"Crooked Feet and Souls"--August 1, 2019

"Crooked Feet and Souls"--August 1, 2019

"Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." [Romans 13:13-14]

I had this so wrong for so long.  It's not about nervously worrying that Jesus' reputation will suffer if the world finds out we're sinners.  It's about being freed from being a self-centered jerk.  And, despite the fact that I keep finding new ways to be a jerk, I really, really do want to be decent to people, kind to strangers, patient with others, and a person of grace and integrity.  I want to be like Jesus.

But it's not that Jesus will be ashamed to be caught with me when I am acting like a self-serving, self-indulgent idiot.  Jesus has a great tolerance for idiots, it turns out--some days that is my only hope.  But Jesus doesn't leave me there, either, wallowing in my idiotic self-absorption.

This is the thing I have learned. For a long time, I heard this talk of Paul's about "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" like I was supposed to pretend to look more religious, more devout, more holier-than-thou, so that the world would think better of me, or so that Jesus wouldn't be ashamed of being associated with... you know, "those sinners."  But maybe this idea of "putting on Christ" isn't like dressing up in the starchy dress shirt you hate to wear but have to put on for special occasions.  And maybe it's more like wearing a brace on your ankle that helps retrain your foot from being bent painfully inward.  In other words, maybe it's not about keeping up appearances at all, but about being healed and redirected.

Honestly, it's not that we have to "be good" and "look respectable" or else Jesus will get a bad reputation.  No, as the Gospels tell it, Jesus of Nazareth seemed always pretty ready to be known for scandalously hanging out with the disreputable, the disinherited, and the despised. It's more that instead of being bent in on our selves (which was Martin Luther's working definition of what "sin" is really all about), we put on Christ, who pulls our souls out of their self-centered crookedness by covering us and reshaping us, something like how a brace retrains your body to move in a different way--the way we were meant to all along.

To be truthful, on my own, sometimes it feels like my heart is congenitally crooked--like there is this impulse to be focused only about me, only about what is good for Me-and-My-Group-First--and I can't fix that on my own.  I can feel that "bent-in-on-yourself" posture that Luther talked about, and it's almost like having a foot that is bent inward that you can't straighten out.  It's the sort of condition that is not only painful by itself but also makes it harder to move gracefully, and which keeps getting worse over time when untreated.  I catch it in those moments when I am particularly a self-serving jerk, but it's there all the time.  And I can't just contort or untwist my heart by my own sheer willpower, any more than you can just wish away a pronated foot or claw-toe.

But I can trade old actions, old patterns, old ways of moving... in for new ones that are directed by Christ.  When Paul makes his list of things to leave behind, that's what he's thinking. His list, which includes "reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy," is really just a recitation of ways we get bent in on ourselves and our own gratification.  It's not that God blushes at the thought of someone drinking wine or beer or whiskey (Jesus, after all, not only famously performed a miracle producing a truckload of Cabernet for a wedding once, and had a reputation by association of being a "glutton and a drunkard,").  But honestly, it's that getting out-of-control drunk is a profoundly selfish thing to do--you aren't able to be available for someone else who might need you, if you're passed out on the floor or can't walk in a straight line.  It's not that it's wrong to get angry, but being consumed by the need to argue and quarrel is really just another way of being self-absorbed with "being right" all the time.  Even Paul's warning about "debauchery" and "licentiousness" (two words which are unhelpfully vague and abstract in English) really boil down to using people as objects--and again, that's the problem.  Jesus doesn't blush at sex.  He does, however, seem to have a sharp condemnation for treating people as disposable consumer goods when you no longer think they are attractive or use someone casually for a fling to make you feel good.  In other words, it's not that Jesus is a wet blanket--it's that Jesus knows we are notorious for being self-absorbed, self-involved, and self-centered, rather than oriented outward at the people around us in love.

And that's what "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" is all about.  It's not covering up a list of naughty actions so that the neighbors will think well of us.  It's about letting Christ correct the bent-ness of our hearts, and reshaping the crookedness of our spirits like a brace retrains your crooked footfall.  And he does it, to continue with Paul's imagery, by making us to be more like himself.

It's not about covering up the fact that I'm a self-centered jerk with a veneer of religion and a cross necklace.  It's about owning that I'm a self-centered jerk and letting Jesus turn this crooked heart of mine outward from being bent in on itself... so that I maybe, just maybe, will feel the freedom and relief of living and walking in love the way I was always meant to.

Now before you try a comeback that Paul's list of sins is "just so much fun," or try quoting Billy Joel's logic, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints--the sinners are much more fun, you know that only the good die young," at me, let me ask you a final honest question.  Before insisting that Paul is just being a spoilsport who hates having a good time, think with me for a moment.  Think of the people you know whose lives are described in his list.  Think of the person you know who keeps letting down her family, her kid, her friends, and her job because she is consistently wasted from drinking.  Think of the relative or acquaintance (you will often know them by their Facebook posts) who just seems absolutely consumed in bitter anger and is always spoiling for a fight.  Think of the person you know who uses romantic partners up and then throws them away like empty cans when they no longer want them around.  Think of the people you know who are unable to be content but are always jealous of what someone else has.  And you tell me that any of those patterns of living are really how you want to spend your life... because, I sure as heaven don't.

I don't want to be the person who is so obsessed with myself, my wants, my wish list, my reputation for "greatness", that I can't recognize the needs of the person who has been sent across my path.  I don't want to be the person known for being just a pompous, argumentative blowhard or for objectifying women because I think I can get away with it.  I don't want to be the person so absorbed in my own good time that I cannot weep with the brokenhearted friend around me.  I don't want to be the self-absorbed jerk anymore.  I want to be like Jesus.

And that, dear ones, is just what we are offered.  Not a fake religious veneer or starched-shirt of false piety stamped with a cross... but the gift of Christ himself, who trains these crooked hearts of ours no longer to be bent inward, but to walk in the freedom of love.

That's what I keep needing every day.

Lord Jesus, retrain this crooked heart of mine to love like you.

"Public Faces"--July 31, 2019

"Public Faces"--July 31, 2019

"All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliation; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us. So we are ambassadors for Christ, since God is making his appeal through us; we entreat you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God." [2 Corinthians 5:18-20]

An ambassador has a unique job.  To be an ambassador is not simply to be a dealmaker between one country and another, or an empty-suited dignitary who shows up at international ribbon-cuttings and ceremonies that higher-up elected leaders don't want to have to attend.  To be an ambassador is to embody the one who sends you as the public face of the realm you represent, for the sake of maintaining relationships in the country to which you are sent.

That means a couple of things.  For one, an ambassador only really has borrowed authority, which comes from the leaders who commission them to speak for the country whom they represent.  Ambassadors don't generally get to make up policy decisions on their own, but they are sent to bring in person the messages and policies of the heads of state from back home.  That also means that if your home government has sent you to bring a message of good-will to your host country, you still have to speak that good-will message, even if you don't particularly like the personalities of the people you have to talk with in your host country.  To be an ambassador is not so much to tell your host country's officials what you think, but to bring the message that is given to you by your home country's leaders.

And second, being an ambassador means that you are sent to represent a particular way of life, a set of ideals, and a way of life that represents the country from which you have come.  People in your host country will receive your individual actions as representative of the whole country that has sent you.  So if you are rude, you represent your whole country as rude.  If you are kind and gracious, those qualities also reflect on the country from which you have come.  If you show in your negotiations that you do not care about what is "right" but only what is "profitable," you reflect that these are the priorities of your homeland as well.  To be an ambassador is quite simply to be the public face of the nation that has sent you, for the sake of the people to whom you have been sent.

So... the apostle Paul sees something similar in his calling as a representative of Christ.  "We are ambassadors for Christ," he says, which means that he knows he isn't just bringing his own personal message to the world, but God's own message.  And it also means that his actions and words will always be interpreted as representing the God in whose name he speaks (and rightfully so).  There is no time he is "off the clock," and there is no point at which he can stop being a representative of Christ, because he is always showing for the world what God's Reign is all about.

It also means that when Paul announces God's blanket forgiveness and reconciliation with "the world," it doesn't mean Paul thinks everybody on God's green earth is polite, friendly, nice, well-behaved, or fresh-smelling--it means he has come to announce that God's policy is to have reconciled with the world, even though that world is still full of nothing but stinkers.  Paul knows he has been called to speak a message of God's radical grace to the world, and that this grace comes, not because of Paul himself, but because no less than God has chosen to reconcile with the world--even with people that Paul doesn't like or get along with.  The personality squabbles or conflicts between Paul and anybody else in the world do not overrule God's authority to set a policy of radical forgiveness in Christ.  God sets graces as the policy--the ambassador's job is simply to declare what the Sender has set as that policy.

Therefore, because grace is the policy, Paul knows that grace is to mark his actions and words toward those to whom he has been sent--which is everybody.  He knows that he is a public face for the Christ whom he represents, and so there is never a time where Paul is allowed to be personally cruel or demeaning to others, and there is never a time where it is OK to descend into petty name-calling or insulting others with whom he disagrees.  That is unbecoming of an ambassador, because those do not represent the "homeland" (the Reign of God) that he represents.

And, to cut to the chase, the same is true for us as well, two millennia later.  We are sent into the world--right where you find yourself today--bearing the radical grace of Christ as God's official policy toward everyone you meet.  We are sent as the public face of Christ, which means that people will look for a glimpse of who Jesus is, and what God's Reign is like, from our actions and words, morning, noon, and night.  There is no point at which we get to indulge our pet hatreds and prejudices, lobby for our own interests first, or sink to the level of being cruel or dehumanizing to anybody else, ever--because we are called, 24/7, to reflect the character of the One who has sent us.  If Jesus were a rude, pompous jerk, maybe we could have an excuse for being rude pompous jerks ourselves as his ambassadors.  As it is, we have been sent by the One who laid his life down even for his enemies and put the needs of others before his own comfort.  So that's the policy we are called to embody for the world where we have been sent. Jesus himself has set the policy of reconciling with "the world," which includes even the folks I don't think are worthy or don't like or seem too different from me.  This is not extra-credit Christianity for "saints"--this is simply what it is to be someone in whom Christ dwells.

So the question in the day in front of us is simply this: how can you and I most faithfully reflect the character, the values, and the personality of the Christ who has sent us?  People will be watching us today, and they will be drawing conclusions about the God we claim to represent as they see us.  What sort of picture will we offer them?

Lord Jesus, be seen in us--truly and beautifully--today.

"Beneath Our Toes"--July 30. 2019

"Beneath Our Toes"--July 30, 2019

"Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, 'The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you'." [Luke 17:20-21]

So much of our lives is spent (you might say "wasted" if you are feeling particularly honest) looking in other directions, rather than right here, right now.

We find ourselves seated at tables with friends or family, maybe with a cup of coffee or supper in front of us, and still we feel the need to look at little screens on our rectangles of technology... implicitly sending the message to the actual humans with us that we'd rather be somewhere else.

We spend our weekdays longing for the weekend, only to find that the weekend has its own hectic pace, and there is still laundry to be folded and dishes to be done even on Saturday and Sunday.  

We complain about the heat in summer, the snow in the winter, and how rainy and cloudy it is in the spring and fall (at least where I live), as if we can never be quiet content with the day we have been given, but are convinced that some future day will be better.

Kids wish they could skip ahead to being teenagers.  Teenagers wish they could be independent adults.  Young adults wish they could jump right to landing their dream job right out of school.  Parents of infants wish they could get past diapers and terrible twos.  People in the thick of their careers long for retirement.  And the next thing you know you are looking back wondering why you were in such a hurry to get to the next thing.

We do it in relationships, too.  I know doe-eyed couples who want to jump ahead to being married (assuming that will be unending bliss with no tears or frustrations).  I know married people who want to jump out of their marriages, convinced that it will be better once they are out.  I know people looking to jump back into relationships after having survived divorce or death who are convinced that getting someone new in their lives will make everything sunshine and rainbows again (when it never was all sunshine and rainbows the first time).  And at each turn, it seems our recurring hang-up is the inability to look right where we are, at the moment we are in, just now, and to see the presence of God there.  We are always looking somewhere else, to some past imagined time when things were "great" in our memories, or to some future time, when we're sure it will all be "great" again.  

We are lying to ourselves.

As the old saying goes, if the grass seems greener on the other side of the fence, maybe it's time to water your own lawn instead of wishing to be elsewhere.

See, Jesus has us pegged on that.  Jesus knows that we are driven to look to some majestic "Somewhere Else" or "Someday" where things will be wonderful, and instead, Jesus directs us to see the very Reign of God "among" us.  Even within us (the Greek of this verse can be rendered either way).  

So often, when we religious folk talk about the Kingdom of God, we immediately make the leap to assuming it is "out there" or "up there" or "off in the future" beyond the horizon.  We talk about "going to heaven" after we die, when actually the Scriptures more frequently talk about God's dwelling "coming to us" as God dwells among us.  We talk about Christianity as though it is primarily a means of getting to some heavenly Somewhere Else rather than a way of life that recognizes Christ's presence among us here and now.

And Jesus consistently redirects our attention, not up to the second star on the right, but right back down to the grass roots beneath our toes.  When the Respectable Religious people ask Jesus when "the Kingdom of God" was going to come, Jesus turns their question on its head.  He says, it's not about getting to some other place, or waiting for some other day, but God's Reign is happening right here and now.  As our older brother in the faith Martin Luther used to say, wherever God gets what God wants done, wherever God thwarts evil, hatred, and injustice and puts things right, wherever and whenever God's Spirit is on the loose--even under the nose of the powers of the day!--that's where you'll catch a glimpse of the Kingdom of God.  

And similarly, we could say, we aren't simply waiting for some future day after our death to see Jesus--he has already given us his social calendar and says we'll be able to find him when we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, visit the prisoner, welcome the foreigner, and gather with others in his name!  If you want to see Christ, in other words, you don't have to spend your life looking somewhere else.  He is already present, as the poet says, "in ten thousand places."  Or like that beautiful line of Dr. Chumley's from the play Harvey, "Fly specks! Fly specks! I have been spending my life among fly specks while miracles have been leaning against lampposts at the corner of 18th and Fairfax!"  If you want to see the Reign of God, don't look somewhere else, to white sand beaches on a tropical island or floating on clouds in the sky, and don't look to some other time, past or future, that prevents you from seeing God's presence and fingerprints here and now.

It's interesting to me.  In this country we talk a great deal about the "pursuit of happiness," which by itself as a phrase suggests having to go somewhere else or to acquire something else or to be with someone else in order to finally "get" happiness and pin it down.  Jesus makes no such deal with us.  Because honestly, the Scriptures seem to think, as the mystics always have for millennia, that knowing God is the source of our deepest contentment and profoundest joy--and God isn't off "somewhere else," or waiting on a shelf to be purchased, or on an app on your phone, or at some future candlelit dinner in a restaurant.  The place to look is here.  The moment to look is now.  Whatever faces are before you.  Whatever work is in front of you.  Whatever beautiful and terrible things you wrestle with right in this moment--these are places to look for the reflection of Christ.  The Kingdom, as Jesus says, is among you.

Lord Jesus, help us to spot your presence right here and right now... and then to be your presence for others where and with whom you have put us.

"Whose Stories Get Told"--July 29, 2019

"Whose Stories Get Told"--July 29, 2019

"And Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.' All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, 'Is not this Joseph's son?' He said to them, 'Doubtless you will quote to me this proverb, Doctor, cure yourself! And you will say, Do here also in your hometown the things that we have heard you did at Capernaum.'  And he said, 'Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in the prophet's hometown. But the truth is, there were many widows in Israel in the time of Elijah, when the heaven was shut up three years and six months, and there was a severe famine over all the land; yet Elijah was sent to none of them except to a widow at Zarephath in Sidon. There were also many lepers in Israel in the time of the prophet Elisha, and none of them was cleansed except Naaman the Syrian.' When they heard this, all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up, drove him out of the town, and led him to the brow of the hill on which their town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff. But he passed through the midst of them and went on his way." [Luke 4:20-30]

It matters whose stories we tell.  At least, it matters to Jesus.

And maybe it should matter more to us--if we want to be the kind of people who reflect Christ into the world, at any rate.

Here's what I mean.  I learned a phrase from my wife, who has training in teaching literature and developing curriculum, about the stories we teach to our children as a society.  She taught me that there is a need for some books that can be "windows" and some that can be "mirrors."  In other words, sometimes you read a book because it shows you the experience of someone else, to widen your horizons and stretch your mind... and sometimes you need a story in which you see your own experience, through characters, struggles, and situations that reflect something like your own.  We need both, just at a basic core human level, because we need to know that we are not alone... and yet also that there are others in the world whose lives and stories and perspectives are different from our own.  If you want to raise up a new generation of minds who can be grounded and comfortable in their own skin, while at the same time able to empathize with others who are different, you need both "windows" and "mirrors."  So the stories we tell--or more accurately, the stories we choose and select to put in front of our children from among the infinite ocean of stories, books, plays, novels, and poems out there--they matter.  And they matter especially when it comes to the stories of folks who are rarely heard, are pushed to the margins, or are told they don't matter because they are few in number.

And this, amazingly enough, is something I have come to recognize in the way Jesus himself selects stories from the treasury of his people's history.  This is something I don't think we often recognize about Jesus--we are quick to identify him as Savior, worker of miracles, Son of God, Messiah, and even moral teacher, but he doesn't get much press for being a sort of curriculum developer for the people of God.   Jesus himself sees this as an important role for his mission--after all, he says in Matthew's Gospel, "Every scribe that has been trained for the Kingdom of heaven is like the master of a household who brings out of his treasure what is new and what is old" (Matthew 13:52).  We don't often give Jesus credit for this, but he himself models the important work of lifting up what is most essential--what is at the heart of things--in the sweeping saga of God and God's people. Like any teacher working with a vast body of material from which he could draw, Jesus has to lift up some things as more important, and to let other things take a secondary place.  He does this all the time in the gospels, actually--we just don't often realize that's what he is doing.  But when Jesus teaches that the "most important commandments" are to love God and neighbor, he is developing a curriculum.  And when he quotes from the prophets, saying, "Go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice'," he is prioritizing some parts of the whole over others.  Jesus carefully selects the stories, voices, and ideas from his own tradition that are most in tune with the Reign of God.  

So in a very important sense, part of what makes Jesus so compelling is the way he reaches into his own tradition--what Christians often call "the Old Testament" or "the Hebrew Bible"--and lifts up stories in which outsiders, nobodies, forgotten people, and foreigners were given special care by God.  Jesus knows there are countless stories to choose from to illustrate the care and work of God... and yet in this moment in his hometown, he chooses, deliberately, to lift up the stories of people they would have overlooked, forgotten, or ignored.  And Jesus does it knowing full well that this will provoke and threaten his listeners--who in this case are the people he grew up alongside of in his own hometown.  Jesus knows it will cause trouble to tell the stories of God's particular love for foreigners, outsiders, and even enemies (Naaman the Syrian wasn't just a foreigner who sought medical assistance across the border in Israel, but a commander in the enemy army), but he does it anyway, because those stories are the ones his listeners need to hear to have their horizons expanded (windows) and so that the marginalized people around him can see themselves (mirror) in the grand Story of God's love.

Now, you just know that the Respectable Religious folk in Jesus' hometown would have loved it if Jesus had just given a sermon about how great they were.  In fact, that's why they applaud him at first and speak well of him.  Jesus had just given a reading from Isaiah 61 and then gone on to say, "Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing." Jesus' hometown listeners were all expecting him to affirm how "great" they all were by telling stories about good religious people like them.  They were expecting Jesus to draw from the well and illustrate his point with a story in which a good Israelite was the hero.  They wanted only stories that would be mirrors for themselves, but nothing to be a window onto the wider world where God is also present and active.  So it upsets these good, pious, Respectable Religious folk when Jesus goes out of his way to choose two stories--and only two--to illustrate his sermon, and for both of them to be the stories of foreigners who found favor with God.  This riles up the pew-sitting listeners in Nazareth, because Jesus has dared to lift up stories--Biblical stories, mind you!--that remind them the uncomfortable but necessary truth that God is not their private possession.

And by taking this radical step of selecting stories that center on people from the margins--in fact, stories in which great faith in God is shown by the actions and choices of people who were deemed ignorable--Jesus forces his hometown neighbors to see a wider picture, and at the same time offers hope to those who were on the margins wondering if God's love was big enough to include them.  Jesus sifts through the many stories of Israel's past and develops a curriculum which offers horizon-expanding "windows" for the people who think God is their exclusive property, and which offers "mirrors" for the least, the lost, and the left-out who gather around Jesus, too, so that they can see their own experience in the great Story of God.  That's part of what Jesus was always doing--like telling a parable where the hero is the border-crossing Samaritan who understands neighborliness better than the Judean Religious Professionals did.  Or calling attention to the widow who offers her last two coins, rather than the bigwigs with the fat checkbooks.  Or telling a Pharisee that the woman anointing his feet with her tears will be remembered and her story told, even when he is just a footnote.  

The bottom line is this: Jesus knows that it matters whose stories get told, whose voices get amplified, and who needs to have a little hot air let out of their over-inflated egos.  And so Jesus lifts up the stories that he does as a way of saying to everybody, "Look here--God has always been specially concerned for the ones that had been written off as too different, too strange, too sinful, or too hostile.  God has always had a thing for the folks on the margins--maybe you had just stopped looking for God there."  And notice here, Jesus isn't calling for the re-writing of any Bible stories.  He doesn't edit Moses out of the Exodus story to recast it--nobody is suggesting that.  Rather, Jesus is selecting, choosing, which stories need to be lifted up for the moment and the people at hand.  So in a room full of self-congratulatory religious folk who are all sure they are God's gift to the world, Jesus deliberately selects stories that remind them they are not the only people God loves.  Jesus doesn't have to change the existing stories of the Old Testament; he just wisely selects the stories that need to be told, perhaps because they are in danger of being forgotten, ignored, or silenced.  And by choosing the stories he does, Jesus calls our attention back to the God of the lowly, the widow, the orphan, and the alien.

So here's the thing: there's a million stories out there in the world, still.  And there are a million voices out there--far more than that, actually.  We now live in an era in which technology allows everybody to share their thoughts (or selfies or lunch photos) immediately without even thinking it through.  The question, then, for you and for me, is how we can help to amplify the voices that are in danger of being drowned out, forgotten, or ignored.  How can we practice the very same skill Jesus did--of sifting and selecting to know which stories need to be lifted up for this moment, both to ground us and to stretch us?  How can we, like Jesus, learn to look for the presence of God in the stories of people who have been told they are not important enough, good enough, worthy enough, for God to care about?  How can we lift up the stories, like Jesus did in his own hometown, of the foreigners like the widow of Zarephath, whose faith became an example, or of the enemies like Naaman, who received help from God even though he was from an enemy nation?  How can we, like Jesus, rediscover and lift up stories from our treasury of Scripture, which will be windows for those who need them, and mirrors for those who need to see their own place in God's story?

It matters, the stories we tell.  It matters, whose voices we allow to be heard amid the roar and yelling around us.

And it matters that we listen when others tell their stories to us, too.

Lord Jesus, teach us how to sift and sort through the stories in the Great Family Storybook of God's People, and how to amplify the voices of those to whom we should be listening right around us, too.

"No Footprints in the Sand"--Poem+Picture--July 25, 2019

"No Footprints in the Sand"
See Christ Here Poem + Picture--July 25, 2019

Hardly ten seconds later,
the swallowtail was gone.
Her six legs left no mark,
no footprints in the sand.
Nevertheless
this moment happened,
as real and true as 
the squish of sand between toes,
and she brought
grace to my eyes
for one instant.

Now,
what will I do?

#seeChristhere

"Hope for Outsiders"--July 25, 2019

"Hope For Outsiders"—July 25, 2019

“So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called ‘the uncircumcision’ by those who are called ‘the circumcision’—a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands—remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” (Ephesians 2:11-12)
At first, I almost don’t want to remember.

Nobody wants to remember a time when they didn’t belong. Nobody wants to dredge up the old memories of not fitting in, of not having a circle of support from loving hands. Nobody wants to have to relive, even for a short time, what it was like to be the odd one out, even if later on it got better.

I have to admit that some part of me hears these words today from Ephesians like Paul is trying to make me remember my junior-high-school self, and I am not terribly fond of that past life. “Remember,” he seems to say, “what it was like to be the wallflower, the nerdy kid, the clumsy kid. Remember braces on your teeth and acne on your face. Remember seeing how the other kids seemed to have a vast social network of friendships and tween romances.” In other words, Paul seems to be saying to me, and to all of us in whatever ways we experienced it, “Remember what it was like to be on the outside looking in.”

Of course, there are a lot of more serious ways to be an outsider. There are stakes a lot higher than my just being the last one picked for middle school social functions once upon a time.  There are folks treated as "less than" because of where they come from, how they worship, what color their skin is, or who they love, and they know far more powerfully than I do what it is like to be dismissed or despised as an "alien" or "stranger."  All of that is what Paul is trying to call to mind as he writes here.  The dirty looks.  The silent treatment. The way people look the other way or treat you like you don't matter.  All that comes with being regarded as "other," as "alien," as "stranger."

The apostle isn’t trying to be cruel. He’s not just rubbing in the most awkward years, the most isolated times, of our lives for the sake of making us feel miserable. He just wants us to be able to understand what a precious gift it is now that we do belong, and that we belong permanently, irreversibly, irrevocably. We do belong now, because of Christ. We do have an endless circle of loving hands—at least two of them scarred by nails—supporting us and holding us up.

There is no edge of threat in Paul’s voice—he isn’t warning us to shape up or else risk losing the gift of belonging that we have now. Rather, he just wants to point us back long enough for us to remember that we weren’t owed this gift of belonging, and we didn’t bring it about ourselves by our own popularity or congeniality. On our own we didn’t bring anything to the table—and now we have been given everything. “Remember,” Paul says, “what it was like before you knew you were held by a love that will not let you go. Remember what it was like with the nagging doubts that you might be on the outside looking in forever. Remember what it was like to fear that it was just you against the universe. And remember it, so that you will know the relief and the peace of realizing you never have to face those fears again. You are loved forever. You now belong.”

People who have been outsiders-looking-in at some point in their lives (and I suspect we have all been there at some point or another) know from their own experience that none of us are born with the guarantee of being accepted, or made to belong, or held dear. It is not something we are owed in this life. That makes us all the more aware, all the more grateful, to be given the assurance that now we are accepted, now we do belong, and now we are dear to God. And unlike the fickle promises of your social cliques from middle school and adolescence—or honestly, even the fickle promises that people make to us in adulthood!—the hope we have of belonging in Christ is a sure one. We won’t get booted out of the cool kids’ lunch table because we stopped wearing their kind of shoes. We won’t be left out of the jokes and the conversation because we live in the wrong part of town. We won’t be abandoned to fend for ourselves because we didn’t feel confident in our acceptance enough to speak up when we needed to. You may have to deal with all of those worries with other people in life, even as adults, but you never have to worry about it between us and Christ. 

We belong. 

You belong. 

I belong. 

We belong.

Remember, for a moment, what it was like once not to know that kind of love. But don’t linger there for very long in this day. Know that you are claimed now and that God’s claim on you will never expire.

Lord God, stake your claim on us again, and let us know for certain you are with us.

"Wonders Right at Hand"--Poem+Picture--July 24, 2019

"Wonders Right At Hand"
See Christ Here Poem and Picture--July 24, 2019

At the edge of a lake
carved by glaciers
twenty millennia ago,
four feet from waters
that flow past borders
and out beyond the horizon,
a toad crept out
from a crevice
where he had been comfortably sitting,
as if to say,
"There are wonders
right at hand, too."

#seeChristhere

Nothing to Say--July 24, 2019

"Nothing to Say"--July 24, 2019

"When Jesus saw her weeping, and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, 'Where have you laid him?' They said to him, 'Lord, come and see.' Jesus began to weep." [John 11:33-35]

Sometimes, I think, the most Christ-like thing you can do is not to try to explain.

Sometimes, I have come to believe, the way to most faithfully reflect Jesus into the world is just to stop thinking that there is some perfect sentence to speak that will be "The Answer" for the heartaches of the moment. And instead, the way to be most Christ-like is to do the thing Jesus does when he steps into the aftermath of missing the death and burial of his friend Lazarus, and bearing the heartbroken faces of his family. Jesus just weeps.

Yes, I know--and you surely do, too--that before the scene is over, Lazarus will have been raised to life.  And yes, I know that Jesus people are supposed to be Easter people.  But Easter's resurrection can only happen after having come through Good Friday and the grave.  And in that terrible, holy space, there is silence... rather than theories, explanations, or (God forbid!) diagrams.  Between the cross and empty tomb there is the space to grieve.  And as Jesus himself grieves for his friend Lazarus, he is able to let the holy silence be.  

He weeps.  But he doesn't try and explain why it happened.  

He sobs.  But he doesn't offer a defense of why it has taken him four extra days to come.

He breaks down.  But he doesn't have some pat answer for why God lets bad things happen.

In the face of such terrible pain, Jesus has nothing to say--not because he doesn't care, but just the opposite. Exactly because he loves Lazarus and Mary and Martha and knows that what they need in that moment is simply the space, the time, and the permission to be heartbroken.  Jesus can absorb their anger at not having come sooner.  He can bear their looks of disappointment and confusion.  He can take the hellish ache of the empty space where he friend was.  And the way he does that is to leave the space for silence.

Sometimes that is our calling as well: to set aside the trite Sunday School answers and insufficient clichés about "heaven needing another angel" or how "God doesn't give us more than we can handle," and just to be OK (even if we're not OK) with the silence of shared grieving.  Whether it is literal death, or the friend who loses a job, or the marriage that is ending, or the friendship that is falling apart, sometimes we are called upon, as followers of Jesus, simply to let there be the holy terrible silence of lament.  Sometimes our calling is not to try to fill the quiet with religious-sounding words, but to learn to be OK with there being nothing to say in the moment.  We can offer presence, perhaps.  We can offer the promise of walking with others through those many losses into the future.  But we don't get to fix things with some combination of "right words."  

Sometimes, then, the way to reflect Jesus is without a word--even at the risk of feeling (or seeming or being) inadequate--because we know that when our hearts are heaviest, what we need is not an explanation, but the presence of the God who weeps, the God who knows what it is to keep a silent vigil between Friday and Sunday.

Lord Jesus, we have no words.  Let that be ok.

"Outgrowing Our Insecurities"--July 23, 2019

"Outgrowing Our Insecurities"--July 23, 2019

"When the days drew near for Jesus to be taken up, he set his face to go to Jerusalem. And he sent messengers ahead of him. On their way they entered a village of Samaritans to make ready for him; but they did not receive him, because his face was set toward Jerusalem. When his disciples James and John saw it, they said, 'Lord, do you want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?' But he turned and rebuked them. Then they went on to another village." [Luke 9:51-56]

Do you know how Jesus handles disagreement, criticism, and even rejection from others?  Not like a baby.

That's actually a pretty big deal.  Jesus doesn't lash out with insecure threats or a violent rage just because someone doesn't like what he says or doesn't agree with him--even when he is completely in the right.  Jesus is just that mature. 

And he expects no less from his followers--that turns out to be a part of our witness, as a matter of fact.

So as a case in point, consider this scene from Luke's Gospel in which Jesus, knowing that his mission will take him to the cross waiting for him in Jerusalem, endures the rejection of a Samaritan village along the way to that destination.  Jesus isn't wrong to be focused on Jerusalem, and he knows that he isn't.  But when the townspeople get upset with Jesus over it (the Samaritans had their own alternative capital and central worship site, after all), Jesus doesn't get in a huff with them.  Jesus doesn't go shouting about how these Samaritans are stupid, or dangerous, or wrong.  He doesn't even question their piety or their devotion to God, even though their religion is different from the Judaism that Jesus was raised in and practiced.  And maybe most radical of all, Jesus offers to be the one to leave.

That is simply stunning to me.  Instead of getting worked up and defensive, instead of trading criticisms or insults with the Samaritans, and instead of insisting that they need to get out of the land of God's "true" people (and there were certainly Judeans who would have said that Samaritans did not have a rightful claim to their own land), Jesus is the one who leaves.   Jesus is the one who goes on his way, back to his own country, rather than some kind of petty demand that the Samaritans pick up and leave.  Jesus chooses the vulnerable position--and that is not an accident or a design flaw in his actions. It is a core element of the way of Jesus.

Now, there is a follow-up to all of this that we cannot avoid:  the followers of Jesus are called to the same kind of vulnerability, the same kind of graceful humility, and the same kind of maturity when we meet with others who disagree, criticize, or reject us.  This is not an option. This is not "extra credit" for saints or holy overachievers.  Jesus rules out his followers taking the dominating position of ordering others around or commanding fire to come down from heaven when someone doesn't like what we say or doesn't agree with us.  We don't get to uproot someone else because they cannot see eye to eye with us--we are called to be the ones who pick up and move along, rather than demanding it of someone else.  We are called to the position of vulnerability.

There is a direct line between Jesus' response to the residents of the Samaritan village and what Jesus expects of his followers.  We do not have permission to invoke, or even threaten, divine judgment on the people who don't like what we have to say or don't agree with you.  And we do not get to insist that someone else has to go if we don't like them or can't agree.  Just the opposite: we are called to the vulnerable position.  We are called to make room for those who think differently or see differently and say so.  That is part of our witness.

In a very important sense, that goes straight to the heart of the Gospel, straight to the core of our understanding of God.  As the Russian Orthodox writer and bishop Anthony of Sourozh (also known by the title Metropolitan Anthony Bloom) once put it, "The church must never speak from a position of strength...the church ought to be, if you will, as powerless as God himself, who does not coerce but who calls and unveils the beauty and the truth of things without imposing them."  That vulnerability--the same vulnerability that just walks away from the rejecting Samaritan village rather than calling down fire from heaven as punishment--is at the core of who God is.  What Jesus shows us in his response is the very heart of God--that God is not some schoolyard bully who is so insecure as to need always to get the last word, and always to be perceived as "strong" or "tough" or "great."  God is not so needy as all that, and because of that, God is willing to bear rejection and just keep on the way to the cross (where yet another rejection waits for the divine).

And if this is the God we think we have been called to share with the world, then we will practice the same kind of vulnerability.  It will be the way the world will see Christ in us.  Our policy toward the world is not to be kind only to the people who already agree with us, or only kind as long as they are still on the fence and deciding how to respond to us.  Our calling is a vulnerable, rejectable kindness that does not return anger for anger or insult for insult precisely when others disagree or reject what we have to say.  Kindness, then, is not simply a tactic for persuasion or part of the sales-pitch.  It is our way of revealing the character of Christ.  And Christ is the same always, regardless of whether folks receive him or reject him, are kind to him or crucify him, serve him loyally or abandon him in fear when the authorities show up.  Christ is the same, and therefore, we are called to his consistent kind of vulnerability.

That will mean learning to outgrown our insecurities and the childish need to seem tough or get the last word.  And that is not always easy, nor do we have many good role models in public life for that kind of vulnerability.  We had better just be honest about all that.  But that is our calling: not to show God's supposed toughness by calling down fire on those who reject us, or telling them to leave, but by taking the vulnerability into ourselves and living with those who disagree rather than trying to push them out of the picture.  

We are called, in other words, to act like spiritual grown-ups.  Dare we?

Lord Jesus, give us the maturity to be vulnerable like you.

"Toward Apples and Humans"--Poem + Picture--July 23, 2019

"Toward Apples and Humans"
See Christ Here Poem + Picture--July 23, 2019

An apple
still ripening
on the branch
is already
an apple,
claimed
by the tree, and
at the same time
becoming more
and more fully
itself.

Such is 
the viewpoint of grace
toward apples
and humans.

#seeChristhere

"What A Way to Go"--July 22, 2019

"What A Way to Go"--July 22, 2019

While they were stoning Stephen, he prayed, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” Then he knelt down and cried out in a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” When he had said this, he died. [Acts 7:59-60]
I hear people talk sometimes about their desire to pass away quietly in the night, or their desire to die doing their favorite things, or splurging with lots of extravagances they had never let themselves do before. And in the course of that daydreaming and/or imagining, the concluding line is often the same: "What a way to go..."

Luke turns that thinking on its head with the story of Stephen's death--because this is Luke's "What a way to go" moment. He highlights for us the way that an early Christian witness, Stephen, dies like Jesus, and Luke seems to hold that up as a blessed thing, even if it is not easy or pain-free. You might recall that the various Gospel writers each give different versions of Jesus' final words (thus raising the question of how helpful it really is to spend a lot of time talking about "the seven last words of Jesus," since no single writer gives us all of them and since each has his own point in mind in the storytelling). Matthew and Mark have those devastating words from Psalm 22, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?", John ends with the bit about his mother being taken in by a disciple, and then being thirsty, and then the final sounding word, "It is finished." 

And then there is Luke who gives us three different final sayings of Jesus, two of which are echoed in Stephen's death. Jesus says from the cross, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," and then cries out "in a loud voice" as Luke points out, "Father, into your hands I commend my spirit." They are not the godforsaken words that Matthew and Mark lift up, and they are not the pregnant and mysterious words of John's gospel. They are life-giving words, trusting words, even—one can almost say—hopeful words. Luke sees Jesus' death as a supreme tragedy and horror, and yet also somehow blessed. And that is exactly how Luke gives us the story of Stephen's death, too—tragic, and yet somehow blessed.

Stephen's final words echo Jesus' final words—not, presumably, because he thinks he has to sound pious or copy Jesus, but because he has been enveloped in the same kind of peace and trust that gave Jesus the courage to die praying for forgiveness over his enemies. You get the sense that this is just what happens to people in whom Jesus is given free rein—we can't help but become Christlike. Now I'll be the first to admit that I'm hardly a good Christ to my neighbors for much of the time—and that we all have our moments when we do a shoddy job of encountering others with the love of Jesus. But Stephen's story gives me hope—that the more I am pulled into this life of faith, the more I am enfolded by the love of God which embraces and disarms "the enemy" and "the other," the more I will be formed into the likeness of Christ. I want to be the kind of person who can die like Stephen—which is to say, who can die like Jesus. I want to become the kind of person who can genuinely love neighbor and stranger and enemy, and who can so deeply trust the living Jesus that even death is like the letting go of a clenched fist or falling back into the hands of One who promises to catch me. 

I will admit that such trust is hard to come by—it is hard to let myself be overtaken by this deep love of God, because it is frightening and new and strange. But one of the implicit promises in the story of Stephen's death is that, without having to sit and force myself to sound artificially "religious" or to copy what I think I'm supposed to say to come across as a Christian, we who follow Jesus will be made into his likeness. We can be people who die well, and who live well, too—because we know we are held by the God whose love will not let us go. It can't have been easy to go through what Stephen went through, and I'm not sitting here writing today with a death wish or a self-destructive streak. We followers of Jesus are not supposed to seek out our own demise. 

But I've got to admit—dying with a word of trust in the God who receives us and a word of love for our enemies—what a way to go...

Lord of our lives and our deaths and our promised resurrection, give us the trust that leads to hope, the hope today that leads to courage, and the courage that leads to love in action today.

"In Precarious Balance"--Hope+New Life Devotions--July 22, 2019

"In Precarious Balance"
See Christ Here Poem + Picture--July 22, 2019

I love
how these rocks sit
in precarious balance
like a monk
so lost in contemplation
so consumed in prayer
that the force of waves
and bluster of wind
and creak of wood
cannot break the concentration
of a soul communing 
with its creator.

This is where we all sit.

#seeChristhere

"Clinging to the Cross"--Poem+Picture--July 21, 2019

"Clinging to the Cross"
See Christ Here Poem + Picture--July 21, 2019

The vines reach up
toward the light,
leaning on the cross
to hold them up.

It bears their weight
and offers itself
to the tendrils
to latch into its wood
as they climb.

A prayer for today
May we be such vines
clinging to the cross
for life
and
be the wood
that bears others, too.

#seeChristhere

"Yes, Sometimes"--Poem+Picture--July 20, 2019

"Yes, Sometimes"
See Christ Here Poem and Picture--July 20, 2019

Yes, sometimes 
there is a voice
calling from the shining cloud
as Moses and Elijah
nod their ancient heads
in prophetic approval.
But sometimes not.
Maybe on a sultry Saturday
all that is needful is
a corona of sunlight
and you
to be the prophet
bearing witness
to God's voice.

#seeChristhere

"The Rough Edges"--July 12, 2019

" The Rough Edges"--July 12, 2019

“The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full statue of Christ.” (Ephesians 4:11-13)
Sometimes I hear people say, “I think Jesus is great—but I just have no place for organized religion.”

Of course, my first impulse is to say in response, “Well, good news—we’re really not terribly organized! See you on Sunday?”

I get where people are coming from when they voice objections, I do. I get it that Jesus is this amazingly gracious, strikingly courageous, brilliantly wise figure, and then in comparison, the dull preacher in the pulpit on Sunday who uses the same stale jokes every week somehow feels like a bait-and-switch. I get it that churchgoers are far too often grouchy wet blankets or pretentious hypocrites. I get that. I am, on my very best days, only a recovering grouchy-wet-blanket-and-pretentious-hypocrite myself, and on my worst days I dig right back into those trenches but without the word “recovering.” I understand the painfully incisive truth Gandhi pointed to when he said, "I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ." Ouch. That hurts because he has hit a nerve.

Okay, so the big, lumbering, often-still-mired-in-self-righteousness institution called “Christianity” or “the church” makes for an easy target. And often, we Christians give ammunition to detractors by reinforcing all the bad stereotypes there are out there about how Christians are nothing but a bunch of judgmental jerks who hawk their religion like they are spiritual vacuum-cleaner salesmen. We can bicker about the color of the carpeting in the sanctuary.  We exclude each other from the Table at the event that Jesus intended to use to bring us together. We get insist we want to grow and welcome new faces but are scared to death if anybody walks in to our sanctuaries on Sunday who didn't come with a long-time member as their unofficial chaperone.  We claim to love Jesus but feel free to disregard his insistence on welcoming the stranger, loving our enemies, and owning our mess-ups. We sing hymns that insist, "In Christ there is no east or west," while white-nationalist mass shooters like Dylan Roof are raised going to our services with no voice to redirect them, and then spend the rest of the week railing at each other on social media about the people from "those states" whose political skew the wrong way.  Yeah, sometimes, the church is the worst. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel to come up with reasons to criticize organized religion.

But here’s the thing. Paul—one of the earliest Christian leaders, one who witnessed the first generation of the Jesus-movement as it made the transition to become a sustainable, ongoing organism, that Paul—sees the “organized” part as a gift of God, not an encumbrance. To hear Paul tell it, the “organized” part of “organized religion” is meant to be one of the ways that God shapes each of us into the likeness of Christ--so that each of us becomes a reflection of Christ.

And that’s just it—Paul says that God’s goal, God’s vision, God’s dream, if you can talk that way, is to make each of us into reflections of Jesus himself, the same Jesus that Gandhi found so compelling. The fact that none of us are there yet doesn’t mean that this experiment called “the church” is a failure—it’s just that all of us have so far to go to be transformed into the image of Christ. When Michelangelo started sculpting La Pieta, nobody thought the project was a dumb idea just because the block of marble he started with didn’t look like Mary and Jesus yet. Everybody just knew that the masterpiece wasn’t done yet—but they didn’t say, “Hey, Mike—don’t use those chisels and hammers. That’s too organized a way of chipping away the rough edges in the stone.”

And maybe now we have come to the real crux of the matter: all of us followers of Jesus are, even at our best and most faithful moments, rougher than a corncob. We are big, awkward, jagged edged chunks of marble. And God is committed to shaping us, every last one of us, into the likeness of Christ—making masterpieces of us all. But the way you get there, from large rectangular block to lifelike human figure, is by chipping away. And how do you chip away at something? Well, you need something else that has some edge to it. You need friction. You need something that can wear down (lovingly, to be sure, but still wearing down) the obstinate seams of minerals and rough edges. And when you are working with self-centered sinners and trying to sculpt them into the likeness of Jesus, it means you need the rough edge of… other recovering sinners. You need the friction of putting a bunch of rough-edged people together and having them learn to love one another because Jesus has claimed the whole lot of them and refuses to let any of them be voted off the island. You need the presence of other broken, jagged-edged people who will be beloved nevertheless to teach them all about how love embraces us as we are, even if it doesn’t leave us as we are.

In other words, you need other people to shape you. I need other people to shape me. We all need the presence of others who will help us to see what Jesus is like, to remember and retell those stories and hold us accountable to seek to live like him, and to give us opportunities to practice what we are learning in how to love like Jesus, how to forgive like Jesus, and how to speak up like Jesus.

And if this movement of people striving to follow Jesus is going to last for more than just one generation, it’s going to mean you end up with people who help pass on the goal, the learning, the stories, the news to others who join the movement. That means you’ll end up with people in the roles of, well, apostles…and prophets…and evangelists…and teachers, and the like. They’re not there just to perpetuate an institution for the sake of perpetuating an institution (or if they ever do fall into that mindset, they have missed the point). They are there as part of God’s way of shaping each of us into “the measure of the full stature of Christ.”

Call it “organized religion” if you like. Call it “God’s chisel and hammer when it comes to us human blocks of marble.” Call it God loving us with all our rough edges but refusing to leave us as awkward blocks of stone. But no matter what you call it, it will mean that God uses other people to shape us, and uses us to shape others, until all of us become masterpieces, images of the beautiful Christ.

We really aren’t terribly organized. See you on Sunday?

Lord God, make of us what you will, using the tools that you choose, even if we are humbled to see you work through rough-edged people to wear down our rough edges, too. Make Christ out of us.