Lunch with Phil and Linda

Lunch with Phil and Linda--August 1, 2018

"After this Jesus went out and saw a tax collector named Levi, sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, 'Follow me.' And he got up, left everything, and followed him. Then Levi gave a great banquet for him in his house; and there was a large crowd of tax collectors and others sitting at the table with them. The Pharisees and their scribes were complaining to his disciples, saying, 'Why do you eat and drink with tax collectors and sinners?' Jesus answered, 'Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners to repentance'." [Luke 5:27-32]

This is the kind of troublemaking that got Jesus killed.  He deliberately shared tables with the "wrong kind of people."

More to the point, Jesus shared tables with the wrong kind of people, and he dared to claim that this was what the Reign of God looked like.

And that was the last straw for the Respectable Religious Crowd.  Jesus knew full well that he was pushing buttons by showing up at parties like Levi's, or inviting himself over for dinners at Zacchaeus' house.  And he did it anyway, not out of bitterness or spite for the Pharisees, really, but out of the conviction that such a widely spread table was what it looks like where God reigns.

We might not put a great deal of weight or meaning on the matters of whom we sit with at a meal.  We are used to being herded into seats at random in the elementary school lunchroom from a young age, and we end up sharing tables or eating space with all sorts of people with who we have no connection or conversation in our adulthood.  You might eat your lunch in the office break room at the same time as Phil and Linda from accounting, but never actually look up from your egg salad sandwich and speak with them.  You might find yourself packed into a crowded McDonald's at a rest stop and having to share a table with Bernie from Milwaukee on his way across the country, but you and Bernie are not likely to become best friends because you ate Big Macs within two feet of each other.  Our culture doesn't necessarily read much into your table companions, maybe in part because we try so very hard to eat in isolation from others for so much of the time.

But not in the first century, and certainly not in Palestine.  In any ancient Near Eastern culture, table fellowship is a big deal.  To eat near someone is to eat with someone, and to eat with someone is to regard them as social equals. So for Jesus to allow himself to be made the guest of a despised tax collector (read: sell-out to the despicable Roman Empire) wasn't simply a matter of eating a hurried lunch in the office break room at the table next to Phil and Linda from accounting.  It was a conscious choice, and a symbolic act that treated these outcasts like they were friends of Jesus. (And again, beyond any accusations of cheating or extortion, tax collectors had definitively cast their lot with the occupying pagan Romans rather than with their own people.) Jesus knew that his choice even to attend a party with Levi was provocative on its face, and it would be only more provocative as Jesus did more and more things to identify himself as the Messiah.  

That was really the scandal that made Jesus' table fellowship so threatening to the Respectable Religious Crowd.  For Jesus to share a table with "tax collectors and sinners" was to act as though they really were acceptable as they were. And for Jesus to do that while also saying and doing things that only the Messiah was allowed to say and do... well that was like saying that God actually accepted these tax collectors and sinners as they were!  And that was simply too far for the Respectable Religious Crowd.  Now Jesus was making claims about God!  And if the Messiah is going around fraternizing with crooks and sell-outs like Levi, well, then it was like saying that Levi was beloved of God as he was, even before any amends or good behavior was attempted.

And yes, that was exactly what Jesus was saying.  Jesus' choice of table fellowship was a conscious and radical choice to include those deemed permanently unacceptable, and in sharing a table with them, he was claiming that they were beloved of God already.  And that's the thing--if Jesus really was and is the Messiah, he has the authority to declare someone acceptable, just on his say-so! That was threatening to the Respectable Religious Leaders, who prided themselves on having the clout and influence to be the gatekeepers of acceptable and unacceptable people. And yet, despite the trouble it caused and the anger it provoked, Jesus kept on getting himself invited to dinner parties where his presence made the nobodies into somebodies.

There is still a great power available to us in our choices of whom we will share tables with in this life.  Even if our culture around us treats the eating of meals as a simply utilitarian chore that gets in the way of productivity, we have the power to reclaim the table as a place of welcome.  We have the authority and example of Jesus to allow our own tables and shared meals to be moments to include the left out, to lift up the despondent, and to create genuine connection.  The only question is whether we will use those opportunities when we are sitting down for lunch somewhere for the sake of drawing someone into the pull of Christ's love, or whether we will wolf down our egg salad without making eye contact with Phil and Linda... who might just have been hoping and waiting for someone like you to tell them they are beloved in the eyes of the Maker of the universe.

Where will you sit today? And what difference could it make?

Lord Jesus, grant us to use our table moments in this day as you did, and as you still do: to welcome, to restore, and to include.  

Perfect in Weakness

Perfect in Weakness--July 31, 2018

"Therefore, to keep me from being too elated, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to torment me, to keep me from being too elated. Three times I appealed to the Lord about this, that it would leave me, but he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for power is made perfect in weakness.' So, I will boast all the more gladly of my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may dwell in me. Therefore I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities for the sake of Christ; for whenever I am weak, then I am strong." [2 Corinthians 12:7b-10]

I have been putting off writing about these verses.

It's not because I don't like them or don't think they make sense.  It's not because this passage makes me squirm or pokes at me by exposing something I don't want to deal with.  Just the opposite, in fact--the first time I saw these verses, when I was probably well into my twenties, I was stunned with surprise that there was such beauty and grace that I had overlooked or never seen before hiding in the tail end of what we call Second Corinthians. It was like a light went on for me--like something I wish had been shouted from the rooftops and preached in sermons from the church experience of my childhood, but had never been mentioned, or which I had never paid attention to before.

But the reason I have been putting off writing about these verses, in this whole month that we have been exploring the power of Jesus, is that there's simply no analogy for what Paul says here.  At least, I strain to find one, and I have come up short.  I have no other earthly example to point to, no other referent or object lesson, to hold these words up against in order to conclude, "Ah yes, well, Paul is being perfectly reasonable here."  I have no reason--at least, none other than the promise of the gospel--to conclude on my own, logically, that "power is made perfect in weakness."  I have no reason, based on the usual order of the day and the conventional wisdom around us, to believe that "when I am weak, then I am strong."

I wish I could point to some obvious illustration and say, "See, consider the oak tree..." but the oak tree's strength is not made perfect through its weakness.  It is weak for a while, perhaps, as a seedling, and then it stops being weak when it gets large enough to stand and stretch up to the sky.  The same with race horses, rip tides, and wrestlers--they are strong because they are strong, not because they are also somehow weak.  Human logic and human categories want to make something one or the other--either something is weak, or it is powerful.  These are, to our minds, opposite poles on a continuum, as far apart from one another as the north pole is from the south.

And yet, stubbornly, wonderfully, there are Paul's words and experiences, standing out there and refusing to go away, insisting that true power is made perfect--made complete--not in spite of frailty, but in and through weakness.

That is because, as I imagine we have seen over the course of this last month, God's power is simply different from our notions of how power works.  The power of Jesus is a different animal than the brute force and coercion we tend to picture when we think of power.  The power of Jesus runs counter to the usual ways the world thinks of strength.  After all, the smartest and most well-respected minds of the first century--the So-and-Sos of the Roman Empire--thought it was a show of power to crucify Jesus... and in stark opposition, the New Testament sees true power expressed in Jesus' willingness to endure being crucified.  The wisdom of the world says, "Power is when you threaten others to do what you want, and then you make an example of them if they refuse." And the upside-down perspective of Jesus says, "Power is when your love gives you the courage and strength to lay your life down for the ones holding the hammer and nails."

The move Paul makes here is simply to say that what happened at the cross was not a fluke or a one-off.  It is the key-signature for all of Jesus' ongoing presence in the world.  That is to say, the same way that Jesus' power is revealed in an unexpected, even hidden, way at the cross will be the same way that Jesus' power will show up in our lives--precisely through weakness, through failure, through emptiness, and through suffering.

Maybe, now that I think of it, that's the one point of analogy I have been looking for all along--the cross. I don't have a snappy object lesson or pop culture reference to connect this power-through-weakness to... but there is the cross.  The cross is exactly what Jesus' power-through-weakness looks like--the salvation of the world hung on an ugly Roman death stake.  The cross is what God's power looks like in all its unexpected, surprising wonder, and then Paul says here in his letter that the same kind of power shows up in our lives as well.  

So for Paul, struggling with whatever malady was his "thorn in the flesh," the same upside-down logic of the cross shows up again.  Throughout the life of the early church, the pattern was the same: the followers of Jesus didn't start an armed uprising against the empire, nor did they leverage their vast wealth to mount a hostile corporate takeover of the Empire.  The beloved community of Jesus was strong through its weakness--its witness was in its refusal to lash out in violence at the people who persecuted them, and its treasure was shared to make sure that nobody went hungry.  

That is a power the world at large simply doesn't understand.  Instead, it reaches for sticks and stones and clubs and knives, in the hopes of getting a more powerful weapon to keep the other side away.  The world at large sees power as the ability to make the other guy afraid of you, and to force others to bend to your whims. The world at large sees power in terms of your stockpiles of stuff and the muscle you can flex to keep others from getting close to it. In other words, the world at large would nod approvingly at the crucifixion of Jesus every time and say, "See?  We're powerful--look! We killed him."  

And in spite of that, the power of Jesus, seen and reflected in the lives of his community, says back, "See?  This is Jesus' power--look! He laid down his life for them, for us, for all."

So for Paul, real power is not found in some example of when he prayed the right magic words and got what he prayed for on the first try; it is found in the persistent pain of a thorn that would not go away, but which became a channel for Jesus' power to be revealed.  And for Paul, real power is not found behind imperial banners or under gleaming centurions' helmets, but in the footwasher's towel and basin and the shared loaf of bread.  Real power is in the weeping with those who weep, the rejoicing with those who rejoice, the walking with others in their lives' journeys, and the enduring through whatever gets thrown at you.

And all of a sudden, the same surprising, upside down power of the cross shows up everywhere in our lives together.  There's no gimmicky object lesson or single perfect analogy for what this kind of power-in-weakness is "like," because in some sense, it is woven through all of the life of the beloved community, like a thread that binds it all together.  The power of Jesus--the power made perfect in weakness--is revealed in the ways we bear with one another in our differences, rather than forcing each other to fit into cookie cutter sameness or cutting people off because we do not agree.  It is revealed in the ways we respond to hostility with a refusal to hate back, even if the world around thinks that is weak or makes us look like "losers."  It is revealed in the ways we intentionally choose to put the needs of others--especially others who are not followers of Jesus already--before our own comfort, even if the world thinks that looks foolish.  The power-in-weakness is revealed in the way we keep on keeping on, despite thorns in the flesh, ache in our hearts, injustice in the world, and the nagging pull of apathy on our souls.  That is the same power seen in Jesus' love, in his life, and at the cross.  That power then gets refracted out, like white like broken up into a rainbow of colors through a prism, in each of our lives in a thousand different ways.  But it is always the same surprising, unexpected power, the power made complete in weakness.

May such Christ-like power be ours today... and may we have the courage to use it, rather than running off after counterfeit versions of "power."

Lord Jesus, grant us your power... the power made perfect in our weakness.

How to Use a Drill

How to Use a Drill--July 30, 2018

"When the ten heard this, they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, 'You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." [Mark 10:41-45]

Okay, safety lesson Number One: you don't point a drill at your face.  You just don't.

In case it were not already abundantly self-evident why it is a bad idea to point a drill at your face, let's say it out loud.  A drill is a tool with a particular purpose, namely, to make holes in things.  It makes holes really well when it is plugged in and someone pulls the trigger, but even if it is not plugged into the electrical outlet, the end of the drill bit is meticulously designed to be sharp, solid, and piercing.  One false move, one clumsy stumble on the rug with the wrinkle in it, and you could have a hole in your face, or at least a nasty cut.  Even if it's just a slight chance of injury, the smart move is to point your drill away from yourself, no matter what, even when you are just walking from the toolbox to your project.  Drills and faces are never a good combination.

Or, to put it slightly less graphically, as a rule, power tools are meant to be pointed away from oneself.  That is simply the right way to use them.  And a tool is, by definition, meant for something else--it is a means to an end, an object used to accomplish something else.  Just having a tool for its own sake is meaningless--you don't go and buy a hammer, a screwdriver, or a drill, simply to accumulate them. They are meant to be used in service of making, fixing, or building other things.  And for the well-being of everybody around, keep your power tools pointed away from yourself.  Consider this the voice of experience here.

Jesus reminds us, too, that what is true of power tools is true of power itself.  Power is never rightly used by pointing it at yourself--using it to puff yourself up, to secure your own interests, or to accumulate other stuff for yourself.  Neither is power an end in and of itself, according to the rabbi from Nazareth; just like it is nonsense to say, "I bought this hammer so that I can acquire more hammers," it is a misunderstanding of power to say, "The purpose of power is to acquire more power." No. No. No.

That's not to say that people don't try.  (But hey, I know people who point drills at their faces, too, and that doesn't make it a good idea.)  Of course, history--and the headlines--are full of examples of folks bent on pointing a power drill at their own eyes, people who treat power like it is intended for their own benefit.  They have accumulated some amount of power--whether being the president of your local book club, getting elected to Congress, or crowning yourself dictator of France like Napoleon--and they proceed to aim that power at themselves, for their own benefit, for their own protection, for their own comfort.  Jesus says that was the accepted understanding of all the surrounding nations in the first century: "among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them."  It is the great fundamental misunderstanding of humanity--we keep making the same critical error of pointing a drill at our own faces, when it was never meant to be pointed at ourselves.  Power tools, and power itself, are simply not meant to be directed back at the one who holds it, no matter how many other people are doing it. No matter how much we think it has become "the new normal," no matter how loud the powerful folks bellow and shout and threaten, and no matter whether it is on the large or small scale, power is simply not meant to be used only to benefit the one who has it.  If you have power, it is meant for the creation of something good for all, for the mending of what is broken, for the fixing of what is out of whack.

And there is the beginning of the radical difference between the way of Jesus and the way of every other king, emperor, prime minister, and president in the dustbin of history.  Jesus offers an alternative.  Jesus points the drill away from himself--which turns out to be exactly the right way to hold such a powerful tool, after all--and he points his power away from himself.  Jesus says that the right way to use power is to use it to place yourself in service to others.  The right way to use power is to lay your life down for others.  The right way to use power is to put yourself last and to put others first.  That is, simply put, the purpose of power, like the purpose of a drill is to point it away from your face and into the wood so that you can assemble the desk you are building.  

The fact that Jesus' use of power to serve (rather than to be served) seems backwards to us is evidence of just how screwed up we all are, not that Jesus is wrong.  Jesus has begun a community of people who dare to use power differently from all the "tyrants," "great ones," and "lords" of history and the present day.  We will be people who lay down our lives, not because we are powerless to do otherwise like helpless victims, but by our conscious choice to use power in the right way: for the sake of those who do not have power.  We will be people who risk our own comfort, our own convenience, and our own well-being, the way Jesus gave his life as "a ransom for many," not because someone else coerces us to do it, but because that is the right way to exercise our power.  We choose to give it away.  We choose to give ourselves away.  We choose to use the drill the right way--to point it away from our own faces.

Think of what good things we could build... what broken things could be restored... if we quit pointing the drill at our own faces and actually got to work using both our power and power tools by using them for the sake of others?  My goodness, it's almost like that's what they were meant for all along...

Lord Jesus, turn our aim away from ourselves and outward to the well-being of all, just as you used your power to lay down your life for the sake of the world.

The Power... to Forgive

The Power...to Forgive--July 27, 2018

“Then some people came, bringing to Jesus a paralyzed man, carried by four of them. And when they could not bring him to Jesus because of the crowd, they removed the roof above him; and after having dug through it, they let down the mat on which the paralytic lay. When Jesus saw their faith, he said to the paralytic, 'Son, your sins are forgiven.' Now some of the scribes were sitting there, questioning in their hearts, ‘Why does this fellow speak this way? It is blasphemy! Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ At once Jesus perceived in his spirit that they were discussing these questions among themselves; and he said to them, ‘Why do you raise such questions in your hearts? Which is easier, to say to the paralytic, Your sins are forgiven, or to say, Stand up and walk?’ But so that you may know that the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins'--he said to the paralytic--'I say to you, stand up, take your mat and go to your home.” [Mark 2:3-11]

Most of the time, Jesus didn’t go around directly saying, “Did you know that I’m the living God-in-the-flesh?” or explicitly announcing, “Hey, I’m the Son of God over here—give me some attention and the glory I deserve.”  But that’s not to say Jesus didn’t send that same message; it’s just that he had different ways of getting it across. Jesus declared his claims of divinity by what he did—by asserting that he had the authority to do things that only the living God can do.  In other words, Jesus showed that he was God-in-the-flesh by his actions: specific, chosen, concrete actions that are the kind of thing that only the Creator of the universe has the right to do.  But those actions were no less clear and no less certain than saying something that direct—and everybody else around Jesus knew exactly what his actions meant.

Take today’s scene. Jesus has just told a man who was brought to him that his sins were forgiven. It’s no surprise that the respectable religious folks were upset—Jesus has just claimed for himself a power and responsibility that belongs only to the living God. And by daring to do this, Jesus is equating himself with no less than the Creator of the universe! The religious experts in the crowd are right to be shocked and scandalized by what they have just witnessed, and they are asking the right question: Who can forgive sins but God alone?  And they are right that the charge to bring against Jesus is blasphemy—claiming for yourself what belongs to God alone. 

There’s no way around it: Jesus has claimed for himself the ability and authority to wipe away the record of this man’s sins (and presumably, of anybody else), and that is a right reserved by none but the living God. So either Jesus has just grievously insulted the Almighty (which is the only possibility that the religious authorities can imagine), or… Jesus is none other than God the Son in our midst. But there is no middle ground on this one. The scribes are right on this one—give them their due. Either Jesus really is who the voice says he is, or he is the most arrogant, deluded soul ever to walk the earth. (To borrow from C.S. Lewis’ famous way of putting it, Jesus forces us to regard him either as a lunatic, or a liar… or the Lord.) There is no alternative with someone who claims to do what only God can do. The question is turned back to us then: what are we going to do with this Jesus, who won’t let us treat him as just a teacher of interesting religious insights and warm-fuzzy spiritual pick-me-ups?

Jesus realizes, he knows, that he has given us only these two alternatives: to take Jesus for who he claims to be (by his actions as well as his words) or to dismiss him entirely. And in fact he raises the stakes here in these verses. He doesn’t wait for us to call his bluff—he calls his own bluff—only to reveal that he’s had a royal flush all along. This is the point of his exchange with these religious so-and-sos.  “Which is easier?” Jesus asks, “To say this man’s sins are forgiven, or to tell him to get up and walk?”   The point, of course, is that in theory, anybody can claim that someone’s sins are forgiven, because you can’t see that to know if it’s true or not. How would you know it if someone’s sins are forgiven? Jesus realizes that although only God has the real authority to forgive sins, anybody with a big mouth can say that they have this authority, and there would be no possible way to tell if it were so. It would be much the same as if I told you I had granted a presidential pardon to some criminal on death-row. The term itself implies that I have the same authority the president has, but you wouldn’t be able to tell if I were lying or not, because conveniently, the prisoner isn’t here for me to show you, and neither is his criminal record.

But Jesus knows all of this, too. So he raises the stakes and says, “I know that anybody can say they have the power to forgive sins—so long as they are not afraid of the risks of saying it! But what if I do something you can see? Would that convince you?” He is setting up a contest, a final showdown: once he goes to the lengths of making this man able to walk again, we will have no choice but to either take Jesus for who he is on his own terms, or we will have to reject him altogether, along with the God whom he represents. 

The question for us today is just that: will we recognize Jesus as God-in-the-flesh, and believe him when he tells us that our sins—and those of the whole world—have been nailed to the cross and dealt with? Will we dare to take Jesus on his own terms? And if we do, well, where will that lead?

Lord Jesus, let us receive you on your own terms today, and not patronize or pander to you by pretending to honor you by giving you second or third place in our lives.  Let us recognize the living God by your presence in our lives today, and make us to trust what you tell us.

Neither Crows Nor Chameleons

Neither Crows Nor Chameleons--July 26, 2018

"Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you.  We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another. Whoever does not love abides in death. All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them." [1 John 3:13-15]

We cannot change what the world thinks about us--at least not directly.  That is not in our power.

But we do have remarkable power that comes from being free from fussing about whether we are liked or disliked, received or rejected, cheered or mocked, by anybody else. There is great power in being free simply to say, "I am not ruled by your impressions of me. I do not depend on being judged successful or great or impressive by anybody else."  That frees us simply to love.  Always to love.

For starters here, John seems to think that maybe it's not so bad a thing to be hated by the world, if "the world" is John's way of naming all the forces and systems that are turned away from God and bent in on themselves.  Maybe in that case, it's something of a compliment to be hated by "the world."  In any case, we cannot change how the world perceives and receives us Christians--we can only affect ourselves and how we act and react in such a world.  We can only answer the question, "Are we practicing love toward others or not?"  Whether the world approves or disapproves of our commitment to a radical, self-giving love for all or not, we are give the power to keep on loving, and the freedom to do it whether the systems, empires, and powers of the day like it or not.

In other words, if "the world" is bent on hating us, we can only make sure that it is an unrequited hate--a hate that will go unanswered with more of the same.  We can only commit ourselves not to play by the rules the world sets if it is determined to put us in its sights. Whether the world likes it or not, we will not respond to hostility with hatred or violence.  John reminds us that we have passed from those things, and that we are now called to be a community that responds to outward hostility and hatred with suffering love.

But maybe we need to back up for a moment and ask why the world would hate us in the first place--or at least, why would "the world" have hated Christians 2,000 years ago?  The New Testament has a habit of assuming that Christians should be ready to meet with hostility from the world. But we live in a country and in an age where many Christians blend right in--where, aside from where they happen to be on some Sunday mornings, there is very little that makes them stand out enough for the world to be able to identify them at all.  And on the other hand, sometimes it seems that some Christians go out of their way to be different, or to stand out in the world, but they do it in ways that don't seem particularly Christ-like--when there is resentful anger, boastful entitlement, bitter resentment, and Respectable Religious smugness, for example.  

We live in an age, then, when some Christians seem only to hear the part about being different from the world that they miss being different in ways that are like Jesus; and we also live in a time when some Christians are so sure they don't want to be labeled as fanatics that they back away from anything that makes them even the slightest bit different from their neighbors--who don't want to stand out, speak up, question their priorities, or risk losing "likes" or "friends" on social media for stepping out in the love of Jesus for those it is easy to ignore.  We seem to have crowing Christians who just squawk angry squawks, and chameleon Christians who blend in with the wallpaper. In other words, it seems we have plenty of Christians who couldn't be hated by the world because the world can't tell the different between them and itself, and some Christians who might well be hated by the world--but it's hard to tell if the world hates them for being Christians or for being jerks about it.  And that's a problem: either of those, the crow or the chameleon approach, is still allowing the world to set the rules and living under the world's supposed power.

Remember, it's an ambiguous thing to be hated by the world--as much as "the world" often is opposed to the Reign of God, there are times when the world isn't all that far off the mark.  It took a while, but the world came to learn to reject Nazism and apartheid and segregation, for example. The vast majority of the world's governments have all agreed to ban torture or the targeting of civilians; we are united against disease like malaria, cancer, or AIDS, and have widespread support to help all people get access to drinkable water.  The world's legal codes almost all uniformly reject murder and rape and theft.  These are all positive things for the world at large to engage in.   Just because "the world" rejects something, then, doesn't make it a good thing.  

So that leaves us with two questions:  if there doesn't seem to be much hostility between you and the world, why is that, and should there actually be more tension there between the way you live your life and the way the world expects us to fall in line?  And then second, if there is hostility between you and the world, what is the reason?  Are we faithfully living out the Good News and stirring up trouble because the world can't stand the news of radically free grace in Jesus Christ apart from our earning or deserving it--or are we hated by "the world" because we are acting like pompous, self-righteous jerks who use their religion like a weapon to beat other people with, or like a cover for their own self-serving ends?

So again, back to the question of why the first Christians were hated.  They didn't have the power, position, or money to launch a public-relations campaign or to advocate for certain candidates for office--remember, they lived under the rule of an empire, not a democracy.  The early Christians did not expect the empire to make room for them to teach their faith in schools (both because there was no public education system as we know it, and because Christians didn't assume that the empire would their work for them).  And they did not protest when they didn't get special treatment from the empire--they simply gave their witness to whoever would listen.  So many of the things that publicly known Christians in our country  and our day are vocal about simply wouldn't have made any sense to the early Christians at all.  The early Christians didn't ask for the right to pray in schools from the government--they simply prayed and wore their faith on their sleeve whether the empire liked it or not, because they believed they had a power the empire knew nothing about.  And they were perfectly willing to be thrown in jail for it--but they would not react with hatred or violence back.  The early Christians walked around the streets of the empire like they were really the subjects of another King--which, of course, they were--and as though they didn't expect the empire to understand their differing allegiances.  That was their freedom, and that was their power--they simply didn't have to abide by the acceptance or rejection of the powers of the day.  They were not in bed with Caesar, and that allowed them the freedom and the power to speak up against Rome when necessary, to support the systems of the day when appropriate, and in all things to go on living in radical love regardless of whether it was popular or not, and regardless of whether the empire approved.

That, in the end, is what made the "world" of the early Christians so hostile to them--it was like the whole Christian community was willing to say that the emperor was wearing no clothes--that the world didn't really have authority over them, and that the empire wasn't really in charge of granting them rights: God was.  The early Christians earned the hatred of the Roman Empire in those first centuries because they called the empire's bluff and in effect said, "You don't have real power over us--not over our hearts, our souls, and our allegiances.  And even if you kill us, you don't even really have power over us then, because our Lord can and does raise the dead."  The Romans didn't know what to do with that.  Angry enemy hordes the Romans could kill with armies, and they could feel good about it because they believed the angry enemy hordes were clearly disturbers of the peace and threats to the rule of law.  Submissive, defeated slaves they could keep under their thumbs, too, and feel good about it because they felt they were preserving the system that kept the pax Romana going.  But Christians?  They wouldn't pick up swords to fight the centurions, but they would not let the Romans intimidate them either.  "The world" of those ancient Christians just didn't know what to make of them--except to know that they were different in a threatening kind of way (threatening in the same way that the boy in the story is a threat to the dignity of the empire when he announces that the emperor is naked), and because the empire feared that difference, it came to hate the early Christians.

Flashing forward back to our day, then, the question for us is not, "How can we make the world like us more?" but neither is it, "How can we get the world to hate us more?"  Instead, the question is, How can we live in the freedom, power, and love of Jesus?  Or to put it differently, How can we come to take the Reign of God that Jesus has shown us so seriously that we are no longer driven by concerns about what other people think about us?  If I am completely captivated by the love of Jesus, I won't care who knows about it, and I won't care about whether that kind of love for all will get me in trouble. That is a power and a freedom the systems and empires of the world will not understand.  I belong to a different Lord, one who trumps the authority of every empire, and even of death.  Today, then, these words from John both give us the courage to risk standing out from the world's ways once again to live as an alternative, and give us a picture of how we are supposed to stand out--by being a community that loves.  Love will make us stand out, in the end, and whether the world likes it or not, we will love the way we have been loved first, by Jesus our Lord.

Lord Jesus, give us such confident faith in your Reign that we are no longer swayed by fears of what others will think of us. And give us such deep love that the ways we stand out will be witnesses to your kingdom rather than angry squawking.

Small Is The New Great

"Small Is the New Great"--July 25, 2018

"Now a certain man named Simon had previously practiced magic in the city and amazed the people of Samaria, saying that he was someone great. All of them, from the least to the greatest, listened to him eagerly, saying, 'This man is the power of God that is called Great.' And they listened eagerly to him because for a long time he had amazed them with his magic. But when they believed Philip, who was proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women. Even Simon himself believed. After being baptized, he stayed constantly with Philip and was amazed when he saw the signs and great miracles that took place." [Acts 8:9-13]

There is a familiar line of Mother Teresa's that is in danger of becoming a cliché—nonetheless, I'm willing to risk that by repeating it one more time here as a way of entering into the story of this man named Simon.  Mother Teresa has said, "We can do no great deeds, only small deeds with great love."  The life of Simon (sometimes also called Simon "Magus", which is just the Latin word for "magician," not a last name) is evidence to us that Mother Teresa's statement is not just sentimental schmaltz.  It is hard to be told that we do no "great deeds."  It humbles us—it deflates our puffed up egos.  That will be the case with Simon, who will have an ongoing struggle with giving up the need to be "great" in order to really understand that he belongs to a God who is great, but whose greatness is most clearly shown in smallness, in weakness, in a cross.  This reminds me of another challenging saying, this time by theologian Richard Lischer, who says, "A profession summons the best from you. A vocation calls you away from what you thought was best in you, purifies it, and promises to make you something or someone you are not yet."  That is Simon's challenge, too—he had a good racket going before becoming a follower of Jesus.  Maybe even that is too hard on him—he had an impressive reputation as a doer of great signs.  Maybe he had the best of intentions to be the greatest entertainer around, or maybe he even thought that his "magical powers" would benefit others in the long run.  But the call for Simon to belong to the followers of Jesus meant giving up not just sorcery in particular, but also the idolatry of "greatness."  Simon was called to give up not just his magic wand, but also the whole way of thinking that insists on carrying a "big stick" in the first place.

In other words, Simon might not have completely realized it at first, but he was being called to give up delusions of grandeur and instead to receive a life in which we God's greatness is revealed in our smallness.  You can't help but think he would have gotten a hint of that when heard Philip "proclaiming the good news about the kingdom of God" since nearly every time Jesus opens his mouth about the kingdom of God in the gospels, it involves a new reality in which God lifts up the lowly and pulls the rug out from under the haughty.  The kingdom Jesus announced and taught his disciples about, the kingdom they kept "proclaiming," was a new order of things in which the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty (remember Mary's song in Luke 1), in which the poor the blind and the lame are invited to the party (remember the parable in Luke 14), and in which a bunch of scattered ex-fishermen are conduits for the power of God's Spirit.  So it shouldn't have surprised Simon what he was getting himself into—or, more truthfully, what the Spirit was getting him into—by becoming a Christian.  Being baptized into the community of Jesus can't help but mean giving up our feeble attempts at "greatness" in order that we may be drawn into the great love of God that shows itself in smallness.

But you can also tell that Simon isn't quite there.  He is drawn by the good news announced by Philip, and he even becomes a member of the disciple-community by being baptized himself, but, ooh, he's still distracted by the signs and wonders Philip does, as though they were ends in and of themselves.  Simon is having a hard time with the idea that "miracles" and "wonders" in the New Testament stories are first and foremost signs that point to what God is up to, so that people can indeed recognize the living God present in the likes of an ordinary-seeming rabbi named Jesus and his band of equally ordinary-seeming followers.  Miracles, healings, and wonders are always signs, and signs point away from themselves, beyond themselves, to something else.   That's hard for Simon to wrap his head around--he's still fighting the temptation just to be wowed, just to be entertained by the next great thing, and maybe even just to be given the power to do those "great" things himself.  It's hard for him to see the things that Philip does as signposts pointing to the God who is doing something new in Jesus, the God who chooses to be made known in smallness and weakness and death and humility.

Maybe that is hard for all of us to see. Before we make Simon into a black-hat-and-mustached villain, we need to see ourselves in his story, because we are all tempted to nurse dreams of being considered "great" and to seek out religious experiences as just one more distraction in our lives.  We are tempted to be drawn to the church that puts on the best "show", however you define it:  the church with the loudest praise band, the church with the highest of high liturgies and incense, the church with the most Power Point slideshow sermons and folksy preaching, or whatever.  Not only that, we are tempted to be the church that puts on the best "show"—we are tempted to pick up on whatever we think will make us seem "great" to others, in order that we can attract more people, who will in turn make us feel even "greater" about ourselves.  We are tempted to puff up ourselves, our neighborhoods, our school districts, our political parties, or our country and to try and project the idea that ours is "greater" than theirs, that at least if we can convince ourselves we're better than somebody else, we will be of some worth. 

It is an unending cycle in human history, from the childish one-upsmanship of kids comparing their toys to nations bragging about their GDP or nuclear arsenals. It's all the same old idol of wanting to be seen as "great"... and it's Simon's story all over again.  

Maybe we have good intentions, or we dress up our thoughts in good intentions.  And indeed, we are people who really are believers, who really have been baptized, and who really have been received in the household of God.  But like Simon, we still wrestle with the idea of wanting what seems "great"—we want to be enthralled and entertained by what seems "great", and we secretly still want to hold on to our dreams of being seen as "great" in the eyes of others.  Most of all, we have a hard time with the idea of God who doesn't seem to think that being viewed as "great" is all that great a priority—we have a hard time, like Simon, with the idea of a God whose most definitive action in the world is a death on a cross and not a glorious parade or a noble battle or at least a parting of some seas.  We have a hard time, like Simon, not just giving up our own need to be seen as "great" by others, but giving up the notion that God needs to be seen as "great" in those old familiar terms of glory and credit and power.  We do not like the idea of a God who meets us in smallness, but as Simon will learn, this is the only God we know.   

This is an ongoing struggle for us.  Like Simon, even after being baptized, even after time in the church, and even after time spent at the side of wise teachers and faith mentors, we still flirt with the idea that our quest is to build up the most impressive reputation or résumé or list of accomplishments.  And we still flirt with the idea that God will work best through us if we are "wowing" people in one way or another.  But instead, God keeps speaking to us, and speaking through us, a message about a new order in which the lowly are raised up, the untouchables get the first invites to the party, and death turns out to be the key to resurrection.  What are the temptations we face today to do "great deeds" rather than "small deeds with great love"?  What are the things we may be summoned to let go of with Simon, and to leave behind?  What are the surprising things we may be dared to pick up in this day?

Lord of great and small alike, surprise us again today in the unexpected places.  Guide our acting and living in this day that we might be blessed in our smallness and might bless others with great love, channeled through surprising vessels like...us.

The Armor That Isn't

The Armor That Isn’t—July 24, 2018

“Therefore take up the whole armor of God, so that you may be able to withstand on that evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm.  Stand therefore, and fasten the belt of truth around your waist, and put on the breastplate of righteousness.  As shoes for your feet put on whatever will make you ready to proclaim the gospel of peace.  With all of these, take the shield of faith, with which you will be able to quench all the flaming arrows of the evil one.  Take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.” (Ephesians 6:13-17)

You use certain defenses for certain kinds of threats, right?

Police officers going into hostage situations will wear Kevlar body vests, because the most likely threat in those moments are individual bullets from a bank robber’s gun.  On the other hand, a Kevlar vest isn’t very helpful in surviving an air raid, with jets dropping bombs or missiles raining down from the sky.  An army might use armor plating on their tanks, or anti-missile-missiles, or underground bunkers for those kinds of scenarios.  And if you are talking about the threat of cyber-terrorism or computer hackers, no amount of bulletproof vests or armor plated vehicles will save you from a nasty bit of malware or virus on your computer network or website.  There you need firewalls and anti-virus software and the life—things that aren’t physical or touchable at all, but which are nevertheless essential. It's a question of what kind of power you need in the situation. Pretty straightforward so far, right?

Well, how about for the people of God?  What kinds of threats really matter to us?  Should we be investing more in Kevlar, or in armor-plating? Anti-virus software, or underground bunkers?

How about none of the above?  Our defense is the armor that isn’t armor.

In today’s famous passage about the “whole armor of God,” Paul gives us the things we ought to be concerned with:  truth, righteousness (or justice—the word is the same in Greek), the announcement of peace, faith, salvation, and the Spirit of God speaking through the Word.  Note: not a one of those is a literal physical weapon, not a sword, not a gun, not a tank.

Of course, that should make perfect sense, given that Paul just got done telling us in the previous verses that our real adversaries are not other people—not “enemies of blood and flesh,” but against the powers of evil and the systems of sin.  If other people aren’t the real enemy, then the usual weapons of the day—swords, shields, and the like—won’t do the trick.  It’s like trying to fight off a computer virus with a gun—it just doesn’t work.  No, rather, because our real adversary is spiritual in nature, normal ammunition won’t work.  “Ideas are bulletproof,” as the title character in V for Vendetta says. Our defense is different, because our kind of power is different--it is Jesus' power, after all.

So Paul takes the standard image of an armed soldier, and he turns it on its head.  Instead of saying, “We Christians had better defend ourselves from the pagans, so round up all the blades and spears you can and stockpile them for a great big knock-down, drag-out fight with them on the battlefield,” Paul gives a spiritual set of defenses.  It might help to hear him this way—it’s more like Paul is saying, “Instead of a breastplate, we will take justice to protect our hearts.  Instead of a shield made of metal or wood, we will take faith to defend us.  And rather than defeating our enemies by killing them, we will simply take the Spirit’s presence to be our defender.”

When Paul talks about a “shield of faith,” for example, he’s not picturing an actual shield that is merely stamped with the word “faith,” regardless of what the makers of religious merchandise suggest by selling plastic “armor of God” playsets to the children of churchgoers.  It’s not that we get physical weapons and just get to wrap them in spiritual meanings—it’s that we as the followers of Jesus forgo all the conventional weapons because we face an unconventional foe.  Paul is just reminding us that you can’t defeat a computer hacker with an armored tank, and you can’t fend off a spiritual foe with a sword or suit of armor.  We don’t get breastplates—we get justice.  We don’t get combat boots—we get the good news of peace.  And those, amazingly, are enough.  They are exactly the right tools for facing down the real powers of evil, because those powers are not found in an opposing army or invasion force.  They are there in the evil lurking in and around our own hearts.

There’s an observation of Walter Brueggemann’s that seems right for this moment.  Brueggemann writes: “People notice peacemakers because they dress funny. We know how the people who make war dress - in uniforms and medals, or in computers and clipboards, or in absoluteness, severity, greed, and cynicism. But the peacemaker is dressed in righteousness, justice, and faithfulness - dressed for the work that is to be done.”

That’s it.  We will be known, not for our uniforms or armaments, but because we wield justice, faith, peace, and truth.  Those might seem like odd defenses to a world obsessed with hardware, but they are exactly what we need. That is how the power of Jesus works.

Lord God, equip us with what we need to disarm the powers of evil today, and to let go of the tools we don’t need for that mission.