You are beloved--therefore you belong."

So, if we dare to take these words many of us heard this past Sunday--really quite radical words, if you think about it--from Galatians seriously, we won't pretend that we suddenly lose our gender, our preferences, our in-born traits and tendencies, or our DNA. Rather, we come to say that these things are not more fundamental than the love of God which says we all belong. The old lines and distinctions no longer divide us or carry any force for us within the Christian community.

Our baptism into Christ defines us, Paul says, and makes a stronger claim on us than any other label that gets put on us or that we put on ourselves. Before I am anything else--before I am white or male or English or middle class or married or clumsy or near-sighted or whatever other categorization we might describe ourselves with--I am made a child of God through Christ. My daughter EzRhianna has none of those demographic boxes checked the same way I do, but she is a child of God, and she and I can both recall the day when the water came streaming down her face and the cross was traced on her forehead to inscribe the promise over her. I don't stop being any of those other things that I am, and neither does she and neither do you. Paul would tell us that none of those other things are the basis of my belonging or my identity any longer. The old labels used to define me just don’t stick. The disciple community is not constrained by what we were born with nor confined to our biology. It is defined by God's promise.

Now... truth be told, the problem we face with all of these words, though, is that we have let it go as just a utopian vision and we perpetually fall short of it. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to point out that the most segregated hour in America was the Sunday morning worship hour--a sad reality that flies in the face of all that Paul says about what it means to live in the Christian community. For that matter, for generations, Christians have either ignored or spiritualized this passage from Galatians so that women could not have positions of leadership in the church--often with the claim that they were abiding by other scriptures that speak against women's leadership, but clearly then ignoring this passage. How tragic is it that Paul gives us this radically open, profoundly beautiful picture of community in this passage, and we have spent the last two thousand years inventing all sorts of excuses for why "those people" (pick your label or category) did not apply to that surprisingly inclusive vision in Galatians 3. We have come up with countless new ways to settle for less than this genuine kind of community.

And maybe the saddest part about all of it is that Paul doesn't describe this picture as a future possibility or a commandment of what we should be or could be if only we would strive harder at it. This is not a utopian hypothetical community--Paul says that this is how things are for us. In other words, as far as God is concerned, God regards us already as a community where the old lines of gender, class, and race no longer need to divide us. God sees Christ in us, and over us, and through us. God just sees children. And yet we somehow still settle for the divisions and distinctions and labels. Paul seems to think that there's nothing more we need to do to create this kind of community, except to believe that it is already the case. We belong in a family already--the powerful promise of love has already been spoken over us. What happens now day by day is our ongoing answer to the question, "Dare we believe that the promise is true?

It seems painful clear that the culture and time in which we live really struggles with daring to believe it, largely because we keep doing awful things to each other and justifying it in the name of our fear of one another. Every day there is more evidence on the news of how we still struggle with racism, how we still use talk about gender to alienate or belittle, how we make assumptions about people from other neighborhoods or tax brackets. The evidence day by say says that we just do not know how to relate to one another, and the temptation can be just to withdraw into our own little categories, and only imagine that God likes people who are "like me." Of course that is the temptation--it is always tempting to stay with what we have always known rather than letting God lead us somewhere new... and yet somewhere that feels profoundly like home.

And in spite of our utter failure (or maybe worse, our giving up on even trying) at loving the "other," here is Paul announcing that the Christian community exists as an alternative kind of community where the old boundary lines really can be taken down--because they have been taken down, once and for all by Christ Jesus. Maybe the challenge for us, seeing how fractured our world is, is whether we can dare to actually trust the claim of the gospel--that the old lines need not hem us in any longer, that the old labels do not stick, and that our identity is a gift of Christ, a common gift meant to be shared with all.

Can we let our hearts catch up to the bold promise of the Gospel--that who we are comes from Whose we are? Can we dare to stake our lives on the claim that regardless of whatever categories nature doled out to us at birth, the living God has said over all of our dripping foreheads, "You are beloved. You belong..."?

The gamble is daring to let our hearts believe that is true. Believe it.

God of new vision, teach us to see as you see. Train our hearts to look on your beloved and to see your beloved. Teach us to own our particularities but not to judge by our particularities. Teach us to rejoice that you have created a community in which the outsiders are brought in and the lowly are raised high, and we are all given the likeness of Jesus--simply as a gift. Teach us these things, and we will praise you for them.

Called Back to Life--June 25, 2025

Called Back to Life--June 25, 2025

"The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him; but Jesus sent him away, saying, 'Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.' So he went away, proclaiming throughout the city how much Jesus had done for him." [Luke 8:38-39]

Jesus is always bringing people back to life.

This is simply what he does everywhere he goes, for whatever people cross his path. Deeply devout people, and people with wavering and weak faith. Fellow children of Israel who spoke his language and shared his God... and foreigners across the sea like this Gentile man who had been possessed by a "legion" of demons. Respectable, well-dressed, and dignified community leaders in the privacy of their own homes, and even people who are stark naked out in public rambling through the graveyard. Wherever Jesus goes, he brings people back to life. Even if they weren't physically dead.

That's the key to seeing what happens with this man we remember as "the Gerasene demoniac" in this story we've been looking at this week and since many of us heard this Gospel passage read on Sunday morning.  He isn't physically dead, but he sure ain't really alive... until Jesus comes into his world and gives him his life back. However we conceive of the evil spirts that have control of his life at the start of the story, this poor guy has been cut off from his old life because of them. His wife and kids haven't seen in him in who knows how long, both because he is impossible to be around, but also for their own safety. His neighbors don't go out to visit him in the graveyard, and the spirits made him unwilling to live in a regular house. He can't even have a normal human conversation, because the demons keep interrupting, and they won't allow him to wear clothes, either. I don't know what you call that kind of existence, but it's hardly a life. And all the things and people who made up his old life have been taken from him, and he has been plucked up out of the familiar streets and home routines like he was erased. In a way it's even worse than dying, because he really is conscious somewhere out in the graveyards, aware that he's missing his old life and family, and they all know that he's somewhere unwell and without them, too.

That's why I think it is so important to see this moment at the end of the story as something of an act of resurrection. After all, what else do you call it when Jesus gives you your life back? And because that is Jesus' intention, that sheds a whole new light on why Jesus doesn't allow the man, healed and in his right mind, to come along with Jesus. The whole point of this miracle was to give him his life back--now he gets to go back to see his kids and kiss his wife. Now he gets to sit on his front porch with his morning coffee. He gets to sit and listen to his neighbors ramble on about the good old days. He gets all the little things that make up a life handed back to him. What other word for that is there than resurrection?

I have been thinking this week a lot about what we miss even by just missing a Sunday's gathering with our church families in worship. I feel it when I take a Sunday off after Christmas on some years, or when someone is sick and can't get out to worship on a Sunday, or when others for whatever other reason miss being in church any given week. Even when any of us is only missing from the picture one Sunday, we miss out on these little, beautiful details from one another's lives--the person who shares about a sick relative, the moment that someone else is brought to tears by a hymn they loved and could really use a comforting friend, the reminder about the potluck next week, or the celebration of who won a blue ribbon for their painting at the art fair last week.

There are so many chances to be present with each other, sharing our lives with one another, and my goodness, that's just thinking about a single Sunday morning we miss! Here in Luke's Gospel, the healed man has been pulled out of all the details of his whole life for a long time. Who knows how long it's been since he's been able to hug his kids or talk to his best friend? All of those things are what Jesus gives back to this man by telling him to go back to his home, where he can tell people about what God has done for him there.

This is what Jesus is doing all the time, of course. And if we are Jesus' followers, this is the work we are being trained for as well: to help people be brought more fully to life. I almost want to suggest that there's really only one kind of miracle Jesus ever performs: resurrection and restoring life--it's just he plays it like a song in different key signatures over and over in different situations. He restores life to the leper begging on the roadside by curing the leprosy. He restores life to the woman at the well by treating her like a person rather than a pariah. He restores life to the man possessed by a legion of demons by sending away the spirits so he can go back to his life and his home. And yeah, sometimes, he just plain raises the dead for Lazarus and Jairus' daughter and others, too. But in each situation, Jesus brings people to fuller life than they had before--not just restoring breath and heartbeat, but giving us back the things that make a life... life.  And for us as his disciples, walking the road beside Jesus, going among the people Jesus meets, crossing boundaries and borders as he does, we find that we, too, are made more fully alive than we were before.

It saddens and convicts me that so often we all settle for less than life--choosing to miss out on those connections with people's lives because we've got other "more important" things to do, when we take the presence of those God has put in our lives for granted so easily. Maybe this man's story will remind me in the future that it is a shame to miss out on those chances to "show up" for one another--at church, with family, with the friends who count on us, or even with the stranger whom God sends across our paths. And maybe I'll be able to see, too, how many dark powers I am tempted to give control over to in my life that would keep me from being a part of those beautifully ordinary details of other people's lives. Maybe it will just help me to see my priorities clearly, so that I will better know how and where to spend my time. But in any case, we all need this kind of resurrection that can pull us out of the foolish and rotten ways we've let ourselves be cut off from others in our lives, and that can bring us back to each other, and to what life is all about.

And that is the good news for us on this day, too: Jesus doesn't have to wait until our hearts stop beating to bring us to fuller life. God's mission is not just to resuscitate our bodies and then leave us wasting our lives on making more bucks, climbing the corporate ladder, burying our heads in screens, or chasing after a more "fun" crowd to spend our days with. Jesus calls us to life again, and quite often he sends us right back into those ordinary places to live our everyday lives again as new people. Maybe it starts quietly, without anybody noticing at all, while you and I take an honest look at the things we have missed out on while we were busy chasing after other "more important" things that really aren't so important. Maybe it starts as Jesus helps us get back into our right minds and remember the gift it is simply to be given our own lives back.

For whatever ways we have settled for a life that is less-than, may the living Jesus resurrect us.

Lord Jesus, call us back to life, and send us back into the wondrously ordinary details of our daily lives as new people.

The Far Side of the Sea--June 24, 2025

The Far Side of the Sea--June 24, 2025

"As [Jesus and the disciples] stepped out on land, a man of the city who had demons met him. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he did not live in a house but in the tombs. When he saw Jesus, he fell down before him and shouted at the top of his voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me”—for Jesus had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many times it had seized him; he was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the wilds.) Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” He said, “Legion”; for many demons had entered him.  They begged him not to order them to go back into the abyss. Now there on the hillside a large herd of swine was feeding; and the demons begged Jesus to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. Then the demons came out of the man and entered the swine, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and was drowned. When the swineherds saw what had happened, they ran off and told it in the city and in the country. Then people came out to see what had happened, and when they came to Jesus, they found the man from whom the demons had gone sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. And they were afraid. Those who had seen it told them how the one who had been possessed by demons had been healed. Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked Jesus to leave them; for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned." [Luke 8:27-37]

I don't think much about the borders I cross in a given day, maybe because they are all safe to the point of being mundane most of the time. I don't notice when crossing from one township to another in daily travels among congregational visits, or from one county to another if I am headed across the river that divides Lucas County from Wood County. I don't even stop to think about the state lines I cross to venture into Michigan if my son has a soccer tournament just over the border or if we are taking a trip that leaves out of the Detroit airport. In a country like ours, despite the differences that exist between one state and another, we cross those borders almost without thinking about anything happening.

And yet, to make a trip across one state line, or even a county line sometimes, means that you are going somewhere intentionally--that there is someone you need to see at the other end of your trip, who is the reason for your journey. On a trip across even a line like a county border, you go with the person or people in mind whom you will be seeing at your destination, and they become the reason and the momentum that leads you to cross whatever other civic borders you cross along the way.

The stakes were higher, I believe, when Jesus made trips across borders. Even when there weren't the military checkpoints, barbed wire, or concrete barricades lined with armed soldiers like there are today that separate places called "Israel" and places called "Gaza," or between Israeli territory and the walled off West Bank that includes Bethlehem, the city of Jesus' birth, the borders were a big deal. When Jesus made a trip across the Sea of Galilee like he does here in this scene that many of us heard this past Sunday, he crossed a border intentionally, and even provocatively. Sometimes I think we forget that about Jesus, and we imagine that Jesus just pleasantly ping-ponged at random between towns and villages without a thought of where he was going next, until some sort of alarm clock rang inside him and told him it was time for the Last Supper. But that's not really how the Gospels actually play out--they are not random episodes, but flow one to the next, with Jesus setting things into motion.

This scene here, where Jesus and his disciples get out of a boat in "the country of the Gerasenes" as we heard from yesterday's verse, is one of those moments. Even though the Sea of Galilee is really just a medium-sized lake, it's not the sort of place you can cross "accidentally." And it's not ambiguous who lives on "the other side." The "other side" of the Sea of Galilee is Gentile (non-Jewish) territory, ruled either by a different Roman-installed puppet or independent cities called the Decapolis, which were loosely ruled by Rome with some degree of their own autonomy. But in any case, Jesus deliberately instructed his followers to cross out of their own land and to enter the realm of "the other." You know it's Gentile territory there when they arrive because there are pigs around and swineherds raising them, and every good Jew knew that pork was not kosher. So nobody was surprised, or unaware, or accidentally crossing into foreign territory here--this was Jesus deliberately going across this boundary, knowing full well that there were leaving the territory of their own people, language, religion, and ruler, and heading into another realm.

The way of Jesus is like that--he has a way of intentionally, even provocatively, crossing boundaries we set up, and then going (and leading his followers along with him) into the places where "the other" is waiting to meet him.  Being Jesus' disciple will inevitably mean crossing borders like that, rather than staying safely in the blissful ignorance of our own comfort zones.  Jesus will take us to the far side of the sea.

And that's just what happens. As Mark tells it, Jesus has barely gotten onto dry land when this man troubled by a whole army of evil spirits comes out to him and confronts him. It's almost like Jesus had an appointment to keep--or at least that Jesus knew there would be someone in need of his help across the waters on "the other side" of the sea. And when you have in mind the faces at your destination, it has a way of making the state lines in between fade in your awareness. Jesus isn't worried about what lines he is crossing, and yet he is well aware that he is crossing them.

He helps and heals the man who is plagued by these spirits, but it comes at a price. The pigs become the new hosts for the demons, and they rush into the waters to their death. One man gets his life back, but some pig farmers lose their prize hogs for the county fair. And this is the other thing to notice about this story: when the townspeople come out to see what has happened, they start asking Jesus to leave--he is making more trouble and costing them their profits. So what if he cured a man troubled by unclean spirits--they won't be able to bring home the bacon if Jesus stays around! They make a clear choice: they would rather have their businesses intact than their neighbor back, whole, safe, and sound. They would rather keep being able to make a buck than to have their friend, their cousin, their fellow human being restored back to wholeness. And so that means they choose against the way of Jesus.

In this life, you do have to choose sometimes, which is more important: the bottom line, or the blessed Lord... the securing of your profits, or the savior's presence... the life of a neighbor, or your own net worth. You have to decide whether people are more important than things, even when the "thing" is money. And for that matter, following Jesus compels us to decide whether the man waiting on the far side of the sea is more important than all the scandal Jesus creates by crossing the border to help him.

We have a way of assuming that Jesus would only ever leads us on the safe route, never force us to make a difficult choice like that, and never would cost anybody a bigger profit for the sake of some random stranger. We forget that Jesus unilaterally made the decision in this story to put a higher value on the man's life than on the market value of a couple thousand pigs, and all the sausage patties that were lost in the lake that day, and perhaps we are afraid to consider that Jesus reserves the right to tell us as well that the lives of other people around us are more important to him than our making an extra buck, or posting higher profits in the first quarter, or getting the stock market to close higher than it did today. We assume (wrongly) that Jesus has too much respect for boundaries and borders to go recklessly crossing into Gentile jurisdiction like he does in this story, and we sometimes forget that he made his hand-picked followers complicit in the crossing, too.

But this is Jesus, dear friends. There is no version of the rabbi from Nazareth who does not do such things, and there is no form of discipleship that does not dare to take risks to cross boundary lines for the sake of restoring someone else to their full humanity. There is no option of editing Jesus, or re-routing his path to avoid a crossing to "the other side of the sea," and there is no possibility of following him in such a way that we are not taken across the border with him along for the ride, even if it puts a damper on the bottom line somewhere.

If we are going to be Jesus' disciples, then here is the question: are we willing to go where he leads us, even when that takes us outside the boundaries of our own comfortable circles, even when that leads us to people we would call 'the other,' even when it means a cost to profits for the sake of restoring personhood, even when it means being rejected by folks who would rather make an extra buck than have their friend back in their lives? Will we dare to let Jesus take us on his way across the boundaries we have erected, and will we dare to picture the people waiting there at our destination, whose paths Jesus intends for us to cross?

And where will that take you and me... today?

Lord Jesus, take us where you will today, grant us the courage to go where you lead, even if that moves us into new and frightening territory for us.

Going Where Jesus Goes--June 23, 2025

Going Where Jesus Goes--June 23, 2025

"Then [Jesus and his disciples] arrived at the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee." (Luke 8:26)

At first blush, this verse that begins the Gospel reading many of us heard on Sunday seems like just a bit of dull geography.  "Jesus and his disciples go to such and such a region."  Nobody memorizes a verse like that or underlines it in their Bible, and I have never seen it embroidered on a wall hanging or made into a decorative plaque to mount on their living room wall. And yet, there's a lot going on in this single verse, and it has serious implications for how we live our lives as disciples, too.

Let's start with the most basic: Jesus brings his disciples along with him, just about everywhere he goes.  That is to say, being Jesus' disciple is different from being an observer of a performance or a fan watching a game.  Observers don't have to do the difficult stuff.  Fans don't have to even break a sweat.  But disciples go where the rabbi goes... in order to do what the rabbi does.  I'm reminded of the old line of Kierkegaard's that Jesus isn't looking for admirers, since an admirer can decide at any point not to follow in the teacher's footsteps.  Jesus calls people to join in his work, share his journey, and go to the places he goes, whether or not that is comfortable for us at the time.

That's worth remembering every time we slide back into thinking that following Jesus is just a hobby, like "playing church," that we can set aside for a while or bow out from when it gets risky or costly. Sometimes we treat this faith of ours like a Sunday-morning pastime, interchangeable with doing the crossword puzzle in the newspaper, going golfing, or picking up with your favorite soap opera.  But Jesus calls us to go along with him where he goes--even if we don't know the destination ahead of time when we step on the board or hit the road.  He calls us to trust him, and to trust that he knows where he is going, without getting our permission first for where he intends to take us.

And that, of course, raises a second point--just where precisely do we think that Jesus is going to lead us?  Because it's not likely to be just a matter of gentle loops around the block in our own familiar neighborhood or comfort zones.  Jesus has a way of crossing boundaries.  That's also here in this single sentence from Luke's gospel: Jesus and his disciples get in a boat and cross to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which puts them solidly in Gentile territory.  They land in "the country of the Gerasenes," which is definitely not familiar turf for Jesus' Jewish disciples.  (It will become even clearer later in this story that they are in Gentile/non-Jewish territory when there is a herd of pigs nearby, since swine are unclean animals in the Jewish law.)  So Jesus takes his disciples across the border into non-Jewish territory, which forces both him and his students into the role of outsiders.  They are the foreigners now.  They are the migrants who have crossed the boundary into another country.  They are the ones going into the midst of people who might well view them with suspicion as people with the "wrong" religion, culture, language, and way of life.  Jesus and his disciples are the odd ones out here, running the risk of being rejected or run out of town if things go sour.  Jesus and his disciples, then, are the ones who make themselves vulnerable and take the chance of being mistreated as "foreigners." They don't merely stay on their own side of the Sea of Galilee where no Gentiles will cross their paths. Jesus' community of followers go where Jesus goes, which includes going into potentially hostile places.  Before anything else happens in this scene, it is worth remembering this much: being Jesus' disciple will mean we are not only going to be surrounded with other people "like" us, because Jesus deliberately leads his disciples across borders and borders where we are seen as the outsiders. That's part of what it means to be his follower.

On this day, then, the question to ask is, Where might Jesus be leading me... or us, today?  It's unlikely he will only call us to stay in our comfort zones, and it's almost certain he will not leave us where we started.  We may be sent to get to know people with different languages, skin colors, cultures, customs, and ways of living.  We may be sent with Jesus to meet people who look different, love differently, and learn in different ways.  We may be sent to put ourselves in positions where we become the vulnerable and marginalized ones, rather than being in control and comfortable.  But it will be worth it because we will be where Jesus is leading us, and we will be where he is.

And wherever Jesus is, even if we don't know the destination while we're on the journey, is the right place for us to be.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to follow where you lead us, even across boundaries we thought were uncrossable.

On Living Sacrifices--June 20, 2025

On Living Sacrifices--June 20, 2025

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." [Romans 12:1-2]

To be clear, God isn't hungry. Not even peckish, not even a little bit.

In other words, God doesn't need to be fed... or fueled... or powered up... by our sacrifices. That's not how God works. Plenty of gods and goddesses in ancient pantheons were thought to need sacrifices to keep them appeased, or their celestial bellies filled, but not the God we meet in the two Testaments. The God of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Miriam, and of Jesus himself, doesn't get hungry, and doesn't need to be fed.

While we are on the subject, neither does God just arbitrarily demand sacrifices from us out of some cold, logical calculus. God doesn't demand a pound of flesh, like Shakespeare's Shylock, and God doesn't require our contributions in order to get some kind of heavenly response. God doesn't dole out blessings in proportion to how many goats we have slaughtered at an altar, how many sheaves of wheat we have laid down as tribute, or how many zeroes are on the offering check you put in the plate last Sunday.  God doesn't need any of those things, even if it might just turn out that we need to give things to God. The living God whom we meet in the Scriptures has never been bound to such transactional, "quid-pro-quo" kind of thinking.

And yet... the God we meet in Jesus does indeed call forth sacrifices from us. No, more than that--this God calls us to be sacrifices! What on earth can that mean?

Well, let's look at the other qualifier that Paul gives us here in Romans. We are called to offer ourselves as "living sacrifices," rather than dead ones. There is no demand of blood, or meat for the altar fire to fill the nostrils of the divine. Your heart doesn't have to stop beating to be a living sacrifice--in fact, it's about how God will use us precisely with our hearts beating, our hands serving, and our muscles working in showing love. There is no talk of God needing payment, or of our sacrifices providing fuel to power God up for answering our prayers. God doesn't need us to die in order to make something else happen. Instead, it's really the opposite: offering ourselves as living "sacrifices" to God means letting our minds be renewed and our whole selves be brought more to life! We are not made less by becoming living sacrifices--we are made more than we were before: more alive, more in tune with God's justice and mercy, more connected to God's goodness and grace toward all people. God's goal is not to sap our strength to power up some divine project--but to make us actually more invigorated and enlivened by letting God shape our hearts and direct our priorities.  In other words, we are called to be disciples--people who offer our thinking, our loving, our speaking, and our acting, to be shaped by God in Christ's likeness.

I think that's really what's at stake here in the idea of "renewing your minds." It's not about proving our love to God by memorizing Bible verses, but about letting God's priorities become our priorities... it's about letting God's way become our way, rather than me getting to keep my self-centered, "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking that bellows, "No one can tell me what to do!" When we fall into those mindsets, we are less alive. When we let God shape our thinking, our loving, and our acting, even that act of surrender makes us more fully alive. That's what this is all about.  Discipleship is about allowing God to make us more fully alive--hence "living" sacrifices.

So here's the sacrifice part: to be a living offering to God means we give up our old self-centered mindset that is only interested in what's "good" for me or what's "convenient" for me. But it turns out that the life lived bent in on self is a waste anyhow--when God pull us outside of ourselves, it's like being yanked out from the deadly pull of a black hole in outer space. We are pulled into life that is fuller, love that is deeper, meaning that is richer than just angrily insisting, "Nobody else can tell me what to do." So it's a sacrifice, but it's rather like being asked to give up the bottle of poison you've been nursing sips from for too long, and instead being given clean water to drink and discovering that you are more alert, refreshed, and energetic because of it. It means letting go of all the Me-First programming the world has done its darnedest to instill in us, and letting God write new words on our hearts that lead us in a way of love--that lead us in the footsteps of Jesus, who is our rabbi.

But at no point does God need us to give up our vitality in order to feed the Almighty--God isn't hungry, and doesn't need our death to sustain divine life. God, instead, is calling us to new ways of being more fully alive, like a chrysalis becoming more fully alive as it opens into a butterfly.

Come, dear ones. Let's be fully alive today--let us allow God to reshape our minds and hearts and actions into the way of love.

Lord Jesus, we offer our deepest selves to you--make of us what you will--even as you make us more fully alive.