Holding a Three-Sided Coin

Holding a Three-Sided Coin--January 31, 2018

"And we urge you, beloved, to admonish the idlers, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with all of them. See that none of you repays evil for evil, but always seek to do good to one another and to all.  Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, give thanks in all circumstances; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil. May the God of peace himself sanctify you entirely; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful, and he will do this." [1 Thessalonians 5:14-24]

This is who we are.

This is who we are--because this is what the living God calls us to be.

This is who we are--because this is what the living God makes us into.

Identity.  Calling.  Grace.  

I wish that somehow the laws of geometry allowed us to make three-sided coins, because what I want to be able to say is that these three are really three different "sides" of the same reality.  Our identity--who we are as followers of Jesus--is both something that we are called to do and to be by God, and something that we are transformed into because God graciously accomplishes it in us.  And did you notice that?  In one flowing thought here from the tail end of what we call First Thessalonians, Paul describes who we are, summons us to live in this particular way of life, and then also says over all of it, that the God "who calls you is faithful... and will do it."  God is the One whose power and presence makes us able to live out the calling... the calling that comes from God in the first place.

I remember the year in my middle teens that my parents bought me a guitar as a birthday present.  And I can remember the conversation, at some point after the instrument itself had been revealed, where I said to my mom, "But I don't know how to play the guitar..." to which she immediately responded, "Well, part of the gift will be that we will help get you lessons to learn, then."  So now when I put my guitar strap around my shoulder and look back, it is simultaneously right and true that I can think of myself, my "identity," so to speak, as being among other things "a guitar player."  I am now someone who knows, at least in a rudimentary way, how to play the guitar--that is way of talking about who I am.  And that also means I can look at the practices, the work, the time, and the energy I have spent and continue to spend trying to get better at making music with this instrument.  That is a way of talking about the work I do, or the practices I keep up with, to live into the gift that was given to me.  That is calling talk.  But in the very same breath it is accurate (indeed right and salutary, one could say) to recognize that I am only able to do what I can do because the gift was given and included the time and wisdom of a teacher to train my hands and mind to move with the strings.  Identity, calling, and grace--all intertwined.

And that's how this life following Jesus is lived: we learn who we are, as we practice the way of life we are called into, and at the same time as a faithful God refuses to give up or let go until we are made into the likeness of the Jesus whom we follow.  Identity.  Calling.  Grace. We lose something critical if we forget any one of those. 

Without the reminder that our calling from God is also our identity, we would imagine that God calls us only to exotic distant mission projects or headline-grabbing acts of heroism, rather than to be the persistent, moment-by-moment presence of blessed weirdness like salt or light or yeast.  Our calling is about who we are all the time, not simply a stand-alone project or event.

Without the reminder that our calling is also God's work of grace, we would turn Christianity into a never ending to-do list, which (to be perfectly honest) we could never keep up with on our own energy alone.  Christianity without the grace of Christ becomes just an "-ism," an ideology, or a set of instructions we lack the power to carry out.  Our identity needs to be understood as a gift of God as much as it is a calling.

And without the reminder that that this God-given identity is also a calling, we might think it was an optional thing.  We might think that Christianity is simply a label, or a club, or a heavenly fire-insurance policy that leaves me unchanged.  We need to know that God calls us, most fundamentally, to lives that do not return evil for evil, to patience with those I have the hardest time getting along with, to constant prayer and gratitude, to the same kind of love and courage we have found in Jesus... and that this is not up for discussion or debate.  

Today, then, remember, as these ancient words percolate in our hearts, this is who we are.

Lord Jesus, remind us who we are, who you call us to be, and who you are making us into.

God's Calling Card

God's Calling Card--January 30, 2018

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God."  [1 Corinthians 1:26-29]

You and I are evidence of the table-turning ways of God.

Wow.  You.  Real, actual you. And real, actual me.  God's call to us--not just people in Bible times, or halo-marked saints from oil paintings, or famous heroes from history, but us in all of our ordinariness--shows the world how God operates.  And God's ways are always to take the foolish and the frail and the forgotten in order to let some of the hot air out of the puffed-up, the proud, the pompous, and the powerful.  Paul says that the very fact that we have come to faith in Jesus is evidence to the world of God's upside-down ways.

You could say it's God's calling-card--this divine habit of taking the ones looked down on by the strong, the powerful, and the elite and calling them to belong in God's Reign.  Like the two robbers in Home Alone who always leave the water running in the faucets of the houses they break into, so that people will know they've been hit by "The Wet Bandits," God has left a calling card, a way of working in the world, by deliberately NOT calling only the so-called best and brightest, but intentionally calling anybody and everybody "beloved".  That's you and me.  We, just in the very fact of our belovedness without riches or political power or social influence, we are how God deflates the arrogant and turns the usual order of things upside down.  We are the way that God shames the strong and shows the world's "winners" that they are not nearly so special as they like to tell people they are.  We are the evidence that none of their accumulating, blustering, fist-shaking, or intimidating really had any sway in the big scheme of things--because here we are, ordinary and unassuming, and Christ has called us--chosen us!--to belong to his movement.  

Think of it--it's really quite a beautiful design on God's part, how God both lifts up the people who have been told they are nobodies and silences those who have puffed themselves up as "somebodies."  God does it by picking... us.  And God calls us without auditions, without being impressed by our skills, our charm, our net worth, or our job titles.  God calls us and loves us in all of our wonderful ordinariness, as a way of telling the Big Deals of the world that they aren't such big deals after all.  And that turns out to be part of how God is changing the world--by creating a totally new kind of community, in which we no longer fuss over who has more money or who wields more influence.  God is creating a fellowship of the ordinary, so that we will understand that our belonging has everything to do with grace and nothing to do with our raw talent or even our greatest achievements.

It's a bold--and I dare say risky--plan on God's part.  Risky, not because God can't do amazing things through ordinary people without having an elite team of the smartest, strongest, richest, and most successful people... but because we still keep missing the point of how God operates and we Christians keep falling into the same old thinking that being a Big Deal is important.  We do it institutionally as "The Church" when we play games like, "Whose Congregation Is Bigger?" or when religious-sounding hucksters on TV sell the message that "God wants you to be rich."  We do it when pastors give up on their call to be Elijahs to the Ahabs of the day because they (we) would rather have a seat at the table of power rather than risk being called "irrelevant."  We do it, each and every one of us, when we try and puff ourselves up to make ourselves feel better, or more significant, than our neighbor down the street.  Day by day, followers of Jesus miss the point of the fact that we have been called, just as we are, in all of our ordinariness--and that this is God's choice. We fail to see that this is part of God's surprising way of redeeming and restoring the world--by calling the nobodies and telling them they are beloved somebodies... by choosing the ones who have been overlooked or unseen in order to send a message to the ones who want to keep putting themselves in the center of attention.  We miss the sheer surprising genius of it, and instead so often we still play by the world's rules that you have to convince people you are a "winner" or a Big Deal in order to matter... when God has actually bent over backwards to show us that we are beloved just as we are.

And yet, for all the ways we miss the point, God does not give up on working with--and through--us.  That's one of the risks, you could say, of not going with only the best and the brightest and the most well-skilled and charismatic: God deliberately runs the risk that we will miss the point of what God is doing by having called us in the first place.  God chooses to work through us, despite how dense we can be, even when our dense minds miss the beauty and the wonder of a God who loves and works through people who are not necessarily the brightest bulb in the bunch.  

So even when I have missed the point and give in to the old thinking that says only the Big Deals, the "strong," and the "winners" matter, God doesn't "uncall" me because I don't "get it." God chooses and claims and calls a world full of us who don't "get" it on our own.  And that is the wonder of grace--the God who calls us doesn't select only from the Varsity Team, the Honor Society, or the Homecoming Court.  The God who calls us in Jesus doesn't get impressed with any of them.  The real living God who calls you just loves... you.

Own it today.  Know it.  And know that nothing else is needed but that love, that call, that Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear that you have claimed us as we are, and help us to see the ways you love us despite our drawbacks, limitations, and frailties.

A Life Worthy

A Life Worthy--January 26, 2018

"I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." [Ephesians 4:1-3]

Jesus doesn't call anybody to "be a success."

For that matter, you'll never find Jesus calling someone with the sales-pitch, "Come follow me, and I'll make you win more in life."  You don't hear a single Bible story where Jesus says, "Join my team, and I'll make you richer than everybody else around," and you don't find Jesus calling people with a promise of what the world calls "greatness."

In fact, usually in this life, Jesus says, the voices who lure you with talk of "winning," "success," "bigger wealth," and becoming greater and greater...if only you'll pledge them your loyalty, are the voices who have nothing to do with him, or with the Kingdom he represents.  They are, to borrow a word from another New Testament writer, "anti-Christ" voices. 

There is no calling to "look successful" on the lips of Jesus.  And there sure-as-heaven is never a time where the actual, living Jesus calls anybody to put themselves, or their group, First, ahead of everybody else.  It just ain't what Jesus is about.

On the other hand, when voices like these verses from Ephesians describe Jesus' call on our lives, they immediately start talking in terms of "love," "humility," "gentleness," "patience," and "peace."  And that, dear sisters and brothers in Christ, is what it looks like to "live a life worthy of the calling" to which we have been called.

A life that is "worthy" in Jesus' book doesn't mean bigger profits or higher market closes.  It does not consist in being the envy of your friends or fawned over by neighbors.  Jesus looks at the way the big-wigs and so-and-sos of our era brashly call attention to themselves, or boast about looking out for themselves first, or pass the buck in blame to avoid responsibility for their own mess-ups, and Jesus just simply says, "That isn't worthy of the Kingdom I represent.  That kind of life has nothing to do with me.  Those kind of values have nothing to do with the God I have come to reveal."

It's funny--well, "funny" in that way things can be called funny when they are really disturbing and sad--how often the talking heads, celebrities, and pundits of our day avoid answering questions about what is good or noble or worthy in their actions or words, and instead shift the conversation by talking about what is "successful," or calling themselves and their side the "winner," or, most popular of all, calling those they don't like "losers."  And I don't know--maybe they really think they are fooling people, or maybe they have fooled themselves, or maybe they just don't care, but it just seems so cartoonishly obvious that those voices sound nothing at all like the way of Jesus.  It doesn't seem like the point could be any clearer than it is here in Ephesians: the followers of Jesus have been called, not into a club, or to a religious "winner's circle," or to the top of the Forbes 500 list, but to a way of life marked by selfless love that doesn't have to call attention to itself or put someone else down in order to puff itself up.

That is, quite literally, what these verses are all about.  Words like "humility" and "gentleness" actually mean something for the followers of Jesus.  And it is worth noting that in the first century, in the Greek and Roman world in which Ephesians was written, "humility" (literally "lowliness" in the Greek) was not considered a virtue.  The Greeks and the Romans thought that putting yourself lower than others was scandalously bad PR.  You were supposed to flaunt your strengths, leverage them to get people to give you what you wanted, and at the very least find someone else you could blame or put beneath you to make yourself seem better, more like a "winner," by comparison.  That was the stock-in-trade of Caesar and his Empire, and maybe of every empire and every new Caesar since.  So when Ephesians describes a "life that is worthy," it was radical to hear such a life described, not in terms of "winning," or "success," or "greatness," or military wins, or money accumulated, but in terms of putting ourselves lower so that others can be raised up.

I will tell you something.  I am tired.  Tired of all the usual talk from the talking heads on television and their Greek choruses on the radio, who use the same tired, worn-out old talk of who's "winning," who is "greatest," who is the "loser," and of how the key to success is in putting Me-and-My-Group-First.  I am just done with it all, and it leaves me with nothing but disgust.  

What does envigorate me, though, is this surprising, life-giving, unexpected picture that Ephesians gives us... which is really no different than the picture Jesus has been sketching out for us all along.  What gives me genuine hope and real newness on the days I need it is this vision that Ephesians says I have already been called into:  a life lived together where we don't try and climb over each other or step on others to put ourselves ahead, a life in which I am willing to bend lower for your sake and you do the same for me, a life in which nobody has to go around tooting their own horn or labeling somebody else the "loser," because we have all just grown tired of the childish games of making some winners and some losers.  Whether that way of thinking really ever satisfied the Caesars or not I could not say (although, honestly, I rather suspect that history's long line of Caesars all went to bed at night insecure, alone, and afraid that someone would see through their self-aggrandizing bluster), but what I am certain of is that such talk and thinking never had anything to do with the way of Jesus.  The Me-And-My-Group-First mindset is, to be blunt about it, unworthy of Jesus.

You and I have been called into the life that really is worthy--and to be clear, Jesus does not seem to think it is optional whether we will adopt his view of the world or not.  Jesus calls us, and his voice carries authority--which is to say, Jesus is convinced his call itself is enough, not only to draw us to his side, but to get us to let go of our sweaty, little fingers from their clenched grip on the old "success" way of thinking.  Jesus calls us into a new life, one which means surrendering the old neediness for attention and blue ribbons and ego-stroking, so that our hands will finally be free to hold one another's... and his.

There is no option of getting to wear the name of Jesus and keeping the old mentality.  It is simply unworthy of Jesus and his people.  So maybe this is a moment for us to decide which is more important to us: the call of Jesus... or the endlessly annoying chatter of the talking heads on TV.

Which way of life is worthy of you giving your minutes, your mind, and your heart to on this day?

Lord Jesus, give us the freshness of your call to new kind of life, one freed from the stale self-centeredness of the "successful" that has never satisfied us before.

Called to Be

Called to Be--January 25, 2018

"Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostles set apart for the gospel of God... through whom we have received grace and apostleship to bring about the obedience of faith among all the Gentiles for the sake of his name, including yourselves who are called to belong to Jesus Christ, To all God's beloved in Rome, who are called to be saints: Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ." [Romans 1:1,5-7]

It's bigger than a paycheck.

It's more than a job.

Your calling.  My calling. It's more than even a career, or a resume built up over a lifetime.

When we talk about "calling," or the idea of vocation (which is just a fancy word from the Latin for "calling"), we have a way of usually reducing it down to meaning "a person's full-time paid employment," which is half-right and half-wrong, honestly.  Or rather, it is just significantly incomplete--rather like saying that A, E, I, O, and U are the whole alphabet, that a skeleton is all there is to a human body, or that the wheels are your car.  A paid job is a part of your whole life--maybe even an important part of a whole life--but a life is bigger than actions you do or a position you hold in exchange for a paycheck.

And because a whole, full life is bigger than just a paid job, so is a person's calling.  Because ultimately Jesus calls us into a certain kind of life, not simply to a certain kind of job.  It is a call to be before it is a call to do some particular employment.

And that is where our language usually falters.  We may talk about someone doing a job and saying, "That's her calling," or "He really found his vocation," and that's usually a way of saying that someone's abilities, talents, and aptitudes are well-suited to the job they do as their primary source of income.  That's fine for as far as it goes, but frankly it doesn't go far enough.  Because, in the bigger scheme of things, we are more than our jobs, and our lives are of greater significance than how we contributed to the bottom line of a company, how much money we made, or what titles we acquired in a career.  And for that matter, Jesus is not satisfied to make a claim only just forty hours of each week in our lives--he claims us wholly for our whole selves to live in a certain way.  That includes what we do to make a living, but it also includes the work we do, the labor we expend, that never gets a paycheck, never gets recognition, and never goes on a CV.  

If we only think of "calling" in terms of "paid employment," we end up thinking that God only cares about one-third of our hours each day, or that my value is reducible to what I did to contribute to the country's GDP, or to a company's quarterly profits.  It suggests that my abilities that are used in volunteer capacities don't matter, or that the simple way I treat people or speak to others is irrelevant to God... because it isn't "my calling." It comes off sounding like the times spent caring for children, or attending to aging parents, is unimportant because it doesn't get a paycheck. It suggests that people who have terrible, dead-end jobs should just suck it up and not complain because they are in "their calling," and a dead-end job must be what God "planned" for them.  In gives the impression, too, that if I am not feeling completely "fulfilled" at all times in my work, I must be in the "wrong calling," because we assume your "calling" is supposed to fit you like a hand in a glove. And maybe worst of all, it invites the dangerous leap of bad logic that says "If it's good for the company, then it must be God's will, because my job is my calling from God."

But notice here in these opening verses from Paul's letter to the Romans that talk of "calling" is so much more expansive than just someone's Monday through Friday occupation.  Paul talks about our whole selves being called--that we are "called to belong to Jesus," that we are "called to be saints" (which is just a word for "holy people"), and that he himself is called "to be an apostle" (which is just a word for "sent person").  These are about whole lives, not jobs, paychecks, or careers.  When Jesus calls us, he calls our whole selves.

And Jesus calls us into a particular way of life.  And basically, that way of life is to reflect back Jesus into every corner of our lives.  Jesus calls us to belong to him, to be shaped by him, and to reflect the Reign of God in every moment, and at every location.  My job, if I have paid employment, is a part of my calling, because it fits into the wider category of "my life," and my calling is not simply to make the company more money, or to climb higher in the corporate structure, or even necessarily to preach sermons from my place of business.  Rather, it is about being a certain kind of person, in whatever circumstance I find myself.  It is about being someone marked by Jesus' kind of love, and courage, and empathy, and mercy, and honesty, and strength, and generosity.  I can do that whether I am the Vice President of Operational Affairs, or the cashier at the grocery store, or the bus driver, or a public school teacher.  Vocation is not really about the what, as much as it is the how: the way we do anything and everything.

It's rather like that insight of Martin Luther, who says something to the effect of this: a Christian shoemaker is not someone who stamps little crosses on the shoes he or she makes; a Christian shoemaker simply makes high quality shoes in such a way that the people who buy them will have decent coverage for their feet when they walk.  In other words, our universal calling--for every last one of us--is to love other people.  And part of how a shoemaker who follows Jesus would fulfill that calling would be to do good work for those who will eventually wear the shoes you make.  The calling is to love--the particular way you express it will change moment to moment and situation to situation.

And that's why our vocation is always so much bigger than just what a person's paid employment is.  You have a vocation beyond what you do when you are "on the clock" for an employer, because you and I are always called to be Jesus' people.  There is no "off the clock" time for being followers of Jesus; he calls our whole selves for our whole lives long.  

So the way you act toward strangers at the grocery store?  That's part of your calling to love.

And the ways I take care of my world and my resources for the sake of the generations who come after me?  That's part of my calling to love.

When a farmer brings in the harvest out of sheer devotion to the land and for the good of those who will get to feed their kids, that is part of the calling to love.

When a tired full-time employed mom comes home after a long day of work to solve the problems of her kids and then has to go and take care of her own aging parents in the evening, that is part of her calling to love.

When a decent, good attorney speaks up for those who have been victimized, or when a young graduate passes up a more lucrative job offer to help teach English to young students who have just come to this country, it is part of their calling to love.

When a grandmother--without getting paid or acknowledged for it--takes the time to be there for her grandkids when they are sick, or when a family makes huge sacrifices to take care of a family member with chronic sickness, this is all part of the calling Jesus gives to all of us to love.

And when you or I take a moment, both to listen to someone else's story and then also to share where Jesus' love has met us so that someone else can know it, too, that is the calling of Jesus, too.

Sometimes the calling for the day is to weep with those who weep, or to laugh with those who laugh.  Sometimes it is to share our bread.  Sometimes it is simply to be present.

On this day, then, the question to ask is not, "What is the right paid job for me to have?" so much as, "Since I am called to belong to Jesus, what could it look like in this day to be a reflection of Jesus for people right here and right now?"

So... beyond a paycheck today, who are you called to be... today?

Lord Jesus, let us hear your calling and live it out right where we are today.

Into the Marvelous Light

Into the Marvelous Light--January 24, 2018

"But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God's own people, in order that you may proclaim the mighty acts of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light.  Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.  Beloved, I urge you as aliens and exiles to abstain from the desires of the flesh that wage war against the soul." [1 Peter 2:9-11]

"Every heart," says Leonard Cohen, "every heart to love will come... but like a refugee."

That lyric from the haunting Cohen classic, "Anthem," gets it right.  And, even more to the point for the followers of Jesus, that means acknowledging that we are the refugees.

The whole of the Christian story, according to the New Testament letter/sermon/treatise/mission-statement that we call 1 Peter, is the story of God in Christ calling and claiming a band of refugees and welcoming them into this Christ's country, making them his own people.  To be a Christian, 1 Peter would tell us, is to be a refugee and to be honest enough to say it out loud.  We are refugees, aliens, and exiles, people without a home in the world around us, who have been given a new identity and belonging in Christ.  Almost like a whole new creation story, 1 Peter says we had been called "out of darkness" and into God's "marvelous light." 

We were "not a people," he says.  That doesn't just mean individually we were regarded as "nobodies," (although that may be true, and it certainly does seem that the God of the Scriptures has a particular concern and love for the people treated as "nobodies" by the world), but it means also that we weren't a people--we had nothing on our own to bind us together to give us identity, belonging, or a place of home.  I remember two years ago, during the last summer Olympics, when there were athletes who competed but who were forced to flee from their home countries as refugees and who competed together as a team representing a "refugee nation." They had a flag--designed in orange and black as a symbolic callback to the life-jackets many had to wear in escaping war zones or disaster areas in boats, and even a "Refugee National Anthem" that a composer had written.  It was this real-life picture of the longing we all feel to be "a people," to belong somewhere, and to know that we are not alone.  Well, 1 Peter says that is our story--all of us.  Aliens in the world, exiles, strangers--trusting the promise that we will be brought to Love, but knowing that it will, as Cohen sings it, "like refugees."

"But now," says the old apostle... but now we are no less and none other than God's people.  We have been made citizens, granted a welcome, graced with permanent belonging, within the Kingdom, the Reign, of the living God.  That is not something you achieve--it is something you are given.  It is a matter of what the Ruling Authority of the Realm in question says about you.  And of course, that's just it--the Ruler of the Realm has the authority simply to declare that you belong, by calling you a citizen, a member, a part of the realm.  That is easy to do--it is simply a question of whether a Ruler does, or does not, have the will to do so.

But so that we are perfectly on this, 1 Peter says that every Christian--every last sister and brother who name the name of Jesus--is in fact simply a refugee, an alien, whom Christ has claimed and called to belong to his realm, his kingdom.  Jesus' word is enough to make us belong.  That is because Christ is a good and decent Ruler--his is the kind of Reign that not only makes room for strangers and aliens like us, but actively seeks us and calls us his own, even though we all come from varied places, languages, backgrounds, nations, and abilities. The Jesus Administration has a clear policy of welcoming refugees and making them permanent citizens, you could say--there's nobody in Christ's Kingdom who isn't one!

It's important for us--no, vital--to understand that this is how the Bible itself describes us, because otherwise we end up thinking that the Jesus' call is reserved for just some--some nationalities, some languages, some skill-sets, some income-levels, or some skin colors.  We end up thinking that "Christian" is a synonym for "people who look and dress and shop and think like I do... because, after all, I am a Christian, so they all must be like me."  But that's not how 1 Peter sees it.  These verses remind us that "once we were not a people"--that is to say, we are not Christians because we share one language or music style or hair color or facial complexion or culture.  Rather, we who have been gathered from all over creation, who were never really at home, have been given a new kind of belonging and a new identity in Christ.

That's precisely how the early church saw itself, mind you.  In the second century, a letter now known simply as "The Letter to Diognetes" was written as a sort of self-description of the growing Christian movement. And here is how the anonymous author describes us, we followers of Jesus:

"Christians are indistinguishable from other people either by nationality, language or customs. They do not inhabit separate cities of their own, or speak a strange dialect, or follow some outlandish way of life. Their teaching is not based upon reveries inspired by the curiosity of humans. Unlike some other people, they champion no purely human doctrine. With regard to dress, food and manner of life in general, they follow the customs of whatever city they happen to be living in, whether it is Greek or foreign.... And yet there is something extraordinary about their lives. They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country.”

We have a way of confusing "Christian" with "American" or "middle-class" or "people who also buy their jeans at Wal-mart like I do," and then assuming that Jesus is only interested in calling people who are like that to belong on his team.  We have a way of assuming that churches are only supposed to grow by bringing in more of the same kind of people "like me"--as though "Christian" were a nationality or an ethnicity, rather than being a radical in-gathering of aliens and exiles declared to be citizens of the Reign of God. But the call is always wider and bigger than we want to make it.  It takes us, from our varied locations, lifestyles, loves, likes, lands, and languages, and makes us belong in a new kind of realm, a new kind of citizenship altogether.  

Jesus isn't just looking for people like me.  He calls all of us from wherever we have been and he draws us into the Reign of his love.  Like being called from a war-zone into a safe new country--and told you can call it "home" now, forever.  Maybe even like being called out of darkness, and into a marvelous light... and marvelous Love.

And indeed, like the song says, every heart... every heart, to such Love will come... but like a refugee.

Lord Jesus, remind us again of just how big your Kingdom is... and just how varied and beautiful the people are within it, we whom you have called together to make into a people.

Beyond Playing Church

Beyond Playing Church--January 23, 2018

Now there was a disciple in Damascus named Ananias. The Lord said to him in a vision, “Ananias.” He answered, “Here I am, Lord.” The Lord said to him, “Get up and go to the street called Straight, and at the house of Judas look for a man of Tarsus named Saul. At this moment he is praying, and he has seen in a vision a man named Ananias come in and lay his hands on him so that he might regain his sight.” But Ananias answered, “Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem; and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.” But the Lord said to him, “Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before Gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.” [Acts 9:10-16]

It's not just that Jesus' call reaches out to include people who called him their enemy; it's that Jesus calls his followers to love those enemies, too.

We saw the first part in our look yesterday at the way the risen Jesus called Saul of Tarsus to a new orientation and vocation, even though Saul (1) hated Jesus, (2) had rounded up Jesus' followers, and (3) was convinced he was doing right in all of it.  But that wasn't really the hard part of this story.  The difficult thing about the ninth chapter of Acts is this: Jesus calls us, if we dare to call ourselves his disciples, to show the same risky, reckless love to enemies as well.

That's where the rubber meets the road for a disciple named Ananias, unfolding at the very same time that Saul/Paul was on his way up the road.  And, of course--this had to be a hard conversation for Ananias.  How do you make sense of what is being asked of you if you're Ananias here?  It seems like down is up and wrong is right and all the sure, certain things are being undone.  If there's one thing that Ananias knows about Saul of Tarsus it's that he's responsible for the arrest of Christians, displacement of Christians, and to some degree, the violence against Christians.  This Saul has been dead set against the community of Jesus, and now Jesus appears to him in a vision and says, he has to be welcomed in to the Christian community?  That's difficult--that's near impossible!  It's even harder for Ananias than for us on most days, because Ananias is being asked to be the human voice and face of that welcome—it's not just Jesus telling Ananias to get used to the idea or the concept of unexpected people being received into the church.  It's that Ananias, if he is to be faithful to what Jesus is calling him to do, will have to personally take the risk of receiving this man, who is not just a stranger or unexpected believer, but a downright enemy of the church.

In other words, Jesus is calling Ananias to quit playing church and to embark on being the church.  And let us be clear about what that difference is, that difference between playing church and being church.

It is the difference between talking about love for neighbor and stranger and enemy, and then actually doing good for those persons when we are brought face to face with them. 

It is the difference between believing intellectually that Jesus has forgiven us and called us to be forgiving people, and then taking those beliefs seriously enough to know that my guilt has been wiped away and that I am called to speak that same word of liberating forgiveness to others. 

It is the difference between secretly nursing grudges against others and publicly letting go of them. 

It is the difference between making a big fuss over the "decline of Christian influence in culture," and actually letting the way of the real Jesus influence me, regardless of whether anybody else notices or applauds.

That is hard for us to do—much harder than the easy tasks of rattling off a few facts about God without thinking as we say the Creed, or putting on a fake smile for the visitors in worship on Sunday while secretly muttering, "We're letting the riff-raff in?", or hearing the words "Go in peace, serve the Lord!" and promptly forgetting the call to serve by the time we're out the door.

Ananias is called to be a person who makes God's grace real, to make God's mercy tangible, for Saul.  It will not be easy for Ananias, as it is never really easy to forgive if we understand just how complete a wiping away of the record is involved in forgiveness.  But it will not be easy for Saul, either—his whole world is being turned upside down, too, and the new life he has been invited into will be a life of the same kind of suffering, enduring love that Christ Jesus has shown to him.  The Lord knows it, too, that the life which Saul will be entering as a follower of Jesus will not be an easy one:  "I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name," says the voice.  But then again, this life of faith was never promised to us to be easy—only deeply good in the end. 

If we are to take this story seriously, and to see ourselves as people who just might be placed in the difficult position of Ananias, we need to consider that we will be called upon to speak words of real forgiveness to real people.  We sometimes gloss over the real messy details of our lives when we talk about "confessing our sins" in worship—we put into generic terms that we have sinned "in thought, word, and deed," but easily block out of mind that this specifically means the betrayal of a spouse that happened years ago, or the angry words spoken at a former-friend months ago, or the cold indifference to someone met on the street just days ago, or the apathy toward the hurt and brokenness that is always all around us—an apathy we cover up in our day to day "busyness" that keeps us from paying attention to things beyond my immediate circle of work and family.  These are the difficult real sins we need to know are forgiven, and these are the sins that God forgives in my neighbor next to me.  When I am the betrayed spouse, or the one wounded by careless angry words, or the one left on the side of the road, or passed by and left out by the priests and Levites—in other words, when I am sinned against--it is hard to hear God's forgiveness for the ones who have done me wrong.  It is hard, in other words, to be Ananias, hearing God's forgiveness spoken for Saul, and knowing that he must be the one to speak it to Saul.

And yet, in the big picture of things, given our utterly sinful ways, perhaps it is more honest to say that we are always sinning against each other and are therefore always called to be Ananiases for one another, speaking to someone else that God has forgiven them, and calling on God to grant us the ability to forgive as well.  We are called, too, to pray fervently to God when such forgiveness seems too much, too easy, too big a cancellation of debt, and to ask God to help us deal with such a wide mercy.  That is hard word, but it is always harder to be the church instead of just playing church.  And, of course, it is always deeply good in the end.

For this day, the call of Jesus is the call to be done with "playing church," the call simply to be church... which is really just another way of saying, the call to live within the enemy-reconciling love of God.

Blessed One, you make it hard to be disciples because it is hard to hear your mercy spoken over those who have wronged us, and it is hard to hear the litany of ways we have wronged others.  It is hard to tell the truth, and it is hard to have the truth told about us and to us.  And yet, we are compelled to be your disciples by your love that has chosen us and called us.  So give us the grace and the strength we do not possess to hear your forgiveness in all its breadth and depth, and make it possible for our ears to hear it and our mouths to speak it.

The Reckless Call

The Reckless Call--January 22, 2018

"Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' He asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The reply came, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do'." [Acts 9:1-6]

I've got to hand it to them--Amazon has me pegged.

The online book, music, and just-about-everything-else distributor knows my tastes, and they know how to cater to them.  That's their business, in fact.  Literally--knowing what I like, based on what I have purchased before, what I have looked for, what I have searched for, and what other people have bought who also like the things I like--that is Amazon.com's business model.  And through whatever algorithms they use to figure me out, I must confess--those computer programs know my tastes pretty well.

If you have every bought anything through an Amazon, or a similar online store, you have probably had something like that experience too.  It becomes almost uncanny how the programmers figure out what kinds of things to recommend.  Sometimes they're a little off, but the more and more you give them information (like from purchases), they more and more they get a clear picture of who you are, what you like, what kinds of demographic groups you fit into, and what things you are likely to buy.

Now, on the positive side of that, that means that once I realize that I like something--say, the piano works of Claude Debussy, or 70s classic rock, or mystery novels by women authors, or sturdy, well-made pocket knives--the algorithms at Amazon are great at helping me flesh out my collection, or showing me new books, authors, music, and tools that are just close enough to what I already like that there is a high probability I will also like their new suggestions.  Like Debussy?  Then listen to Erik Satie, or Maurice Ravel, or a Gabriel Faure.  Like Agatha Christie?  Well, try Sue Grafton.  Like Cheap Trick?  Click on a sample of Electric Light Orchestra.  

But there is a hitch to that kind of marketing: it has a way of teaching me to only like--or for that matter, only to be exposed to!--things I already have a predisposition to liking.  That has a way of giving me narrow tastes, and missing out on a whole wide world of things I never would have guessed to try, because they aren't like anything with which I am already familiar. (Reminds me of that great line from the movie The Blues Brothers where the manager at the saloon tells Jake and Elwood that "They like BOTH kinds of music: Country AND Western!") If I had only ever listened to Amazon's suggestions about music, I would be awash in French piano composers, but would have missed out on the jazz of Miles Davis or Ramsey Lewis.  If I had only ever wanted to read 16th-century German church reformers or 19th century English novelists, I would have missed out on James Baldwin, Marilynne Robinson, Wendell Berry, or Alice Walker  The tragic flaw of this age of niche targeted marketing is that our individual worlds each become pathetically narrow and isolated... and as a result, so do we.

It's the same phenomenon that the world is living through right now on social media or cable news--we self-select what we are exposed to, in such a way that we are less and less even shown things we might not like, or that do not fit our preconceived pictures of the world.  And of course, the current state of division across our country is evidence of what happens when we treat reality itself as simply a matter of "tastes" from which you might choose.  We have this way, this sort of tribal impulse, to retreat to the echo chambers of like-mindedness, so that we will only ever have to deal with things we already like, already have an inclination toward, or already have shown a preference for.  That may be a feature of human nature--it's just that folks like Amazon, Facebook, and cable news have found a way to capitalize on our flaw.

Now... what on earth does any of that have to do with this story about the stunned Saul of Tarsus staring up at the ground after getting knocked off his high horse on the way to Damascus when the risen Jesus calls him? Well, just this: regardless of how lucrative (and comforting) it may be to pander only to our already-existing preferences, and regardless of how safe it may feel to retreat inside our own little echo chambers, that is simply NOT how the living Jesus actually operates.

In a word, Jesus calls recklessly.

I mean that rather literally--"reckless" comes from the Old English, meaning something like, "without heed," or "without consideration of others' warnings."  That is to say, Jesus calls people without the steering of a "Recommendations" algorithm telling Jesus which souls are already most likely to pick him.  Jesus recklessly seeks even--maybe we could say especially--the folks most decidedly turned against him.  Jesus calls enemies to himself--not those Jesus has declared as his enemies, but those who, like Saul, had declared themselves enemies of Jesus.

This really is a wonder.  In a culture like ours that is so conditioned to think in terms of probabilities of likely buyers, demographic research on prospective customers, and artificially intelligent algorithms designed to give us suggestions based on what we already like, we can come to assume that this is the way God operates, too.  We might get it in our heads that the divine is essentially a Celestial Customer at some kind of Amazon.com, and that Jesus only seeks out those who are deemed statistically likely to accept him. We might get it all backwards and think that in the great calling of God, God looks into the future and sees who will end up choosing God, and then retroactively "calls" them.  But honestly, that treats God like just one more cog in this great marketing machine in which we live.

The scandalous thing in the story of Saul's calling on the Damascus Road is that none other than Jesus calls out to someone who has declared himself Jesus' sworn enemy.  And Jesus doesn't seem to think that disqualifies Saul.  There is no divine scolding to say, "Saul, this is your last chance to get right with me--now pray a prayer and accept me into your heart or else I can't call you onto the Heaven Team."  There is no Amazon.com style suggestion from Christ to say, "If you liked Phariseeism, you might also like me--Jesus!"  And there is not even a whiff of a suggestion that there are angelic algorithms in the background telling Jesus not to waste his time on Saul because he's not likely to become a fan or a follower.

There is only the call--the wondrously reckless call--of Jesus, which doesn't wait to be asked, doesn't select only statistically or demographically likely candidates, and doesn't exclude enemies.  

This is a story, then, of God's enemy love--the same love the living Jesus taught, spoke, embodied, and practiced before the cross, at the cross, and after the cross.  The same Jesus who says, "Love your enemies and do good to those who persecute you" has put his money where his mouth is, so to speak, and done just that with Saul of Tarsus, without waiting for Saul to discover on his own that he should be listening to this Jesus.  Jesus just calls, taking the first step and offering the first hand onto the dance floor, as Jesus always does.  And that, in turn became the centerpiece of Saul's own new theology, once he re-introduced himself to the world by his Greek nickname Paul, and started bringing the gospel of the living Jesus to anybody and everybody--insiders and outsiders, Jews and Gentiles, friends and enemies, men and women, free and bound, rich and poor.  Paul was convinced that the reckless call of Jesus that had grabbed hold of him was by no means the exception to the way Jesus operated, but was in fact his calling card.

This is the movement we are called into, we followers of Jesus--the same reckless call of Jesus that summons not just "likely customers" but outsiders, strangers, and even enemies.  That means Jesus is not ONLY interested in reaching out to people for your church who are already like you, who have jobs like yours or who vote like you, who see the world the same way you do, or who like the same songs you do.  Jesus is always calling more recklessly than that--wider, further, and more recklessly than we are comfortable with. The living Jesus is not here to reinforce your or my little echo chambers, and he calls people who watch different cable news from what you watch, whether or not we like it.  That is possible, not because such things do not matter in the end (it DOES matter, because reality is NOT simply a matter of tastes, preferences, or likes that fit my preconceived safe picture of the world), but because Jesus recklessly calls people even who are his enemies and diametrically opposed to his vision of a life grounded in God's justice, mercy, and goodness.  If Jesus could call someone like Saul, who was both SO convinced he was on the side of "righteousness" and was also SO wrong about it, then I should expect that Jesus will just as recklessly call people I do not think worthy of him... because this was never about "worthiness" or even a "target demographic." 

It has always been about love... the reckless, indiscriminate, preemptive love of Jesus that calls us and draws us to him, regardless of what we thought we wanted.

May such love take hold of us in this day... and knock us off our high horses where need be, as well.

Lord Jesus, pull us out of our narrow preferences, established likes, and preconceived notions to allow you to use us far and wide, as your reckless love chooses.

The First Goose in the V

The First Goose in the V--January 19, 2018

"Now when Jesus saw great crowds around him, he gave orders to go over to the other side. A scribe then approached and said, 'Teacher, I will follower you wherever you go.' And Jesus said to him, 'Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head.' Another of his disciples said to him, 'Lord, first let me go and bury my father.' But Jesus said to him, 'Follow me, and let the dead bury their own dead'." [Matthew 8:18-22]

As a rule, Jesus never calls anybody to do anything that he himself hasn't done first.

That's important to say out loud and to see, because otherwise these words of Jesus from Matthew's gospel will seem impossibly harsh and even cruel.  And yeah, obviously, these are difficult words to hear coming from the mouth of Jesus, the same mouth that says, "Come to me, all you who are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest."  These are difficult words especially to hear in a culture like ours, one that has spent the better part of the last few decades trying to make Jesus into the champion of "family values" and to turn Christianity into just a religious form of parenting advice.

And yeah, but stick a pin in that for a moment.  We'll need to talk about how much we may have sanitized Jesus to make him sound like he will never claim higher allegiance than your job, or your country, or your personal political preferences, or your family... when in fact, Jesus regularly insists on a higher allegiance from us than we give to any of those other pieces of our lives, higher even than all of them put together.

But first, we can only hear that rightly if we are clear from the starting gate that Jesus does what he calls us to do, and he has done it first, for that matter.  He doesn't send us out as spiritual guinea pigs to test things ahead of him. We are not Jesus' cannon fodder to bear the brunt of the difficulty so that Jesus will come out after the smoke has cleared and the guns are silent.  Jesus does the hard thing, and he does it first.  Jesus is always the first goose in the flying V who bears the hardest headwinds while pulling us along to follow.

So when he reminds a would-be disciple that following him will mean abandoning the old connections and comfort of home, he points to his own situation:  "Even foxes have holes, and birds get nests, but I am a homeless wandering rabbi.  Following me will mean the same kind of homelessness."  Jesus himself doesn't have a permanent mailing address (wow--just think for how much of our country's history Jesus would not have been allowed to vote if he had lived here, as someone who was neither white nor a real-estate owner!).  So when Jesus tells those he calls that they will be summoned to be ready to let go of what they called "home," it isn't like he is a fraternity member hazing a new pledge, or that Jesus is grandfathered into the club without having to make the same sacrifice.  

In fact, Jesus' homelessness is itself the reason for the homelessness of his followers--to be a follower of Jesus is to go where Jesus goes.  And if Jesus has no home, but rather keeps wandering like a drifter dependent on the welcome of others, then yeah, we should expect that following him will also mean surrendering the comfort of a particular place or of nicely-accumulating equity to save up for a nice condo by the beach in our retirement.  If you want to be where Jesus is, then that means actually being where Jesus is... which means being ready to pick up and where Jesus goes next.  

The same, really, is true with the other would-be disciple who asks for the chance to wait to bury his father.  Even though Jesus' words seem terribly harsh, it is at least worth considering that Jesus has done the same first.  Jesus didn't stay rooted in Nazareth where his family all lived, and he didn't just pick up with the family business and keep the messiah stuff to the weekends as a hobby.  He knew that his calling meant leaving some of that security and familiarity behind--even when surely the expectation of the day was that a good son would have stayed close to home to inherit the family business or house, and to take care of Mary (and presumably Joseph, for as long as he was in the picture), and to be a good older brother to all of his brothers and sisters.  Jesus was willing to endure the social scorn of not being a "good son," as well as losing out on inheriting the house and homestead or whatever else was a part of that picture.  So, yes, as hard as it is that Jesus tells a would-be follower, "Let the dead bury their own dead," those words come from someone who has put his money where his mouth is, and who has a mother (at least) waiting back at home while Jesus has picked up and gone to live his own calling.  

So where does that leave us?  

Well, on the one hand, it leaves us with good news--we are invited to be where Jesus is, and there is something compelling, something wonderful, something downright beautiful, about being wherever Jesus is.  Just look at the stories--where Jesus shows up, parties break out and everybody (I mean everybody!) is included there.  Where Jesus shows up, mercy transforms stingy hearts.  Where Jesus shows up, the piously proud and puffed-up are taken down a few pegs and brought back down to earth.  Where Jesus shows up, the poor have good news spoken to them.  Where Jesus shows up, the dead are raised, the outcasts are welcomed in, and those who had been shamed into silence are invited into conversation over a cup of water at the well.  All of that is to say, wherever Jesus is is the best possible place to be.  

And if that's true, then when Jesus says, "To follow me, you risk losing the familiarity and security of a building called "home," he isn't adding a price tag to his call--he is simply being clear about what he is calling us into.  You want to go where Jesus goes?  Well, that's a moving target--he shows up in all sorts of unexpected places you would not have guessed a respectable messiah should go, and he does not hold office hours.

But if we had it in mind that Jesus' calling on our lives was just for an hour on Sunday mornings or would leave our priorities, our politics, our loves, and our security untouched, well here is the wake-up call.  Jesus calls us to a new kind of life, not simply to be our weekend hobby.  

Today, on this day, what things that have kept us feeling comfortable and secure might we have to leave behind, in order to be where Jesus is?

And by the same token, what amazing wonderful adventures might begin on this day for us by being where Jesus is when the party breaks out all around him?

Lord Jesus, we hear your call.  Give us the faith to trust that you are worth it, and give us the courage to leave behind the familiar, the comfortable, and the secure to be where you lead us.

You Don't Have to Like It

You Don't Have To Like It--January 18, 2018

[Jesus said:] “For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire laborers for his vineyard. After agreeing with the laborers for the usual daily wage, he sent them into his vineyard. When he went out about nine o’clock, he saw others standing idle in the marketplace; and he said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. When he went out again about noon and about three o’clock, he did the same. And about five o’clock he went out and found others standing around; and he said to them, ‘Why are you standing here idle all day?’ They said to him, ‘Because no one has hired us.’ He said to them, ‘You also go into the vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his manager, ‘Call the laborers and give them their pay, beginning with the last and then going to the first.’ When those hired about five o’clock came, each of them received the usual daily wage. Now when the first came, they thought they would receive more; but each of them also received the usual daily wage. And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, ‘These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.’ But he replied to one of them, ‘Friend, I am doing you no wrong; did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what belongs to you and go; I choose to give to this last the same as I give to you. Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ So the last will be first, and the first will be last.” [Matthew 20:1-16]

I will tell you six of the most important words I have learned as a parent of young children.  Are you ready for them?  Okay.  Here goes:

You don't have to like it.

There they are.  Six words' worth of crystal clarity.

You don't have to like it. You don't have to like it.

Now, I guess at one level, those are words that I need to hear myself from time to time as a parent.  I need to be reminded that being a dad or a mom is not a hobby or a pastime, done only for the sake of how fun it is or how happy it might make you on any given day.  That ain't the point.  And it is not the sort of thing one has the right to quit doing just because it is hard or you are tired or you don't want to have to be the bad guy telling children it's time for bed or no more cookies for the night.  In such moments, yeah, I guess those six words of clarity are aimed at me:  "Hey Steve, guess what?  You don't have to like it.  It's still your job... your role... your calling, in this moment and this place and time to love children, and that is not dependent on whether you like doing it at the moment."

But more often, I find that those same words are part of the underlying logic of teaching my son and my daughter how to be human in our particular branch of the human family tree.  In other words, I find that a good bit of parenting--of forming children into a particular way of life so they can be good and wise and loving mature adult humans--is teaching them that there are some things we do in life whether or not we "feel like" it, and whether or not we like it.  And there are some things that are true about how we "run" the household that are not up to their votes or their liking or disliking.  Being loving to one another is not up for debate--that is how we treat one another in this household.  You don't have to like it--that's just how it is.

So, for example, if one kid got to have a special treat in school and the other is left without, well then, yes, Mom and Dad reserve the right to find some other kind of treat to give to the one with nothing, even though that puts an end to the gloating from Child #1 (and to be honest, sometimes it seems like the gloating is more the point for them than whatever the piece of candy or cheap colored plastic is that they are bickering over).  In moments like those, I get to be the dad who says, "I know you are upset that your sister gets something as well as you getting something.  You don't have to like it--but that is how we do things in this family.  We don't gloat about having when someone else is going without."

Or, when Mommy is sick or tired and needs to go to bed early after a rough day or a nasty flu bug, sometimes the conversation has to be had with the kids:  "I know you don't like helping clear the table and doing the dishes with me, but right now we need to let Mommy have a break and that means we're going to do the clean-up.  You don't have to like it--but that's how we do things here.  We take care of the one who is feeling sick."

I'll bet you can supply your own instances from your own family life as well.  Sometimes it's teaching the kids that even when someone else is mean or rotten or unfair to them, we treat them back with respect rather than meanness--when they go low, we will go high.  Sometimes it's about our collective responsibility to clean up after ourselves, or the limits of how much television or candy can be consumed in any single twenty-four hour period.  Sometimes it's the insistence that we will be holding hands and praying before we eat, and that means we will wait for everyone to come to the table rather than scarfing down the macaroni before everyone is seated.  Whatever the particulars, I'll bet you have had the experience in your own life, whether on the giving end or the receiving end, of the sentence, "You don't have to like it!  But this is how it is..."

And as much as that might sound like a harsh line to take with children, ultimately I think it is freeing, for the children and the grown-ups alike.  It is a reminder that we are called into families in this life, whether biological, adoptive, or the spiritual kind of family we call Church, that shape us for a particular way of doing things, a particular way of life.  And in the household, or the "economy," of God's family (the word "economy," remember, comes from the Greek word for "house" or "household"), God reserves the right to be gracious more than we deserve, and beyond what we think other people deserve, too.  That is the kind of community God calls us into. 

That's one of the things I love about this story from Matthew's Gospel.  The landowner knows perfectly well what he is going to do all along, and in fact he is the one who creates the "crisis" and tension in the story by setting up the pay line the way he does.  He has called the workers into his kind of system, his kind of order.  When he hires them, they agree to "whatever is right," and that means letting the landowner be the one to determine "what is right."  They are expecting that it will mean getting more than other people, but the landowner all along knows that he is planning to pay them all the same wage at the end of the day--enough to feed their families the next day.  Even just the hiring itself so late in the day is more than the workers are "owed," and perhaps they should have gotten a hint from that at the beginning that this landowner reserved the right to do things differently than they might have expected. 

But once they have been called into his vineyard, they are now also being called into the landowner's way of doing business.  And at the end of the day, as they look at their paychecks and see that they don't have a case for claiming they were cheated, but also as they look bitterly to see that the landowner has made them all "equal", the ones first hired hear the landowner's response:  "Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me?"  "Didn't we agree on exactly what you got in your paycheck?"  "Are you envious because I am generous?" All of which boils down to, "You don't have to like it, but I choose to be gracious."  The landowner has called them, not just into a day's work, but into a particular way of living, a particular ordering of the household, a particular "economy" of grace.

We should be honest about this ourselves.  To be called by Jesus is, in much the same way, to be called into God's particular way of running things--what Jesus so often called "the Kingdom of Heaven," or "the Reign of God," if you want to be a bit more accurate.  To be called by Jesus is not just to throw on a jersey for Jesus' team (with embroidered crosses on it, I guess?) while still getting to keep our old way of thinking and acting.  To be called by Jesus is to be called into his way of doing things, and that will include our (sometimes grudging) training in the economy of grace.  It will mean that we get used to God running the universe beyond what we deserve, and beyond what we think "those people" deserve," whomever we imagine "those people" to be.

And, like being in a family, it means that sometimes--wonderfully, blessedly!--God says to our stingy, self-righteous hearts, "You don't have to like it--but this is how we do things in this household."  And so Jesus teaches us, like children learning their family's ways of managing the house, to shape us into his own likeness--whether or not it's what our self-bent spirits would have picked.  

He says things like, "You don't have to like it, but in this household, we do good to those who wish us ill.  We will not return evil for evil."

He says things like, "You don't have to like it, but in this household, we admit our mistakes rather than digging in our heels and pretending we weren't wrong."

He teaches us to tell the truth in the face of hypocrisy, and yes, to the face of hypocrites, but also to own up to our own hypocrisies as well.

He teaches us to welcome the last, the least, the left-out, and the lost... and to see that "we" are "those people," too.

He teaches us to surrender ourselves, to lay our lives down for one another, and even to offer up ourselves for the sake of our enemies, rather than insisting on protecting "me and my group first."

He trains our eyes to see a new kind of household--a "beloved community," to use Dr. King's phrase for it--that God is making, one which includes people from everywhere, and to see that beautiful variety as its glory.

Jesus does all these things because we have been called into his household, and whether we like it or not, this is how God does things in the family.  But Jesus teaches them to us as well so that they will become our practices, our way of thinking and doing, and our character.

You don't have to like it when God is gracious beyond your expectation.  But you are--inescapably--part of a family in which the head of the household not only practices such grace, but trains up all the children in the family to do the same.

Lord Jesus, you have called us into this family, into this household, into this economy of grace--shape us in the likeness of your way of doing things, into your way of loving.