Where the Fruit Comes From

Where the Fruit Comes From--June 1, 2018

"By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another." [Gal. 5:22-26]

Trees don't audition.

This obviously but vitally important fact is brought to you today by the Apostle Paul, who talks about our lives in the Spirit like trees that produce fruit.  And just to make it clear, trees don't audition... or apply... or try to impress.  They bear fruit because of what they are.

In these familiar verses from Galatians, Paul talks about our life in Christ as one marked by the "fruit" of the Spirit, and that imagery is important.  If you've got an apple tree, let's say, and it starts producing apples, you can really only say that this is what you expect it to do--it is an apple tree, after all.  And it is an apple tree--that is its identity, its definition, even--even before the first golden delicious hangs from a bough.  You might say it produces apples because it is an apple tree, not that by producing enough apples first, it might gain the elite status of being an apple tree.

That's the picture Paul offers of our lives as people given new identity by the Spirit--we are Spirit-people, the people in the community of Jesus in which the Spirit of God dwells, and what comes forth from us--what comes to hang from our boughs, so to speak--is the fruit of this Spirit.  But notice that the imagery presumes that we are such a people first, and then that the practice of love, joy, peace, etc. comes to fruition in us consequentially.  

Sometimes we are tempted to reverse that logic and turn this laundry list of virtues into conditions for belonging--as in, We'll know if you're really worthy enough to be a believer when we see you do something from each category on this list--something loving, joyful, peaceable, etc.  But for Paul, it's the other way around--God has made us to be Spirit-people (like an apple-tree, but for the Spirit), and because God has called us to be such people, that is what we are.  And flowing from that is the work of the Spirit in us that brings forth all of this fruit--all of this new way of ordering and aligning our lives.  And as this new life comes to realign us, to remake us from the inside out, the old life is shed like a snakeskin--at least that is the possibility handed to us.  Sometimes it seems we are determined to keep covering ourselves with that dead old snakeskin of the old life, the life of self-interested materialism and manipulation of others, the life of "the flesh".  But Paul says that regardless of what coverings we put on ourselves and how foolish we look when we do it, we have been identified by God as his children, as people in whom the Spirit lives, as people who share in the life of Jesus.  And so we are.  The invitation to us once again today is to become what we are.

This picture of a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control can become a throwaway, too, if we treat these as just abstract words or greeting-card sentiments.  

Please don't.

Please don't let those words be empty religious talk.  

Please don't let them be pious-sounding jargon that we use to mask the old bitterness, avarice, self-centeredness, rudeness, and rottenness that we are used to.  

No, not today, not when we are given then chance to embody these things--to practice faithfulness by showing up for someone who needs us, to enflesh peace by bringing reconciliation between people estranged today, to embody love by taking the time for compassionate listening today when you would prefer to be on your way.  These are all opportunities standing in front of us today--take one.  

It is who you already are--no auditions or try-outs necessary--by the Spirit's presence.

It is who the Spirit is transforming us to become.

O God the Gardener of our Very Lives, give us all that we need today to bear fruit today, to bring to fruition the life you have handed to us and create in us by your Spirit.

The Right Thing to Say

The Right Thing to Say--May 31, 2018

"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to all who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgive you." [Ephesians 4:29-32]

The Holy Spirit has a way of pushing us to re-examine things in our lives we have stopped paying attention to, in order to make us more into the likeness of Christ.

And one place the Spirit is likely to start is with our mouths, and what comes out of them.

Americans pride themselves on their First Amendment right to “freedom of speech,” which we usually think of in terms of a negative freedom, as in “You can’t tell me what to say,” or “Nobody can censor or silence what I want to express.”  We have built two hundred-plus years of legal precedent on finding newer and wider ways to let people say whatever they want to say, and we have a tradition of protecting nearly anything that can be counted as “expression,” whether it be of noble and profound content, crass advertising, intentionally provocative gestures and profane comments, or even vile and derogatory remarks, because of the fear that once you start putting limits on “acceptable” speech, you will stifle the good ideas while to trying weed out the drivel.  And that makes a certain sense--there was wisdom in the Framers' decision to assure their citizens that they wouldn't be rounded up by the government for expressing opinions that are critical or unpopular.

But as is true with just about everything else in life, there is a minus that goes along with the plus here. And one of the costs of thinking of our right of free speech only in negative terms of "Nobody should be able to tell me what to say," is that we are not always terribly wise or good at discerning what would be good to say in this moment. So we have bent over backwards as a society to make sure people can say whatever they want… but we haven’t spent much time thinking through what is worth saying, or how anybody would know what is worth saying. 

There’s another hallmark of the age we live in: as people who live in the era of social media, we are practically goaded into saying, publishing, posting, and messaging people without any thought of why someone else needs to know what I had for breakfast, or what the consequences might be if I say something that I cannot take back before it goes viral. We live in a time when we can spread messages that claim to be factual without knowing whether they are true or not, and we are increasingly told not to even care whether our words, facts, quotes, and messages are true or not--only whether they feel like they reinforce what we already want to think. We have learned that we have the “right” to say whatever we please, but we have not learned how to discern what is right to say.

Love, by its nature, doesn’t start by demanding its rights.  Love looks for the good of the other, rather than itself—or rather, love recognizes that I can only find what is to my benefit when I am looking to the benefit of those around me.  That’s not merely an emotion—that includes a whole way of thinking.  It means the conscious, deliberate, intentional practice of doing good to others, and looking for ways to show them kindness.  That takes thought.  That takes creativity.  That takes paying attention.  It takes patience and self-restraint.

And above all, it takes the Spirit's presence.

Now, as Ephesians reminds us, the followers of Jesus have been marked with the Spirit, and the Spirit already dwells within us.  So nobody is saying, "Use nice words or else the Spirit will vote you out of the Heaven Club."  Rather, Ephesians says that our words have the capacity, not only to hurt others... but actually to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Whoa.  That's a big deal.

Ephesians is saying that our words have the power, not simply to tear other people down, but in fact to break the very heart of God, to "grieve the Holy Spirit," when we use them to tear other people down (usually in the attempt to puff ourselves up).  The Bible is much less worried about whether we say "potty" words that would get bleeped on prime-time television, and much more concerned about whether we are recklessly wrathful in our words and hurt one another.   And because the Spirit dwells within us always, then we are always responsible for our words--there is no time when we are "off the clock," "not on duty," or "just venting frustrations" on one of the many screens and keyboards at our disposal.  We are always called to practice love... in actions, and in words.  These verses from Ephesians dare us to take that kind of thinking and put it into practice with your words, too.

So, Ephesians would tell us, we may need to unlearn some things, as the Spirit cultivates love in us.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the impulse of the Facebook age to say something without thinking about the people to whom I am saying it, what purpose I am saying it for, and what benefit comes of saying it.  

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without thinking critically and having your own personal content editor.  

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking anything that could harm someone else, even if it plays to your gain or makes you feel important by saying it. 

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of saying whatever you want because you can insist, “I have the right to say whatever I want, and you can’t stop me," regardless of whether what you want to say is true, helpful, out-of-context, or edifying.

And the Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without a thought for the consequences of what you say.  Consequences matter, because they affect people.  And people matter, the people I like and agree with... and the people I do not like, and everybody else.

So instead of thinking that the world owes me a hearing (because even the Bill of Rights only guarantees me a right to speak without the government silencing me, not a right to have the whole world give me a platform to listen to me and hang on my every word), what if we started this day, and every day, with the question, “How could my words today give grace to someone else?”

That kind of speech is just what the world needs.  That is what will stand out in a world (and a world-wide-web) full of people talking just to hear themselves talk.

That’s what love sounds like—words that are carefully chosen because they will bless and heal.

Spirit of Truth and of Love, help me unlearn the self-centered ways of speaking with bitterness, wrath, and untruths, and train my mouth and my heart to speak in ways that build up and reflect Christ.

More Than Words

More Than Words--May 30, 2018

For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. [1 Thessalonians 1:4-5]

As a child of the 1980s, I will confess that I can't read these words of Paul's without hearing the old song by Extreme, "More Than Words."  The recurring lyrics keep running through my head:  "More than words/ Is all you have to do to make it real/ Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me/ 'cause I'd already know."  The song itself, of course, is sung as a request, or maybe a challenge, from the singer to his beloved, insisting that she make it clear that her feelings are more than just talk.  Now whether he's got ulterior motives in putting that dare to her, or whether he really does wonder if he's being strung along by his girlfriend, are questions for another day (and probably not as part of a devotional conversation on 1 Thessalonians).  But the point of the lyrics above is a powerful one in any case--anybody can talk a great game, but if all we've got to go on is words, we can easily be let down.  Too many times before in life we have gotten our hopes up because of big talk, polished rhetoric, or flowery prose, only to find there was no substance to the speech.  Too many times we've been in the same place as the singer in the song, afraid of letting our hearts be broken by empty promises, whether from romantic interests or political promisers.

Now, the surprising thing to me reading Paul's words today is the direction he takes this idea of needing "more than words."  We religious folk tend to automatically assume this train of thought is aimed at other people, or even ourselves.  We know the words of James that faith without works is dead, and we might be suspicious of people who say they believe but show no evidence (to us) of a sufficiently changed life to be "really" redeemed.  We know the words from John's letters that call us to show love "not in word or speech, but in truth and action," and we know that all too often that can be us, paying only lip service to our calling to love God and neighbor with all we have and all we are.  So, yeah, it's true that the Bible does call us to a way of life that is "more than words," and to a faith that goes beyond talking the talk. 

But that's now how Paul is thinking here.  Here, in these opening verses of 1 Thessalonians, Paul isn't trying to poke our consciences and make us do more to show God that our faith is sincere.  He's trying to assure us that God's faithfulness is sincere, and that the Good News Paul brought was more than just talk.  Paul is reminding the Thessalonians that even if the gospel sounds too good to be true, they can know it's the real thing because when Paul came to them to tell them about God's free grace through Christ, it wasn't just a sales-pitch.  They had an encounter with the living Holy Spirit, who came among them in "power" and "full conviction."  Whether Paul means that they saw miracles or wonders done, or that the Spirit's presence was made clear in some other way, Paul doesn't say--but his readers apparently remembered whatever it was.  And Paul is convinced that their experience of the Spirit confirms that the Good News of Jesus is not just an interesting story. The power of the Spirit's presence is their guarantee that Paul was not peddling snake-oil, and his God is not the snake. And then he caps it all off and says if nothing else, the Thessalonians can remember the way Paul lived among them and they can see from his own transformed life that this Jesus is the real deal.

In other words, here in this verse, Paul isn't trying to goad Christians into putting forth "more than words" to convinced God that they really love him.  He's turned that whole song around and says, "Look here--God has given us more than words to assure us that the words he does speak to us in the gospel are true!"  Paul is putting the "more than words" test to none other than God, and saying that God has been found truthful after all.  The amazing, even unbelievable, good news that we are beloved through Jesus apart from our earning and without restriction is really the honest-to-God truth, and we can rely on that truth, because God has shown us more than words. In a world where a lot of voices are just talk, God has given us the Spirit, who shows up with a power that is always more than we can manufacture for ourselves.  And God has given us the lives of saints around us who have been transformed by the free grace of Jesus as yet a further sign to us that the Gospel is more than wishful thinking.  God has held himself to the "more-than-words" standards, and if we are honest at all, we can see that God has not been found wanting.

Today, we go out into a world confident that the news we bring is more than a political platform or empty romantic gesture.  We go out bringing the news of God's love with the assurance that God actually backs up the promise with the power and presence of the Spirit, who will transform us and leave ripples behind as we go.

Lord God, come among us in power and full conviction again so that we will be assured that your promises are true, and so that we will be transformed in the sight of the watching world, and so be your witnesses of a promise that sounds too good to be true, and yet is indeed the Gospel truth.

The World's Librarians

The World's Librarians--May 29, 2018

"Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, which you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you were bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body." [1 Corinthians 6:19-20]

I am a book person.  Let's talk about books for a moment.

Look, I know that we increasingly all have little shiny rectangles of technology (we usually call them cell phones, smart phones, tablets, and computers) from which to read the news, to check the weather, as well as to catch up on your angry uncle's latest bitter tirade commenting on the day's news, interspersed with all the cat pictures your acquaintance from work likes to post.  I know we have ways of reading that don't involve the printed page anymore... but honestly, I don't think that the book, as a physical object with printed pages you can hold in your hand, is going anywhere any time soon.  There is something so... real... about holding a book in your hands, something that feels authentic about the smell of the paper, the heft of the weight in your hands, and the ease of the pages for dog-earing, underlining, and bookmarking for picking up where you left out.  Books are fantastic, wonderful inventions, and they will all survive even if some terrible computer virus or power surge wipes out my shiny rectangles of technology.

Now, here's the thing about a book.  The book itself contains the story--the actual content of the text you are reading--and in a sense, you can think of the text of the book separately from the actual bound pages.  After all, before the words were printed in your book, some author somewhere had to write them, some editor had to pare them down, and some typesetter had to arrange how they would all fall on the printed page, not just of your copy, but of all the other thousands that are out there.  So, yes, in a sense, the text of a book is separable from the physical pages you happen to have in your hand.  

But on the other hand, for you as a reader, the way you experience the text is with the text printed on the particular pages, with the particular paragraphs falling just so, and (in a physical book at least) those are always the same.  So when you keep coming back to, say, a favorite passage in the novel, or a favorite poem in the anthology, or that quote you underlined three times because it was so important to you, it will always be there, in the same spot on the page, the same crinkle at the top from turning to that page so many times, the same crease beginning to wear on the binding from opening it there.

So, for example, when I picture the words of Rudyard Kipling's poem, "If," once taught to me by my grandfather from his very own volume of "Best Loved Poems," I picture the way the stanzas fall in that particular volume.  I picture the way it spills from one page to the next, and the way the paper has yellowed with age.  I smell the old book-glue smell, and I can almost feel the softness of the fraying outer binding.  I know that I can look up the text of "If" on my computer in an instant anywhere, but somehow my brain has now associated those words, "If you can keep your head when all about you/ Are losing theirs and blaming it on you..." with the specific encounter I have had for three and a half decades with that poem in one particular volume of poetry.  It's the same, too, with the old, second-hand volume of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Letters and Papers from Prison that I have been wading through again this spring--I picture particular quotations the way they fall on the page, and when I think of the words, I picture the page the way I read it, now often with my added underlining.

All of this is to say that even though we can all concede that the text of a book is a separate "thing" from the physical volume itself that you check out from the library (or buy from the bookstore, or--come on, let's just say it--have delivered from Amazon) at the same time, in a sense the ideas in the text are forever "bound up" (no pun intended... well, maybe a little) with the actual physical object on whose pages you read the words.  The words of the author do indeed exist separately from the printed pages, but you and I can only encounter those words once they have been published, put on paper, and bound.  

I don't think it's a stretch, either, to say that in some real, meaningful sense, when you read someone else's words--especially in the pages of an actual book--you really do experience the presence of the author.  Those words of Kipling's in the poem, they came from his mind, his thought process, his way of seeing the world.  Those letters of Bonhoeffer's were first written in his own hand to friends and family during his imprisonment at Nazi internment camps, and you really get a sense of what he thinks and feels, as he himself is being shaped by the experience of prison while the shadow of an execution looms over him.

In a sense, you could say that the words, ideas, and stories of an author are embodied in a book, and that without the book itself, you would have no real way, short of a face-to-face conversation with the author her or himself, to receive those ideas and words.  The physical, bound book is the channel, and it matters--it becomes a part of the experience of sharing the mind of the author, in a way that would not feel the same if you simply viewed the text scrolling on a screen somewhere.  

So, in a nutshell, that's what it is to be human, as well.  We are embodied beings, and the embodiment matters.  We are not just brains that can walk, and we are not just collections of words and ideas that float in the ether or reside on "the Cloud."  We are embodied, so that the wonderful, complicated, sometimes shallow, sometimes deep thoughts, feelings, words, and stories that make you you, are contained in the specific physical bag of muscle, bone, sinew, and skin that is your body, and in the particular stream of minutes, days, and decades that you call your lifetime.  To be human is to be embodied, and so if human beings matter, our bodies matter.  We don't just "have" bodies--in a very real sense, we are bodies, much the same way an author's manuscript doesn't just float around in nothingness, but comes to you through the pages of a book, and the book itself is an important part of the connection between author and reader.  It would be a mistake, I believe, for me to get rid of my grandfather's poetry book simply because I can always Google the text of the poem if I want it.  And it would be a mistake to get rid of my copy of Bonhoeffer because I have read it once.  The book matters, and so do our bodies.

That by itself it an important point, because Christians are notorious for acting like our physical bodies are unimportant because they are temporal and earthly, and we have been taught to think about "spiritual" things.  And therefore over the centuries Christians have repeatedly made mistakes like saying it doesn't matter whether we eat well or exercise or sleep, because that's all just "body" stuff, and God (we say) only cares about spirits and souls.  Or we have ignored the way we treat other people's bodies--the way some people's bodies are treated as objects, or the way some people's bodies are treated as "less than" because of the color of their skin, or the way we have treated some people's bodies as expendable because they weren't like our bodies.  And on top of that, we have not always been very good and speaking up when the wider culture wants to judge people's worth on the shape, size, height, width, or appearance of their bodies.  

Let's just confess to it: sometimes we religious folks have been so focused on sounding "spiritual" that we forget the inherent beauty and value of the bodies through which we connect to one another.  It is only through the words produced by your mouth in a conversation, along with facial expressions and eye contact, that I get to know how you really think, for example.  It is only in the held hands around a circle of praying friends that I know I am not alone.  It is only in the embrace of someone I know loves me when my world is falling apart and my heart is broken open with grief that I can dare to believe that it will be all right.  And sometimes we church folk haven't treated that gift of embodiment as preciously as it has deserved.

Paul the apostle, however, has been hammering this home since the first century.  Our bodies matter, right off the bat because they are the means by which we connect with one another, much like you experience the actual words of a text through the pages of an physical book.  But even deeper, Paul says, the books that are our embodied selves are also the residence of the Author of all creation, the very living God by the Spirit.  Our bodies are like mobile, walking temples, Paul says, where the very Spirit of God resides.  That means our bodies matter--the same way I treat my grandfather's poetry book with deep respect because it both ties me to my grandfather and Kipling himself.  And because the physical book itself matters, I take care to use it in ways that it was meant for, rather than in ways that do violence to the book, or get in the way of the right connection it allows between me and the author.  I don't use my grandfather's poetry book for a doorstop.  I don't leave it near open flames.  I don't set my palette of paints on top of it, either, because any of those could damage the pages on which good and worthy words are written, and then I would lose the connection to those authors' minds.  So, too, Paul says, that we are called to treat one another's bodies as though they really do bring us into the presence of the very Spirit of God.  That means it matters what I do with my body... and it matters how I regard your body, too.  It means I will not judge your value based on the appearance of the outside cover, as the old proverb reminds us.  And I will not cause harm to your body, as though it doesn't matter.  And I will not treat you as less important a book simply because your pages are different from mine.  We are called, always, to regard each person who comes into our presence as of infinite importance, both because they are made in the image of God, and because it is into bodies such as ours that the Holy Spirit resides.

In Paul's day, the particular issue he was writing about to the Corinthians had to do with treating other people's bodies as objects through prostitution.  But the underlying idea is bigger than just the lyrics to Roxanne.  It's more than just a rule against hookers.  It's about how we regard our own bodies, and how we regard the bodies of others.  It means I cannot treat the bodies of some as expendable or ignorable, simply because they are far away or different from mine.  It means I cannot regard someone else's body as any less worthy of protection, even if theirs is different in melanin or culture or language or gender from mine.  

And, maybe hardest of all in this culture of ours, it means that even my own body is not simply "my possession" to do with as I choose.  I don't have the "right," no matter how many Facebook memes want to fuss otherwise, to do whatever I choose with my person, my possessions, my stuff, and my body--because they aren't really just mine.  They belong to God, who, as Paul reminds us, bought us at a price.  I am God's property--God's residence!--and so are you.  That means I don't have permission to harm you or myself--certainly not under some misguided notion of "but I have the freedom to do what I want."  I don't.  I don't have permission to act as though my body, or my life, is more important than yours, and that I should preserve my life at the expense of yours. I just don't. We are both claimed by Another.  Just like my grandfather's poetry book, which in my mind will always remain "my grandfather's" no matter how long it resides in my custody, isn't really mine to do whatever I want with it, but to care for and steward as a prized possession, we are each called to care for our own--and one another's--bodies, because they are not really purely "ours." We are stewards, the librarians of the whole world if you will, entrusted with both reading and taking care of a world full of volumes.  We are caretakers of one another's bodies, and of our own, because none other than the Spirit of God and the Author of Life resides in the pages of our stories.

O Spirit of God, enable us to be good and faithful stewards of the bodies and lives of the people you place across our paths today.

...And Not Caesar

...And Not Caesar--May 28, 2018

"Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, 'Let Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord!' except by the Holy Spirit." [1 Corinthians 12:3]

It's not that the words are hard to say.  

At least, not the physical mouth movements required to form the syllables and make the sounds.  It is not physically difficult to utter the three words, "Jesus is Lord!" (two in Greek, which can get the same meaning across with simply, "Iesous Kyrios").  And it's not like this is a tongue-twister--there are no pecks of pickled peppers or woodchucks chucking wood to be found here.

So at first blush, this might seem like the apostle Paul is being a bit melodramatic when he declares that "No one can say 'Jesus is Lord!' except by the Holy Spirit."  We might think he should tone it down, because, after all, to us, it seems easy to string those words together and equate "Jesus" with "Lord."

And that is probably a sign of how comfortable we are, or of being unaware of just how big a deal those words are.  We hear "Lord" and tend to assume it is a strictly religious term--calling someone your "Lord," we have been told, is just a way of saying "whoever you accept as your personal savior to get you into heaven after you die."  We are used to being the dominant religious group in our communities, too, so it's not even all that brave a thing for us to say that we name Jesus as our Lord.  And for that matter, we are still getting over an era in which people were just born into families that went to church, where the name "Jesus" was said next to "Lord" without much thought at all about what it meant or was claiming, and where the assumption was that everybody went to church somewhere, if just in order to be a good respectable citizen, regardless of whether you really had any interest in this Jesus fellow.  There was a certain peer pressure for a long time in our communities and towns, with the expectation that everybody would be saying "Jesus is Lord," and so it almost ran the risk of becoming one of those empty stock phrases that people throw around to make others think they are nice and respectable religious folks.

But in Paul's day, it was a dangerous--even subversive--thing to call Jesus "Lord."  Naming Jesus as Lord demanded a courage that nobody had on their own, because calling Jesus "Lord" meant also saying that Caesar was not.  And that was a big deal, because in the Empire, the Romans insisted that their subjects all pledge allegiance to Caesar with the simple three-word declaration, "Caesar is Lord" (or, you guessed it, in the Greek-speaking part of the empire, the two words "Kaesar Kyrios").  Calling Caesar "Lord" wasn't a term of quiet personal piety and private devotion; it was as much a political claim as anything else. To call Caesar "Lord" meant accepting the way Caesar ruled, and accepting a view of the world where more armies made you right, where wealth went to Rome and its armies while the people were distracted by bread and circuses, and where dissent was crushed or crucified.  And to call Caesar "Lord" was to accept that this was the way things were--that victory was determined by who killed more than who, and greatness was determined by hoisting yourself to the top of the pyramid.  All of that, along with the fact that by the time Paul was writing, the Caesars of the day called themselves divine and insisted on being worshiped, too.  Official Roman policy said you could worship whatever other gods or goddesses you wanted on the side, but Caesar had to get his due--a pinch of incense offered on the altar, and the coveted confession, "Caesar is Lord."

The scary thing about all that was that Rome could threaten you with punishment, prison, or torture if you didn't pledge your allegiance to Caesar... and there was tremendous peer pressure for the first Christians to do it, because all their neighbors, friends, and acquaintances, and often other members of their own families, were all giving in and doing it.  The way to make sure you kept your head (literally) and kept your reputation as a respectable, rule-following subject of the Empire was simply to bow your head, do what Caesar demanded (it only took just a few minutes after all), and to mouth the words, "Caesar is Lord."  And as long as you didn't muck it all up by then following it up with "But not really, because Jesus is Lord!" you were... safe.  Sold out, but safe.

And at the same time, there was a whole other group of people who would have been furious at the mere suggestion of putting "Jesus" and "Lord" in the same sentence--the religious leadership in Jerusalem.  The title "Lord" had become a substitute for the ancient divine name, "Yahweh," the name, "I AM WHO I AM" that God had spoken to Moses out of the burning bush all those centuries before.  To claim the title "Lord," then was to dance around equating someone with the one true living God... and the one central, undisputable rule of 1st century Judaism was, "There's only one God; so don't equate the majesty and glory of God with any one or anything else!"  Many in the early Christian movemenet were themselves Jewish and had grown up reciting the ancient Hebrew creed called the Shema: "Hear, O Israel, the LORD your God, the LORD is one.  You shall love the Lord will all your heart and all your mind and all your strength."  They had all learned not to put any one or any thing on the same level as God, and therefore, you weren't supposed to call anybody but God "Lord."  And yet, here came the early church all insisting that none other than a crucified rabbi named Jesus was "Lord," even though they had largely grown up in Jewish backgrounds and knew not to call anybody "Lord" but the real living God.

That makes a clearer picture for why Paul could say, "No one can say Jesus is Lord except by the Holy Spirit."  It was just too risky a thing to go around saying casually.  To call Jesus Lord required greater courage than we chicken-hearts could muster on our own.  To call Jesus Lord, Paul is saying, requires the Spirit to be the one giving us the guts to say that Caesar is NOT Lord, that the emperor is wearing no clothes, and that a homeless rabbi who washed feet and ate with outcasts was the very presence of the Creator of the universe.  To call Jesus "Lord" was to make enemies out of all the respectable religious crowd and all the powerful political leaders, because it meant lifting this sinner-loving, party-crashing, cross-carrying criminal above every other name and saying that he was in fact the Sovereign over all the universe.  And saying that sort of thing didn't just get you laughed out of town--it got you stoned to death or crucified, depending on which group got to you first.

All of this is to say that if, despite all that danger, all that risk, and all the power of peer pressure from everyone else telling you to just go along and pledge your allegiance to Caesar, if you still went ahead and refused the Empire and the Temple by insisting that Jesus is Lord, well, the only explanation, Paul says, is that the Spirit must have been behind it, giving you the courage and the clarity to say what nobody else wanted you to say.

We use different titles for our leaders these days, perhaps, and we have given up on the burning of incense by and large.  But this is one of those points where we should be at least willing to ask the difficult question: "Just what am I committing to when I confess that Jesus is Lord?"  For a long time in our recent history, we might not have thought we were committing to much of anything when we mouthed those words.  We have for a long time, relatively speaking, figured that saying "Jesus is Lord" is just more religious gobbledygook we are supposed to memorize from the hymnal, and that as long as we said the pre-printed words in the service book, we had earned ourselves a spot in heaven.  

But if we take Paul seriously, then saying Jesus is Lord also means denying that anybody or anything else in our lives gets our highest allegiance.  It means that we will not burn incense to Rome, but neither will we give our deepest loyalty to donkeys or elephants, to Facebook or Apple or Amazon, to the money in our bank accounts, or to our ethnic group, country, or nationality.  And that's a scary thing to do, especially for a chicken-heart like me.  That's why Paul says if we dare confess Jesus as Lord, it's got to be because the Spirit stirred up the courage in us to speak those words.

In this day, we will constantly be asked about our allegiances--who and what matters most to us.  Is it the job?  The paycheck and the bank account?  Is it to a political party that talks big and then lets you down?  Is it to the stuff you own, the technology you are tethered to, the pleasure you get from buying more and more and more?  Is it to any one of those idols, or the whole pantheon, or additional ones you have added yourself to worship?  In the end, it comes down to asking, "To whom do I give my deepest self, my time, my love, and my devotion?"  Who is worth risking it all for by naming them "Lord"?

I will confess, I am a coward on a lot of days.  I would chicken out if it were just left up to me.  But it isn't... it isn't left up just to me. None of us are left to ourselves--the Spirit is stirring in us now, right this very second.  The Spirit is pushing us to see and to think about what it really means to confess Jesus as Lord and to take up his way of living in the world as our own... and then the Spirit is leading us to risk it all and confess it all the same.  

Jesus is Lord.  Yes.  Not Caesar.  

Jesus is Lord.  Yes.  Equal with the living God of all creation. 

Now, we have said it.  Dare we live like it is true in this day?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for your Spirit who has given us the courage to see you as you are and call on you as you truly are--Lord of heaven and earth, and Lord of our lives.

Not for Sale

Not for Sale--May 25, 2018

"But as for me, I am filled with power, 

     and with the Spirit of the Lord, 

 and with justice and might,

     to declare to Jacob his transgression

           and to Israel his sin.

 Hear this, you rulers of the house of Jacob,

      and chiefs of the house of Israel,

 who abhor justice

      and pervert equity,

 who built Zion with blood

     and Jerusalem with wrong!

 Its rulers give judgment for a bribe,

     its priests teach for a price,

     its prophets give oracles for money;

 yet they lean upon the LORD and say,

     'Surely the LORD is with us!

      No harm shall come upon us'." [Micah 3:8-11]

The other day I caught my kids bribing each other over the rights to picking TV shows before school.  And it told me that something was wrong.

Our household has limits on how much television we can watch in a day, and usually the rule during the school year is that the kids can only watch a show (a single episode of a tv show) once their clothes are on for the day, and their breakfasts are eaten.  Then, and only then, will there be the possibility of TV.  Well, as any economist will tell you, when you increase the scarcity for a commodity, demand drives the price up.  And that means that my kids will try all sorts of tactics to get the "rights" to pick the morning's show. Sometimes one will use intimidation and just try to yell their way into claiming "It's my turn to pick!"  Sometimes they will try and throw one another under the bus and tattle on their sibling for some small infraction, hoping I will then rule in favor of the whistleblower and give them the choice of TV shows.  And then sometimes, like just the other day, I will catch them basically bribing each other, often on a preposterous scale.  

The conversation the other day in the family room went like this.  "If you give up your turn to pick MY show, I'll buy you a toy."  (Not terribly virtuous as a deal at this point, but not strictly breaking the rules, either.)  From there, it became, "You have to get me a toy that I pick, and then I'll let you pick the show, and I pick a life-size  Barbie go-cart."  And then, in a turn of plain old trickery, it became, "If you pick my show (right now), then on your birthday (in ten months), I'll buy you a life-size Barbie go-cart that really drives (something that would cost hundreds of dollars that neither of my children have to spend)."  And had I not stepped in at that moment to interrupt their economy of bribes and shady deals, they would have agreed to that arrangement... despite the fact that what was being promised in the future was not theirs to offer, and was so far off in the future it would be forgotten, and was ridiculously disproportionate to promise in exchange for picking a morning's TV show.  Each of my kids was trying to game the other--one making absurdly large demands, and the other offering it so far in the future that no one would remember the deal when it came time to pay up.  They certainly seemed to show promise for a career in politics in that instant.

So, like I say, I put a stop to it.  I said "No."  I said "No," in fact, preemptively, before any TV shows had been watched, and before any supposed "deals" had been struck, before any specific wrong acts had been committed and anybody was cheated.  I said "No," not just to one of my kids, but to both--to the whole system of TV-related-bribery they were trying to set up, in fact--because I love both of them.  Saying NO to their deliberately crooked system was a way of saying YES to both of my kids, in reality, because I don't want either of them to be taken advantage of (by their brother or sister, or by anyone else) and also because I don't want either of them to become the kind of persons who cheat and swindle other people.  I love my children too much to be OK with them setting up a system whereby they can trick each other, con each other, or bribe each other with empty promises or outrageous demands.  And so I intervened and said, "No.  TV shows, among other things, are not for sale."

In a way, that's all the prophets of Israel and Judah ever said.  We sometimes misunderstand the role of the Hebrew prophets and cast them as fortune tellers who were only interested in predicting the future and setting up a complicated system of pre-determined events that will bring about the end of the world.  But usually the people who think that about the prophets are the ones who haven't spent very much time at all actually reading their words or listening to their message.  The prophets were people who, provoked by the Spirit, kept on declaring that the truly important things in life were simply not for sale. 

This passage of verses from Micah are hardly the only example, but it's a good representation of what the prophets, from Isaiah to Malachi, were really all about.  Micah talks about being filled with the power of the Spirit of the Lord for a particular purpose--to speak up for justice and to say "No" to all the systems God's people had set up that were turning them into crooks and schemers.  The "No" was an all-out, no-holds-barred, truth-to-power criticism of the leaders of Israel and Judah--the kings, the courts, the priests, and the court prophets. And the basic criticism here was that the Spirit said "NO" to the ways they were setting up a bribery-based system where everything was available for a price.  And the "No" was necessary because behind it was God's eternal "Yes" to humanity. God does not want us taking advantage of each other or being taken advantage of, because both being the schemer and the victim distorts us and who we are meant to be.  The "Yes" of God's care for all people requires the "No" to whatever crooked systems people set up--even when we think we are agreeing to those arrangements freely--that allow us to take advantage of each other.  And that, Virginia, is what prompted the Spirit of God, time and again, to whisper in the ear of prophets like Micah to call the people on the carpet, from the royal palace to the courtroom to the sanctuary.  No, Micah said, you are not allowed to do this to each other.  No, the Spirit prompted, you are not allowed to create a whole system where we scheme against each other and call it "deal-making," while it distorts our souls and disfigures our hearts.  No, the living God said--and keeps saying--I love you too much to let you think I don't care about the ways you are treating each other.  Influence and favors, imaginary religious "points" and public approval, these things are not for sale.  Justice is not for sale, and God's favor is not available for purchase at the Temple gift shop.

We would do well to remember what the prophets--and the Spirit who speaks through them--were really all about.  Otherwise we tame them and act like we can ignore their message.  The Spirit has always had a way of speaking God's "Yes" by also saying "No" to the ways we harm each other and the systems we set up to con each other out of good things. And the Spirit has not retired from that work, even if the names of the prophets, rulers, and priests have changed over time.  

Because I love my children, and because both of them were bent on conning the other, I had to say a clear "No" to their proposed system to mutually hoodwink each other. I had to insist some things are simply not for sale.

And because God loves all humanity--both the would-be schemers and the potential victims--God's Spirit keeps on inspiring prophetic voices to say "No" to our crooked systems and corrupt hearts, too... in order that God can say "Yes" to us at the same time. 

The Spirit keeps on insisting that some things are not for sale, no matter how great we think we are at deal-making.  That is the only way we will learn that God is intent on giving the best away for free.

Lord God, let your Spirit open our ears to your prophets, and let your Spirit open our mouths when you appoint us to be your prophetic voices, too.

The Love You Take

The Love You Take--May 24, 2018

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.'

 And let everyone who hears say, 'Come.'

 And let everyone who is thirsty come.

 Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift." [Revelation 22:17]

It is hard for me to say this, but the Beatles were wrong.

And not just a little bit wrong: spectacularly wrong.

At the very end of the last album they recorded together, John, Paul, George, and Ringo offer up a final showcase of their rock capabilities in a song called "The End," which let the three non-drummers each get their own guitar solos as the drums and the volume build to a dramatic climax, as if to prepare us for something really, really important.  And then, the only words of the song emerge from the distortion of the guitars, like the sun breaking through the fog at down.  You know these guys thought they were thinking what they had to say was really really profound... and what the Beatles offer at the end of "The End" is simply this:

"And in the end, the love you take

 Is equal to the love you make."

All of that build-up for a moral that boils down to, "You only get what you give," (which, for fans of early 2000s Top 40 pop-rock, will sound familiar as the recurring tagline of a song by the New Radicals).  Nothing new under the sun, as they say... especially in pop music.

But let's think about this for a minute.  At the end of a masterpiece of an album... and at the end of their band's existence before they broke up, all the amazing and innovative musical ideas and fusion of styles from "Please Please Me" at the start to the tail end of "Abbey Road," and it all built just to a tired old moral cliché that there are no free gifts in life.  

That's really what the Fab Four's line means, isn't it?  If, in the end, you only get as much love as you have contributed first, well, then the universe is basically a clockwork mechanism, or a cosmic Rube Goldberg contraption where one action inexorably to the next and to the next with the same output every time.  The universe is basically a vending machine--you put in your money, and you get what you pay for.  You input love, and you get an equal amount of love back.  No remainders.  No margins.  No excess.  In the end, you only get as much love as you first put into the system.

And I'll be honest with you here, as much as I appreciate the Beatles--I expected better from them here.  I expect something more radical, really--as inventive as they were with music and style and instrumentation--more revolutionary, honestly, than just rehearsing the same old moral calculus of "You only get out as much as you put in within this life."  

And it reminds me that there was something far more radical going on at the end of the Bible's version of "Abbey Road," the book we call Revelation.  After all the drama, spectacle, and criticism of the Empire that happens throughout the book of Revelation, there is a final crescendo, a lot like the Beatles' track "The End," that builds to the final arrival of God and God's dwelling with humanity in the "new heavens and the new earth."  All the calamities and chaos, all the jarring imagery and natural phenonomena in the first twenty-one chapters, have all been leading to a final conclusion, and we're waiting for with anxious anticipation like when you are first waiting to hear what Paul McCartney will sing when the guitar solos fade out.  And here it is:

The Spirit says, "Come."  And let anyone who is thirsty come.  Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift.

That is to say, the grand finale scene of the Bible's grand finale book ends up saying, "And in the end, the Spirit is giving away more than you deserve... for free."  It is exactly the opposite of what the Beatles sing.  Revelation's final conclusion is that at the end of the Christian story, God gives away what we need as a free gift, not a matter of paying out rewards to those who have earned them.  The text does not say, "And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."  It says nothing of the sort.  In fact, it says that in the end, God's economy is--as it has always been--one of grace.

The qualifications--the only qualifications, mind you--listed for eligibility for the "water of life" that the Spirit offers, are simply this: you have got to be thirsty.  You bring your neediness.  You bring your empty hands.  You bring no credentials, papers, resumes, lists of accomplishments, records of past successes, or anything else.  You just bring you, without any talk about whether the cool drink of water has been earned or deserved.  Those are not our questions to worry about.  We bring our need, and God supplies it... as a gift.

And as John the Seer, writing this whole book down, puts it, all of this gift business comes from the Spirit's own mouth, as it were.  The Spirit is the One who says, "Come!" and then our voices are added to the chorus, too.  The Spirit is the One who makes this gracious invitation "as a gift."   There is no test. There is no bartering--your good deeds in return for a cup of water.  At the last, the only thing you need in order to receive God's good gifts is... your need.  No pretending or posturing.  No puffing ourselves up to look more self-sufficient.  In the end, the ones who get free water from God's Spirit to give them life... are the ones who bring nothing but their empty-handed neediness.  Grace upon grace upon grace, beginning to end.

And in the end, the love you take, John the Seer (not Lennon) says, is infinitely more than whatever contributions we have made first in life.  Even at the last in the new creation, the only terms for getting God's water of life are God's terms of grace.  No deal-making. No bargaining.  No buying.  There is only the gift, given and received beyond our earning, our deserving or our "making."  That is how the Spirit of the living God runs the show.

O God of Life, help us to stop fussing about our earning--or anybody else's for that matter--and simply to hear your invitation to receive your good gifts as gifts.  Thank you for grace, now and always.

Getting Out of the Way of Ourselves

Getting Out of the Way of Ourselves--May 23, 2018

"For through the Spirit, by faith, we eagerly wait for the hope of righteousness. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision counts for anything; the only thing that counts is faith working through love." [Gal. 5:5-6]

"Faith working through love"--that's what we're about as God's people in Christ.  And Paul believes that anything that stands in the way of "faith working through love" doesn't need to hold us back any longer--not our race or former religious identities, not our gender or class or income.  None of those labels will stick on us any longer, because we are a community of "faith working through love."

And if we think about it, "faith working through love" is a rather broad commission--it touches on every part of our lives and every part of our world.  Notice that Paul isn't very picky beyond this faith-active-in love about qualifiers: he doesn't specify who should get the love or who is allowed to participate in the giving of love.  It is as though Paul really believes that once the Spirit grabs a hold of us, the best we can do is to get out of the way of ourselves and let the Spirit kindle that kind of active faith in us.

That's really how we need to hear this talk about "faith working through love" in the church. We can so easily turn it into a litmus test, a condition for real belonging, as in: "Well, we can't judge people by their race or ethnicity anymore--let's judge people by how good they seem to be acting before we let them in."  Paul isn't saying that "faith-working-through-love" is some sort of easily measurable prerequisite you can use to let people in or keep people out.  He's saying that this faith is something that comes "through the Spirit" as the Spirit goes to work on us and in us and through us.  That's why we just can't put too tight a rein on "faith-active-in-love" or hem it in with conditions about what race or class or sex are really allowed in or to do the work.  Paul is convinced that we can leave the who and the how questions up to the Spirit to take care of--and the Spirit will draw all sorts of people together into this community.  The Spirit has already drawn the pious and the impious, the wealthy and the poor, the insiders and the outsiders, the beautiful people and the losers, all into this community of Christ Jesus where the old identities no longer separate us.  And the Spirit has already kindled a fire in us to act in faithful love for each other and for those outside our doors.  Sometimes, the best thing we can do is to get out of the way of ourselves.

Where are you standing in the way of yourself--or in the way of the Spirit's action in you?  Where have you felt led by God to act or speak up or move in some new way, only to find your voice of inner restraint or fear keep you from doing it?  When have you let the Spirit overcome those inner barriers and acted or spoken up or moved anyway?  Which will today hold for you?

Great God, before we have the faith to act in love, you are the one who acts faithfully and lovingly toward us.  You are the source of our faith, our love, our hope, and our belonging.  Continually give us those gifts so that we can pass them along to all we meet today--and even find ourselves blessed in the giving.