Nothing Means Nothing

"Nothing Means Nothing"--April 28, 2017

"Who is to condemn?  It is Christ Jesus, who died, yes, who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who intercedes for us. Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?  As it is written, 'For your sake we are being killed all day long; we are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered.'  No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord." [Romans 8:34-39]

For Superman, it’s kryptonite.

For Storm from the X-Men, it's tight enclosed spaces and a case of claustrophobia.

For Green Lantern, it’s either wood… or the color yellow (so I guess he’s really wary of the pencil aisle at Staples).

The weaknesses of comic book superheroes are strange and rare, because the heroes themselves are meant to be so otherworldly and extraordinary. If you already have yourself an alien with superhuman strength and the ability to fly, then it’s not much of a stretch further that a green glowing rock from his home planet could make ol’ Supes grow weaker. If you are already granting the existence of an intergalactic corps of emerald-clad cosmic police using their magic rings to fight evil, then sure, you’re probably not stretching your suspension of disbelief much further to allow yellow to be an Achilles’ heel. Once you start inventing outlandish heroes, equally outlandish weaknesses seem to be par for the course.

Now, practically speaking, what that means is that neither Superman nor Storm (nor any of the others in the Justice League, Avengers, or any other superhero team) can make you an unconditional promise.  They all have absolute weaknesses, things which will leave them hamstrung and helpless.  Not even Superman, then, can make you the promise, "Nothing can separate you from my help!"  He can't even say it to Lois Lane.  There is always going to be an unspoken asterisk if he tries.  He can say, "Nothing*... but really kryptonite could stop me," and Green Lantern could say, "Nothing*... except a banana or a banana tree..." and Storm could say, "Nothing*... well, other than a cardboard box put over my head."

But none of those characters from the printed page can truly, fully mean the sentence, "Nothing will be able to keep me from helping you when you are in need."  And that is because, quite simply, each has a weakness over which they cannot triumph, from the mundane to the mysterious.

What's interesting to me about all of those superhero weaknesses is that they all belong to fictional characters whose creators could have just invented as completely invincible... but didn't. Even when people who specialize in imagining the fantastic and strange try and invent the most amazing, most powerful, most uncanny superheroes they can... we still seem unable to imagine someone who really can say "Nothing can separate us..." and actually mean the word "Nothing."  We can only imagine people whose promises, power, and presence are basically like ours--conditional... even if Superman has fewer limits than I have.  We can only imagine characters and heroes who have to put boundaries on their saving help.

But the apostle Paul says that this is the wonder of the resurrection of Jesus: his victory over death means that there truly is nothing that can ultimately separate us from his love.  There is no asterisk, and no fine print.  When Jesus says to us, as in Paul's words here, "Nothing can separate us..." it really means nothing.

How do we know that's not just empty talk (because, to be honest, there's a lot of that going around)? We know it, Paul says, because Jesus is risen from the dead!  Death is the one wild card, the ace up the sleeve, that every other hero has to reckon with.  Superman can't say "I will always be there for the good citizens of Metropolis..." because he knows that if someone locks him in the bathroom with a rock or kryptonite, he'll be done for.  None of the rest of the world's imagined heroes can say "Nothing will separate us..." and mean it.  Nope, no one other than Jesus himself, can say the word "nothing" like that and have it mean everything.  Jesus has come through the worst that death could do... and he is still here, with us, beside us, upholding us.

For Paul reflecting on this, that's what gives us courage.  We know that for whatever we face in this day, the Risen One has promised to be with us... and death has already done its worst to Jesus... and lost!  Whatever fears, real or imagined, have wormed their way into our consciousness, they cannot separate us from Jesus.  Whatever things inside myself get me tangled up in guilt... cannot separate us from Jesus' love.  Nothing can divide us from him. And for Jesus, "nothing" means nothing.

Today, know it is true--you are held by a love that will not let you go, because Jesus is risen from the dead.

Lord Jesus, speak your promise to us again, and make us to believe that you mean it when you say nothing could separate us from your love.  We do believe, Lord Jesus, we do.

"Easter Promises"--April 27, 2017

"Easter Promises"--April 27, 2017

[Paul said:] "....When they had carried out everything that was written about him, they took him down from the tree and laid him in a tomb. But God raised him from the dead; and for many days he appeared to those who came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, and they are now his witnesses to the people. And we bring you the good news that what God promised to our ancestors he has fulfilled for us, their children, by raising Jesus; as also it is written in the second psalm, ‘You are my Son; today I have begotten you’...." [Acts 13:29-33]

It's a refreshing thing--maybe even surprising--in our day to hear someone talking about actually keeping their promises.

We live in a time in which talk is cheap, commitments are shrugged off, and promises are broken without so much as a second thought.  We live in a time in which public figures walk back their official on-the-record positions or pledges, and then try to spin or dodge questions to try to make it sound like they never thought differently and never really meant what everybody thinks they meant when they made their promises. 

We used to have a word for making a big claim or promise and then having it be revealed that it was never true at all--we used to call that being a fraud.  But increasingly our lives are filled with weaker and weaker commitments, less and less investment of our selves in keeping our promises, and fewer and fewer people caring or even noticing when we sweep our past claims under the rug.  Reminds me of the old Jack Handey line from his Saturday Night Life "Deep Thoughts" where he says, "Broken promises in life don't bother me--I just think, 'Why did they believe me?'."

And yet, the writers of the New Testament see the empty tomb of Jesus as the central moment for the keeping of God's promises.  And there are a LOT of those divine promises.

Here in the book of Acts, Paul says, when Jesus was raised to life and the tomb was empty, God had "fulfilled" all of "what God had promised to our ancestors." In other words, Paul says, all of the ancient promises--and we can spend some time rehearsing what they are--are cashed in with the resurrection of Jesus. That's a really, really strong claim to make--just think about it. 

God had promised to Abraham blessing for all the nations of the earth, and had promised to David an heir would reign in justice and righteousness permanently over God's people.

God had promised vindication for the victims and mending for the brokenhearted. 

God had promised that death would be defeated and that a whole new creation would be begun, in which wolves and lambs would lie down with one another and old enemies would  be disarmed and welcomed.

But wait a second--Paul says that all of those promises are fulfilled in the resurrection of Jesus? But the world still looks so...broken! But the world still looks so...unblessed! But the world still seems to be under the power of death! Jesus may be alive again, but what about the rest of the world, the rest of humanity--the friends and loved ones we have lost--who have died? What about the promises for justice and peace--when our world still looks awfully unjust and awfully un-pacified. Is Paul really saying that because Jesus is alive again, God has made good on all of those promises?

Well, you can read his words. Paul seems to be saying, and Luke the narrator of Acts does not censor him at this point, that indeed--as contrary as it seems to the evidence around us--Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of all of those other promises being fulfilled, even the ones that don't seem to directly relate to an empty tomb. 

I mean, okay, granted that one of God's promises had been the defeat of death, and you could say that Jesus' resurrection at least hinted at it--but what about the promise of a new order of justice and peace? What about blessing for all peoples? What about the lifting up of the lowly and the blessing of the poor? If you can believe it--and really, even if you can't--Paul's claim here is just that broad. 

Paul believes--and would have us believe, too--that Jesus' resurrection is what announces to us the fulfillment of all those promises. The resurrection, then, is as much about blessing for all peoples and the reign of a just and gracious Lord as it is about life beyond death. Sometimes we make the mistake of narrowing the scope of Easter--we treat the resurrection of Jesus as though it is just about the hope that I will go to heaven when I die. But for Paul, the resurrection of Jesus means that all of "what God promised to our ancestors" has now been fulfilled "by raising Jesus." 

Jesus is alive again--so the Kingdom he announced where the poor are provided for and the hungry are feed really has begun. 

Jesus is alive again--so the new order in which wolf and lamb lie together and enemies can even be loved really is taking shape among us. 

Jesus is alive again--so the whole world is in store for the blessings of God, just as God had promised to Abraham a blessing that would lead all peoples to be blessed. 

Paul says that all of those hopes have been pinned on the resurrection. That is not just a lovely, poetic thought--it is a weighty, immense claim. And, yes, as Paul says, it is good news--it is likely better news even than we expected it to be!

Lord of life, help us to take in just how wide and deep your promises are, and grant us the boldness to share the word that you keep them all and have kept them in Christ's resurrection. Give us the courage to dare to see the world as though you truly have begun making all things new in the empty tomb of Jesus.

No Nests in the Hair!

"No Nests in the Hair!"--April 26, 2017

"If the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will give life to your mortal bodies also through his Spirit that dwells in you. So then, brothers and sisters, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh--for if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption...." [Romans 8:11-15]

In a sense, you and I get to decide how much we want to be ruled by fear.  As odd as it sounds, perhaps, fear is not the inevitable driving force of our lives any longer--you and I have to make the conscious choice to keep running back to fear's cold arms if we really want to be trapped in its grasp.

And sadly, that is precisely what we still do sometimes.

We choose fear.  Or at least it is fair to say we choose to let fear have dominion over us--closing the doors and windows, crushing us smaller and smaller and enclosed on all sides by its grasp.  We give ourselves over to the weight of all the "what ifs" and we let them bury us.  As the line famously attributed to Martin Luther says it, "You cannot stop the birds from flying overhead--but you can stop them from building nests in your hair."  And once again, our older brother in the faith is right on the money.  We cannot stop every momentary fleeting anxiety or worry or fear from flitting through the synapses in our brains... but we do get to choose how much we want to be ruled by those fears, how much room we clear away for them to starting brooding, and how much of our lives we will rearrange in order to let the fears roost in our hearts.  We do get to choose that--and in truth, not deciding is deciding.  Not choosing to shoo the power of fear away is a choice to let it stay, and like a mother cuckoo hiding her own eggs in another bird's nest, we let fear incubate in our own hearts and then when it hatches, we treat it like it is our own, rather than a parasite.

It's the way fear whispers in your ear after you have an icy drive and says, "It's too dangerous to drive at all!  Stay in and never go out of your house between November and April!"  And sometimes, we listen. 

It's the way fear whispers to the man walking down the street on a city block some night, and says, "That person coming your direction in that hooded sweatshirt up ahead... that person must be out to get you--you have to stop them now!"  And then a fearful stranger pulls a trigger and ends the life of a teenage kid who was just walking home from the convenience store.

It's the way fear whispered to the official gatekeepers in the US and in Cuba in May of 1939 when a transatlantic ocean liner the St. Louis carrying 900 Jewish passengers fleeing the Third Reich and seeking refuge in America and said to those who met them at the docks, "No--don't let them come ashore! They could be dangerous!  They are troublemakers!"  And the officials on land listened to the fear... and sent back more than 900 Jewish people seeking refuge back to Europe, all of them almost certainly sent back to their deaths in the Holocaust. 

Fear has a way of crippling us, making us bitter and paranoid, and then convincing us that we are only being "reasonable," only being "realistic," only "playing it safe."  Cuckoo eggs!  We come to own the fear and its offspring as our own responsible, respectable thinking, rather than what it really is--an intruder bent on wrecking our peace and eating us alive. We slide into fear so easily, and we let it happen every day, every time we do not consciously choose to live in the freedom and courage that the resurrection offers. 

Paul has been saying that to us for the better part of two millennia now, too:  "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear!" he says.  We who have been captivated by the news of the empty tomb do not have to live in the old fear any longer!  We do not have to be controlled by it, hamstrung by it, contained by it... except that we let it, every day.  And when we let fear rule us, soon enough we lose the ability to notice just how much of a stranglehold it has over us.  We end up choked to death without flinching, because we have slowly been desensitized to how we allow fear to squeeze and constrict.

But it doesn't have to be this way!  It is not meant to be this way!  We have been given the Spirit of Christ, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead!  The Spirit keeps speaking an alternative message to us, meant to get our attention over against the insidious whisper of fear.  The Spirit keeps saying to us, "You are beloved children of God!  You are not meant to live ruled by fear any more!"  The Spirit keeps saying to us, "Don't let the fear shut you in and lock the door!  Don't let the fear hold you prisoner!  God has the power to raise the dead, after all--what can anybody else do to you, honestly?" And for every message the fear speaks, the Spirit of God speaks a counter-message.

The question, then, is whether we will listen to the voice of the Spirit or the voice of the fear.  That's the long and short of it all.  Will we take what the fear tells us as the gospel truth, or will we accept the Spirit's message about the world and our place in it?  This should be a no-brainer, and Paul thinks so too.  He says, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God--just let the news sink in that you are children of God, and you will begin to feel the freedom of not having to do what the fear tells you to do!"

But in all seriousness, it really does boil down to this: which voice will we take to be more authoritative in our lives?  Will it be the voice of fear, or the voice of the Spirit?  If you had to pick one, who gets your allegiance?  And if they each call to you, to whom will you answer?

That's the question for you--whose voice gets to claim you--the living God, or the power of fear?

Lord God, let us listen for your voice and listen always for what you have to say.

Less Like A Deal

"Less Like A Deal"--April 25, 2017

"Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.' When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any they are retained'." [John 20:21-23]

So... what are you supposed to do with a dirty diaper? 

The answer to that question tells you a great deal about the nature of forgiveness...and about the freedom that is made possible by Jesus' resurrection.  No, seriously.

Okay--let me say at the outset here that I have changed my share of diapers, perhaps more than was common for males a couple of generations ago, not to toot my own horn but to be honest about it.  I have changed diapers.  I know the drill.

I have changed them in the house.  I have changed them in public park bathrooms. I have changed diapers in the midst of long car trips across country, and I have changed them at all times of day and night.  I have changed them, with the help of a traveling diaper pad kit, on the floor of not one, but two, pastor's offices.  And, at the risk of sounding like a rejected Dr. Seuss book, I have changed diapers here and there, and practically everywhere.

So I know two important truths about what happens with the... used... diaper once the baby has been changed. First off, I will grant that there are times, rare as they might be, when I cannot immediately throw a diaper away into the closest trash receptacle.  For example, if I am visiting relatives or extended in-law family far, far away from home, it is not good form to leave a fresh and fragrant (shall we use that euphemism?) Huggie in their kitchen trash while no one is looking.  No, in that case, the best call is to hold onto the diaper for a short bit of time longer, and then to ask the hosts where I can safely and appropriately dispose of the article in question.  And then, of course, into the correct trash receptacle it goes.  And that, obviously is the second important truth about used diapers--pretty much, you want to get it out of your hands and disposed of as quickly as possible... but granting whatever local constraints you may have to deal with (like, hey, if you're at the park, how about throwing that used diaper in one of the outside trash cans rather than concentrating any smell in the restroom trash... because other people are going to have to use those bathrooms for the rest of the day at the park).  If you are the diaper changer at the moment, you may consider yourself empowered--with all the rights and privileges pertaining thereto--to find and make use of the nearest appropriate trash receptacle.  No one will question your judgment in getting rid of the diaper, and no one will suggest you just wad the used diaper in your traveling bag to hold onto for a while.  You are empowered to get rid of it--and to get rid of it with haste.

In summary, when you find yourself with a freshly changed child in one hand and a plastic grocery bag with a dirty diaper in it resting in the other hand, pretty much your mind is focused on getting rid of the stinky bag as quickly as possible.  This should be a no-brainer.

Well, it is in that light that I think we need to hear Jesus post-resurrection charge to a room full of ten of his fearful and still kind-of dense disciples, when he says to them, "If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven" and conversely, that "if you retain the sins of any they are retained."  Jesus knows that sin is like the dirty diaper of the soul--and in all honesty, the only thinkable thing you can do with someone else's sin when it is brought to your attention is to dispose of it as quickly and safely as possible.  And that is precisely what Jesus empowers his followers to do.  That is, in a word, what forgiveness really is like, and Jesus says it is ours to do in light of his resurrection.

I will be frank with you here--for a long time in my own faith journey in the Lutheran tradition, I didn't like this saying of Jesus.  Not because I'm not "pro-forgiveness," but because my good solid Lutheran upbringing taught me that God is the one who issues forgiveness, and that we human beings are not supposed to pretend it is in our hands to dole out.  After all, Luther's whole project, the central issue that launched the Protestant Reformation five centuries ago, was driven by his assertion that the institutional church didn't have the right or authority to put strings or conditions on forgiveness that came from God.  Luther's point was that nobody--not a local priest, not an absentee bishop looking to fill his coffers, and not even the Vatican--could charge money or require a special prayer or demand a certain number of empty rote repetitions of liturgical gobbledygook as a condition for forgiveness.  And I am still to this day convinced that Luther's point is exactly right.

That led a younger version of myself to wince at Jesus' sentence here, that if his disciples say someone's sins are forgiven, they are... and also that if those same disciples decide to retain those sins, well, they are retained.  That just hit my dyed-in-the-wool Lutheran ears too much like Jesus was saying that Christians, or Christian leaders (or priests or bishops or popes?) get to decide who really is forgiven and who really isn't.  And something about that notion just made my Lutheran Spider-sense start tingling.

But maybe I've been giving sin too much credit.  Maybe I've been hearing it all wrong all this time.  Maybe I have been imagining all this "if you forgive" and "if you retain" business like Jesus is offering his disciples leverage... when really he is charging his disciples with diaper disposal duty. 

Here's what I mean: we have a way of hearing Jesus' words in this passage like he is authorizing religious extortion or racketeering, as if he is saying that his authorized group of apostolic forgiveness-merchants can choose to grant divine forgiveness to the people they deem worthy of it... or at least the people who do the correct religious action to get access to this forgiveness.  We have a way of hearing Jesus like he is some crooked deal-making snake-oil salesman authorizing his middle managers to squeeze unsuspecting customers for something valuable, like he is some pathetic CEO figure trying to look strong by giving the appearance of being a tough and shrewd negotiator and insisting on "getting something good in return" for that forgiveness.  We have a way of projecting the worst of humanity onto Jesus that way, and making him sound like he is saying, "If the sinners will play ball and do what you want, go ahead and give them some token forgiveness... but if they won't do what you say, well, you just threaten to withhold that forgiveness... and then they'll come crawling and groveling, and you'll show what a tremendous deal-maker you are!"

Please, please, please--let us stop for a moment and seriously ask if we really think that is how Jesus operates.  Please let us stop and make sure we can still see the difference between the living Christ and that kind of sleazy, slimy, self-serving scheming.  Please, let us see if it is possible, maybe, just maybe, that Jesus isn't some conniving corporate type... because maybe forgiveness of sin is, as in the words of that beautiful Jonathan Rundman lyric, "less like math, less like a deal." 

And maybe Jesus has been saying all along that sin is best dealt with like a dirty diaper--once it's in your hands, the best thing for you to do is to look for a quick, responsible, appropriate way to get rid of it.  There is no "leverage." There is no "deal" to be made.  When Jesus says, "if you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven," he says it not like someone authorizing a religious racket, but someone saying, "For goodness sake, if you have the stinky sins of someone else in your hands, get rid of them as quickly as you can!"  You could, in theory, hold onto that disgusting dirty diaper for longer--you could cram it in your travel bag and take it with you... but why on earth would you?

Yes, of course, you need to find the right receptacle.  Yes of course, you don't use your grandmother-in-law's dining room trash can for an overripe Luvs from your toddler--that's just not good form.  But you don't hold onto the diaper forever then--you just go out to the outside trash cans and get it out of your hands as fast as possible.  And it is the same with speaking forgiveness to other people.  The forgiveness comes from Jesus--it is God's prerogative, and only God's (thank you, Martin Luther, you were right on this one all along) to forgive our sin... but that has already happened.  The old diaper is already off.  The old sin has already been forgiven from God's perspective.  The open question is whether I will live like God's forgiveness is true--and get that stink old diaper out of my hands as fast as possible--or whether, for some bone-headed reason, I think I need to hold onto someone else's already forgiven sin still, like a dirty diaper in my hand.

See, this is how to get rid of that moronic deal-making "leverage" mistake in our thinking.  It's not that I can hold someone's sins over their heads and say, "Do what I want, or I will deem you unworthy and you'll be stuck with your sins again."  No--they are forgiven already by God. The question is what I am going to do with the sins that God has already forgiven someone else of but that I am still holding against them in my mind.  If I refuse to forgive (and by the way, the Greek word "forgive" more literally means "let go of"), the old sins don't go back onto the other person--no, not any more than the old wadded up dirty diaper ever goes back on the baby!  No, the question is whether they will stay in my hands and I awkwardly amble around the house, or whether they will be gotten rid of in the nearest appropriate trash can.  If I recognize that there is a better or worse moment for the letting to go happen, fair enough--that's like choosing which trash can is the right one to pitch the diaper into.  But the goal is for me to get rid of them.  "Retaining" the sins of someone else doesn't mean that I have the power to slap a dirty sin diaper back on someone for whom Jesus already died and erased the record against them--it just means I am left holding the bag with the stink in it until I can bring myself to let go of it.

To hear Jesus' words rightly, then, means that we think of ourselves less as shrewd religious dealmakers, leveraging someone else's sin to get something out of them in order to win our decree of forgiveness, and more like we are holding a dirty diaper that holds all the... let's say "mess"... of what they have done to us.  Ok, well if you are holding someone else's diaper, you are not hurting them to keep holding onto it, you are hurting yourself.  You are just making yourself miserable with the stink--thinking that you can't let go of it, or that you are somehow punishing the other person by holding onto it, or that you are protecting yourself from future wrongdoing by holding the grudge and wishing evil on those who have wronged you.  It's like the old cliché says, "Refusing to forgive someone else is like drinking rat poison yourself and expecting the rat to die."  Withholding forgiveness is like holding a dirty diaper--you may need to pick the right moment or receptacle, but you are a damn fool (and I mean that literally) if you think that you are stronger, tougher, better off, or safer if you are clutching that diaper in your hands rather than pitching it in the right place.

Now for us, all of this radical forgiveness flows out of the resurrection.  It is the risen Jesus who gives this blanket command and authority, and that is because on the Easter side of the empty tomb, our sin really has been dealt with from God's perspective. The resurrection of Jesus is like God taking the old diaper off of all this whole stinky, sinful world... and then God hands the diaper in the shopping bag to us, and says, "Please, go--you are empowered to go get rid of this."

This thing called forgiveness is so much more than a deal brokered by a stingy blowhard.  It is like letting go of some awfully smelly garbage... so we can start over fresh.

So... I guess, go ahead an hold onto that stinky pile in your hands if you want to... but it seems to me the right question for us to ask today in light of the risen Jesus is... why would you ever want to?

Lord Jesus, let us take you at your word and announce your forgiveness to all the world, well aware of the mess each make of it.

Bigger Fish to Fry

"Bigger Fish to Fry"--April 24, 2017

"Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know--this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  But God raises him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power." [Acts 2:22b-24]

I had a poster on my wall for a few years as a kid, that had Garfield the cat (right? I know--I was so totally cool as a ten-year-old...) standing in front of a cartoon Lamborghini, helicopter, mansion, and a cascading fountain, with the implication of even more status symbols behind and all around the rotund orange cat with the big eyes.  And Garfield's speech bubble says, "The one who dies with the most toys in the end... wins."

We've all seen that sentiment somewhere or another in the course of our lives, too.  Sometimes it is put just that explicitly, and sometimes it is more subtle.  We are constantly surrounded by voices that tell us, either directly or suggestively, that you "win" in life by having more toys... or trophies... or signs of achievement... or money... or (go ahead and fill in the blank). 

Now, here's the hitch in all of this.  I'm willing to bet that most of us who are even half paying attention to Jesus will recognize this notion is as a desperate lie when it's put in stark terms.  When it's Garfield the cat saying it on a kid's poster, we all can spot the lie and can say, "No no no!  It's not true--you don't "win" if you've got the most toys when you die!"  We are probably sharp enough to offer that corrective you sometimes hear people say, too:  "The one who dies with the most toys in the end... still dies."

And that is exactly right.  Death has a way of equalizing people--rich or poor, powerful or helpless, respectable or infamous, the ones with a championship ring on every finger and the ones with empty hands, too.  When the world's attitude is put in its most cartoonishly exaggerated form (say, with an orange-black talking cat in front of a sportscar), we are adept enough to spot that it's all wrong.

But... we have a harder time when it's put more subtly.  We have a harder time seeing the same logical problem when it comes to the less explicit ways of expressing the same sentiment.  Even though we may be well aware that we can't take our toys, our technology, or our trophies with us... we still make an awful fuss about racking them up in this life, don't we? 

Take this, for example.  I see a lot of criticism around (and I get it, I do) for the modern phenomenon of kids playing sports who all get a trophy.  There is this great outcry against "participation trophies," and seriously I have seen and heard folks decry the everybody-gets-a-trophy practice as a symptom of "what's wrong with our culture" and people who give out trophies to all the kids on the t-ball team as teaching kids that hard work doesn't matter since everyone will get a prize in the end.  And sure, I get it.  Nobody wants to raise up a generation of laziness or entitlement.  For that matter, I don't want to see my own kids bringing home so many pieces of cheap shiny plastic trophies that we have no place to put them.  I get it.

But, in all seriousness, I just don't think that criticism of "participation trophies" goes far enough, really.  When we get upset that "everybody gets a trophy" we are still acting like trophies matter!  We are still subtly reinforcing the whole notion that "the one who dies with the most trophies in the end is the real 'winner' at life" and that "the one who dies with the most toys in the end is the winner."  We seem to get so hung up on the meaning of a kids' little league trophy that we invest a lot more meaning in the cheap gold-tinged plastic than it's really worth. 

If we are wise enough to recognize the fallacy when it's put starkly on a Garfield poster, can we be wise enough to see the same silly logical flaws when it's handing out trophies at little league or the spelling bee?  Could we be the voices who say, "You know what--the trophies just don't matter... ever?"  Could we instead teach our kids that hard work and determination matter in and of themselves, regardless of whether someone gives you a prize for it or recognizes it?  Could we instead model a humility that says, "I just don't care about getting the prize, or the statue, or the new title at work, or the special recognition at the fancy awards ceremony with the mediocre appetizers and plastic cutlery?"  Could we be people who see from beginning to end that a life lived seeking after trophies at all, is still falling for Garfield's fallacy but just in more subtle ways?  And could we dare to raise our kids differently--not obsessing over whether trophies are given just to the "winners" or are given to everybody--because we realize that can't water down the worth of something that's worthless to begin with?  Maybe we'll stop shaking our angry fists on the internet like an old man yelling at kids to get off his lawn while we fuss about "those people making our kids soft by handing out participation trophies" and seeing instead that all that fuss is still reinforcing the lie that trophies matter at all--and the further lie that the reason to work hard is to "get" a prize for doing it, rather than just doing something well and diligently because it is worth doing?

At least, I want to suggest that this is the way followers of Jesus will come to think about achievements and trophies in life, because of the way the New Testament itself talks about Jesus' victory in the resurrection.  In these words from Acts, we hear that Jesus' resurrection is a victory against the real threat that held power against us: death.  Jesus didn't care a lick about getting recognition, having status, looking like a winner, or doing what everyone else thought a "winner" should do.  He was--and is--free that way.  And instead, Jesus turns our attention to the thing that really matters--the breaking of the power of death.  Jesus takes our little slogan yet a step further.  Jesus reminds us not only that "The one who dies with the most toys and trophies in the end still dies..." but takes us a step further to see that "The real victory is in the One who has beaten death... and that victory doesn't depend on award certificates or gilded statues for our mantelpiece.

Today, part of what resurrection means for us is freedom--freedom from all the stupid and tedious games the world is still playing.  We don't have to fuss about who gets a trophy--not in kids' little league, and not as grown ups vying for attention at work or with our neighbors--because we know that there's no winning or losing to be found there.  In a world where trophies and toys all go in the trash bin eventually, we can be free from fussing over them because we know that the real victory has been accomplished already in the resurrection.  And from there we will work hard and diligently on what matters--because it matters.  We have bigger fish to fry than getting trophies or toys--we have learned from Jesus what really matters.

Lord Jesus, free us today from fussing about recognition and free us to do what matters with our lives.

What to Reach For

"What To Reach For"--April 20, 2017

"After the Sabbath, as the first day of the week was dawning, Mary Magdalene and the other Mary went to see the tomb. And suddenly there was a great earthquake; for an angel of the Lord, descending from heaven, came and rolled back the stone and sat on it. His appearance was like lightning, and his clothing white as snow. For fear of him the guards shook and became like dead men. But the angel said to the women, 'Do not be afraid; I know that you are looking for Jesus who was crucified. He is not here; for he has been raised, as he said. Come, see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples, He has been raised from the dead, and indeed he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him. This is my message for you.' So they left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy, and ran to tell his disciples. Suddenly Jesus met them and said, 'Greetings!' And they came to him, took hold of his feet, and worshiped him. Then Jesus said to them, 'Do not be afraid; go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee; there they will see me'." [Matthew 28:1-10]

It's funny what people run to grab when they are surprised.

Take this scene, for example.  It's the day of resurrection--in fact, the moment of the Big Reveal that the tomb is empty!  And in the wake of that most world-shaking of surprises (literally--Matthew says there was an earthquake!), notice that two different groups respond in two different ways. 

There are the soldiers--who shake with fear and fall the ground when they see the wonder before them.  And then there are the women--who are just as surprised at the news and then the presence of the risen Jesus.  But the women don't reach for one another... or a tree to hide behind... or the guns in their purses.  They reach for Jesus.  That is kind of odd, but also exactly right--odd, because Jesus is the one who is startling them in the first place, but exactly right because he is the one who can ease their fears, too.  These two women named Mary run to take hold of Jesus' feet, as Matthew tells it, and to them this is the most natural thing in the world they can do. 

Funny, isn't it, how the same surprising turn of events makes one group of people reach for Jesus and grab on to him, thereby finding peace... and another group of people (the guards) have nothing to reach for but their pathetic, useless weapons in cowardice.  I suppose like all Roman soldiers they have been trained to think that their swords and spears could solve any problem or make them feel big and tough... but they now realize in the actual moment that their weapons cannot do a thing to banish fear.

Isn't that funny--the ones in the Easter scene who are armed to the teeth and trained for shooting first (well, stabbing first) and asking questions second are the ones who fall down to the ground petrified with fear until they "became like dead men," and meanwhile in the very same turn of events, the ones who find their confidence, their hope, and their strength are the unarmed women of the scene.  Maybe it is only in that moment when the angel speaks and the risen Jesus arrives that it becomes clear: a Roman sword, or any other weapon for that matter, can't give you any actual peace of mind in this life. And meanwhile, it's the empty hands of the women who are free to reach out for Jesus--and who find peace because they do.

And while we are drawing comparisons, notice, too, that it's only these women who have the courage to move when the scene is over.  The guards are still traumatized and curled up in a ball on the ground after seeing the angelic messenger--they can't even get up to report back to their commanding officer that they've blown it and let the dead rabbi out of his grave.  But the women--again, who had literally NOTHING to defend themselves with--are the ones who end up with the courage, not only to bear going to the tomb in the first place, to face down the guards in the second place, and to talk face to face with the angel who has made the trained soldiers wet their pants in the third place...but then beyond all that, the courage to go out and bring the news of the empty tomb to the disciples.  As the old line puts it, if it weren't for women preachers (that is, for Mary and Mary, bringing the news on Easter morning), there would be no church or gospel!

Look at the immense difference that Jesus makes for us, ones who are in some way standing in a long line of continuity with those first women at the tomb.  In the face of life-changing surprise and wonder, there are two kinds of responses: either the paralyzed cowardice of soldiers who have nothing to clutch but their impotent weapons, or the empty-handed courage of two women named Mary, who get all the resolve they need for a new mission by reaching out for the risen Jesus.  Almost makes you feel sorry for those sad, pitiable guards.

So here's the question for the day: which are you?  Which will you be in this day?  Look--the world is going to startle you and catch you off guard.  Life is going to surprise you, maybe even shock you.  That's how it is, and there's no point in pretending it's otherwise.  But when it happens--when you find your world shaken like an earthquake in the dim light of early morning--what will you reach for?  What--or whom--will you turn to?  And will you have empty hands able to take hold of real peace, or will they be too busy shaking as you fumble for your spear?  Will those moments of shaking leave you collapsed and immobile, or will you find that Christ is speaking peace to you in the turmoil and sending you out on a mission?  Will you and I let the news of the resurrection, and the presence of the Risen One, move us beyond the prison, the tomb, of fear?

Dear Jesus, thank you for the witness of real courage in women like Mary and Mary, and for offering us the same courage for our fearful lives into our empty hands, too.

From Behind Locked Doors

"From Behind Locked Doors"--April 19, 2017

"When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the lord. Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you'." [John 20:19-21]

Jesus, you will notice, does not knock.

For that matter, let us take note: Jesus does not ask for volunteers, but rather sends out his disciples like EMTs being sent out on a call. 

This is because being moved outward is not an option for the followers of Jesus--it is at the core of what following Jesus means.  Taking the Easter accounts seriously means knowing that the risen Jesus is going to move us out beyond whatever locked doors we have been hiding ourselves behind.

Again, think of it for a moment like the crew of an ambulance, or a fire corps--when the alarm starts going off, even if the crew in the station were asleep or about to eat dinner, they go.  The dispatcher gives them the information, and perhaps a supervisor assigns who will go where, but there is no long deliberation over "whether you feel like going" to help the person who is out there somewhere having chest pains, or whose house is on fire.  No one is terribly interested in that matter whether any of the EMTs "feel" like going, and nobody on the fire crew says, "Can't we reschedule this fire for another day after I've gotten some 'me' time?"  This is the sacrifice made by first responders, and it is worthy of honor and recognition.  But let's be clear: nobody knocks politely at the door in the fire station and says, like some office middle-manager with a coffee mug in hand, "Hey... I don't know if you've got the time, maybe, but if you could get around to it... and if you feel like it... there's a three-alarm blaze going on the edge of town... and it would be great if you could go ahead and get to that fire, maybe."

Well, if we are clear on that much, then we can be clear about what happens with the resurrection of Jesus and his followers.  Instead of lulling them into a state of passive comfort behind locked doors while they just talk to one another about one day going to heaven, Jesus breaks in to the room where they are huddled and gives them a commission.  Granted, that mission comes with his gift of peace, but it is a restless sort of peace.  It is a moving and urgent thing, something that drives them outward.  If Jesus wouldn't stay confined within the stone walls of a tomb, his followers will not be allowed to stay locked up by their own fear.

And that's just it: unlike the tomb of Jesus that was sealed by the Romans (pathetically!) from the outside, now the disciples of Jesus have locked themselves in, because they are afraid.  They are afraid of the religious establishment that invoked the Almighty while calling for the death of Jesus.  They are afraid of the Empire that callously doesn't care who it executes as long as it gets to make an example of somebody to keep everybody else in line.  They are afraid of the crowds of ordinary innocent bystanders who got swept up in something horrible and either started crying for Jesus' death, too, or were just silent and too afraid themselves to speak up.  Put all of those together, and Jesus' disciples are just plain ruled by fear of a laundry list of "what ifs" and "who might be out there" fears.

Given that fear, there's no point in Jesus politely knocking from the outside and patiently waiting to be let in.  The disciples will never let Jesus in on their own--that's the vicious circle they are caught in!  They are so afraid because they think they are alone that they will never let in the One who would remind them that they are not alone!  So Jesus could play the old-fashioned gentleman or polished lady of manners and wait outside until someone greeted him at the door... but meanwhile the disciples would be dying of fear on the inside and too paralyzed by that fear to even let in the One who could pull them out of it.

So, as I say, Jesus doesn't knock.  This really is something for us to be clear about, too, because an awful lot of (bad) theology out there actually tries to hang everything on the notion that Jesus knocks at the door and must wait politely to be let in to our hearts.  This, it turns out, comes from a blatant misreading of a lone passage in the book of Revelation about Jesus "standing at the door and knocking," but it also comes from our perennial proud tendency of giving ourselves too much credit.  In a culture like ours where we are told to see ourselves supremely as "customers" and "consumers," we like the illusion of control to things--we have to decide first if we are going to let Jesus in... we have to make the smart decision first... we have to choose to accept Jesus... and so on.

The only trouble with that picture is--that is literally never how it works in the Bible!  Jesus is always crashing the party because people are too paralyzed by fear or their own pride to let him in!  It's the disciples in the upper room here after the resurrection... it's Jesus looking up into the sycamore tree and inviting himself over to Zacchaeus' house for dinner... it's Jesus interrupting the funeral procession for a stranger to waken a dead boy back to life... it's the risen Christ knocking Saul of Tarsus off his high horse on his way to Damascus.  Look, as much as we might think we want a Savior who has read his etiquette manual and sits meekly outside our front door knocking until we work up the nerve to let him in... the truth is that we would never let Jesus in if that were his way of operating.  We have a way of letting the fear rule us--and once you let fear rule you, it has a way of boxing you into smaller and smaller spaces and making you more and more paranoid about "what might be out there," until even the sound of Jesus knocking seems scary.

Jesus, therefore, does what any fire crew does when they know there are people behind the other side of the wall suffocating to death--he just crashes in.  Jesus appears behind locked doors because his disciples are now suffocating on fear, and they will never find the nerve to let him in on their own... but they will never find the courage to open the door until he is already inside.

And from there, once Jesus is there, his peace becomes real.  It is not "magic," like all he had to do was say some secret mystical formula to make the scary stuff go away.  And it's not trite or empty sloganeering, either, just trying to motivate the disciples to stop being afraid by empty self-help or cheerleading.  It is Jesus' presence that makes the difference, and finally smacks those fearful disciples upside the head to decide just how much they want to let the fear rule their lives.

And once they see that the One standing among them has endured the worst that the Empire could do... and has defeated their most powerful weapon (death), well, all of a sudden, something is new.  Resurrection, along with the peace of Jesus' presence, pushes them outward--out of the doors they had locked to keep everyone else out.  Resurrection won't let them stay put.  Resurrection won't let them be imprisoned by fear any longer.  "As the Father has sent me... so I now send you," Jesus says.

With that, there is transformation.  Whereas just a minute ago, the disciples were the ones needing rescue from the firefighters because they were suffocating under the thick smoke of fear behind the door, now they are sent out, too, as if they now are the first responders, sent out to free any and all who are still imprisoned by fear, and the cruel way that fear, like carbon monoxide, poisons the air all around it and chokes us faster.  Now the disciples are the ones sent out into a world that doesn't want to admit just how much it lets itself be ruled by fear--fear of death, fear of the enemy, fear of scarcity, fear of being alone, fear of some ambiguous picture of "those people", fear of any and all of the above. 

And we are sent, too.  Whether you and I recognize it or not (that is, even if we still live under the illusion that Jesus waited until we asked him to come into our lives to start getting our attention), Jesus has already shown up in that locked room inside your and my own hearts.  Jesus has already invited himself over for dinner, and he has already broken open the door to rescue us from suffocation in there.  And the same living, risen Jesus speaks to us the word, "Peace," and then immediately follows it up with, "Now... you go, too."

What can we do today but go? After all, we are the ones on call for this day.  We are the ones Jesus is sending into a world that is choking on its own fear.

Go.  You're up.  This is not a drill.

Lord Jesus, wake us up and shake us up and break into our locked rooms to save us from our fears, so that we can be sent to speak your liberty to everyone still ruled by fear's power.

Risen, Therefore Lord

"Risen, Therefore Lord"--April 18, 2017

[Peter said to the crowd at Pentecost:] "This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses....Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified." [Acts 2:32, 36]

For the first followers of Jesus, the news of the resurrection was less about proving the existence of an afterlife, and more about naming who is Lord over life and death.

Let that sink in for a moment.  As the earliest Christian witnesses tell it, both those remembered sermons of the apostles and the writings we call the New Testament, the news of Easter's empty tomb was significant because of what it said about Jesus more than what it said about life after death. 

That is to say, the first followers of Jesus already believed that God was going to raise the dead (one day).  The idea of being raised to new life was already simmering in pockets of first-century Judaism.  And while not every first century Jewish person believed in resurrection (the Sadducee party, for example, was famous/infamous among first-century Jewish groups and sects for not believing a resurrection of the dead, as even the New Testament notes), certainly a good number of them did.  The Hebrew Scriptures--what we call the Old Testament--don't spell out a definitive "doctrine of resurrection" in any one single place, but it is fair to say that all of Jesus' first followers certainly believed that God would one day raise the dead.  And for that matter, there were other Jewish groups--who were decidedly not followers of Jesus--who also believed that God would raise the dead, too.  So when someone like a Simon Peter addressed a Jewish crowd on the day of Pentecost in the early chapters of Acts and makes a reference to the resurrection of Jesus, it wasn't because he was trying to prove that resurrection can happen--it was because he was trying to say something about Jesus.

Note here in Acts 2, when Peter gets to the point of talking about Jesus being raised from the grave, his argument doesn't go, "Jesus rose from the dead--therefore, resurrection must be a real thing."  Rather, Peter's point goes in a different direction, one pointed back at Jesus: "Jesus rose from the dead--therefore, Jesus must really be Lord and Messiah."

To be sure, other New Testament writings (see for example 1 Corinthians 15) take Jesus' rising as grounds for believing in the idea of resurrection for others, but those passages are usually written to audiences that didn't already have resurrection in mind.  But in the Jewish mindset to whom Peter was speaking in Acts, the idea of life-after-death wasn't the thing that needed proving--it was the claim that Jesus is Lord.

And this is the real rub here: saying Jesus is risen means that he really is who he says he is, and that God truly affirms and vindicates Jesus.  To say Jesus is risen from the dead means that he really is "Lord"--a title with a lot of power and punch in the first century.  That not only puts Jesus somehow in union with the living God (whose divine name "Yahweh" was translated "Lord" in Greek translations of the Hebrew Scriptures), but also puts Jesus on collision course with Caesar.  The earliest Christian creed statement was the simple sentence, "Jesus is Lord," which was also a direct assault on Rome's claim about the emperor.  "Caesar is lord" was the mantra that the Empire required its subjects to affirm, often along with worship of the emperor, as a pledge of allegiance (or at least of acquiescence) to the empire's rule. 

And it was on this very point that the first Christians resisted. They went to their deaths--fed to lions, crucified, tortured, burned, and so on--because they refused to say that Caesar, with all his armies, weapons, threats, and bluster, was really in control. They instead insisted that "Jesus is Lord," and for the first Christians, Easter was the evidence.  The empty tomb was God's stamp of endorsement on Jesus, and God's rejection of the empire as final authority.  The empty tomb was God's supreme dissent, if you like, against Rome's verdict and death sentence for Jesus.  The empty  tomb was God's affirmation, to hear Peter tell it here in Acts, that Jesus rules... and that the way Jesus rules really was and is God's way of ruling the entire universe.

Now here is the hard part for all of us: saying Jesus is "Lord" also means confessing that Jesus is "right."  Right in what he said, what he did, what he taught, and how he loved (and loves).  As the great line of Dallas Willard puts it, if you have to hesitate before saying "Jesus is smart," it doesn't mean very much to say "Jesus is Lord."  Sometimes we hear this talk about "confessing Jesus as Lord" and we think that it is just about having a warm fuzzy feeling about this bearded fellow in the robe, but truthfully, to confess Jesus as "Lord" means to say that what Jesus says... goes.  Not just on the things that are easy for you to accept.  Not just on the things I like.  Not just on the matters that leave my personal comfort unchanged.  Not just on the things I think I am doing a good job on.  Jesus is not running as a candidate in our political system, where he is expected to tailor his message to what will get him votes.  Jesus isn't running for office--either he knows what he is talking about, or he doesn't.  And for the earliest Christians, the supreme evidence that Jesus really is Lord and really does have authority to say how things are going to be run, was the resurrection.

So to follow Peter's logic... if we believe in the Good News of Easter, it means accepting that Jesus is right when he teaches us to love our enemies.  If we believe the tomb was empty on that first day of the week, it means that Jesus is right when he says that the poor and the meek are the blessed ones, and that the well-fed and the well-spoken-of are the ones who should be worried.  If we believe that Jesus is risen from the dead, it means also accepting that in God's reign, the last are first and the first are last, and in the end the workers who only did one hour of labor get paid the same as those who worked all day.  If we mean it when we say, "Christ is risen indeed!  Alleluia!" then it also means accepting that the only true greatness is in giving yourself away, the only true victory looks like a loss, and the only real power is in surrender, not in making yourself look tough or beating your chest.

In other words, if we believe the news of Easter, it not only makes a difference in what we believe happens AFTER death--it makes a difference in what we believe about life BEFORE death, too.  It means accepting that Jesus' perspective on things is correct, even if I am not "there" yet... even if I recognize it makes me uncomfortable... even if it means I have to do some learning and growing and changing of the way I think, as well.  That puts a stop to any of this silly nonsense we religious folks sometimes try that says, "Of course I believe in Jesus... but I just don't think that his teaching about ________ is very realistic or practical."  And it puts an end to any schmaltzy gobbledygook  like, "I love Jesus with all my heart... but I don't think his teaching to do good to those who hate you is very prudent." At least not if we read the Bible on its own terms.  Peter doesn't leave us that option.  For Peter there on the day of Pentecost, the logic is airtight with no wiggle room: if Jesus is risen from the dead, then Jesus is Lord.  And if Jesus is Lord, then Jesus is right--about everything, even the things that mean my life will have to change, or be rearranged, or have to be re-aligned.

So... for us who just got done singing, "Jesus Christ is risen today! Alleluia!" this past Sunday... what things might be changed, or have to change, in our day to day priorities, beliefs, actions, attitudes, and prejudices?  What things had we convinced ourselves were necessary for our security and livelihood that Jesus will tell us to get rid of?  What people were we ready to ignore that we can no longer turn a blind eye toward?  What corners of our lives were we comfortably bent in on 'self' with that are now going to have to be hammered out to reshape us?  And how will the risen Jesus lead us out of the tomb, and out of our old self-centeredness, if he really is alive again?

Go... live like Jesus is risen... and thus Lord... and thus right... about everything.

Lord Jesus, as we dare to confess you--and not the powers of the day--are really in charge, let us live this day as your people, taking your lordship seriously.

Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt

Beyond the Shadow of a Doubt--April 14, 2017

"Jesus said to [Peter], 'One who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is entirely clean. And you are clean, though not all of you. For he knew who was to betray him; for this reason he said, 'Not all of you are clean.' After he had washed their feet, had put on his robe, and had returned to the table, he said to them, 'Do you know what I have done to you?'" [John 13:10-12]

"When they came to the place that is called The Skull, they crucified Jesus there with the criminals, one on his right and one on his left. Then Jesus said, 'Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing'." [Luke 23:33-34]

If there had been any question, any question at all, whether Jesus really meant (and lived!) the notion of love for enemies, let those questions now be put to rest.

Together, these two snapshots from Thursday and Friday remove any shadow of a doubt--Jesus understood his life, his ministry, and indeed the whole Reign of God, in terms of showing love for those who have shown the greatest unkindness first.  Jesus didn't just say it in the Sermon on the Mount when the stakes were low and he was just building public awareness, and then walk it back when push came to shove.  Jesus consistently lived as though the words that came out of his mouth were--and are--the God's-honest truth, which is to say that Jesus lived as though God really does rule the universe through suffering love that embraces enemies.

And I believe that these two passages together make the case that this is not a fluke, but the core of Jesus' mission and person. 

Now, the skeptic in me wants to say that if we only had one of these two passages from the gospels, we might be able to dismiss it.  If all we had was John's account of the footwashing, it might be easy to overlook John's clear chronology that puts Judas on the scene and in the room when rabbi Jesus takes the towel and washes his disciples' feet.  We might miss that Jesus knows exactly what is coming, and who is responsible, or we might think that Jesus is just a poor helpless victim who didn't know he was about to be turned over to the police by one of his own inner circle.  You could say that it's easy to be nice to people who are later rotten to you, because they haven't been rotten yet... but as John tells it, Jesus knows even before the betrayal and the kiss in the garden.  But like I say, if all we had in the Passion stories was just this scene of the footwashing with Judas in the room, we might miss that Jesus is consciously, intentionally practicing love-for-enemies there in his few remaining hours of freedom... and life.

And on the other hand, if all we had was the lone verse from Luke about a crucified Jesus praying, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do..." we might dismiss that, too. We might hedge or water down what Jesus is doing--we (who have a way of letting our own vindictiveness off the hook) might rationalize this word from the cross and say, "Well, this is only for those who didn't know what they were doing... or didn't understand that what they were doing was wrong!"  We might skeptically disregard anything a dying man says while being tortured to death as the mad ravings of delirium.  Just like we wouldn't necessarily trust what your relative says when they are coming out of anesthesia or lost in the fog of dementia, we might try the same with Jesus on the cross: "Oh, he can't possibly really mean to call on God to forgive the very people who are knowingly murdering him! He must mean someone in the scene who is just an innocent bystander caught up in the action without knowing what's going on."

But as it happens, we have both of these scenes from the Passion of Jesus.  Before the horror begins, we have Jesus, consciously and with clear eyes choosing to wash the feet of the one who is about to betray him over to death.  And then once the bottom falls out and the crucifixion has begun, we have Luke's note about forgiving those who have nailed him to the wood.  Together, these leave us no room for doubt--the way of Jesus is the way of love for those who are rotten to us.

Now, that may sound like good news to you... or it may sound like the hardest thing in the world.  (It is possible, and I think in fact the best sign that you are paying attention to Jesus, if it sounds like both at the same time to you.) It may sound like the most difficult part of this whole Christianity thing, honestly.  Come on, let's just say it: we are great with the idea of going to heaven when we die.  We like the idea of God always being "with us," and we just eat up all that "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want," business.  We really don't have that hard a time with the notion of rules and commandments, either--we just learn to think of them as boxes to check off of a list in order to earn a heavenly prize when we die. 

But all of that allows us to picture Christianity as basically a religious game in which we get to decide who is "worthy" of mercy and who is not. All of that allows us to picture ourselves as worthy--and thus we get the heaven-prize--and then to picture the people we DON'T like (or the people who don't like US) as UN-worthy, and thus excluded from grace.  Neat and tidy, huh, isn't it?  I get to pat myself on the back, because I must be a good-little-boy since I have all these great promises of God's favor... and I get to look down on the people I can't get along with, because they must be on the wrong side, and God's love can only be for one side or the other.  Dust off your hands, and we can all sleep well at night with that picture...

And yet, when we get these two moments in the Gospels, there is no way of keeping that neat and tidy religious game up any longer.  There is no more illusion that God's kindness to me is really because I am so great and moral and nice, while I get to keep nurturing grudges and bitterness toward everybody on my enemies-list.  No, because Jesus insists that the whole Passion--and thus his whole life (and death and resurrection)--is a theme-and-variations on love that embraces enemies.  From washing the feet of thick-headed dopey Peter and conniving, betraying Judas, to forgiving his executioners in his dying breath, Jesus makes it clear that everything has always been about the way God rules by loving those who are turned away from God.

And this is the turn that makes it possible for us to hear this challenging truth as good news, too: if Jesus' love is even for enemies, then there is nothing, really nothing, that can shake Jesus' love for you and me, too.  Even when we are being arrogant jerks who think we know better than everyone else.  Even when we say and think hateful things about others without realizing how terrible we sound.  Even when our priorities are turned dead-set away from God's.  Even when we have been letting hate and bitterness overtake the good soil in our hearts like weeds.  If Jesus' love does not draw the line at those who were crucifying him or the one who betrayed him, then Jesus' love will not cut me off, either.  The same truth that is so difficult for me because it forces me to see how self-centered, bitter, and hypocritical I had become hating other people and nursing grudges against the people I don't like... turns out to be the truth that gives me the only sure comfort and confidence there is in life. 

In the next twenty-four hours, Christians around the world will be contemplating once again the story of Jesus' execution on a Roman cross, with the smiling approval of the religious authorities of his own nation.  Don't let that storytelling pass in your consciousness without hearing it the way Jesus lived it--as a love story... the love that embraces while it disarms, the love that includes all, even those who are my enemies, and even those who are Jesus' enemies.  Don't miss that such a love is the only hope for people who mess up and flounder... people like you and me.

Lord Jesus, thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  For the cross.  For everything. For the love that will not let us go.