Spotting the Freeloaders

Spotting the Freeloaders--July 1, 2016

"Take care that you do not forget the LORD your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid wasteland with poisonous snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good. Do not say to yourself, 'My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.' But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives you power to get wealth, so that he may confirm his covenant that he swore to your ancestors, as he is doing today." [Deuteronomy 8:11-18]

A day before he died, our older brother in the faith Martin Luther took a scrap of paper and wrote the last sentence he would ever pen: "We are beggars. This is true."

He was right.

But it does take a crucial change of perspective to realize that, indeed, it is true that we are all beggars. It means letting go of the illusion that I am the source of my own success.  It means surrendering the right to get praise and credit for all my accomplishments... because that was never really my right to begin with.  Whatever good I have in my life is a gift of grace.  Before I get up on my high horse and moan about "all those freeloaders out there..." as it can be tempting to do, I need to acknowledge that I am a recipient of God's free gifts on a day by day basis, and everything good in my life has come by grace.  So if I am going to go around labeling people who live off the provision of another as "freeloaders," I should be honest and spot the one who is looking back at me in the mirror.  We are beggars, says Luther, the whole lot of us--not just the people I feel justified in looking down on.


God knows that we have an innate impulse to puff ourselves up and see ourselves in a distorted perspective.  God knows that we have a way of forgetting how people before us and around us have blessed us.  God knows we have a way of assuming that my money, my house, my possessions are all my reward, rather than recognizing them as God's provision for my daily needs.  God knows we have distorted vision that skews and obscures how much we rely on others and falsely enlarges our own importance.  Sin, it turns out, is not reducible to just "bad things we do," but sin has to do with our distorted ways of seeing everything, ourselves included.


And since God has known that about us all along, the Scriptures rehearse for us again and again God telling us, "Don't forget... everything is from grace.  Don't forget... it's all a gift.  Don't forget... when you could not do for yourself, I was the one providing for you all along." God said it to the wandering Israelites, as Deuteronomy tells it, before they at last entered the land they had been waiting for.  "When you get there, you're going to be tempted to have selective amnesia and to edit out the memory of all I have done for you.  Don't forget.  Don't forget that at every turn I gave you all you needed."  God goes even further and warns them in advance: "I know you'll want to say that you've accomplished this all by yourself... and then that will lead you to want to be stingy with the poor and to look down on them as if they just didn't work hard enough.  Don't do it--everything you have is a gift, and you are meant to be a channel of blessing for the person next to you who has nothing."


If we are going to take grace seriously (and I think we should), it will do two powerful things to us.  First, it will force us to see that we ourselves have been living off of God's goodness before we ever did a thing, and even though we can never pay God back.  We are the freeloaders... we are the beggars, even til our last day on earth and even if we have spent our lives as faithful workers on God's team.   We are always beggars--dependent on grace.  And then second, that will change the way we see other people around us, too.  I am no longer allowed to dismiss people who are just scraping by, and assume they must be "lazy" or "lack a serious work ethic" or "deserve" to be poor, or that they must be "freeloaders."  Because if they are... well, then I am, too.  And all of us are.  Every one of us, despite our illusions of being self-made successes, has only empty hands that receive the good gives of a generous God. 


We are all freeloaders in that sense, so I don't get to throw that label on other people as though I am better than anybody else.  We might as well see it and own it, so that we will know how deeply we are beloved--we who bring nothing to the table but our neediness and are met with nothing but grace from the God who gives generously.

We are all, as Luther said it, beggars.  We are all, in a word, graced.


Lord God, you give us everything we need day by day, we ask, too, that you would open our eyes to see our need and your provision, so that we may stop condemning and criticizing our neighbors and stop pretending we are above anybody else.  Open our eyes, Lord God, to see our need, and your giving, of grace.

Philoxenia [Or, The Sacrament of the Stranger]

Philoxenia [Or, The Sacrament of the Stranger]--June 30, 2016

"Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it." [Hebrews 13:2]

Be kind to strangers... to "the other," says the Bible, because you just might have been brought face to face with the messengers of God.  All of a sudden the stakes of your short temper with the single mom juggling three kids ahead of you in line at the grocery store just got a lot higher, eh?  The writer of Hebrews whispers, "Mighta been angels, the whole lot of 'em. Now... just how important was it that you got your plastic box of pre-washed spring mix salad greens and bag of Oreos three minutes faster if those kids wouldn't have been holding up the line? More important than the way you treat a quartet of the heavenly host?"

Jesus, too, never himself one to fold in a game of cards, doubles down on this train of thought in those familiar words, "As you did it to the least of these... you did it to me."  And now all of a sudden, the hungry face I turned away because I thought he might be a freeloader... and the shadowed face behind bars that I ignored because I thought all prisoners were worthy of my condemnation... and the lonely face... and the sick face... and the... uh-oh, stranger's face... all of those faces now bear the eyes of Jesus himself.  Jesus upped the ante even from where the book of Hebrews had set it--now the face of the stranger is not just a potential angel.  The stranger is Jesus himself... and, of course, as we insist in the ancient words of orthodoxy in the Creed week by week, wherever Jesus is, none other than God is there, too.  So now, the way you treat a stranger is... <gulp> the way you have just treated the almighty Maker of all things.

Now, if those stakes weren't high enough, even the word the Bible uses for "stranger" is loaded.  Our English translations use the word "hospitality" in this verse--"do not neglect to show hospitality...".  But to be truthful, most of us hear "hospitality," and we picture someone who offers a coaster and a glass of lemonade to the company they have invited... or the concierge desk at the hotel who offers bathrobes for use of paying customers.  "Hospitality," in those circumstances, is not much of a gamble, and you only have to show it to people who have either given you money to do it, or people who you already like enough to invite to your house.  But the Bible's word is more...adventuresome.  The word beneath our English "hospitality" here in this verse is the Greek "philoxenia," which is made up of the two words "phile-" (which you probably already know is one of the words for "love," as in Philadelphia or "bibliophile" for book-lover) and the word "xenos," which means... well, "stranger," or "outsider," or "foreigner," or just... "the other."  The one thing it does NOT mean is "people who are already like you in every way."  Hebrews is not merely saying, "Be nice to other Christians whom you haven't met yet." Other Christians aren't called "stranger" in the New Testament--they are brothers and sisters.  For the writer of Hebrews to talk about "strangers"/"xenos/xenia", it means we are, by definition, talking about people who are not already part of the "family" we call church.  It is not just a welcome to "safe" people... it is a welcome to "the other."  Those are the stakes when the Bible uses the word "xenos."

You know the word "xenos" already because you almost certainly already know the word "xenophobia," the fear of outsiders and foreigners.  And even if you didn't know the word for it, you know what it is to live in a culture of xenophobia... because we are living in one.  As polarized as we are, often from even the neighbor across the street or down the block, and as much as the loud voices from the screens around us encourage us to fear "the other" as a threat to us... to our way of life... to everything, we are increasingly baited to be afraid of whomever and whatever is different from what I already think, or look like, or believe, or hold dear.  We live in a culture that is not predisposed to welcome "the other" these days, however you take the phrase.

And yet--rather than saying, "Beware of those strangers who don't share our culture, our faith, our language, our way of life... they are dangerous!" (and in the supremely cosmopolitan Roman Empire, you couldn't help but cross paths with peoples from all sorts of places, cultures, and creeds), the writer of Hebrews says, those very strangers just might be angels you do not have the eyes to see yet.  Like Jesus' own words about "the least of these," the writer of Hebrews dares us see in a new way--a daring, risky way.  The "other," the "stranger," the faces who are different, they are the very people we are commanded to receive, to care for, and to love--not out of condescending pity for "those poor souls," but in fact because they may well be the ones God has sent as divine holy messengers across your path.

Curious, isn't it, how we can be so concerned in our Facebook posts about wanting to call our country "back to the Bible"... and yet to forget, stifle, or silence the clear command of Scripture when it comes to how we see the "stranger" and the "other" who cross our path in real life off of the screens.  Go ahead, protest about how it sounds impractical or dangerous or foolish to welcome those the Bible would call "foreigners", if you want--but you cannot do so on the grounds that the Bible is backing your argument.  The living voice of the Scripture is always pushing us to do things that strike the world as impractical, dangerous, and foolish--that's one of the ways you know it is really the living God and not just our own self-interest talking.

So today, let us dare to hear the words of the Bible in all their force.  We are not given an "inspirational suggestion" to "be nice to the guests at your dinner party," but a firm command to love--to love!--those who would get labeled "foreigner," "stranger," "outsider," and "other."  And in order to love them, rather than pitying them, we have to follow  the other directive Hebrews gives us: we must learn to see the "stranger" and the "other" as quite possibly the very angels of God, come to fill the empty places around us.  Let us dare to actually do what Jesus says, and to open our eyes to seeing that "the least of these" bring us face to face with none other than the living God.

Lord Jesus, help us to see you and to see your messengers everywhere you show up... let us recognize your real presence in the sacrament of the stranger.

Finding Waldo

Finding Waldo--June 29, 2016

"By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God." [Hebrews 11:8-10]

They say that seeing is believing, but that is not always true.

Anybody who has witnessed that phenomenon on a hot day where you are driving along the road and the asphalt highway up ahead looks like it is melting into pools of water knows as much.  You see that mirage once, and you know every time afterward: it isn't melting, and there isn't water up ahead.  You are seeing a trick of the eyes because the heat is affecting the density of the air, which in turn affects the way it refracts light.  You might get fooled the first time you ever see that mirage, but you won't get fooled again.  You will still see the same trick of the light on hot days along the open road, but you will no longer be fooled into believing the road ahead is wet.  Seeing is not always believing.

In fact, sometimes, actually the opposite is true: sometimes you don't see something until you believe it.  A wise mentor of mine used to refer to it as "faithful imagination," a term which I always took to mean the ways the people of God envision something that isn't yet here, and then as they envision it, they can begin to be a part of it already.  Sometimes you can't see anything until you believe it is there, or that it will be there.  You trust that Waldo is somewhere in the picture because the book makes you the promise that Waldo will be found somewhere on every page. And because of that promise, you can then spot the bespectacled cartoon fellow with the red and white striped shirt and hat walking stick.  And yet you know not to go looking for Waldo in, say, the newspaper, or the pages of whatever magazine you are reading on the beach.  You will look for him in a Where's Waldo?  book, though, because the book itself promises you that he will be found there.  You believe that promise, and so you can see him.  Sometimes believing comes first... then the seeing.

That is the truth for the people of God, certainly, and it always has been.  That is how, as the book of Hebrews reminds us, Abraham lived his whole life, looking forward to a promised future he could not yet see.  But as he trusted, it came into existence--first a promised son, and then beyond that the promise of a homeland. 

There are a lot of times in this life when we cannot see yet the reality of what God has promised.  We can't see our loved ones who have gone before us in death.  We cannot see yet how our kids turn out, or how our relationships will work out.  We cannot see yet what events lay around the corner after the next bend in the road.  But that doesn't mean there is nothing out ahead of us.  It just means we may have to believe it first, in order to see it.  Waldo is there on the page; even if you do not see him yet, you can trust the promise.  And as you believe that promise that you will find the red-and-white striped walking figure, and you'll know he has been there all along, even before you could see him.

Christians believe that even faith itself is a gift--not something we earn or accomplish, but something we are given.  Even our ability to believe in God is itself a gift of God.  It is grace.  And that grace allows us then to see what has been promised to us, which we would not have spotted before.  Christians, in other words, live by the promise that Waldo is there, waiting to be found on the page in front of us... and because we believe that he is there, we will come to see him.  Or, more accurately, we believe the promise that Jesus is there in this day ahead of us, alive and leading us. And because we believe that promise, we will see him.

Where will you see Jesus today in your world?  Believe me--he is already there.  He has been there all along.

Lord Jesus, give us the faith to trust that you are here in this day, so that we will recognize you and the life you promise you are leading us into.

More Beauty Than We Can Bear

More Beauty Than We Can Bear--June 28, 2016

"When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?" [Psalm 8:3-4]

There is a line from Marilynne Robinson's beautiful novel, Gilead, which rings in my ears every time I hear these words from Psalm 8.  Robinson's dying minister-narrator says this:

"Theologians talk about a prevenient grace that precedes grace itself and allows us to accept it.  I think there must also be a prevenient courage that allows us to be brave--that is, to acknowledge that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear, that precious things have been put into our hands and to do nothing to honor them is to do them great harm."  

More beauty than our eyes can bear.  That is the truth.  We live in a glorious world, a world bursting at the seams with wonder, with good things created by a good God, a world that is handed to us as a free gift to cherish along with each breath.  And we walk around so often with our heads buried in screens, with a numb sense of entitlement that it will always be there and will always be around, so we don't need to treasure it now.  We miss so much, because we do not pause to consider that there is more beauty than our eyes can bear.

There is a conversation in Alice Walker's novel, The Color Purple, where the one character suggests that God must be frustrated when people walk past the beauty of the world--like the title color flowers in a field--and don't notice it.  We are not owed violets.  We are not owed the smell of rain or the taste of peaches. We are not owed the gift of people who love us unconditionally--these are all blessed gifts that God lavishes on us day by day, and so often our eyes are closed to them.  Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote in the midst of the Nazi crackdown on the Confessing Church movement in Germany, "It is easily forgotten that the community of Christians is a gift of grace from the kingdom of God, a gift that can be taken away from us any day.... Therefore, let those who until now have had the privilege of living a Christian life together with other Christians praise God's grace from the bottom of their hearts. Let them thank God on their knees and realize: it is grace, nothing but grace, that we are still permitted to live in the community of Christians today."  Such beauty--in the gift of those connections with one another, in the gift of those soul friends who show us the face of Christ--and so often we take it for granted.

All of this is to say that you can't turn in any direction--not up at the night sky, not down at the flowers sprouting under your toes, not right at your side where the people God has put in your life offer their presence to you--without seeing the work of God's fingers.  It is a wonder, says the psalmist, that God is not only "mindful" of us, but that God cares for us with such depth and abundance.  But that is God for you--gracious beyond our ability to comprehend. 

There is indeed more beauty than our eyes can bear.  But that doesn't mean it isn't worth looking up... or down... or sideways... to take in, to appreciate, what grace gives us moment by moment.

Today, let us open our eyes, and take in as much as we can of the sheer goodness of God that has been placed in our lives.  And know that you walk into everything else in your day surrounded by such a love that puts all these things in your path, such a love that is mindful of you and lavishes on you and me more beauty than our eyes can bear.

Great God of all creation, thank you.  I look up, and there are signs of your goodness to me.  I look between my toes at the grass under my feet, and there is your goodness yet again.  I look beside me, and there are the ones you have put in my life as blessing... as undeserved gift... as grace.   Thank you. Thank you.  Thank you.

Sweeping the Spiders Away

“Sweeping the Spiders Away”—June 27, 2016

“But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord, and the Lord sent Nathan to David. He came to him, and said to him, “There were two men in a certain city, the one rich and the other poor. ²The rich man had very many flocks and herds; ³but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had bought. He brought it up, and it grew up with him and with his children; it used to eat of his meager fare, and drink from his cup, and lie in his bosom, and it was like a daughter to him. ⁴Now there came a traveler to the rich man, and he was loath to take one of his own flock or herd to prepare for the wayfarer who had come to him, but he took the poor man’s lamb, and prepared that for the guest who had come to him.” ⁵Then David’s anger was greatly kindled against the man. He said to Nathan, “As the Lord lives, the man who has done this deserves to die; ⁶he shall restore the lamb fourfold, because he did this thing, and because he had no pity.” ⁷Nathan said to David, “You are the man! Thus says the Lord, the God of Israel: I anointed you king over Israel, and I rescued you from the hand of Saul; ⁸I gave you your master’s house, and your master’s wives into your bosom, and gave you the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would have added as much more. ⁹Why have you despised the word of the Lord, to do what is evil in his sight?” [2 Samuel 11:27b-12:9a]

When someone brushes your shoulder unexpectedly and says to you, “You had a spider on you!”, have you ever noticed that there is both fear and relief at the same time?  Your brain has to process both the fact that you had a secret arachnid crawling up your back, and the good news that someone else has taken care of it for you and swept it away to go bother someone else or go save a pig with web-based advertising somewhere else.  There is relief and discomfort at the same time, and they are interconnected, because the relief is the relief of the uncomfortable truth that you are just finding out about: namely, that something with four times as many legs as you have was lurking unbeknownst to you toward your neck.

Forgiveness is, in a very important sense, like that dual rush of fear and relief from someone telling you they have brushed the spider off your back.  And that’s because being forgiven also requires that we face the uncomfortable—in fact squirm-inducing—reality that we have wronged someone else.  To hear someone else say, “You are forgiven,” brings us face to face the with the honest truth that we NEEDED it in the first place.  It means I admit that I have broken relationship with someone else, and by grace, they are restoring the relationship rather than leaving it broken.  There is grace in the same instant as there is hard truth.  There is relief in the same instant as there is discomfort.

And just like with the friend who brushes off the spider from your back, the relief is only possible at the point of facing the squirmy truth.  I won’t be relieved that the spider is gone until I know at the same time that there was, after all, a spider.  And I won’t appreciate what it means to know I am forgiven until I have been compelled to see, even kicking and screaming, that I was in the wrong… that I hurt someone… that, to use the old phrasing for it, sinned against my neighbor.

All of that is to say that the grace we call forgiveness includes opening our eyes to see the uncomfortable truth about ourselves first, and then in the same instant creates a new reality in which our sin is put away.  Maybe you could even say that the grace of being forgiven is what makes it possible for me to hear the truth that I messed up again in the first place, much like your friend doesn’t usually say, “Hey, there’s a spider somewhere on your body, but I’m not going to tell you where it is or help to get it… I’m just going to let it hang there and drive you nuts.” 

The story of David being confronted by Nathan tells us the same.  Without rehashing the whole soap opera, King David had done what nearly everybody does when they get a hold of power—he let it inflate his ego to the point where he thought he could do anything he wanted.  And in fact, he then had an affair, covered it up, and had the woman’s husband killed to contain the scandal when the initial cover-up didn’t work.  Well, you can’t fool God, and so God sent the prophet Nathan to do what prophets do: to speak truth to that power. 

Nathan forces David to come face to face with his actions, and to own them rather than to keep hiding them and running from them.  Nathan forces David to see what he had done.  He does it graciously, and even subversively by telling his little parable of the man with the ewe lamb, to get past David’s defenses.  But he did, in fact, open David’s eyes in a way that David needed.  There is forgiveness, to be sure—by the end of the story, Nathan will say to the king, “Now the Lord has put away your sin.”  But that statement of forgiveness is only possible as David is brought face to face with the reality of that sin first.  Otherwise he will be stuck trying to cover up and hide his actions rather than having them swept away.

Chances are, our day to day sins are not quite so melodramatic as David’s.  But we still have the same need to face what we have done as we receive forgiveness for our mess-ups.  When I wrong you, I need to know it—not so that I will suffer a certain amount and thereby earn a second chance—but because when you forgive me, I will not appreciate the gift of your grace to me unless I realize what you are wiping away off of my back.  If you keep trying to pretend there is no spider because you are afraid it will make me squirm to know it is there, it doesn’t make the spider go away.  What I need is for you to be honest with me, and to say to me, “Steve, you screwed up.  This hurt me.  This didn’t work…. Those words were cutting rather than curing… that action was self-centered and rude...”  or whatever else I’ve done.  I need to know that if I am going to understand the depth of your grace when you forgive me. 

And the same is true with us and God as well.  We all need those people who will help us face the ways we have broken relationship, hurt others, treated people as objects, let hate fester in our hearts, and fallen for idols.  We need those people who, like Nathan, will be real with us and hold us accountable.  We need those voices of sisters and brothers in Christ who will open our eyes—first, to see the spider… and second, to see that it has been swept away and taken off of our backs, in the very same instant.

Today, instead of more of the same old hiding, covering, and running, who are the people you can seek out who will help open your eyes to the need for grace… and who will also speak that grace into your life by announcing God’s forgiveness?  And how might you be one of those voices for someone else who has got something with a lot of legs crawling on their back, too?

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to see what we have been carrying on our shoulders for too long… to face it, and then to see as well that you have swept our sins away at the same time.