Precious Sleazeballs

Precious Sleazeballs--August 1, 2016

"Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, 'Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.' So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, 'He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.' Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, 'Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.' Then Jesus said to him, 'Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost'." [Luke 19:1-10]

Come on, let's get it over with and just say this: there are some people you just love to hate, aren't there?  There are some folks who just always find a way to rub you the wrong way, who push your buttons, who come off as arrogant jerks, or with whom you disagree so strongly about so many things that you always feel at odds with them.

And, while we're being honest, I'll bet there is a dark streak inside you (about which you are not proud, to be sure... but which is still there all the same) that just kind of relishes the idea that you might see them mess up, or have to eat their own words, or get their comeuppance.  We don't like to talk much about that hostility inside us, curated and cultivated like a rare plant in the hothouse of our short tempters, but it's there.  There just some people you know who so irritatingly get under your skin that you find yourself rooting against them.  You dislike them (maybe we would never say the word "hate" out loud), and you don't really want to ever get to the point where you don't dislike them anymore.  Is there someone you can think of--whether a public figure or private individual--who comes to mind in that category? 

I'll be honest: I can think of some.  I don't like it that I have that piece inside me, but I do.

Well, Zacchaeus was one of those guys.  Ol' Zach was somebody that everybody else seemed to love to hate, back in first-century Jericho.  The Pharisees and the Zealots didn't like him because he was a sell-out by working for the Romans.  And the Romans didn't like him because he was a grubby little nobody they subcontracted with to do the dirty work they didn't want to do.  The Republican committee of Jericho didn't like him because he was a tax collector.  The Democrats didn't like him because he was a greedy member of the one-percent.  Zacchaeus was the guy everybody loved to hate... and in truth, you get the sense that he really was something of a sleazeball. As a hired tax collector reporting to the Romans, he could threaten and cajole people and basically extort whatever he wanted from them.  But the Romans themselves didn't want anything to do with him, either... except get their share of what he collected.  This is the kind of guy who can only get "friends" to hang around him because he buys their dinners and drinks.  Everybody wanted to see someone like Zacchaeus the sleazeball get his comeuppance.

And then Jesus happened.

Jesus, who makes the first move the way that grace always does, seeks Zacchaeus out.  Zach might have been curious about this traveling celebrity rabbit, but he doesn't dare approach Jesus on his own.  Zacchaeus has been called out one too many times from righteous preachers who correctly point out what a shameless sell-out he has become... so Zach doesn't want to even approach Jesus at first.  He's tired of being booed and belittled--he was ready to just watch Jesus pass by without a word.  But Jesus has more in mind.

It's not "comeuppance," it's really "comedownance," as Jesus calls the unliked tax goon down from his treetop perch so that they can be on the same level and share a table. Jesus invites himself over into Zacchaeus' world, into his very house, the same way grace always takes the first step, pulling us spiritual wallflowers out onto the dance floor, beginning the conversation we were too afraid to begin ourselves.  And because Jesus offers grace to Zacchaeus--cutting through all the long list of reasons he should not have been in the same company as this scummy sell-out that everybody loved to hate--dear ol' Zach is changed.  Grace does that, you know.  Grace changes our hearts.

This is a critical point: it's NOT (in big letters!) that Jesus just happens to see a flicker of good in Zacchaeus that nobody else does.  It's NOT that Zacchaeus was really a nice guy all along if you just got to know him, but nobody ever had tried.  It's NOT that Zacchaeus was unfairly discriminated against because people wrongly assumed he was a sleazeball: he really was one.  Zacchaeus wasn't a diamond in the rough--he was a lump of coal.  He wasn't  misunderstood--he really was a misanthrope.  He was a sell-out, a cheat, and a privileged fat-cat if ever there were one. There was a reason, in other words, that everybody else loved to hate Zacchaeus.   Well, everybody except Jesus.  Jesus knew he was a dirtbag and loved him anyway.

And that's the thing: Jesus doesn't go around looking for people who are just in need of a fresh coat of paint and a wax.  He finds total wrecks and overhauls them from the inside out.  Jesus doesn't "discover" an already half-decent guy in Zacchaeus who just needs a nudge in the right direction.  Jesus' gracious acceptance of Zacchaeus the Sleazeball changes him into someone who can own his sins and go to work to make them right.  To Jesus, he is a precious sleazeball, beloved in spite of himself.  And it is that love, that amazing love that meets us while we are selfish jerks rather than diamonds in the rough, that transforms us.  It's like the line from the old hymn: "love to the loveless shown... that they might lovely be."  Grace changes our hearts--it doesn't find "pretty good" hearts and just dust them off.  It finds us in all our sinfulness, while we are being selfish jerks and shameless sleazeballs, and invites itself over for coffee to get through our defenses.

And in meeting us where we are, as we are, we are made into new creations.  Martin Luther said it so perfectly in the last of the theses of his 1518 Heidelberg Disputation:  "The love of God does not find, but creates, that which is pleasing to it."  In other words, God doesn't go around looking for a perfect peach somewhere to bestow divine love on--there aren't any of those.  Instead, God finds us as total messes... and makes us into something new by loving us exactly as we are when we are total messes. Grace changes our hearts. 

We are all there, up in a tree like Zacchaeus, with stubbornly jagged rough edges that make us hard for others to love and sometimes easy for others to dislike.  And we all have moments in which we are (not to put too fine a point on it) sleazeballs.  But we are precious sleazeballs in the grace of Jesus... and Jesus' reach is slowly wearing away everything but the grace in us.

How will you meet people today--especially the people you really like to dislike?  How could Jesus be using you as the invitation of grace to change their hearts?  And... how might Jesus be sending people into your life to change yours?

Lord Jesus, here are our hearts... in all their unloveliness.  Reach out to us as we are, and make us over into your new creations.

It Ain't Easy

It Ain't Easy--July 29, 2016

"In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another." [1 John 4:10-11]


In the end, this is the truth: grace is not easy.


We have been looking all this month at how grace tells the truth, but at the end of all that, the truth has to be spoken about grace itself, and it is a surprising truth to some: it ain't easy.


At first blush, of course, the whole notion of grace sounds exactly too easy: it sounds like God just up and forgives a bunch of still-sinning stinkers without even making them take the first step toward him by trying a little harder to follow the rules. And of course, that is one of the regular criticisms you'll hear about folks who take the Gospel seriously: "You just want to make things too easy!"  "That sounds like you don't care about sin very much!" "If God just forgives us, then what possible motive do we have for being good anymore?" You get the drift.  The common thread from these voices is that they think that because God does it all by grace, that grace is therefore "easy."


No.  No, not at all.  Nothing could be further from the truth, actually.  Grace is not just God winking away our sins like they didn't matter.  Nor is grace some grand divine cover-up, where God obstructs justice by shredding all the damning evidence against  us like incriminating emails or shady secret tax returns and business dealings.  Grace isn't easy--not for God... and not really even for us.  And that's because ultimately, grace is not about pretending our mess-ups don't matter or pretending they didn't happen.  Grace is about God's willingness to risk loving us when we are crummy at loving back.


You know you put it surprisingly well?  Katharine Hepburn.  Yes, the First Lady of Cinema once said it like this: "Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get--only what you are expecting to give.  What you will receive in return varies, but really has no connection to what you give. You give because you love and cannot help giving. If you are very lucky, you may get loved back. That is delicious, but it does not necessarily happen."


Those are hard words to take to heart, maybe because ours is a particular self-centered era, and we are taught to believe we are all entitled to have everybody else meet all of our wishes and wants.  And maybe because our culture so often hears the word "love" and confuses it instead with its smoke-and-mirrors distant cousin, "romance." Maybe because we all have this overdeveloped sense we imagine is "justice" (but is often really envy) that says we should only give to others if they are going to give to us in return... you know, that's "fair."  Maybe because we do not want to admit that each of us has been loved in life by people we will never be able to pay back.   But Hepburn's point is hard because it gets right at the root of grace, which shares the same internal logic and genuine love: namely, if it is real, it is given away regardless of whether it will be returned.  It is, in a word, unconditional.


That's one of the reasons I love these verses from what we call First John--when the subject of genuine love comes up, John stops us dead in our tracks before letting us focus on our selves or what we are supposed to do.  And instead, John says, "No, no, no--it's not about what we do, not first, at any rate.  Real love is about the way God loved us and gave everything--even God's own life--before we did a thing!"


Take a look at the line of Katharine Hepburn's again, and read it this time as though she is talking about God, rather than offering romance advice.  Real love--God's love--gives without being contingent on getting loved back, or being paid in return.  This is grace: it does not keep score, or insist on getting its own needs met.  It does not worry about whether it looks foolish, either.  It just gives itself away.  That's not easy--that cost God everything.


And if we are honest, it is not easy to admit we need grace to operate like that.  We would rather live in some illusion that we are all pretty decent investments for God, and that we totally pay God back by all of our... hmmm... occasional good deeds, moments of unselfishness, sharing of vaguely inspirational Facebook posts, and periodic offerings in church. We don't want to admit that we are beggars, and that is the truth.  We don't want to admit that we are in need of an unconditional gift, even though we are both needy and stinkers--because that will force us down from our high horses where we like to criticize people we imagine are just mooching off of handouts elsewhere in society.  But if grace really is as the New Testament describes it, then we are all living on handouts from God, and there is no room for us to judge someone else for the need they share in common with us.  Grace is hard, because realizing that we have been graced already before we knew it means that we have to admit our dependency on God, and we like to imagine ourselves as independent and self-sufficient.


And then here is where grace deals us a double-whammy: once we realize that God has loved us, as Hepburn says, without condition or dependence on what God "gets" out of the deal from us, then it dawns on us that we are called to love others in the same gracious way.  Not in order to earn what has been freely given already.  Not to pay God back.  But because God's grace does something to us... it transforms us from the inside out like a caterpillar being remade inside a chrysalis, or like a carnation drinking in the color from dye in the water.  When you realize that God has loved you with a reckless and risky love, you also see all the ways you have been trying to get by with self-interested, conditional "love" toward everybody else in your life... and that won't work anymore.


Grace changes you--it compels each of us to see our need, and it pushes us to do good to other people, regardless of what they will or won't do for us.  Don't call that easy.


This is the truth: you and I have been loved by God apart from any expectations from God that we will pay God back.  And this is also the truth: the love of God, which is rooted in unconditional, gracious giving, will change you.  It will remake you in its image, until you and I become living reflections of the amazing grace of God.


Lord God, let your grace remake us.

Too Good to Be True?

Too Good To Be True?--July 27, 2016

"Paul, a servant of God and an apostle of Jesus Christ, for the sake of the faith of God's elect and the knowledge of the truth that is in accordance with godliness, in the hope of eternal life that God, who never lies, promised before the ages began--in due time he revealed his word through the proclamation with which I have been entrusted by the command of God our Savior, To Titus, my loyal child in the faith we share: Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior." [Titus 1:1-4]

I'll be the first to admit it: the Christian message (what we sometimes call "the Gospel") sounds too good to be true.

Right?  I mean honestly, if we take the notion of God's grace seriously, it sure sounds like God is giving away the farm for free.  And it turns out there is a reason for this:  God is giving away the farm for free.

That sounds like there should be a catch in there.  Life beyond the power of death--for free?  (Yes!)  Belonging where before I was estranged and cast out--without strings? (You got it!)  God, the very maker of the universe, absorbing the sickness of my own heart, and bearing it all the way to death... even though I am this tiny speck on a tiny blue ball in the infinite vast blackness of space?  (Exactly--hit the nail on the head!) All of God's own infinite life, given to us, beyond our deserving, while God takes the old record that had stood against us and nails it to the cross?  (Well.... yeah.) Sounds too good to be true.

That's why it is so critical that we be clear--as these verses from the lesser-known letter to Titus make plain--that even if the gospel sounds too good to be true, the God who promises it never lies.  Without knowing that, the message of grace seems precariously uncertain--we would be left wondering, "Is it all just wishful thinking?  Is God just saying what we want to hear?  Is this all just smoke and mirrors?"  Without that confident assurance, we are left wondering if there is a loophole or fine print--if really and truly, God doesn't lie... or cleverly omit facts... or gloss over unpleasant details with glittering generalities.  Without the assurance that God really is reliable and does not lie, we'll always be left wondering if we've been hoodwinked by believing God's promises.

We are, after all, surrounded by the makers of bad promises.  It is the calling card of candidates--to promise fixes for all of our problems in vague slogans and wishful thinking, but to be light on specifics, or have an "out" if it turns out they can't deliver on their commitments in the end.  It is the way politicians use meaningless words and offer nebulous policy ideas to talk big while leaving themselves wiggle room so they can't be held accountable. It is the way of vendors and sales reps at work--assuring us that the new product will work so much better, or that they can save us big in the long run, only to leave us disappointed with buyers' remorse.  It's the way friends and family members all make big offers of support in one moment... but can become forgetful about actually living up to their assurances of help through a hard time.  We know, in other words, what it is like to have someone make us big promises, and to discover, to our chagrin, that they really were too good to be true.

And that's why it is critical for us to know that the real and living God does not make such empty promises--because God does not lie.  That's the foundation of believing the news of grace is NOT just wishful thinking, but an ironclad promise.  That means, too, that we need to be crystal clear that the nature of God's promises are not in the same ballpark--not even in the same solar system--as the loophole-riddled empty-word promises of campaign slogans and flaky friends.  We need to be clear that we can see through the puffed up rhetoric of election-season and that we know that they are not reliable in the way that God's promises are.  And that's why we had also be crystal clear to the rest of the watching world that no candidate, no campaign, and no political party, gets the right to claim it is "God's chosen" party, candidate, or campaign--because they will at some point all have to break or water down their promises... and God never will.  It's an affront to God's faithfulness and loyalty to drag God's always-sure, always-truthful promises into association with any one candidate or program or party.  So, if we want the world around us to know why we can believe God's promises when we have been let down by so many other promisers before, we need to commit from the outset that we are not, not, not going to label anybody as "God's candidate" or "God's party."  That's bad press for God, who never lies, and whose promises never have to be walked back.

Today, focus on the unchanging, unflinching, unbreakable promises of God, and let it sink in that because God doesn't lie, you and I can believe the news of grace that otherwise would sound... too good to be true.

Lord Jesus, give us the deep confidence in your truthfulness so that we can swim in your deep grace.

Advanced Peek-a-boo

Advanced Peek-a-Boo--July 26, 2016

"So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will not become known.  What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops.  Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? Yet not one of them will fall to the ground apart from your Father. And even the hairs of your head are all counted. So do not be afraid; you are of more value than many sparrows." [Matthew 10:26-30]

You know this already, but even when you are not looking at your feet--say, if they are obscured by a table or desk while you read your morning devotions--your feet are still there.  They do not blink out of existence just because you don't see them at the moment--which is good news for you the moment you want to get up from your reading to actually do something with your day.

It's called "object permanence."  It's the realization that the world is still there when your eyes are closed, or when your head is looking the other way.  And while it's obvious to you that, say, the tree in your front yard is still there when you are at work, that wasn't always the case. It wasn't always obvious to you--or to any of us.  We all go through a phase of development, somewhere between infancy and toddler-hood, where it finally dawns on us that the world is still there even when we can't see it. It's part of why "peek-a-boo" is enthralling to babies--they are learning that the familiar face hasn't vanished from the universe when covered up by their hands.  For all of us, there was a moment when we realized that the objects around us, and the world in which we lived, continued on whether we paid attention to them or not. 

And even though we now understand as adults that the faces playing peek-a-boo are still there when our eyes are covered, we still have a really hard time coming to terms with our faults, our failures, and our weaknesses.  There is something still so enticing about the idea that if we just ignore something we don't like or don't want to face, it might go away. And so we spend an awful lot of our energy in adulthood actively trying to pretend the objects we don't like aren't permanent. 

It's the way I can be so good at seeing other people's faults... but unable to see the same tendencies in myself.  It's the way I built a little narrative of the world and how it works... but then when any information comes my way that doesn't fit with it, I ignore it, or yell over it, or assume it must be entirely wrong.  It's the way I can give myself permission to sharpen my claws and attack others, but feel offended if someone points out the same faults in myself or those I tend to agree with.  And it's the way I choose to surround myself more and more only with people who will only reinforce what I think--whether in my circle of friends, my social media feed, or my choice of sources for news on television.

That may be a particular danger of our era--we live in an age and in a place where we have access (in theory) to all sorts of sources of information, but more and more, those sources tailor themselves to our tastes and likes, so we have to deal less and less with information or ideas that provoke us or challenge us... and so that we have to acknowledge less and less the failures and weaknesses within ourselves.  If I don't like the way one news channel tells the story, I can simply turn the channel to find one that puts a slant on things that doesn't bother me... rather than listening and seeing if there is some possible element of truth to it that I didn't want to have to deal with at first.  If I only click on or "like" stories that reinforce what I already think, the algorithms in some ethereal other place will feed me only more of those kinds of stories... until I no longer have to deal with news or ideas that poke at me.  That's part of the myth of our era--we tell ourselves that technology, the internet, and social media have all made us more connected, but that is really only a potential, a possibility.  All of those neat inventions have also made us more insulated, if we choose to use them in ways that surround us only with what we already know and keep at a distance anything "other."

So here we are in this day and age where we can make the uncomfortable things seem to disappear, because we can easily change the channel, click "unlike," or just decide not to think too much about them. We have invented a whole new way of denying object permanence... as adults.

Jesus, however, reminds us that we can't keep playing some advanced version of Peek-a-Boo for Grown-ups with reality forever.  And he doesn't say it as a scary thing--like we should all try to live in blissful ignorance as long as possible because one day the bottom will fall out.  But rather, he calls his followers to be agents of that great unveiling, that great truth-telling.  He tells his followers to be people who can be real... who can be honest... who can both speak difficult truths, but also hear difficult truths that we might not have wanted to have to deal with. 

And underlying Jesus' instruction that we be people who can live with the uncovered, out-in-the-daylight truth, is his deep confidence in the unshakable confidence of God.  Jesus tells us not to be afraid of the uncomfortable truths, or facing our failures, or naming our sins, because Jesus knows we are loved by a God who does not flinch at them either. Once we know that we are unconditionally beloved, we can bear honest confession of our sin.  Once we know that God will reign regardless of who seems to be in power today, we can face the good and the bad in our favored (and unfavored) politicians, rather than hiding or ignoring their faults while only seeing the failures of the opposition.  Once we know that we are unchangeably held in the hands of a God whose love will not let us go, we can dare to listen to other voices without be threatened--and we can consider them without being afraid, and not immediately block them out or change the channel.  Sometimes we will discover we had some learning to do.  Sometimes we will find our original viewpoint confirmed.  But we won't have run from something out of fear that the truth was too fragile to withstand a little scrutiny.  It's like the line attributed to St. Augustine: "The truth does not need to be defended. The truth is like a lion.  Let it loose--it will defend itself."

And this much is the truth: there are things in the world, and in ourselves, that we would rather not acknowledge, and they are there whether we choose to see them or not.  However, we are also loved by a God whose grace is not conditional on us being perfect peaches.  The God who holds us will be faithful even when tomorrow's news doesn't fit our preconceived pictures, even when we have come face to face with our mess-ups, and even when our old view of the world gets shaken.

Maybe it's time to stop playing peek-a-boo.

Lord God, give us the courage from trusting your love to bear hearing the truth we had been shutting out.

Is God Enough?

Is God Enough?--July 25, 2016

"Then all the elders of Israel gathered together and came to Samuel at Ramah, and said to him, 'You are old and your sons do not follow in your ways; appoint for us, then, a king to govern us, like other nations.' But the thing displeased Samuel when they said, 'Give us a king to govern us.' Samuel prayed to the Lord, and the Lord said to Samuel, 'Listen to the voice of the people in all that they say to you; for they have not rejected you,  but they have rejected me from being king over them. Just as they have done to me, from the day I brought them up out of Egypt to this day, forsaking me and serving other gods, so also they are doing to you. Now then, listen to their voice; only--you shall solemnly warn them, and show them the ways of the king who shall reign over them.' So Samuel reported all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king. He said, 'These will be the ways of the king who will reign over you: he will take your sons and appoint them to his chariots and to be his horsemen, and to run before his chariots; and he will appoint for himself commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and some to plow his ground and to reap his harvest, and to make his implements of war and the equipment of his chariots.  He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers. he will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive orchards and give them to his courtiers..." [1 Samuel 8:4-14]

God should have been enough.

As a rule, in fact, without exception, God really is enough--enough and more than enough, abundant and all-sufficient--except that we so often tell ourselves that what God has laid at our feet and placed in our hands is insufficient, while we imagine that what the people next door have is so, so much better. 

This story from what we call First Samuel reminds me of that--and it reminds me of how God has a way of telling us the truth we do not want to hear, and nevertheless surprising us with grace we do not know we will need yet.  The scene is in the days of Samuel, this last of the judge figures  who led Israel and first of the prophets, and the collective voice of the people is envious of what they think "everyone else has." (You have surely seen this logic around small children, too: "He has one--why can't I have one?"  Turns out that we may never really grow out of that immature jealousy.  They are unsatisfied with the current arrangement of things; they have told themselves that they can only be satisfied if they get a king, "like other nations."  And at first it's Samuel who is taking this request as a personal insult--he feels it like a rejection of his leadership over the people.  But God then tells Sam, "No, it's not really you they have been rejecting... it's me." 

That by itself blows me away--a God who is so faithful as to accept rejection, rather than forcing obedience with bitterly thrown lightning bolts to make the people come back to him.  The God of the Bible is indeed all-powerful, but chooses to risk unrequited love when the people believe the lie that God is not really "enough." 

Now, here's the rub--here is where grace and truth are intertwined with one another. God does not lie to the people, or cover up the uncomfortable truth about the consequences of their actions.  So often this is where we miss the mark in our own lives and relationships--we refuse to be honest for fear of upsetting someone, so we don't mention what's really on our minds, or what really is going to have to be dealt with.  God doesn't lie--not by outright deception, and not by omission or technicalities.  God tells Samuel to be up front with the people: if they get a king, they will not like what they get.  The candidate they choose to lead them is Saul, whom they choose because he is tall and good-lookin' (1 Sam. 9:2), and they all believe wrongly that he and he alone can make Israel great and rid them of the threats they fear from other nations.  And, of course, at one level, you can understand why the people might think a king would be great--rather than having to trust in an invisible God to provide satisfaction, they want to have someone they can see, someone they can imagine as their great protector and provider, someone who will make them feel safe and treat them well.  Sure, I get that.  God's point, however, is that the people have missed that God has been protecting and providing for them all along--and that God really would have been enough for them if they would not have determined their wish-lists by comparing themselves to other nations.

But because the people have fallen for that sad old thinking that they can only be happy if they have what their neighbors have, Samuel warns the people that a king will become a tyrant, and will take the best of what they have to use for himself.  He will make them big promises--that they will win military victories after being trampled on by enemy armies, that they will be prosperous and safe, and that they will at last be like other nations.... and Samuel tells the people ahead of time that there will be consequences to having a king, too.  Their children will be conscripted to build an army, to construct palaces, and to serve the king and his elites.  They will see their best resources taken and used for the king's pleasure and military campaigns.  In a way, it's like Samuel is giving Eisenhower's famous 'military-industrial complex' speech, warning that having a king will lay the groundwork for a society built on the need to keep having wars to enrich their territory, a society that will be paid for with the lives of their sons and daughters. 

All of this is to say that God tells the people the truth--the truth they do not want to hear at the moment, but which they need to hear.  God doesn't just send Samuel to shrug and say, "I hope this king business works out for you--good luck." God tells the people that even though they think they will at last be happy if they get the king they want at the top of their wish-list, a king will not really satisfy them--only create more heartache and at the same time distance them from the One who really did love them, protect them, and provide for them.

So the truth is spoken.  And yet--and this is the wonder of our God!--God also gives the people what they ask for.  Having told them the consequences of letting them have what they want, God allows them to reject him. And then--most amazing of all--God continues to love them even after they reject God.  That's right--read that sentence again: God allows the people to reject him, and then loves them and stays faithfully at their side even after they have rejected God's kingship and insisted that God wasn't "enough."  And God doesn't do it with passive-aggressive eye-rolling or bitter jealousy.  In fact, God will one day make a promise Israel's king (David, the next one after good ol' handsome Saul) to keep one of his descendants on the throne forever.  There is, in other words, grace.  Instead of a condescending divine "I told you so" when the people get the rotten consequences of choosing an arrogant authoritarian to be their leader (and man, if you don't know the stories of how thin-skinned and petty Saul could be, read more in the book of 1 Samuel--he's pathetic), God bears with the people's rejection and continues to be faithful to them even when they have chosen the hard way.

This is who the God of the Bible really is--both truth-telling and grace-giving at the same time.  There are times when God sends Samuels into our lives, and they tell us things we do not want to hear: they tell us that chasing after "what everybody else has" will not make us happy, or they warn us that the choices we are making could be disastrous.  They are the voices we do not always like, but which we usually need, who force us to think things through and consider just what might happen if we really got what we thought we wanted.  And as much as those voices may make us uncomfortable, we need them.  But amazingly God does not just stop with giving us those Samuel voices who have wisdom to share if we would only listen--God also bears with us when we make stupid choices, and stays faithful to us anyway.  That is what real Love does--it risks our rejecting it, and then does not abandon us when we slap it in the face by saying it was not enough.

There are voices like this in your life right now--instead of ignoring them because they force you to think through your actions and choices, what if you and I dared to think of them as gifts of God?

There are also voices in our lives who remind us of the unflagging grace of God--they are the ones God has sent, too, who tell us that even when we have messed up, and even when we have told ourselves God wasn't enough, God has remained faithful and stayed with us all along.  What if you and I listened to those voices, too, today, before we make a new wish list of what we have to have in order to be happy?

What if--as the Bible has been saying all along--God really is enough after all?

Lord God, be honest with us and be gracious to us... we need both, whether we know it or not.  Thank you, Lord, for both.

Upward, Not Northward

"Upward, Not Northward"--July 22, 2016

"Then Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the king of the Jews?' Jesus answered, 'Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?' Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not from this world.  If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews.  But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.'  Pilate asked him, 'So you are a king?' Jesus answered, 'You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth.  Every one who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.' Pilate asked him, 'What is truth?'" [John 18:33-38]

Poor Pilate.  Poor, sad, too-big-for-his-britches Pilate. His mind, his view of the world, is so pathetically small that I almost want to feel bad for him not getting it.  Almost.

But still, the sad and clueless imperial show-off just can't grasp that Jesus could mean something different when he talks about a kingdom, a "reign," that is different than the bluster and brutality of Rome.  If Pilate weren't also a cruel and violent authoritarian, I would pity him for how small his understanding is when he is face to face with the Walking, Talking Truth.

There is this line that comes to mine from Edwin Abbott's classic thought experiment Flatland, about what would happen if someone who lived in a world of two-dimensions (hence, "Flatland") came to experience the three-dimensional world that we know.  Harder still, Abbot's protagonist then has to go back to the 2-D real of a plane and explain to everybody there what it was like to be plucked out, beyond somewhere, and to be able to see his X-and-Y-coordinate-bounded world from a new vantage point, and to try to explain what a sphere and a cube are to folks who can only think in terms of circles and squares.  So to remind himself, he has this repeated line of what his experience was like, he keeps saying, "Upward, not northward."  When he says "up," everyone in a two-dimensional world assumes north--that is all they have ever experienced.  But of course, for folks in three dimensions like you and me, we can understand that "up" means more than "north."  From our perspective, a world of three dimensions isn't esoteric or mysterious--it is more real than a 2-D world would seem to us. 

I sometimes think of that challenge--that "upward, not northward" train of thought--when I read about Jesus' encounters with the powers of his day, and really with all of us.  But particularly when Jesus comes head to head with the religious gatekeepers, the political appointees, and the imperial loudmouths, I think Jesus must have had a hard time trying to get through to them.  He saw reality--well, he still sees it--in its fullness, in all three dimensions, so to speak.  And when he speaks that to, say, a Roman governor who wants to impress the people by sounding tough and making himself look like a "winner," Jesus has to try to cram three dimensions' worth of reality into two dimensional worldviews, in a manner of speaking. 

Jesus is heralded as "Messiah," for example--a term that, yes, speaks of kingship, and of a reign, but also speaks of redemption and justice, of God's own rule among people, all the way down to their hearts, and of ancient promises being kept.  But Pilate can only hear "king," and immediately the only kings he can picture are kings like Rome's, and all the other empires that have come before.  Pilate, like all of Rome's way, can only think in terms of armies, swords, conquest, and death.  Pilate thinks only in terms of winning by killing your enemies and making the next people in line afraid of you.  Pilate, a good soldier of the empire, can only think in terms of control, fear, and brutality.  That's what power looks like to him, and so that's what he assumes rulers, kings, and kingdoms will look like, too.  No wonder, then, that poor, sad Pilate tries like a schoolyard bully to make himself look tough.

But Jesus means something far more--not less, but more--than kingship and reign.  It's not that Jesus is saying, "I only say and do spiritual things, so I have no opinion on matters of politics and power," but rather than the world around him is only settling for the 2-D version of the picture, and Jesus sees real power and real kingship in an infinitely richer depth.  When Jesus says, "My kingdom is not from here," he is not saying that God is only interested in "getting souls up to heaven," and then giving up on the rest of creation to go to hell in a handbasket.  No!--God is determined to reign in all things, on earth as in heaven.  But God's Reign doesn't work like the flat (and frankly pathetic) 2-D kingdoms and powers and empires of the world.  Jesus brings us face to face with a totally different kind of power--one that doesn't kill its enemies to win, but which dies on a cross for them. 

That's why Jesus says, "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting... but my kingdom is not from here."  It's a way of saying, "Here, you all squabble and kill each other to try and get your way, like that is the greatest kind of power there is.  My kind of power is the creative power of suffering love.  My kind of reign comes from self-giving.  My kind of kingdom is like a sphere... and you can barely wrap your head around a circle, Pontius."

That's also why Jesus (and I imagine this with a sigh of frustration, rather than anxious defensiveness) says back to the Roman blowhard, "You say that I am a king," before going on to say "I came into the world to testify to the truth."  It's the old "upward, not northward" thing again: Jesus is trying to put into words that Pilate can understand what God's Reign is like, and Pilate can only think in terms of kings and empires.  To Jesus, "being the Lord of God's Reign," "being King," and "testifying to the truth" are all part of the same thing--but Pilate doesn't get it.  And because he doesn't get it, Pilate forces it through his tiny categories and sees Jesus as a threat--to him, to Caesar, to Rome. 

That's why I still almost--almost--feel sad, feel pity, for the tiny-minded voices of power today.  The labels and the empires have changed, but the same pattern keeps coming back: people who can only see power in terms of killing, people who can only see the "other" as a threat, people who use fear to get what they want.  It was Pilate's strategy, and it is still the stragegy du jour of pompous blowhards and political bullies.  If their small-mindedness were not also so dangerous, I would almost feel sad for them.  Poor, pathetic modern-day Pilates, who just don't get it.  Sad.

But into this pathetic scene, there is still Jesus.  Jesus, who perhaps sighs that we still don't understand him, but does not give up on us.  Jesus, who speaks again, to you, to me, and to the Pilates of every age: there is good news!  There is a new kind of Reign with a new kind of Ruler!  It has begun!  And its greatest conquest was not the execution or deportation of a dangerous enemy, but the death of the king for his people.  Jesus keeps speaking, like he is trying to get three-dimensions of space into our small two-dimensional brains, so that we will be pulled into his deeper kind of reality. 

And frankly, the fact that Jesus has not given up on us to keep speaking that truth of his new kind of reign, well that is something we did not earn.  That is grace.

Today, be a voice of grace... even to the Pilate-sounding bullies. Be a voice that shows the power of God's suffering love that conquers the world.  Be a voice that shows how the power of laying down your life is infinitely more potent than killing and intimidating.  Be a voice that keeps at it, even when the bluster of the bullies is at its loudest.  And when all their showing-off is over, then, like Jesus, speak in measured tone, "There is another Way."

We are the citizens of that new reign.  We are the members of the commonwealth of grace.  We are following after Jesus' other Way.  Keep on following--upward, not northward.

Lord Jesus, stretch our minds and souls to take in all your fullness, and to settle for nothing less.

The Minority Report

The Minority Report--July 21, 2016

"At the end of forty days [the twelve spies] returned from spying out the land. And they came to Moses and Aaron and to all the congregation of the Israelites in the wilderness of Paran, at Kadesh; they brought back word to them and to all the congregation, and showed them the fruit of the land.  And they told him, 'We came to the land to which you sent us; it flows with milk and honey, and this is its fruit. Yet the people who live in the land are strong, and the towns are fortified and very large; and besides, we saw the descendants of Anak there'.... But Caleb quieted the people before Moses, and said, 'Let us go up at once and occupy it, for we are well able to overcome it.' Then the men who had gone up against this people, for they are stronger than we.' So they brought to the Israelites an unfavorable report of the land that they had spied out, saying, 'The land that we have gone through as spies is a land that devours its inhabitants; and all the people that we saw in it are of great size. There we saw the Nephilim [the Anakites come from the Nephilim]; and to ourselves we seemed like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them'." [Numbers 13:25-28, 30-33]

It's not about forcing yourself to see the glass as half-full.  It's about knowing that even half a glass of water is enough for God to claim a new child in grace... or turn into wine. 

This is the remarkable (but often neglected) gift that the people of God have been given--and which we also therefore owe to the world around us--the gift of truthfulness about how things really are... and with that, the ability to trust in God's ability to work with and through how things "really are."

Sometimes we make the deadly mistake of confusing Christian hope with optimism.  And while I have nothing against optimists per se, it seems to me that the biblical writers never see optimism as a necessary character trait for Christians, nor do they call for us to be pessimists.  We are not any holier if we see the glass as half-full, and we are not any more saintly if we are all dour-faced Eeyores with cross necklaces.  Both of those viewpoints are distortions--filters--that edit out the gloom or the sunshine, rather than seeing the whole spectrum.

Because Christians are (supposed to be) grounded in the confidence that God reigns, and that God is good, we can be utter realists about how things really are.  We can be realists--who don't force the evidence to be "better-sounding" or "worse-sounding" than it really is--because we trust that God promises that ultimately, as dear Julian of Norwich put it, all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be made well.  We have confidence that, before all is said and done, the universe will be set right, the broken will be mended, and the proud and puffed-up will have their hot air taken out of them, and so, of all people, we should be able to the be the ones who can be honest about things in the world, and in ourselves.  We should be the ones who can give an honest report of the conditions around us, without polishing our fake halos or making everything seem worse.  We should be the ones who can tell and hear all the evidence, even when it doesn't fit a convenient narrative or sound-byte like the news networks or pundits would like it to.  We should be, of all people, the ones most able to hear the findings of scientists without fear that it will unmask our religion as a fraud like the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.  No, of all people we should be the ones who don't need to put a spin on how much water is in the glass. 

That's what I love about this story from the wilderness days of the people of Israel.  It's not really a story of optimists versus pessimists, although I must confess I have heard plenty of sermons basically saying that.  It's not that Joshua and Caleb's minority report from the Promised Land was the "optimistic one" and that the other ten spies were all just playing Droopy Dog while they sadly shuffled their feet and gave their pessimistic report about taking the land.  They have all seen the same land, and they will all attest to both the bounty there, and the challenges in dealing with the people who already lived there.  But Joshua and Caleb can be both realistic about what they saw and at the same time have confidence that for the God who brought them out of Egypt, nothing is impossible. There are real threats there in the Promised Land; of that there is no doubt or denial.  But the difference of the minority report is that from within that realism, there is also trust in the power and presence of God.

That's the kind of voice you and I are called to have--and which is given to us for free, if we dare to speak--one that can see reality without needing to always add rose-colored or storm-gray-colored lenses, and that can remain hopeful in the power and presence of God. We can be the voices who answer Jesus, "We've only got five loaves and two fish, and we know that on our own that wouldn't feed a family of five, much less a crowd of five thousand--but we know that you can do wondrous things with whatever we thought was not enough."  We can be the people who don't automatically dismiss news or science reports that are not what we wanted to hear.  We can be the people who give everybody an honest listening.  We can be the people who can sit with people in their times of deepest sorrow without reaching for unhelpful clichés and instead just live in the heartache with them... and still pray for God to bring divine power and presence to those moments.  We can be the people who see and name the truth without being afraid of it, without sticking our heads in the sand, and without angry uninformed yelling that dresses itself up as "telling it like it is". 

Because we know that, at the last, God reigns, the Love named Jesus wins, and all really will be made well, we can be honest about all the ways and places in the world that are crying out for redemption, and we can be honest about the signs of God's redemption that has already begun.

Be that voice today.  Be the eyes that can see the glass and the water and say, "That is enough for God to claim someone in baptism... and that is enough for God to turn into wine, too."

Lord Jesus, give us the honest vision to see the world in all of its mix of beauty and brokenness, and give us the courage to voice it along with our hope in you.

The Right Kind of Scandal

The Right Kind of Scandal--July 20, 2016

"Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone." [Colossians 4:6]

The followers of Jesus ought to sound scandalous, but for the right reasons.  We ought to sound reckless with love, foolish in our willingness to sacrifice ourselves, and audacious in our trouble-making kind of welcome to outsiders.  We ought to turn people's heads, and we ought to make people blush.  That's what Jesus did, after all--from dinner parties with tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers, a reputation for being a drunkard and a glutton, and his habit of including people who were "supposed" to be left out, while not paying attention to the religious and political so-and-so crowd.  Jesus was scandalous, so, at least in some way, the followers of Jesus ought to sound scandalous, too.

Ah, but the question is--as the old line of Gerhard Ebeling's goes--what is the right kind of scandal?  I remember reading that line of the old German theologian years ago, and at first thinking to myself, "Oh, no!  We Christians are never supposed to be scandalous.  We are supposed to be bland and mild-mannered and not to call attention to ourselves, and we should only ever say things that people will call nice and pat us on the back for."  But Ebeling kept speaking.  He writes that sometimes (maybe a lot of the time, these days) we cause the wrong kind of scandal--by angry yelling, political hackery, all-caps-style barbs traded online, and bumper-sticker smugness--so that people are already so turned off by what they have heard us yelling that they do not stay to listen to the real scandal about a God whose love gets nailed to a cross.

We have an amazing message to announce the world!  History's revolving door of empires and power-mongers will keep turning, but God has broken into that world in Jesus with a new kind of Reign in which the lowly are lifted up, the merciful and poor are declared "blessed" rather than "losers," and the true source of Power is seen in self-giving love.  That is scandalous to a world that applauds for pomp and pageantry, big talk, and big sticks.  It is scandalous to say that the greatest show of real power was a life offered up in love on an empire's execution stake.  It is scandalous to say that the greatest "success", the greatest "big win," of all of history came from someone who washed the feet of his thick-headed students 24 hours before his death.  It is scandalous to say that our calling is always love in the face of hatred, rather than returning evil for evil or hatred for hatred.

And in these days, such a message--as shocking as it will sound in the world's ears if we say it honestly--is exactly what is needed.

But... no one will listen to that scandalously gracious message if they have first been turned off because we were jerks leading up to it.  If we turn people away with the wrong kind of scandal, they will never hear the saving scandal of the new kind of life Jesus opens up in the Reign of God--what we sometimes call "the Kingdom."

And the worst of it, the bitterly ironic part of it, is that usually we are most blind to our own vitriol while we are in the act of casting ourselves as offended, put-upon targets.  Look, here's the thing:  even if someone else does criticize, or verbally attack, or upset Christians, we do not get to be jerks back to them.  That undercuts our witness.  And I must confess, I have been ashamed, far more times than I can count, at the truly awful, hateful, wrong-kind-of-scandalous things I have heard and seen from fellow people who are striving like me to follow Jesus.  If I am really honest, there have been plenty of times when I have thought to myself, "If I were not already a Christian, this person... this remark... this "like"... would make me not want to be a Christian or listen to what they have to say.  This is just so bitter, so entitled, so vitriolic, so self-absorbed."

The flip side to that, of course, is that I have to consider the very real possibility that there have been times when I have been the one acting or speaking like a jerk, and causing the wrong kind of scandal so that others could not hear the Good News over my own bluster or self-righteousness.  Of course, those are my blind spots--the reason I wouldn't realize I have come off as a pompous blowhard in the past is that there are places within my own faith and thinking that need the correction and clarification of others.  And I can only face the truth that I might just need some of that correction if I have the humility to start with the notion that I might be wrong.  Jesus won't let us down, and Jesus won't turn out to be all wet... but I sure as heaven might get it wrong in how I speak about him, think about him, and believe about him.  If I can dare to see that... and to say it... not just once, but as a daily admission that lets me be self-critical and listen for what others might hear that I cannot, well, then, maybe I can hold the wrong kind of scandal at bay so that others can hear the Good News of Jesus from my lips without being turned away in disgust first.

So, let me propose something for all of us--something of an experiment in discipleship.  Let me propose that we actually take these words from Colossians seriously, and think about everything we say, write, post, "like," or communicate, and ask first the question, "Is there the possibility that I am coming off as a jerk here... and if so, what is that doing to my witness to Christ?"  Because here's the other thing we need to be clear on:  being a witness is not an option.  We will all bear witness to whatever or whoever is really our God (or our god), whether we think we are "doing evangelism" or not.  You cannot name the name of Jesus and not be a living walking billboard for him--the trouble is that for a lot of us, or maybe for all of us at one time or another, we have spray painted a lot of all-caps angry graffiti over our own billboard, so nobody wants to hear about the Jesus we say we follow.

The old cliché is right: you may be the only Bible, or at least the first Bible, somebody else ever reads.  You may be the first picture of Jesus somebody else sees.  And if we are distracting attention from the scandalously good news of God's free grace in Jesus by being utter jerks in every other area of our lives (as well as in our talking about faith), nobody will see the real Jesus.  And they will have no reason or desire to peel past the outer layers of our vitriol to find him underneath all the garbage we have piled on top of him.

Today, what if we asked the question, "Will this be a scandal to someone else who hears it?" before we speak?  And then if the answer is yes (and sometimes it will be), what if we ask the follow up question, "Is this the right kind of scandal--the scandalously good news of Jesus--or is this me being a jerk?"  And what if we dared to get other people around us who will help us see our blind spots and call us on it when we really are at risk of pushing people away from Jesus?

Sounds like a tall order... but a necessary one.  We had better pray on it...

Lord Jesus, make us witnesses of your true scandal, and make us honest about the ways our ungracious words have turned people away from you.  Make us the right kind of scandalous witnesses to your Reign of love.

Come and See

Come and See--July 19, 2016

"Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people, 'Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?'" [John 4:28-29]

When we have been met with love, it makes it possible for us to bear hearing the truth about ourselves. 

Jesus had--has, rather--that remarkable ability to embrace and disarm us at the same time, doesn't he?  You get story after story where he meets people with surprising, unexpected, unbounded graciousness--that is, with love--and within the safety of that love, people are able to let down their guard and tell the truth about themselves, or hear it told.

Here's one.  She had gone to the well trying to avoid everybody else that day. She didn't like the way the neighbors viewed her as damaged goods . She didn't mention the long line of exes she had left behind in her past like some Biblical "Goodbye Girl." She was used to keeping her lips sealed tight and didn't want to even start a conversation with the stranger who asked her for a drink that day. And she certainly didn't expect to be airing her dirty laundry with a stranger like that.

But Jesus disarmed all of her prepared attacks (her dodges and jabs back at Jesus) by embracing her.  That is, Jesus cut through her tough, guarded exterior and her prepared barbs by accepting her, and by showing her that there was nothing she could have done or could yet do that would make him take back his offer of "living water" to her. 

You almost have to think that she was looking for reasons for Jesus to reject her or say she was disqualified--then she would have had room and reason to hate him. She was looking to try and pick a fight with him, on any subject other than herself, and hoping that he would say something that would make her mad enough to ignore him, or that she would say something he would get upset about and then he would walk away.

But he doesn't.  He never gives up on the situation, or the person. And as she finally begins to realize that this stranger Jesus already knows everything about her that she is afraid of him finding out, she lets Jesus in.  She comes to see him for who he really is--not just a judgmental jerk, trolling for an angry reply, but the promised Messiah about whom she has only heard whispers and rumors.

And when she goes to tell her neighbors and friends about this Jesus she has met by the well, instead of hiding her past, she can now own it and put it own there, no longer ashamed.  She has been met with the grace of Jesus, and that grace allows her to trust that she is accepted no matter what.  Now she can say, "Come meet this amazing person Jesus--he knows all of my deepest darkest secrets, and he didn't run away on me!"  Jesus' grace makes it possible for her to own who she is, where she has been, and therefore where she is going next, no longer bound by the weight of all that baggage.

Sometimes we Christians do a pathetically poor job of offering that kind of grace to the people around us.  Sometimes our attempts at welcome sound like, "There is a place for you... as long as we don't find out that there's this in your story..." or, "You are more than welcome to come, but if we find out that you don't fit our cookie cutter picture, we won't really let you belong." For that matter, sometimes we are so busy testing people to see if they will pass our litmus-tests for acceptability that we never actually listen to their stories.  No wonder people don't feel drawn to that kind of invitation or so-called "welcome."

Jesus shows us the amazing feat of disarming people and embracing them at the same time.  What if your words of grace to someone else allowed them to feel safe enough to be honest with you, and with God, about the baggage they have been carrying?  What if your love was the thing that caught someone off guard and got through to them when they were looking for reasons to write you off?  What if you and I started following the pattern of Jesus in this story rather than worrying about what people will think if we let that person in?

Let's try it today and see what happens.

Lord Jesus, disarm us and embrace us in your love and truth.

Complicity--July 18, 2016

Complicity—July 18, 2016

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death came through sin, and so death spread to all because all have sinned…. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died through the one man’s trespass, much more surely have the grace of God and the free gift in the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for the many.  And the free gift is not like the effect of the one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brings justification. If, because of the one man’s trespass, death exercised dominion through that one, much more surely will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness exercise dominion in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.  Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” [Romans 5:12, 15-18]

The bad news is that we all have blood on our hands. If you didn’t know that uncomfortable truth from the Bible already, you might already know it because of RICO.

You watch enough crime or mafia movies, and you’ll eventually become familiar with RICO.  The RICO Act, or the Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations Act, is a brilliant piece of legislation passed by Congress in 1970 (back in a magical distant time when Congress passed things) that allowed prosecutors and police to go after the bosses of organized crime for the crimes that they ordered their underlings to commit.  Prior to that, there was a loophole in the law, and if some grubby henchman was the one who actually pulled the trigger, or beat up the local business owner, or took the money for the illegal gambling or drugs, only the ACTUAL person with the gun or the bat could be prosecuted. 

Well, any truthful consideration of things would see that the henchmen are not really the source of the problem.  The nameless goons might do the actual deeds with the horse-head, but Don Corleone back behind his desk was the one calling the shots and ordering the crimes to be committed.  The individual drug dealers in a city certainly bear responsibility for their own actions, but so do their bosses who order them to sell, who get the supply, and who enforce their turf with lethal force. In other words, it’s obvious when it comes to the mob or drug cartels that everybody in the whole organization is guilty—they are all part of “the problem,” even if it’s only a few who physically pull triggers or sell on street corners.  They are all, in a word, complicit, in the situation.

The New Testament makes the uncomfortable claim that we are all part of one big corrupt organization, too—the human race.  We are all complicit in the brokenness for which the shorthand is “sin.”  You hear that?  ALL.

And we are all doubly complicit—in the sense that, as Paul says, “all have sinned,” and also in the sense that we are all bound to a sinful system like we are all part of a great big infected family tree that is sick with blight.  Paul takes it back to the storytelling from Genesis and says that just as the “one man” sinned, so now we are all complicit in his sin, and you can see it to be true, Paul says, because we each keep killing each other, cheating each other, stealing from one another, and hating each other.    And pushing that further, Paul says here in Romans, even if each of us hasn’t physically committed all of those acts on the checklist, we are all complicit like a RICO case in all of it.  We are all mired in the brokenness of the world, and we are also all guilty for that brokenness. If you think of Sin in Martin Luther’s terms as being “bent in on oneself,” then we all have the same family resemblance of the same bent souls, like you might see a crooked nose, sunken eyes, or sturdy chin throughout the generations of your own family photos.

Now, as squirmy as that truth might make us in the abstract, it gets even tougher to deal with when we get real and practical.  Paul’s point means that even if I am not directly responsible for the death of hungry children half a world away, in a very real sense I DO bear guilt for living in a wasteful culture and turning a blind eye to my hungry neighbor.  I am complicit in their hunger—I am a part of the problem that lets their bellies go unfilled while I order another serving of French fries.  And it means that even if I never physically gave anybody else cancer, but I’ve been dumping paint and chemicals down the drain, or if I’ve built my fortune selling asbestos-laced products, I am complicit in the spread of sickness if someone else gets sick indirectly from my actions.  I am part of the problem.

Want to go further?  Every time I ignore the ways other people are mistreated, or deny even THAT they are mistreated, every time I am the priest or the Levite rather than the one who stops by the side of the road, I confirm, just as Paul said, that I am complicit in the brokenness of the whole system.  And every time I protest, “But I didn’t do that bad thing directly…” I should get the creepy chill down my back of realizing I am using the same bad defense as a mob boss or drug lord.  I am complicit—at the very least as a willing recipient of benefits from the dirty work that other people did—in a whole host of ills through history, yes, even including events that happened before my life, but which I stay quiet about now.

It includes slavery and segregation, as well as their modern heirs. It includes greed and exploitation of past generations of coal miners who did their jobs loyally for decades with little provision for their families if they got sick or killed in the mines, because customers didn’t want to pay a little bit more to ensure they had benefits.  It includes the kids working in sweatshops under awful conditions because I have been taught to believe that I have the right to cheap t-shirts and electronics.  Sure, I have never directly met any of those people, but I am complicit in the brokenness because I gladly accept the benefits of those arrangements like a mob boss raking in the bucks from his underlings’ exploits.  I am complicit.  We are complicit.  We are all part of the problem.

Now as bad as all of that news is, the flip side of that truth is deeply good news.  Because even as we are all bound up in the sins of one another, and even as I cause ripple effect harm to others from my actions and choices, that also means that Jesus’ free gift of life can be given to me as well, even though I have not earned it. Jesus’ grace, and the freedom and forgiveness he offers, are possible because of the same dynamic—that we are all bound up together in this thing called humanity.  And because Jesus, the human—in fact the Truly Human One—offers me all of his goodness, it is mine… and yours… and in fact all of ours.  “Therefore, just as one man’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so one man’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all.” 

There it is—we are all complicit. That is the truth.  But we are also all graced.  That is part of the same truth.  How will you and I face this day differently acknowledging both?

Lord Jesus, make us honest about the ways we are complicit in the hurts and brokenness of the world—and make us able to believe, too, that your righteousness is ours by the same interconnectedness.