Don't Be A Jerk in the Car

Don't Be A Jerk in the Car--October 27, 2016

"I will make for you a covenant on that day with the wild animals, the birds of the air, and the creeping things of the ground; and I will abolish the bow, the sword, and war from the land; and I will make you lie down in safety." [Hosea 2:18]

Did you ever go on a long car trip and forget--maybe even for just a moment--your destination?

I don't just mean forgetting for a split second where you were going.  That kind of thing happens easily enough if you get engrossed in the song on the radio or the conversation with the person riding shotgun at your side. I mean forgetting even that you are going somewhere, and that the world is bigger than just the space inside the car.

 

Because sometimes, like on a really, really long car trip, you can almost even forget that there is a destination coming.  If you are on one of those all-day drives, or a trek spread out over several days, sometimes, in the monotony of seeing mile after mile of highway, you can almost forget that the journey isn't the end of things.  You can forget that there is an arrival you are awaiting.

And when that happens, you find yourself getting hung up on little, piddling, petty stuff about the ride.  You get possessive about the armrests or air vents.  You get snippy toward the voices in the back seat.  You sometimes can only think ahead as far as the next rest stop, or where you'll get off the road to eat dinner, or even just how long until you can stretch your legs.  You get combative over who controls the radio like it's some kind of contest. You can end up being possessive over the thermostat, or bossy on questions like "Where will we stop to eat?"  When you lose sight of the fact that the world is bigger than just "the car ride," you can end up being a real jerk to other people in the car ride.

But... on the other hand, when you remain mindful of the fact that the journey in the car ride is a narrow little piece of the whole, you can see things in the right perspective.  Control over the radio is not worth being a jerk about.  Power to regulate the strength of the air conditioner should not be the sum goal of your existence.  It is not worth causing lasting damage to a friendship or family relationship by "winning" the contest of listening to "Come On, Eileen" on one station or "I Want to Know What Love Is" on the next station.  If you "win" on those small, petty, trip-contained things but have made everybody else in the car mad at you and unwilling to talk to you when you all arrive at the end of the trip, it's a pretty meaningless victory. 

And on the other hand, if you remember the whole time that your goal in the car is get somewhere good, and to get somewhere together, you come to find that future promised destination has a way of changing the way you act toward the rest of your car-mates right now.

Sometimes I think we Christians--we religious folks--forget that there is a destination, a promised future, in our journey, which is meant to make us act and think differently toward everybody else in the car right now, and all along the way.  I don't mean that we ought to just say, "We're going to heaven when we die, so we aren't going to care about what happens to people in this life, since the 'afterlife' is all that matters."  Rather, it's almost the opposite: it's more like, "We have been promised this future at which we will all get out of the car and be with each other--so we had better be all the more gracious, all the more compassionate, all the more interested in the well-being of the 'other', because we realize that controlling the radio station or getting more square footage of the shared armrest is not all that important in the big scheme of things.

When you remember, while driving, that you are going to get to be with all those people in the car at whatever point you arrive together, you care a lot more about how you treat them now, because you realize the battle for control of the thermostat is not worth losing a friendship over.  The friendship should be real--the question of whether it is 71 degrees or 76 degrees inside the car is the non-issue by comparison.  When you remember what matters, what the point of the journey is, it becomes a lot clearer that it's not worth being a jerk on the drive.  And it's not worth being self-centered, either.

I mention all of this because the Bible has this way of holding out to us this grand promise--of life in which we no longer kill each other, in which we no longer imagine ourselves safer because we have more guns than the next person, in which creation's aches will be healed over, too.  And yet we, yes we religious people, have a way of living our lives still day by day as though all that mattered was the piddling contests of life inside the car: who controls the radio, getting to pick where we stop to eat, controlling the temperature the way you like it regardless of how the other people in the car feel.  We have a way of chasing after the momentary pleasures you can find while you are in the car--snagging the last M&M from the bag you are sharing with the person in the passenger seat, even though you already had an extra handful while they were dozing, lobbying the kids in the back seat to take your side in the question of whether to eat at Cracker Barrel or not, when you know that someone else in the car doesn't like going there, or pitching a fit about the music.  We have a way, we religious folks, of still playing the world's games of focusing on getting more money, complaining about our taxes, acting like the world will end if your party loses the election, chasing after our own interests, and leaving the work of caring for other people undone.  That happens, often, when we forget what is really real, and what is just a meaningless victory over the car thermostat for an hour.

Being a follower of Jesus means living in light of the promised future when grace heals the world, and taking our cues now to see what matters now.  See--it's not that this life, this car ride so to speak, is un-important.  That's the other error sometimes we Christians make when living in light of the promised future: we end up saying "This life doesn't matter at all, because we're going to heaven one day..."  That's not it.  Rather it's that the promised destination tells us what matters now, and what doesn't.  When you realize you are driving to a destination where you will get to have dinner provided in another fifteen minutes, you get less greedy with the Pringles now, because you know your needs will be provided for and you don't have to take from the kid in the back seat who is hungry and doesn't understand what "fifteen minutes" means.  When you realize that you are going to live with all the people who are in the car now still once you get out of the car, you treat them with greater care than if you could just walk away and burn the bridge.  You spend the time reading a book out loud to the kids in the car, or you spend the time talking with the elderly great-grandparent in the passenger seat, even if it is boring to you, because they matter more than your momentary entertainment.

Today, then, the question to ask is this: if God has promised, as God seems to have done here in Hosea chapter two, to heal all that is hurting in this world, to end violence, to protect not only the humans but the animals and birds of creation too, to provide enough for all--if that is the promised destination, then what things will matter in this day, this life, this car ride... and what things will not?  What things will it be worth pouring yourself into, like--as they say in the famous play about Alexander Hamilton--"you are running out of time," and what things will you realize were a waste that kept you from loving the people God had put in your path?

In the decade and change that I have been living and praying alongside people at all sorts of moments of their lives, and often in dying moments as people felt themselves arriving at that promised destination, I have never heard anyone say, "I wish I had gone to more cocktail parties."  I have never heard, "I wish I had more money to hold right now." I have never heard someone say, "I wish I had fought with my sister more over the inheritance."  And I have never heard someone say in their final breath, "I wish I had had more me time."

Somehow in those moments, there is often an awe-some clarity of what things we have spent our time and energy on well, and what things were wasted nights chatting up the good old days or misspent Saturday mornings, what things were beautifully given gifts to other people, and what are the regrettable moments of our selfishness.  Somehow, in the moments before the promised arrival home, we realize we have been fussing too much over getting "my share" of the snacks, or more space on the back seat bench, when those things become meaningless the moment you step out of the car. 

God has promised a day when the world will be healed and war will be done.  How will you live today in light of that destination?  And what things suddenly lose their appeal in light of that promise?

Lord God, give us today the clarity to live in light of your promised healing of the world... and to live differently now because of it.

Taken by the Hand

Taken by the Hand--October 26, 2016

“As soon as they left the synagogue, they entered the house of Simon and Andrew, with James and John. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was in bed with a fever, and they told him about her at once. He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up. Then the fever left her, and she began to serve them." [Mark 1:29-31]

Pay attention to Jesus’ hands.  There is something wonderful about Jesus’ hands.  Pay close attention….

Anytime I am reading a story in the Bible, I find it worth asking, “Why was this story held onto in the first place, and why might it have been remembered in the way it was?”  Why are some details remembered and held onto like precious stones, and why are other details lost in the mists of time?  The Gospel-writers are, after all, a lot like movie-makers, choosing the angles and scene breaks as they tell the story that has been given to them.  Why does one director’s version of the Robin Hood story seem so campy and lighthearted, and another’s seem so dark? Why does one choose to start the story with Robin already a popular folk hero, and another tells an elaborate back-story for how Robin became the person he was.  If we are allowed to ask these questions about movies, it’s fair to ask them about the way the biblical writers tell the stories they are passing onto us.  After all, the gospel-writers think that the story they are telling is a matter of life and death, of history-changing good news—so it’s worth it to take a moment sometimes and to ask why the story goes the way it does, and why some details stick.

Take this short little story for a moment. It’s a short one, but at the same time, you almost wonder why Mark even bothered to tell it, given that he and the other Gospel writers apparently had no problem skipping over just about all of the first thirty years of Jesus’ life.  Mark himself doesn't even given us the birth of Jesus--just a sudden arrival of a thirty-something on the scene at the Jordan River, and then he is off to the races.  But for whatever interesting questions we might have that go unanswered in the gospels—what was Jesus like as a young boy? What was his first word?  How did he come to recognize his calling as God’s Messiah?  and surely many more—Mark stops his camera and parks it on this moment, for this short exchange with Jesus and Simon Peter’s mother-in-law.  Why? (Surely, it’s more than to tip us off that at least some of the disciples were married, which seems to poke some gaping holes in the idea that Jesus can’t use leaders who are married.)

While we’re stopping to ask questions, doesn’t this scene come across as a little anti-climactic, compared with some of the other miracles of healing Jesus does? Whether it's casting out demons, restoring sight to the blind, curing sickness at a distance just with a word even when Jesus isn't in the same room as the sick person, or raising the dead, there is something of a spectacle in the healing. But here, with Simon Peter’s mother-in-law, it’s just a fever. Certainly that was serious in the first century, but by comparison, that just seems like small potatoes up against a story of demon possession or the cry, "Lazarus, come out of the grave!" doesn't it?  This miracle barely seems miraculous, really—no lightning or thunder, no twelve baskets of leftovers. 

But this scene is different.  And it may just be that there is a method to Mark’s madness here.  Jesus touches Simon’s mother-in-law.  He “took her by the hand and lifted her up.”  Curious detail to hold onto, isn’t it, Mark?  You could have just said, “Jesus healed her, and she got up.”  But Mark mentions touch.  He shows us Jesus offering his hand and taking this woman by her hand, and helping her to her feet. Why?

Well, consider this:  obviously, Jesus doesn’t have to touch people to make them well.  Jesus can heal the centurion's servant at a distance without ever entering the house.  Jesus can cast out demons with just a word. So Jesus’ power is not like magic—it’s not about having the right technique, in other words, to get it “right.”  So if Jesus doesn’t have to touch someone with his own hand to heal them, but he chooses to anyway, like in today’s story, what does it mean?  It means Jesus chose to come that close.  It means that Jesus doesn’t worry about the most efficient way to be the Messiah—a quick spoken healing here, a speedy verbal exorcism there—he is willing to take people by the hand.  That’s what the Gospel is all about, after all—the God who comes close to us in our own human life, the God who can take us by the hand, through the human hands of Jesus.  The other kinds of healing stories remind us that it didn’t have to be this way—that means Jesus chose to take Simon’s mother-in-law by the hand.  It means that Jesus is willing to come that close to heal us, too. Not just a booming voice from a distant heaven, but a God who comes and takes us by the hand.

Sometimes, I think we assume that if God is so good and so powerful, God should just blink and nod with crossed arms like a scene from I Dream of Jeannie and fix all the world's ills all at once.  But Jesus shows us a God who has a certain bedside manner--a God who comes close, right at our side, to share whatever we are going through with us, and who is willing to be less than efficient to take us by the hand and help us through.

If you have found yourself wondering at some point in your life, "Why hasn't God fixed this yet?  Why isn't there a cure?  Why am I still waiting for an answer? Why hasn't God filled that empty place in my life? Why isn't there a clear perfect solution right now that appears in my inbox at the end of my prayers?"  then maybe this scene from Mark's Gospel is part of the answer.  The God we see in Jesus chooses, so often, to take the time to take us by the hand and go through the hurt together with us.

What are you facing in your world today where you need to be reminded of the One who is holding your hand? And who are the people in your world today who could use the reminder, too, who might recognize divine fingerprints in their lives because you have been there to take them by the hand?

Come close to us, Lord Jesus, and let us know we are in your good hands.



The Hurts Between Us

The Hurts Between Us--October 25, 2016

"But now in Christ Jesus, you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us.  He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one both through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it." [Ephesians 2:13-16]

A funny thing happened to me on the way to meet my son for the first time.  Well, not so much a "funny" thing as an awful, horrible, painful thing. 

My wife and I had a drive of about an hour and a half to a Children and Youth Services office to meet an 18-month old who had been in foster care from birth, and after about an hour on the road, we stopped at a gas station-convenience-McDonald's rest stop--nerves and excitement and a sense of the unknown have a way of making coffee go right through you.  As I walked into the bathroom down the back hallway of this rest stop, I didn't pay much attention at all to the man who was leaving as I was entering.  In the split second that I saw him, I noticed a figure of average height, dressed appropriately for the weather--a coat that suited the February weather.  He was African-American, with close-cut hair, and other than that, I can't recall anything else that stood out about him.  As I say, he was walking out of the restroom, efficiently and politely, as I was walking in.  Other than the inescapable weirdness of the moment when you are walking into a public restroom and someone else is throwing their used paper towels in the trash can which has been set in the wall at a spot that is perilously close to the doorway, it was an entirely unmemorable interaction.

Well, anyway, I'm walking into the restroom, and as I pass the sinks and the one or two other occupants of the men's room, fixing their hair in the mirror or heading to a stall or whatever, there is someone there washing his hands--someone whose forebears probably came from the same geography in northern Europe that mine did, probably. And once the door has shut behind me, he looks at me with a nod back at the doorway and says something like, "Now it feels better in here."

I looked back in stunned silence.  I wasn't sure what was happening--and whether I was really hearing what I thought I was hearing.  "Now it feels better in here?"  Now that someone whose skin is a different color has left the room, now it feels better to you?  Are you serious?  My mind looked for any other possible interpretation to what he was saying, because, I thought, there had to be something else I was missing.  And why was I the lucky one to get hit with this awful observation? Was he talking to me?  Seriously?  What about me made this total stranger assume that I would share his opinion? What about me gave the unspoken impression that I shared his disregard for the man who had just left the bathroom as I was coming in?  The sheer casualness of his bigotry stunned me--it was all said with a smile, like he was doing the world a favor to make his little observation.

I don't know what else I should have done in that moment, but as truly disoriented as I was, I just walked past the man and didn't even acknowledge what he said.  Some part of my brain was still scrambling for any way to make sense of what had just been said to me, and whether there was any other possible way to hear what he had said, or any other missing piece of the context that would make what this stranger at the sink said not be horrifying.  I could find none.  By the time I turned back to look at the counter of sinks, he was already gone, and I had no idea at the moment what I could have said to him--I have been a preacher long enough to have limited expectations regarding the persuasive power of my words, even from a pulpit, and this was a public bathroom.

I walked into that restroom excited and nervous and hopeful to meet my son, my son whose hands and face and arms and legs and skin are the beautiful color of sassafras wood, and in the midst of all the hopeful possibilities in front of me, here I was confronted by an ugly moment of racism made uglier because it was so casual and said with a smile.  That was hardly the first time I had ever experienced someone saying something awful about another group of people--but that day, in that moment, it hit me in a whole new way.  Sheltered white kids from suburbia learn that "prejudice is bad" in school in an abstract way, but here in a conversation out of nowhere, all of a sudden there was this voice that not only wallowed in demeaning someone else, but assumed that I was a part of it, too. 

I walked out of the bathroom shaking.  This was the world--this is the world--in which I was going to raise my son. This is the world in which he lives, even if he does not know it or understand it yet at five years old now.  He has met all sorts of wonderful people, and there are many, many people who have shown nothing but kindness and love to him.  And for all he knows right now, that is all there are in the world.  There will come days, I know, when he will have to learn otherwise.  There will come days when he learns, whether from history class or from some else's smiling bigotry, that there are strands of casual hatred woven into our common life together, and that often the people who display it most clearly do not recognize it is there inside them.  Often the people who are convinced there is no racism in the world are the ones who have simply been drinking it in small doses all their lives, like someone trying to build up a tolerance for arsenic, that they no longer recognize the taste of poison on their tongues.  And often, sheltered kids from suburbia are convinced that nobody really says or things such awful things about another group of people, just because of the color of their skin, or the way they dress, they way they speak, or the land their parents came from--no, surely not... those things were all "fixed" decades ago, right?  We wish to believe that overt, smiling racism went extinct long ago... and then like a coelacanth you find it waiting for you, alive and well, and grinning with an ugly, heart-breaking grin.

That episode of only, what, five minutes, in a rest stop was, I am well aware, nothing compared to the actual violence that has been done in human history between one group of people against another.  I don't pretend it was historic... except to me.  It was one of those moments in which I realized there is no escaping the reality that we humans keep inventing ways--and rehashing the old ways--to divide ourselves up along lines, and then to decree that we're all gonna hate the people on the other side of the line.  We have done it from the beginning, practically, and we have kept doing it all along.  As much as I wish I could protect my son and my daughter from a world that keeps doing that, and as much as I wish I could inoculate them from the sickness, it will be around them as they grow up, and as they become good, fine, solid adults.  I start to wonder, too, about myself--why was I ok with that latent smiling racism before it was MY kids I pictured?  When it's anybody's kids, is it ever ok? When it's any mother's son, any father's daughter, is it OK to demean them? 

I walked out of that bathroom shaking and shaken, because I am still slowly coming to realize that I have spent a lot of my life comfortably insulated from the reality of other people being looked down on, hated, demeaned, and excluded, and I haven't thought it was a problem, because it wasn't being said to me.  That always made bigotry seem like a dodo--an awkward and ugly bird of the past, but which was all but gone except in history books, museums, and re-runs of All in the Family.  But now there is no ignoring it--we humans have a way of dividing ourselves up and cutting each other down, not just along lines of skin color, but with gender and sex and tax bracket and language and culture and faith.  And we are so good at it that it is like second nature--we don't even know we are doing it when we are doing it, so we can do it with a smile while we are washing our hands.

In the midst of that reality--that painful, difficult reality--there are these words from the New Testament that speak of a different kind of hope.  It is not the head-in-the-sand approach that ignores our human tendency to draw lines between us and scorn the ones on the wrong side of the line.  And it is not a simple, "Well just try harder and we'll fix it by sheer will power," either--that is just as naïve.  The hope we are given from Scripture is Christ--who absorbs our hatred from all sides and makes us one.  The hope from the New Testament is not that with one more after-school special on TV we can make ourselves all be nice and kind to everybody, or that we can imagine ourselves color-blind.  The hope from the New Testament, rather, is a new kind of human community, a new way of being human altogether, in which, as Paul says to the Galatians, "there is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer free or slave, there is no longer male and female."  There is, in other words, the hope that the wounds and gashes between us can be healed--even if some part of us had been wishing to ignore that we were sick in the first place.

Now you know the beginning of the story of the day I met my son.  The middle of the story is, of course, both still unknown and plenty troubling--there are still going to be plenty of encounters with the kind of proud hate that smiles while it demeans.  And I am going to mess up plenty trying to raise children to live in that world, just like I am messing up being someone who tries to love people rightly.  The middle of the story is still fraught with potential for heartache.

But we know the end of the story already.  We have been promised that God will not leave us divided forever, but has already made us into one new humanity in Christ Jesus, even if we don't all know it yet. We have been promised that the old enmity will at last be worn away.  We have been promised that subtle bigotry and smiling hatred don't get the last word--God does.  And God in Christ has brought us all together in him.  Christ says we are one humanity, no matter what other lines we keep drawing.   

On the day I met my son, I learned just how much I need that promise from Jesus.  And when we say, as we have been doing all month here, that "grace heals the world," at least part of what God has promised is not to leave us hating each other with cruelly casual smiles, but rather to make us each into new creations.

I need that hope today.  We all do.

Lord Jesus, pull down every last wall we keep putting up between us and others, and give us the courage to live now like it has already been done.  Teach us to love like you.

 

Straight Lines or Circles?

Straight Lines Or Circles?--October 24, 2016

 

"He [Epaphroditus] was indeed so ill that he nearly died.  But God had mercy on him, and not only on him but on me also, so that I would not have one sorrow after another." [Philippians 2:27]

Let’s put it this way:  God is considerably more efficient than we are.  God, you could say, has a way of getting a whole flock of birds for every stone—not just one or two.

We tend to have a much narrower, much more limited, view of things.  We often will look at an event and figure that there is—at best—one “thing” that God is trying to accomplish through it.  And we tend to assume that the “one thing” God has in mind will be obvious and dramatic, when sometimes it turns out that God has been accomplishing all sorts of outcomes through a single turn of events.

So, for example, when someone who has been ill gets better, quite often we look at the situation and say, “God healed them because God had something more for them to do in life,” and we leave it at that.  We tend to assume that the patient, the one who had been sick, is the only one God is really interested in within that situation, and so their healing must be directly related to something God is going to do with that one person, and only that person.  End of story. Start dusting the chalk off your hands and move onto the next problem, professor.  Right?

Or maybe, it’s more complicated that than.  Maybe wonderfully complicated.  Maybe, because God turns out to be a whole lot cleverer than we are, God is arranging a whole web of connections through the one event.  Maybe God’s designs are more intricate than simply saying, “Domino A knocks over Domino B.” 

Paul sees this in this more involved, more intertwined, sort of way.  His friend and co-worker in the gospel, Epaphroditus, had been sick to the point of death.  Now he is better and recuperating.  But Paul doesn’t just say, “God is going to collect a favor from good old Epaphroditus for this one day, and that’s why God healed him.”  Paul doesn’t limit the consequences to the healed man alone, but to Paul himself.  “God had mercy on him,” Paul writes, “and not only on him but on me also.”  That is, Paul can see at least in a glimpse that God is doing more than just helping one person’s life (Epaphroditus’ obviously) through this healing.  God is showing mercy not only to the sick man, but to those whose hearts are fraught with worry over Epaphroditus.  God is being merciful to Paul, too, by restoring Epaphroditus to health, because it just would have broken Paul’s tired heart to lose such a friend at this time.  And God is being merciful to the Philippians, who are going to benefit by Epaphroditus’ coming to visit them, and who would be sorrowful, too, if something happened to him.  And if you think about it, if you look down the chain of historical events, the Christians in Philippi are a part of a great web that stretches across two thousand years to include you and me.  We have all benefited because this one man, Epaphroditus, was healed.  God had all of us in mind, and all of us are part of God’s “design” (if you want to call it that) in healing Epaphroditus.  You can’t boil it down to a simple, one-directional, straight line from motive to cause to effect, like, “He must have been healed because God was rewarding him for good behavior.”   That kind of thinking just seems too… linear… and too narrow for an infinite God’s purposes.    God is so much bigger than a single straight line.

So… consider the day in front of you.  Some blessing, some bit of good news, may have already come to you.  Your sick friend is going home from the hospital, and the prognosis is good.  Or a relative who has been out of work for a long time is, at long last, hired for a new position.  Or someone speaks a word of encouragement to you out of the blue.  You might first think, “Oh, that’s nice.  It was nice of God to look for me and my needs by having them write me this note.”  But if we can follow Paul’s thinking, we can recognize that there may be something else at the same time that God, in all God’s wisdom, is accomplishing in the very same situation. The person who wrote you the encouragement needed to know that their note-writing was helpful for you, and is spurred from your note to write to another ten people in the next month… who find themselves so encouraged they come back to church on a Sunday… and their grandkids are there now, too, with them!  The relative who gets the new job is not only helped by having a new source of income, but also now supports some local ministry like the food bank or clothes closet with his money, and now yet more people’s lives are touched with the graciousness of God.  The friend who had been in the hospital says something to the nurse before being discharged that sparks a new wave of faith in the nurse’s life and gets the whole family to come to worship.  God may be accomplishing a hundred small (but important) things alongside some obvious thing that is going on.  We just don’t know what that hundred is.  But it is clear that God’s Spirit ripples out in circles that are so much bigger than a simple connect-the-dots straight line.

Today, let us have our eyes open for ways that God’s fingerprints can be seen in our lives—and how that will make a difference for others that are in our lives in ways we cannot predict.  Today, let us see how grace heals not just you or me, but the whole world, beginning with each of us. Let’s see the ways that mercy will ripple out in this day.

Lord God, we can so often only see a narrow line of cause and effect, when in fact you are infinitely beyond our ability understand your purposes.  Help us today to see more deeply and widely how you are already at work drawing others to yourself, through many moments and means.

What We Don't Believe

What We Don't Believe--October 21, 2016

"Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me, bless his holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and do not forget all his benefits--who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from the Pit, who crowns you with steadfast love and mercy, who satisfies you with good as long as you live, so that your youth is renewed like the eagle's." [Psalm 103:1-5]

There is an old cliché that says when you cross paths with someone who is fiercely certain that there is no God, the best response you can make--rather than getting defensive and shouting Bible verses at them or threatening them with descriptions of hell--is to start a conversation with this invitation: "Ok--tell me about the god you don't believe in."

Like I say, that is by now a fairly well-worn line, so you may well have heard it, or even used it, at some point before.  But there's a reason that clichés are cliché, after all--there is often something durable about them, something reliable that makes us keep going back to them like wells on the family farm.  And in this case, there is a decent amount of value in reframing a conversation with the sentence, "Tell me about the god you don't believe in," because it does something both to the devout believer and the hardened skeptic.  For the diehard, devoted, Bible-reading crowd, it forces us to consider that if people have come to doubt the existence of God it may well be at least in part because we who say we believe in God have sometimes been terrible P.R. people for the divine.  And for those who struggle with faith, it opens the door to the possibility that maybe the caricature of God in pop culture isn't what Jesus had in mind anyhow when he prayed to his Abba.

Quite often, the skeptic who cannot bring him or herself to a faith in any sort of deity has only ever heard religious people talk about a god who looks more like the old Greek Zeus than the Spirit of God who brooded over the waters of creation in Genesis.  Quite often, people have been given this picture of the divine as a bearded old man, who wields lightning bolts and capriciously throws them at mortals who break his arbitrary rules about what thou shalt and shall not do, and who sides with the strong, the popular, the well-to-do, and the winners. 

Quite often, in other words, the picture of "God" that is propped up in the wider world is a sort of two-dimensional underwriter of the status quo.  You're rich?  Well, that's a sign of divine favor rewarding you for all your hard work.  You're poor? Clearly, punishment from the same celestial CEO in the sky who is punishing you for being lazy.  Ostracized and excluded? You must be an especially reprehensible sinner that any respectable deity would never associate with.  You came out on top against your opponents?  You must have received divine favor and a heavenly endorsement. 

There is a word for all of that thinking, and it is the primary ingredient in fertilizer. 

None of that, at least, is what the real voices of the Scriptures have in mind when they talk about who God is and what makes God great.  The God of the Old and New Testaments is decidedly less predictable--forgiving stinkers who seemed to be just itching for lightning bolts, lifting up the lowly, promising good news for those who have been labeled losers, outsiders, and unacceptable, and who, in Jesus, seems much less interested in decreeing rules than we would have expected.  And instead of being some sort of cosmic stamp of approval on "the way things are," the Scriptures give us this rather subversive story of a God who takes on tyrants, emperors, pharaohs, and other assorted pompous blowhards, and takes them down a few pegs, from freeing the slaves under Pharaoh's nose, to planting resistance to Nebuchadnezzar and his gold statues meant to trumpet his own greatness, to Jesus casually mocking out the puppet king Herod, to secretly getting the apostle Paul sent to the capital of the empire to bring the liberating news of Jesus to the very center of communication in the ancient world, and making it all happen on Rome's dime.  It's Mary's song, praising a God who takes down the overly-inflated powerful and "winners" from their boardroom amchairs and fills the hungry with good things.  It's the promise to Paul that weakness is where divine strength really gets seen.  It's the hype in the book of Revelation looking for a Lion to appear, and then discovering that the hero is a Lamb all along.

None of that is what people usually assume when they talk generically about the existence or non-existence of God/gods.  Usually, it is just a question of whether you believe there is a great white-bearded man in the sky keeping order and preserving the way things are. 

And so, part of our calling as witnesses is to remind folks--ourselves included--that we do not believe in Zeus, nor in some generic, store-brand version of Zeus, either.  The God we have come to know and see in the Scriptures is decidedly less interested in zapping, and infinitely more invested in healing.  The God of Israel, the Abba on whom Jesus calls, doesn't prop up emperors and tyrants, but whispers to the heartbroken and bone-weary, "It will be all right--I will be here with you.  I will make you whole."

That is the God in whom we believe.  That is the God the psalmist cries out to--not a celestial CEO firing us when we mess up, but the One "who forgives all your iniquity, who heals all your diseases."  When we cross paths with people who are dead sure there is no god, it is worth asking if they are picturing the first or the second--because it just might turn out that we don't believe in that false first god, either.  Not a cosmic man behind a curtain pulling levers like the Wizard of Oz.  Not a celestial Boss figure doling out punishments with reckless ease.  Not a crutch for history's powerful to exploit the weak.  But rather the living God is the Healer of our sicknesses, the Liberator of slaves, the One giving hope to the captives and exile, and the Source of mercy for the world.

Who do we really believe God is?  And can we speak honestly and graciously about the God we have met in Jesus, the God who is praised here in the psalms--the God who heals this world full of sinners and sell-outs as a gift of sheer grace?

Lord Jesus, we praise you for who you are to us and for us--thank you for healing and for mercy.  Let us re-present you for the world as you really are... the source of grace for all things.

Less Like a Deal

Less Like A Deal--October 20, 2016

"And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." [John 3:14-17]

Don't think sales pitch.  Think heart transplant.

Lutheran singer and songwriter Jonathan Rundman puts it beautifully in his song, "Forgiveness Waltz."  This refrain keeps coming back, that God's grace, God's forgiveness is "less like math... less like a deal.... more like a heartbreak beginning to heal--we can start over; we know forgiveness."

We are used to hearing these words from John's Gospel like they are a deal, like Jesus is the great divine vacuum salesman here to promote his new product. "All you have to do is sign on the dotted line," we can picture a neatly-groomed Messiah saying in suit and tie at our front door, "and your free ticket to heaven is waiting!  All for a low, low price--believe these facts about God, and you'll secure your place in glory."  Even the way we are used to seeing that Bible reference, John 3:16, held up just as a Bible reference on posters at football games, looks more like an advertisement along with all the other ads, corporate logos, and billboards, than it sounds like good news.  And given the way so much else in our culture is presented as part of one unending advertising campaign, it can sound like that's all that Jesus offers, too--one more deal for sale from a polished salesman.

But if we listen to Jesus himself, if we actually listen to him, it's clear that Jesus isn't wearing the shirt and tie of the corporate vendor shilling some new package deal--he is wearing the scrubs of the heart surgeon healing us from the inside out as a gift of grace.  Jesus makes a reference to "Moses lifting up the serpent in the wilderness" here in the lead-up to the famous words of John 3:16--one of those stories from Israel's distant memory of healing.  Jesus calls to mind a story of how grace healed for free once before as a picture of himself.

It's the story of a time when the people of Israel had started complaining that God wasn't doing enough for them, and God had let them feel the full brunt of what it would be like if God weren't there defending them against the dangers of the wilderness and the pangs of hunger.  So these poisonous snakes encroach on the camp of the Israelites, and they bite a lot of the people, and they are threatened by this very real, very deadly malady. And at that point, Moses pleads to God simply on the basis of mercy--not because the people are really good at heart and have earned a second chance, but seriously just on the basis of God's goodness and grace.  And God grants that mercy--God provides a way for the people who have been bitten to be saved.  God tells Moses to make an image of a serpent out of bronze, and when he puts it up on a pole, anyone who looks on the bronze serpent will be healed.  That's it.  No statement of apologies. No probationary period of good behavior.  No test of the sincerity of their faith.  Just look--just let your eyeballs pass in the direction of the bronze serpent--and the healing was given.  A brand new life, a brand new start, given as a free gift from God to a bunch of stinkers who had just been complaining an hour before about how bad a job God was doing at taking care of them.  God wasn't selling anything that day to the Israelites--God saved their lives as a free gift given to a bunch of whiners and doubters.

And that is the story Jesus chooses, of all the stories from the history of Israel, to set up the right way to understand himself and his coming.  It is the story, not of God offering willing customers a good "deal" if they would accept it, but God giving a free gift they almost couldn't help but receive.  Like I say, it's more like a heart transplant than a sales pitch.  And when Jesus takes that story and applies it to himself, the point is the same: here is God, once again healing and saving a world full of stinkers and complainers, who are used to the logic of salesmen and vendors, but who are always caught off guard by the surprise of real grace.  God sends the Son--Jesus--as the free gift of healing to people dying of snake bites. God sends the Son--Jesus--in such a way that you almost can't help but be touched by his healing power.  God sends the Son--Jesus--not to offer a conditional service to paying customers only, but to a world full of people with broken and dead hearts that need a new one to make us live again.  And God sends the Son--Jesus--as the donor's heart, too.

Jesus means what he says, and that makes him radical.  God is intent on really, actually, truly, saving the world--even though "the world" is the very system of people who are dead-set against God and who don't think they need a savior.  This is part of what really should make us think hard about John 3:16 before waving it around at ballgames--it is perhaps far more radical than we give it credit for, and more radical than we are prepared to be in our understanding of God's love.  To say that God "loves the world" is to say that God embraces, graces, and forgives an awful lot of evildoers, and that God doesn't think this is a mistake. 

So often our assumption is that the only response to bad guys who threaten us is to find some good guys who can threaten them back louder and more convincingly (maybe with bigger sticks or weapons to scare them more, too, for dramatic effect).  But Jesus himself--in the very verse that everybody knows so well and points to as their favorite--Jesus himself says that God's response to evildoers and bad guys is to die for them.... and in fact, to offer them healing in the process.  If you don't like a God who helps out undeserving jerks, crooks, robbers and criminals (like one on the cross next to Jesus), this is your warning--don't read John 3:16.  Ignore it, and pretend it isn't in your Bible.  And instead, insert your own made-up verse about a God who is selling tickets to heaven if you say the right magic words about Jesus first.  But that is not the way Jesus himself sees things.  Jesus himself sees his coming into the world--and into our lives--like a surgeon giving us a new heart when we were basically dead men and women walking, even when we couldn't pay for it, and even when we didn't want to admit we needed it.

Could we dare to let God be so radical in love as John 3:16 really describes?

And could we dare in this day also to let our own love be so radical in its graciousness?

Lord Jesus, help us to hear you rightly--not as a divine salesman at the door of our hearts, but as the surgeon who has come to give us a new heart for free.  And let our own love for others be just as free.

The Power to Heal

The Power to Heal--October 19, 2016

"Then some people came, bringing to him a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' Now some of the scribes were sitting them, questioning in their hearts, 'Why does this fellow speak in this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?' At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussion these questions among themselves; and he said to them, 'Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Stand up and take your mat and walk? But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins'--he said to the paralytic--'I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.' And he stood up, and immediately took the mat and went out before all of them; so that they were all amazed and glorified God, saying, 'We have never seen anything like this!'" [Mark 2:3-12]

There are two things you need to know in this day:

(1) You have the power to heal the hurt in someone else that Jesus thinks is the most pressing to deal with.

(2) The Queen does not need your ax-head anymore.

Confused yet?

Ok, let's start with the second one:  it turns out that the city of London, yes, in England, pays an annual rent to the Queen of England for several old (and now long-lost) pieces of property with rental arrangements that go back to the 13th century.  Nobody knows for sure any more which pieces of land they were, or what is there now. Nevertheless, the tradition persists that every year, representatives of the city of London conduct a "Ceremony of Quit Rents" with the Royal rent-keeper, titled "the Queen's Remembrancer," and the original terms of the rent are paid.  For one particular piece of property in the County of Shropshire, the terms are one knife (called a billhook) and one ax.  Yep--for eight hundred years, the city of London has been paying, as rent, to the reigning monarch of the United Kingdom, one knife, and one ax, to settle the year's debt in rent for a property that no one can identify any longer.   This is true, all true.  Silly, but true.  And, perhaps just out of appreciation of the sheer tradition of it, the same old debt is collected every year, even though the Queen surely isn't out chopping firewood with her annual ax, and even though nobody in London even knows which piece of moorland in the County of Shropshire they are renting. 

It is an old debt that everybody is just so used to having that it is never put away once and for all.  Now, all it would take to make this odd little inconvenience of a ceremony go away would be the word of the Crown to say, "We are cancelling this debt," and it would all go away.  Alas, the debt persists... and every year another ax is presented to a regent who might well just toss it into a pile with the previous eight hundred.

And there, dear friends, is the rub: for eight hundred years, and for perhaps no other reason that that "we have always done it that way for as long as anyone can remember," a tiny, petty debt is being held onto, rather than being let go of once and for all.  Maybe the power of the sheer tradition itself is so strong that the Queen herself doesn't even feel she could stop it all and forgive the debt if she wanted to.


By contrast, as I hinted above, you have the power to heal the hurt in someone else's life that Jesus things is the most glaringly in need of attention. You have the power to speak forgiveness into other people's lives.


That's the detail that jumps out at me from this story early in Mark's Gospel: when the paralyzed man's friends go to all that trouble to lower their friend to Jesus, through a hole in the roof, the first thing Jesus does for the man is to speak forgiveness to him.  Forgiveness!  As though that were really what needed to be addressed first, and the physical sickness was just a side issue or afterthought! 


The connection between forgiveness and healing keeps coming back in the Bible--not that you have to get some official religious pronouncement of forgiveness in order to get God to heal your ailment, but rather that healing the relationships between us (and between us and God, too) is of one piece with the healing of the bodies that are us.  These are all part of the same great act of redemption that God is doing: forgiveness and healing, healing and forgiveness.


And while you and I may feel like we don't have the supernatural ability to heal people miraculously like Jesus did, we do have the power to speak God's forgiveness--and our own--to one another.  Jesus has given his disciples the authority to announce God's forgiveness far and wide.  We do have the power to bring mercy into people's lives, and Jesus himself seems to think that is the most urgent issue of all.  We can be the ones who break with all the old silly grudges, whose origins have been long forgotten like the property in the moorland of the County of Shropshire.  We can be the ones who tell people trapped in the familiarity of their old debts, "You are free."  We can announce to people waiting to hear it that God's forgiveness is for them, too.  That power is yours, and the authority of Jesus is behind it.


Sometimes I think we 21st century Christians are afraid to talk much about the power to heal, because we have seen too many tv preachers and religious hucksters before, and we can see how many pretenders out there have solicited donations and taken advantage of people's goodwill by making the false claim that they could supernaturally heal people when in fact they were just snake-oil salesmen.  But to take this story seriously is to say that the power of speaking forgiveness into someone's life is a kind of healing, and in fact, it just might be the kind Jesus thinks is most needed. The authority to announce forgiveness is the power to say, "You are free from this debt.  You can stop carrying it, like the weight of an ax-head, around with you wherever you go.  The Queen is no longer holding this against you.  You really are free." 


Now, if you knew that you had the God-given power to bring healing to everybody you came across, and you kept it to yourself, that would  be a pretty rotten thing to do.  If you had the Spirit-given ability to relieve people of the burdens they are carrying, and then chose not to help anyone, that would be a terrible shame and a waste of a holy power.  So... what will you do on this day with the divine authority you really have been given?  How will you be the voice today that speaks of God's mercy to people who are carrying old burdens and still think they have to pay off old debts that God has already cancelled at the cross?  How will you be the one someone else is waiting for who says, "Your sins are already forgiven--you are free to stand up straight now, and walk!" and who says it on the authority of Jesus?


The Queen of England might be too afraid to break with tradition and cancel the old, long-forgotten debts owed to the crown, but you do not have to be too afraid on this day to announce that the Ruler of all creation has already declared a universal pardon.  Speak the healing of forgiveness to someone today who needs to hear it.


Lord God, let us be a part of how your grace heals the world--let us be voices of your mercy to someone else today.

Not for Sale

Not for Sale--October 18, 2016

"Now when the apostles at Jerusalem heard that Samaria had accepted the word of God, they sent Peter and John to them. The two went down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit (for as yet the Spirit had not come upon any of them; they had only been baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus).  Then Peter and John laid their hands on them, and they received the Holy Spirit. Now when Simon saw that the Spirit was given through the laying on of the apostles' hands, he offered them money, saying, 'Give me also this power so that anyone on whom I lay my hands may receive the Holy Spirit.' But Peter said to him, 'May your silver perish with you, because you thought you could obtain God's gift with money!  You have no part or share in this, for your heart is not right before God. Repent therefore of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you'." [Acts 8:14-22]

There are those rare occasions when the word "No" is the most gracious word that can be said.  This is one of them.  No--grace is not for sale.  No--help is not just for paying customers.  And when you try to make grace a commodity for sale, the most gracious thing that can be said is simply, "No."

You can already figure the gist of the situation between Peter (yes, that Peter, the same Simon Peter who was a central leader of the early church and one of Jesus' original twelve disciples) and Simon (often called Simon Magus, or Simon the Magician, because obviously there are a lot of people with the popular name Simon in the New Testament; it was like the name Kimberly or Heather for girls in the 1980s).  Peter and John have come to welcome in new followers of Jesus and to show publicly that they really are welcomed, even though they were outsiders.  (These new believers are from Samaria, and you probably know from enough stories in the Gospels that Samaritans were looked on with utter contempt by most Judeans in the first century, as a result of centuries of animosity between the two groups in both directions.)  Peter and John have come in their role as leaders, with the thought that they can show to the whole rest of the church (including any folks in the church who are nursing private or not-so-private hate in their hearts toward this other ethnic group) that these Samaritans really have been embraced by the grace of God and received the same Holy Spirit as everybody else who has named the name of Jesus.

This by itself is the kind of moment we need to let sink in.  This was bad politics for Peter and John--but they are not politicians (thank God).  It would have been easier to be silent and hold off on endorsing these Samaritans.  It would have been easier for them to be silent as to whether they should be included.  It would have been easier to ignore the hateful things that the members of First Church of Jerusalem had been saying about "those people..." or all the awful and Christ-less things they had surely been posting about "those Samaritans and their dangerous agenda" on Facebook.  But instead, Peter and John go down to Samaria to embrace them and show everybody--including the crossed-arm, scowling, and skeptical Christians back in Jerusalem--that the reach of grace includes everybody we thought was unlovable, unusable, unacceptable.  That by itself is a word of grace healing the world.

But there is another chapter to the story.  There was a flim-flam artist in the same town, too--Simon.  He was as good a showman as they come, and he dabbled in putting on spectacles to astound and amaze--for his living.  He was a big, loud, entertaining charlatan, and he didn't like it when someone else got more press than he did.  So he hung close to the Christians who were doing amazing deeds of their own in the name of Jesus and wanted to get access to the same power they had.  But showmen are salesmen, too, by definition--they sell the spectacle they perform.  And Simon was looking for ways he could sell more tickets.  So he approaches Peter and looks to buy the rights and the power and the whole nine yards to harness the power of the Holy Spirit, too.

Now, at first, you might think, "Come on--what's the harm? Isn't it a good thing to spread the Spirit around to as many people as possible?  And if the church made a little money in the process, so they could repave their parking lot or refurbish the nursery, what's the harm in that?  That's win-win!"  But, of course, Peter knows better.  You don't get to sell the power of God.  You can't put a price tag on the Holy Spirit.  And you don't--not nobody, not no-how--get to limit grace only to people who bought a ticket.  Nobody gets to be gatekeepers--the whole point of Peter showing up there in Samaria was to show everyone, Christians included, that God's grace and Spirit were being given audaciously and abundantly even to outsiders like these Samaritan Christians.

So Peter's answer to Simon is No.  A loud and clear No.  No to the money. No the whole notion of selling the Spirit.  No, in fact, to the whole logic of salesmen and showmen.  For Peter, there is no wiggle room of, "Oh, but Simon's really a good guy... he is always so nice... he does these great things..." none at all.  If there is a sales tag anywhere in the picture, the whole thing is tainted... yes, even Simon himself.  Peter says as much to him: "your heart is not right before God."  In other words, this wasn't just one bad idea, but points to a fundamental problem with the logic of the sales floor.  In the Kingdom of God, we don't do things that way.  In the Kingdom of God, grace will not be available for purchase.  Among the people of God, the Spirit is not buy-able--because when you buy something, you think you have control over it... and God will not give over control of the Spirit's power to any of us who would limit or leash that power only to the select few.

In order to really mean the promise that God's grace is here to heal and embrace the world--as in, everybody--Peter has to take a hard line NO position against Simon's business deals, and to dealmakers, sales pitches, business lunches, and all the rest of the trappings of that way of doing things.  Only with empty hands do we come--no money will be accepted in exchange for grace.  Only with empty hands that can open to the hands of the others--even "those people" we weren't so sure about yesterday--will we find that the Spirit has reached down already to fill and embrace us.  And then we discover that empty hands were exactly enough.

Who is Jesus inviting you to say "Yes" to, and to welcome?  And what kinds of deal-making, sales-pitch posturing are we going to say "No" to in order to let grace be free among us today?

Lord God, send your Spirit on us with our empty hands, and give us the courage to say NO to deals and sales pitches, so that your word of grace can speak a louder YES to all.

Unreliable Starlight

Unreliable Starlight--October 17, 2016

"But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings." [Malachi 4:2]

The Shirelles were asking a good question--maybe the essential question of faith.  They just didn't know it in 1961 when they sang it:  will you still love me tomorrow? 

Of course, when it's asked of a boy in a Motown song, it's a reminder of how flighty and fickle the professed promises of a teenager with moonlight and hormones on the brain can be.  But it's also the question of each of us when we hear the promises of "a sun of righteousness" who will "rise with healing in its wings."  The promise of grace healing the world can't help but make us ask the question, along with the Shirelles, "But will my heart be broken when the night meets the morning sun?"  That is, when God promises a "sun of righteousness" to dawn, will its healing prove as reliable in the morning as we were hoping for in the darkness of the night before.

I have been enthralled lately with a science news story that is both fascinating and deeply troubling.  It is the story of  KIC 8462852, also known as Tabby's star, in honor of the astronomer who uncovered the odd things going on with this astronomical oddity.  The mysterious and inconclusive (so far) findings are really quite interesting on their own, but I'll spare you the nitty-gritty.  The short version is that Tabby's star is losing light.  It is dimming--the output of its light that reaches Earth is literally dimming, and it has been doing so in strange fits and starts and spurts.  For a while, this was making scientists entertain the question of whether it was a sign of alien life by a race of extraterrestrials who had figured out how to tap the energy of their star with something like giant solar panels that were blocking the light from us here on Earth.  But even though that doesn't seem to be a likely explanation, it is even more haunting, in a sense, to think that for some mysterious and unexpected reason, a star might just stop shining. 

Mind you, these are scientists who know when to expect a star to die, or to explode, or when it is getting on in years and is ready to go to the stellar nursing home.  And Tabby's star isn't one of those.  It isn't "supposed" to change.  It isn't "supposed" to be fluctuating or varying or dimming.  And yet--there is the data. The scientists don't know if the star itself is shrinking or if something is blocking it, or what. There is less light from this strange star, and nobody on Earth knows why.

I think I find that so troubling first because we think of stars as these virtually eternal objects, and we assume that they will be constant and equally bright forever.  Scientists measure the life-span of stars in terms of billions of years, and they say that our sun has even fuel to keep on chugging for another five billion.  We think of the light of the sun as this unchanging thing... and then here come some scientists who have discovered that even stars like our sun can fail.  Even their bright lights in the cosmic darkness can dim unexpectedly, even when nobody knows how or why, much less how to get them to brighten again. It seems like just about everything we think of as solid, as constant, as reliable and unchanging in this life--even the light of the sun or the stars--can be dimmed without warning.  And yeah, that is rather unnerving to me.  I count on that light--and so do you, and so does every animal and plant on earth.

Well, I wanted to take this little excursus into contemporary astronomy news because of this image from Malachi and the picture of healing it offers.  "The sun of righteousness will rise, with healing in its wings," the prophet says.  And it's a beautiful--but also strange--image, largely because we don't picture the sun having wings anymore in the first place, so we don't know how to picture "healing" in those non-existent wings, much less how to know if we can trust the promises of the light to be there.

The poetic promise from Malachi, that God will send "the sun of righteousness," has usually been understood to be a prediction of the coming Messiah--that one day God would send a divinely chosen person to bring about that "healing."  So the prophet has decided to picture the coming Messiah like the sun rising to start a new day.  A lovely image... but one that raises my newfound fear.  Will I be able to count on this sun?  Will the savior God sends really be dependable?  Reliable?  Will the "sun of righteousness" shine a constant, faithful light, or will it dim over time? Will something get in the way between me and its light?  After all, if it can happen to Tabby's star, what gives me any assurance it won't happen to the Source of Light I have staked my entire life on?

Malachi, perhaps surprisingly, thinks that's a fair question.  In fact, Malachi doesn't get a lot of credit usually for the way he embraces skeptics and makes room for those with questions and doubts.  It's a bit earlier in the book that bears his name that Malachi, speaking in God's voice, dares his readers to give their offerings to God and then "see if I will not open the windows of heaven to you."  In fact, God invites the people to "put me to the test."  It's rather like Malachi is so confident that God will come through that the prophet says, "God will double down on the promise--dare to trust God, and you'll see how God comes through for you, and for all."

In a world like ours in which people make big promises and wild claims to us, often only grounded in, "Believe me!" or "I will do such a great job--you'll see!" maybe we have reason to be skeptical.  We have heard the big claims of hope and healing before--politicians are making them at full tilt these days--and we know (if we are honest) that they will not live up to their own hype.  They cannot, even though they keep on making talking big talk.  We cannot help, knowing what we know about real life suns and stars like Tabby's star, that the light isn't always as constant and reliable as we had been led to believe.  We cannot help worrying, too, if the promise of God will turn out to be the same--that maybe there really won't be healing for our broken places in the end... that maybe God's love won't be there in the morning.

The prophet names our doubt--and he makes room for it.  "Go ahead--risk it," the prophet says.  "I get it: you have been let down before.  I get it: the promise sounds too good to be true.   I get it: you are worried God's word will turn out to be just one more sales pitch like every other sales pitch from every other salesman in history--all talk, all a front, all pretending, just to get us to sign on the dotted line."

And we say, basically, like the Shirelles, "Ok, God, despite all my doubts and all the build-up, will you still love me tomorrow?  Will the light of this sun of righteousness of yours really be there in the morning with healing in its wings."

As you know, when the Shirelles asked it 55 years ago, they never got an answer: after two and a half minutes of singing, the question fades underneath the string section. 

God doesn't leave us with only a string section.  God makes room for our doubts, and still makes the promise all the same.  "The sun of righteousness will rise... with healing in its wings."  There really will be grace to heal.  Bring your doubts and skepticism, and they will see.   Unlike every other star, every other sun, every other voice and promise and person in this life, my light will be the same in the new day.

Well, a new day is here... let's find out.

Lord God, be faithful to your promises, and let your light dawn on our darkness today without dimming or fading.