The Table Set Before Us

The Table Set Before Us--August 31, 2018

"When the jailer woke up and saw the prison doors wide open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself, since he supposed that the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted in a loud voice, 'Do not harm yourself, for we are all here.' The jailer called for lights, and rushing in, he fell down trembling before Paul and Silas. Then he brought them outside and said, 'Sirs, what must I do to be saved?' They answered, 'Believe on the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household.' They spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house. At the same hour of the night he took them and washed their wounds; then he and his entire family were baptized without delay. He brought them up into the house and set food before them; and he and his entire household rejoiced that he had become a believer in God." [Acts 16:27-34]

There is a wonderful, difficult line from within the familiar words of the Twenty-Third Psalm.  Most everybody I know can recite the opening words by heart: "The Lord is my Shepherd... I shall not want."  But a little ways down before the poet rounds the home stretch, he prays this beautiful, disarming verse: "You set a table before me in the presence of my enemies... my cup overflows."

I used to skip past that line because I never really understood it.  Now... I picture this story from the early life of the church, a powerful story about how the table of the enemy becomes the table of Jesus.  This is what it looks like when the followers of Jesus are set loose on the world: the enemy becomes a brother, and the enemy's dinner table becomes a place of reconciliation.  And to be quite honest, there is nothing about this story that doesn't hold me spellbound with wonder at the gracious power of God.

The backstory of this scene is a miracle.  In fact, it's probably the miracle that most people know.  Paul and Silas are in jail (because, of course they are--Jesus and his troublemaking go merrily on, as Andrew Greeley says), and there in prison, after having been tortured and flogged by their captors, they are singing hymns when an earthquake rocks the foundations of the prison, and the doors are all opened.  

Now, that's where most of my flannelboard memories of this story ended.  The gist of the story as I recall it from Sunday School lessons was something like, "If they put you in jail for being loyal to God, God will spring you," almost like God was a mob boss arranging a prison break or bribing the governor for a pardon to get his henchmen out of doing hard time.  My childhood recollection of this story basically boiled down to, "If you are loyal to God, God will keep you from really bad consequences and will bust you out of jail if they catch you." That reading, of course, forgot two important things: for one, others like John the Baptizer, never got an earthquake to spring them out of the big house, and for another, Paul and Silas don't leave the prison even when the earthquake makes it a cakewalk to escape.  

To just about any of us, that would seem like a waste of a miracle, wouldn't it?  You get a divinely-sent earthquake that breaks open your locks and chains... and you don't use it to escape? Maybe that's why the Sunday School versions of this story I heard and saw re-enacted with two-dimensional felt figurines on an easel ended before this part: it seemed preposterous that Paul and Silas wouldn't immediately run out of the jail if God had gone to the trouble of miraculously setting them loose.

But this, to me, is really where the story actually gets going.  Even though our own self-centered mindsets would likely advise us to get while the getting's good in this scene, Paul and Silas do not leave.  In fact, none of them walk out.  Paul and Silas had the chance to run away, and to leave their jailer (who had overseen their torture, mind you) to kill himself for the escape... and they don't do it.  Right off the bat, this story is messing with our gut impulses for revenge and self-preservation, isn't it?

There is no other explanation for what happens there--this second miracle, as it were--other than to say that the first followers of Jesus actually dared to believe their rabbi and Lord about loving their enemies.  There is no rational reason for the sake of self-preservation, no way of holding this alongside our seemingly innate human hunger for revenge, other than to say that Paul and Silas--and the rest of the early church--actually dared to take Jesus seriously when he instructed his followers to do good to those who harmed them, to pray for their persecutors, and to reflect God's love by loving their enemies.  There is no other reason for Paul and Silas to stay in jail, or to prevent the jailer from committing suicide.  But--wonder of wonders!--love wins, and so they not only stay in jail, but they go on to tell the jailer the Good News about Jesus, and he comes to faith in Christ, too.  

Just think about that scene for a moment: Paul and Silas not only refuse to hold a grudge against the man responsible for overseeing their torture, but they offer back to him in response a gift they are convinced is of infinite value--the gift of life in Christ.  They don't refuse to share their faith with him out of some bitter wish for him to go to hell.  They don't twist their gospel message into some way of manipulating the jailer to force him to be kind to them.  None of that.  They are simply able to love--to do unrequited good to--this jailer who had inflicted so much brutal pain and violence on them.

And then, in a final sketch of details that blows my mind every time I read it, the jailer not only comes to faith and has his whole household baptized, but he also washes Paul and Silas's wounds (and, equally marvelous to me, they allow it!), and then this jailer spreads out a table for them.  This is the verse from the psalm that defied my comprehension, that I could not picture for so long!  Here in real lives, in real history, not merely in the poetic language of an ancient psalm, here is the love that makes it possible for a table to be spread in the presence of enemies... and for it to be somehow safe and good.  Here in this moment, Paul and Silas do not walk away with their arms crossed and hate boiling over in their hearts, but with the ability to do good to their torturer.  And maybe hardest of all for them--and even hardest for me to imagine--they then allow this torturer of theirs to do good to them in return.  They allow him to wash their wounds--wounds for which he was responsible!--and they allow him to spread a table before them... and then can all share a meal together.  This is possible only because Jesus creates a community in which we love our enemies, we practice mercy on those who would harm us, and in which we are pulled out of our own self-centered thinking.

And I have to tell you--this is what I want to be a part of.  I want to be a part of a community, a way of life, a movement in history, in which enemy-love is the order of the day.  I want to be caught up in a way of life where we find creative ways to reconcile with those who have wronged us, and whom we have wronged.  I want to be moved by the same Spirit that made it possible for Paul and Silas to break bread with someone who had broken their bodies... and I want to be freed from the bitter need for revenge and the tired old impulse for self-preservation. Because, I'll tell you what--it feels so often like I am drowning in this world's old me-and-my-group-first mindset.  It feels like we are surrounded on all sides by the attitude that says you have to hold grudges and launch mean personal attacks back at people you don't like, or feel slighted by.  It feels like we are practically being encouraged by those voices to attack the people we don't like, and to nurse a hatred for the people we label "enemies."  And over against all of those bitter (but popular and powerful) voices, there is the staggering witness of Paul and Silas, sitting at a table with the man who had whipped them to within an inch of their lives and breaking bread with his family... all because the love of Jesus has made such a preposterous thing possible. 

This is the love that has captivated us--and at the same time, has set us free.  This is the beautiful assurance that the psalmist felt when he described a table set "in the presence of my enemies" where he could yet feel at peace.  This is the table to which we are invited every day, because every day there is the possibility that we can embody Jesus' kind of love for those the world would tell us to hate.

This is the table spread out before us today. Dare we sit down and break bread at it?

Lord Jesus, where you lead us to share a table with our enemies, grant us the courage and love to give and receive grace, even from those we most want to hate.

What God Brings to the Table

What God Brings to the Table--August 30, 2018

“You were dead through the trespasses and sins in which you once lived, following the course of this world, following the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work among those who are disobedient.” (Ephesians 2:1-2)

Dead is a strong word. 

It is, like a handful of other words in this life—words like promise, never, always, hopeless, or love—not to be misused, spoken lightly, or ignored.  Do not use the word dead unless you mean, all the way, completely, no fakin’, no mistakin’, dead.

“Sick,” you can throw around willy-nilly—it will work for a case of the sniffles or terminal cancer.  “Weak,” you can apply to a wide variety of people or things.  Even “sinking” and “fading” and “drowning” leave a little ambiguity—the swimmer might just get a second wind and pull himself to shore or grab hold of the life-preserver floating beside him.

But dead allows no such wiggle room.  In the words of The Princess Bride’s Miracle Max, “There’s a big difference between mostly dead and all dead.”  Dead means the door is closed, no foot in the way.  Dead means the deceased cannot do anything anymore for him or herself—not watering the petunias, not folding the laundry, not breathing on your own, and not even reaching for a rope that’s thrown to you.

"Dead" means we bring nothing to the table, as it were, in the grand divine potluck.

Now, this might seem to be belaboring a point, but I want us to be clear about the way that Ephesians describes our condition before God got a hold of us.  Paul doesn’t say that we were sick in our sins, but could conceivably get better on our own with enough bed-rest and spiritual orange-juice.  Paul doesn’t say we were merely weak and just needed some spiritual muscle-building in order to become strong enough to pull ourselves up to God like a chin-up bar.  Paul doesn’t say we were just stuck in the road and needing a kick-start.  And you know what—Paul doesn’t even say that we are like a drowning man in the water who reaches out to grab a life-preserver to be rescued. 

Paul says we were dead.

In other words, on our own, we couldn’t grab the life-preserver.  On our own, we couldn’t accept the offer of a free gift of help.  On our own, we couldn’t reach out and ask Jesus for help.  Dead people can’t ask or accept or reach.

This is an uncomfortable truth for us, because we don’t like hearing the idea that we didn’t have something to do with our salvation.  We like to think that we had to bring something to the table to make it happen. Maybe not the main course... maybe not the fabulous cupcakes, or even the deviled eggs, but at least something, right?  Maybe the carrots and celery sticks? But the word "dead" insists otherwise.  We don't even bring our empty hands--we can't even plop our selves up to the buffet by our own power.  

We tell ourselves (and often, religious people tell others, thinking this is the “good news”) that you have to do something to kick-start God’s involvement in our lives—e.g., we pray the right prayer first, we invite Jesus into our hearts first, we clean our lives up first, or we achieve a certain level of moral behavior first.  And so we imagine that in the story of salvation, we are like swimmers sinking in the sea, who at least were smart enough to shout for help to Jesus at the wheel of his rescue ship and grab a hold of the life-preserver he throws us. We would like to think that God awards us this thing called salvation on the basis of our having done, or at least decided, something for our part that leads God to save us.

But that’s not what dead people do.  Dead people can’t grab a life-preserver.  They can’t even ask for it. 

Paul pushes the point this far, insisting that we are not merely sick in sin or drowning in sin, but that we were dead in our sins.  And Paul does that to make it clear just how amazing grace really is.  We didn’t do a thing to get this gift called salvation.  We certainly didn’t swim to shore ourselves, and we didn’t even get a hold of a life-preserver.  We were dead in the water, and God scooped us up and resuscitated us.  God didn’t wait around for us to get it figured out first.  God didn’t wait for us to be able to diagram it or explain it. God didn’t wait for us to ask for the help first, either.  God did for us the only thing God can do with a dead person—God raised us.

It is scary to hear all of this, because it reminds us that we are not in control of this thing called grace. We can’t command it.  We can’t limit it.  We can’t say it has expired.  We can’t set up fake hurdles for other people to jump first in order to be eligible for it.  And we can’t imagine that we have earned it by our own good deeds, pious devotion, winning smiles, or charming personalities.  To hear today’s verses from Ephesians rightly means that we come face to face with the fact that we bring nothing to the table that we could use to earn or buy or win God’s saving, but only our deadness.

Robert Farrar Capon puts it this way, with his usual provocative clarity:  “Jesus came to raise the dead. Not to reform the reformable, not to improve the improvable... As long as you're struggling like the Pharisee to be alive in your own eyes -- and to the precise degree that your struggles are for what is holy, just and good -- you will resent the apparent indifference to your pains that God shows in making the effortlessness of death the touchstone of your justification. Only when you're finally able, with the publican, to admit that you're dead will you be able to stop balking at grace.” 

So, if somebody religious ever asks you, the way certain religious somebodies do, “If you were to die tonight and to stand before the judgment seat of God, and he asked you, ‘Why should I let you into my heaven?’, what would you say?” the answer cannot be, “Because I grabbed the life-preserver God threw me after I asked.” We cannot say, "Well, God provided the meat and potatoes, but at least I brought these celery sticks of my good intentions to the table." And it cannot even be, “Because I was bright enough to invite Jesus into my heart,” either.

Paul says we were dead.  And as the saying goes, dead men tell no tales… because dead men don’t do anything.  All they can do is be raised.  All Lazarus can do is receive resurrection. All you and I bring to the table with God is our spiritual deadness.  And what God brings to the table—despite our love for control and the illusion of earning—what God brings to the table for each of us, is everything.

Let that sink in today, and see if you don’t break into praise and thanks.

Lord God, raise up what is dead in us, and enable us to let go of control so that we can recognize you have saved us without our earning it.

Either/Or...Both-And

Either/Or... Both-And--August 29, 2018

"Now during those days, when the disciples were increasing in number, the Hellenists complained against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution of food. And the twelve called together the whole community of the disciples and said, 'It is not right that we should neglect the word of God in order to wait on tables.  Therefore, friends, select from among yourselves seven men of good standing, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we may appoint to this task, while we for our part, will devote ourselves to prayer and to serving the word.' What they said pleased the whole community, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, together with Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolaus, a proselyte of Antioch. They had these men stand before the apostles, who prayed and laid their hands on them." [Acts 6:1-6]

It takes great wisdom to spot a false dichotomy out there in the world.  And it takes even more wisdom to know not to accept its terms.

Just so we are clear and all on the same page, a false dichotomy is when some present you with an either-or alternative that doesn't seem to be necessary.  And our culture, in this time and place, is swimming with them.  The most extreme and obvious examples probably jump out at us well enough for us to spot them.  If someone says, "You either like pancakes... or you must hate puppies!" you know that this is a logical misstep.  That's a false dichotomy--there are people who do not like pancakes but do love their puppies, and there are surely also people who do not care for puppies but are perfectly happy with a stack of pancakes instead.  There is nothing, logically speaking, that requires one to choose one OR the other in this choice, this dichotomy.  It is a false choice--you can, in fact, have both in this instance.

Other examples get more subtle, or play games with our traditional assumptions and loyalties.  If someone says, "You either wear this American flag t-shirt that I'm selling... or else you aren't a true patriot!" well, I hope we would recognize that as another false dichotomy.  (For that matter, I would hope we would also know that proper observance Section Eight of the U.S. Flag Code requires that the U.S. Flag never be used as an article of clothing, bedding or drapery, nor handkerchiefs or napkins...)  But again, the underlying logical problem is that the statement presents a false-choice: either you are a patriot and buy the speaker's t-shirt, or you are not patriotic if you do not buy his shirt.  Well, again, that should obviously be hogwash to our ears, but we have a way of getting our gears all gummed up when questions of patriotism arise, and sometimes we don't think quite straight.

The false dichotomy is a terribly insidious little trick, and because people have a way of accepting the terms and choices presented to them, we keep falling for them.  Whether it's a line like, "Vote for THIS party/candidate, or else you're not a true Christian!" or "If you don't help me lie to my boss, you don't really love me!" or "It couldn't have been unethical--it was perfectly legal!" we are bombarded by false dichotomies all the time, from voices that expect us (and pressure us) to accept the conditions they set up for us.

The question, once we have turned our critical thinking skills on in our brains to try and spot them when they are put to us, is, "What do you do when someone presents you with a false choice?"  Well, maybe like Yogi Berra famously (and humorously) put it, "When you come to the fork in the road, take it."  That is to say, maybe you say out loud that you don't have to choose just one or the other alternative--maybe some things are overlapping, or both-and kinds of scenarios.

Well, we needed to have this background conversation on logical fallacies because in this episode from the early church in Acts, clear thinking actually prevailed.  And a moment that felt like it could have been hijacked into a false dichotomy... did not succumb to that temptation of bad logic.  Thoughtful hearts discerned that the two needs in the early Christian community were not either/or alternatives, but both were vital parts of the church's life.

The situation was basically this: as the early church grew, it began to include a more and more diverse population.  And one of the first barriers it had to cross was a language barrier.  Some of the early Christians were all Judean, Hebrew or Aramaic-speaking, Jewish families who had come to faith in Christ, and some were Greek-speaking (Hellenist is the word in this case) Jewish backgrounds.  From the very beginning, the community of Jesus had a food distribution program, but that was easier at first when it was all just people from the neighborhood whose stories and needs you knew.  As the church grew to include new people--new people who didn't necessarily speak the language of the "original" insiders, mind you--the work of making sure that everyone had their food needs covered became a full-time job.  It was either going to have to be overseen by people who made food ministry for the vulnerable (widows had no safety net and very limited means of providing for themselves) their entire job, or it was going to fall apart.  And the leaders of the Christian community--the original apostles who had followed Jesus--knew they already had their work cut out for them in preaching, teaching, and traveling to take the Good News of Jesus everywhere.  

Now this would have been the moment for the early church to fall for it.  This would have been an easy moment for some loud voice to rise up and say, "Looks like we have to pick one or the other--EITHER there can be preaching and teaching and praying in this new thing called church, OR we have feed the hungry among us.  But there's only enough in our human resource department for one or the other!"  This would have been an easy moment for the disciple community to fracture into parties along the lines of "preach and teach" versus "feed the needs," and knowing human nature, it would have been easy for the whole Christian church to split over which one or the other was THE right thing to do.  

But something wonderful happened instead of a split while the church was in its infancy. Something amazing and yet terribly common-sense happened: they refused to accept that this was an either-or proposition.  The apostles knew that they did not have the time or resources to divert to managing a food-distribution program.  But--and this is key here, too--they didn't belittle the need as unimportant, nor did they write it off by saying, "We can't be responsible for feeding people, too!"  They accepted that the community of Jesus needed to be about both the feeding of the hungry AND the sharing of the news of grace.  They knew that they were called to be about the relief of suffering AND the teaching of the Reign of God.  And maybe even deeper, they understood that they could not do one, at least very meaningfully, without doing the other.  Only focus on handing out food and you might as well just be a restaurant; only talk nice religious talk without attending to physical needs too, and your witness will be empty and shallow.  This isn't an either-or choice; it's a both-and situation.

This is so often our challenge in this day, too.  It is easy to hear the same rationale echoing in the back of our heads and down our church halls today, too.  "We only have enough resources to either reach out to the community, or to focus on worship and teaching." Or, "We don't want to speak to real problems or issues around us, because the church is only supposed to focus on 'spiritual' things" (whatever that might mean).  We are always feeling the pressure to make the church's life a false choice between the ministry of teaching and the ministry of the table, our message and our mission, our words and our actions.  But let this moment be a reminder for us: these things are not really separate "sides" or "alternatives" at all.  They are all part of the one mission of the Jesus-community--to live, witness, serve, and share in the Reign of God as we've known it in Jesus himself.  So when we preach and teach and witness, hurray, that's part of our one mission.  And when we share our tables, not out of condescending pity for "those people," but with such indiscriminate love and dignity that everyone walks away both fed and honored, well, that's also a part of our one mission, too.

For all the ways that organized institutional religion blows it--and we do get plenty of things all fouled up--this is a moment when both the organizational side and the institutional dimension of the church were exactly what we needed.  We needed to have someone say, "We need to share both faith and food." We needed to have someone say, "We do not have to accept the terms of a false dichotomy." We needed the wisdom of humble leaders who knew they couldn't do it all but also didn't want to give up on important work in either direction.  And, thanks be to God, that happened.

Today let us remember that the shared table is just as much an essential part of our calling and ministry as Christ-followers as Bible studies, sermons, and worship services. We do not have to accept the split that gets foisted upon us.  We can follow the example of these wise early saints who said, "Both... and."

Lord Jesus, help us to see the breadth of our calling, not just in talk and theology but in action and practice, sharing tables with one another and feeding all around us.

The Right Attire

The Right Attire--August 28, 2018

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters, and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out,

    'Hallelujah!

     For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.

     Let us exult and rejoice and give him the glory,

     for the marriage of the Lamb has come,

       and his bride has made herself ready;

     to her it has been granted to be clothed with fine linens, bright and pure--'

for the fine linen is the righteous deeds of the saints.

And the angel said to me, 'Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb.' And he said to me, 'These are true words of God'." [Revelation 19:6-9]

In this life, it is a good rule of thumb to dress for the occasion.  

Not to earn your way in to an event.  Not even because you will be turned away if you didn't have the right clothes (even fancy restaurants often have a couple of spare blazers to give to guests who have not come in their own sportscoats or suits).  But you dress for the occasion in life, especially a big party like a wedding, as a way of fully joining in the celebration and honoring the people who invited you.

So, even if you think that tuxedos and cummerbunds are stuffy and uncomfortable, if you have been asked to be a groomsman in a wedding where all the other groomsmen are wearing them, too, my guess is that you'll do it, too.  You'll show up in the suit they acquired for you, whether or not it is your personal style, because you want to honor the bride and groom, and because they are the real center of attention at their wedding.

And similarly, if the couple getting married are a cowboy-boots-and-jeans sort of couple, you will dress accordingly so that you can join in the line dances in the barn where the reception will be... not because it is your personal preference in wedding attire, but because you want to be dressed for the kind of party it is going to be.

And if the bride-to-be tells you that all the bridesmaids are going to be wearing bright turquoise chiffon dresses with puffy sleeves, and then asks you to be one, too, my guess is that you will set aside your own fashion tastes for a day to wear the outfit that is provided for you, exactly because you know that the bride's favorite color is turquoise and it is important that the wedding ceremony "fit" with the character, style, and personalities of the couple getting married.

For that matter, when a ninety-odd-year old pillar of your congregation invites you to a birthday party and gives everyone plastic bead necklaces as part of his party, you darn well better put your bead necklace on, too, regardless of whether it "goes" with your outfit or feels a bit silly, because in that moment, it's not really about you.  It's about celebrating and honoring the one at the center.

In other words, in this life, we dress for the occasion--knowing when to dress up, when to go casual, and when to wear plastic bead necklaces--less as a way of "earning" something, and more as a way of honoring the people (whom you love and care for) at the center of the day's celebration.  Because it matters to the host of the party, or the guest of honor, it matters to you.  You dress up, not trying to impress anybody or win anyone's approval, but rather because, well, sometimes love looks like puffy chiffon sleeves.  And maybe you do it because it just seems... fitting (no pun intended) for the people at the center of the party.  The boots and jeans wedding reception "fits" with the couple who loves life in the country and whose lifestyle fits with dancing in a refurbished barn.  The tuxedo-clad wedding party fits with your sophisticated friends who radiate class and refinement.  And the beads, well, they just "fit" with the need to celebrate a birthday of anybody after nine decades of life.

So if that much is true--that we dress for the occasion in life because a particular outfit will "fit" with the character of the party and the character of the party-throwers--then think about what it means that at the grand wedding party for Christ the slain-but-risen Lamb, the right apparel for the day is "the righteous deeds of the saints"? 

Or maybe we even need to take a moment to hear that phase rightly, too.  Because "righteous deeds of the saints" can sound a lot like there is some special, select group of holy people who do "holy" things like extra praying, or going to church more, or fasting, or taking other ascetic kinds of vows, and that all of their extra... religiosity... as it were, was the thing that God really liked about them.  To be very honest, that sort of thinking was exactly the institutional Church's party line for almost a thousand years in the medieval era, as people came to hear "saint" as a sort of religious elite, and "righteous" as a synonym for "shows of religiosity."

But neither of those is what the book we call Revelation has in mind.  For one, the word that gets translated "righteousness" is the same word for "justice" in the Greek of the New Testament.  And when you hear "justice," you are less likely to picture things that are confined to prayers chanted from behind stained glass walls.  When we hear "justice," we picture the day to day actions of treating people rightly, of regarding people with fairness and equity.  We will hear in our minds the voices who speak up when someone else is being stepped on or being taken advantage of.  We will picture those who, like the prophets of old, can tell the king when he is corrupt, or when the people have forgotten the commandments to care for those in need.  "Doing justice," after all is what the prophet Micah once said that God was all about after all--along with "loving mercy" and "walking humbly with your God."  

Well, now, we might be in a better position to hear what the book of Revelation was saying all along. Instead of suggesting that God needed monks and friars and nuns to all go hide in the desert or at some monastery or abbey somewhere where they could perform "righteous deeds" in seclusion like they are banking up extra heaven-points, Revelation says that the right dress for God's big wedding party is simply "doing justice."  The fine linen of the bride of the Lamb is nothing more and nothing less than "the actions of justice that the followers of Jesus have made as their way of life."

And the reason that "doing justice" is the appropriate attire for the big celebration of the Lamb is that God's character all along has been one of justice... which is to say, of putting things right.  Justice is so much bigger and wider a notion than we often imagine--we often think of it only as punishing crimes and prosecuting criminals.  But in the biblical sense, justice is more fully about mending what is torn, repairing what is broken, setting right what has gone awry, sharing God-given abundance, lifting up those who have been stepped on, and yes, holding to account those who step on others.  All of that is what justice looks like.  And so in a very real sense, every time a relationship is reconciled... justice is done.  And every time someone takes the risk of telling an uncomfortable but necessary truth... justice is done.  And every time people offer up their own lives for the sake of protecting someone else in danger... justice is done.  And even in its widest sense, every act of compassion to bind up the brokenhearted, to lift up those who have been pushed aside, and to put things right, these are all an important part of what it looks like to "do justice."

So there at the grand divine wedding party that John the Seer of Revelation envisions, the dress for the day is no more and no less than... doing justice.  There is no other accessorizing needed--no checking of your status or class on earth, no language requirement or history tests, not even a requirement that you wear a cross necklace and matching earrings or a WWJD bracelet.  The wedding party, as John sees it, are all dressed simply in "doing justice," which always allows for more freedom of motion than puffy chiffon sleeves and turquoise cummerbunds.

But, in an important sense like those bridesmaids dresses and tuxedos, the proper attire for God's grand celebration is not really a condition for entrance--it is something the host of the party gives you to wear precisely because it fits with the style and character of the couple at the head table.  The bride doesn't just tell her bridesmaids to wear the turquoise dress with the puffy sleeves as a dare or as a condition to earn her friendship or belonging in the bridal party--she gives them the dresses to wear that will "fit "with what she is wearing, and because the style fits with her own style.  And so in an important sense, Christ doesn't say, "Unless you have done fifty-seven deeds of religiosity, you cannot come to the party."  Nor does he say, "Until you have helped ten grannies across the street, cleared a wrongly-accused criminal from jail time, and then picked up litter on the highway five times, you do not belong in my club."  Almost the opposite--Christ says, "Justice is the theme of God's Reign and this party, so I've gotten you a way of life to walk in that will fit with the character of the celebration.  Why don't you try it on?"  Justice becomes the gift that the host of the party gives us to wear, not as a condition for being accepted, but because we've already been included among the bridal party... and because justice "fits" with the character of the God whose party it is.

Sometimes we get very confused about how it will all work when we get to glory.  We have heard plenty of voices around us tell us that there will be a great evaluation to see if we've done enough good stuff to earn a place at the table, or if we've avoided enough bad stuff to stay off the "uninvited list."  At the same time, anybody who has spent much time in the New Testament has heard the notion that we are saved by grace through faith apart from what we've done... and then we are left wondering, "Does that mean God doesn't care about how I treat other people, how I use my life, or how I respond to suffering in the world?"  Because sometimes we church folks (especially we Lutherans) end up sounding like all God cares about is memorizing some theological formulas and then we are off the hook for doing justice, loving mercy, and walking humbly... which is what Micah had said God was really after in the first place.

So maybe this passage helps put things in the right perspective.  Doing justice is all the apparel we'll need... but like the beaded necklace at the nonagenarian's birthday party, it is handed to you to wear as a gift, and you put it on because you know it is a way of fully celebrating with everybody else around.

Today, we'll be given the chance to try on the garb for the party.  We don't need to worry at all about impressing anybody, or what anybody else thinks of our outfit.  When you are in the bridal party after all, you don't care about what anybody else thinks of the puffy sleeves--you are wearing them because you love the host of the party, who has handed them dresses out to make the celebration complete.  Today, doing justice--even in seemingly small acts of putting things right and lifting up the stepped-on--that is all the attire we need for the occasion.  Like they say about wearing black, justice goes with everything.

Lord God, because of the promised day when we will be gathered at your table for the supper of the Lamb, grant us to do justice today.

Broken Things

"Broken Things"--August 27, 2018

While they were eating, he took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” [Mark 14:22]

Pay attention to the action that goes along with the words. The only way Jesus can give bread away and share it is if it’s broken.  The only way Jesus can give himself away is the same. 

Taking a look at today’s verse, I have had a song lyric running through my head.  It’s a Julie Miller song, and the opening verse goes, “You can have my heart/ Though it isn't new/ It's been used and broken/ And only comes in blue.” Then the refrain opens with this offer:  “You can have my heart… if you don’t mind broken things.” Wow.

I have to admit, I am hearing Jesus’ words—the same words and the same story it is mine to tell week by week at the Communion Table—in a whole new way, held up against that song.  There is vulnerability in them.  There is tenderness.  There is love.  All of that was there all along in Jesus’ words, in his single simple sentence, “Take; this is my body.”  But all too often, we let Jesus’ words get starchy and stiff, like he is giving a theological lecture with charts and graphs, rather than graphically depicting what he is about to do for his friends.

We read, “This is my body,” and for a lot of Christian history, we have decided he is giving us a metaphysical statement that we are supposed to diagram, and then agree to, and then commit to memory.  So over the centuries, lots of well-intentioned smart religious professionals have jumped on these words and picked fights with one another over them.  “He means that the bread transforms into his body in a literal sense, and if you don’t agree on that point, you are going to hell,” insist some.  “No, he is telling us that the bread is like his body as just a symbol, and anybody who believes differently is lost in superstition and magical thinking,” say others as they wag their fingers.  (Lutherans, I will confess, have their own way of saying it, and we have reasons for our position, which would go something like, “It’s not magic, but it's not just a nice metaphor, either. It's a mystery, and the real Jesus is really there in, with, and under the ordinary, everyday stuff of bread.”  But that is a conversation for another day.)  And so the fighting goes back and forth, with each party condemning the other’s supposedly incorrect diagram of what Jesus surely meant when he said, “This is my body.”

How easily we forget that the action comes with the bread and the words.  “He took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it, he broke it and gave it to them….”  The only bread Jesus gives is broken bread.  He tears the bread in two (or more probably, since it would have been flat unleavened bread for Passover, cracks it in two along jagged lines).  It doesn’t pull apart neatly into perfect little perforated squares or circles like the tidy ways it often happens in churches.  It is ripped, pulled, torn—it is broken.  And in the breaking, Jesus says, earnestly, tenderly, and vulnerably, “This is for you.  This is me.  You can have it, if you don’t mind broken things.”  

Jesus’ words have the exposed intimacy of a love song.  They had it all along, but we were busy making charts and graphs to decide whose theology was damnable because of what they believed the bread did, or did not, turn into.  We so easily miss the beauty and the infinite preciousness of what Jesus is doing.  He is not saying, “Here is some quasi-magic bread, and if you eat it with the correct theory about how the magic gets in there, you will get more heaven points.  So take it...but only with the proper diagram in your head while you do... or you'll go to hell.”  He is saying, “See this?  See this broken thing?  It is broken for you.  This is me.  I am going to be broken for you.  If you want me in your life, the only way you get me is broken.  It’s the only way I come.”

The cross, the Communion Table, the whole life of faith—they are all in one way or another all about Jesus giving himself away for us.  And the only way we can receive him… is broken.  There is no Christ without a cross, no Jesus as "conquering, invincible warrior-god",  or “just a nice moral teacher” or “just a guy with some good spiritual insights.”  The only way Jesus comes is crucified.  Risen, too, certainly.  Triumphant over death, absolutely.  But having come through death to get to resurrection.  And that means Jesus himself was broken… for you, and for me.  If we miss that, we can get all the rest of our diagrams right and still miss the point.  Pay attention to the action  at the table that comes with the words.  Receive the gift and take in what it is Jesus is holding up for you and me:  This is my body.  You can have it, if you don’t mind broken things.

Lord Jesus, we can scarcely take in what you have done for us.  Don’t let us miss the awesome beauty of your love in our attempts to reduce you to theories and theology.

A Movable Feast

A Movable Feast--August 24, 2018

"As they came near the village toward which they were going, he walked ahead as if he were going on. But they urged [Jesus] strongly, saying, 'Stay with us, because it is almost evening and the day is now nearly over.' So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight. They said to each other, 'Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?' That same hour they got up and returned to Jerusalem; and they found the eleven and their companions gathered together. They were saying, 'The Lord has risen indeed, and he has appeared to Simon!' Then they told what had happened on the road, and how he had been made known to them in the breaking of the bread." [Luke 24:28-35]

Jesus has a way of making himself at home in other people's space, doesn't he?  Thank God for that.

No, seriously, I was struck today, rereading these words from the tail-end of Luke's Gospel, after the resurrection of Jesus, at how Jesus just sort of makes himself the host of this impromptu late-night meal at Cleopas' (and his wife's?) house.  Usually, when you are a guest in someone's home, especially if you are a guest at someone else's table, you wait to be served.  You wait to be offered food.  You wait to have a napkin set at your place.  And you don't impose.  The WASP in me wants, just a little bit, to take Jesus aside and teach him proper etiquette for  being a guest at someone else's table--even if it is a table that reveals the risen Lord to two of his close friends.  I kind of want to tell Jesus, "Don't you know you aren't supposed to manhandle the bread and start tearing off pieces to others when you are the guest?  Don't you know that you are supposed to just politely offer what is put before you? Didn't your mother raise you right?"  But of course, I'm getting way too big for my britches there.

It is a bit odd maybe, that Jesus just up and casts himself in the role of host at this table... except that Jesus always had that way, didn't he?  Jesus borrows tables wherever he can and sets up these amazing meals of life... these amazing moments of welcome... these amazing memories and shapshots of the Reign of God come among us on earth as it is in heaven.  

Again and again in the Gospels, Jesus shows us the Beloved Community at table after table, but the builder's son from Nazareth didn't own a single one of those tables. It's the table at Matthew's house where all the not-good-enough found welcome and acceptance, despite the grumbling of the Respectable Religious Crowd.  It's the table at Zacchaeus' house that Jesus has to invite himself over to because poor little Zach is sure as heaven never going to work up the courage to ask Jesus to come first.  It's the table in an otherwise anonymous upper room where Jesus celebrates Passover for the last time and tells his friends that he's about to give his life away like broken matzoh.  And now it's here at another borrowed table on the night after the resurrection, where the same Jesus, now with nail scars, brings life and hope to two friends who were at the edge of despair.  At every one of those borrowed tables, Jesus sets up his movable feast and brings the presence of the Reign of God, the Yahweh Administration, right in the face of ordinary people living their lives, as if to remind them that the power of God for life, and the grace of God for all, can erupt anywhere, right under their noses.  

Now think about that for a moment: Jesus only ever uses borrowed tables.  As much as we church folk make out our sanctuary furnishings to be somehow holier than the card table you can buy from Wal-mart, or the beaten up folding tables of the AA group that meets below the sanctuary in the church basement, there is no such thing as "the ONE right and proper Table of Jesus."  We Christians don't have a single Temple or a city you have to go to if you want to be a good disciple.  There is no one spot, one table, or one set of furnishings that makes the Eucharist "count" or makes the bread and cup into holy things. There is no rule in the Bible that you can only celebrate Communion at some oak-hewn altarpiece adorned with crosses and Greek lettering.  Jesus doesn't own a single table on earth, come to think of it--he just borrows whatever is handy and brings the gracious presence of the living God right there, right under our despondent noses, Rome's arrogant nose, and all the Respectable Religious Crowd's hypocritical noses, and starts breaking the bread there.

That should tell us a couple of things right now, then.  For one, it should maybe help to keep us from making idols of our worship spaces.  Whether they are Gothic cathedrals, folksy American white painted buildings with pillars out front, or modern structures with liturgical-consultant-approved and acoustic-technician-certified furnishings, the building and the furniture is not all that terribly important to Jesus. He is just as happy borrowing the bedside table in the ICU, the book-strewn coffee table in the living room of a man on hospice, the jury-rigged arrangement of craft tables in the mental hospital worship-and-craft-room, or the kitchen table of Cleopas and company at midnight on one spring Sunday.  And he does.  Jesus only and always borrows our tables--and it is his presence, in the midst of our common, worn, cluttered, and inelegant tables and lives, that makes the meal holy.  

And that means the second realization of the day is this. We can't do anything to make one square inch of God's creation any holier than it is already, not even by carving a cross in it, dousing it with incense, or bathing it in the light from a stained-glass window.  But Jesus can take a hospital tray table and make it an honest-to-God revealing of the promised divine dinner party at which tears are wiped away and everybody is there (see Isaiah 25:6-9).  Jesus just has that habit of commandeering our kitchen counters and making himself at home in our space.  So maybe we can fuss a little bit less about the relative fortunes we blow on fancy religious accessories and spend our time and resources inviting the broken-hearted, mentally ill, substance-addicted, homeless, foreigner, outcast, shady-looking, dropped-out, and beloved children of God to come to whatever table we have.

Wherever you go today, any horizontal surface will do.  Jesus can borrow laminate countertops, beaten up wood, and even institutional plastic to set up his movable feast.  And when he does, our eyes are opened, and we realize we have been standing in the presence of Love himself all along.

The world is awash with borrowable tables where the living Christ is holding appearances and playing the host.  The only question for you and me today is whether we will see these ordinary looking places and let him open our eyes when the bread is broken.

Lord Jesus, let your movable feast happen right here in our midst, right here and now, as you invite yourself into our space and our lives and our hearts and bring the presence of God there.

The Missing Ingredient

The Missing Ingredient--August 23, 2018

"Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. For, to begin with, when you come together as a church, I hear that there are divisions among you; and to some extent I believe it. Indeed, there have to be factions among you, for only so will it become clear who among you are genuine. When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord's supper. For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing? What should I say to you?  Should I commend you? In this matter I do not commend you! … So then, my brothers and sisters, when you come together to eat, wait for one another. If you are hungry, eat at home, so that when you come together, it will not be for your condemnation...." [1 Corinthians 11:17-22, 33-34]

We have a rule at our house around supper time.  It is simply this: you don't start eating until everybody else in the family is seated at the table, too.  That's it.  Not very complicated, really.  There's really just a simple mental checklist is involved to follow it: 

(Step 1) Look around at table.  
(Step 2) See if someone in the family is missing. 
(Step 3) If someone in the family isn't at the table yet, repeat Steps 1 and 2.
(Step 4) Once everyone is seated together, then we can pray and pass the biscuits and eat.

Now, just because it's a simple rule doesn't mean it's always easy to follow.  After all, our lives are busy, and sometimes one person is late coming home from work, while another person has an early evening meeting to get to, and meanwhile kids are running in and out of the bathroom washing their hands (or trying to get away with just pretending to wash them), and there are plates and platters being carried out to the dining room table in a flurry, too.  And sometimes, it is very, very tempting, for some members of our family (their identities shall remain undisclosed) to start putting forkfuls of macaroni and cheese into their mouths, or eating their watermelon chunks before everyone has come to the table.

And when that happens, we put a stop to it.  Busyness or meetings to get to are not acceptable excuses for eating without others, neither are "But I'm really hungry!" or "I just really like watermelon."  In a family, we wait for each other.  We wait at the table for one another, and we hold off filling our own bellies until everyone has arrived.  That's just what we do.

And the reason we do this--the reason my wife and I regularly allow ourselves to be cast as the bad guys at supper by insisting that we wait for everybody--is frankly that suppertime is about more than just consuming calories.  The family meal is a chance for us to shape the kind of people we are.  The dinner table is a place to practice love--and genuine love doesn't look after its own hunger first, but rather waits for everybody else who is coming to the table to join as well.  That is crucial.

Sure, there are times in the course of a week when I just quickly grab a bite of lunch while standing so I can get back to work.  Sure, there are days when I just skip the lunchtime ritual altogether.  And sure, in the mornings, sometimes breakfast is rather scattershot with the early adult departure at 7:00am and the kids not needing to be out the door to school much later.  But supper time is different.  It is not really just about food.  There is a missing ingredient to supper, even when all the serving platters and side dishes are already out on the table.  Supper is this wonderful moment when we remind each other that we are bound to each other in love, and that love means you wait to make sure everybody else knows there is a place for them at the table.  You wait for them.  You make space for them.  And you make it clear that "my" individual hunger is not more important than the welcome of each person to the table.

Now, that also means that we have knowingly chosen to set the pace of dinner, not according to who can wolf their meal down the fastest, but according to the needs of the slowest person to get to the table.  We don't say that dinner starts as soon as the first person gets to their chair and grabs the fish sticks for themselves.  We don't even say, "First come, first served" at the family dinner table.  We almost do the opposite: we wait for whoever is the last one to get to the table, and we all share the serving all at the same time.  That is an important piece of teaching one another--not just the kids, but reminding the grown-ups, too--what love looks like.  

And love is not a first-come, first-served commodity.  Love is not awarded according to who gets to the buffet line first and piles all the shrimp on their plate so there is none left for the latecomers.  Love waits.  And that means that love gives a certain priority, not to whoever thinks they have "earned" to get to eat first, but actually to whoever is slowest to get to the table, and whoever has the hardest time getting the corn scooped onto their plate.  

So far, I hope all of this is rather straightforward and without controversy.  I imagine that on this point, family dinners look much the same all across our communities, and across our country, maybe even the world.  And I expect that by and large in our family meals, we can all affirm the importance of making the effort of waiting for whoever is last, providing for whoever has the least, and setting aside a place for whoever has been left behind.  You wait to eat until the last person has been seated.  You help make sure the people around you have had everything passed to them.  You make sure to save some for whoever is going to be arriving late, or you save leftovers to bring to the person who couldn't get out to your house for dinner.  This is obvious stuff, I hope.

But somehow that same logic, that same obvious almost self-evident logic of dining room love, gets confused when we consider the wider family to which we belong in the community of Jesus.  And we have been getting hung upon it since the first century.  There was a time, as our passage today from First Corinthians describes it, when the followers of Jesus met for worship, fellowship, and discipleship all around tables for a community meal of the family of God. And in the midst of that meal, they would not only eat their own dinners and break bread together, but they would retell the story of Jesus' meal with his disciples--the meal we now call Holy Communion, or the Eucharist, or the Lord's Supper.  But just like happens with my kids prematurely scooping macaroni or shoveling watermelon into their mouths, in the early life of the church you had the same kind of me-first attitude creeping in.  Some people, whether as individuals or as nuclear family units, would eat on their own first, while others had nothing.  They acted as though the meal wasn't a shared common experience, but simply a race to get food into their bellies. It was Me-and-My-Group thinking at its most obvious.  And the apostle Paul had to smack them all upside the head and say, "No! No!  That's NOT how we do things here!"

Paul is upset, not because the Corinthians have gotten their metaphysical diagrams about the transubstantiation of the eucharistic elements slightly wrong, and not because they had forgotten to use incense or organ music during their liturgy, but because they had forgotten to treat this moment like a family dinner.  And at a family dinner, you wait for everybody.  You pace yourselves, not according to who can eat fastest and get to seconds, but according to who is the slowest, so that they don't get left out.  At a family dinner table, you put your own needs and hunger in a lower priority than welcoming everybody else to have a place at the table.  At the family meal, you take into account the needs of the last, the least, and the left behind. So Paul said, in so many words, "That's what you need to be doing when you gather with other Christ-followers!  You all need to put the needs of the others before your own immediate gratification!"

This is where we often have a hard time.  I don't have too much of a problem teaching my kids that they need to wait for everyone to come to the table.  But I know there is this self-centered streak in me that has a hard time telling myself, on Paul's authority, to do the same in the wider circles of my life.  And yet, that is just what Paul is calling us to: to put the needs of the other before our own wants.  To wait until everybody has gotten the chance to sit.  To put my own wish for a drumstick be put beneath the need of the person next to me so that they can have some chicken too.

Paul knew the power of sharing a table together with others.  And he knew that we need the regular practice of learning to share tables with one another not just within our nuclear families but across them as well, or else we will turn our own little families and tribes into idols.  And so Paul insisted that in this family, the family of God, we wait for each other, and we honor each person's contributions, and we also let others come to the table regardless of what they have to bring or offer.  In this family, we wait for one another.  In this family, we look out for the needs of the other.  In this family, we put others before ourselves, and instead of getting huffy or bitter about it, we can rejoice that someone else got to have their needs attended to.   That is radical talk these days, where it is so much more popular to talk about getting as much as you can, as quickly as you can.  It is radical because it will mean that day by day, each of us will reorient our lives, not around trying to hoard treasures into piles, but around the needs of the slowest, the lowest, the least, and the last.  

We wait until the slowest person coming on their way arrives.  We make room for the last-minute arrivals.  We hold off on filling our plates with wants and wishes until after everybody there gets enough for their needs.  And maybe, just maybe, if we practice it as church together, we will be transformed to practice the same kind of love outside the walls of church, just recklessly loving people without the tired old logic of "first come, first served."  

May today be such a day: may we put the needs of others before our own.  May we prioritize the last, the least, and the left behind.  May we wait until everyone is welcome at the table before stockpiling the fried chicken for ourselves.  May we live in the fullness of sharing our treasures with one another.  And may we discover that true communion sprouts up from that sharing.

Lord Jesus, lead us to your table, and bring us to welcome others as you have made a place at the table for them, too.