Christ No Matter What

“Christ No Matter What”—May 31, 2019

"For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain." [Philippians 1:21]

Ten little words in English, but they sure are powerful.

Surprising, too, maybe. And against the grain of our usual thinking. But powerful ones.

Let’s be clear, though: Paul isn’t just mismatching opposites here. He isn’t just saying “black is white and up is down” to sound profound like some caricature of a zen master. There is an underlying logic, even if it sounds like the opposite of common sense at first.

Let’s start at the end: dying is gain. At first blush, that doesn’t sound right at all! Dying is sorrowful. Dying is heartbreaking. Dying means pain and separation. And loss. Certainly not “gain.” Think of how we even talk about death: “He lost his battle with cancer,” we say, or the doctor comes into the family waiting room and says, “We tried everything we could, but we lost her and couldn’t get her back.” Death doesn’t seem like it’s about gaining anything.

At first, we might want to be angry at Paul for saying such a thing. How insensitive, Paul! Don’t you know that kind of remark is going to rub salt in the wounds for anyone who has felt the sting of grief? How can you so glibly say that “dying is gain” when we, who have lived through the deaths of people we have loved continue to feel such loss over it?

Ah, but Paul has lost people, too. Paul knows that death involves loss. Paul has wept over friends and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who have died. Even Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus—mere moments before he was to raise him from the dead! But, of course, all the pain of that loss is really for us who remain alive. We feel the pain of loss. We feel the empty place in our heats. But Paul is talking about himself here—he is saying, “When the time comes for me to die, it will really be for my gain!” Death is loss, but it is also the end of loss—it is the point at which there is nothing left to lose. And Janis Joplin is not too far off the mark on her refrain that “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Paul got that and said as much 1,900 years before “Me and Bobby McGee” hit the charts.

For someone whose life is hid in Christ, dying means freedom. It means release from the weights we carry, the burdens of life, and the responsibilities we shoulder. For us who have found our hope in Christ, death really is gain, because it means death can’t do anything more to us—the power of sickness, of separation, of sorrow, they are all broken, and we will find ourselves in the immediate presence of the God whose love was so strong as to face death for us, too. If we did not have that hope of a God who will not lose his grip on us, then sure, death would be nothing but loss—the ultimate loss of our grip on ourselves. But because of Christ, death becomes not a stopping point, but a gateway. It doesn’t mean we seek out death, of course. And of course, the world may not understand it, but for us who have found our hope in Christ, dying really does mean gain.  We still grieve... but the fact that Christ is alive and risen means we grieve differently.

But now, here’s the thing that gets me about Paul’s powerful little sentence in Philippians 1:21—the first half of his little pair is not “To live is loss.” You might expect that, given the way it ends with “dying is gain.” That would have had a nice rhythm to it, a nice balance and symmetry. We might expect Paul to say something like, “Since dying is really about gaining eternity, this life is awful and miserable by comparison,” or something like Thomas Hobbes’ famous decree: “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” And to be truthful, sometimes Christians do get sloppy and say things like that—that because we’re going to heaven one day, this life is just a waste, or just a practice, or just a matter of putting your time in until the streets of gold and gates of pearl.

But Paul doesn’t say that. In fact he goes out of his way and breaks what would have been a neat and tidying pairing in order not to say that. Instead of saying, that “living is loss and dying is gain,” he says that living is "Christ." Now, what on earth could he mean?

Well, he’s really only saying the other half of what allows him to say that “dying is gain.” Dying is only gain for us because we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection. Death’s power is broken over us because we have been united with Jesus’ death and his new risen life. So when we die, our lives are still held in Christ, who never dropped us or loosened his grip on us even for a moment. And when we continue to live, we are still living with Christ alive in us. So at every moment, even right now as you read and as I write, Christ dwells in us, and living this moment is a matter of letting Christ live more and more fully in us.

But see how that changes our perspective on this life. It’s not meant to be tragic, dire drudgery. It’s not meant to be just putting our time in or paying our dues. It’s Christ himself, active in us, equipping us, recharging us, renewing us, and working through us. It means that every moment of this life, and every minute of this day is filled with divine purpose and beauty. Yes, dying may be gain—the gain of freedom from having to carry the weights of this life. But for us, living is not drudgery, either—it is the privilege of being allowed to have Christ live and move and act through us. And that, if you ask me, is some pretty powerful stuff in its own right.

So today, no matter what happens in this day, there is good news to be spoken. If we live through this day, Christ will be present in us, working through us and filling us to fullness, because we are indwelt by Christ. And if it should happen that you or I breathe our last on this day, we know that there is nothing death can do to us any longer, and its power is broken, because we are held by Christ.

On the one hand, filled by Christ. On the other, held by Christ. No matter what today, you and I will be brought right into the very presence of Christ. Let us have our eyes open.

Lord Jesus, we give you this and all that will happen in it. Grant us to see the gain for us no matter what is in store in this day.

Waiting in the Dark

"Waiting in the Dark"--May 30, 2019

"When the dissension became violent, the tribune, fearing that they would tear Paul to pieces, ordered the soldiers to go down, take him by force, and bring him into the barracks. That night the Lord stood near him and said, 'Keep up your courage! For just as you have testified for me in Jerusalem, so you must bear witness also in Rome'.” [Acts 23:10-11]

What do you suppose Jesus does with his time... you know, now that he is risen from the dead and has "ascended into heaven," as the ancient creeds put it?  He's alive again, but what's on his calendar these days?

He's busy showing up to be present with us, taking our side, standing near us.  

To say that Christ is alive again is really only part of Easter's good news--the rest of it is the promise that he is now able to show up... anywhere, perhaps right in the moments we feel most alone and abandoned by everybody else.

Jesus is risen and alive... so that he can keep showing up for the people waiting in the dark.  You know, people like us.

Not to "fix" or change the situation, perhaps. Not to snap a divine finger and beam us out of trouble or heartache or desperation.  But, like the friend who shows up in the hospital waiting room with you, just to be there with you because you need them to show up.

That's certainly how Paul experiences the risen presence of Jesus.

In this short night time scene, Jesus is quintessential Jesus, which is to say that the way Jesus acts in this story is not only consistent with who Jesus is throughout the gospels, but also who we can expect Jesus to be among the disciple-community today, too. And the primary thing about Jesus in this story is that he shows up. Jesus is present with his people, in this case with Paul, just as Jesus had promised to be. In the face of danger and trouble, Jesus does not stand off at a distance from heaven and sit on his hands--he "stands near" Paul, even in the night, and even when he is otherwise utterly alone.

Sure, you can argue that Jesus is really appearing to Paul in a dream, or that this is some kind of communication from heaven to earth. We could debate the metaphysics of how we can even talk about the "where" of Jesus post-resurrection and post-ascension. And we could debate whether or not Jesus himself should bother appearing to people when he has no trouble sending angels to be his couriers on other occasions, even in the book of Acts. Obviously when we start talking about God and location our usual, ordinary language begins to fall apart--clearly Jesus did not have to catch a cab, get an Uber, or hitch-hike to make an appearance in Paul's room in the barracks. And it is hard to say precisely what we mean when we talk about Jesus "showing up" in some place in particular if we also believe that somehow Christ is present everywhere in the same way that God is omnipresent.

Okay, okay, so it might not be difficult for Jesus to appear to Paul in the middle of the night here. But all of that seems to miss the point of Luke's language here: however we conceive of it happening, Jesus stood near Paul. Jesus showed up.  On all Paul's other nights, and all his other days, we could say in some sense that Jesus was with him, but on this night in particular, in the face of danger and in the deathly places where Paul finds himself, Jesus chooses to make himself especially present to Paul there. In the dark place, in the fearful place, in "the valley of the shadow of death," Jesus comes and stands near Paul. 

That is a curious thing to say about Jesus after his resurrection, in particular. We are used to saying in the creeds that Jesus is "seated" at the right hand of the Father--and that is usually our metaphorical way of saying his work is accomplished and completed, and that Jesus now reigns in communion with the Father once and for all. But this same Jesus that we like to imagine is "seated" somewhere for all time, this same risen and living Jesus comes and stands with Paul, coming close to where the troubled saint is waiting in darkness and desperation, rather than watching from a comfortable distance in a heavenly easy chair.   

That is the essential promise of Jesus throughout the Gospels--as Matthew puts it, "Lo, I am with you always, even until the end of the age" (Matt. 28:20). Those are comforting words--if we truly believe that Jesus will keep that promise. When Jesus speaks them at the end of Matthew, all we can go on is faith there, since that is the last sentence of Matthew's Gospel--there are no follow-up stories to show how Jesus either did or did not keep his promise. But here in Acts, even from the hand of a different author, we get a picture of Jesus keeping that promise of presence. Jesus, who may well have been "with" Paul all along, removes whatever veil had kept Paul from seeing him in all his other moments, and comes to "stand near" Paul. Jesus shows up--that is both a sign that Jesus keeps his promise, and that Jesus can be counted on to stand with us, too, when we are taken into the deathly places. Jesus does not keep us at arm's length and say, "I've already suffered my share, so why should I come to endure your suffering, too, alongside you?" Rather, even the Jesus who has earned the right, so to speak, to remain seated in the heavenly throne room waives that right so that he can come and stand with us. Jesus shows up, as promised, which is good news not only for Paul in his difficult dark night, but as a sign that Jesus will keep this promise for us, too.

We need to know that, because the second half of this scene flows from Jesus' promise to our mission. And the way Jesus puts it to Paul is really a nutshell-synopsis of the mission put to us as well: we will be, like Paul, witnesses. That should sound familiar to us, because Jesus' recurring direction to his disciples is, "You will be my witnesses." That is the sum total of what we do as Christians in the world--we are pointer people. We are not commissioned to "win souls" or to "save the world" or to fix all the world's ills--and it would be the epitome of arrogance to think that such things were in our power. Rather, we are people who point to Jesus, who has in fact been sent "that the world might be saved" and who has in fact come to bring the Kingdom of God. We will be people, like Paul, who simply point--in our words and in our actions, so that the watching world (and fellow sisters and brothers in Christ, too) will get a glimpse of what Jesus and his Kingdom are like by seeing us. Our lives will be enacted parables of the Kingdom, things that point to the reality that Jesus really does and is. No more, no less. We are witnesses. The location may change, and the means of doing it may change--not every moment calls for a sermon to be preached--but the mission remains the same. We will be people who point to Jesus.

Of course, even that mission itself brings a word of assurance to us, because we can only point at Jesus if Jesus himself is present among us--otherwise, our fingers are aiming at empty space. Our very act of witness, intended for the watching world to see where Christ is moving among us and so to be led in faith, comes back around to be an encouragement for us. Every time, every way, we point to the ongoing presence of Jesus--in outreach, in the hospital waiting room accompanying the friend who needed you to show up, in the feeding of the hungry, in the welcome of the stranger, in the speaking of Jesus' name--we are reminded, too, that this Jesus to whom we witness is keeping his promise and showing up, too--even in the dark. So, today, out into the world we go...and out in the world we will meet Jesus...

O Lord, be your faithful self today and give us the eyes to see you among us, so that we can point to you as your witnesses, wherever you lead us.

Happy for Jesus

Happy for Jesus--May 29, 2019

[Jesus said:] "I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and will remind you of all that I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid. You heard me say to you, 'I am going away, and I am coming to you.' If you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father, because the Father is greater than I. And now I have told you this before it occurs, so that when it does occur, you may believe." [John 14:25-29]

It is hard to be happy for someone who is leaving--even Jesus.  Maybe especially Jesus.

It is hard, let's just be honest, to be happy over someone's departure if that person is important to you--not because you are cruel and don't wish good things for them, and not because their welfare doesn't matter to you, but exactly because they are important to you.  And selfishly (which, in this case, is a part of being honest with myself), we are fearful of losing the presence that has meant so much for us.  It's like that lyric of Fleetwood Mac: "I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you."  

That means we may be more easily able to wish someone well on new adventures if they weren't that close to us in the first place, because they won't leave so much of an empty place in our lives when they are gone--whether they are leaving geographically, or just withdrawing the ways they had been involved in our lives in the past.  Doubly hard is when someone who has been important to you chooses to leave--not because their job made them move across country, or because they needed to go and take care of an ailing relative, or something like that.  It is hard to have someone say to you, "Can't you be happy for me that I'm going onto this new, good thing?" because that carries the double edge of losing the closeness that had been there, as well as sounding like the other person isn't all that bothered about leaving, because they seem excited rather than sorrowful.

And that's just hard to bear--it causes a triple wound: the pain of losing someone you valued, the pain of feeling like you weren't as important to them as they were you (if they are leaving you behind for something else), and the pain of not having that person to lean on to process the first two.  It's hard to be happy, despite our best intentions to be good and kind and polite people in this world, when someone important in your life is leaving that vital space they occupied.

Even if the other person we are asked to be happy for... is Jesus.

I'll admit, this passage from John's gospel is always hard for me, for exactly these reasons.  Jesus tells his closest friends that he is "going away" and that they should be happy for him.  They should "rejoice," he says--and I can't help but hear a layer of guilt added (this may be my issue, rather than Jesus', I'll admit) when he adds in, "if you loved me, you would rejoice that I am going to the Father."

That hits all my buttons.  For one, it sounds like Jesus, on whom the disciples had built their lives and for whom they left their jobs, families, and reputations, is now just up and leaving them.  They had dropped their fish nets at the mere calling of their names, and now the one who had called them says he's moving on.  That's hard.

Second, Jesus is excited--and understandably so--to be returning to the Father.  That means he isn't just talking about being separated by death.  He isn't just saying to the disciples, "You know I wish I didn't have to leave, but this cross thing is unavoidable," but it sure sounds like he is saying, "I am tired of being separated from the Father, and there is something I can get from closeness with the Father that I can't get from you." Again that is certainly true: the Source of All Life and the Ground of All Being is surely more fun to hang around than a bunch of dense and barely literate fishermen.  But you know it can't help but feel to Peter, James, John, and the rest like they are chopped liver, and like Jesus had just been slumming it with them as a placeholder until he could get back up into his old spot at the right hand of God in heaven.  I know, I know: Jesus doesn't mean it that way--but it sure must feel that way to the disciples, who had done their very best to give everything they had to Jesus.  

And third of all, to cap it all off, now it sounds like Jesus himself won't be there with them to help them through this loss... because he's the one they're losing.  He had been there with them through lots of other learnings, and he had helped them through.  He helped them understand and adjust when they saw that God loved the outcast and the notorious stinkers as much as the Respectable Religious people, even when that blew their minds. He helped them readjust their worldview when he told them that God's way of saving the world wasn't to kill the Romans but to die at their hands, even though that idea turned their world upside down.  He had helped them understand that death wasn't the worst thing in the world, because he had the power to give life--even though they had learned to be afraid of death.  And through all of those lessons, it had been Jesus who helped his disciples to cope--it was less scary to face whatever the new thing was that he was teaching them, because he was there as the constant.

Now, it sounds not only like Jesus is going, but wants his supposedly closest friends to be happy for him that he is leaving them behind because he's got a better thing going with the Father in heaven than to stay with them.

And yeah, I've got to be honest, it's kind of hard to be happy for Jesus in this moment--even though I wasn't there with those disciples in the upper room that night, and even though I hadn't walked all those years with Jesus, sharing joys and sorrows and unexpected changes in life like they all did.  It's hard for me every year when our church's rhythm of storytelling that we call the lectionary gives us the story of Jesus' ascension into heaven, because, well, because it's hard for me not to hear it as the story of when Jesus left us for a better gig, a cushier spot, or a better relationship.  It's hard to hear Jesus say, "If you loved me, you would be happy for me," and not have it sound like the "It's not you, it's me," speech you get right before being dumped.  And that makes it hard to be happy, even to be happy for Jesus.

I read somewhere a while ago that the reason we human beings fear change so much in our lives is that we are really afraid of loss, and I think that is very much what is going on here, both for the disciples in the upper room, and for me as I read this story.  We are afraid of losing this One on whom we have built our lives, and it is hard to be asked to be happy about losing that relationship.  That explains, too, why the disciples act in such strange ways shortly after this conversation--they are impulsive (like Peter, flying off the handle in the garden and trying to whack someone's ear off, even though he knows that is not Jesus' way); they are confused (because the one solid person in their lives is now bailing on them); and they even run away (because sometimes when it feels like you are being abandoned, you run away first because it hurts less).  The disciples--and I'll own this about myself, too--are afraid of losing the love they have known in Jesus, a love that got them through a million struggles up to this point, and a love they had been counting on to go with them. 

So of course, when Jesus tells the disciples, "Things are going to change between us," it sounds in their ears (and ours) like, "You are going to lose me."  That's exactly what it feels like.

All right, then what are we disciples today supposed to do with all of this?  Is this just an unavoidable word of bad news for us? Is this a time when we are supposed to make ourselves fake a smile and pretend happiness for Jesus while we hold back the tears and swallow the lump in our throat?  Are we just supposed to take this moment as an unavoidable loss?

Well, ok, to be honest (and I think that's what I need here), maybe a piece of this is unavoidably bittersweet--both for the first disciples and for us.  Pretending there will be no heartache in the life of discipleship is theological malpractice, and as the line from The Princess Bride reminds me, "Life is pain, your highness--anyone who says differently is selling something." And for us with Jesus, part of that loss is that I don't get to eat at a table with rabbi Jesus like Peter and Matthew and Nathanael did.  I don't get to hear his voice, or see how he deals with new situations in life.  I don't get to have a conversation with him like I can talk with another person in the room.  I don't know what it's like to see Jesus smile or hear him laugh.  I don't know what it is to seem him nod in approval when I get something right.  All of those things are losses to be grieved because Jesus, the Middle-Eastern, brown-skinned, Aramaic-speaking Jewish rabbi, is not walking the earth like he did for those years in the first century.  And yes, that feels like a loss to me--I would have liked those kinds of experiences that the other disciples got.

But--and this is an important but--Jesus doesn't only seem to think that he is leaving his disciples.  He doesn't see this as good news for him that only comes at the cost of bad news for his friends.  Jesus tells his disciples that he is somehow still going to be present to them, even though he is also "with the Father."  And that has something do with the "Advocate," whom Jesus also names as "the Holy Spirit."  Now on another day, we'll have to flesh out how the Holy Spirit can be different from God and yet also God and distinct from Jesus but also somehow one with Jesus.  But for today, let's just consider that Jesus seems to think that somehow he will be able to be even more present to his friends than before, because of the Spirit.  Somehow, Jesus' going to the Father isn't just happy reunion or a renewed relationship for Jesus, but is also the way Jesus can be with us, present to us, all over the world, all at once.

It was easy, after all, for Jesus to be with "all of his followers" when they would have all fit in a conversion van.  But now, as we are scattered all over God's beloved world, and as we are sent to make more and more disciples, there's no way the human body of one person can be with us all at once.  Instead, by the Spirit, Jesus can be--and is!--truly present to us whether we are walking in his footsteps in Jerusalem, across the ocean in America, or in orbit around the earth on the Space Station.  

Jesus really does mean it as good news for us that he has gone to the Father--it turns out to be his way of being with us more fully.  When we feel ourselves tensing up at the idea of losing this One who has breathed our air and broken bread at table with the likes of Peter and John and Philip, maybe we can stop and be honest with ourselves: we are afraid of the change, because we are afraid of losing the love we have known.  And yet Jesus still offers himself to us in a way that was not even possible when he was walking the dusty roads of Galilee.  

Honesty is the key that lets us hear good news: yes, it feels like a loss, and it seems scary, to consider that Jesus "went away" to be with the Father.  And once we have owned that our fear about the change is really fear about loss, we can bring that to Jesus, who is still with us by the Spirit, in a way we would not have had if he had simply lived an ordinary mortal human life walking from one place to another in first century Palestine.

Maybe once we dare to say it out loud, that it seems hard at first to be happy for Jesus, rather than thinking we are not allowed to say or feel that, then we can hear his assurance that his love will not abandon us... even if he does change how that love gets us.

There it is: we don't lose the love. The route he takes to get to us simply changes.

That is enough for us to live on today.  That is something to be, in a word, happy, about.

Lord Jesus, bear our honesty, our hurt, and our fear, and then when we have vented it all to you, assure us that your love will not dry up, but will come to us by new channels every morning.  And let that love bring us your joy.

The Gift IS God

The Gift IS God--May 28, 2019

"And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life." [1 John 5:20]

Church folk talk about "eternal life" a whole lot... but maybe we've been burying the lede all this time.  A lot of the Respectable Religious people I know talk about "eternal life" as a unit of time (as in, a lifespan that goes on and on and on), when the Scriptures themselves emphasize that really, it's Christ himself.  "Eternal life" isn't primarily about "how long" but rather about "who" gives himself to us.

I know, I know--that also includes life that lasts forever, life beyond the grip of death, life that reunites us with the people of God who have never fallen out of God's grip for a second.  I know that the Christian hope includes a resurrection life that goes on without end.  But that's not separable from the "Who" piece--the God who gives us that life.  In the end, the gift God gives is... God's own self, God's own life.  It just so happens to be a gift that plays out over eternity to be fully received.

Here in this passage, a writer name John pushes us to hear that eternal life is not a thing you can separate from the person of God—in fact eternal life is a who. We belong, John says, to Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father, who “is the true God and eternal life.”

Did you catch that?  The God we meet in Christ IS "eternal life," not simply that he "has it" or "can make it available to you if the price is right." But it is God's very own Being.  That means “eternal life” is not some object God can lob down at us, not just a present in a box that we can open apart from God himself. What God really offers us is not merely immortality or a new lifestyle, but in the end, what God offers us is...God. What Christ gives us is... Christ himself. He gives us a life that participates in none other than God himself, and that by its very nature goes on without end. It means that God is the goal of our existence, and that God has been working through human history to draw us, not just to a time called “eternity” or to a post-mortem street address called “heaven,” but to the living Christ himself, so that we can share God’s own life.

This might sound very strange and mystical, but maybe it’s not that different from the promises we make to each other in marriage. When a couple says to one another, “I promise to be faithful to you until death parts us,” they are primarily promising themselves to each other, and only secondarily making promises about a length of time. There are no guarantees in this life (only bonuses, as the poet says), and we cannot be assured of a length of years we will get to be with those to whom we make promises. “Until death parts us” could be fifty or sixty years, or it could be a week. To exchange vows in marriage is not so much about a quantity of time, or to guarantee that you'll be available for periodic date nights for social occasions, but about giving yourself to the beloved for as long as you have time to give. And really, the vows of marriage are not really about a particular kind of life, either—traditionally, we point out in the vows that the shared life in front of the couple could take all kinds of dips and turns. “For richer or poorer, in sickness and in heath, for better or worse,” we say. Again, the point is not that we promise our spouses a certain length of time (at least not exactly), and not even a certain course of life—all we really can promise is our abiding presence, for however that affects the when and the what. All we can really promise is the who. All we can really give is ourselves.

Now, of course, when we make these kinds of promises in marriage, sometimes things fall apart. We have the best of intentions when we give ourselves to our spouses and promise ourselves to one another “until death parts us,” but we humans are nevertheless a bunch of wounded, moping, ragged sinners (and sometimes jerks and scoundrels to boot). And sometimes our promises simply cannot hold. We are not terribly good promise keepers, sad as it is to say. But at least the analogy is there to what God offers us. Whereas our promises give out, God’s do not—but the content of the promises is very much the same. Christ promises us himself. God offers to let us share the divine life, to indwell us and to animate us, to shape us and hold us, until we become perfect reflections of the character of Christ, reflecting God’s light back to each other and to God. 

Essentially what God promises is us “I give you myself for as long as I am around”—it’s just that with the living God, we are talking about Someone whose life will not end and who will be around forever. That is why we can talk about having eternal life forever and ever in God’s presence beyond death. What God gives us, ultimately, is God's own self. “Eternal life” is not a separate product that God has lying around on the shelf in the back store rooms of heaven—it is life because God is Life and the Source of our life, and it is eternal because God lives forever, indeed beyond and outside of time altogether.

All of a sudden, the promises of the Christian faith seem a lot deeper. We are offered so much more than we sometimes tell people. We settle, in our religious programming and literature, for telling people about “life in a heavenly mansion after you die” or “the 8 easy steps for a happy and content family life,” when what God has really been offering us is nothing less than God’s very own self. Like the doe-eyed couple taking their vows, God promises to give us nothing less than himself. Wow. That is worth telling others about. That is worth sharing with everybody.

Today, we close with a prayer that was first offered by the wise and faithful saint, Julian of Norwich, who seems to have heard just what John was saying in this passages, and who was determined to take God up on the offer:

God, of your goodness give me yourself for you are sufficient for me. I cannot properly ask anything less, to be worthy of you. If I were to ask less, I should always be in want. In you alone do I have all.

On Not Pitying Jesus

On Not Pitying Jesus--May 27, 2019

[Jesus said:] "For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father." [John 10:17-18]

We have a problem with pitying Jesus.

I don't think we want to admit it, or maybe we don't even recognize that we do it to him. 

But still an awful lot of Respectable Religious people I know seem to treat Jesus' whole cross-directed, "love-your-enemies" way of life as a naïve and unrealistic philosophy.  "Just look what loving your enemies gets you--that's letting people walk all over you like a doormat!  You have to stand your ground in this life, or else you get nailed to a cross!"  Some version of that is how the thinking goes.  And that's basically a way of saying you pity Jesus for being gullible, or irrational, or for just not knowing how the world "really" works.

Some variation on this theme almost invariably gets offered any time someone dares to suggest that Jesus' way of life is not compatible with a "Me-and-My-Group-First!" mentality. Without fail, the objection gets raised that you can't build a way of life out of looking out for the good of all people, because there's only so much to go around, and you have to get as much for your own people, your own tribe, as you can.  Someone always seems to have to object that each of us has to look out for Number One in this life, and that if you don't, you are a sucker who is going to get taken advantage of, or worse, you'll get hurt or lose your life.  

Nobody wants to connect the dots to say the conclusion out loud, but if we are going to be honest, that means pitying Jesus for being the sucker who got killed because he practiced enemy-love rather than standing his ground.  Respectable Religious folk don't want to have to admit that's what they're saying (they kind of want to make Jesus into their poster boy for being a certain kind of "tough" and "strong," so they don't want to pull at this thread), but that's the logical conclusion of this train of thought.  

If you're going to insist on a "Me and My Group First" mentality for life, you are going to run in to real trouble holding that together with the actual words, actions, teachings, and cross of Jesus.  And then you're in the difficult bind of having to pick one. And whether you admit it or not, what a lot of Respectable Religious people end up doing is secretly pitying Jesus for being foolish enough to get killed by his enemies instead of striking them dead first.

What's curious to me is that Jesus himself never seems to think he is pitiable.  In fact, Jesus doesn't accept the premise in the first place.  Jesus doesn't see himself as a helpless victim, someone "fooled" into the supposed weakness of love only to be met with the brutal force of his enemies who crucified him. Jesus doesn't see himself as a sucker who gets duped into letting his guard down, nor a fool who thinks everyone will be nice to him if he is nice first.  Jesus is not so naïve as to think the world will live by the same terms he lives by.  But for Jesus, that's not the point--he will live his life (and lay that life down) in his own way, regardless of how anybody else treats him or responds.  That is exactly how Jesus defeats the powers of evil--by refusing to play the game by their rules.

Did you catch that in this passage from John's gospel?  Jesus is adamant--he isn't losing his life, not in the sense that anybody can take his life away from him without his consent.  Jesus lays his life down.  He willingly gives his life away, with the understanding, as he puts it, that he can "take it up again" when he chooses.  This isn't the talk of a naïve victim who thought the world would go easy on him; this is the clear-eyed perspective of someone who knows the costs for living his way of life, and who chooses to give his life up while retaining the power to take it back.  Jesus is never out of control, in other words--he goes to Good Friday knowing he has the power and authority to step out of the grave come Sunday.  That means the resurrection is NOT about Jesus getting control of his life back--but rather revealing that Jesus never really lost control of his life in the first place.

I'm reminded of a line of Walter Wink's that has stayed with me over the years. He is writing more broadly about martyrs throughout history, but there is a clear connection to the way Jesus speaks here in John. Wink writes: "To have to suffer is different from choosing to suffer.... Martyrs are not victims, overtaken by evil, but hunters who stalk evil into the open by offering as bait their own bodies." 

That's what Jesus says here, too--he is not duped or fooled or hoodwinked into dying at the cross. No! Jesus has been in control all along, and he lays his life down of his own choosing just as surely as he rises to life again by his own authority.  This is what Jesus' way of life looks like--a love that is willing to give itself away to death, and which also rises triumphant over the powers of evil.  There is no need to pity this Jesus--he is nobody's fool.

If we are going to confess our faith in the risen Jesus, it will also mean recognizing that the Jesus who is forever alive now is also the same Jesus who chose to lay down his life and who also chose to take it back up again.  It will mean realizing that the Jesus who walked out of the tomb is the same Jesus who taught his followers to walk the second mile willingly, even if they think it makes you look weak to do it.  It will mean realizing that the same Christ whom we confess to be Lord and God is the same Christ who did not put his own comforts or interests first, but laid it all down for our sake.  

Today, let's be done with pitying Jesus, whether overtly or unintentionally.  Let's allow Jesus to tell us in his own terms that he has laid down his life and taken it back up by his own authority.  

You don't need to pity such a Christ, only praise.

Praise to you, O Christ, for your power to lay down your life and your power to take it back up again.

The Song of Robins and Rabbits

The Song of Robins and Rabbits--May 24, 2019

"Then I looked, and I heard the voice of many angels surrounding the throne and the living creatures and the elders; they numbered myriads of myriads and thousands of thousands , singing with full voice, 

   'Worthy is the Lamb that was slaughtered

    to receive power and wealth and wisdom and might

    and honor and glory and blessing!'

 Then I heard every creature in heaven and on earth and under the earth and in the sea, and all that is in them, singing, 

    'To the one seated on the throne and to the Lamb

     be blessing and honor and glory and might

     forever and ever!'" [Revelation 5:11-13]

Imagine the worms singing.  Imagine the jellyfish.  

Imagine, not just chatty songbirds and roaring lions, but the usually demure giraffes and shy gerbils, the microscopic paramecium and the giant squid, all finding their voices, along with every human being that has ever lived, all to sing about God's triumphant, suffering, self-giving love.  Robins and rabbits, all in praise of the love that laid down its life and won by losing.

I would think it would take something pretty amazing to make sloths sing and old miserly curmudgeons start tapping their feet to the beat.  But that is exactly what John the Seer in Revelation gives us: a victory worthy of such a song, from the Lamb (Jesus) who was slaughtered but now lives.  It's not worth teaching the choreography to centipedes and sea cucumbers so that "every creature" can be a part of this musical number, unless Jesus really is risen from the dead, having defeated death by being swallowed by it and destroying it from the inside out.  Only a victory so complete, and only a victor so thoroughly committed, is worth making that much of a song and dance over.

You don't break out a chorus of angels and humans and animals just to announce "30% Off Mattresses This Weekend Only!" at the local strip mall store.  You don't awaken the great sea monsters of the Marianas Trench to sing with the invisible hosts of the cosmos just to announce that your baseball team made it to the play-offs... or that the Dow Jones closed at a new record high... or that your political party won the election.  None of those milestones are a big enough deal, a great enough triumph, to warrant all creation singing in praise.  Nothing short of Jesus' resurrection and the defeat of death is worth us dropping what we were doing to learn the melody of this new song and make its cadences our own.

One of the great ironies, of course, is how easily we let ourselves get hyped up into singing songs and shouting praises for those lesser occasions--the team in the playoffs, the closing number of the stock market, or the one-time win of your political party--while we shrug off the great cosmic song of Christ's victory over death.  We live day to day like it's no big deal--as though, at best, it become relevant when we are dead and hoping for an afterlife, but not like it makes a difference in how we live this moment, this day, right here and now.

I suspect the angelic singers in this scene from Revelation would be surprised what things we get excited about (and riled up about, too).  We make a big angry racket if we don't like the ending of a TV show (ahem), and we let the talking heads on cable news provoke us into getting outraged over news stories they only give us half the facts for.  We cheer when the third-quarter profits are up, when the polls show an uptick for my party, and we hoot and holler when our team gets a home run... but day by day we treat the victory of the living Jesus like it is old news, irrelevant, or wishful thinking.  

No wonder we have no peace or sense of centeredness in our lives--we have treated the stupid little stuff like it's the most important, and we've acted like the turning point of the universe's history is a forgettable blip on the radar!  And make no mistake: this is why John goes to such lengths to capture for us the best, most thorough description he can of this song in the heavenly throne room: he wants us to hear what is important, to know who is worthy of building our lives around, and where our hope truly resides. John knows it: if Jesus is still in the grave, then the empires of the day really have won, and the greatest power really is death, propped up by the power of fear and coercion to make us cower at the mention of death.  

If Jesus is dead, then suffering love really is just a strategy for losers, and death really is the only true god to be fear.  If Jesus is dead, all we have to hope for is the little piddling triumphs of your team in the playoffs or your candidate getting elected.  If Jesus is dead, the only thing that can keep us going, putting our feet on the floor each today to face the world and all its rottenness, is the fear that it could get worse.  But if--no, since--Jesus is alive and risen, like a Lamb slaughtered yet standing up, everything else in all the universe is seen in a new light.

Today, the question to ask is this: what truly is worth singing about? What is worth dropping everything else for, standing up in the middle of the workday, and singing about? And what things have suddenly lost their capacity to rile us up any longer?

Praise to the crucified lamb, the true ruler and lover of the universe.

Worthy are you, Lord Jesus, Lamb who offered your life for ours and for all creation.  Worthy are you.

Like the Truth Is True

Like the Truth Is True--May 23, 2019

"...In the midst of the lampstands I saw one like the Son of Man, clothed with a long robe and with a golden sash across his chest....when I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead. But he placed his right hand on me, saying, 'Do not be afraid; I am the first and the last, and the living one. I was dead, and see, I am alive forever and ever; and I have the keys of Death and of Hades'." [Revelation 1:13, 17-18]

If Jesus really is alive again, we do not have to be ruled by fear anymore.  We really don't, and it really is precisely that straightforward.

But making that connection--between saying "I believe Jesus is risen" and living without letting fear determine our choices--is a hard thing to do in a time like ours that is full of fearful voices and frightening dangers.  But seriously, no less an authority that the risen Jesus himself insists that because he is alive, we do not have to kowtow to fear any longer.

Nevertheless, taking Jesus' word for it is perhaps easier said than done. It has been often observed that the church is full of people who mouth a profession of faith when we recite the ancient words of a creed, but who live as "practical atheists" outside the walls of the church building.  In other words, our church buildings have plenty of people who say they believe in God, or confess Jesus is the Christ, or affirm that the tomb was empty...but who don't let that translate into a different perspective for living in the world.  On paper, we are believers, but in action, we live like you can't count on God to be real or Jesus to be alive.

We say we believe God reigns... but we still act like there is no voice calling us to love our neighbors or to see all people as made in the image of God, and so we treat other people as disposable, ignorable, or less valuable than "Me and My Group."

We say we believe that Jesus has won the great victory at the cross and resurrection... but we still act like the way to get ahead in life and be a success is to threaten, coerce, cajole, or outgun your enemies, even though Jesus uses none of those strategies.

We say we believe that Christ has given us the sure hope of resurrection, too... but still act like we are afraid of losing our lives--and therefore, we are unwilling to share our faith with a stranger (who might turn out to be a dangerous person), or drive in one of "those neighborhoods," or welcome the visitor to sit with you in worship.  

We say we believe that Jesus is no less than God-in-the-flesh and knows all things... but still we act like we have no obligation to listen to his teaching that we love our enemies and consciously refuse to return evil for evil (much less pre-emptively attack someone because we all of a sudden "feel threatened" and in the name of defending our turf).

We are fantastic at mouthing faith, but still give ourselves over to so many kinds of fear it is like we don't really believe God is real or Jesus is correct when it comes to any practical matters.  We treat the faith as a handful of facts to be memorized but never applied.  It's almost like when you had to memorize the formula for calculating the circumference of a circle back in school (Pi x the diameter, in case you forgot), but when you actually have to figure out the size of your round kitchen table for some reason, you totally blank on how you would even calculate it.  We do a bang-up job of getting the religious words right, but don't dare to live like they apply to real life situations.  As the civil rights leader and co-worker with Dr. King, Bayard Rustin put it so powerfully, "To be afraid is to behave as if the truth is not true."

And over against that, the voice of the living Christ says, "I really am alive forever, and death really has been stripped of getting the last word.  So live like that is true: do not be afraid."

Jesus insists that the day-to-day practical application of the resurrection is that we do not need to be ruled by fear any longer. As John Chrysostom said in his famous Easter sermon, "Let no one fear death, for the Savior’s death has set us free. He that was held prisoner of it has annihilated it. By descending into Hell, He made Hell captive." Those things do not have power to control us anymore... except that we let them have it.

None of this means that the dangerous and frightening things aren't still out in the world--it just means that we know the worst anyone or anything can do to us involves death... and death no longer gets the last word. There are still lots of terrible things in the world and lots of ways we can suffer in life, but we do not have to be so afraid of them happening that we stay locked inside our rooms like the eleven disciples on Easter evening forever. Jesus keeps showing up, meeting us in our fears, to say, "I'm alive--see? The worst anyone could do was kill me, and see, I'm alive--and now I'm the one holding the keys! Death doesn't have final authority over you, either, so don't let anybody else make you afraid of death."

Today, what if we trusted Jesus on this one? What if we moved beyond mouthing the words to acting on our faith, and daring to live like death doesn't get the last word over us? What if we did not allow fear--whether of specific things or just fear in its nebulous, shadowy forms--to control us and keep us from acting? What if we were so confident that Jesus is alive that we were able to live courageously, in spite of our fears?

That's the adventure today: to live like the truth is true.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to believe your resurrection, and the boldness to connect our head-faith with our actions.

The Breathing Space to Grieve

The Breathing Space to Grieve--May 22, 2019

"When [Paul] had finished speaking, he knelt down with them all and prayed. There was much weeping among them all; they embraced Paul and kissed him, grieving especially because of what he had said, that they would not see him again. Then they brought him to the ship." [Acts 20:36-38]

As a word of pastoral counsel and a personal favor to me, let me make a hugely important request of you.  Please do not short-circuit someone else's grief or hurt.

Christians are Easter people, people of hope and of new life, to be sure, but it is not ours to rush someone else through their grief or pain because it makes us uncomfortable to see them not "fixed" yet.

We are people who believe, not only in our own resurrection from the dead, but that we will be reunited with those who have gone before--and yet, we still ache in the present moment when we have to say goodbye.

We are people who trust that God is both good and just and will right the wrongs of history--both the world's and ours--but still it hurts to live through the days when it seems that rottenness wins the day.

We are people who look to a day when, as Jesus says, "everything that is hidden will be revealed," and as Paul says, "we shall know even as we are fully known," but it does not mean there is no struggle now, in this time when some truths remain hidden, some lies have gone unexposed, and some deceivers have not yet received their comeuppance.

So, because we are not yet there at that day when our hopes are realized and our longings are fulfilled, please, dear friends, let us not decide for ourselves that we need to rush other people through to a smile and a feeling of serenity because we are uncomfortable being around the wounds that are not done healing yet.

This is one of the lessons I take from this lesser-known scene from the book of Acts.  This episode comes near the end of the book, as Paul the apostle prepares to journey to Jerusalem on a trip to bring relief and aid to the people living through a food shortage there.  But Paul knows that there are folks waiting for him there who are looking to arrest him and get him put on trial--which will likely mean death when the sentence is rendered for being a holy troublemaker who spreads the news of a different King other than Caesar.  So as Paul loads up his suitcase and stands at the docks saying his goodbyes to the leaders of the church in Ephesus where he had been living and serving, everybody knows this is their last goodbye, this side of glory.  So of course, there are tears.

This was a difficult moment all around.  Paul had stayed in Ephesus longer than in anywhere else in his pastoral career to date, and that meant these were the longest lasting, deepest relationships he had built since coming to faith in Christ.  And even though nobody quite knew how or when he would end up in handcuffs, the metal bars of a prison cell cast a long shadow backward onto this moment, and everyone knew that this was their last time to see one another, likely before a long and difficult time in Paul's life.  

Now, what is telling to me in this painful moment is that Paul, despite his role as pastor and leader, doesn't stop his sobbing friends from grieving with a well-meant inspirational cliché.  There is no point in his farewell message where Paul trots out the "Footprints" poem to make everyone remember that they're being carried, nor does Paul tell them that "God won't give them more than they can handle," either.  Paul doesn't tell them to stop and look at the bright side, or tell these folks not to be sad... or hurt... or angry.  

And honestly, all of those are perfectly understandable responses to this situation. They could have been angry at God for letting Paul be taken away on this voyage knowing that danger was at hand, or hurt that Paul hadn't told them before this moment that he wasn't coming back again.  They could have been sad for what was in store for Paul, or sad that they were losing a friend (and wouldn't even be able to check up on him through Facebook!).  They could have been heavy-hearted knowing that Paul had carried the burden of knowing he was headed for trouble as a secret in his heart and mind all this time, or they could be upset that he hadn't told them what he knew was in store.  Maybe they were all of the above at the same time, and maybe so was Paul.

But what is striking to me is that Paul doesn't short-circuit that grief and lament by shoehorning in a message about resurrection and Easter hope at this moment.  It's not that it isn't true.  It's not that Paul doesn't believe they'll see one another again in glory--honestly, Paul probably believed Jesus was coming back any day and they all might see each other in the resurrection life very soon.  It's not that Paul didn't want to help his friends in Ephesus heal, either.  It's just that he knew, right then and right there, that they weren't ready for a "Chin-up!" kind of message.  They needed to hurt and to be sad for a while, and he needed to let them.  As much as Paul may have wanted to be able to speak a magic word or wave a wand to fix it all, this was a time when they just needed to be able to lament... even while they also believed in the Big Picture sense that they would be reunited in glory and that all would be well. 

This is a difficult dance for us to do, too--it's rather like a high-wire act for us.  We are people who, like Paul, have a hope in resurrection, in redemption, and in restoration.  We believe that God will at the last right everything that is wrong, mend everything that is broken, and renew everything in this whole creation that is aching for wholeness.  And yet we are also people who feel the pain of this life, of this present moment, in whatever heartaches and sorrows there are.  Sometimes in the name of looking religious, we think we have to hide the tears and make others do the same.  Sometimes in the name of appearing devout, we think we have to interject an optimistic message or put a positive "spin" on things when others simply need to complain, or grieve, or name their wounds.  And this scene from Acts offers us a wiser, ultimately more compassionate approach: sometimes we need to let the pain be the pain, and simply share it with those who hurt, rather than appointing ourselves God's press secretaries to do damage control to God's reputation.  We are Easter people, yes, but that also means we are called to have the patience to accompany people who are living through Holy Saturday.  Indeed, it our hope for Sunday that allows us to stay in Saturday's pain and heartache for as long as others need us to be there with them.

So today, when you run into people who are struggling--whether at a turn of events in their lives, an estrangement with another person in their lives, or even with anger at God--maybe we can learn from the apostle Paul here, and hold our tongue before we rush someone else to have a happy face simply because sitting with the pain makes us uncomfortable.  Honoring someone else's pain, and giving them the breathing space to feel it, to acknowledge it, and to say it out loud, is not a denial of our Easter hope.  It simply means we believe in Easter hope so firmly that we believe Christ can bear the full brunt of someone else's lament and heartache, rather than making them skip over the hard work of grieving.

We do not grieve as though we have no hope, the apostle says elsewhere; that is true, but we do still grieve.

And if we believe that Jesus is not just going to be alive in the future, but actually alive and risen and present among us now, then we can wait with others who hurt today, like Job's friends sitting in silence on the ash heap, trusting that Jesus is there in the hurt as well, right now, too.

Please, friends, let's not short circuit someone else's grief because it makes us uncomfortable--but let's allow the presence of Jesus to give us the strength to go through the pain with them.  That's what it will look like to be Easter people on a day like today.

Lord Jesus, before we rush to say shallow sentimentalities because we don't know what else to say, give us the wisdom and love to know when simply to be silent and let others pour out their hearts, and to trust that you are there in tears as much as in the time for wiping them away.

Dandelion People

Dandelion People--May 21, 2019

"But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. For while we live, we are always being given up to death for Jesus' sake, so that the life of Jesus may be made visible in our mortal flesh." [2 Corinthians 4:7-11]

This may be a controversial proposal, but I would like to nominate the dandelion--the lowly so-called weed persecuted by many a persnickety groundskeeper--as the flower to rightly represent the resurrection, rather than the white trumpet lilies we are used to seeing in church on Easter Sunday.

I make that suggestion, not merely as a stunt or a joke, but because a dandelion gets it.  A dandelion knows death and resurrection.  Lilies look cool, and their smell is unmistakable; I will grant you that.  But a dandelion shows you that the real power of life is most evident in being broken open, smacked down, blown apart by the wind, and given up to death, and not just in smelling up your sanctuary.  Lilies hint at Easter by the sheer blunt force of tradition--dandelions practice resurrection with their very bodies.

And in a very real sense, that is the question for us: Christians are fond of saying we are Easter people, but all too often that just means we like to talk about triumph and victory through the pastel-colored light of a stained-glass window, rather than to live the way of death and resurrection in our daily lives.  We like to shout to the world, "It's Easter Sunday! How come you haven't all come to church today?" rather than going out into the world and giving ourselves away like dandelion seeds, so that life can be seen in the ways we lay ourselves down. And when the world can see it in us, nobody needs to shout.  When our actions, our choices, our vulnerability, and our self-giving reveal Christ's life for others to see, we don't need to advertise.  When we trumpet and toot our own horns like lilies, we are just making a lot of noise; but when we are dandelions in the world, Christ can be seen in us from the way we live out our belief in the God who raises the dead.

What does it look like to be dandelion people?  I can think of two in the news lately--their names were Riley and Kendrick, and each of them laid down their lives to stop domestic terrorists in recent mass shootings by putting themselves in the path of the shooters.  That is the kind of life that witnesses to the life of Christ within them by being willing to bear death in their bodies.  

Or it is the single mom who works three jobs to make enough money to give her kids a good life--spending her years and energy for them so that they will have enough to eat and a roof over their heads.  It's the dad who risks everything traveling to a new country on foot, a son and a daughter trailing behind as quickly as they can with their few belongings in a couple of plastic shopping bags and a backpack, who is willing to lose everything to try and get his kids to safety in a land away from violence and chaos.  It's the EMS crew who goes out on call after call when they are already bone-weary and dog-tired, but know that there are people whose lives depend on their willingness to show up on the scene of an accident. It's the adult who knows what it was like to be disowned by parents and family as a teenager for being different, who now risks their reputation and career to help other troubled teens to know they are not alone.  Such lives show a willingness to give themselves away like dandelion seeds--and as they do, they are witnesses to the living Christ who is present there and, as Paul says, "made visible in our mortal flesh."

To be painfully honest, the world does not need more people who will just shout, "It's Easter--you should get to church!" but rather, the world needs the witness of people who will show the world resurrection as they give themselves away in confident hope that the living Christ is alive within them and will renew them even when they are spent.  Dandelions don't have to blare like trumpets to get your attention; they show resurrection in their bodies, and in the ways they give themselves away for the sake of new life.  That's our calling today.  Today, tomorrow, and the third day, too.

How will you and I give ourselves away and let the living Christ be visible within us as we do?  How will we be dandelion people who show resurrection in our lives--especially in a church culture that so often expects only the obvious trumpeting of lilies?

Lord Jesus, let your risen life be seen within us and among us--make us to be your dandelion people.