Lessons from a Shrub--September 21, 2026

Lessons from a Shrub--September 21, 2026

"The LORD God appointed a bush, and made it come up over Jonah, to give shade over his head, to save him from his discomfort; so Jonah was very happy about the bush. But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the bush, so that it withered. When the sun rose, God prepared a sultry east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint and asked that he might die. He said, 'It is better for me to die than to live.' But God said to Jonah, 'Is it right for you to be angry about the bush?' And he said, 'Yes, angry enough to die.' Then the LORD said, 'You are concerned about the bush, for which you did not labor and which you did not grow; it came into being in a night and perished in a night. And should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are a hundred and twenty thousand persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also many animals?'" (Jonah 4:6-11)

It really makes a difference to get the whole way through a story.

Fans of mid 1990s "Must See TV" from NBC's old classic line-up will know that. If you were a fan of the show Friends at all, you are likely familiar with the classic episode where Phoebe (played by Lisa Kudrow on the sitcom) says how much she hates that "sad movie" called It's A Wonderful Life, and how much she loves the happy story of Old Yeller, because she has only ever seen the first two-thirds of both movies. And of course, there's the joke--she has never seen the classic Frank Capra happy ending of the Jimmy Stewart Christmas classic, complete with Clarence getting his wings, and so she doesn't know that It's A Wonderful Life leaves everybody smiling. And she has never made it to the end of Old Yeller, so she has never had to see the good and loyal dog be put down when he gets rabies at the end. Phoebe has her movie reviews backwards, because she has never made it the whole way through either story. And in both of those cases, the ending is really what the whole story drives toward.

That's not only a helpful hint for your movie viewing, but it's also essential for reading the stories of the Bible. And Jonah's story is a classic case in point, as many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. If you stop halfway through, you will likely assume Jonah's story is a morality tale about doing what God says or else risking punishment (like getting swallowed by a great fish). But that's not what the point of the story was ever really about. Making it all the way to the end of Jonah's story is much more dangerous to our sense of religious self-righteous. Be careful--if you keep on reading past the famous fish scene, Jonah's story just might make you rethink your whole faith and revise the way you see "the other."

It's a shame that in a lot of church life, we stop at the part of the story where Jonah gets spit up by the great fish. That much, almost everybody knows. The Sunday School flannelboard version of Jonah's story that I grew up with boiled down to something like this:

"God told Jonah to go to Nineveh.

Jonah said, 'No,' and went as far away in the other direction as he could.

God punished Jonah for disobeying by first sending a storm at sea and then sending a great big fish to swallow Jonah up.

God only let Jonah out when he finally promised to do what God said.

And the moral of the story is--do what God says or else you'll be punished."

Nobody in my recollection ever bothered pointing out that there was another two chapters to the story, and that maybe, just maybe, the actual turning point of the story was yet to be told. In the Respectable Religious version of Jonah's story, Jonah is basically Goofus from the old Highlights magazine feature, "Goofus and Gallant," giving us an example of what not to do if we wanted to avoid God's wrath.

But really, once the great fish vomits Jonah out at the city limits of Nineveh, the story takes a couple of unexpected turns. Once we get beyond the whale, Jonah goes into the city of Nineveh--the capital city of Israel's sworn enemy, the cruel Assyrians--and he begrudgingly announces God's judgment on their cruelty and wickedness... only to have these terrible, no-good, hopeless, pagan Ninevites... change. They turn from their wickedness and cruelty, so the story goes, and God decides to be merciful.

That was exactly what Jonah had been afraid of.

Seriously. Jonah is angry with God, because he knew--he just knew--that if he did as God told him and announced his message to Nineveh, that they would turn from their wickedness and God would be merciful to them. And Jonah didn't want that. He complains to God, saying, "I knew it--I knew you would do this, because I know that you are gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love!" Jonah gets upset that God is gracious to these... others... these enemies.

This is the real issue of the story: Jonah wants permission to hate these people because they are from a hostile foreign country. They are "the enemy."  And he doesn't want to listen to God's summons to speak to them, because he doesn't want them to be eligible for mercy. He just wants a justification for his own hatred of "the other." And that willful ignoring of God's love for these enemies consumes Jonah. Truthfully, he has been swallowed up long before any whales get to him.

So after Jonah has his hissyfit with God, the last scene of the story unfolds. Jonah is wallowing in his own bitterness over God's choice to show mercy to the people Jonah hated, and so God gives another chance to Jonah to "get it," just as God had given the people of Nineveh another chance to "get it," too. God shades the self-pitying, miserable prophet with a miraculous bush that grows overnight (take that, Jack and the Beanstalk!), and Jonah loves the plant for its shade. Then, when God lets a worm eat the plant in a second night, Jonah is upset at the loss of this random shrubbery. This is God's entry--this is where divine mercy gets a toe in the door.

"You are upset about this plant, Jonah?" says God. "You are sad for the loss of a shrub, which grew up in a night and which you had nothing to do with taking care of--and yet you wanted me to destroy a whole city full of people?" God forces Jonah to see how divine love for "the other" really works. Jonah has felt compassion for a plant--so how much more should Jonah have been concerned for the lives of men and women and children (and many animals, as the text notes, too!) in Nineveh? Jonah had wanted to see divine wrath consume the city in fire and brimstone... and instead he saw divine grace envelop the city with love and mercy. So God refuses to give up--not on the despicable Ninevites, and not on the despairing prophet, either. And the last line, the question that God puts to Jonah, becomes a question put to us, too--can we dare to allow that God loves the people we have sworn off as our enemies? Could we bear the thought that God just might send us to be the means of redemption for the people we wanted to hate?  Could we possibly learn that lesson from a shrub?

This is what the whole story of Jonah has always really been about. It's just that most of the time, we never make it beyond the whale. But what a dramatic turn, if we actually make it through to the end of the story. What at first sounds like a straightforward morality fable about what bad things will happen to those who disobey an angry and almighty God turns out to be a story about a grace that will not stay contained within the boundaries we want to put up.

Look, let's be honest: we are burning with our own personal hatreds for people we don't like and don't want to like. There is a near daily ritual on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media in which we collectively post angry words about how "Nobody else sees what's going on!" while we rattle off our personal list of our favorite villains to hate--the political party you despise, the dangerous outsiders you want to get rid of, the dangerous influences affecting our children... the whole nine yards. I'm pretty sure Jonah gave a speech like that to God listing all the reasons that God was not allowed to forgive the Ninevites. You can easily imagine the reluctant prophet lecturing God about "those godless people of Nineveh" and how big a threat they are to Israel's national security--how they must be gotten rid of, not forgiven, and how anyone who shows mercy to "those people" must be hopelessly naïve or brainwashed. Jonah is basically everybody's one rage-filled bigoted uncle who goes off on tirades about all the dangerous bad people we all ought to be afraid of.

And in a wonderfully ironic twist of grace, even that bigot of a prophet is given mercy, too. Rather than just zap Jonah with a final lightning bolt or have the big fish just digest him at the bottom of the sea, God gives Jonah the chance to be changed by grace, just as much as the Ninevites are changed by grace and set free.

See, here's the thing about grace: the moment--the very moment--that we set up a boundaries beyond which we say grace is not allowed to go, God deliberately goes there and showers mercy on the people we were hell-bent on hating. Godless, conniving Ninevites? Grace. Bitter, hateful Jonah? Grace. The people you and I are damn sure are beyond the reach of God's love? Grace. You and me for thinking that someone else was beyond the reach of God's love in the first place? Guess what--grace, too. Jonah's story is precisely about how God chooses to take the side of the "other," even when we don't want to see it.

If we stop at the great fish, we'll never get any further than tired old moralizing that reinforces our old hatreds and justifies our old bigotry.

But if we go beyond the whale, we will find God has been leaning against castor bean plants and standing with the people we wanted to hate.

It really makes a difference to make it all the way through the story.

Lord God, whether it's by fish or plant or the voice of a friend, get our attention to love the ones we want to ignore or hate, and lead us to see the ways you have been gracious with us, too.

Letting Go of the Gavel--September 18, 2026

Letting Go of the Gavel--September 18, 2026

Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister? Or you, why do you despise your brother or sister? For we will all stand before the judgment seat of God. For it is written, “As I live, says the Lord, every knee shall bow to me, and every tongue shall give praise to God.”  So then, each one of us will be held accountable. (Romans 14:10-12)

So... good news, bad news (kind of).

The bad news (of sorts) is that God reserves the right to be our judge, and God sees all the evidence.  There's no use in hiding our sins or pretending we are perfect peaches, because God already knows the truth.

But the good news is really good:  if God is the One who holds the gavel, nobody else gets to be the judge over us.  No one else has the authority to condemn us, and of course also, none of us has the authority to condemn somebody else.  That is God's prerogative, not ours.

It's worth noting that these words, which come from the same reading in Romans 14 that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday and which we've been looking at in our devotions over the last couple of days, are from a larger passage that is focused on making space within the Christian community for those with whom we disagree. Whether it was about food restrictions, celebrating different holidays, observing different festivals, or other differences of opinion, Paul directs the Christians in Rome to let people act according to their consciences rather than forcing others to fit your personal scruples.  And it's that train of thought which leads him to ask, "Why do you pass judgment on your brother or sister?" He mentions that all of us will end up in front of God's judgment seat, which is to say, none of us gets to be the judge. In other words, the driving point is that none of us gets to be the judge over the rest, because "judge" is a role to which God has exclusive rights.  The point here is not to make us afraid of God judging us, but rather that because God is the sole judge we ultimately have to keep in mind, we don't get to deputize ourselves judges over others--and we don't have to worry about someone else's verdict over us, either.

This is important for us to notice. Sometimes in our Bible reading, we get the words right but still get the meaning wrong because we are placing the emPHAsis on the wrong sylLAble, if you get my drift. We put our focus in the wrong place and end up distorting the thrust of a passage rather than listening to the Scriptures on their own terms.  So, for example, here in this passage, yes, it is true that Paul talks about all of us standing before "the judgment seat of God." And certainly, over the centuries, plenty of people have gotten hung upon that image with the assumption that Paul is primarily trying to scare us into good behavior or to paralyze us with fear of getting zapped by a vindictive deity throwing lightning bolts at sinners.  But actually, the thrust of his argument is in the opposite direction--to move us away from being afraid of being condemned, because we know that other people who want to criticize or judge us don't have the standing to render a verdict--only God.  And this is the same Paul, I'll remind you, who just six chapters earlier in this same letter, wrote to these same Christians, "There is therefore no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus" (Romans 8:1).  In fact, that same passage that we call the eighth chapter of Romans builds to a crescendo with this powerful set of claims: "What then are we to say about these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not withhold his own Son but gave him up for all of us, how will he not with him also give us everything else? Who will bring any charge against God’s elect? It is God who justifies. Who is to condemn? It is Christ who died, or rather, who was raised, who is also at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us." And then famously Paul concludes that "nothing in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus."  Taken together, Paul sure seems to be saying that nobody else gets to put themselves in the role of judge over us (and we don't get to put ourselves in the role of judge over others), because that is solely God's prerogative.  And God has already committed not to condemn us but instead to come to our defense and to take all the condemnation into God's own self through Christ.  The One Person who has the right to judge us has already told us that condemnation is not the end of the story for us because of Christ.

In that sense, this passage feels like something of a riff on that well-known story in John 8 about the woman caught in adultery who is brought to Jesus.  And when Jesus puts it to the lynch-mob that "the one who is without sin gets to throw the first stone," the accusers all leave, one by one, until Jesus alone remains.  He, of course, is the one person who could claim to have a right to throw stones, but he deliberately refuses.  "Where are your accusers?" he asks the woman, and when she responds that no one is left who condemns her, he says, "Neither do I condemn you."  Paul is simply daring us to take this kind of story seriously and to trust that the One who has the right to be our judge has already promised us mercy.  So you don't have to stay awake at night in fear of what somebody else--even somebody else who acts "religious"--says about you or thinks about you.  Nobody else gets to be your judge--only God, the same God about whom Paul has already said, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Once we are freed from worrying about whether or not we live up to the expectations of some other Respectable Religious People, we can face the truth of our lives, even when that truth involves acknowledging our mess-ups, sins, and rotten choices.  We can face those truths, acknowledge them, and turn in new directions, because we are confident that the God who sees them all already has assured us "There is no condemnation" because of Christ Jesus.  We are united to him, and God is not looking to zap us, or to let our failures get the last word.  Like Bryan Stevenson has said in his work against the death penalty, "Each of us is more than the worst thing we have ever done."  Paul would seem to agree: God will not let condemnation be the last word over us, and because of that we are actually freed and empowered to face the truth about our worst actions and start over.  We can begin again as forgiven and freed people because we know that the other people who want to be our critics and judges do not get to sit on the bench.  Only God gets to be the judge, and God has already promised that "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus."

Where have each of us been trying to make ourselves judge over someone else--and what would it look like if we stepped back from that today?

Where have each of us been running away from the judgment of others, or our fear that they will condemn us for not fitting their expectations--and what would it mean for us if we didn't have to keep running anymore?

Today's a day for each of us to let go of the imaginary gavels in our hands and to drop the stones.  We will find that we are free.

Lord Jesus, give us the confidence of knowing that no one else gets to be our judge but you, and you have promised to be our defender and not to let condemnation be the end of our stories.

Belonging No Matter What--September 17, 2026

Belonging No Matter What--September 17, 2026

"We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the living and the dead." [Romans 14:7-9]

There's an old Patsy Cline song that has had more than its shares of covers and re-makes, but whose words come to mind when I read these verses from Romans. The lyrics go like this:

"See the pyramids along the Nile,

Watch the sunrise on a tropic isle,

Just remember, darling, all the while--you belong to me.

"See the marketplace in old Algiers

Send me photographs and souvenirs,

Just remember till your dream appears--you belong to me.

"Fly the ocean in a silver plane,

See the jungle when it's wet with rain,

Just remember till you're home again--you belong to me."

Well, you get the gist--wherever the beloved finds themselves, no matter what happens, the singer says, "You belong to me."

And this is the beautiful thing that the apostle claims for us, too: none other than Christ himself says to you, and to me, "You belong to me." There is no condition under which we stop belonging to him. There is no place you can travel beyond his grip. There is no jurisdiction which will not recognize his claim on us. There is nothing you can do to dissolve the bond. There is no way to fall "from grace," as though you were outside of Christ's reach--not even in death. And so, Paul can say without an asterisk or fine print or catch, "whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's." You can almost hear Patsy Cline in the background, "Just remember till you're home again... you belong to me."

That claim means two things for us on an ordinary Thursday. First off, Christ's claim on us gives us a relentless assurance that we will never be abandoned, never be let go of, and never find ourselves outside of Christ's own grip. If there's nothing in life that can separate us from him, and there's nothing in death that can separate us from him, then all of a sudden, nothing--literally nothing--needs to paralyze us with fear any longer. The one thing that matters above all else is knowing that we are claimed, that we are beloved, and that we belong.

And that is true regardless of whether anybody else thinks we are "worthy" of it--in fact, throughout his ministry Jesus seemed to make a point of especially claiming that the folks others deemed "unworthy" were the ones who most preciously belonged to him. While everyone else is bad-mouthing Zacchaeus and scandalized that Jesus has gone to his house, Jesus says of the Chief Sell-out of Jericho, "Today salvation has come to this house, for he, too, is a son of Abraham" (see Luke 19). Or there's the woman who is anointing Jesus' feet--and while everyone else is scandalized by her actions and wants to stop her, ostensibly in the name of decorum and prudence, Jesus goes out of his way to call attention to how good her gesture is, and insists that she, rather than anybody else there in the peanut gallery that day, will be remembered (see Mark 14). Jesus' whole story in the Gospels is spent creating a beloved community out of people who have been marginalized, ostracized, rejected, and cast out, and saying to each of them, "You belong to me." Paul the apostle just says that here on the other side of the resurrection, nothing changed about that. The risen Christ says the very same to an endlessly varied gathering of hims and hers and theys and wes and us-es and thems and you and me, and regardless of what anybody else says or thinks, the living Jesus says, "Just remember... You belong to me." Once we get that straight then all of a sudden, all the scowling faces of the Respectable Religious Crowd who want to keep out the "riff-raff" and the "sinners" just fade into the background, and all that matters is what Jesus says of us. And he says we belong... every last one.

Now, there is a second truth that emerges from knowing that "whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's," and it is this: because we belong to Christ, we don't belong to ourselves anymore. (Maybe honestly we never did--we have always been selling ourselves to other lesser loves and lords; Jesus is just the first one to really love us as we are and to rightly be called our Lord.) Paul is as clear about this as he is about the assurance that nothing, not even death, can separate us from belonging to Christ. "None of us lives to ourselves, and none of us dies to ourselves," he says. The nonsense that folks like to quote from Henley's poem, "Invictus," about being the "master of my own soul" and "the captain of my own fate" is a load of hot fertilizer fresh from the horse. We sometimes tell ourselves the myth (and that's all it is, a myth) that each of us should aspire to a sort of "Don't-tread-on-me"/"You-can't-tell-me-what-to-do"/"I-did-it-MY-way!" mentality, and think that's what we mean by "freedom." Well, my apologies, dearies, but it just ain't so, on two counts. For one, to quote the Eagles, "Freedom? That's just some people talkin'... your prison is walkin' through this world all alone," and more to the point, the living Christ says we belong to him. The point of life ain't for me to look out for ME--you can try it if you like, but you'll find yourself one day an empty hollow husk even if you're surrounded by piles of money and a garage full of new cars.

When that wretched impulse inside us cries out, "Me and My Group First!" the living Christ just says, "Ah, no... you belong to me. You don't live for yourself--that's a damnable lie. You are mine." When the voices around us and within us say, "But we HAVE to look out for our own first!" the living Christ says, "No, in fact, you don't. I'm looking out for you, and that is precisely why I went through death and out the other side into resurrection--to keep hold on you no matter what, so that you don't have to waste your energy focused all on you!" And when the presence of fear chimes in and says, "You have to protect your self and your own interests in this life, because the world is full of scary things and people who are out to get you!" the living Christ says, "No--even if they do their worst, they cannot overcome the resurrecting power of my love. You are freed to give yourself away all the more exactly because you don't have to worry or be ruled by fear of what anybody else can do to you anymore!"

To belong to Jesus is both a gift and a calling, a blessing and a charge (a "blarge," if you like). It calls us out from our myopic and self-centered little worlds where we were trapped, only living for "Me," and it assures us that no matter where else we go or what else happens to us, we are the Lord's.

"Just remember," says the risen Christ, "you belong to me." And indeed, we do.

Lord Jesus, we are yours and you are ours. Let us live to you as you give us life today, and let us trust that we belong to you no matter what anybody else says or thinks.

Better to Be Gracious--September 16, 2026

Better to Be Gracious--September 16, 2026

"Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions. Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgment on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand. Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, eat in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God." (Romans 14:1-6)

It's often the invisible divisions between us that are the hardest to overcome.

Sometimes the "us" and "them" groupings we put ourselves into are obvious. We divide ourselves up along lines of gender, or skin coloring, of language and dress, and the like. And almost instinctively, we make judgments and preferences based on who is more "like" us and who is "other." We tell ourselves in our wiser moments that it is wrong to do, of course, but we still struggle with those obvious, overt divisions.

But even more insidious, even more powerfully subtle, are the divisions we cling to that are invisible because they have to do with the thoughts in our heads and the convictions in our hearts. We still fiercely clutch those hatreds, the lines between "those who think like us" and "those who disagree with us," sometimes even more tightly than the (seemingly) visible differences of gender and race and dress. Perhaps enough after-school TV specials or sound-bytes from Dr. King's "I Have A Dream" speech have taught us that it is not publicly acceptable to scorn people for the way their physical appearances differ from our own (although, again, below the surface, we are still often still entangled in those sins, too--and there are more and more voices who seem to get away with making that kind of hatred publicly acceptable, these days). But we have without a doubt given ourselves permission to hate people who disagree with us.

That kind of division is rampant. Not that our day and age has a corner on that market--as these verses from Romans remind us, the first generation of Christians in Rome were already good at dividing themselves into categories of "us" and "them," "like me" and "other," based on convictions of their hearts and theological differences in their minds. As much as the early church in Rome was still trying to heal the wounds that had set Jews and Gentiles against one another, they were also divided along invisible lines over things like who would or wouldn't eat meat (which may have had something to do with being sacrificed to pagan idols before it was sold in the marketplace), who did or didn't observe special holidays, and so on. These weren't visible differences--they didn't wear buttons or badges, or have color-coded t-shirts so you could tell at a distance who was one of those no-good, backward-thinking meat-eaters, and who was one of those rotten, weak-faithed non-meat-eaters. You couldn't tell by just looking at someone who was secretly calculating when to celebrate the next new moon festival, and who were the folks that couldn't tell you what day of the week it was. And yet those divisions were just as fierce--maybe even more so--than the visible categories of gender, of ethnicity, or even of socioeconomic status. They still are pretty powerfully divisive.

Paul the apostle wasn't blind to those differences. Even though he had never been to Rome when he wrote this letter, he knew about the partisan divides in the Christian community at Rome, not only the visible ethnic ones but also the invisible fault lines below the surface. And not only does Paul know about the different factions--those who would only eat vegetables, and those who would also eat meat; those who observed special days, and those who did not--he has opinions of his own. He doesn't pretend to be neutral on these subjects, and he has a set of convictions that ground his position. He knows why he believes it's ok to eat meat (if his writing to the Corinthians gives us a clue, it's because Paul knows that the pagan gods are all fictional anyway), and he is free to say so. Paul doesn't think that being in his position of authority in the church as an apostle means he must be Switzerland, neutral and without any convictions of his own. He has them, and he says them.

But here is the really radical thing that keeps coming back throughout the New Testament--the thing that we in twenty-first century America seem to have forgotten: Paul doesn't insist that everyone has to believe like he does, even within the Christian community. Instead, Paul says that we are all called to make room and allowance for those who think and feel differently. Granted, we may not be at each other's throats in the year 2026 over meat or calendars, but the strategy Paul uses here is just as radical and just as vital today. Paul's response to the invisible divisions we partition ourselves into is to say, "Ok, fine, you over there think one way, and you over there think another way--so how about you each make special effort to accommodate each other, since we are all striving to be faithful to Jesus here?" The different factions Paul was writing to weren't a danger to each other--nobody was leading armed vegetarian raids against the meat-eating Bible Study members. So Paul says, "If this group over here is convinced in their conscience that their meat-eating and holiday-celebrating is glorifying God, and this group over there is convinced in their consciences as well that only eating vegetables and not celebrating holidays is where they are led to be, then let's allow God to deal with it in God's own time and God's way!"

In other words, Paul is capable of seeing that sometimes it is better to be gracious than to be "right." Paul understands that being "saved by grace through faith" does not mean that you earn your salvation by having more correct answers on your theology exam than your neighbor. It's not the case that the theologically "correct" get into heaven and the theologically "incorrect" go to hell--it's always all been about grace, and it always will be. If that's how God regards us, then it's the least we can do to regard one another with the same grace.

That doesn't mean we have permission to be sloppy in our theology or not to care about what we believe and practice--but it does mean that we will not put a higher value on being "right" than on being kind. And it means that even when we are deeply convinced of our views, that we will not deliberately make it harder for others who see things differently to do as their conscience leads them to do. If anything, Paul says--and this is probably the hardest, most counter-intuitive part--we are to give preference to those with whom we disagree: making sure that they have what they need to be able to live by their own consciences, going out of our way to accommodate their needs, and bending over backwards to protect their ability to act and speak as their conscience leads them to, precisely because we disagree with them and want to make sure they are not snuffed out or silenced. And the beautiful catch here is that the folks on the "other side" of the argument will be listening to Paul, too, and they will be instructed to go out of their way to accommodate you as well.

See? Instead of Paul just bringing down the hammer of "I'm right. You're wrong. Get on my side or get out," Paul says, "Here's what I believe and why. But I'm not so insecure as to be threatened by your difference of conviction, because I'm convinced we are serving the same Lord and called by the same Spirit. So I will make my case, and then go out of my way to help you live by your convictions as well."

We have been fed so much self-interested "Don't tread on me" sloganeering that it might never occur to us to recognize that Paul has built a whole way of life around deliberately putting his own preferences second to making room for "the other." There is no "Me-and-My-Group-First!" thinking from Paul, or anywhere in the New Testament, for that matter.  Paul doesn't get riled up when there are different factions who believe and practice differently than he does, and he doesn't defensively react by saying, "You can't tell me what to do! No one can make me do or not do something--I have to defend my RIGHTS after all!" Instead, he says the opposite: "I will go out of my way to make room for you, and I will lay down my rights for the sake of making sure you are ok." And if everybody does that on both "sides", we will end up with breathing space for all of us to seek, to listen, and to do what we are convinced God is calling us to do.

Paul seems to be ok with the possibility that he might pray for God's direction and come to one conclusion, and that someone else might be praying just as earnestly for God's direction and come to another, and even though Paul knows what he believes and why, he doesn't have to attack the people who feel genuinely led to a different conclusion than he does. Living together that way--knowing that we will disagree with each other, but staying with one another in the midst of that disagreement--is always hard. It is certainly harder than just walking away and taking your toys with you. But Paul is convinced it is worth it, because Paul is convinced that Christ is there, with the "other" side while Christ is also here "with" me, too.

Today, let's be as completely honest as we can be: not just about the visible divisions that we allow still to color our treatment of one another, but also about the invisible fault lines that we struggle with. Let's be honest about where we stand and why, rather than sweeping our differences of conviction under the rug and pretending they are not there. And then, let us also go out of our way--as Paul here teaches us--to help those with whom we disagree to be able to live and practice as they are convinced God is leading them to do, because we are more interested in being like Christ than in winning a fight.

Lord Jesus, help us to see your presence with those with whom we most disagree, and to learn to do good for those we have the hardest time talking with.

Forgiveness Changes Everything--September 15, 2026

Forgiveness Changes Everything--September 15, 2026

[Jesus said:] For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves. When he began the reckoning, one who owed him ten thousand talents was brought to him, and, as he could not pay, the lord ordered him to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions and payment to be made. So the slave fell on his knees before him, saying, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.’ And out of pity for him, the lord of that slave released him and forgave him the debt. But that same slave, as he went out, came upon one of his fellow slaves who owed him a hundred denarii, and seizing him by the throat he said, ‘Pay what you owe.’  Then his fellow slave fell down and pleaded with him, ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you.’ But he refused; then he went and threw him into prison until he would pay the debt. When his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed, and they went and reported to their lord all that had taken place. Then his lord summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his lord handed him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt. (Matthew 18:23-34)

I know that's a stinger of an ending, and I don't mean to ignore it, but let's not miss the forest for the trees here.  Here Jesus tells an utterly outrageous story about the audacity of mercy, and even the punch at the end cannot erase the scandal of a God who forgives impossibly large debts without so much as a second thought.

That's what happens.  The first enslaved person comes to the king with an absolutely astronomical debt: ten thousand talents.  We are no longer in the realm of coins and currency here--a talent was a unit of measurement of precious metals like silver or gold, and our best guess is that one was roughly equivalent to about seventy-five pounds!  Do a little bit of rough back of the envelope math and you'll see that a single talent of silver might have been worth more than an entire year's wages for a day laborer, possibly two years or more.  A rough estimate might be about $30,000.00 in our money.  And that's just one talent--this debtor somehow has racked up a debt of ten thousand talents!  We are talking hundreds of millions of dollars in today's money, or hundreds of lifetimes' worth of wages, assuming he didn't get to spend any money on his own needs!

Jesus is sketching out a comically large sum, something you can't imagine anyone racking up unless they tried to make omelets out of Faberge eggs or dropped the Hope Diamond into the ocean.  Right from the get-go, he has invited us to imagine a debt so impossibly large that you could never lose that much money in your lifetime, much less ever hope to pay back, not even in a hundred lifetimes.  And yet--and this is the hilarity of it all--the indebted servant pleads, "Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything!"  But of course he cannot and he never will. Not even old Methuselah lived long enough to pay back a debt like that.  

So out of nowhere comes grace--sheer, utter grace--as the king in the story just up and decides to write the whole thing off.  The debt is forgiven, in its entirety. No monthly payment plans.  No "Just do the best you can, and we'll see how much you pay back." Not even a garnishing of wages or a bit of relief on the interest rates.  Just complete and total wiping away of the whole debt, all with just a word from the king.  

This should be life-changing.  Really, it should.  The previously in-over-his-head-with-debt servant should have seen everything with new eyes: it was like he had been given his life back!  Instead of the prospect of being sold along with his family (possibly to different new masters for each of them--slavery has been known to be particularly cruel that way), he is released from the debt. No collection agency will be hounding him.  No debtors' prison.  None of that. Only grace.  Only mercy.  And the gift of keeping his family together. You would expect someone like that to be changed by such an act of impossible forgiveness.  You would think he would let such graciousness become his whole way of life now, since it had saved him from certain calamity just a moment before.

But the servant just doesn't get it.  He sees a co-worker who owes him a pittance in comparison--maybe a few month's worth of wages, if that--and he refuses to listen when his fellow servant pleads in the exact same words he had spoken to the king: "Have patience with me, and I will pay you."  The same words that had fallen on merciful ears when it was a plea to the king now fall on stingy ones, and he refuses to give any mercy to his fellow servant.  Everything should have been different--and instead, this once-and-future debtor has made a damn fool of himself by staying stuck in the old rut of keeping score and holding grudges.  He refuses to forgive as freely as he has been forgiven, or even to be patient with his associate, even though the amount owed to him is miniscule by comparison. He refuses to live as though everything has changed because of the forgiveness already granted to him.  It's as foolish as getting married and then locking yourself alone in a room as if no one loved you. It's as nonsensical as being declared not guilty by the judge but then shutting yourself in a jail cell.  No one needs to send this guy to hell--he's already made one for himself by refusing to live as if the forgiveness he has already been given really means something.

And in the end, that's the question Jesus' story compels us to deal with: will we live as though God's forgiveness of us actually means something? Will we take God's grace as more real, more true, more essential, about us and our identity, than the things other people have done to us? Will we allow God's forgiveness of us--as mind-bogglingly large as it is--to change everything in our lives? Or will we insist on being damn fools ourselves (and I mean that literally) who cannot take seriously what it means to have been forgiven already?

My life will change if I live like someone who has been forgiven.  I will see grace as the current flowing through everything. I will see mercy as the currency on which my whole life has been redeemed. And I will extend that same kind of mercy back to the people around me.  If I refuse to live like I have been forgiven, and if I refuse to let that forgiveness make everything new for me, well I've already chosen to be miserable.

I suppose the choice is up to us today.  Will you and I choose to take God's already-granted forgiveness as the defining truth of our lives, or will we insist on staying stuck in the childish and petty mindset of bean-counting and score-keeping?

I know which sounds like a better choice to me.

Lord Jesus, enable us to live as people who have already been forgiven, and let your forgiveness of us be the determinative truth of our lives.

Jesus' Math and Ours--September 14, 2026

Jesus' Math and Ours--September 14, 2026

Peter came and said to [Jesus,] “Lord, if my brother or sister sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times. (Matthew 18:21-22)

We question whether or not it's foolish to give people a second chance when they mess up, and here Jesus is talking about seventy-seventh chances.  That's quite a difference, isn't it?

But then again, Jesus keeps showing us how the logic of God's Reign runs counter to the conventional wisdom of our place and time.  And in that regard, we are in the same position as Simon Peter, looking for Jesus to give us reasonable limits to forgiveness--reasonable to us, of course.  In this short scene that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, Peter voices the kind of realistic concerns that all of us have.  "Okay, Jesus, I get it--we should be merciful to other people and not hold grudges. Fine.  But come on, how many times do we have to go through the same old routine of being hurt and then setting ourselves up for more pain by forgiving people who let us down again?"  You get the impression that Peter has seen enough Peanuts cartoons to know that when Lucy insists she really will hold the football still this time, Charlie Brown still falls on his head when she yanks it away yet again.  And Peter, perhaps with good reason, thinks that is unfair.  How many times does Charlie Brown have to get taken advantage of?  How many times does anybody have to get mistreated, sinned against, or wronged before we shut down and walk away?  It seems a reasonable question, wouldn't you say?

And yet here is Jesus, speaking like he is from an entirely different world--because in a sense, that is exactly what the Reign of God that Jesus brings really is: a different way of living in the world, arranged by God's ordering of things rather than what passes for our kind of conventional wisdom.  And for Jesus, the right question to ask is not, "What about how badly the other person treated me?" but rather, "What about how God currently treats me?"  And Jesus is clear that from that vantage point, God is constantly forgiving us, giving us a new start, and not getting revenge against us.  Jesus dares us to take up a different perspective, where the definitive factor in how I treat others is how God acts toward me, not how other people have acted toward me.  In other words, we are called to forgive, not because the people who have wronged us "deserve" it, but because God has shown forgiveness to us constantly even when we don't deserve it.  And for Jesus, the kingdom way of life is really a matter of defining our lives based on how God sees us and acts toward us rather than how other people see us and act toward us.  The way other people have behaved toward us factors out of the equation, and instead we are left with the way God acts toward us--which is constantly with love and forgiveness.  That's why Jesus' math looks different from Peter's and our own.  If my choices are based on how people have already treated me in the past, then of course, I will be hesitant even to give someone a second chance.  But if I treat other people based on the way God acts toward me, well, then, grace becomes the order of the day.

And that, I am convinced, is what is going on here.  Jesus isn't just raising the forgiveness quota from Peter's proposal of seven times to a higher number of seventy-seven (or, as some manuscripts suggest, "seventy times seven")--he is changing the way we view the whole world and our relationship with everyone in it.  We no longer relate to people on the basis of what they have done to us in the past, but on the basis of how God is currently acting toward us right now.  And that means we are no longer doomed to live our lives shackled to the past and defined by what others have done to us.  That's the beauty of how Jesus frees us in his response to Peter.  As long as I am withholding forgiveness from someone else, I am chaining myself (as well as them) to the past.  I am defining my relationship with the other person in terms of what they did to me, rather than in terms of what God is doing for me right now in the present--namely, forgiving me.  Jesus frees us from being stuck in the past by giving us a new orientation for our lives: everything hangs on God's grace toward me, not on how other people have acted toward me.  Like the letter we call First John says it, "We love because God first loved us." The same is true about forgiveness:  we forgive because God has first forgiven (and keeps forgiving) us.

Now, all of that said, there is a difference between forgiving someone and choosing to put myself in a place where I can be hurt again.  Forgiveness is not Charlie Brown running up to kick the football for the umpteenth time because he naively believes Lucy won't yank it away this time.  Rather, forgiveness is the choice not to get revenge for what Lucy did last time.  It is the choice to move on rather than stay forever in the unchangeable past.  It is the decision not to weaponize the past so that you and the person who wronged you can begin again.  You don't have to set yourself up for being hurt again, and forgiving someone does not equate to trusting them again.  It simply means you are letting go of the past and refuse to seek revenge.

So, how will we face this day?  With the same old tired math that requires "getting even" with someone, even though that can never change what they did to you?  Or by seeing people in view of the way God is currently acting toward each of us--which is with grace?

If you want to stay stuck in the past like a dead-end, I suppose you can.  But it feels like a terrible waste of this day.  You and I have been freed by Jesus to move forward, because God has made everything new.

Lord Jesus, enable us to see other people in the light of how you have shown grace to us.

Dress for the Day That Is Dawning--September 11, 2026

Dress for the Day That Is Dawning--September 11, 2026

"Besides this, you know what time it is, how it is already the moment for you to wake from sleep. For salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers; the night is far gone; the day is near. Let us then throw off the works of darkness and put on the armor of light; let us walk decently as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in illicit sex and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." (Romans 13:11-14)

At this time of year especially, I check the weather before I get dressed in the morning.

Early September can bring with it the hottest days of the year with full bright sun, or heavy storms that keep me indoors, or chilly mornings of an early autumn's arrival.  So I do my best to dress for what I know is coming in the day ahead, especially if it's my day off.  If it's going to be another scorcher, the lightweight short-sleeves and shorts are the order of the day.  If it's going to feel like fall, I may break out the flannel shirt and jeans.  Days when I know I'll be in the yard mowing the grass call for one kind of apparel, and days of sedentary office work for another.  If I know I will be in a situation where it is important to be visible as a member of the clergy, I'll deliberately wear a clerical collar.  If I am going to be painting an art projects at the church, I'll wear something less formal.  My guess is that you do the same with your clothing for the day.  Basically, we dress for the day we anticipate we are going to be living through, keeping in mind the conditions of the weather, the temperature outside, and the things on our to-do list for the day.  That is probably so natural and obvious to us that we don't even realize we are doing it.

Now this is the thing you have to accept, too, if you are getting dressed for a new day early in the morning on a September Friday: the day could become dramatically different from the conditions at 5:30am when you are getting dressed in the dark.  At this time of year, there can be wild swings in temperature from day to day.  Some mornings I wake up remembering how hot and muggy it was the day before, only to find out it will be a cool 72-degrees for a high today.  Sometimes the other way around. Sometimes I dress in anticipation of a bright sunny day even though it is currently still dark when I get dressed in the morning.  I suppose that's something we all choose to live with: we get dressed in the dark, anticipating that the night is really almost over and the new day is starting.  And we put on the clothes we'll need to the particular kind of day we are about to have.

Paul the apostle talks the same way about our lives as followers of Jesus, interestingly: we dress for the day we are stepping into.  Except in Paul's view, this isn't about what you wear on a Friday in September, but about how we face every day in light of Christ's coming and God's promise to make all things new.  In other words, we are called to live our lives now in light of how things will be in the new creation God has promised, which has begun already in Christ.  And we make choices each day about how we will prepare ourselves for the work in front of us.

That's the idea behind Paul's extended metaphor in this passage, which concludes a section of the reading from Romans which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  After talking about how love is the heart of our whole lives and the fulfillment of all the commandments anyway, Paul says, essentially, "You know, too, that a new day is dawning--we had better dress for the day in front of us."  He talks to us like it is the first waking moments before dawn and that we would be wise to step into the day ahead.  We can set aside whatever the trappings of the old day and order were--the "works of darkness," as he puts it--like they are the sweaty, smelly clothes of yesterday's toil.  And today we put on something fresh, clean, and right the day ahead of us.  Much like I might wake up on a September Friday and see it's going to be a pleasant and lovely day, I'll dress with clothes that will help me to enjoy its loveliness and maybe do something good that fits with the weather.  Paul says that's us every day as Christians: we are called to prepare ourselves, like getting dressed, for the day that is just dawning now.

That "day," of course, is a way of talking about God's new creation and the "new day" of Christ's coming in glory.  We don't live like the Empire is still calling the shots.  We don't have to follow the uniform dress code dictated by the Powers of the Day.  We are already anticipating how the world will work in the fullness of God's Kingdom, and we are preparing to live that way... now.  So, for example, Paul says that we don't have to give ourselves over to the indulgent and self-gratifying ways of the world around us--instead, we will dress in the pattern of Jesus.  That doesn't mean we'll wear ancient tunics and sandals, but rather that we'll prepare ourselves to face the day in light of Jesus' coming new creation. 

The question to ask, then, is, "What conditions should we be dressing for?"  What sort of day is dawning, and what will we be doing in it?  Or to put it differently, What will the world be like in the fullness of God's Reign when Jesus is revealed in glory?  I'm not asking you to make wild predictions like Nostradamus or a speculative science fiction writer imagining new technology.  I'm not looking for predictions of end-times cataclysms like the popular (but with terrible theology) authors who think the Bible gives some kind of code or clock for Jesus' return.  I mean to ask, quite simply, how will things be when God's reign is fulfilled, and when God's will really is done, as we have been taught to pray, "on earth as it is in heaven"?  And that sort of question doesn't require wild speculation or outlandish guesses.  It only calls us to think about the character of the God whose kingdom we are praying to have come.

In the new creation, will we hoard and stockpile more than we need out of some fear of scarcity?  No--we dare to believe that God's provision will be enough for all... and so we begin to live lives of generosity and sharing resources now.  When Jesus comes in glory, will he need us to threaten our enemies with weapons to help him achieve victory?  No--we are told that we'll beat our swords into plowshares, as a matter of fact, so we practice peaceable lives now. When Christ is "all in all" as the New Testament says it, will we be divided from one another along lines of culture, language, nationality, or ethnicity?  No--we believe that all peoples will be gathered together into Christ's gentle reign... and so we welcome people from every background, place, and culture right now.  That's what it looks like to dress for the day that is dawning.  We prepare ourselves now to live and act in light of what we know is in store.

So here we are, on the verge of a new day. And not just another Friday in September, but the breaking in of God's Reign and Christ's coming in glory.  Since we know something of what to expect that new "day" will be like, how will we get ourselves ready now... even before the sun has come up?

That's the invitation of this day, and this moment.

Lord Jesus, renew our vision of your coming reign, so that we can anticipate it today in our lives.