"What Do We Want?" And Other Upside Down Questions...



"What Do We Want?" And Other Upside Down Questions--February 1, 2017

"Pray then in this way: Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name. Your kingdom come.  Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven..." [Matthew 6:9-10]

Maybe we have been asking the wrong question about yellow.

There's a line of C.S. Lewis' where the great 20th century theologian suggests that a lot of our questions are unanswerable by God, not because God doesn't know the answer, but because nobody can answer a nonsense question.  Lewis gives as an example questions like, "Is yellow round or square?" A wise old pastor from my childhood used to ask, "Is it further to Cleveland... or by bus?" as an example of a nonsense question. You get the drift--there are some times in life where the very questions we are asking are wrong-headed from the get-go, and so any attempt to answer them skews the conversation that unfolds in the wrong direction from the beginning.

We ask upside-questions like that about God all the time.  "How do I earn God's love?" or its cousins, "What do I have to do to get into heaven?" or the way it was phrased in Luke's Gospel, "Teacher, what must I do in order to inherit eternal life?"  Well, if we are serious about the news of God's radical grace screaming to us from the New Testament, we have to stop the conversation at the outset and say, "Wait--love isn't something that can be earned, certainly not God's love!  You can't do anything to inherit anything in life--inheritance is by definition a gift."  We have to say at the start that these questions themselves are upside-down questions--they make assumptions in their very premises that point toward a set of bad answers.

Or take Peter's famous question in the Gospels: "Lord, how many times must I forgive someone who sins against me--as many as seven times?" The question itself assumes a limit--good ol' Pete just thinks it's a matter of finding the magic number, and Jesus' answer suggests a limitless view of forgiveness that doesn't keep score or keep count.  The question itself needs to be turned right side up in order to make any sense for people who are caught up in the Mercy Movement of Jesus.

The list of upside-down questions pile up in the Gospels: "Rabbi, is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor?" "Whose wife will she be in the resurrection if she was married seven times on earth?" "Lord, now are you going to set up your regime and raise up your armies?" They are questions that have got things upside down from the beginning, and so in a sense the answer will be wrong, too, no matter what response is given.

All of this brings me to a central question we tend to get upside-down in the life of faith: "How do I get God to give me what I want?"  It can be phrased in plenty of other more respectable sounding ways--"How do I get God to answer more of my prayers in the affirmative?" "How do I get the good life I am after?" and so on.  They are wrong-headed questions, all of them, because they all start with the (false) assumption that the critical thing in life is me getting what I want.

But maybe the problem is not that I am not getting what I want--maybe the problem is what I think I want in the first place.

These days, protests, marches, and angry social media memes are practically omnipresent, and on every place on the political spectrum.  And so often, when one group protests, you'll get a host of peanut-gallery critics making snide remarks, to the effect, "I don't even know what they were protesting about--what do they want, after all?  What was their message?"  The implicit criticism is that "just being mad" isn't a helpful or productive conversation, and so you get people comparing protesters to children throwing tantrums.   Left attacks right, and right attacks left, and often the shouting match becomes a contest of wish-lists and perceived grievances.  "You all on that side are complaining about not getting your wants, but what about my list of wants?"  We end up with people arguing at each other over whose list of wants should trump the others' list of wants.  We end up with people acting like if you get your way, it will somehow take away from me.

But what if the real issue is deeper?  What if the real question is not "your list of wants versus my list of wants" but rather, "what is God's will here?"  And I mean that, not in some narrow sense like "It was God's will for me to get a good parking space," but more like, "What kind of life, of community, of world, does God dream for us?"  More like, "What does the living Source of Being and Love want for us to get to experience?"  More like, "What would God's will look like on earth, as it is already done in heaven?"

Because if that's the right question, then all the petty, self-centered questions about me and my personal wish-lists seem pretty pathetic by comparison.  Instead of me asking, "How can I get God to endorse my plan for a bigger house and extra car?" the right question becomes, "How can I re-align my will with the God who intends for everybody to get to eat?"  It's less about getting God to underwrite all my self-centered fantasies, and more about catching God's vision of  a world in which nobody has to live in fear, all are honored, and each is beloved.  It's less about finding the trick to getting God to give me what I want, and more about letting God shape what it is I want after all.

That's the right kind of question to be asking.  Instead of asking, "What do we want?" the right question is "What would God have us want for the sake of all?"  And if I dare to ask that question, I will find myself less and less able to put my interests above the interests of others.  I will have a harder and harder time praying just for a raise for me and success for my business while ignoring the people who went to bed hungry last night, or who went to sleep in their car because they have no bed.  I will have a harder time justifying my wish for the illusion of security by ignoring the needs of those whose village was just bombed out by their own government.  I will have a harder time saying, "We have to look out for our own first!" and looking Jesus in the eye.

Maybe you and I have been praying and thinking the upside-down question "How do I get what I want?" for so long that we have stopped seeing it as the wrong question to be asking. But for followers of Jesus, the right orientation is there for us in the words of Jesus: "Your kingdom come... your will be done on earth as it is in heaven."  For a lot of my life--my church-going, Bible-holding life--I assumed those words meant something like, "Jesus, take me to heaven when I die."  But Jesus frames it differently, doesn't he?  It's less about me praying for my personal comfort or my want-list, but about God reigning in all places and all hearts HERE the way that God already reigns in full in heaven.  It's about asking for God's ordering of things to happen here and now--that new order of things where wolves and lambs lie down without eyeing other suspiciously, where debts are cancelled gratuitously, where bread is passed around for all people, where no one hurts or destroys or excludes at the big table of God anymore.  We are asking, in other words, for God to pull each of us out of our petty, self-interested life-plans and goal-sheets, and to pull us into a new vision for creation.

If you find that you have been asking an upside-down question as I have, then today is the day to start something new.  Today is the day to turn the question right side up, and instead of asking for God to endorse my selfishness, to ask God instead to realign my will and wishes with the dream God has of all creation made new.  Today is the day to stop asking wrong questions that have no right answers, but instead to let Jesus turn our protest signs the other way round, until we are no longer asking, "What do we want?" but rather, "What does the living Jesus want for all people and all creation?"

You cannot answer, "How do I get God to do what I want?" any more than you can answer, "Is yellow round or square?"  But we can ask, "Living Christ, how would you reshape my vision to align with your love for all?"

That, it turns out, is a question worth asking.

Living Christ, reshape my vision to align with your love for all.

Ride Sharing with Jesus

Ride-Sharing with Jesus--January 31, 2017

"For John came neither eating nor drinking, and they say, 'He has a demon'; the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!' Yet wisdom is vindicated by her deeds." [Matthew 11:18-19]

Here's a simple truth: if I am in a car that you are driving, by logical necessity, I will go where you go.  I am along for the ride. 

By logical extension, if you pick up other people for this ride to go to the same destination, I will be where they are, too.  This is not a choice: if I want to be in the same car you are driving, it means I will share the ride with whomever else you stop to offer a ride to, as well.

You could make it a boat, too, or a plane, or a train: if I am with you on this ride, then I will go wherever you are driving (or flying, or what-have-you), and I will get there with whomever else you choose to include.  We will all be in this together, if I am committed to staying in the same car where you are.  And I will have to deal with the fact that it comes with the price-tag of accepting all the people you choose to share the car with, even if I have my own hang-ups.  If the most important thing to me is being where you are, then it will mean I have to be ok with going where you want to go, and with whom you want to include.

It is no different in this voyage together we call following Jesus: if the important thing is going where Jesus goes and being where Jesus is, we are going to have to be ok with letting Jesus take us where he wills, and including people that he is letting on board.

Because, after all, Jesus has a way of going to unexpected parties and identifying with people without asking for my approval first.  This is not a choice.  That Jesus--he never stops to ask for my approval on his decisions first! (Thank God!)

I like to think this was one of the things that shook Jesus' first followers up the most--that they had to learn to follow their rabbi into unsavory places, disreputable parties, and socially unacceptable gatherings of people.  And because they wanted to be where their rabbi was, they learned to let Jesus stretch them by bringing them along.  I have to imagine that at the first party thrown by the local sell-out tax collector that they attended with Jesus, that good ol' Simon Peter and Andrew kept blushing and looking around to make sure nobody they knew saw them going in the front door.  I have to imagine that all of Jesus' first followers had to come to a point where they realized that being where Jesus was so important that they would share a table with whomever Jesus wanted them to share a table with.  I have to imagine that Jesus smiled from time to time, as he saw how his social schedule among the not-good-enough and unacceptable forced them to learn something.  I'll bet he said to them sometimes, right before going into a party that none of the religious so-and-sos approved of, "This is not a choice.  You're coming."

From the beginning, really, Jesus has always been taking his followers and stretching them that way--he has always brought us into table fellowship with people the respectable so-and-sos are shunning, and he has always pushed his disciples to identify with the people who were most marginalized.

There is this cartoon I have on my office door (a brilliant little piece by Daniel Erlander, whose site you should check out) where this person is answering his door and there is Jesus at the door knocking, but behind Jesus is a crowd of all sorts of people: people with different colored skin,  some people with bruises and scrapes and differing ages and heights, all different and each in need in some way.  And the man answering his door thinks to himself, "Why is it that whenever I ask Jesus into my life, he brings all of his friends with him?"

You could put it the other way around, too--that whenever Jesus takes us, he is going to bring us into the company of people we may or may not like and might or might not have chosen.  He is the one driving the car--so he gets to decide which parties we are stopping at along the way.  And Jesus has a habit of identifying with the people he hangs out with.  So that when people start accusing Jesus of being a drunkard and a glutton because he hangs out with so many of both of them, Jesus doesn't do a P.R. turnaround and say, "Nuh-uh!"  He doesn't quit going to the parties he is invited to, and he doesn't stop hanging out with people that others have deemed unsavory, or suspicious, or just plain "bad."

You will never see a place in the gospels where a verse reads, "And then Jesus, afraid of what others would think, decided not to go..." or "And then Jesus, uncomfortable to be too close to the outsiders and marginalized people, chose to wall himself in from people he didn't like."  Not once.

Instead, at every turn we find Jesus going out of his way to identify with a world full of people that were being viewed as suspicious, unsavory, or just plain "bad."  And once we, who claim to follow our rabbi Jesus, we who claim that going where Jesus goes is the most important thing to us, once we get that, then all of a sudden, we start to identify with anybody and everybody Jesus surround himself with.  We don't stay back in our own little enclave of "religious people," or people who like the same kind of music I do, or people whose skin has the same amount of melanin in it as mine, or people who talk like I do.  No, we learn to go where Jesus goes and to identify with all those whom Jesus shows up with.  (And to hear Jesus tell it later on, like in Matthew 25, Jesus promises to show up with the hungry, those held in prisons and detention centers, those who are without clothing, strangers, and those who are sick... among others....)

Following Jesus, in other words, means identifying with people we might never otherwise have chosen to even associate with... because they matter to Jesus.  In that light, I am reminded of the story of Casper ten Boom (father of Corrie, who wrote and lived the story The Hiding Place, about her family's resistance to the Nazis in Holland and their hiding of Jewish families).  In the days when the occupying Nazis insisted that all Jews wear yellow stars of David and be registered (for subsequent rounding up), Casper chose to wear a yellow star of David on his clothes as well, even though--or really, exactly because!--he was a committed follower of Jesus.  Casper's comment was that if everybody wore the stars, the occupying stormtroopers wouldn't be able to round up anybody!  It was an act of radical solidarity with those who were being scapegoated, thrown right in the face of the powerful. It was an act that took seriously Jesus' way of identifying with people even when it could have gotten him (and did) into big trouble.

That's what Jesus calls all of us to do.  This is not an option. If we are going to follow Jesus, we will go where he goes, and with whom he goes.  And Jesus has a way of bringing everybody along for the ride. 

Today, how are you and I called to go where Jesus leads us?  And who might we be called to identify with, too?

Lord Jesus, lead us where you are going, and stretch us with the breadth of your love when we get there!

On Getting Carried Away

On Getting Carried Away--January 31, 2017

 

"Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility regard others as better than yourselves. Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others.  Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus….” [Philippians 2:3-5]

 

Let’s get carried away, shall we?

 

All this month, we’ve come back again and again to the idea of the Christian life being like a sailboat voyage, pushed and powered by the wind of the Spirit, rather than by the huffing and puffing and bluster of our own self-centered willpower.  We have imagined that, just like the wind blows a ship in a certain broad direction, the followers of Jesus are (to the extent that we are really filled with the Spirit and not our own hot air) being directed on a certain course—a way of life we call the Reign of God, or the Kingdom. 

 

And much as a crew that seeks to get to the eastern shore of the lake will (obviously) head east from the opposite side to get there, the followers of Jesus who hope for the Kingdom coming in its fullness are dared to live “in that direction” in the mean time—that is, we practice unconditional love NOW because we are oriented toward that day when unconditional love fills ALL things, and we practice forgiveness NOW because we are looking ahead to the day when ALL things are reconciled before God in the new creation. 

 

Well, ok, if that picture is in your head—a wind-filled sail that pushes your boat on a certain course toward a certain destination—then in a very real sense, your goal is, quite literally, to get carried away.  A sailboat is carried, not by its own power, but by the borrowed momentum it gets from the wind.  Like a leaf being carried on the breeze in fall, or a tuft of dandelion seed on a clear August afternoon, except that a sailboat is bigger—but the same principle is at work.  The wind carries you along.  Your hope, if you are in a sailboat, rather than a motorboat or a rowboat, say, is to get carried away.

 

I mention this because, even apart from nautical metaphors, the life of Jesus’ followers is a life of getting carried away.  That’s what it’s all about.  Getting carried away with the mercy of God.

 

I say that in direct opposition to those voices—both around us and within us—that want to say, “Stop! No! Be reasonable—we have to look out for ourselves!  Don’t get carried away with the love of God and the mercy of Jesus!”  You know those voices, don’t you?  They are, indeed, sometimes around you, and they sometimes have the strangely familiar timbre of your own voice.  We tell ourselves, “We don’t want to get carried away here…” as an excuse not to take Jesus’ call and way of life too seriously.  No, no, no—that just might mess with our plans or our comfort.

 

So often, those voices start out sounding sympathetic. “Yes, we ALL should want to live RESPECTABLE, godly lives.  Yes, of course, sure, we all need RELIGION.  Yes, we need more public postings of the Ten Commandments to remind people of good old-fashioned morality.”  And at that point, you may think, “Oh, good—this is someone seeking to live in light of the Reign of God!  This voice will help me to listen for the voice of Jesus—clearly this person is truly seeking for the direction of the Spirit!”  And if it is our own voice, we pat ourselves on the back for being so spiritually-minded and sensible.  “What a fine example I am to those awful people down the street me, who don’t even go to church at all….”

 

Ah, but the moment that the path of Jesus heads into self-sacrifice… or vulnerability… or danger… or a risk to my comfort and security… all of that “God-talk” comes to an end.  And you know what comes next?  Five faithless words: “Let’s not get carried away….”

 

What?  Jesus said to love our enemies and pray for those who most persecute and hate us?  Whoa, whoa, whoa—let’s not get carried away here.

 

Hold on—Jesus went out of his way to welcome… and heal… and include… those who were the wrong religion, or ethnicity, or nationality (I’m thinking of a certain Samaritan ex-leper, a nameless woman at the well, a Roman centurion, a Gentile man who had been plagued by demons and forced to live in the graveyard in chains… and on and on and on)?  No, that doesn’t sound right.  Jesus must be mistaken—love and charity and kindness are for safe people… you know, people like me… people who will not pose a threat to me or my way of thinking.  Let’s not get carried away here…

 

Wait a second—Jesus put the needs of others (who might never say thank you to him!) so far ahead of his own needs that he was willing to get strung up by the empire rather than save his own hide?  Well, I’m kind of comfortable in my own little world… let’s not get carried away here…

 

So often, we hear “religious” voices (and sadly, they are many times our own voices, speaking back to us from the mirror) say things like, “I’m all for being loving, but it’s just not reasonable to take that risk—let’s not get carried away here!  It’s fine to give money to the local homeless shelter, but… well, I can’t be asked to actually give up my time and comfort zone to share a meal with a homeless family!  It’s ok to pray for people in other countries who are having a hard time (because, I think, deep down, some part of us doesn’t think God will do anything with that prayer, or least that God won’t do anything with that prayer that affects us), but… well, I don’t want to have those people in my neighborhood!”

 

You know how those conversations go—they always start by insisting they are all in favor of listening for God’s direction, but the moment there is risk, or vulnerability, or the possibility of not being in control… they stop dead in the tracks and say, “But Jesus can’t seriously expect me to sacrifice my safety for other people, can he?  Christ can’t expect me to risk my reputation, can he?  The Spirit can’t expect to lead me to do something that might delay my retirement age or raise my taxes or make room for a stranger, can he?”

 

Jesus wouldn’t ask me to put the needs of a stranger ahead of my own, would he?  Jesus wouldn’t expect me to consider others’ needs more pressing than mine, would he?

 

Yes.  Yes, he would.  Yes, he can.  Yes, he does. 

 

The unmistakable call from the New Testament is just that—to have the same mind in us as Christ Jesus had in his years of welcoming outsiders, healing ungrateful strangers, and loving his enemies all the way to a cross. Either we get that, or we don’t.  Either we are willing to let Jesus call us beyond our comfort zones the way he went beyond his, or we should quit pretending we are “religious” people after all, and we should just call ourselves “self-centered and wanting to be respectable.” But Jesus calls our bluff every time—we don’t get to say we are “Christian” or “pro-Christ” if we do not intend to let Jesus lead us into the same places he went… and that may well mean risking our comfort and our routine for the well-being of others, or welcome of people we are a little bit apprehensive about, or love for people who will be ungrateful and unappreciative.   Before we dare to suggest that Jesus wouldn’t push us beyond the realm of conventional wisdom, we should look at where Jesus actually went.

 

Jesus got carried away.  He expects nothing less from us, his followers.

 

Lord Jesus, let us get carried away with you today.

The Good Captain

The Good Captain--January 26, 2017

"...looking to Jesus the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such hostility against himself from sinners, so that you may not grow weary or lose heart." [Hebrews 12:2-3]

It may well be "good to be da king," but it's hard to be the captain.

Mel Brooks famously declared, "It's good to da king!" again and again, playing different historical characters in his movie classic The History of the World: Part One, as he and his comedic cast depicted different scenes from the centuries.  And, yeah, as Brooks and company recount, kings throughout history get it easy--taking what they want, skipping out on the hard work, living in decadence at the expense of their subjects, and being able to get rid of anybody who dares question that comfortable arrangement.  In Brooks' vision, it is a darkly funny punch line that so often in the history of civilization, the people in power simply milk it for their own comfort and profit.

But to be the captain of the ship is a different story.  Even though in our heads, we may think of a captain simply as a boss, or "like being king... but on a boat," the critical difference between a good captain and a king is that the captain goes through the waters with the rest of the crew along with them, rather than sitting comfortably on shore while everybody else does the hard work.

A captain gets to tell the crew what to do, sure, and yes, a captain gets to determine where the ship is headed.  But the captain also then does work to get them all there, too. And if some on the crew don't like what the captain says, or don't understand why they are changing course, the captain just has to take the criticism.  You can't be thin-skinned and a good captain; you can't lash out with petty insults or passive-aggressive taunts.  You make the calls you need to make, and you make them whether you are popular or not... but you then you take the criticism, rather than getting vindictive.  The whole crew has to rely on one another after all, so good Captain Jack can't go making crew members walk the plank every time his feeling get hurt.  The responsibility falls on the captain to rise above the grumbling, not to get caught up in petty squabbles defending his authority.

 

Kings get to tell others to go off on voyages to seek treasure or raid the enemy ports while they recline in their palaces.  But a good captain throws his or her lot in with the crew, and leads from in the midst of them, going on the voyage with the people under his or her command.  That makes ship captains vulnerable, in a sense--they are susceptible to the same storms and enemy ships and seasickness and shortages that the rest of the crew face.  But that vulnerability is also what gives them authority and credibility, too.  You listen to your captain, you put your life in the captain's hands, and you follow what the captain says even if you don't understand, or even when it is difficult, because a good captain has earned your allegiance by suffering with you.  A really good captain will already have been suffering first, in fact--cutting back on food before the rest of the crew has to be ordered to ration their meals, staying awake at night and keeping watch worrying about things before the crew is even thinking about the things up ahead.

That is the critical thing about this life of following Jesus. Even though we sometimes use the title "Lord," for Jesus, please please don't make the mistake of picturing Jesus like one more of Mel Brooks' decadent kings or dictators.  Jesus is king, all right, but he is captain, too.  These verses from Hebrews capture some of that image--the idea of Jesus as the "pioneer and the perfecter of our faith," who "endured hostility from sinners" like us.  Jesus is Lord, to be sure--but he is not removed off in some far away throne room putting his feet up and living off of our labor.  No, quite the opposite--we live because of Jesus' work for us!  We live because of Jesus' willingness to go first into the fray, to be at the head of the charge.  We live because Jesus is rather like the captain of a ship on which we disciples are all crew--he commands our allegiance, our service, and our actions because he is alongside of us and ahead of us--leading us by being with us in our work.  He is the one moving us forward, and he has committed to sharing what we endure on the voyage.

That changes our whole picture of the faith, doesn't it?  I was listening to someone on the radio the other day, someone who purports to be a "religious" broadcaster (a particular quirk of mine is listening to them, as bad as their theology and biblical interpretation usually is). Anyway, as he was trying to give a broad-brushstroke overview of his understanding of the Christian message, it basically came out as something like this: "God sits in the heavenly throne room and has set up a list of rules and laws.  When you break the rules, God is mad at you and is ready to issue a royal decree of punishment over you--but if you pray this prayer to accept Jesus into your heart, you won't break the rules as much any more, and then God won't be so mad at you."

It struck me, listening to this "religious" radio broadcaster of many decades, that for some people out there, that might have been their first--or only!--introduction to the Christian faith.  And if so, you would be likely to end up thinking that Christians have a sort of Mel-Brooks-kind-of-kingship picture of "God" (or "god"?)--that this "god" is basically back at the palace issuing decrees, and woe to you if you should fail to live up to his expectations.  The radio voice's "god" was pretty much inactive except for having set up the rules once upon a time, and this "god" seemed to be pretty thin-skinned, too--only accepting you back into his good graces once you had mostly stopped with the rule-breaking. 

What shocked me as I listened was how inactive and practically absent this god was from the world in that picture.  Jesus wasn't "in" the world in this picture, among us and with us, and bringing about the Kingdom and the new creation, but was simply the name you had to pray a prayer to in order to avoid punishment from the celestial "king" figure.  This picture of "god" was a lot like Mel Brooks' "It's-good-to-be-da-king" kind of figure rather than a ship's captain going on the voyage with us.

And here's the thing: if your basic picture of the divine is someone sitting back at the palace (or "up" in heaven) looking for reasons to throw lightning bolts at you whenever you mess up, you are going to eventually think it's safer to just do nothing so that you don't accidentally break a rule or cross a line.  But if your picture is more like this passage from Hebrews, where Jesus is the one at the head of the movement, the "pioneer" who goes ahead of us and who shares the same journey we are on, well then, "doing nothing" or "staying put" are not options.  We are all on board the same ship together--staying put would mean letting the boat leave you behind on the shore.  That's not what we are called to!  The Christian life is not a stationary thing, that you achieve and then step back from, like building a house of cards that you never want to touch after it's done, for fear it will fall apart.  The Christian life is not a fixed point, but something in motion.  And we can bear the uncertainty of it all because unlike a Brooks-ian monarch, Jesus doesn't just stay back in the throne room and send us off to do the hard work.  No, our good Captain is there on the adventure with us. 

That makes--he makes--all the difference.

O Captain, our Captain--go with us today where you lead us, and let us dare to place our trust in you as we go.

Where the Wind Chooses

Where the Wind Chooses--January 24, 2017

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." [John 3:8]

I had a drama teacher back in high school who used to say, "When the spirit moves you, you move."

It was her philosophy of blocking and staging characters for a play. Instead of making a bunch of already-nervous, acne-covered, hormone-riddled teenagers memorize a set of wooden body motions to accompany the lines they were trying to memorize (all the while in the midst of learning their actual academic subjects like chemistry and algebra, mind you!), my former teacher used to tell students to pay close attention to the words and the action going on around them in the story of the play, and the right actions, gestures, and movements would emerge almost naturally.  After all, if your character is angry, and you get that because you are paying attention to your character and the things in the story making your character angry, you will not to bat your eyelashes lovingly at the villain or start skipping across the stage.  And if your character is full of unrestrained joy, you'll know to hold your arms out with energy rather than sternly crossing them like a frustrated toddler.  But on the other hand, if some "expert" has told you, "Now raise your arms after this line," and then something goes wrong with the timing on stage during a performance, your whole delivery will be off, if you only learned a rote list of gestures and words.  You'll come off to the audience, less like a real person and more like, well, a high school sophomore stumbling through lines you do not really understand.  Better, my teacher used to say, to be so in tune with your character and the story of which you are a part that the movements arise organically out of you, than to be trained like Pavlov's dog to step here or turn there at a certain verbal cue.

Or, in summary form, when the spirit moves you, you move.

Curiously enough, even though Jesus never had to put on a production of A Midsummer Night's Dream with Simon Peter, Mary, and Martha, Jesus says something similar about life in the movement he has begun.  "The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.... so it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit."  That is to say, "When the Spirit moves you... you move."

We have been thinking together all this month about how the life of following Jesus is a lot like being on a sailboat together.  And if we are all on a sailboat, well, then, the next logical question is, "What, in our little mental picture, is the wind supposed to be?"  Who or what directs us, drives us, gives us momentum and direction?   Well, here is Jesus' crystal clear answer: the Spirit of the living God.  The Spirit, like the wind in a sail, blows and moves and directs us as he will, and we move.  And, really, it is an awful lot like what my old drama teacher used to tell us--when you know your Story well, and you know who you are within that Story, the Spirit's moving nudges you as naturally as the wind filling a sail.  It's not forced, but feels more and more natural.  It's not wooden or rote, but feels more like something flowing through you than acting on you.  And yet at the same time, it's not merely ME and MY WHIMS that are at work.  It's about something bigger than myself, something more beautiful than just me and my self-interest.

For the followers of Jesus, it is the Spirit--the living breath and wind of God--that moves us, more and more, as we seek to let God's direction become our direction, too.  It is, then, "the Spirit first," not "Me first" or "Profits first" or even "Family first" or "America first."  Those all miss the point--Jesus says it is the Spirit who moves us... and when the Spirit moves you, you move.  That is a joyful thing, and looks an awful lot of the time like an energy that moves us and leads you spontaneously rather than because you are worried about following rules or doing what someone else in power tells you to do.  The wind blows on the sail, and the sail does what sails are made to do in the wind: it moves the boat.  The Spirit blows into us, and more and more we open ourselves up to catch the direction of the Spirit... and we move.  It is free, and it is freeing.

Now, contrast all of that with someone dictating from on high with a bunch of wooden, artificial decrees or directions.  Here's an example that just floors me.  Did you know that in the first century, the Roman Empire issued an official decree, declaring that everybody was supposed to celebrate and rejoice over the anniversary of the birth of Caesar Augustus, and on the date of the anniversary of his ascension to power?  The official party line, approved of by ol' August himself, was, that Caesar's arrival on the world scene was "good news for all people," and that all subjects of the Roman Empire should celebrate with full-hearted civic devotion to dear, beloved Rome and its emperor... because Augustus was going to make everything so much better for everybody.  What a hilarious and yet terribly sad thing--to have to decree for people to celebrate!  To have to have an official imperial government edict telling them, "You're supposed to be smiling here!"  What outlandishly overblown arrogance to call one human leader's ascension to power "good news for all people" that would--as the Romans claimed about their Caesar--bring peace to all the world and unite all of the empire in a shared destiny with renewed pride for their empire.  What a load, to be technical about it, of dingo's kidneys.

Someone telling you that you are supposed to celebrate?  How forced is that?  How ridiculously artificial?  And you know what--it comes off that way to the watching world, like a nervous high schooler playing Hamlet and stumbling through his lines because he forgot when the director told him to raise his hand with the skull in it. 

That's not the Christian life!  The community of Jesus' followers is a movement who dares to let the Spirit blow, and move, and speak, and breathe into us, rather than a bunch of nervous actors waiting to be told when and where to walk on stage, or a bunch of frightened citizens of the empire who have to be told when to fake at celebrating over their emperor.  Jesus has been telling us all along--when the Spirit moves you, you move.

And the Spirit has a way--not of being predictable but of being faithful--and of consistently showing up in wonderfully surprising places, like alongside the brokenhearted and fearful, among the poor and hungry, welcoming the outcast, leading people to lay down their weapons and their burdens, and breathing courage into hearts to help those in harm's way or caught in traps of their own making.  That's where you find the Spirit moving--never quite able to be pinned down to our exact expectations, but blowing like regular wind currents on the sea that you can turn your sail to.

Where will the Spirit move you today?

Lord Jesus, we freely and joyfully celebrate that you are our Lord, without needing and single official proclamation to order us to fake it.  Let your Spirit move us like wind filling our sails... today and always.

Into the Fray

Into the Fray--January 23, 2017

"When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored the boat. When they got out of the boat, people at once recognized him, and rushed about that whole region and began to bring the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fridge of his cloak, and all who touched it were healed." [Mark 6:53-56]

Sometimes it feels overwhelming.  Doesn't it?

Sometimes, if we just lay our card on the table, the sheer amount of brokenness is hard to wrap our heads around.  The sheer scope of hurt and heartache, of injustice and wrong, of lingering old hatreds nursed at for generations, the insidiously powerful fears that make us view each other with suspicion and prejudice.  The suffering, physical and spiritual, the wounds in our flesh and in our hearts, can be too much to bear.  Like the terror of feeling your foot caught in an undertow, and you feel the rush of the waves swirling around you, reading to swallow you up. 

In those periods of life, it can feel like there is too much to do for the healing of the world around us... or even the healing of our own immediate spheres of influence... or even simply the healing in our own selves. It is powerfully easy to feel like it is time simply to give up.  No way to get traction.  No way to get a toe-hold.  No way to make enough of a dent in the pile of sorrows to make it feel like it was worth even trying. 

You surely know that old cliché story about the boy picking up the starfish along the beach, who insists to the cynic that it is worth it to save even one starfish by picking it up and tossing it back into the water so it will not get parched when the tide goes out.  I get the point that story is trying to make, but come on--sometimes, doesn't it feel like something is wrong with the universe if the waves and tides keep conspiring to kill starfish every day?  Sometimes, you look around, and you just think, "There is too much.  Too much to even make a beginning."  We have this special church service every year on the night of Epiphany where we take candles and go out and stand around the old brown Christmas tree from the immediately preceding Christmas to burn it--and every year, without fail, the naturally strong wind on the hilltop there snuffs out candles before we have gotten out from under the portico.  It is a repeated moment of futility that sometimes makes me wonder what the point was, that split second of flame, before the wind blew it out.  

It is easy to wonder, on such January evenings, why Jesus and his band of followers kept at what they did in the midst of such light-extinguishing force in the world. What's the point in being a presence of grace in a graceless world, or even trying to be a voice of truthfulness in a world that increasingly believes it doesn't matter whether news is real or fake, or facts are tethered to reality at all?  What's the point of crossing the sea and healing the sick when the powers of decay, the momentum of entropy, and the brutality of death keep creeping back? 

But that is exactly what Jesus did, isn't it?  And with such intensity!  Jesus doesn't just meander through the Gospels--he launches himself right into the darkness and lights himself up like a firecracker.  He throws himself into the suffering as a presence of relief.  And he teaches--and pulls!--his followers to come with him, like it was the exact bearing he was headed on all along in their boat, right into the heart of the pain of the world.  And he does it without regard for getting thanks or repayment--because that is part of the essence of Jesus movement, not simply to heal or tend a wound, but to do so free of charge and free of the baggage of tit-for-tat.  Jesus throws himself into a bean-counting world as a hand-grenade of grace.  He hurls himself into the world's ridiculous obsession with looking like a "winner" as the one who offers himself to all those who have been labeled "losers."  Jesus leaps out into the darkness carrying his light--and he is prepared to spend every last bit of fuel within himself to bring just a bit more brightness into it.  That's what his movement is about.

I suspect, if you pressed Jesus on it, he would concede that, indeed, all those people he and his followers healed on outings like these would eventually get sick with something else.  Eventually the healed become the relapsed, the once-again-sick.  Even ol' Lazarus, called forth out of the grave, went back to it eventually and laid down his tired bones a second time, poor guy.  Being a part of Jesus' movement means the acknowledgement that the light we are called to bring to the world may seem to be snuffed out awfully quickly, and it means admitting that we may make an awful lot of effort for very little visible return on the investment.

But--and this is our act of holy rebellion against the powers of suffering, sin, and sorrow--we do it anyway.  We go at it anyway.  We follow Jesus into the fray.  We head with Jesus right into the stormiest waters, anyway.  We say to the forces of self-absorbed fear, of envy and avarice, and of cultivated hate, "No.  You cannot silence or stifle us.  As long as there is breath in us, we keep at it.  As long as there is wick to burn, we will keep lighting it again.  As long as there is Jesus, throwing himself into the heap of the world's pain, we will leap with him."

And, yes, at some point, you and I, we will each run out of steam, and we will have spent every last ounce of love and of energy within us.  At some point, like Lazarus (either the first or the second time around) we, too, will lay our weary bones down. 

And when that day comes, the relentless resistor Jesus will come and raise us up.  I am putting all of my chips on that hope.  I am going all in--Jesus has taken me, and you, too, I can see, by the hand. Let's go.

Lord Jesus, give us honest eyes to see the depth of the need and sorrow around us, and give us your fierce courage not to give up our calling to be the presence of grace and truth and compassion even on the cold nights where we find ourselves.

Ahead of the Shipwreck

Ahead of the Shipwreck—January 20, 2017

Since they had been without food for a long time, Paul then stood up among them and said, “Men, you should have listened to me and not have set sail from Crete and thereby avoided this damage and loss.  I urge you now to keep up your courage, for there will be no loss of life among you, but only of the ship. For last night there stood by me an angel of the God to whom I belong and whom I worship, and he said, ‘Do not be afraid, Paul; you must stand before the emperor; and indeed, God has granted safety to all those who are sailing with you.’ So keep up your courage, men, for I have faith in God that it will be exactly as I have been told. But we will have to run aground on some island’.” [Acts 27:21-26]

I know this is a weird story, not just for today in particular, but perhaps on any given day.  But it is weird stories like these that give me hope—real, solid hope that is honest and weather-tested.

We may lose the ship, but God is going to get us where God has promised to get us.

That’s one way of putting the hope that holds us through the Christian life.  The thing we have to hope in is the movement, the motion itself, rather than in the vehicles we may be currently using to get there. God will get us where we need to go—but that is different in hoping in the sturdiness of the ship, the durability of the car, or the permanence of the institution. Those may or may not last.  But the motion is promised—God is going to get us where we are supposed to go.

We need that kind of reminder to keep us honest, and to help us be prepared for the inevitable reality of losses in this life.  Sometimes we forget that, or we choose to ignore it.  You will find plenty of religious voices out there who will say things like, “Without God in your life, your car, your job, and your family are all insecure,” which is a fair point… except that it is still true, even with "God in our lives." Even if you do your utmost to dedicate your whole life to Jesus, the car will give out, the job can fall through, and family can flake out on you.  The promise of God is not, “If you let me into your life, I’ll keep all the important stuff from falling apart,” but rather something more like, “Because I am already holding you, I will make sure you get where I need you to be even if the wheels fall off of everything else in your life… or in the whole world…” Being a follower of Jesus is not a deal that guarantees you will not lose your job or that your kids will not get cut from the team this year.   Sometimes we have to face the reality that we may lose the ship… but we will make it to shore.

I say that because we can hear the stories of Jesus calling those fishermen disciples and conclude (wrongly) that it was all upward progress from there on out.  We can (wrongly) assume that Simon and Andrew and James and John and the rest all struggled with mediocrity in life BEFORE they signed on with Jesus, but, ah, from then on, they had success after success.  Except… that’s not the way the story goes.  They lost their livelihoods, their homes, their comfortable family situations (at least some of the disciples were married when Jesus called them—what do you suppose that did to their home lives or their kids’ college funds?), and eventually their own lives. Following Jesus wasn’t the key to getting the rest of their lives all sorted out—not the way so much “inspirational literature” and “Christian-living” books or radio shows can make it out to be.  The Christian life is not about using Jesus to get a more comfortable, insulated (privileged) life, and nowhere does Jesus make that promise.

Instead, the promise—like the promise made to Paul on board the ship that will take him to his trial before the emperor in Rome—is that God will get us where God needs us to be.  The people around Paul will be protected, too.  But they will lose the boat.  Their hope was never supposed to be in the boat, but in the God who was carrying them along.  Their hope was never supposed to be in the physical structures, but in the presence of God to provide the motion.

For Paul, the motion was to get the apostle to a place where he could speak truth to power—where he could have a forum to say, right at the seat of the arrogant empire’s glory and vanity, that the real Lord of the universe was a crucified homeless rabbi, not the decadent pompous dictator called Caesar.  For Paul the promise was not that God would spare him from any trouble or hardship, but that God would bring him through it all so that he could be a more faithful witness to the coming Reign of God, right in the face of the reign of the emperor (who claimed to have divine backing for his rule). For Paul, the promise was not, “You can put your feet up—God’s gonna give you a comfortable life now because you have been such a good Christian now,” but rather, “I will carry you through to the place where you can speak and live most powerfully as a witness to my new order of things, the Kingdom.”

That is our hope, too.  Nothing less, but neither more.  If we have come to Christianity thinking it will help our kids do better in school or rekindle romance in marriages that have been left on auto-pilot, we have missed the point.  If we think that if we pray hard enough, our struggling religious institutions (like cultural Christianity, denominational structures, or the old ways of “doing church”) will all come back to us the way we imagined they “use to be” in some previous golden era, we have again missed the point.  If we have assumed that by doing this or that “religious-looking” thing, God will smile from heaven and give national prosperity and “greatness” (whatever that is) as a reward for our devotion, we have missed the point.   

This was never about us using God to get our wishes.  This has always been about letting God leading us in ways that reveal and embody God’s new creation, God’s reign of grace and justice, God’s movement of mercy.

So… Paul is promised a safe arrival, in order that he can keep standing up to the pitifully self-absorbed powers of the day in the capital of the empire.  And you and I are promised that God will carry us to where we need to be—but it might not be in the vehicle we expect. Paul’s fellow travelers and the crew lost their boat… and had other misadventures along the way. There were setbacks and disappointments that could have been avoided (Paul even gets in a little “I-told-you-so” action here).  There were sufferings to be endured.  But Paul doesn’t give up, and he tells those around him listening to him not to give up either, because he believes the promise that God will not give up, either, in getting him where he needs to be.

This is the truth for us as well: there are going to be hardships ahead. There are going to be strains and struggles that we could have avoided. We might just lose the boat. There are going to be days it feels like we are just barely treading water and our legs are getting tired.  But the promise of God is never to let go of us, and instead to bring us where we need to be. God has arranged for us moments and times ahead to live out the loving Reign of God in the face of the powers of the day, just like Paul. Even if the vehicle is not guaranteed, the motion is promised. 

Today, if you find yourself like Paul staring down the prospect of a shipwreck ahead, regardless of whatever fears or anxieties surround us, and regardless of whatever we have to lose (and, yes, it could be the whole boat), let us listen to Paul’s words: “keep up your courage. We are promised we will get where we need to be.”

 Lord God, give us courage in the face of shipwrecks, to trust that you will lead us and hold us and direct us to the places you want us to be.

Into the Country of Love

Into the Country of Love--January 19, 2017

"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully know. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." [1 Corinthians 13:12-13]

In the end, there is only love.  When other things have been left behind, or broken, or failed, love is what goes on.  Yes, that's it: love goes on.

The Beatles had it half-right, then--not merely that "love is all you need," but that ultimately, "love is all there is." At the end of not just my life's story, but the whole Story we call the universe, all there will be that lasts... is love.  If we have been imagining the Christian life as a voyage on a sailboat together, then love is both, in some sense, the country at which we will arrive, and it is also the course by which we get there along the way.  In the end, all that is not love will have been left behind like so much excess baggage.

If that sounds too esoteric or "out there," let me zoom back to the nitty-gritty, day-to-day circumstances of this life.  I was thinking the other day about people who visit our churches on Sunday morning... and the people who you cross paths with at work... or the people you have a chance encounter with in line at the store.  And I was wondering to myself, what is it that we really think we have to offer anybody, we Christians?  What is it that really would draw anybody, or would be of lasting value for people that Christians I know can give?  I mean, there are plenty of places where you can get pithy little inspirational thoughts, or self-help suggestions.  There are plenty of places to get social interaction or get a decent cup of coffee in a Styrofoam cup, other than the local church social hall. And there are plenty of motivational speakers, plaques, or wall-posters out there to give you a boost of encouragement to "follow your dreams" or "pursue your goals" or "hang in there." None of those are the exclusive property of the Christian community.


All we can honestly ever offer anybody... is love.  Sometimes ours--sometimes we do a passable job at loving others.  But always, the love of the living God... who then pulls us deeper into that love until it becomes our own for others.  The whole "movement" we have been talking about so far this year--it is really just another way of thinking about organized, intentional, unapologetically and unashamedly unconditional love. Love, not in the sense in which our culture uses the word--a sort of mushy, maudlin emotion that comes and goes with the breeze, but love as the conscious, chosen, action of the heart and the hands to show up for people, to stand with people, to sit with people, to do good to people, regardless of whether we "feel" like or we think they "deserve" it.  That kind of love is where God is leading us, and so along the way, that is what we aim for and practice day by day.


What we can offer people--not only people we already know and sing "Amazing Grace" beside on Sundays, but people we haven't met yet, people who are being drawn now, people to whom God is sending you--what we offer people is the promise of such love, first from the living God, and then, in a second sense, from the people of God who dare to reflect what we have first been given.  What we offer to people is that even if everything else falls apart, love goes on, and they will not be alone.  We will go through their struggles with them.  We, bringing the promise of the presence of Christ himself, will sit with them when life feels like it's all coming unglued.  That is what this whole voyage of life together boils down to.


The neat life-organization principles proferred in so-called "Christian living books" will fail from time to time--you can be the most "mindfulness"-practicing, "don't-sweat-the-small-stuff"-living, "minimalism"-following, de-cluttering, person in the world, and still have everything get thrown up in the air when someone you love overdoses... or winds up in a car wreck... or loses a job... or survives abuse and tells you about it after a long silence.  The warm-and-fuzzy inspirational quotes will not offer comfort when you have to face the realities of an aging parent, a struggling child, or a deep betrayal from someone close to your soul.  The self-help books, day-planners, and life-coaches cannot offer the strength to keep going when you are overwhelmed by guilt or fear or deep sadness over the mess of the world.  All of those other things that people sometimes think "faith" or "religion" or "spirituality" offers will at some point flake and crumble like old paint on old wood.


What remains is genuine love--the promise that we will not abandon one another... because God will not abandon anyone.  What will carry people through is love--not as an abstract idea, or as fake niceness, or as romantic gobbledygook--but as the unrelenting promise of the living God to hold us, by the nape of the neck like a mama cat if necessary, and keep on moving with us.  We bring that message to one another... and then we embody it for each other, carrying one another as long as we need it, and never leaving someone else behind.  All of the other stuff that gets offered as "Christian living" stuff will at some point crack--the "Bible-inspired diet" won't work, and the "Ten helpful hints for raising wholesome children" will prove ineffective.  But love will remain genuine even when everything else fails.


That is the movement we are a part of. That is why it is worth giving our whole selves into such a movement--because it is a movement choreographed by none other than the living Jesus himself.


I was reading an article the other day that really depressed me the more I read it--it was about how modern politicians make slogans and market themselves.  The article was tracing the history of past successful political slogans, and it was looking at how often successful slogans don't mean anything--they just sound good.  Put enough words together that sound positive, and we'll chant it by the millions.  And as I read this article, I was wondering, very truly, whether that's all we have to offer...whether that's all I have been ultimately offering, in all of this talk about joining Jesus "movement of mercy." Is it just a slogan?  Is Christianity just a handful of catchy phrases that people latch onto? Is there really substance beneath all the layers of marketing that churches find themselves doing in our time and place?


For a while, there was a deathly silence in my heart while I let the question sink in.


And then I realized again what Paul had been shouting to us from the New Testament all along.  There is love.  That is what gives the followers of Jesus substance.  There is love--the love of God which fills us, and the love of God which then flows through us.  Love is what makes the movement real, and love is how we practice the movement in the mean time.  The slogans and self-help schemes will fail, but the love of God will go on.  And such love will pick us up, too, and carry us through this day, through whatever waves and storms are ahead of us.


Love is where we are aiming, and love is with us along the journey.  Like T.S. Eliot says, "We shall not cease from exploration, and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."   Love is the destination, and love is the trip to get there.  Love is what we have to offer anybody and everybody. Love is what lasts.  Love is what goes on.  Love is what carries us.


That's why I am a part of this movement.

Dear Jesus, let your love carry us and fill us, today and always.