The Daily Dare

The Daily Dare--October 1, 2018

[Jesus said,] "The Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." Then he said to them all, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.  What does it profit them if they gain the whole world , but lose or forfeit themselves?" [Luke 9:22-25]

There is really only one challenge from Jesus; he just keeps putting it to us again and again in different words.  And the one challenge of Jesus is nothing more and nothing less than the cross.  Daily.

That challenge, it turns out, also is the key to a life that is rich with joy, full of meaning, overflowing with love, and tempered with strength.  It is, as Bonhoeffer once put it, "the only true life there is," even at the same time as Jesus' challenge will cost us our old lives and our old selves.

But let's get it clear from the outset that there is no Christian life without the cross--and that the cross is each of ours to carry on a daily basis.  There is no indication anywhere in the New Testament that Jesus envisioned his followers would have it easier because they named his name, or that being known as a Christian would get them better jobs or more promotions.  There is no promise from Jesus at all that following him would make his followers seem more respectable in anybody else's eyes, or would make us more popular, more prosperous, or more prestigious.  Not a bit of any of that.

In fact, Jesus advertises this very point, precisely by using the image of "taking up a cross."  That isn't just a metaphor for generalized suffering, even though people sometimes use it that way today.  Sure, today, we talk about any  sort of inconvenience as a "cross to bear"--things like, "My kids are sick and I have to stay home with them, but I guess that's my cross to bear," or "I was driving down the road and someone cut me off in traffic--must be my cross to bear."  No--in fact, in Jesus' day, they had a word for the general inconveniences, common troubles, and ordinary sufferings of daily life:  they called it life.  That's how life is.  That's just the way life is for everybody--sick kids, bad drivers, and a whole host of other daily troubles.  These are not even close to what it means to carry a cross, because you can keep your dignity doing any of those other things.

But carrying a cross isn't just about losing your comfort, or about physical suffering.  To take up a cross is a total loss of reputation and respect in Jesus' usage.  That's because a cross wasn't just a means of dying in the time of the Roman Empire--it was a means of humiliating someone.  To be executed on a cross was Rome's way of saying not just that you were going to die, but that you were dying as an enemy of the state.  Rome thought they were doing a public service when they crucified someone--they were making an example of the troublemakers, so that there could be peace on the streets.  

On top of that, to be crucified by the Romans was to be stripped of any dignity and appearance of strength.  After all, to be crucified made you look--at least in the empire's eyes--like a wimp, like a pushover, like a weakling.  Rome reveled in crucifying people the same way bullies relish picking on smaller kids to try and make themselves feel bigger.  To be crucified was to be subject to the mockery of the crowds who might have said, "Poor, poor schmucks--they were nice, but in the end, they just weren't tough enough to go toe-to-toe with the real powers in Rome."  To be crucified was to be made weak, and the message Rome intended to send was clearly, "The weak will be crushed, because they are losers.  We are the real power--you can tell because we are the ones holding the hammer."

And to be clear, this is what Jesus calls all of us into.  This isn't just reserved for Jesus, and this isn't an exception to the usual order of things.  But Jesus calls all of us to take up our crosses, and in doing so, to let go of the old definitions of what bravery, courage, dignity, and power look like.  When Jesus calls all of us, his followers, to take up our crosses as well, it means that the cross becomes our picture of courage. The cross becomes the measure of true strength.  And the cross--including all of the shame, humiliation, and weakness that come with it--becomes our pattern for life as well.

This is really, really, really important, because sometimes you'll hear Respectable Religious Folks today saying that there is some other picture of courage or strength for Christians in "real life" situations.  You'll hear folks say that Jesus' kind of suffering love and gentle compassion is ok "for him," because he's "supposed" to die on a cross... but that disciples today really need to get tough and fight dirty and shrug off suffering love in favor of a street-fighter's mentality.  You'll hear that Jesus' way is just fine for leaders "in church," but for actually living in the big, wide, "real" world, you have to make sure you are the one holding the hammer rather than taking the nails.

And in case it were not already obvious, this is absolute horse-fertilizer.  

Jesus has one challenge for us--and it is always and only the challenge of the cross.  It means surrendering our old notions of what strength looks like, what toughness looks like, and what victory looks like, and seeing them through the lens of the tortured human form of Jesus of Nazareth, stripped bare and strung up by the empire.  That is our new picture of what endurance looks like.  That is our new picture of love.  That is our new picture of strength and toughness--the ability to endure such evil, such hatred, and such violence, without giving in to return in to the ones with the hammers in their hands.

So today, friends, let's allow Jesus to challenge us on his own terms, as he has a way of doing.  Let's allow Jesus to challenge us to be willing to lose our reputations for the sake of Jesus' kind of love.  Let's allow Jesus to dare us to give up on trying to play by the world's rules.  Let's allow Jesus to speak, and then let us dare to take our crosses, not just this day, but every day.

Lord Jesus, we hear your challenge, and we dare to go where you lead us, even if it means losing ourselves as we lay down our lives for others.

The Luxury of Hindsight

The Luxury of Hindsight--September 28, 2018

[Jesus said:] "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous, and you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.' Thus you testify against yourselves that you are descendants of those who murdered the prophets." [Matthew 23:29-31]

Everybody wants to believe they would have done the right thing, "if only I had lived back then..."

Everybody wants to believe, for example, that if they had lived in 1930s Germany that they would not have gone along with the rise of the Third Reich and would have had crystal clear moral certainty that they would not have given in to the pressure to sit idly by while Jewish families disappeared.

Everybody wants to believe that if they had lived during the first half of the 1800s, that they would have been a part of the abolitionist movement, or even helping slaves to escape on the Underground Railroad; everybody wants to believe they would have known not to accept the teaching in many churches that because slavery was "the law" it had to be obeyed and the law had to be enforced, and that supporting slavery was the "Christian" thing to do.

I want to believe, if I am honest with myself, that this white northern European American from a mild-mannered churchgoing family in a northern state would have stood with Dr. King and Rosa Parks and John Perkins and Bayard Rustin and risked the dogs and firehoses and going to jail with them in the cause of ending segregation and Jim Crow.  I want to believe that I would have had both the clarity and the courage to be on what we tend to call these days "the right side of history."

And it is always infinitely easier with the luxury of hindsight to look back, see where someone else blazed a trail at great personal cost, and to anachronistically imagine ourselves standing alongside them.... because we all want to believe we would have done the right thing, if only, if only, if only we had lived back then.

It is a clever deception we pull on ourselves--we look back at some brave, bold, heroic figure or movement, and now that it has become popular to agree with them (even if it was terribly unpopular or even dangerous to join their cause in the actual moment), we can cast ourselves as "on their side" now, retroactively, meanwhile never being forced to take a look at where, or with whom, we should be standing now, and never having to actually endure any risk or suffering for it.  It is a sneaky, chicken-hearted way of trying to have our cake and eat it, too.

It's just... it's a sham.  Because, honestly, a good way to tell if you would have been standing with the abolitionists against slavery… or the Confessing Church against the Nazis... or the Freedom Riders against the KKK and Jim Crow... is to look at where we stand now, and whether we are willing to lay our lives down, our reputations down, our comfort down, and our complacency down, for other people whose backs are against the wall today.

And similarly, a good way to tell if I would have really been on board with Jesus' movement two millennia ago is whether I am willing to let Jesus direct me, challenge me, stretch me, and re-orient me now in light of his values, rather than assuming he will adopt and bless mine.

Jesus says much the same to the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day.  They all insist they "would have been" on the right side of history when it came to the prophets of old.  Surely they wouldn't have run Amos out of town, or had Isaiah killed, or thrown Jeremiah in a well.  No, surely not--they would have listened!  They would have been faithful and loyal and true to their prophetic message!  But Jesus says the very fact that they cannot see how out of touch they were with the actual message of those prophets, while still wanting to ride on their coat-tails and claim their legacy, says that they are no different from the ones who actually killed the prophets generations before.  

Jesus, however, knows better.  Jesus knows that just paying lip service to the prophets of old is not the same as taking the same stand that the prophets did.  And, to be clear, the true prophets always took a stand that ran the risk of being unpopular, especially with the well-heeled and powerful.  When Amos went to the official government-approved worship center and told them that even though the markets were hitting all-time highs, that God was nauseated at their indifference to the needs of the poor and their greedy quests to just make more money, the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day ran him out of town.  When Isaiah said that God didn't care about fasting or festivals but wanted people to welcome the homeless poor into their homes and to invite foreigners to live among them, people started picking up rocks.  And when Micah said that God couldn't be bought off with sacrifices but just wanted justice, mercy, and humility, the official Union of Religious Professionals just about had a conniption.  The scribes and the Pharisees of Jesus' day were not willing to take such risks.  They were not willing to trade the comfortable positions they had brokered in order to speak such a bold message.  But they wanted to bask in the aura of the prophets who had come before them.  So they made shrines of their graves and built monuments to their memories... so they never actually had to do what the prophets had done, or take up their radical message, but could still borrow some of their street cred.

The temptation is the same for us, too.  We want to present ourselves as "pro-Jesus," as "religious," "pious" types, and we can get all the trappings right--wearing the cross necklaces, posting vaguely inspirational memes on Facebook and guilting others to forward them, talking about how much we love religious monuments and how much better things would be if we only had more of them carved in stone.  But that is rather different from actually taking seriously the message, the values, the love, and the actions of Jesus.  

We all want to insist that if we had been there, two thousand years ago, surely we wouldn't have been among the crowd crying out for Jesus' death--surely we would have come to his defense and been on the right side of history--right?  But here is the thing--the terrible, inescapable truth we need to own, if there is to be any good news--we wouldn't have.  We wouldn't have come to Jesus' rescue.  We wouldn't have spoken up.  We wouldn't have been faithful and loyal.  We wouldn't have risked our lives for Jesus or his mission.  We would have found a comfortable spot alongside the religious pretenders and cried out, "Crucify him!"

And yet... Jesus did not flake out on us.  Jesus did not bail out on us.  Jesus did not give up or give out, even though we are such utter chicken-hearted hypocrites.  Jesus lays his life down, even for people who are utter cowards like me... and he makes it possible for me to find a new courage in a new day, and to start over, looking for ways to follow him rather than to build a shrine to him.  Jesus, as Kierkegaard famously said, is not looking for admirers or fans--he calls disciples.  And disciples do not just "look" religious, but do what the rabbi does, value what the rabbi values, and stands with the people whom the rabbi loves.

Where is Jesus calling us to stand today... without the luxury and safety of hindsight?  With whom?  And can we dare to recognize that, despite all the ways we have failed to have the nerve to stand with Jesus and the prophets and all the outcast people they spoke up for, Jesus has not given up on us?  Could we dare to see that Jesus is still at our side, leading us to where he stands, and to all the other people he has been standing with all along.

Lord Jesus, we confess: we likely would not have been on the right side of history when you were before the angry crowds and Pilate.  We would not have been there to speak with the prophets, but would have stoned them, too.  We are struggling to learn where to stand today.  Teach us, dear Lord.  Teach us.  Lead us.  Move us.  Walk with us.  Without you we are lost.

For the Splinters Between Us

For the Splinters Between Us--September 27, 2018

"If your brother sins against you, go and point out that fault when the two of you are alone. If the brother listens to you, you have regained the brother. But if you are not listened to, take one or two others along with you, so that every word may be confirmed by the evidence of two or three witnesses. If the brother refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if the offender refuses to listen even to the church, let such a one be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector." [Matthew 18:15-17]

Telling the truth about what happened is a form of loving your neighbor.  So is listening to the truth being told.

It is important, in this age of ours where things like "facts" are debated, where we seem to have having an increasingly hard time even agreeing about the reality we live in, and where sources of information are regularly questioned on their reliability, to say that Jesus values truth-telling.  Jesus is convinced that "the truth" is a thing, a real, solid thing, and that it is possible to live without fear of hearing the truth being told, but in fact that we could be set free by the truth (see John 8:31 and following on that point).

That includes the truths about ourselves that we have a hard time facing.  And it includes the truths about when others have wronged us as well.  This is something we need to be clear about, because we sometimes get confused about how forgiveness and truth-telling relate.  Christians are forgiveness people--at least we are supposed to be--and that is not up for debate.  But often, we treat being "forgiveness people" as meaning we are "don't-talk-about-what-happened" people, and we tell ourselves that's what "forgive and forget" means.  None of that is correct.

Jesus, however, shows us--in fact, he lays out a model for life in community for us--that forgiveness does not short-circuit truth-telling, nor does forgiveness mean that we can sweep under the rug when someone is wronged.  The initial wound can heal--so long as it is given the chance to air out and not kept covered up to get gangrene.  The real trouble comes in our lives together when we experience a wrong done to us and then just bury it deep down, or feel pressured not to mention it  (because some religious person has told us that's what "forgiveness" means), or tell ourselves we must have deserved the wrong done to us.  Now we've got a wound--or maybe even a splinter, so to speak--in the relationship between us, and by leaving it there and pretending everything is fine, the wound will only get infected, and the pain will only continue.  Your body can heal from a splinter--your finger will take just a few days to be good as new--but removing the splinter is what allows it to heal rightly.  

And the same between us: if I am wronged, it is important--vital, even!--to be able to say it out loud, and to go to the person who has wronged me, so that we can deal with it.  After all, it is certainly possible that I have also wronged the other person and am not aware of it, or it is possible that the other person doesn't realize the gravity of how I have been hurt.  It is possible that the other person knows exactly what he or she did, but is still working up the courage to be able to speak with you about it and needs you to be able to say it out loud in order to acknowledge the elephant in the room.  It is possible that I will only be able to heal when I have said out loud to the other person, "This happened--and this is not okay," with the same focus as taking the tweezers to the splinter.  And then, once that has been said, I can say freely, "You are forgiven--I will not weaponize the past against you, and I will not come seeking personal revenge."

Jesus' approach is much like this: if I am wronged by someone else (and presumably if I feel safe having a one-on-one conversation with this person, depending on what the nature of the wrong has been), I will go to them and will say out loud what has happened.  We will acknowledge the elephant in the room--that is, after all, the only way you can eventually deal with it and ask it to dance. 

Saying it out loud to the other person is not being "unkind" or "unloving" or "nitpicking" or "unforgiving."  Saying it out loud is part of loving your neighbor--even the neighbor who wrongs you--because it shows sufficient respect to your neighbor that you do not treat him or her with kid gloves, but honor them enough to be real with them. Saying, "This hurt me," or "When you did that, it wounded me," is not unloving or grudge-bearing--it is the beginning of taking the tweezers to the splinter between you both.  Taking that splinter out by acknowledging it is there doesn't guarantee you will become best friends by next week, but no true healing will happen so long as it is left there unaddressed.

And, of course, in another teaching of Jesus, the other side of the equation is addressed, too: if I am in the middle of my daily routine--or even if I am about to bring my offering to God!--and I realize that I have wronged someone else, I should stop what I am doing, be the grown-up, and own my actions to begin to make things right.  In other words, I will tell the truth, even when it is an uncomfortable truth, or an admission of my failings. Telling the truth is an act of love for the neighbor--whether the neighbor is some I have wronged, or someone who has wronged me.  In either case, we need the honesty in order to get the splinter out.

And to hear Jesus tell it, that honesty is so important to Jesus, it even supersedes acts of religious devotion like bringing your offering to God.  God doesn't need your money as much as God wants you and your neighbor to deal with the wound between you.  Jesus values the truth-telling that makes reconciliation possible more than our offering checks, tithes, sacrifices, and prayers.  

On a day like today, we need to remember that, especially because we are followers of Jesus.  Truth-telling is a form of loving your neighbor.  And listening to the truth being told--taking the time for it, bearing the pain of it, enduring the implications of it--is a form of loving your neighbor.  

Today, let us be people who are capable of such love--the love that is expressed by honesty.

Lord Jesus, you who are our Truth, and who sets us free in your truth, give us the courage and love to tell the truth when we have been wronged or been the offenders, and give us the passion to take the time to listen to truths being told, even when they make us squirm.

Don't Waste Your Nails

Don't Waste Your Nails--September 26, 2018

And [Jesus] said to them, "Take care! Be on your guard against all kinds of greed; for one's life does not consist in the abundance of possessions." Then he told them a parable: "The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, 'What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, 'I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I wills aid to my soul, Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, 'You fool! This very night you life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?' So it is with those who store up treasures for themselves but are not rich toward God." [Luke 12:15-21]

Biblically speaking, there should be an asterisk to go along with every use of the word "my" or "mine."  You know, one of those little star-shaped * punctuation marks that hints there's really more to the story than what appears at first at face value.  We need one of those to go along with the word "my" and "mine" while we read biblical texts, and maybe even as we think about our own lives and resources, too.  

We need such a special footnote marker, because at least from the perspective of the Old and New Testaments, everything I want to call "mine" is really first and foremost God's, and at most I am only ever the temporary guardian, steward, and caretaker of things that have been entrusted to my care.  The asterisk could say all that--it could be the unspoken added reminder that there is nothing that is finally, fundamentally, or purely "mine," but rather that all things, including my own body as well as my house, paychecks, talents, time, and abilities, are really God's.  We need such a reminder, it seems.

We need it because we have a way, as a species, of mistakenly assuming that the possessions we acquire in this life are unconditionally and permanently ours.  But they are not, and the Bible has always been clear on this (whether or not we have wanted to listen on this point is another question).  Rather, the biblical writers, including Luke here giving us a teaching of Jesus, all start taking it as a given that all things belong to God, and that therefore holding onto "my stuff" or "my group's stuff" can never be of utmost value to us.

The foolish rich man in Jesus' story has made this mistake.  He assumes that when he gets a windfall of an overly abundant harvest, that it is his to do with as he pleases.  He assumes it is all meant for him, and for his own enjoyment or use, and therefore his plan to build bigger barns to store it all seems to him the height of wisdom.  It does not even appear to enter his mind that if he has been given such a remarkably exorbitant harvest, that perhaps it has been given to him in trust, as a resource to share with others.  He apparently has not given any thought at all to how he could use such abundance to feed his neighbors or help attend to present-tense needs.  No, the only thought he has had is about himself, and so he misses the asterisk. He doesn't remember that the harvest he thinks of as "his" is really his* to steward, not to hoard.  And he apparently doesn't even remember his own Bible lessons from childhood about the manna that was hoarded in the wilderness and which grew maggots and stank to high heaven when you stored it up.

Now, of course, Jesus' story about this man whose life comes to an abrupt end is just that--a story.  No actual humans were harmed in the telling of this parable.  But the point hits home for all of us.  Our stuff--whether our pay from work, our possessions at home, or the investments for our futures--is not worth making the most important value in our life.  It's not reliable, for one--you can't count on it to be there, and you can't count on life proceeding in the way you plan it to in order to use your stuff.  Hoarding your stuff rather than using it for sharing good things all around is a misuse of what our stuff is for in the first place.  It is, very simply not the right way to use what has been entrusted to us.

Let me offer an analogy.  When I buy a box of nails at the hardware store, they are meant to be used.  They are intended to be hammered into lumber of various kinds and sizes for different projects, and they are intended to be used.  Now, it would certainly be a case of poor stewardship of my nails if I carelessly pounded them into boards without precision, bending them and breaking them rather than getting them to go in straight and true.  And so, on the one hand, I want to make sure I am not wasting my nails by hitting them left-handed or carelessly pounding them off center so they go in crooked.  But at the same time, it is also wasting my nails to leave them in the box forever, untouched and unused, because I am so afraid of hitting them in crookedly on a project.  Hoarding a vast supply of nails for some unknown possible future project while other actual projects go unfinished on the workbench is just as much a waste of nails as hitting them in crooked.  They are still meant to be used rather than accumulating dust on my shelf.  I don't want to waste them either way--not by misusing them, but neither by not using them.

Jesus' story reminds us that all of our possessions are like this as well.  We can be so afraid of misusing our "stuff" that we waste it in the opposite direction--we hoard rather than share what has been entrusted to us for the sake of all.  That's the underlying thing here--all of my possessions, all my paychecks, and all my other potential is all really God's, and God retains ultimate ownership of it all.  If I store it all up, whether on shelves in my workshop or piled into bigger barns, I am misusing what is really God's, and I am mistakenly valuing stuff over people.  The Bible never envisions that I get the final word on the stuff I am supposed to be stewarding--I am holding it in trust for a time, to use well and use rightly, rather than to let it get rusty and dusty or bent and broken.  

We have a way of forgetting that it's all really God's.  We have a way of insisting that protecting (and then hoarding) "my" stuff for "me" alone to use is better than letting these things be shared and used all around, as if my possession is the end-goal, rather than blessing other all around.  Today, Jesus calls us to abandon the foolishness of "Me and My Group First" thinking because, well, the stuff we hoard for ourselves just isn't reliable... and it certainly isn't meant to be more important than other faces.

Today, Jesus dares us not to waste our nails.

Lord Jesus, help us in this day to value people and to use things, rather than the other way around.

Learning New Loves

Learning New Loves--September 25, 2018

“…Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news’.” [Mark 1:14b-15]

A big part of loving someone else is learning to care about the things that they care about… even if only because they care about it.  You might not know a shortstop from a shooting guard or a pitcher from a place-kicker, but if you’ve got a child in your life playing Little League, you learn… and fast.  You might not usually care at all about economics and trade policy, but if someone you love is worried their farm will go under because their wheat and soybeans aren't selling at the right price this year, all of a sudden, you start to pay attention.  You might have no idea at all what a corporate account or an occupational therapist or an insurance adjuster actually does, but if one such person becomes your friend, you come to learn the details of their job simply because you care about what is going on in their world.

That’s just how it is—with the relationships that matter most in life, your primary allegiance is to the person, and the things they care about come along for the ride, whether you had any previous interest in them before or not.  To put it simply, to love someone—to really and genuinely love someone in something more than the shallow way we usually use that word—is to let their passions, cares, and interests matter to you, even if  just because they matter to the one whom you love.  You come to strive for the things they strive for, to cheer them on when they get the things they are excited about, to be glad to stand back in the wings when they get to be in the limelight, and to find joy in the things that give them joy.  Like I say, there’s a certain allegiance you pledge to a person when you love them, in whatever kind of relationship you dare to love them.  And that allegiance means that you will dare to let their concerns re-order your priorities, so that over time they become your very own, too.  A lot of dads never figured they would care a lick about jazz-dancing until their daughters started taking lessons.  A lot of spouses never imagined they would care about fighting cancer until the diagnosis in their own family.  I never imagined I would find myself rooting for specific pigs and sheep and horses at the fair, until families in our congregations invited me to cheer alongside them for their animals each summer.  But that’s love—it makes us pledge allegiance to a whole list of priorities and passions.  Allegiance to a person means learning new loves.

Well, if these are the commitments we make by loving children, family, and dear friends, can we expect anything less from loving Jesus?  If having a niece or a nephew on the local basketball team or marching band means you start showing up at games and concerts, well, should it surprise us that Jesus calls us to let our priorities and loves be aligned with his?  After all, loving someone means learning to care about what they care about, right?

But maybe we haven’t asked the question that way before when it comes to us and Jesus.  Maybe we aren't used to asking “What matters to Jesus?” so much as we are just used to assuming Jesus' job is to miraculously get me the things I want on my personal wish list. So it stands to reason that we haven’t asked the follow-up question, “How will my allegiances and cares be changed by loving Jesus?”

That’s an important question to ask, because we often make assumptions about what Jesus cares about without really asking him, or digging deeper into his story to find out.  But here as Mark gives us the first public words of Jesus, we are about to find out.  Jesus cares about the Kingdom, or Reign, of God.  The Yahweh Administration, if you like.  Jesus has come to announce that God’s rule over all things is being established, and that we are invited to be a part of it.  And being a part of God’s reign over all creation means pledging our allegiance to God, and learning to care about the things God cares about.  That’s the way Jesus talks about it:  “The Kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe the good news.”  This repentance business is not a religious formula—some magic prayer you have to say first to “get in” to God’s club.  It is the conscious surrender of our old priorities and loves and allegiances to God’s.  It is a turning from one old set of things-to-care-about, and letting the One whom we love re-order them.  Perhaps we haven’t cared much about justice and mercy—to be honest, many of us find ourselves quite occupied with just keeping bills paid and getting a good night’s sleep, and not paying attention too much to the news because it will keep us up at night if we do.  Ah, but because God cares about justice and mercy, we will, too.  Perhaps we haven’t cared much about the needs of the hungry and the reconciliation of enemies—but because our Lord Jesus is passionate about giving away food and forgiveness to those who need them, we are going to have to learn to care about those, too.  That’s what it means to “repent and believe the good news” that the Reign of God is at our fingertips—because that’s what it means to really love Jesus.  Let us dare in this new day to love Jesus by learning to care about what he cares about, and whom he cares about.  

Let us allow Jesus to teach us new loves--as wide and as deep and as blessedly reckless as his.

Lord Jesus, help our love for you to grow by re-ordering the things we care about and spend our lives on.

God Chooses Imperfection

God Chooses Imperfection--September 24, 2018

"My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." [Gal. 6:1-2]

Ask the Bible what matters most to Jesus, and you get an answer like this: carry each other's burdens, and sometimes even carry each other when you are the burden for a season.  Carrying someone else's heaviness, and knowing that they carry yours, too--that's at the top of Jesus' list of values.

It has to be if we are honest with each other and if Jesus truly only invites messy, mistake-making, rough-edged, baggage-carrying people into his community.  (And to be clear, yes, those are the only kind of people Jesus invites, because those are the only kind of people there are in the world--including you and me!)

A community full of nothing but forgiven sinners (like the church, which is made up of nothing but forgiven sinners) is has to give some thought to how it is going to keep on going when someone messes up. And at that point, you have to decide whether it is more important to be "right" and alone, or bear with someone else and keep them in the community along with you. If we're not going to play the old game of eliminating the rule-breakers or keeping the "sinners" out of the family of God, then what will do we to bear with each other when we do keep on stepping on each other's toes, wronging each other, and missing the mark? This is what Paul is leading us to think about here.

There is something beautifully realistic about Paul's talk here--he's under no illusion that the church will be a perfectly functioning community where no one ever sins or says a cross word or offends or hurts someone.  Paul knows that this is the risk God runs by forming a people with the free and open gift of grace and forgiveness--if God lets anybody in (as God seems to be doing in Christ Jesus, through whom race and class and gender no longer hold power over us), then God runs the risk of conflict.  If God lets sinners and the ungodly into this community (and apparently God does--it is God's signature move!), then we are going to still have to deal with how we bear with each other's sin and failure and missing the mark.

And apparently, it is more important to God that all these broken, messy, baggage-carrying people be included than having a "perfect" community with no jagged edges.  Apparently God values the grace that welcomes all sorts of stinkers to share life together more than the need to be free of defect.  Think about that for a moment--God chooses a community of imperfection that keeps holding together even when its members mess up and hurt one another, rather than a community that keeps rooting out bad apples because they have messed up or carry blemishes.   I cannot stress enough how counter-intuitive that is to our usual assumptions about God and Respectable Religion. We tend to assume that when people mess up that God is the first one in line to vote them off the island and kick them out of the Heaven and Holiness Club--but in fact, the New Testament here insists that God values holding the community together, restoring people who have messed up, and bearing with one another, rather than taking your toys and walking away.  Be very, very, VERY careful before you decide that someone else's mess-up is so impossible to accept that you would rather overrule God's priorities in order to kick "sinners" out or part ways with them in the Christian community, instead of bearing with one another even in our sinfulness.

See, Paul's response to the ongoing presence of sin and failure and mark-missing in the Christian community is neither to sluff it off carelessly nor to launch witch hunts.  When we fail each other, when we let each other down, and when we live out of alignment with the values of Jesus, we are called to restore each other with graciousness and gentleness.  That neither ignore the offense, nor demonizes the offender--and both pieces are key.  By holding those together--seeking to confront, deal with, and repair the places we have broken relationship with each other--we enact for each other in flesh and blood what God has done for us in Christ--to confront, deal with, and repair the places we have been out of right relations with God. We do not cover over wrongs or deny that those who have been wounded are hurting, but neither do we throw others under the bus in the name of weeding out "sinners."  In other words, we model for each other and we practice what God has done for us already--to forgive, to restore, to welcome back in.  And beyond that, we carry for each other whatever other burdens we have been given to share.  Whether it is the community responding to some offense between members or the hardship of one person's sickness or financial troubles, we can do no other but to hold each other up, because this is precisely what God has done for us and keeps doing for us.  We learn to forgive because God has forgiven.  We learn to shoulder burdens because God has carried ours and keeps doing the heavy lifting.  And we intentionally talk about how to respond to such offenses and burdens that happen among us because we are realistic about life in a community of forgiven-but-still-messy-sinners.

Who is someone in your community of faith in need of being "restored"--and restored graciously and with gentleness?  Where is place in your life for which you need to be restored? Where might we all need to be reminded that God values us hanging together in love more than kicking each other out in the name of "holiness"?

O God who sees us truthfully and who yet chooses us in all our imperfect realness, grant us the ability to let go of blind or blurry-eyed idealism which cannot see the failures or hurts among us, and instead give us the clear eyesight that makes forgiveness possible--the sight that allows us to see and to name hurts between us and faults inside us and love enfolding us that binds us into one in you.

Refusing a Reasonable Devil

Refusing a Reasonable Devil--September 21, 2018

Then the devil took Jesus to Jerusalem, and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, "If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from here, for it is written, 'He will command his angels concerning you, to protect you,' and, 'On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone'." Jesus answered him, "It is said, 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test'." When the devil had finished every test, he departed from him until an opportune time. [Luke 4:9-13]

Whatever else you might want to say about him, the devil comes off as a reasonable fellow.

By that, I mean that the tempter who speaks here in Jesus' wilderness days is only suggesting that Jesus use the privilege he surely has in order to keep himself safe, insulated from pain, and comfortable.  And to our ears, that temptation always sounds reasonable--we don't have to work too hard to convince ourselves to use our privilege (while at the same time, maybe not even recognizing that's what we are doing) to keep ourselves from having to endure suffering.

That really is the gist of what the devil proposes to Jesus.  In the whole contest between Jesus and the tempter, the real issue is how Jesus will embody his calling as Son of God.  Will he use his divine potential to whip up bread and other creature comforts whenever he wants?  Will he be willing to bow down in exchange for political power and all the world's kingdoms?  And then there is this third offer in Luke's gospel--for Jesus to throw himself down from the top of the Temple, knowing that if he wished, the angels would come and catch him, so that he didn't even stub his little messianic toe.  It is, in other words, the temptation to use the perks of being the Son of God with angel armies at his command.  It is the temptation to be treated specially and to let it happen in order to be spared some menial inconvenience or trouble.  

And honestly, don't we find that all too tempting ourselves?  We might even convince ourselves that it's just plain... reasonable to use whatever advantages, leg-ups, or head starts we can get in life.  We might even convince ourselves that our advantages aren't really unfair--they're just how it is and always has been.  And that's just the thing--what makes the temptation so diabolical here is the suggestion not only that it's perfectly reasonable for Jesus to use his privilege to keep himself insulated from suffering, but that maybe it's not even a privilege, but just the natural order of things.  After all, once you have chosen not to see to special position you have, you also prevent yourself from having to see that others do not have the option of calling angelic armies to cushion your feet.

Wonderfully, of course, Jesus rejects the devil's offer.  Jesus sees through it, and refuses to go through with the stunt, even though the tempter has quoted Bible verses to make it seem appealing (a reminder to us all once again, that just having a Bible verse to quote is not a guarantee of being in tune with God's Kingdom agenda).  Jesus rejects not just this particular dare--of jumping off the temple and getting caught by angels--but the whole logic that lies underneath it.  Jesus refuses to use his status as "Son of God" for his own benefit, or to secure his own life, or to keep himself comfortable.  That is true, not only for those forty days in the wilderness, but for a whole lifetime all the way up to and beyond the cross.  

Jesus lays down the privilege he could have leveraged as the divine Son of God at every turn.  He gets hungry.  He gets lonely.  He bears the anger and doubt and betrayal of those closest to him.  He gets arrested.  He endures the hateful way the Romans look down on Jews, as a Jewish man himself, and he endures the hateful way the religious leaders look down on outcasts, tax collectors, and sinners by identifying with them as well.  He allows the soldiers to torture him rather than using a divine Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free card.  He dies.  Surely, at every point along the way, there was the voice of the tempter at the back of Jesus' ear saying, "You could avoid all this.  You could be spared enduring what these walking meat-sack humans go through.  You could have those angels here in a moment to prevent you from having to be treated poorly.  You could let them suffer themselves."  Luke hints as much when he notes that the devil departed from Jesus "until an opportune time," which meant that the temptation to use his privilege for himself was there all the time, ultimately at the cross when the crowds cry out, echoing the devil's own logic, "If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross..."

Thank God that Jesus says no, not just once, but for his whole life long.  Thank God that Jesus is able to see that even if he could summon angelic protectors to keep him from stubbing his toe, that is not the way of the living God.  The God whom Jesus has come to make known suffers alongside us, walks with us through the wilderness, goes with us into exile, and grieves in our own grief as well.  The God whom Jesus has come to make known doesn't put God's own self first, but lays down whatever privilege could be used.  That, in fact, is what the apostle Paul would say about Jesus by quoting an even earlier hymn in what we call Philippians 2:5-8, where he says:

"Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death--even death on a cross."

For Paul and the very, very earliest Christian community even before Paul, this was not simply a recitation of historical episodes in Jesus' life, but a picture of how Jesus had dealt with the privilege he had access to as one "in the form of God."  And in the wider context of Philippians, Paul's point is that the followers of Jesus are called to do the same. We who name the name of Jesus are called to recognize the places in each of our lives at which we have been given advantages, protections, and comforts that are not given to all. And instead of milking them to keep ourselves comfortable while others suffer, we are called like Jesus to lay them down.  We are called, in other words, to value other people more than our own privilege... because we have learned it from Jesus.

Today, that's our calling: to look at our own selves honestly, and to see where we have been hiding safely in the shelter of advantages others do not have, and instead of using them at others' expense, to lay them down.  We are called to value what Jesus values--and Jesus values others more than he values his own comfort.

The devil won't be able to understand such other-centered values, because the devil's appeal to using your own privilege for yourself and your group always presents itself as "reasonable." But the good news for us on this day is that Jesus was never all that interested in looking "reasonable," at least on the devil's terms, and he has already laid down all his privilege, all the way to a cross, for us, even before we have done a thing.  

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to see ourselves honestly and to set aside our advantages to stand with the world you love.

You

You--September 20, 2018

"For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person--though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, not that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:6-10]

What does Jesus value?  

That is, if I may correct myself, ultimately the wrong question.  The issue is not a "what" sort of question, but a "whom" question.  Whom does Jesus value?  Who is of such worth to the infinite almighty Creator of the universe that the divine enters into death for their sake?

You.

You.

You.

And, of course, a whole world full of "us," too.  You are of such importance, such worth, to Jesus, that he thought it was better to give up his own life for your sake.  And mine.  And an endless line of other "ungodly," "sinful", "enemies" (all Paul's words here, mind you), who are also of such precious worth to God.

Now, so far, this is pretty basic, pretty standard Christian jargon.  "Christ died for us" is like Gospel 101, and all too often we religious folk don't go any deeper to poke at that sentence to think about what it means or how radical it is.  But if we consider what Paul says here as he fleshes out this idea of a God who enters into death--the Ground of Being drowning in non-being on a Friday afternoon!--it should shake us, terrifyingly and then wonderfully, to our core.

And this is why: the New Testament makes it clear, here among other places, that God values you apart from your "goodness" or "badness."  Apart from your being well-behaved or being a chain-smoking, unkempt, alimony-shirking, deadbeat drifter panhandling for booze money.  Apart from whether you were born in America or across the border or across the ocean.  Apart from whether you have paid your taxes or go to church. Apart from whether you pray to God daily or don't believe in God at all.  Apart from whom you love, and apart from whom you hate. You are precious to the living God, regardless of whether your manners are polished and refined like something out of an etiquette book or a debutante's ball or as rough as a corncob.  In fact, like all other human beings, you are not just one OR the other, but a peculiar mix of both righteousness and rottenness. And we are, all of us, tainted like bad clams. And yet, in the face of all this, Jesus deems you infinitely valuable.  Enough to die for.  Enough to embrace while an enemy, knowing that you might stab him in the back or nail him to a cross while you are that close.

Your life is of greater value to Jesus than preserving his own.  Period.  Full-stop.

Let that sink in for a moment.  You know yourself pretty well, I hope.  You know, surely better than I, the skeletons in your closet, the things you are ashamed of, the failures you cannot shake, and the selfish rottenness back in the cobwebbed cornered where you don't let anybody else in to see.  And then beyond what you know about yourself, there's a whole list of other stuff that God knows that even you and I don't want to face about ourselves, or don't see anything wrong with.  The secret hates we have learned to justify, the ways we have let ourselves off the hook for our avarice and indifference, the ways we have told ourselves we have "forgiven" ourselves for things we should still be on the hook for, and the smug self-righteous pride we have baptized to let ourselves think we are better than someone else.  The things we are so used to that they don't even raise a red flag for on our own hearts, but which God has never forgotten or ignored.  All of that, too, God is completely and perfectly aware of... and still God says, "I choose you."  

Still, God says, "Death for me first!--rather than life without this precious one whom I love."

It is enough to move one to tears of joy. It is rare, after all, to be loved like that, in this world of fickle, conditional, half-hearted empty promises and broken commitments.  Most of the time, we hide ourselves, either in part or in full, from each other (and from ourselves) in order to avoid being rejected by someone who says they love us, because we are afraid that if we are truly seen in all our rottenness, we will find the limits of their acceptance.

And yet here is the apostle Paul--a man who literally died for the chance to tell the least-acceptable people that they were accepted--insisting that the God who sees you completely loves you all the more, without condition and without asterisks.  And more than that, Paul makes it clear that this love from God is not simply a foggy cloud of emotion or endorphins, but is the conscious choice of the divine to deem your life worth more than preserving God's own life.  That's what the cross is--for whatever else the death of Jesus means, it cannot mean less than God's absolute, irrevocable, wholehearted decision to value your life more than keeping God's own life safe.  You are of such infinite value to Jesus.

But, if you will allow me for just a moment more, let that sink in further, all the way down to the ground floor.  If you are loved so unconditionally, if you are valued so infinitely, but wholly regardless of being "ungodly" or an "enemy" or a "sinner," then that means that everybody else on God's green earth is so loved and valued as well.  If God deems me precious without regard for my "goodness" or "badness" (and that is what Paul has said, very clearly), then the "goodness" or "badness" of anybody else is not a factor in God's love for them, or God's determination that they are of infinite worth as well.

So it's not just the adorable kindergarteners who have been coloring rainbows and unicorns that God in Christ says are of ultimate worth, as cute as they surely are. and it's not just the decorated soldiers or the heroic firefights who marched into the burning buildings, as good and noble as those folks surely are.  As Paul says, "someone might dare to die for a generically 'good' person, maybe," after all.  But from God's vantage point, the white-collar criminals, the entitlement-abusing absentee parents with drinking problems, the spoiled rich kids who think they can do anything with impunity and want to rub your face in it, the bitter angry kids who punch other kids at school because their moms told them they were accidents, the repeat overdose case who keeps getting Narcan-ed back to life, the mean old racist neighbor who is mad that the world is changing, and the couple that got evil-eyed out of the church and understood the unspoken message that they were not welcome, and everybody else you have ever met or ever will meet--we are, all of us, deemed infinitely precious by God apart from our supposed "goodness" or "badness."

There is no one you will ever know who is not worth dying for in God's book.

There is no one over whom Jesus will ever say, "Ugh... now that is too far--that loser is just not worth the pain."

And that means, finally, that there is no one you will ever come across that Jesus does not insist we treat with the respect and love due to someone who is made in the image of God--no matter how much damage we do that image in each other and in ourselves.  

For Christians, at least, this is our obligatory, non-negotiable posture toward the whole world.  We are not permitted only to be kind to "our kind of people," and we are not allowed to look out only for "our interests first."  We are not authorized to say we matter more, or that we should look out for things that help Christians more than non-Christians, and are not given the divine OK to think that God loves us because of our goodness, our smartness, or even our ability to love God.  Everybody you meet today is of infinite worth because Jesus deems them so.  You and I don't have to like it--it just is.

But even on the days when we fail to live like that is true--even at the points where we slide back down into self-preservation and limits and Me-and-My-Group-First rottenness, you cannot lose God's love.  Because you know Jesus thinks is utterly precious?

You.  And the person you least expect, too.

O Love that will not let us go, let it sink in on this day how deeply you value us, and let us then treat this whole world full of your creations like the precious treasures you declare us to be.