Easter and Welcome

"Easter and Welcome"--May 31, 2017

"Welcome those who are weak in faith, but not for the purpose of quarreling over opinions.  Some believe in eating anything, while the weak eat only vegetables. Those who eat must not despise those who abstain, and those who abstain must not pass judgments on those who eat; for God has welcomed them. Who are you to pass judgment on servants of another? It is before their own lord that they stand or fall. And they will be upheld, for the Lord is able to make them stand.  Some judge one day to be better than another, while others judge all days to be alike. Let all be fully convinced in their own minds. Those who observe the day, observe it in honor of the Lord. Also those who eat, in honor of the Lord, since they give thanks to God; while those who abstain, abstain in honor of the Lord and give thanks to God.  We do not live to ourselves, and we do not die to ourselves. If we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord; so then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, so that he might be Lord of both the living and the dead." [Romans 14:1-9]

Hmmm... Easter means accepting people who think and live and live their lives differently from me.  Resurrection means... acceptance.   How about that?

I have to be honest with you, this is not the first place my mind goes when I think of Easter.  The obvious conclusions are something like, "Because Jesus is risen... we will live." or "Because Jesus came back to life, I have the hope of seeing again those I have loved who have died."  Maybe even, if the reflections we have shared in the last several weeks are in the right ballpark, "The empty tomb means that Jesus' really is Lord, and really does rule the universe from suffering love and self-giving, rather than saber-rattling and angry threats like the powers of the world doe."  Maybe those are conclusions we might all draw on our own from the news of the empty tomb.

But leave it to good ol' Paul of Tarsus to lead us in a direction no one expected like he does here in Romans:  the resurrection of Jesus means acceptance of others who are different from me. 

If that connection doesn't automatically make sense, let's watch again working backwards and see how Paul gets there.  Paul starts with the idea that Christ, who has died and risen, is Lord of all--of the living and the dead.  And that, in turn, means that no matter what circumstances we find ourselves, we belong to this same Jesus.  We are his. We are claimed. We are beloved.  We are precious.  That is true if we are alive. It is true even in death.  The key is that, no matter what, we belong to the Lord Jesus.

Now here is the move that comes as a surprise of grace. 

Paul says that people with all sorts of different perspectives, practices, and lifestyles can be living "to the Lord."  In Paul's day, the issues in the life of the early church that were on the apostles' mind were about whether to eat meat or not (meat which, almost certainly would have come from pagan markets and have been first used in sacrifice to pagan gods), or whether or not to continue observing special days (whether Sabbath or other festival days or whatever).  And while Paul clearly has his own opinions on the subject (Paul thinks it's fine to eat meat, even if it came from a pagan meat market, since none of the other "gods" out there are real), the amazing thing is that Paul can allow the possibility that other people can have different practices... and still be serving the same Lord Jesus. 

This is a radical move: Paul decidedly does not say, "It doesn't matter what anybody believes, and there are no good reasons to think one way or the other..." but rather he has a solid reason for thinking as he does.  And yet, and yet, Paul sees that if Jesus is the Lord of all--of the living and of the dead, of those who eat and those who don't, of those who keep special days and those who refrain--then what is important is not so much "being right" but the way that the same Lord Jesus can hold all of us.

This is a really big deal.  Elsewhere, Paul can talk about how God's love reaches across the divides of gender and class and ethnicity (in Galatians 3, he writes that there is no longer "Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male and female," but rather we are all "one in Christ").  But this goes even further. These questions, about eating or not eating, about observing special days or not, and such, these are matters that you could call moral questions.  These are questions people feel "right" and "wrong" about.  Either it was morally "right" to avoid eating meat, or it was morally "wrong" to tell people not to eat it.  These were questions that people felt strongly about in the early church--these were questions of their lifestyle, of their daily routine, of their way of life and their practice of piety.  And Paul, instead of just enforcing his opinion as "the-once-and-for-all-answer," says, "If Jesus really is risen from the dead, and if he is also Lord of all, then we need to bear with and love--and accept--those who think differently in their ways of striving to love and serve that same Lord.

It's funny--we can be so focused on making sure we have the "right" answers that we forget that Jesus claims us even when we don't have it right... even when we are sure we are right but turn out to have it all wrong.  Jesus' claim on us is bigger than the people who get 100% on their theology.  Jesus' claim on us is stronger than the differences between us.  Jesus' claim on us is more vital, more real, than whether we can see things from the same perspective as those we want to label "weak." 

All of that is true because Jesus is alive and risen from the dead.  All of that is true because of the resurrection.

In a world and culture like ours that gets so polarized so quickly, the resurrection itself--the news of Easter--does something to us to cause us to accept one another because the living Jesus is accepts us.

Today, celebrate the resurrection: love someone who thinks differently from you, and accept someone who is following Jesus but whose life and lifestyle look very different from yours. Jesus, after all, is the risen Lord of us all anyhow.

Lord Jesus, let your risen life enable us to see your love for all... even those we have a hard time accepting.

Turning the World Upside Down

"Turning the World Upside Down"--May 30, 2017

"When they could not find [Paul and Silas], they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities, shouting, 'These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. They are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, saying that there is another king named Jesus.' The people and the city officials were disturbed when they heard this, and after they had taken bail from Jason and the others, they let them go." [Acts 17:6-9]

The charges here are pretty serious--but notice: nobody contests them.  There is no plea bargain.

In this scene from the early life of the church in Acts, no less than the apostle Paul, as well as Silas and someone named Jason, and the rest of the Christian community there are accused of "turning the world upside down," and they have been announcing "another king," the Lord Jesus.  This is subversive stuff--not violent revolt, but a clear statement that for the Christian community, ultimate allegiance goes to the living Jesus, and not to Caesar--to the living Jesus, and not to local authorities; to the living Jesus, and not to their own self-sufficiency.  These are weighty allegations--and, yet, surprisingly enough, Paul and Silas do not dispute them.

At least they do not dispute the charge that they have come to announce the Reign of God and the Lordship of Jesus, and I hardly suppose they would dispute that their message really is turning the world upside down.  Just at the most basic level, the news of the risen Lord Jesus turns the world upside down in the sense that the news shakes up the nice and quiet order of life-as-we-know-it.  And then on top of that, the actual Christian message itself is pretty subversive stuff the more you dig into it.  The God who raises Jesus from the dead is, as the Scriptures insist, the same God who lifts up the lowly, who deflates the inflated proud, who calls "blessed" the ones everyone else labels "losers," and who uses weakness and foolishness to shame the strong and the wise.  There is no getting around it--the Christian message IS aimed at turning the old order of things upside down. The crowds and the authorities are spot on when they accuse Paul and the other Christians of "turning the world upside down," and they are right on the money when they accuse the believers of announcing a new king.

I can remember as a teenager the first time I came across these words in the Bible and thinking, "This doesn't sound like church as I've seen it!  We never talk about turning the world upside down, and we hardly have much enthusiasm for talking about Jesus as our king."  There was surely a good bit of adolescent foolishness and naïveté in that reaction, but that doesn't mean it was wrong.  I think it was nevertheless an accurate read of church as I had seen it.  We Christians--at least by and large in America--have for a very long time lived with a sort of gentleman's agreement with the orders of the day, saying that we would not rock the boat if they would let us religious folks be.  We would not raise the question of whether being a good follower of Jesus and a good citizen were always the same, and in turn, churches would not pay taxes.  We would agree to get comfortable with the order of the day--even if it meant comfort at the expense of others who get bombed, or turned away, or exploited--and in exchange, well, we could live in that comfort.  We would promise not to mention that the emperor had no clothes on, and in return, we would get front row seats for his parade down the street. 

We have not talked much about "turning the world upside down," maybe because we either believe that everybody has already heard the News about Jesus (which is incorrect) or because we believe that the News of Jesus isn't really earth-shaking stuff (which is also incorrect).  Sometimes, the closest we can muster is playing church, where we all agree to be in worship on a Sunday and we smile at the presence of children and will occasionally mention to friends and acquaintances about "what a lovely church we attend," and invite them to come, with the same casual whimsy as inviting someone to join you for a concert or a movie. 

But Paul and Jason and Silas, none of them find the message of Jesus to be so insipid, so tame.  They don't protest when the accusations are read, "They have been turning the world upside down!"  Paul doesn't stop the proceedings and plead, "But you've got us all wrong!  We don't want to affect people's actual lives, just to make them feel a little more spiritual!"  And Silas doesn't say, "You've misheard us--Jesus is our Lord, but that doesn't actually affect they ways we buy or sell or act or love.  No, we're still good subjects of the emperor on those counts!"  And you don't hear Jason saying, "All of this Jesus-is-king business is just spiritual--we don't really believe what Jesus said, or live under the way of life he taught us!  No, he's just our ticket to heaven, not our way of life on earth!"  Nope--not a word like that from any of these holy troublemakers.  They seem to believe that the charges fit--or at least, they reflect how you would hear the message of Jesus if you thought in terms of the Roman Empire's legal system.  Any other "lord" is a threat to the unquestionable rule of the emperor. Any other "logic" than Rome's might-makes-right is treasonous.  Any other allegiance than to the authority of Caesar threatens to subvert the whole system.  And any claim of a risen Messiah who has defeated the one threat Rome was really good and making ("We'll kill you if you cause trouble!") is going to sound like it's up ending the order of the day. And yet in the face of that, here are these followers of Jesus, who do not protest at the charge that they are "turning the world upside down." Instead, they kind of shrug their shoulders and say, "Well, yeah, I guess that is exactly what we are doing after all. All hail king Jesus!"

Could we hear the Good News that way again?  Could we let it sink in today that the news of God's free gift of grace in Christ Jesus up-ends all the earning-schemes and winner-take-all ways of life as we are used to it?  Could we see again that if Jesus--the one who defeats death by dying--really is lord, then he has exposed every emperor's need for dominating others with bigger guns and bigger treasuries as just naked aggression?  Could we recognize that if Jesus really is Lord, then our priorities and finances and commitments are all subject to re-ordering--and yet that it is good news, because the old rat-race system we lived in no longer has power over us?  Could we be the kind of Christians who do not try to soften the charges when people say we are "turning the world upside down"?  What could that look like for you and me today?

Or, to put it in these terms--if someone accused you of "turning the world upside down" because you were living your life in allegiance to "another king, named Jesus," would there be enough evidence to convict you?

Our Lord and King Jesus, we teeter between naive and adolescent rebelliousness at the good structures around us on the one hand, and quiet complacency in a world that pretends it is god on the other.  Keep us restless, then, dear Lord, so that we can give our allegiance to you and find the freedom you give living in your Reign.  Grant us the courage needed for the day, if we are to live this day as people in the Kingdom of God that is rippling out all around us and among us.



Resurrection and Taco Sauce

Resurrection and Taco Sauce--May 29, 2017

"John, to the seven churches that are in Asia: Grace to you and peace from him who was and who is and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth.  To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.  Amen." [Revelation 1:4-6]

Jesus is risen from the dead: therefore, my life is complete even without buying more salsa.

Forgive the non-sequitur, the seeming lack of connection between thoughts of Easter and tomato-based condiments.  Allow me to explain, if you will.

We live in a world that is bent on trying to sell us stuff. It is a system, comprehensive, and nearly all-encompassing, dedicated to getting us, all of us, to be dissatisfied with our current situation, and to want to buy whatever they sell us in the hopes of making us happy.  And just about every voice you hear, every image you see on a screen, every ad you consume or click, is in on the hustle.  It is all a grand scheme to get us to be permanently unhappy and to be permanently fooled into thinking that the next big thing they offer is, at last, the thing that will make us finally content.

"Your food isn't gourmet enough--buy this new brand of 'artisan' rolls!" they say, even though they are made in the same factory as the regular hot dog buns and white bread, but with rustic-looking packaging designed to make me think that some flour-covered baker somewhere in Tuscany rolled out the dough just for me, while allowing me to ignore the fact that thousands of kids in Aleppo don't have any bread of any kind because their grocery stores, markets, and bakeries have all been blown up by bombs, or that there are hungry kids in school district where I live who go to bed with rumbling bellies.

"Your kids deserve trendy-looking jackets that make them look like grown-ups--you need to spend more on these children's clothes made by adult-label brands to keep them looking like they stepped out of a photo shoot!" they say, knowing that the clothes are all made in the same assembly line half a world away by people who will never be able to afford the same clothes for their children.

"You deserve convenience," they say, "and you should be able to have any product brought to your house in two days or less, flown in by robot drone if necessary!" And the more they say it, and the more we listen, the more likely we are to come to believe that, in fact, yes, we do have a right to have our "stuff" shipped to us by robot drones, and we should be impatient if things take longer.  It's our right, isn't it! It's our right, they say, as Americans, to get what we want when we want it!

Do you see--the system isn't just selling us one product or one brand.  The powers of our day are complicit in selling us a worldview, specifically a worldview tailored to keep us from ever being content, and always wanting more... more that they will be glad to sell us for just the right price.  It's less about getting you and me to buy this item or that service, but more about slowly getting us to accept that our happiness can be acquired by having the right stuff.  Once we accept that premise, they've got us already--we'll buy whatever else they tell us will give us a burst of endorphins to possess.

Or, as the character Mr. World puts it (hauntingly played by Crispin Glover on the show American Gods), "Spicy, medium, or chunky--they get a choice, of course.  Of course!  But they are buying salsa."  That's the clever game--we all get fooled by the powers of the day into thinking we are freest and happiest in all the world because we can buy more stuff in more varieties (and more shipping options!) than anyone else on the planet, and than any other time in human history.  But really, we have let ourselves be duped into accepting the premise of the powers of the day that we need... more in order to feel finally like we are living the good life.  So whether it's artisan sandwich rolls, children's clothing, or five kinds of salsa, we have already fallen for their bait.  We have already accepted the idea that because we got to choose which brand, or which kind, we must be happier... rather than considering that maybe the meaning of life doesn't reside in the ability to buy more.

But like I say, part of the New Testament's witness is that in the risen Jesus, there is someone who is willing to tell us the truth about reality, and who pulls the masks off the powers of the day to reveal that they are hucksters and pretenders, not the true source of our contentment, our joy, and our lives. 

When the first Christians thought about what it means that Jesus rose from the dead, it didn't just mean to them that it proved there was life after death.  Jesus' resurrection meant that Jesus really knew, and knows what he is talking about--that he has the key to reality, and that the other competing voices of authority (we know them still blasting ads at us on screens and speaking to us from radios, TVs, and digital billboards) are liars.  The  New Testament writers took the resurrection to mean that Jesus can tell us the truth because he has seen behind the curtain the Wizard of Oz keeps hiding behind.  Jesus can tell us the truth about things because he is the one who, in all creation, is not selling anything. He is simply giving away life... abundant... overflowing... and free.

When the writer of the book we call Revelation, a guy named John, thought about who Jesus really is, it's interesting that he puts three titles, three roles, if you like, side by side.  Jesus is both "the faithful witness," and "the firstborn of the dead," and also "the ruler of the kings of the earth."  That might seem like just heaping up impressive-sounding titles for one's God-figure, but they are all related.  Jesus is the one "witness" in the universe who tells us how things really are--he is no paid spokesperson, and he is no ad exec angling for a sale, but simply can tell us that the powers of the day don't really have a way to make us happy.  Jesus tells us that the sales pitches of the world are just a shell game.  And Jesus tells us we don't have to play it anymore--he is the one faithful (that is, truthful) witness to how things really are in a world full of pretenders and snake-oil salesmen. 

At the same time, Jesus is "the firstborn from the dead," the one who guarantees that there is resurrection in store for more than just himself, and the one shows us that the point of life is not just to get more "stuff" now.  The powers of the day want us to believe the old line of Schlitz Beer is the gospel that "You only go around once in this life, so grab all the gusto you can."  Do you see? It's just one more variation on the salsa-scheme!  The powers of the day want us to spend our lives acquiring, more and more, because we are convinced that all that really matters is how good we can make ourselves feel based on how much stuff we can acquire in this life.  And here comes Jesus, risen from the dead, to say, "Nope.  There's more to life than how much you can acquire in a lifetime.  There is more than what will be parceled out to others after you draw your last breath."  Jesus is the "faithful witness" about how things really are because he is the one who has been through death and revealed the truth that the Gospel-according-to-Schlitz is a lie.

And last, John calls Jesus "the ruler of the kings of the earth." That is to say, that Jesus really is the Lord that all the powers of the day are pretending to be.  Whether you imagine the rulers of the world today are presidents, prime ministers, and kings, or CEOs and businessmen, the New Testament's claim is that none of them are really in charge--Jesus really is the one who reigns.  And his reign is not something you buy or order or click on to sign up for--it is given as a free gift from the one "who loves us and freed us."  It turns out that freedom is NOT having more choices of brands to buy (as long as you buy SOMETHING), but in fact, the freedom of knowing that contentment and meaning and purpose come as free gifts from the real Lord of creation, the crucified and risen Jesus.

If we are going to take the resurrection of Jesus seriously, it will mean we also take seriously Jesus' way of undermining the voices and sales pitches of the powers of the day.  We will no longer fall for the false premise that we cannot be content unless we buy... or unless we have... or unless we acquire...  We will no longer fall for the lie that happiness or greatness is about having more brands to choose from.  We will no longer believe the lie that we have to grab as much as we can because we only go 'round once in life.  And we will no longer believe that our comfortable lifestyle (and the luxury of free shipping on cheap merchandise)  is more important than the lives of other people.

If we believe the resurrection, we will no longer feel obligated to buy salsa in order to feel like we are living the good life.  In fact, we will find that the good life comes, not from getting or possessing at all, but from giving ourselves away, as we will have learned from Jesus, the firstborn of the dead.

What else will you and I be free to re-think and re-consider because we belong to the Lord of all the powers, the risen Jesus?

Lord Jesus, free us from the ways we have fallen for the world's game-playing and sales-pitches, and let us find the freedom of giving ourselves away.

Easter and Justice

Easter and Justice—May 26, 2017

 [Paul said to the Athenians:] “Since we are God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stones, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” [Acts 17:29-31]

You don’t repair what you are about to throw away. 

You don’t fix what you are going to pitch immediately.

You don’t take the time and energy and sweat and effort to mend something that you don’t care about.

And you don’t take the time to straighten out, or reinforce, or set right, something that you are just abandoning.

We had neighbors across the street a while back, maybe a year or two ago, who had to leave the house they were renting.  And because it wasn’t theirs (they were just renting), and the terms were not ending on a particularly happy note (eviction is never a happy circumstance), they just left the place a gigantic mess.  Weeks later, after they had grabbed their stuff and gone, someone from the bank or landlord came and investigated the condition they had left the house, and it was just awful—messes from the animals, walls banged up and dirty, and things just left in a bad state.

Now, was it irresponsible of the former tenants to leave things that way?  Sure.  But in a sense, that is exactly the mindset you might expect from any of us when we are feeling “just done” with something.   If you are throwing away the old broken cheap venetian blinds from your window to install new ones, you usually don’t take the extra time to dust and wash the ones you are pitching.  If you are using disposal plates at your family picnic, you don’t wash or even scrape off the plates that you are just going to throw away anyhow.

On the other hand, the things you are invested in are the things you take the time to mend when they are broken, reorganize when they are strewn around in a mess, and put right when they are out of sorts.

If we are clear on that much, then we are in the right frame of mind to talk about the New Testament’s claim that God has raised Jesus from the dead in order that one day he will “judge the world in righteousness.”  We often assume the phrase “judge the world in righteousness” means destroying the world.  But again, I think that misses the point of why judgment happens in the universe... ever.  Judgment is--or at least it is meant to be--about justice, which is to say, it is about setting things right. The word translated "righteousness" here in the Greek is the same word for "justice;" these were not separate ideas in the minds of the biblical writers.  That means when Paul, or Peter, or James, or any of the other writers of the New Testament talk about God's future "judgment" over all things in Christ, it is about "establishing justice." It is about setting things right that are currently out of sorts and out of whack.  It is about mending and restoring.  After all, you don't bother to check if a wall is plumb if you are already determined to knock it down.  You only measure--that is, to judge--the squareness or plumbness of a building if you intend to continue to inhabit it, not if it is already slated for the wrecking ball tomorrow.

And that means, too, then, that the resurrection is not meant to be heard as a threat--as in, "Look out, because the divinely appointed hit man is back from the dead and looking for revenge!"  but as a promise, as in, "Here's how we know God is committed to setting things right in this broken, crooked world--God has even raised Jesus from the dead for the expressed purpose of taking a level and a plumb line to the universe and restoring it where it is out of true.

And it is in light of that promised future--a future of justice, in which people are no longer stepped on or elbowed out of the way by those who imagine themselves more important, in which nobody gets bullied or silenced, in which no one has to live in fear--that we are called to turn our hearts over to the plumb line now, too, and to let Jesus go to work making us true again, too.  Even the call for "all people everywhere to repent" is part of that restoring work, letting the risen Jesus reset the warped beams in our hearts that have allowed us to become selfishly crooked and indifferent to the needs of those around us.  To "repent," after all, is to let Jesus effect a change in our thinking and willing, our hearts and our minds, where they have gotten bent in the wrong direction.  But of course, a carpenter doesn't bother to bend and re-direct the nails that have started to go in crooked if he is going to throw away the project straight away anyhow.  The hammering back into the right shape is a sign that the carpenter is still committed to setting the boards right and getting the nails in correctly.

And so, dear friends, today take the Easter news that Jesus is alive again and risen from the dead as the New Testament voices like Paul and Luke intended us to hear it.  The news "Christ is risen" is the opening sentence in a declaration that this crooked universe will be put right.  Resurrection means that God is not throwing away creation, but putting it right where we have all bent it out of true.  And being Easter people now means that we strive even now to let God's justice bend us back to our right shape where we have let ourselves become curved in on ourselves.

And when we feel that hammering, shaping, bending presence working on us, we will have confidence: God is still working on us.  And you don't keep working on something you are just going to pitch.

Lord God, let your justice shape us and reshape us, more and more fully now, as you are remaking and restoring all this crooked world and putting us right.

Strong at the Broken Places

"Strong at the Broken Places"--May 25, 2017

"But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh." [2 Corinthians 4:7-12]

There is a line of Ernest Hemingway's, from A Farewell to Arms, that is now increasingly well-known.  Hemingway writes, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward, many are strong at the broken places."

There is something stark, maybe even brutal, about that first half: the world breaks everyone.  There is no pain-free option.  There are no heroes who escape untouched.  There is no life that goes without cracking at some point--from the stress of sorrow, the raw energy of anxiety, the weariness of just being run down.  The world breaks us all.

Well, it turns out that there was a weary world traveler about nineteen hundred years before Hemingway who voiced a similarly blunt assessment.  "We are afflicted in every way... perplexed... persecuted... struck down... carrying tin the body the death of Jesus."  And even though Paul was talking first and foremost about his own literal life experiences, his words could be spoken over any Christians, because we are called to enter into the suffering and broken places of this world--this same world that breaks us--and to speak the news of resurrection for broken bodies.

Any time we imagine that Christians should, or might, or will have an easier time at life because of our faith, we are missing something important and essential: we are called to go where Jesus goes, and Jesus always goes right smack into the middle of the world's aching.  Despite what TV and radio preachers have been selling, being followers of Jesus does not give us a right to expect more secure lives, less danger, less trouble, less heartache, or more creature comforts.  Just the opposite--we are called to bear the signs of death and brokenness into the world, because we are called to share the grief of others, to share the hunger of others, to share the outrage of others who have been hurt or taken advantage of, and to share the tears of others.... because that is where we have learned from the storytelling to find Jesus.

You can hear the protest formulating in someone's mind now, can't you, though?  (Maybe it is even forming on your lips right now.) The objection comes back, "Well, if Christians really spent so much of their lives and their time sharing the sorrows and troubles of the world around us, the communities around us, and the heartaches of people around us, we wouldn't have time to look out for ourselves! What about me, after all?  Who will look out for my needs? If I am spending all my energy attending to someone else's broken places, I won't be able to shore up my own!" 

Yes... that is exactly right.  That is exactly the point.  For the followers of Jesus, the way we get pulled out of ourselves, out of fear, and our self-pity parties is to be pulled into sharing the sufferings and broken places of others.  And sharing those with others--sitting in silence in their grief, working on their behalf when they are in need of help, speaking up for them when they are too afraid to open their mouths, sharing from our own abundance to meet them in their need--doing any or all of those things will leave us feeling... spent.  Perhaps we might even say... afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, or struck down."  Perhaps that is exactly the point at which we become witnesses to a power that is greater than our own ingenuity or resources.  And perhaps that is exactly the point at which we can best become the conduits for the amazing resurrection power of Jesus (so that his life can be seen in us... even at the points when we are running on fumes).

I am not a science expert, by any means.  On many scientific subjects I know just enough to be dangerous.  But I recall reading at some point along the way a bit of the background to how superconductors work.  Certain substances, which might do a half-decent job of conducting electricity at room temperature, all of a sudden lose nearly all their electrical resistance when you cool them down to very, very low temperatures, and at that point they become able to let electrical current flow through them with virtually no loss or waste or resistance.  Oddly enough, though, in all the superconductive materials scientists have discovered so far, the material has to be made extremely cold--within just a few degrees of "absolute zero". In a sense, that is like saying their own internal heat energy has to be taken away, and at that point, they lose all their old resistance and become able to let another power (electricity) flow through them without their own atoms getting in the way of the flow of electrons.

Something like that, I think, is what the apostle Paul envisions for us, too.  We can spend our lives trying to shore our own resources up, plug the holes we see in ourselves, defend our own interests, and hold back to take care of our selves... but then we will always have a pretty sizeable part of ourselves that is actually resisting God's power and love flowing through us.  On the other hand, at the point where we surrender it all, the point where we give our energy, passion, strength, minutes, and love back into God's movement to reach all people with love, in that moment, our own internal resistance dissipates, and we become conduits of God's resurrection power.  It is at the point where we feel we are carrying around the death of Jesus in our bodies that the witness of resurrection really has any true power--it is, to borrow from Hemingway, at the point where the world breaks us that God's power can make us strong in the broken places.  But it means that our posture in life changes--instead of looking out for me and my own, my comfort, my wealth, my reputation, my preferred traditions and customs, we begin to look out more and more for ways to spend ourselves in the service of loving the people around us who are feeling struck down, afflicted, or perplexed.

At the point where I quit spending and holding onto my own energy to keep for myself, I can become a superconductor for the power of God--but that means seeing that the path of the resurrection life runs through my own self-surrender.

So today, part of practicing resurrection--part of letting Mercy lead us out of the tomb--is, surprisingly, not by psyching ourselves up or shoring up our own supplies of power and energy.  But rather, it is about daring to step into a world that breaks us all and doesn't bat an eye while doing it, and then to share in the sufferings of others, spending ourselves and our love until we feel we are almost all used up--and then discovering that right in that moment, the power of the living God who raised Jesus from the dead is most fully able to flow through us, bringing the rise life of nail-scarred Jesus into the midst of a world aching for his presence.

Lord Jesus, let us live the resurrection life... by surrendering ourselves and our resources for the sake of others.  And do not let us go.

Whether We Like It Or Not

Whether We Like It Or Not--May 24, 2017

Then Peter began to speak to [Cornelius and family]: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name.” [Acts 10:34-43]

Did you notice--in all this sharing of the Good News, in all this announcing of the resurrection and the promise of Easter, there is no sales pitch. From the beginning Peter doesn't sound like he's selling anything.  There is no deal proposed, no tit-for-tat, sign-on-the-dotted-line move to "win" Cornelius or make him a notch on a spiritual bedpost.  In fact, there doesn't seem to be any talk of what "I get out of the deal" for believing in Jesus until the very last sentence.

Instead, Peter presents the news of Jesus first and foremost as a story of what God already has done.  Jesus did these things—healing, doing good, dying, rising—and there is nothing anyone can do about it.  Whether you like it or not, Jesus has been sent by God for the sake of "peace," Luke tells us.  Whether we can believe it or not, he is alive again.  And whether we completely understand what it means or not, he is Lord, and has brought about the upside-down rule of God in which the last are made first, the poor are the blessed, and the dead are raised.  Peter's first move is not to sell Cornelius a religious product or dangle the carrot of heaven or wave the stick of hellfire in front of him. In fact, that is never Peter's move in this speech.  There is no looming question, "If you were to die tonight, Cornelius, where would you wake up?"  And there is no pitch for Cornelius to make Jesus his personal Lord, since Peter seems to believe that whether we like it or not, Jesus is already currently "Lord of all." 

This is all quite different from so much of the talk out there floating in the religious airwaves about how to share the Good News.  Peter tells it like it is--Peter seems to believe that the universe is a different place already because of what God has done in Jesus, and his role is to invite Cornelius into the movement of what God has done.  And in particular, what God has done is to mend the world's broken places through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.  Peter knows already that Cornelius is a man of some faith--that he has been a prayerful person and was clearly seeking more about God.  So Peter takes that and runs with it, not trying to prove that there is a God, nor to prove that Jesus is God, nor to prove that the Scriptures are infallible, but to carry on with the story of the God Cornelius already knows something about.  It's a rather different sermon than on the day of Pentecost or back when Peter was in front of the authorities earlier in Acts, which means that there is no cookie cutter formula for sharing the Good News.  There is no simple 1-2-3 formula or recipe or set of directions, and there is no requirement that the Good News be packaged like a deal in which "you do your part" so that, in response, "God will do God's part."  Instead, there is this wide open invitation to be a part of the motion God has already begun, to be a part of what God has already done. 

Reading through this whole sermon and knowing that the very next thing to happen in the story is the pouring out of the Holy Spirit on those who were gathered to hear Peter, you almost have to wonder where all the familiar trappings of evangelism are—where is the invitation for Cornelius to pray and invite Jesus into his heart?  Where is any talk of repentance?  Where is any mention of the responsibilities of church life?  Why hasn't Peter tried to close the deal with a promise about going to heaven when you die?  And why isn't there a single mention of making Jesus your personal anything?  Unless perhaps all those staples of popular religion in our day miss the point—if we really do believe that faith is God's gift to us, and if we really do believe that we are received into God's new community completely by God's grace toward us, then it shouldn't surprise us that God doesn't wait for someone to sign on the dotted line first to become a believer.  It is God who acts first, to pull Cornelius and everyone else in the room to faith.  It is God who gives the Holy Spirit—not just when we've prayed a prayer or asked for the Spirit or felt sorry for our sin—but as a pre-emptive first strike on our walled-in and insulated selves.  It is God who sent Jesus and raised Jesus, it is God who set up this meeting between Cornelius and Peter, and it is also God who kindles faith in Cornelius rather than wait around for him to get it right or to ask for it first.  That is precisely what it means to say that God is Lord of all, anyway.

Many times, we Lutherans live under the impression that since we don't "do evangelism" the way the popular religious voices on television and the radio do it, then we must not care about evangelism at all.  We sometimes assume that since we don't do the altar call or talk in the language of "making Jesus your savior" that we must not really be interested in sharing the Good News of Jesus with others who have never heard the story and have never learned the news that God has loved us to the point of death and invited us into a new relationship and new community.  But perhaps Peter's example tells us that there are more possibilities than the radio religion would allow.  Perhaps Peter's example gives us a new—and yet really ancient—way of sharing the Good News, a way that is centered in what God has done rather than in what we should do.  Perhaps Peter would dare us simply to retell the story of our faith, the story of what God has done for us, the same story that invites us to be part of what God is doing, and the same story that holds out the promise of what God will do.

God of all nations, give us the capacity to see your Spirit reaching out to all in this day, and give us an awareness of your generosity so that we will share your Good News as a free gift to be received—the way you have meant it to be—rather than a deal we must sign up for.

 

So We Laugh

"So We Laugh"--May 5, 2017

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth in to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith--being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire--may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." [1 Peter 1:3-7]

Easter people laugh.

We laugh, not because we are trying to pretend that rotten things don't happen in the world.  They do.  They happen to everybody, and they happen to us, who are a smaller subset within "everybody."  Easter people laugh even though it is also true that we are called to weep with those who weep.

But we laugh because the resurrection of Jesus gives us the ability to disarm the powers of death and sin and cruelty.  The resurrection gives us a way to see the worst that they can do, and still say back, almost taunting, "You do not get the last word."

Laughter, then, for the followers of Jesus, isn't a distraction, or a way of ignoring the awful things, the sadness, the injustice, the brokenness, and the violence of the world.  Laughter becomes our way, or as First Peter here says it, "rejoicing" is our way, because we are in on the great cosmic eternal joke that death thought it had won over Jesus the innocent victim, but resurrection shows death that it has been duped.  The powers that killed Jesus were fooled into thinking they got the last word, too.  The rulers of the day were convinced that they could make an example of Jesus and silence any opposition... but the rolled-away stone shows us that they could not stop his momentum. And still today, laughter is our way of disarming and disrupting the dismal dark.

I am reminded of a remark Mel Brooks would often make in interviews, when people would ask about the repeated habit he has of making fun of Hitler and the Nazis in his movies and comedy.  Whether it's the all out parody musical "Springtime for Hitler" in The Producers, or the shots he takes in History of the World, Part One, or wherever else in his movies you find it, Mel Brooks has often said that laughing at Hitler is part of what undercuts the power of his hate and cruelty all these decades later. When The Producers was being adapted from a movie into a stage show in the early 2000s, he gave an interview where he said, for example, "by using comedy, we can rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths." 

In other words, without denying the atrocities of what evil can do, one kind of effective resistance is to poke fun, to laugh, to ridicule the powers that think they are in total control.  By using laughter to combat the powers of the day, their insecurity is revealed, and we point to another, truer, Power--the power of abundant life, the power of resurrection, the power of the risen Jesus.

First Peter calls us to that kind of response to evil, to suffering, and to the powers of cruelty and death.  We will "rejoice"--which is to say, we will laugh--and get under the thin skin of the those powers, and unmask them as impostors.  First Peter says that the resurrection gives us the kind of hope it takes to learn to rejoice in the midst of suffering, even of persecution, and to let that joyful laughter be part of our resistance against death, against greed, against sin, and against cruelty.

This is critical, and this is revolutionary, if you think about it.  Our own gut tendency is to want to get very serious in the face of the powers that persecute.  In the first century when First Peter was written, there was the specter of official persecution from the empire, and of unofficial persecution from local pockets of people who didn't like these Christ-followers.  There were people in the administration of the empire who were trying to stamp out early Christianity, and there were others who just viewed Christ-followers with suspicion (us and our crazy way of including poor and rich, free and slave, men and women, like those old boundaries and distinctions do not hold anymore!).  From the beginning, Christians have lived in cultures that were hostile in varying degrees.   But First Peter's word to us is that we aren't supposed to make a fuss and insist on official protection from that hostility.  Followers of Jesus are not supposed to go around complaining that it's not fair, or that we should be free from the persecution.  And we are certainly not called to spend our energy trying to make things "easier" for ourselves--that just smacks of self-serving and self-interest and the impulse to stay comfortable.  Instead, First Peter says, our calling in the midst of hostility is to rejoice--to laugh.  Laughing provokes bullies to overplay their hand.  Laughing shrugs off whatever angry threats the powers of the day will make.  Laughing strips them of their power... and instead, finds joyful hope in the resurrection.

For followers of Jesus two thousand years later, we still struggle with the question of how to live in a wider culture that doesn't often line up with the things we believe Jesus is teaching us to hold dear.  Much like in the first century Roman Empire, sometimes the tension is with the official powers who govern, and sometimes it is from being at odds with the general "feel" or atmosphere of culture at large.  And, yeah, sometimes we run the risk of standing out from the crowd, or saying unpopular things.  But First Peter calls us, like he is simply following Jesus' lead, to rejoice in the midst of being rejected by others--to laugh in the midst of it all.  We don't go looking for special treatment, or for special protection, and we don't expect to get an easy time with the powers of the day.  Instead, we rejoice, and we take away the power that was meant to make us afraid.  And so we laugh.

Today, laugh. Laugh full and deep.  Because you and I are in on the biggest punch-line in the history of the universe.  We are Easter people.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be joyful, no matter what.

Seating Arrangements

Seating Arrangements--May 4, 2017

“God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come.” (Ephesians 1:20-21)

So… not to be disrespectful, but why exactly should we care about the seating arrangements in the heavenly throne room?  And more specifically, why should we care about the seating arrangements for Jesus in heaven, not even of ourselves?

Okay, let’s start with the presumption that there is a reason that Paul takes the time to describe this scene, and not throw this detail of the “seating” of Christ away like it’s unimportant.  Now think for a minute about any throne room scene you have ever observed, whether in a movie or television, a fairy tale, or what have you.  Even a real-life throne room scene from some ceremonial event in England, maybe.  But think for a minute about what you have seen:  is anybody ever allowed to stay sitting when the king or queen enters the room?  Is anyone allowed to stay seated if the king or queen is standing?  I’m not even sure I’ve ever seen an occasion where anybody ever sits in the throne room when the king or queen is in the room.  It’s all a symbol of royal power and majesty—they command a certain respect by their title and their crown.

But that of course brings us to the question… Why then is Jesus allowed to sit in a heavenly throne room?

Well… because of who he is.  This is one of those moments where the Biblical writers show us, rather than merely telling us, that Christ Jesus is not merely a good human teacher or religious guru, and not even that he is good prophet or heaven-sent hero, but nothing less than God-in-the-flesh.  You don’t let pretenders be seated in the throne room, after all.  And God, according to Ephesians has seated Jesus there in the heavenly throne room.  It is Paul’s way of showing us that Jesus has all that God has, and that Jesus is all that God is.  For a good faithful Jew as Paul was raised to be, the one absolute, crystal-clear rule was “Don’t give to anybody else the glory or praise or worship that are only due to God.”  And yet here Paul is giving glory and praise and worship and esteem and all the rest, which should only belong to God, to… Jesus.  It’s Paul’s way of saying what the Creeds would later put in bullet points: that Jesus is none other and nothing less than God in the flesh, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God.”

And then there’s this to consider—our culture’s love for coffee breaks every fifteen minutes notwithstanding, in Paul’s mind, you don’t sit down unless your work is done.  As in completed.  As in finished.  As in, not just “in progress” or “I’ve got a good start made here…” but actually done.  The resurrection of Jesus is Jesus’ sit-down moment, because the work—all the work—of redemption is done by then.  It happened at the cross, and it’s done now.  There’s no more mopping up for me to do, or you.  There’s no more worry about whether I’ve done my part for God enough or not, no antsy-ness about whether I’ve said the words or prayed the right prayer.  There’s no question left hanging in the air about whether I have to do a certain number of good deeds, give a certain amount in the offering plate, or win a certain number of converts and new members to my church.  It’s done.  Jesus did.  That’s why he gets to sit down. His work—the work of saving us—is done.  He did it with his hands nailed outstretched to a plank of wood.

But, of course, the nails weren’t the end.  And that’s the other piece of this whole seating arrangement scene.  God the Father “seated” Christ Jesus right along with having “raised” him from the dead—which Paul says is how God shows his great power.  In other words, the power of God is real power that really makes a real difference in the world, in history, and in our lives.  Sometimes Christians talk like God’s presence in our lives is entirely a matter of subjective feeling, like it’s just a matter of having a warm and fuzzy feeling of “peace in your heart,” which is fine and good, but doesn’t seem to make a hill of beans’ worth of difference in the big scheme of things.  But resurrection?  Now we’re talking.  Life beyond death? That I can see and understand. Being raised up after being struck down?  That’s something I can really hope for and cling to.  That’s what God’s power is like—not just a warm feeling or an inspirational moment or a quiet breeze, but a pulse to a heart that had stopped beating, a breath where there had been none before, and a stone rolled away from a tomb. 

All of that is waiting to be seen in the way Paul describes God seating Christ at the right hand of the heavenly throne.  All of that is meant to give us hope.  That’s worth giving a standing ovation for, don’t you think?

God of majesty and glory… and of nails, grant us the courageous faith to pin all our trust on what Jesus has done and to pin all our hopes on what you did to raise him from the dead.



One Bite of the Elephant

"One Bite Of the Elephant"--May 3, 2017

"Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, 'What are you discussing with each other while you  walk along?' They stood still, looking sad. Then one of them, whose name was Cleopas, answered him, 'Are you the only stranger in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have taken place there in these days?' He asked them, 'What things?' They replied, 'The things about Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet mighty in deed and word before God and all the people, and how our chief priests and leaders handed him over to be condemned to death and crucified him. But we had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel. Yes, and besides all this, it is now the third day since these things took place. Moreover, some women of our group astounded us. They were at the tomb early this morning, and when they did not find his body there, they came back and told us that they had indeed seen a vision of angels who said that he was alive. Some of those who were with us went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see him.' Then he said to them, 'Oh, how foolish you are and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have declared! Was it not necessary that the Messiah should suffer these things and then enter into his glory?' Then beginning with Moses and all the prophets, he interpreted to them the things about himself in all the scriptures." [Luke 24:13-27]

You know the old chestnut, I'm sure: "How do you eat an elephant?  One bite at a time."

I think there should be a similar saying for the risen Jesus: How do you lead people out of the darkness of despair?  One conversation at a time.

There is something really lovely, and strangely calm, I think, about the post-Easter stories of Jesus' appearances to his followers.  The stories that come from that first Sunday morning are all hurried and frenzied--the frantic running to and from the tomb, the confusion in the darkness before dawn, the fear and joy all mingled together in a volatile cocktail, even earthquakes and angels.  But afterward, there are these recurring moments where the living Jesus shows up--just invites himself into locked rooms and closed conversations--and he finds people who are at the edge of despair... and patiently walks them out of their fears.

Just that by itself would be striking, miraculous, even: you would think that a resurrected Messiah would have a full to-do list without frequent check-ins to appear to his disciples, again and again and again.  You might think that being freed from the power of death also buys you a bit of "you-time" when you don't have to keep proving yourself to be alive.  But beyond that, the disciples Jesus keeps showing himself to seem particularly skeptical--and captive to their fears, to boot!

It's the ten disciples locked in their room, and Jesus points out his wounds to convince them. It's Thomas after that, who famously says he can't believe until he puts his hand in Jesus' side.  And now it's these two on the road to Emmaus, who, to be quite honest about it, are rather rude to the stranger-they-don't-recognize-as-Jesus when he starts to ask them about what's got them down. 

With each of these encounters, disciples with real, nagging doubts bring their difficult questions to Jesus. And with each of them, Jesus takes the questions.  He doesn't run.  He doesn't get flustered.  He doesn't punish his followers for the doubts, and he doesn't walk away just because they have asked him a tough question.  He may not be tickled pink that they haven't gotten it yet, or that they keep letting themselves be paralyzed by the fear, but he doesn't walk away or write them off.


And that, just that by itself, is a wonder.  Ours is an era when it is so much easier to just walk away when a conversation becomes difficult, or to shut down when someone asks you a question you don't like.  Ours is an era in which we tend to get defensive when someone is honest, truly honest, with us, and we start hearing questions as attacks.  But Jesus doesn't run.  Jesus doesn't get up and walk out on Thomas for having questioned, and he doesn't leave Cleopas and his companion in the dust because they don't get it yet, either--even though they freely admit that they have heard the news that the tomb was empty. Jesus doesn't shrug them off or wash his hands of these doubters.  He never once says, "I'm done with you."  Jesus doesn't leave them in their despair or fear--in patience and grace he walks them out of the dark like they are walking out of the tomb themselves.


And that is my hope, too--that Jesus never says, "I'm done with you, Steve," even when I am sure I must be testing Jesus' patience.  I know myself well enough to know that I am often the coward who keeps running back inside the locked room of the familiar, the fearful one afraid to speak up, the one who dares not believe news that sounds too good to be true.  I know that I often have a hard time living with my hands and heart like the news that I have heard in my head really is true.  I know that I need to keep being reminded... and having my eyes opened... and having my heart stretched.  And I know that if I were Jesus, I would likely have given up on me.


Thank God I ain't Jesus.


These stories, like this scene from the walk to Emmaus, they tell me that Jesus doesn't get upset or flustered when I get hung up in fear or doubt or darkness.  They tell me that Jesus doesn't say, "That's it--we're done here."  They tell me that Jesus will keep leading me out of those dark places, even when I am the one who has walked myself back into them.


And that gives me the courage--maybe just enough courage--to let him lead me out again of the tomb, and to take another step with him seeing the world in the light of a whole new creation.  One step at a time. One day a time.  One bite of the elephant at a time... that Jesus, he just doesn't give up on me. Or you.  Or any of us.


Lord Jesus, keep meeting us where we are... and keep pulling us out of the darkness, the fear, and the despair... and into your new day.