Easter Economics

Easter Economics--May 1, 2019

"With great power the apostles gave their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. There was not a needy person among them, for as many as owned lands or houses sold them and brought the proceeds of what was sold." [Acts 4:33-34]

As a general rule, when you see one sentence sitting right next to another in a paragraph--say, in a newspaper or magazine article, in a novel, or in a daily devotional blog you read online--there is a connection between them.  The ideas in one sentence are supposed to lead to the next sentence, whether reinforcing a single main idea, offering a contrast, or advancing a train of thought in a logical progression toward a conclusion.  Sentences that sit side by side are usually related.

Can we take that as a pretty solid, pretty obvious given?  Does that seem fair? Reasonable? Logical?

The reason I ask is that, even though I know that the original manuscripts of the books we now know as the New Testament didn't have chapters, verses, or paragraphs like our modern Bibles do, they certainly were still written to have a logical flow.  And more to the point, I think it's reasonable to assume that when a given author puts one idea next to another, readers like us are meant to see a relationship between those ideas, rather than treating the Scriptures like random compilations of isolated verses waiting to be embroidered on throw pillows and inscribed on decorative bookmarks at your local religious bookstore.  

All of that seems like just standard, elementary reading comprehension stuff, right?  Good.  Glad that's settled.

So let's try this out.  In this section of the book we call The Acts of the Apostles, the narrator (Luke) notes that the earliest Christian community was centered on the message of the resurrection, and that this same early Christian community was moved to sell their possessions and share them with those who were in need.  Now, you could dismiss these two sentences as merely unrelated random facts that Luke just threw together like a jumble of early Christian trivia... or you could ask if Luke sees a connection between the two of them.

And, just to lay my cards on the table here, I think there is a connection.  The more I think about the way these two sentences sit side by side, the more I can't help but see a logical through-line from the empty tomb to the abundant sharing of the early church.  In a sense, it just seems like the logical conclusion of taking Easter seriously.  After all, if Jesus is alive and risen from the dead, well, then two things follow:  first, he was right about how life is meant to be lived, and second, the point of life (if resurrection is real) has to be more than simply acquiring more stuff.  

Consider the first of those for a moment.  The early church took it as a given that if Jesus was raised from the dead by God, it was a vindication of all that Jesus had said, done, and taught.  And so the resurrection is a sort of divine stamp of endorsement on Jesus' teaching to share our abundance, to announce blessing on the poor, and not to hoard possessions in bigger and bigger barns while others go hungry.  Jesus taught his followers to share with one another and with the wider world, too, and when Jesus rose from the dead, his disciples understood that to mean that he was right about how we use our resources.  

And then second, if the resurrection of Jesus is indeed real, and if that further means that death is not the last word over our lives, then the meaning of life has got to be more than just, "The one who dies with the most toys wins."  The resurrection shouts that other people matter more than holding onto our stuff--yes, even our private property. The resurrection reminds us that people are of such infinite worth to God that God will hold onto our lives even through death, while our stuff will all one day collapse in rust and decay.  If the resurrection is true, then the lives of other people matter more than me clutching onto my trinkets and treasures.

I'm not sure that most Christians I know (myself included) have really thought this bit of Easter economics through and worked it out.  In the American church, we tend to treat our property as our permanent possessions, awarded to us by God for good behavior and hard work, and that others who have less are simply out of luck unless they work harder, do more, or get a better-paying job.  We tend to treat people as disposable and our possessions as permanent.  But it sure seems like Luke is saying the opposite.  It sure seems like Luke is saying that if we take Easter seriously, we will be much less interested in holding onto our money, our piles of stuff, and our pensions than we are in caring for one another--because we know that people will be raised from the dead, while our treasures will only gather (and eventually become) dust.

For the first followers of Jesus, it was so vitally important to get the word of the resurrection of Christ to as many people as possible that the individual members and families of the church took it upon themselves to sell their real estate, cash in their investments, and give it away to make sure that their sisters and brothers had clothes, and food, and a roof over their heads.  Somehow, I think we have gotten it backwards and upside down in our culture, where we use religion (I dare not call it genuine Christianity) as a justification for clutching more tightly onto our stuff and assuming that God's will is for our endless acquisition of more.  

We get so antsy when someone dares to suggest that there is a higher good in the universe than me getting to hold onto piles of money, and we get even more nervous if someone suggests that "my money" should be shared with other people around me.  And I get it, I know that the scene here in Acts 4 is not in any way, shape, or form a coercive government-mandated socialist state.  I'm not talking Bolshevism, here: what the book of Acts describes in the Jerusalem church was neither required in every new town where the Gospel went, nor was it ever mandated with threats of punishment at the end of a sword or the barrel of a gun by the army.  But what I am suggesting is that for Luke and the other voices of the New Testament, Easter did demand a radical revision of values, and the importance of acquiring more and more became trivial, while the importance of caring for other people, even with your own hard earned money, grew more and more.  And that reversal of values is going to put us at odds with the voices of our day and our setting, which seem only to harp about how high the Dow Jones is closing and how fast the GDP is growing, without considering what sort of people we are becoming as we obsess over our wealth.

Maybe today is a day for us to consider just how much the Easter story is going to mess with our old picture of the "good life." Because if we take the resurrection seriously, we can no longer simply be satisfied with getting a bigger house, a newer phone, and a more luxurious car. Those investments are simply too shortsighted--they will only last your own lifetime at best.  But other people? By the resurrecting power of God, they will last forever.  They are worth giving up our piles of stuff for in order that they might have food and clothes and a home.

The bottom line is this: other people's well-being is more important than my ability to have a newer car with more storage room to lug around my ever-increasing piles of stuff.

Today, let us be Easter people; let us become people who recklessly share our abundance.

Lord Jesus, let your risen life reorient our values, so that we can spend our lives investing in what you show us to be important--the lives of others.

Easter Protest Hymns

Easter Protest Hymns--April 30, 2019

"When [the temple police] had brought [Peter and the other apostles], they had them stand before the council. The high priest questioned them, saying, 'We gave you strict orders not to teach in this name, yet here you have filled Jerusalem with your teaching and you are determined to bring this man's blood on us.' But Peter and the apostles answered, 'We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior that he might give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins. And we are witnesses of these things, and so is the Holy Spirit whom God has given to those who obey him'. When they heard these things, they were enraged and wanted to kill them." [Acts 5:27-33]

The emperor never likes to be told that he's naked, and the loud, powerful voices never liked to be exposed as just empty suits.

But these things need to be said and done--and in fact, to hear the apostle Peter tell it, this is exactly what the resurrection of Jesus means. Easter is about civil disobedience.

Seriously. If you don't believe me, go read the words of Peter again. He makes a direct connection to his refusal to do what the authorities have told him to do, and the resurrection of Jesus.

Why? How do those dots connect? Like this: it is the reality of the resurrection that assures Peter that he must resist the directions of the police, the governing council, and the decrees of the Respectable Religious Crowd. The fact that God raised Jesus from the dead is what reveals God to be the one with real power, while the bullying of the authorities is revealed to be hollow. So if (or rather, when) Peter has to choose between obeying the local rulers and obeying his commission from Jesus to speak and act as his witnesses, Peter knows whom he will choose to obey, and whom he will choose to disobey. The fact that Jesus is risen from the dead confirms that he is the one to listen to... even when that runs counter to the edicts, decrees, and bans of the powers of the day.

The resurrection is what tells Peter to obey the directions of his crucified rabbi--Jesus didn't stay dead! He must really be who he says he is, and this Jesus must really have the power that the authorities could only wish they had. And even though it sure looks like these authorities have all the force and leverage, Peter is convinced that standing with Jesus will turn out to be the right side of history. It is the right side of history, because it is where Jesus stands, after all.

We don't often sing about this dimension to Easter, do we? We don't hear many hymns that make the connection Peter does. I've yet to hear a verse that goes something like:

"Jesus Christ is risen today (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-le-lu-ia.) Tell the king we won't obey (Ah-ah-ah-ah-ah-le-lu-ia.)"

or a riff on this Easter classic like:

"Thine is the glory, risen conquering Son. We will not comply when Caesar says what must be done."

The reason I think we do not sing Easter protest hymns like that is that we are afraid. We are afraid of making the connection that Peter so clearly made, so early on in the life of the Christian church. Peter knew that there would be times when the decrees of the state were incompatible with the mandate of the risen Christ. For Peter (the Simon Peter, apostle whose confession became the rock on which the church was to be built), the resurrection of Jesus makes it clear that sometimes being a good Christian means being a bad citizen of the Empire, because only one should get your allegiance. And the empty tomb tells us where to put our chips.

And I'm not sure we are willing to take that leap, honestly. It is easier to believe that we can always keep a foot in both camps, and that following Jesus will always align with supporting Caesar. But that's a hollow lie--and to be honest, for a lot of the time we really know that already. Caesars and Respectable Religious Leaders alike, no matter how much they may try to cover themselves in the trappings of piety, have a way of revealing rather blatantly that they think they themselves, and they alone, should get our allegiance and loyalty, and they do not like the possibility that purposes of the living God just might run counter to their agendas.

Voices like Simon Peter's here, followed by a long line of witnesses like the martyrs of the early church, Martin Luther exiled and excommunicated for his stance of faith, Anabaptists burned at the stake for their convictions, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass for resisting our nation's laws regarding slavery, the ten Booms, the White Rose resistance, and the Dietrich Bonhoeffers during the Nazi reign in Europe, Dorothy Day and Martin Luther King, Jr., who both lived their faith in jail cells from time to time, and saints among us today who say "No" to the powers of the day, this whole chorus of faithful voices sings out to us the hymn we are too nervous to sing on Easter Sunday--that the resurrection means Jesus is Lord, and Caesar is not. They teach us that if Christ is our "Leader and Savior," then even if the Respectable Religious Crowd of the day scowls at us for going where Jesus leads us to go, we should be prepared to disobey those middle managers to go where Jesus himself compels us to go, walking in his footsteps since Jesus never sends us somewhere he isn't willing to go first.

The thing we are going to have to let simmer in our heads and hearts for today is this: even though much of American church life has declawed the Easter message to be a warm fuzzy feeling, made it a time to break out the trumpet lilies and pull out all the extra stops on the organ, or reduced the impact of Easter to be only about the afterlife, for the first followers of Jesus, it was the resurrection itself that pushed the early church to know when to say "No," to the powers of the day, and to be willing to suffer for it when they did.

Today, being Easter people might mean that we should be prepared to be unpopular, or to act against the decrees of Caesar, or be seen as unpatriotic. That's ok. It might just actually be a sign that the God in whom you put your faith is the real deal. In fact, that's how it's been since the beginning.

And if someone thinks that your dedication to following the way of Jesus looks subversive, maybe that just puts you in the company of Simon Peter and all the rest of those holy troublemakers following the crucified and risen Jesus.

Lord Jesus, guide us to follow after your nail-marked-but-risen footsteps, even when that means running against the grain of the powers of the day.

Kinds of Knowing

Kinds of Knowing--April 29, 2019

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Philippians 3:10-11]

There is a difference between knowing a person and knowing about a person. 

I might know several biographical facts about George Washington.  We could even sift out the mythic bits about chopping down cherry trees or not being able to tell a lie.  But even if I commit all the available facts about George Washington to memory, I still will not know the man himself.  The difference between knowing the actual person and just knowing facts about them is the difference between seeing pawprints in the dirt and spotting the actual tiger herself right in front of you with your own eyes.  

On a side note, other languages get this better than English does, and we just have to make do with the blunt tools English offers on this matter.  In Spanish, for example, there are two different verbs for knowing facts (saber) and knowing people (conocer); and in Hebrew, interestingly, the idea of "knowing" can go much further beyond memorizing facts, to include even sexual intimacy (as in, "Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore him a son...").  We tend to focus on "knowing" as mastering trivia, and to completely forget about a deeper "knowing" that is not objective and distant but participatory and relational.  That by itself is an insight worth the price of admission.

The difference between mere "knowing about" and genuine, deep "knowing" that is relational is much the same difference between singing a song and just owning the printed sheet music, or between tasting fresh summer cherries and being able to identify one in a photograph or give its Latin name for scientific classification.  The printed page of black lines and dots and the photograph of the red fruit are all well and good, but they were never meant to be the end of the line.  Music is meant to be played, sung, and heard.  Cherries are just begging to be tasted.  Well, humans are more than collections of random facts, too.  The facts of our personal stories, our likes and dislikes, our backgrounds and hopes, these are a part of who we are—but they are meant to be known in relationship, not merely memorized for a test.

It is true whether you are talking about your children, your parents, or your best friend. And it is true if we are talking about Christ.  To be a Christian is not merely to know facts about Jesus—it is to know Jesus himself.  Not fully, not completely, maybe, but truly.  Knowing Jesus may well involve learning things about him along the way. And like a relationship with any other person, we keep learning new things about Jesus because life keeps giving us more experience to learn about. But a friend is not a subject to be “mastered.” And simply memorizing a statement of Jesus-related trivia is not the ultimate goal.  Knowing Jesus himself—opening our lives up to his, and vice versa—is.  It is to participate in Christ's life, his death, and his resurrection.

Note that when Paul talks about all of this, he has the same desire:  “I want to know Christ,” he says—not “I want to know about Christ.”  If Paul would have been satisfied with knowing facts about Jesus, he just could have sat good old Simon Peter down for a talk and gotten biographical data from his brother James.  If it were just a matter of head knowledge on the topic of Jesus, Paul would have been happy enough with just reading a handful of third-person accounts in the Gospels.  

But he isn’t.  When Paul says he wants to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection,” he isn’t saying that he just needs to brush up on the facts of the Easter story.  He is talking about an experiential knowledge—Paul is saying he wants to experience the same kind of power that holds on beyond the grip of death, the way Christ himself came through.  Paul is saying he wants to continue in relationship with Jesus more and more fully so that he actually shares life with Christ himself.  

Sometimes we treat Jesus like a subject to be mastered, akin to geometry or grammar or American history, rather than a person with whom we relate.  And that messes up our whole picture.  The goal of study an academic subject is to become an expert in it. If you are a particle physicist, your job is to discover tinier and tinier pieces of the universe so that you can explain and diagram and chart how the whole thing works—in other words, so you can predict and dissect and even control it.  But when it comes to knowing people (not just knowing about people), the “goal”, if we can even talk that way, is the relationship itself. It is about opening our lives to one another and going through common experiences. (And that is why, to be truthful, the list of people you or I truly know is surely a lot shorter than the list of people we know about.) That cannot be reduced to a list of facts.

In other words, if you ask, “What is the point of knowing biographical information about George Washington?” the answer has to be something like, “To be an expert in history,” or “To be able to understand how he shaped world events,” or “So I can be a civics teacher.”  But if you ask, “What is the point of knowing… your best friend?” well, now things change.  There isn’t a “point,” not exactly—at least not something separable from the relationship itself.  The point of knowing him or her is to know that person.  Knowing about a person may be a stepping stone to get you somewhere else.  Actually knowing a person is its own goal, because the relationship itself has worth.

I wonder how it would change us if we really treated Jesus the same way—not as a subject to be mastered or a frog to be dissected as a means to an end, but as a person with whom we relate and interact now.  I wonder how it might humble us and embolden us at the same time to give up on trying to master Jesus, and instead simply to know him, more and more fully, just because he is worth knowing.  What if we spent today intentionally inviting conversation with Jesus (you know, actually treating him as though he is alive!), rather than thinking we learned all we needed to know about Jesus back in Sunday School or catechism classes or in last week’s sermon?  What would you do with your day, your free moments, your running inner thought life today, to deepen that relationship?  Maybe it’s worth a try today.  The relationship itself has worth.

Jesus, help us to know you more fully today, and to open our lives to yours.  And let that be enough.

God Without Grudges

The God Without Grudges--April 26, 2019

[Peter said:] Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,
"He was not abandoned to Hades,
nor did his flesh experience corruption.”
This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses. Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear. For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,
“The Lord said to my Lord,
‘Sit at my right hand,
until I make your enemies your footstool.’ ”

Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.’ [Acts 2:31-36]

Jesus was not a sore winner. 

Or maybe more to the point, Jesus is not a sore winner. 

Peter sees Jesus' resurrection as this huge victory over death, over the shame of being rejected, over all the enemies of God, and I think we can say even over the power and way of Rome, and the sway of the Respectable Religious Leaders over the crowds. Jesus has been vindicated by the resurrection—the one who was regarded as godforsaken is now reigning as "both Lord and Messiah" (and those are not terms taken lightly by first century Judaism—the word Lord in the Greek here is the word used to translate the holy name of God YHWH; to call Jesus "Lord" in this way hints at Jesus being everything that the God of Israel is and ever was). The one who was utterly defeated—and not even in a noble way (as we sometimes think of death on a battlefield), but as Public Enemy No. 1 by means of tortuous capital punishment—is now triumphant over those powers that put him to death between two shady bandits.

But to hear Peter tell it, Jesus is not a sore winner about this—in fact, the last sentence of this speech of Peter's opens up the invitation of being a part of Jesus' movement even to those who are responsible directly for Jesus' death (which, if we are honest, is us, too). It's not just that God has vindicated Jesus' reputation and now Jesus is going to get back at those who are responsible for his death. This is the same Jesus whose last words, according to Luke, are a prayer of forgiveness for those who have crucified him because they didn't understand what they were doing, and a word of mercy to one of those shady bandits who pleads with him on the cross. Jesus has no vendetta to pursue—instead, the very crowds who played into the drama that got Jesus killed are now being invited to turn and become part of the resurrection movement. They are invited to share in the same Spirit that was poured out on Jesus when he came up out of the river, the same Spirit that blew through the roomful of haggard and confused disciples earlier on this day of Pentecost.

That means that the first public sermon preached about Jesus' resurrection—at least the way Luke tells the story—is preached to people who had acted as enemies of Jesus. The enemies are welcomed in to be reconciled—they are not told that they missed their chance to get "in" with him when Jesus died. The criminal on the cross was not too late, and neither are these crowds on the other side of Jesus' death—they are offered reconciliation with this Jesus who is now alive again. 

Maybe this shouldn't surprise us, since it's Jesus who had been preaching and teaching about the love of enemies. It just turns out now that even when he has the opportunity to get even, Jesus puts his money where his mouth has always been. It's easy to talk about loving enemies when you don't have the power or opportunity to get back at those who wish you ill—one could say that's just rationalizing a position of weakness you can't do anything about. But for Jesus to love enemies when he has the option not to be kind to them is radical. Jesus doesn't just invite followers when he's in need of followers—even after being raised from the dead, and even though he clearly has no need of others' approval anymore (if he's at God's right hand, that's enough of a stamp of approval for anyone, right?), Jesus is still holding out open arms when it's clear he gets nothing out of the deal. That is the mark of the community of Jesus' followers from the beginning. It is what allowed any of us to belong in this community, too, given that the Scriptures tell us our sin has all played a hand in the death of Jesus. We—you and me, as well as those crowds in Jerusalem listening to Peter, as well as people still hotly opposed to this Jesus—have all been "enemies of God" who have nonetheless been welcomed into the community of Jesus.

Now, timeth out here for a moment—let's hold Jesus' refusal to get revenge on those responsible for his death (a rare opportunity indeed--literature is full of people who seek vengeance for the death of a loved one or friend, but who else but Jesus has the opportunity to get even with his own killers?) alongside the signs of our own culture's thinking. This gracious invitation completely flies in the face of the conventional thinking in our whole culture. Conventional wisdom says you use your moment of strength to get back at those who have done you wrong, right? Don't get mad, get even. Even good old common sense tells us not to risk being burned again by people who have wronged us.  The usual thinking of the day says that you are supposed to leverage your moments of advantage to squash your opponents--not to reconcile with them and invite them to belong with you.

And yet, right into that kind of world with that kind of common sense comes the message of the risen Jesus—the message that not only has Jesus been raised from the dead, but is using this opportunity not to get even but to welcome in even those who had been enemies and opponents of Jesus, even the crowds that got swept up in the violence, even the voices that so easily found themselves shouting "Crucify." The same Jesus whom we crucified is alive again, and is yet inviting us to be a part of his movement. Jesus is not looking to get anything out of the deal—just to hold out open arms, even if they now have nail marks on them. That's the kind of invitation that should turn some heads out there in the world if we are willing to speak it. What would it look like for us to make that kind of invitation today?

Risen One, You have this strange way of taking moments that seem weak to us and showing your greatest strength in them. Your offer from a cross of mercy and belonging echoes with dignity and authority, and your offer on the empty-tomb side of that cross of mercy and belonging surprises us who expect you to get even, or at least to keep your distance from us. And yet you have brought us in, enemies welcomed the whole lot of us, and called us to pass along that same welcome. Give us the boldness to do it today, and to speak the strange sounding message that you are not looking to get payback, but to hand out a free gift.

A Walk in the Rain (Poem+Picture--04-25-19)

"A Walk in the Rain"--April 25, 2019

A walk in the rain with my 

six-year-old daughter

reminded me that

just as you can't

outrun your shadow

or leave your reflection

behind,

neither can any of us

help but be surrounded

by the One who,

like the rain,

is always pouring himself out,

that life might spring up

all around.

#seeChristhere

"See You in the Morning" (Poem+Picture--April 24, 2019)

Poem +Picture--April 24, 2019

Tonight the setting sun

waved five pink fingers in the west,

like a loved one waving goodbye,

I thought.

Then I stopped and corrected myself:

The sun will be back at dawn,

entering from the east.

This is not goodbye,

not for the sun, nor loved ones,

but See you in the morning.

#seeChristhere

Easter Is For Failures

Easter Is For Failures--April 25, 2019

After [he appeared to his followers in Jerusalem,] Jesus showed himself again to the disciples by the Sea of Tiberias; and he showed himself in this way. Gathered there together were Simon Peter, Thomas called the Twin, Nathanael of Cana in Galilee, the sons of Zebedee, and two others of his disciples. Simon Peter said to them, “I am going fishing.” They said to him, “We will go with you.” They went out and got into the boat, but that night they caught nothing. Just after daybreak, Jesus stood on the beach; but the disciples did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to them, “Children, you have no fish, have you?” They answered him, “No.” He said to them, “Cast the net to the right side of the boat, and you will find some.” So they cast it, and now they were not able to haul it in because there were so many fish. That disciple whom Jesus loved said to Peter, “It is the Lord!” When Simon Peter heard that it was the Lord, he put on some clothes, for he was naked, and jumped into the sea. [John 21:1-7]

Ted Turner didn't know how right he was.

The celebrated media mogul once famously offered his opinion that "Christianity is a religion for losers." He intended that as a criticism, of course. But the more I think about it, the clearer it seems that there is no greater compliment to the Christian faith than to say it is for losers--losers like me, losers like you, and a whole world full of mess-ups, failures, letdowns, and disappointments. The Good News, particularly of the resurrection, is that the Risen Jesus is "for" all of us, and Easter is, of all things, for failures.

That's definitely what Simon Peter needed to know at this point of his story. After Jesus had risen from the dead, ol' Pete had to come to terms with the fact that the last thing he had said of his rabbi and Lord was, "I do not know him." He had boasted that his faith would never give out--and then he blew it, big time. He failed at being loyal. He failed at being faithful. He failed at being there for Jesus.

So Pete decided to go back to what he used to be good at--fishing. That had been his job, after all, before he had gotten summoned by Jesus to follow. And he had been at least half-decent at that job, enough to have his own business with his brother. But now, even his actual trade seemed too hard for him. After running away from Jesus because he couldn't shake the ghosts of his failure on the night of Jesus betrayal, Peter now found himself unable to catch a thing after fishing all night. This was one of those moments where it felt like the universe was rubbing it in his face how he had blown it. Everywhere he turned, he felt like a disappointment.

And then Jesus shows up. Alive. And he isn't upset. He doesn't carry a whiff of bitterness or resentment, and he doesn't seem to be carrying any grudges, either. All Jesus brings are open, nail-marked hands, and the invitation for breakfast and a new beginning.

If you know this story from the last chapter of John's Gospel, you know that Jesus and Simon Peter will eventually get to have their own heart-to-heart chat. And you know that eventually Jesus will give Pete the chance to affirm his faith and affirm his love for Jesus, three times in fact: once for each time Peter had denied even knowing Jesus. But even before we get to that moment, notice here that Jesus shows up even while Peter has nothing to offer but his failures. Jesus doesn't wait until Peter catches fish successfully on his own, or until Peter takes the initiative to apologize, or repent, or deny his denials. The risen Jesus meets Peter while he has nothing more to offer but his own failures... and he accepts him just like that. The resurrection makes possible this embrace--Peter needed Jesus to rise from the dead, not simply so he could hope for an afterlife, but so that he could know he was loved even in the midst of his failures in this life, too.

I cannot tell you how much I need that assurance, too. Easter is for failures, yes: failures like Simon Peter, and failures like me. Like you, too, and like someone you know but who probably isn't advertising it, either.

Sometimes we can't shake the ghosts of our past mess-ups. The friend who was counting on me and that I left hanging. The person I should have reached out to, or cared for better, who then walks away or disappears when I didn't do enough. The tender soul who needed me to speak up for them, when I was too afraid to take the risk. The new face who had been burned by religious people before who was hoping to hear a sincere word of welcome, but turned away because I wasn't courageous enough to say, "You are beloved," loud and clear. The kids who feel hurt because I was short-tempered. The hurting heart that needed the right words from me, and I blew it. The list could go on forever.

We are, all of us, in Simon Peter's place--having failed as followers of Jesus and wondering if there's any way he can keep putting up with us (we assume that Jesus is like some pompous, petty boss who might fire us on a whim). And in those moments, we are vulnerable, exposed, naked even--and afraid of what will happen when we do have to face Jesus over our failures.

But here's the thing--just like he does with Simon Peter, the risen Jesus is for us, even at the points where we feel we have let him down. Even at the moments we most feel like failures, Jesus doesn't come with a scowl and a wagging finger, but with those same arms outstretched to us in love. For Peter, the resurrection meant that even his biggest failure couldn't ultimately keep Jesus down; and the same is true for us. For whatever moments we wish we had over again, whatever opportunities we squandered, whatever bridges we had burned, and whatever times we just plain failed, Jesus hasn't given up on us. And he won't.

Good news today, then, for all of us--losers, mess-ups, disappointments, and failures--Jesus is for us. He always has been. And he always will be.

Chances are, there is someone else you know who needs to hear that word today, too.

Lord Jesus, keep on meeting us where we are, as we are, and speak your risen new beginning to us. We need it.

Monday's Coming, Too

Monday's Coming, Too--April 24, 2019

"When it was evening on the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you'." [John 20:19]

There was Easter Sunday... but Monday was coming, too.  And Tuesday and Wednesday and who knows how many days to come after that.

And because of that uncertainty, you can understand why the disciples (who had all been big talkers just a few days before, insisting to Jesus that they would never abandon him, even in the face of death!) would lock themselves inside.  They were afraid of what came next.  They were afraid of the unknown.  And they were afraid of who might come and get them now that Jesus, their rabbi, had been executed by the state.  

And that's not a misplaced fear--the same Respectable Religious Leaders would likely be looking to silence any more talk of messiahs, and the Empire would want to uproot any other would-be "king of the Jews" figures before the movement went to seed.  We might scoff at the disciples for being so down in the dumps or fearful on the very evening of the resurrection, but they're not wrong about the danger.

And Jesus doesn't pretend they are past the trouble.

When the risen Jesus appears on the scene--crashing their pitiable party despite the locked doors--and he says, "Peace be with you," his greeting does not erase the danger waiting outside.  Jesus, after all, was a troublemaker constantly agitating the religious and political Big Deals of the day--one would only expect him to keep being a troublemaker on the other side of the cross and empty tomb.  But we do need to say it out loud: Easter does not mean the end of danger, nor of death, for Jesus and his people.  So whatever the "peace" he brings really looks like, it doesn't mean a numbness that removes us from pain or persecution.  Jesus' kind of peace is not an exemption from danger or trouble, and that doesn't change once the organ breaks into the opening strains of "Jesus Christ Is Risen Today."

We should be honest about that, especially because of what happened in Sri Lanka on Easter Sunday.  As I write, the death toll from some eight coordinated terrorist attacks across the island of Sri Lanka has climbed above three hundred.  And the developing news suggests that these attacks on churches and hotels were meant to target Christians at worship as part of an organized plot by terrorists who had pledged their allegiance to ISIS.  Making the attack even more twisted is the notion gaining traction that these attacks were carried out as "revenge" for the mosque shootings in New Zealand last month. (I know, that makes no sense, since the people of Sri Lanka had nothing to do with the events in Christchurch, and the perpetrator of the attacks in Christchurch had no connection to Christianity, either. But I do not pretend to be able to understand the logic of anyone who commits such mass violence in any case.)

But regardless of the twisted reasoning behind these atrocities in Sri Lanka, what is unmistakable is that life on this side of Easter is still marked with suffering and loss, even for the followers of Jesus.  No, let me correct that:  especially for the followers of Jesus. The resurrection of Jesus does not wipe away the sources of danger and violence in the world, and Jesus has never given the hint or suggestion that it did.  To be a Christian is not to be spared suffering--it is to be given the faithful imagination to suffer differently, in ways that can creatively transform terror into opportunities for truth-telling witness.  And the peace that the risen Jesus brings is not an escape hatch that takes us off to heaven while the rest of the world comes unglued, but rather a gracious composure that allows us to remain in the midst of that world, especially in the times when it feels like the center cannot hold.

You'll notice, then, that when the risen Jesus shows up among the fearful disciples on that Easter evening, he doesn't feed them false hope by asserting, "Nothing's gonna hurt you..." like the song in Sweeney Todd.  No, Jesus speaks peace in the midst of the real danger, not as a means of avoiding danger.  And any version of the Christian faith that suggests that Christians will or should be spared the sufferings of a terror-filled world is really only peddling so much snake-oil. 

That also means--and I hate that I have to say this, but I sense that I do--that it is NOT acceptable to turn this terrible attack in Sri Lanka into a rallying cry for vengeance or violence in return.  Even if it is true that these terrible acts were aimed specifically and explicitly at followers of Jesus, our calling is never to return evil for evil, and that calling comes from Jesus himself.  If anything, the perpetrators of the attacks in Sri Lanka want  to try to provoke a violent response.  If we can be goaded into sinking to their level, they'll feel justified in more and more violence. 

But the resurrection is not a revenge story, and Jesus explicitly does not pursue a vendetta against his murderers when he walks out of the garden tomb on that first Easter Sunday.  In life, in death, and in resurrection, Jesus brings the kind of peace that does not lose its wits even when the world around is on fire.  The word to the disciples on that first Easter evening, as the disciples feared what awaited them on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and beyond, is the same word Jesus speaks to us on this day, too: peace... the kind that keeps our heads on straight when hatred and danger and evil are all around us.

How will we answer when terrible things are done that target sisters and brothers of ours?  With the love that Christ's peace makes possible.  With solidarity and support for those who are left grieving across Sri Lanka.  With a refusal to feed the cycle of violence and a refusal to let hatred take root in our hearts.  And with a refusal to turn this into a reason to lash out at whole groups of people out of some desire to lump them all together with the perpetrators.  That is what the risen Christ's kind of peace will look like in this moment.

Dare we hear, believe, and receive what the living Jesus speaks into our locked hearts?  Dare we let Jesus speak peace into this day, knowing that after Sunday, we will need that peace for the Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays that follow?

Lord Jesus, speak to us your peace.  We need it here, in the midst of our troubled world and hearts.

Mostly Dead and All Dead

Mostly Dead and All Dead—April 23, 2019

“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.

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.  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 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.”  And it cannot 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.

What we need is more than a spiritual vitamin, a recitation of rules, or a handful of helpful life-principles from Jesus-as-life-coach.  What we need is nothing short of resurrection.

And that is precisely what we have been given--we who once were dead, have been brought to life again by God, just as the dead body of Jesus was raised and lives forever now.

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.

April 19, 2019

"When Jesus had received the wine, he said, 'It is finished.' 

Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." [John 19:30]

It is finished.

Sometimes there are no other words necessary.

Thank you, Jesus of Nazareth.

Thank you for this.

More Than Coincidence

“More Than Coincidence”—April 18, 2019

"Then Jesus gave a loud cry and breathed his last.  And the curtain of the temple was torn in two, from top to bottom." [Mark 15:37-38]

There are coincidences in life, and then there are moments of intentional connection. 

When you have been humming a song all day that has gotten stuck in your head, and then you hear it on the radio later on (presuming you didn’t call in to the station and request it), that is a coincidence.  If you have a song stuck in your head all day because you were playing it over and over again earlier this morning, the logical connection is right there—you were the cause of the connection.

If you work in an office and someone else comes to work wearing the very same outfit as you, that is a coincidence (one that may take you a while to live down, frankly). If you work in a place that requires uniforms, like the prison or parts of the hospital, it’s not a surprise that your coworkers dressed like you today—it’s a statement of official policy.

If your close friend is moving away across the country, and you come home to discover the light bulb in the kitchen ceiling light has gone out, you might mentally connect the two as part of one big conspiracy the universe is attempting in order to ruin your day, but no, it’s a coincidence.  If your close friend is moving away, and in your frustration and sadness, you start throwing things or kick the wall and leave a mark, it’s not a coincidence—it’s your own chosen action that leaves the mark.  In fact, in a way, the scuff mark on the wall from your foot is, in a sense, your color commentary on how you feel about losing your friend.  It’s much more than coincidence—it’s a reflection of how you feel at that moment.

So, what about this scene in the Gospel?  Jesus dies—he breathes his last—and meanwhile the temple curtain is torn in two, from top to bottom.  Is that a coincidence, or is there an intentional connection between the two?

We might want to read it as a coincidence at first—to say, “Look, there must have been something going on with Jesus that made him important; all these strange things happened around him when he died, all these odd coincidences.” Matthew, after all, says that there was an earthquake when Jesus died, too.  And we heard just a few verses earlier that the sky grew dark for three hours when Jesus was on the cross.  We could chalk up the temple curtain to being one of a number of strange coincidences, shrug our shoulders about it, and go on our way without much of a second thought—the way you do when the song you’ve been humming comes on the radio, or the light bulb is out in the kitchen on an already bad day.

But all of that coincidence talk assumes that God is not behind the scenes of this story, giving us a sort of color commentary on what is happening. And we have been taught, over the course of this whole Gospel, that the living God feels free to step out onto the stage to help us understand what is going on—the voice from the heavens, the fulfillments of the prophets’ words, the miracles. These things tell us there more going on than mere coincidence. It’s true that sometimes two random events just happen to align in ways that make us scratch our heads.  But then again, it’s also true that sometimes, like uniforms at work, the commonalities are statements of official policy.

That’s what’s going on here at Jesus’ death.  The tearing of the temple curtain is, you could say, God’s official statement about what is going on in Jesus’ death.  The temple curtain, you might recall, was not a mere window treatment—it was a visual divider in the temple between the “Most Holy Place” in the temple, where God symbolically “dwelt,” and the rest of the temple facility, where people were allowed to come and go.  Only the high priest could enter the temple’s “Most Holy Place,” and even then, only on one day a year—the Day of Atonement—to offer a specific sacrifice.  But other than that, there was an unquestionable boundary between God (behind the curtain) and humanity (the rest of the temple), a dividing line that was not to be crossed, because God is so holy and awesome, and we are so sinful and small.  And just to make sure that the message was not lost on an observer at the Temple, the curtain was embroidered with images of the sun, moon, and stars in the sky—as if to say that there is a universe of difference between a transcendent God and us ordinary humans.

So, now let’s put these facts together.  At Jesus’ death, the curtain of the temple—which divided a holy and infinite God from sinful, finite humans—is torn in two… “from top to bottom.”  One hundred percent ripped in half, and not from ground level up, but from the ceiling down.  Coincidence… or God’s commentary on what is going on?

You almost can’t escape the conclusion—this is God telling us what Jesus’ death is all about: at Jesus’ death, the boundary between God and humans is permanently torn down.  Jesus’ dying on the cross has brought down the wall, has torn the heavens open, in a way that can’t be patched up or stitched together.  Jesus’ death has broken down the divider between a holy God and unholy us, once and for all.  The tearing of the curtain isn’t a coincidence any more than the scuff on the wall from your frustrated kicking is—it is a visual expression of what has happened to you.  God is giving us an object lesson, you could say—that when we could not climb our way “up” across the infinite expanse of the universe to God, God has come “down” to us, tearing apart every obstacle to come to be with us.  For whatever else the cross means, it at least means that.

Knowing that means two things for the day ahead: first, the story of Jesus was not the story of a bunch of interesting but random coincidences—it is the story of God consciously and intentionally speaking to us, with purpose, with direction, with meaning.  And second, it means that there are no lengths God is not willing to go to, no boundaries God will not cross, even to death and back, to come to be with us.  The tearing of the curtain assures us: that is a statement of official, divine, policy.

Lord God, give us eyes to recognize the messages you have sent and are sending, and grant us to trust your fierce love that crosses boundaries to be with us.