An Unorthodox Board-Game--June 1, 2020

An Unorthodox Board-Game--June 1, 2020

"For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich. And in this matter I am giving my advice; it is appropriate for you who began last year not only to do something but even to desire to do something--now finish doing it, so that you eagerness may be matched by completing it according to your means.  For if the eagerness is there, the gift is acceptable according to what one has--not according to what one does not have. I do not mean that there should be relief for others and pressure on you, but it is a question of a fair balance between your present abundance and their need, so that their abundance may be for your need, in order that there may be a fair balance. As it is written, 'The one who had much did not have too much, and the one who had little did not have too little'." [2 Corinthians 8:9-15]

I've had this idea for a board game. Picture your typical winding-path game board, like "Candy Land" or "Chutes and Ladders," or even the old classic "The Game of Life."  Or even like the pathway around the perimeter like Monopoly.  But here's the twist: instead of each individual player's pieces moving independently of one another, everybody's pieces are tied to each other's with a certain length of string, so that your setbacks affect mine, and mine affect yours, and conversely, your advances pull me along to some degree and mine help move you forward as well.  What do you think?

I know, I know.  The moment I pictured this kind of a game, I heard the imaginary complaints about such an unorthodox board-game:  "Wait a second--you mean MY successes help someone ELSE?" or "That's not FAIR--that means that we're all CONNECTED!" or for certain, some version of, "But then YOU would share in MY winning, and then how would I really know that I'm better than you?"

Maybe my board game would never be a commercial success.  But as a thought experiment, I think it might be a good way to get at what the New Testament writers take for granted about our life together in Christ:  we are all connected, so that my life is inextricably bound up with yours, and yours with mine. We can pretend that's not how it is, or we can attempt to ignore it, but the truth is that all of our lives are already tethered to one another.  And yes, that ruins whatever nonsense we had been carrying along with us that "winning" must be a zero-sum game.  And yes, it means that we will each benefit from the successes of others as they go around in this life, and that we will all bear the costs of one another's troubles.  We have just been fed the lie that life really is like those stringless board games where I can "win" at your expense, when that is, honestly, a gross distortion of things.

When Paul writes to his friends in Corinth, he just comes out and says it that way.  He is writing to a church of largely Gentile Christians--that is, folks who weren't Jewish, and who lived in a pretty prosperous part of the Empire in one of its major metropolitan centers.  Things were going pretty well for them, on the whole, especially compared to what was going on for their fellow Christians back in the greater Jerusalem area.  The region around Jerusalem was living through a famine, so picture food shortages, price gouging, and families going hungry.  Now, just by the geography of things, just about everybody there in Jerusalem would have been Jewish.  So they would have had a different language, ethnicity, culture, and likely skin complexion than the Greek and Roman folks living in and around Corinth.  And Paul is writing to his friends in Corinth calling on them to help out the folks in Jerusalem because, as he seems to think is obvious, they are all connected to one another.  The tokens around the board really are all tethered to one another.  And so, in Paul's mind, it only makes sense that it would be right for his Gentile Christian friends to make good on their commitment to take care of their sisters and brothers in Jerusalem--even though these groups were separated by nearly a thousand miles and would never have crossed paths with each other in ordinary daily life.

Now, let's just hold that thought for a moment and let it simmer for a second.  This is in an era without the internet, without air travel, without telephones, email, or even a national postal service.  Most people never went further than a hundred miles from the town they were born in during their whole lives, and there were already plenty of tensions between Jewish and Gentile groups.  It would have been really easy for the folks in Corinth to say, "But their problems don't really affect us, so why are we being asked to support these people who live so far away?"  It would have been easy for them to get resentful, and to get bitter when Paul encouraged them to come to the aid of the Jerusalem community. They could have said in reply to the apostle, "Look, Paul, we're all struggling with our own stuff in life--we've got our own problems to worry about."  Or you could imagine them insisting, "Why are you calling for special help for THEM?  Don't ALL of us matter to you, Paul?"

And in response, Paul anticipates those arguments and simply says, "But they're the ones in need right now, and when the tables are turned in some other way or time, you'll be the ones who are supported by their abundance."  Paul knows that it would be theoretically possible for these different groups to go their whole lives without ever having to interact.  But he believes that in Christ, we cannot ignore the connections that hold us together, even if the world believes that they are optional or not there at all.  He calls on the Corinthians to help their neighbors a thousand miles away because no one is fully taken care of until all are truly taken care of.

It seems important to me these days to remember that this underlying awareness of our connection to one another isn't a new idea, or a radical notion, but was an obvious truth for the New Testament writers.  And maybe that is one of the greatest hurdles we have to deal with in reading the Bible in our day, because so much of the conventional wisdom in the times in which we live say the opposite.  They say that the pieces on the game board are untethered, and that, in fact, the only way to meaningfully "win" at life is to be better than someone else.  The conventional wisdom says that you need to look out only for your own interests, and in fact, if someone else does well, it comes at your expense. To see the blue game token advance three spaces must mean something bad for the red, yellow and green players.  

But what if that kind of thinking only works in childish settings like board games?  What if that kind of oversimplification is exactly the way Candy Land is different from real life?  And what if the conventional wisdom is just plain wrong, and there is no zero-sum reality where your success can only come at the cost of my defeat?  What if that whole mindset of "winners" and "losers" misses this point of life itself?

We need to ask these kinds of questions, and we need to pull at the thread we are beginning to unravel here.  We have to, because at times like these it gets really tempting to look at the troubles around in the wider world and to imagine the solution is just to put our heads down, or to withdraw up to a quiet little hill removed from everybody else and sit on a porch somewhere muttering, "It's not my problem."  We were already feeling that temptation with the coronavirus, weren't we?  Lots of folks in the region where I live are feeling really tempted to just say, "Let the people who live in big population centers worry about spreading sickness, but I don't have to care about it--we aren't connected to them."  And I get it--we're not New York City or Chicago, and there's no chance of spreading coronavirus in an empty field with just your tractor and the animals out to pasture on the next hill.  But my goodness, that's just how the folks in Corinth could have seen things, too: "Those people in Jerusalem should have known that they could be susceptible to a famine living in that arid place--it's their problem if they choose to live in a place where they can have food shortages and famines!"  Paul doesn't let it fly there, either.

We are also tempted in these days, and in this place, to imagine that the angst, the anger, and the outrage in the African-American community "doesn't have to do with us" either.  I get it, in the place where I live, it is really easy to say, "We just don't have many people whose skin is black or brown, and so we really can't have a problem here--and we certainly don't have to spend time thinking about the troubles everybody else is having over the death of George Floyd... or Ahmaud Arbery... or Breonna Taylor."  It is even more tempting to say, "Getting involved in all of that stuff just leads to riots and destruction like so many cities are having, and so the best thing to do is just to ignore it, to bury our heads in the sand, and to insist that 'those people' don't have anything to do with us as we dust off our hands."  But again, back in the first century, Paul didn't let the differences between Gentiles and Jewish peoples become an excuse not to care for one another.  There is no "It's not my problem" for followers of Jesus--there just isn't.

Maybe most difficult of all to face up to is how threatened we can feel sometimes when someone like Saint Paul specially lifts some one group for needing help.  It can feel like the message is, "These people matter... and you don't."  And of course, you can imagine some in Corinth becoming indignant over Paul's position, because they assumed that lifting up the Jerusalem church meant bringing down the Corinthian church.  We do the same these days, too.  It is the same temptation to answer every cry of "Black lives matter" with an immediate "All lives matter!" in response, when of course the point of saying that black lives matter is that they have been made to feel for a very long time that they don't belong in that "all lives" category.  It's not pie, folks--giving someone else a share of dignity doesn't take any away from mine.  It's not a zero-sum game.  But it is so easy to become defensive.  It is so easy to feel like calling attention to the famine in Jerusalem must be saying that my troubles here in Corinth aren't important.  But that's not it at all--Paul is simply saying that in real life, all of our game pieces are tethered together as we move around the board.  My struggles do affect you, and yours mine.  Your joys lift me up, and mine will buoy yours as well.  And God is at work in bringing us all more fully to life.

Today's work, then, is first of all to let go of the childish nonsense that pictures life as a zero-sum game with one winner and a bunch of losers.  Rather, we will see that our well-being is intertwined with the well-being of people near and far, people whose language or culture or ethnicity are different, even including people you might never have crossed paths with in your lifetime.  And that will mean looking at all the places in our lives where we have gotten comfortable with the idea of withdrawing to our own little hills and hollers where we don't have to deal with "those people's problems," and instead looking for how we can support one another, whether it's you wearing a mask to protect me from sickness, or me speaking up for the folks around who have been treated like they are less-than.  It will mean, once and for all, abandoning the notion that the Kingdom life is a pie to be cut up into competing pieces, where a bigger piece for you means less for me.

Maybe nobody would buy a board game where everybody's pieces are tied to everybody else's, but it sure seems like the New Testament thinks it would be good practice for our life in Christ, because all of us are caught up together in him... and Christ's victory over death itself has pulled us from defeat into life forever.  What if I lived like that were true right now?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to see the ways we are connected to one another.  And give us the faith to trust you will provide for us all.

Round Midnight--May 29, 2020

Round Midnight--May 29, 2020

"When they had brought [Paul and Silas] before the magistrates, they said, 'These men are disturbing our city; they are Jews and are advocating customs that are not lawful for us as Romans to adopt or observe." The crowd joined in attacking them, and the magistrates had them stripped of their clothing and ordered them to be beaten with rods. After they had given them a severe flogging, they threw them into prison and ordered the jailer to keep them securely. Following these instructions, he put them in the innermost cell and fastened their feet in the stocks.  About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and signing hymns to God, and the prisoners were listening to them...." [Acts 16:20-25]

Tonight, Thelonious Monk and Ella Fitzgerald are my conversation partners in Bible study.  They have a lot to teach me, and I have a great deal to learn.

My eyes fell across these words from Acts, about Paul and Silas in prison and how, after being beaten by the police and thrown into the maximum security section of the prison, they find themselves singing hymns to God "about midnight."  And all of a sudden, all I can hear is Ella Fitzgerald's voice and Oscar Peterson on the piano, crooning the old jazz standard-and-lament, "Round Midnight."  (If you don't have that recording in your collection, do a quick search for it and given it a listen--go ahead, I'll wait.)

"It begins to tell, 'round midnight," Fitzgerald sings to Monk's composition, "I do pretty well till after sundown... Suppertime  I'm feelin' sad, but it really gets bad... 'round midnight."  Midnight is that low-point, that deepest darkness of the night, the loneliest hour and the time when hope ebbs almost to the point of vanishing.  It is telling, I believe, how much of the Bible's story takes place in those times of weary midnights, and how much of the lives of the wisest and most faithful saints was spent in what John of the Cross called "the dark night of the soul."  When we are just plain word down--worn down by life, worn down by adversity, worn down by dealing with so much swirling hatred and anger and hostility, and worn down by the absence of friends, the absence of support, the absence of help--that's when you know it's 'round midnight in your heart.

And in that midnight hour, sometimes it is all you can do just to keep singing your blues and pouring out your lament.  Sometimes just continuing to exist, just continuing to live for a little bit longer despite the suffocating night around you, sometimes that's the most victory you can muster.  Just keeping on keeping on.... round midnight.

That's where Paul and Silas are at this moment.  It is literally about midnight, as our narrator Luke tells us, but deeper than that, it is as dark a night of the soul as you'll find.  This is a scene we may not want to think much about, especially not about how these two evangelists came to this predicament.  There are old gospel anthems and Sunday School songs about the next scene in the story, when an earthquake comes and breaks open the prison doors and busts their chains wide open (although, we should note, Paul and Silas do not escape, but use the moment to show compassion to the jailer responsible for their torture).  But what brought them to this moment was that some respectable business owner in Philippi was upset that Paul and Silas were a threat to their profits, and they start accusing the two of them of disturbing the peace.  The angry accusers cast them as dangerous lawbreakers who are only causing trouble, and on top of that, they single them out for being the "wrong" ethnicity, too.  You can hear the code-words in their accusation: "These two are Jews!" (In other words, they aren't like us--they aren't "our kind of people," they say, to the judge and the chief of police, winking in confidence that the authorities will get their meaning.)  The accusers don't want their kind around, and they want to make an example out of them.  So the police, along with the angry crowd that has formed by this point, all humiliate Paul and Silas by stripping them naked and now beating and flogging them, all with the clear permission of the local government authorities, too.  Those whose job is to protect the innocent and ensure justice--the ones you might have hoped would keep you safe from an angry mob--they are the ones condoning the abuse and making it happen, because to them Paul and Silas don't really matter.  They are "other."  They are... expendable.

So yeah, it gets pretty bad 'round midnight.

But this is what gets me about this part of the story.  Paul and Silas, despite their weariness and the violence they have suffered--at the hands of "law and order" no less--they bring it all to God.  And they keep on keeping on.  That is the seed of their victory, their rescue, their vindication.  They bear what they have been subjected to by bringing it to God--they pray, they sing, and they sit in silence, too.  I have to think their songs have the cadence and ache of the blues, too.  I don't think there's reason to assume that the "hymns" they sing are all peppy up-tempo praise songs--I think they just bring what they are carrying to God in words and melody, and they cry out for help there.  And yet, that is exactly what is needed in that moment.  They survive by honest lament, by calling out to God for help, by singing their faithful blues at midnight and bringing into God's face all that they have suffered and endured.

All too often we just want to skip past the pain of this story, the terror of the injustice, and the utter fear that must have been all around Paul and Silas in that place at midnight.  We want to jump ahead to, "And it all worked out because, you know, earthquake."  We want to skip the parts that make us squirm, that make us think, that make us look at ourselves with terrifying honesty.  We (at least we Respectable Religious folk who have been given a lot of privilege in life) want to forget, I think, that our movement began with scenes like these--with the followers of a rabbi who was killed by the state then getting singled out for their ethnicity, too, and being brutalized by the authorities in town after town all across the empire.  I don't think we want to remember the parts of the story that happen 'round midnight like that--before the earthquake comes--because if we remember them honestly, we'll be compelled to make connections to our own moment that we would rather not face.  And I think we are afraid of the solidarity with those who suffer that we will need to practice if we face all of that.

But being followers of Jesus calls for just that kind of honest courage, so let us face it.  For a lot of us church folk, we have simply chosen to ignore or willfully forget that Paul and Silas (and Jesus himself) share an awful lot in common with George Floyd, with Ahmaud Arbery, with Breonna Taylor, and with a list of names that never seem to end.  I have ignored it, I know. And we have also chosen not to think about how many people there in Philippi saw Paul and Silas getting beaten by the civil authorities and just stood there, letting it happen, convinced that "they must have done something to deserve this."  We choose not to think about it, because we do not want to consider that so many times, we are more like the watching crowd in Philippi, condoning violence as long as it is done in the name of "law and order" for people like us, than we are like Paul and Silas, the actual disciples of Jesus in this scene.

And once we modern religious folk face up to how much we are like the angry agitators rather than the apostles, well, we find ourselves in our own spiritual hour of midnight.  And yes, I get it that we are all already each carrying a whole other list of ways we feel like we are worn down at midnight with a host of other worries and troubles.  We can be both like the angry crowd and like Paul and Silas at the same time.  The question, it seems to me, is, What do we do about it?

What do we do at that hour of deep lonely darkness that comes to our souls 'round midnight?  Paul and Silas have a word for us, it seems.  They have the same response that the enslaved Hebrews had during their midnight in Egypt... the same response the three young men had in the fiery furnace... the same response Daniel had in the lions' den... and the same response even Jesus had while he suffocated to death on a state-sanctioned cross.  They carried their weariness to God--they prayed, and they sang, and they prayed and the sang.  And even before help came, the truth-telling kept them going.  Even before their shackles were broken open, the act of bearing their weary souls to God enabled them to keep on keeping on.  Even before the prison doors swung open, they were sustained by lifting up lament to God, calling on God to be present with them in that dark place in the moment between days.

It would seem that is our place to start, too.  Our prayer may well demand confession from us as well as lament; we may have to own the ways we are more like the crowd than the Christians in this story.  But we can also bring our worn places, our threadbare spirits, and the places we are just running on empty.  We bring them to God, we name them, we speak them out loud, and we find strength in naming them all.  That's what Paul and Silas do.  They take what they have lived through, and they lay it before God with empty and open hands.  And that keeps them going long enough until help breaks through and transformation can begin.

I don't have easy answers for how we solve the many things that make us weary and worn.  I don't have some trite religious "fix" for how we'll deal with the anger brewing inside each of us all the time, or the fear that seems as infectious as the coronavirus.  And I sure as heaven can't pretend that if we will only pray harder or do more religious-looking things, all the bad stuff will vanish.  That ain't how it works, and it never was.  But it does seem to me that a starting point is that we take all that we are carrying on this dark midnight of the soul and bear it up to God, both the laments of what feels so wrong and unjust, and the confessions of the ways you and I have each been a part of making things the way they are.  We will lift up to God both the ways we are the violent crowd and the weary, abused apostles, and we will trust that in the darkness, God hears.

God is there--or rather, God is here with us, and with all who are gasping for breath and hope 'round midnight.

Lord God, we lift up to you all that we are carrying, both our failures and our hurts.  Tend to them all, and meet us in these times we feel lost in the dead of night.  Be our hope, and bring us into your new day.  We pray it in the name of your executed Son, Jesus.

Unnecessary Miracles--May 28, 2020

Unnecessary Miracles--May 28, 2020

"When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax came to Peter and said, 'Does your teacher not pay the temple tax?' He said, 'Yes, he does.' And when he came home, Jesus spoke of it first, asking, 'What do you think, Simon? From who do kings of the earth take toll or tribute? From their children or from others?' When Peter said, 'From others,' Jesus said to him, 'Then the children are free. However, so that we do not give offense, go to the sea and cast a hook; take the first fish that comes up; and when you open its mouth, you will find a coin; take that and give it to them for you and me'." [Matthew 17:24-27]

So... this is a weird story, isn't it?

It's one of those strange episodes, like the turning of water into wine at the wedding in Cana, where it almost feels like Jesus is just doing magic tricks.  These moments are pretty rare in the Gospels, actually.  Usually, if Jesus performs some sign or wonder, it is an act of healing, or even of resuscitation, that relieves another person from disease or distress, or even death.  Those kinds of miracles somehow feel necessary--like if you are Jesus, and you have divine power to help someone, you do it.  But this episode, about a coin that seems to appear out of thin air (or water) in a fish's mouth, in order to pay a temple tax, well, it just seems kind of frivolous. Doesn't it?

I mean, honestly, this just seems like an...unnecessary miracle.  For one, Jesus seems to insist in his one-on-one conversation with Simon Peter that he is exempt from having to pay the temple tax, presumably because he is the Son of God, and therefore doesn't need to make a contribution for the temple, which is like his dad's house. So, if he wanted to stand up for The Principle of "You-Can't-Make-Me-And-Neither-Can-Anybody-Else" this would have been the chance for Jesus to dig his heels in and refuse to pay the temple tax.  (I suppose, too, that I would like to imagine that Jesus could have just paid the tax out of his wallet, but then I realize that Jesus was pretty much penniless all his days, even if I would rather picture him as an up-and-coming member of the upper-middle class.  He is not that.)

And there is the snag for me: Jesus, the almighty Son of God and Messiah of Israel, is the one person who shouldn't have to pay the temple tax, as both the embodiment of the New Temple and as the very embodiment of the fullness of God.  It is absolutely within his "rights" not to pay the temple tax.  And, if he really wanted to pull rank, Jesus could have just refused to pay... or used a messianic Jedi-mind trick to make the collectors go away... or called down an angel army to threaten anybody who gave him any pushback.  In short, Jesus could have been a jerk about this.

But he wasn't.  Jesus deliberately chooses not to take the "Be A Jerk About This" option from behind Door Number One.  He pays the temple tax.  He bears the inconvenience of it. He goes out of his way when he theoretically could have avoided it.  And even though he makes it clear to Simon Peter that no one can force him to pay this tax, he seems almost intentional about making Peter see that he is choosing NOT to be a jerk.  Jesus refuses to lean on the Principle of "You-Can't-Make-Me-And-Neither-Can-Anybody-Else," and he uses this as a teachable moment so that Simon Peter can see that Jesus complies with the tax, not because he is afraid to refuse, but because he refuses to be a horse's rear-end about this matter.  Jesus, in short, refuses to be a jerk, for the sake of avoiding the wrong kind of scandal.

Mind you, Jesus is perfectly willing to cause the "right" kinds of scandals--he's willing to go to the mat for his policies of healing on the sabbath, or eating with sinners, or touching the untouchable, or loving his enemies.  He is absolutely willing to ruffle feathers by going toe-to-toe with the Respectable Religious Crowd and will even hold his own with the Roman governor Pontius Pilate himself.  But here, in this moment, Jesus doesn't want to be a jerk... and so he comes up with a (rather creative) solution to the situation and complies with what is asked of him.

And, lest we protest that Jesus can't care about "offending" people, because we don't think that Jesus would care about what is "politically correct," let me note: Jesus himself here says he is trying not to cause undue offense (the Greek word is literally something like "cause a stumbling block" or "start a scandal", but it's the same gist).  Jesus says his reasoning for paying the tax is that he is trying to avoid being a jerk, and that if he has to choose between not being a jerk on the one hand and demanding "his rights" because he can, he is going to choose not being a jerk every time.  He is willing to speak up and be a troublemaker for the sake of others, but you'll never find Jesus shouting, "You can't make me, and neither can anybody else" for his own interests.  That's just so piddling and petty, and Jesus always has bigger fish to fry than that.

That says something really important.  For a lot of my life, when I heard or read this story (not that it was a frequently told one on the ol' Sunday School flannel board), I usually assumed the point was to demonstrate how powerful Jesus is.  I heard it mostly as Matthew saying, "See how authoritative Jesus is?  He can make coins appear in the mouths of fishes--that PROVES he's the Messiah, and that he doesn't have to pay the temple tax!"  But I don't think that's really the point Jesus is trying to make here.  He does point out to Peter (but note--not to the tax collectors) that he could pull rank on this one, or demand his rights and insist that he won't pay the tax for the upkeep of the temple.  But then he deliberately sets up a plan to pay it anyhow, without ever registering his protest with the authorities.  I think this is less a lesson of "Jesus is powerful enough to make coins appear in marine life," and more a moment to see "Jesus refuses to be a jerk... ever."

It seems this story is less about the parlor tricks Jesus can do, and more about Jesus' way of bringing life to others rather than to demand what is easiest, most convenient, or makes him look strong.  And honestly, I think that's more what I need to hear in days like these.  Honestly, there's never going to be a time when my go-to gut response is, "Should I call on God to plant a quarter in a trout so I can get out of a parking ticket?"  but there are LOTS of times when I need to remember that followers of Jesus don't get to choose the Jerk Option behind Door Number One.  There are going to be lots of times in this life when it is tempting to insist, "You can't make me, and neither can anybody else!" and to make a big fuss over what we refuse to do, just because we can make a fuss.  But in those times, I should be clear that Jesus never takes that road.  If I insist on walking it, I will have left the way of Jesus.  That will be part of why I will keep working on being willing to be inconvenienced with long lines at the grocery store... or wearing a mask even when it fogs up my glasses... or not lashing back at someone who has said a mean thing on social media somewhere... or giving the benefit of the doubt to people I have a really hard time with liking.  And it's why I am convinced that Jesus is going to keep pushing me to take the time to listen to people even when I don't agree with them... and to refuse to reduce them to a caricature or straw-person argument... and to keep myself from petty name calling as much as I would like to sometimes.  These things are not options for us... because we are followers of Jesus, who made a pretty big point of not trying to cause unnecessary offense, and who went to the trouble of an unnecessary miracle in order not to be a jerk.

Maybe today, I can look for ordinary ways not to be a jerk, too.  I already have the pocket change.

Lord Jesus, keep us from being jerks.  Even when it's hard.  Even when we think it would be fun.  Pull us along on your way.

Saving Saul, Too--May 27, 2020

Saving Saul, Too--May 27, 2020

"Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem.  Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, 'Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?' He asked, 'Who are you, Lord?' The reply came, 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting...'" [Acts 9:1-5]

Saul doesn't know it, but he needs to be rescued from violence and danger, too.  He needs to be saved... from himself.

Of course, at the very same time, those whom he was hunting down to arrest (or to do worse to) need to be rescued from the violence and danger Saul intended for them.  And that's just the thing--in this moment, everyone is in danger of something terrible happening.  Everyone is threatened, everyone is put at risk, by Saul's reckless fervor to stop the ones he believes are troublemakers--namely, the followers of Jesus.  Obviously, those he plans to round up and bring back to Jerusalem in chains are endangered by his plans, but Sault, too, doesn't realize that he is destroying himself by this same course of action.  

And the stakes are high indeed, all around.  Saul, of course, thinks he is doing God's work by rounding up the followers of this new sect within Judaism--he thinks they are dangerous as well as heretical, because they believe that the Messiah has come and had already died at the hands of the Romans. It flew in the face of everything Saul believed about God, and he was sure--damned sure--that it was his responsibility to stamp out these dangerous disciples of Jesus who called themselves "followers of the Way." They were dangerous enough in his mind that Saul clearly thought it was acceptable to kill them without trial by mob justice if necessary--you'll recall that Saul is the one holding the coats for the lynch mob that stones Stephen to death just a little bit earlier in the story of Acts.  And he smiled with approval while the mob did his dirty work for him, too.

What is most frightening to me about this whole scene is that, until Jesus gets a hold of him, Saul is convinced he is going good--that he is doing "justice" by rounding up followers of Jesus and killing them if necessary.  Saul is convinced he has God's approval for what he is doing, and if some Christians, men or women, get killed in his pursuit of order, well, surely they are just collateral damage in Saul's quest for righteousness and social order.  Regrettable, perhaps, but nothing to lose sleep over, in Saul's mind.  Like Blaise Pascal so famously put it, people "never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."  And here am I, a comfortable, privileged religious professional with a lot of the same perks that Saul had, and it occurs to me how easily I can be led to believe that such ruthlessness is acceptable--even noble!--if we believe it is being done in the service of "maintaining order" or stopping the ones labeled as "bad guys."

Sometimes I think we (at least we Respectable Religious folks) forget that our movement began as a persecuted minority, and that we were constantly seen, both by religious leaders and the empire, as a troublesome and expendable sect of people.  Christians were assumed to be dangerous, to be likely to stir up a ruckus, to be disturbers of the peace, and to be inciters of riots.  Once that picture gained popularity, it became easier and easier in one town after another (notice that Saul is going WAY out of his jurisdiction here to get to Christians in Damascus--modern day Syria!) to look away at the torture of Christians... or the arrest of Christians without charges... or the killing of Christians without a trial.  And when we forget that it is our own story, we become callous and numb in the face of others who are treated the same way still today. You know there had to be people in the first century who invented excuses for why it must have been ok for Saul to round up suspected Christians and drag them off, bound, to stand trial in far away places, or even for those suspected Christians to die in his attempt to bring them to "justice."  There were surely folks in the wider community who just muttered, "Well, those Christians must have done something wrong--otherwise, Saul wouldn't have wanted to arrest them!"  Maybe that's even what Saul told himself at night: "These people are all trouble, and even if I haven't seen them doing something illegal, or if I haven't proven that they are bad, they've surely done something bad in the past, or are going to do something wrong in the future... so I'm justified."  And it occurs to me just how easy it is for any of us to look away when it's someone else's son, someone else's daughter, and to assume, "They must have had this coming."

But no--it's my son.  It's my daughter.  It's your children.  It's our aunts and uncles.  It's our neighbors and acquaintances.  We cannot compartmentalize the rottenness we don't want to have to look at and say, "Well, that's someone else."  We are all threatened by the impulse to destroy the ones we label "other" because we are afraid of them.  The fear itself is part of the problem.

And that's just it: Saul is endangered, too, by his own fearful violence.  He is slowly dying inside from what he is doing to others, and he doesn't even know it. As much as the church was threatened by his quest for "righteous" justice, he was destroying himself, bit by bit, as he gave himself over to that way of thinking and acting.  The more he hunted those troublesome Christians down, the easier it became; and the easier it became, the more and more numb he felt bout it... until the point came where he did not realize how much he was poisoning his own soul.  He could not even realize that he had become diametrically opposed to the way of the God he was sure he was serving by his actions.  He could no longer recognize that his means and his ends were all terribly misguided.

So Jesus interrupts him.  Both for the sake of those he was going to hunt down, and for Saul's own sake--because everybody was in danger.  Jesus came to rescue them all--stopping Saul not only spared the lives of countless families in Damascus that would have been ripped apart if he had carried out his plan, but it also set Saul free from the hateful path he was on.  It was the beginning, for Saul, of a grand reversal that would end up bringing this persecutor of the church to faith in the same Jesus he had been hunting down.  And of course, we have come to know him now as Paul, the apostle responsible for half of the New Testament and the great evangelist and theologian who got into lots of trouble himself bringing the news of Jesus to the rest of the empire.  The rest of that journey is a story for another day, but for now, just consider how the living Jesus works to bring life all around--for the persecuted, and for the persecutor, for the church in Damascus, and for Saul who was out to get them.  They were all endangered by Saul's quest for law and order, and they were all rescued.

This is how God operates in the world, and if we cannot see that, perhaps it is because we cannot see how many ways even we comfortable bystanders are entangled and endangered by the things that threaten and harm others.  Perhaps we need to look daily down at our own hands, and to see that, a lot more often than we would like to admit, we are either holding rocks for stoning, or happily holding the coats of those in the mob.  There are an awful lot of ways we are wearing Saul's sandals, whether we do it knowingly or unwittingly.  That doesn't mean we are irredeemable villains--Saul, after all, is bound for transformation himself.  But it does mean that we may have to look at places in our lives and hearts that we though we were doing just fine--or maybe that we were even righteous and noble and good--and ask God to empty our hands and to disarm us.

I know at least that needs to be my own prayer for myself today.

Saul needs saving, too, at that moment on the Damascus Road.  And I guess I have that in common with him as well.  Lord Jesus, have mercy on me, a comfortable and complacent sinner dressed up in respectable religiosity.

Lord Jesus, I really want to follow after you.  Where I am wrongheaded, turn me in your direction.  Where I am hostile against your way and your beloved, break my hardened heart.  And where I am clenching rocks to throw in the name of righteousness and order, disarm me.  And embrace me at the same time.

The Other Side of Too Late--May 26, 2020

“The Other Side of Too Late”—May 26, 2020

“While [Jesus] was still speaking, some people came from the leader’s house to say, ‘Your daughter is dead. Why trouble the teacher any further?’ But overhearing what they said, Jesus said to the leader of the synagogue, ‘Do not fear, only believe.’”  [Mark 5:35-36]

Jesus has a wonderful way of redefining what is too late. 

Here in this scene, you can feel Jesus is in a vise-grip.  Time is running out, and there are two people who need saving. Jesus starts out on his way to help the young daughter of Jairus, the leader of the local synagogue, but on his way, another woman has stopped Jesus in his tracks needing his help. Jesus does in fact help her and heal her of her malady, and he even protects her from any blowback from the crowd over an unclean woman touching another man in public. But there has been a cost: it now appears to be too late for Jesus to heal the young girl he first set out to help. 

Maybe there was only ever enough time for one of the two to be helped, but now it is certain. Jesus was pulled in two directions, had to make a choice, and now he will have to live with the disappointment in the voices of these messengers: Why trouble the teacher any further? All along this scene has played out in my mind like a set-up in the comic books—there’s Batman, staring up at the latest trap the Riddler has cooked up for him, with the whole city in danger on the one hand, and Robin the trusty sidekick in danger on the other. Will Batman defuse the bomb and save the city, or untie his young fellow crime-fighter? Will Superman save Lois Lane from the clever ploy of Lex Luthor, or will he save Metropolis from certain destruction? It seems that there is only enough time to pick one. That’s always how the super-villains set it up: there’s enough time to rescue one, so you pay your money and you take your choice. One will get rescued, and for the other… it will just be too late. 

Now, of course, when Batman or Superman or some other costumed hero meets with this situation in the comics, they are somehow usually able to save both the girl and the world, or the sidekick and the city. But those kind of endings seem too good to be true—and here in Mark 5 we don’t get one of those saved-at-the-last-minute endings. We really don’t. We reach this point of the story, where one of the two people in need was helped, but for the other… it really is too late. All the sand has run out of the hourglass. The story has pinched around Jesus and closed off any possibility that both could be saved from death. By anyone’s rational description of the situation, it is now simply too late for Jairus’ daughter. She has died. 

Except… Jesus still has this look in his eye. 

Jesus doesn’t propose some cheesy, far-fetched, Just-in-the-nick-of-time way to prevent Jairus’ daughter from dying. It is indeed too late for that. It’s just that Jesus has a way of redefining what is “too late” and what can happen on the other side of “too late.” Do not fear, he says, like a man who knows that there is more coming and the end of the story has not been written. Only believe, he says, confident that there is more to be said. Of course, for us who have grown up hearing these stories of Jesus, we have more than a hunch of what Jesus has up his sleeve. 

We are coming to see that Jesus has a way, not of jumping in at the last minute to save the day before it is too late, but of showing up after the last minute has ticked away to restore life after everyone else would have said it clearly was too late. It is the Easter story in preview—not that Jesus escapes from the cross, but that he goes through it, into the tomb, and then arises long after everyone else had given up hope. Easter Sunday happened on the other side of too late, also, and maybe here in today’s story, Jesus is tipping his hand to let us know where he is headed. 

We Christians are not guaranteed that we will be spared from ever having to go through suffering in this life. We are not ever promised that when things look darkest—look, up in the sky, it’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Jesus!—just in the nick of time we will be beamed out of having to go through something painful or sorrowful. Instead, we have a Savior who goes through those sufferings with us, and who does not abandon us in the face of them. We have a God who endures, who stays well after “the last minute” has ticked away, who rolls away the Friday stone on Sunday, and who says, with a look in his eye, “Do not fear, only believe,” after everyone else has given up hope. Let us be honest: there may be places in our lives where it is now “too late” by any human reckoning. And yet it is possible, too, that Jesus will bring an unexpected echo of Easter in those very places, beyond our predicting or imagining. Who knows what will be possible today on the other side of too late? 

Lord Jesus, your time is not our time. For all the things we are sure are past redemption or beyond hope, come in your own good time and work your Easter power in our midst again today.

Learning to Be Alive--May 20, 2020

Learning to Be Alive--May 20, 2020

“Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and living in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us in love, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” (Ephesians 5:1-2)
There are two kinds of imitation in this life, really. There is a sort of false, slimy-feeling, deceptive kind of imitation, where someone or something pretends to be what they are not in order to fool you. And on the other hand, there is an honest, humble, learning kind of imitation, where someone is earnestly seeking to become something they are not yet, but which they will eventually be.

In the first category of imitation products go things like spray-cheese, cheap faux-wood-grain molded plastic trim in unnatural colors, and unconvincing cheap hairpieces and the like. These things are cleverly and clearly packaged to make you think they are something they will never be. Spray cheese is just not cheese. It's just not.  Fool's gold ain't the 14K real McCoy, either. This kind of imitation can never be truthful, because it always carries with it a vibe that it has to hide some of the truth from you and mask itself as something else, rather than owning what it really is. And therefore, when you run into a product like that, you can’t help but feel somehow kind of icky (yes, I just said “icky,” but there’s no other good word for the repugnance it brings up, and the feeling of someone trying to fool you). You feel like you are being sold a line, and also a little insulted that someone thought you could be so easily duped.

There are times when each of us live in this state of denial, too, pretending to be things we are not and always coming across as door-to-door salesmen or robocall messages peddling a fake version of themselves. They always seem like they are trying to convince you of things about them—they project the appearance that they have it all together (“Just look at my new car, after all—that proves my life is going well!”) or that they have everything figured out by making themselves sound like the expert on everything. Maybe we all fall into this pattern from time to time. Maybe we are all in the camp of being fake people, imitation-spray-cheese-humans convincing others we are something other than we really are, from time to time. But you know what it’s like, don’t you, to run across someone who just doesn’t seem comfortable in their own skin because they seem to be spending as much energy and effort trying to put on someone else’s skin rather than learning to live in their own lives? And maybe this is just a personal quirk or peeve of mine, but nothing quite so poisons a relationship in my experience, of whatever sort from casual acquaintances to work colleagues to supposedly close friendships, like being lied to, and badly, at that. This kind of imitation is bad news all around.  When we play that sort of imitation game, we are always going to lose--not just the game, but ourselves.

But there is another kind of imitation that somehow rings true, if that makes sense. It’s the way young children learning new words parrot back what their parents say because they look up to them as examples of how to be human. It’s the way my son, even at eight years old, still takes my shoes, sitting there on the floor, and puts his own feet into them to try and walk around because he has seen that these are the kind of shoes grown-ups wear. It’s the way the young girl learning how to dance stands on her dad or her mom’s feet to learn where your steps are supposed to go in a waltz. It’s the way you catch yourself picking up mannerisms and habits from the friends and mentors you most deeply respect—not because you are insecure about how to handle yourself, but because they are just rubbing off on you. 

These are forms of imitation that are really signs of becoming. They are moments in which we learn to be alive, which is the only way to really get through this life, since there isn't a manual with all the answers in the back.

When little kids dress up as grown-ups, it isn’t deceptive, like they think they are really fooling anybody into thinking they are police officers or doctors or superheroes. Rather, they are trying out the traits of bravery and strength and compassion that they have seen in grown-ups who wear those uniforms, in the hopes that they will become brave and strong and compassionate themselves as they mature. When you catch yourself saying something and then think to yourself, “I picked up that phrase from so-and-so…” it’s not a sign of being a liar who pretends to be someone else—it is a sign that your friend or colleague is affecting the kind of person you are becoming. This kind of imitation isn’t about trying to fool anybody, not any more than a seedling is trying to fool you by looking like a little version of the great sturdy oak it will one day be—it is about growing into maturity. This kind of imitation is good news.

Well, guess which kind Paul intends for us? When he says, “Be imitators of God,” it isn’t with the sulfur-smelling deception of the serpent in Eden who says, “Eat this, and you will be like God.” He says it like an older brother telling us younger siblings about learning to be like our Father. He says it like someone who has tried walking around in Jesus’ big shoes and is learning how to wear them himself—and wants us to try it, too. He says it like someone who sees what we can become, and wants to let us be made into living reflections of Christ.

It’s not about fooling anybody or pretending to be something we are not in a deceptive, tricky way. It’s about learning to become who we are—children of God growing in to who we are meant to be.

Our whole lives of faith are really the ongoing practice of people who are learning to be fully alive.  We learn it by seeing what Jesus does, and by stepping in his footsteps.  We see it in the lived examples of others who somehow just seem to "get it" and show us the face of Christ in their own lives.  We step into the life that is already ours as a gift.  That's the beauty of this kind of imitation--it's not trying to fool God, or persuade God that we're good enough to "get in" to heaven; it's growing into the grown-up shoes that are ours already to wear when we are ready for them.  It's becoming more fully alive, like children maturing into adulthood by copying what they see in other adults.  In other words, it is all a gift of grace.

And the key, Ephesians says, is love--if you want a guess for how to start learning to be more fully alive, spend your life doing good for others around you.  That is to say, love them.  Love others the way Jesus loved them--not with the fear that if you don't do enough you won't get a passing grade, but more with the sense that love is what we are growing into.  So the question for today, and maybe every day after that, is something like, "How can I practice getting better at loving people today?  Where are there places I struggle, or people I struggle to love, and how can I get more experience doing good to people who really rub me the wrong way, or who I have a hard time sympathizing with, or who can't do anything for me in return?"  That's where we start today, because that's part of what it looks like to learn to be fully alive in Christ.

Let's get to it.

Lord Jesus, let us become more and more like you today in ways that are honest and real and true.

The Blessed New Abnormal--May 19, 2020

The Blessed New Abnormal--May 19, 2020

"While they were searching for Paul and Silas to bring them out to the assembly, they attacked Jason's house. When they could not find them, they dragged Jason and some believers before the city authorities, shouting, 'These people who have been turning the world upside down have come here also, and Jason has entertained them as guests. THey are all acting contrary to the decrees of the emperor, sayign that there is another king named Jesus.' The people and the city officials were distrubed when they heard this, and after they had taken bail from Jason and the others, they let them go." [Acts 17:5b-8]

While we are all in our own ways longing for a return "to normal" these days, maybe it's worth calling a brief time-eth out to remember that for the first Christians, it was precisely their faith in Jesus that wrecked their old understanding of "normal" life, and left it in shards.  For the earliest followers of Jesus, living out their faith didn't mean trying as hard as possible to get things "back" to how someone imagined they "used to be," but in fact, living in a blessed new abnormal, a life that reordered everything in light of the resurrection of Jesus.

Don't get me wrong.  In these days when businesses have been closed, schools moved online, church buildings locked, and restaurant dining and movie theaters all relegated to memory, there are lots of things I would like to get back to doing.  More importantly, I look forward to seeing folks in my community without the worries of where their income will come from, or whether their businesses can make it.  If I got wishes, yes, all of that would be my wish.  But in a deeper kind of way, I know there is a temptation all the time--not just during pandemics--to see faith as a sort of force field of inertia, a sort of insulation against things changing.  It can be really, really alluring to assume that there is some perfect "way it once was" from earlier in our lifetimes, and that Christianity is always on the side of getting things to "how it used to be," because, honestly, there is something comforting about the idea of going back to what is familiar.

We certainly don't like to see Christians as "disturbers of the peace" or "troublemakers," but would rather think of the church's calling as being a big soft blanket for all the world to snuggle up in, rather than overturning tables.  It is always comforting (but with a false comfort) to assume that God's job in the world is to maintain the order of the status quo--of keeping things the way they are, or at least of getting things "back" to how we imagine in our selective memory that "things used to be."  And so often, we turn the resurrection of Jesus basically into a cosmic "And everything went back to normal" happy ending, like on a sitcom.  In the sitcoms of my childhood, tensions could be raised and situations could be stressful up until about the last five minutes of each episode, so that everything could be resolved and "go back to normal" in time for next week, so that you could start again from the same wacky premise and have another short-lived round of problems.  And I think sometimes we project that onto the story of Jesus, like his death is the problem and his resurrection cancels his death, so that everything can go back to the way it "used to be."

But the earliest Christians certainly didn't see things that way.  They were convinced that with the death and resurrection of Jesus (together, as one united event) changed everything in the world, and that things were never going back to normal--at least not completely.  In fact, the early church was convinced that was at the heart of the Good News: because Jesus is risen from the dead, nothing will ever be the same--thank God!  Their hope was that Jesus' resurrection changed everything.  The message they spread was that because of Jesus, "the way it always was" was not coming back--because they had seen and lived through all kinds of rottenness in the old order of things.

So notice that when a group of Christians in the city of Thessalonica welcomes Paul and Silas, the local authorities get called in on charges that these followers of Jesus "are turning the world upside down."  They are charged with being a threat to the rule of the emperor, and even the one who was just the host (someone named Jason) gets accused of disturbing the peace and causing trouble.  Notice, too, that we don't get any speeches here from Paul or Jason or anybody refuting that charge.  They don't say, "Oh, no, don't worry--we won't actually say or do anything that would change the world; we're pretty much harmless that way."  But in fact, these are the charges that stick against the early Christians--we were seen as people who announced that God was doing something new, not that God was propping up the ways of "how it used to be."

I wonder, then, whether we need to reconsider how we see the moment we are living in.  Like I say, there's a lot about life before we all got used to words like "quarantine," "stay-at-home order," and "coronavirus," that I will be tickled pink to get back to.  And, yes, we can be voices of encouragement and a presence of help for friends and neighbors who are just trying to get through and get by until they can get "back" to where things were before, whether in their business life, or family life, or schooling.

But if all we have to say in this moment is, "How long until things can go back to exactly-the-way-they-were before?" we will have missed a chance to step into God's promised future, and the world will be the poorer for that missed opportunity.  Maybe this is a time for us not only to grieve the disruptions and losses of this season of our lives, but also to acknowledge how much was broken and how many suffered in what we all agreed to call "normal."  Maybe we can expand our faithful imaginations to see God doing something new that brings us more fully to life in the next chapter of history that will be written.  Maybe we can see with new eyes how Jesus' resurrection turns everything upside down.

After all, in the ancient Roman Empire, what everyone called "normal" (you know, before them trouble-makin' peace-disturbin' Christians came on the scene) was a world in which a lot of people lived their entire lives in slavery, women were regarded generally as property, children were often treated as non-persons, and the assumption was that whoever had the most power, biggest army, and greatest wealth was "right," no matter who they conquered, killed, or stepped on in order to maintain their empire.  That's the world of the Roman Empire in the first century, and that's what everybody accepted as "normal."  Normal, after all, just means "the ways we have gotten used to."  

When Christians spread across the empire, in a lot of places it led to people questioning what "normal" was, and why it was so important to preserve it forever.  Christians created this new kind of community where women and men were both treated like equals (at least in some places, see Galatians 3) and could hold leadership positions. Christians view children as important and of infinite worth, even if they couldn't earn a living and apart from carrying on the family name.  Christians insisted that those who were enslaved were made free in Christ, and pressured those who owned slaves to release them.  Christians created a new kind of community where language, culture, and whatever other labels you had stuck on you before didn't define you or limit you anymore.  And they did all this, well aware that to the powers of the day, it all looked like turning the world upside down.  But they were convinced that if Jesus was Lord, the Caesar wasn't, and that all the things Rome insisted would remain in place forever were being turned upside-down by the God who raises the dead.  The early church didn't draw people by promising, "Jesus will help get things back to normal!"  They set the world on fire by announcing, "God is doing a new thing, and it is blessedly abnormal! Come be a part of it!"

I am reminded of a speech of Dr. King's (delivered at Western Michigan University in December of 1963) that seems very much steeped in this passage from Acts 17. King said, "There are certain things in our nation and in the world (about) which I am proud to be maladjusted and which I hope all men of good-will will be maladjusted until the good societies realize. I say very honestly that I never intend to become adjusted to segregation and discrimination. I never intend to become adjusted to religious bigotry. I never intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few, leave millions of G-d’s children smothering in an air tight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society. I never intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, to self‐defeating effects of physical violence."

What if the goal for us as followers of Jesus is not merely to get things always and forever "back to normal," just because we assume "normal" equals "comfortable," but what if, rather, our calling is to let Jesus turn the old order of things upside-down, as the resurrection makes possible a blessed new "abnormal"?  What if we are being pulled into an ongoing metamorphosis for all creation, in which God is bringing us more and more fully to life out of all the places we have settled for death as "normal"?  What if, every time we let Christ's love change our hardened hearts, every time we dare to ask, "How can we help the folks who weren't doing so great in the old version of normal?", and every time we let God widen our vision, we saw that as good news?

Then maybe, we could be a little more thoughtful about how much of the old "normal" we want to rush back to... and how much of the old world God has it in mind to turn upside-down in Christ?  It turns out, we Christians have a long legacy of troublemaking and disturbing the peace with the news of resurrection.  Maybe today's a day to live up to that legacy.

Lord Jesus, turn us upside down, and keep us forever creatively maladjusted to everything that resists your reign of justice and mercy.

Go Team Jesus--May 18, 2020

Go Team Jesus--May 18, 2020

"John said to Jesus, 'Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.' But Jesus said, 'Do not stop him; for now one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward'." [Mark 9:38-40]

Here's a question I have to keep asking myself--like on a daily basis, to be perfectly honest with you: am I in the business of self-advancement and brand-promotion, or am I a part of the bigger work of bringing life... everywhere?

Some days, all I have to do is think the words of that question and it brings me up short, truthfully.  I realize how easily I forget, not only that Jesus' mission is bigger than just me, but that it includes people I don't like, too.  Even more humbling (and sometimes hard for me to deal with) is that Jesus actually includes those people I don't like, or whom I don't agree with on a bunch of things, or whom I really really want be allowed to hate--and he includes them in doing his work.  

I think that's especially hard for me, that idea that Jesus is willing to work through people I don't think are acceptable.  Maybe I can picture Jesus helping those people I don't think of as "part of my group," as if they are charity cases and Jesus heals them out of pity... but when he chooses to include those "others" as part of the team?  As healers along with him?  As helpers?  As workers in the Kingdom?  That doesn't sit well with me--how can Jesus be OK with them?  How can he elevate them to--<gasp> the level of actually doing God's work, if they are... you know, wrong about things?  (Notice how I have not-so-subtly decided that where I don't like people or disagree with them, that I am the one who is right, and they are the ones who have to change, rather than even considering that I might be wrong... or that we could each have part of the truth. Hmmmm….)

Part of what's so difficult for me some days is to see that Jesus just isn't flustered about some of the things I think he should be hot and bothered over.  I want to assume that Jesus doesn't like the same people I don't like... that Jesus holds the exact same views I already hold... and that Jesus will only ever really use people whose cultural, political, and religious preferences align exactly with mine.  You know... the "right" ones.  And maybe, if Jesus were simply running a business with franchises all around the world, he would insist on uniformity and consistency.  After all, you can expect everybody at McDonald's to all offer the same basic menu and wear the same basic uniform.  But--and this is the thing--Jesus isn't running a business, and he isn't interested in promoting a brand.  Not his own brand, or mine.  Jesus is about God's vast, inclusive, relentless mission of bringing the world to life.  In whatever ways we are less than fully alive, Jesus is committed to the work of resurrecting the dead places in us. And to hear Jesus tell it, that means he is willing to work with, and through, people who don't belong all to the same "group."  Even if, on the surface, they look like they are working at cross purposes, they may still be, in the big picture, all part of God's universal project of bringing us to life.

This is hard for me sometimes.  I want there to be some kind of litmus test, some requirement of meeting with my approval.  I want people to have to get my stamp of endorsement before Jesus is allowed to use them.  And Jesus just stubbornly refuses to give over that control to me, just like he didn't let John his disciple have control over who was or was not allowed to heal people in Jesus' name.  Jesus isn't upset that some stranger has started doing good--bringing people to life and freeing people from the powers of evil--in his name.  John, of course, thinks he is being a good little disciple by trying to silence this other exorcist, but Jesus simply lets him be.  And, I have to be honest, that is a struggle for me.

It's a struggle sometimes in our theological traditions.  It's hard to have our theology all figured out, and then to cross paths with folks whose traditions and theologies are different--sometimes very different--and to allow the possibility that God not only loves, but is doing good work through, folks who believe differently about God than I do... and that God doesn't seem to be as hot and bothered about making them change what they think as I want God to be.  And at the same time, I don't want to give up on the reasons I believe what I believe.  But it seems at least part of the pride I have to swallow is seeing that Jesus is indeed using folks from all sorts of different denominations and traditions and sects for his good work of bringing people to life.  After all, Jesus seems to be interested in feeding people--not only feeding people in a Lutheran way, or Methodist way, or Pentecostal way, or Greek Orthodox way.  Jesus sees hungry people, and he feeds them.  No Catechism prerequisite.

It's a struggle, too, with the political and cultural fault lines between us, too.  Sometimes that's a really, really hard thing.  It's hard sometimes to see folks all wholeheartedly saying they want to follow Jesus, that they will listen to the way and teachings of Jesus, and that they will strive, as we say in our liturgy, to work for peace and justice in all the world... and to find that we may come to diametrically opposed conclusions about what that should look like, who should do it, and what that means for our common life.  It's hard to see where the disconnects happen, that we find ourselves living in a time where some are deeply convinced the more they read the Scriptures and follow Jesus that their faith leads them to vote Democratic every time, and there are folks who are sure as anything that Jesus is a card-carrying Republican.  And it's difficult sometimes to consider that, while there are some things we don't agree about in policy and party, God reserves the right to work through all of us for the divine mission of bringing all creation more fully to life.  Surely, there are times when God has to work in spite of my political or cultural commitments, and there are times God has to overcome yours, too.  And much like with our theological differences, I need to be able to own my beliefs and know why I hold them... while at the same time swallowing my pride enough to consider that other people might have a point... or that God regularly chooses to do good through people who voted differently than I did in the last election... and who will vote differently from me in the next one.  (Part of my hope, too, is that when we get to glory, there will be a lot of God clearing our eyes and each of us no longer being afraid to see the places where our thinking, our politics, our theology, and our mindsets were all way off base, and where it will turn out we were close to being in the right ballpark.)

And in the era of social media, it is really really easy to get swept up in saying (in all capitals) that the folks I don't agree with must be downright evil.  It's difficult, it's humbling, and it's even painful, to consider that someone who has a different set of policy commitments from me is also trying their very best from their vantage point to do good.  We may have very, very different pictures of what "the common good" looks like, and at those points, we need to have some honest conversation.  But conversation itself assumes that we can put ourselves at the same table and grant the benefit of the doubt that the other person is trying to do something good in the world, and that God could well be using this person in the big picture mission of bringing us all more fully to life.  We may not leave the table agreeing (let's not be naïve here), but we can probably find that the people we are in the most heated disagreements are also trying very hard to do good in the world.

So what does that mean for how I face this day?  I want to suggest a couple of things.  First off, none of this means we should give up the things we believe at our core--not in our theology, not in our politics, not in our philosophy or culture or musical tastes or favorite movies (although if you pick something other than The Princess Bride, we need to have another talk).  But rather, we each need to do some honest thinking and re-examining of the why to what we believe, think, and teach.  Why do I think the way I do? Where do my commitments come from?  And for me at least, as a follower of Jesus, how do I honestly see the connecting points from what I understand about Jesus to how I think, and act, and see the world, and vote, and make purchases, and everything else?  My hunch is that a lot of us live our lives without really having those conversations with ourselves, much less anybody else, because it is so much easier simply to assume that what I have always thought is what Jesus thinks, and not to scratch any deeper than that.  But it seems like it would be wise for me to take the risk of that kind of self-inventory--and where I find myself running into inconsistencies in myself, then it's worth asking what needs to change in me.

Second, I think this is going to mean we do a lot more extending of grace to others that we really don't want to extend grace to.  This is hard--let's not pretend it isn't.  It's going to mean looking for ways to practice empathy: that is, when I cross paths with someone whose mindset is really different from mine, I can't let myself off the hook to ask, "How does this person see the world, and why might it be that they have the commitments they do?"  I don't have give up my beliefs or convictions to practice empathy--I just have to have enough emotional imagination to put myself in someone else's shoes, and enough moral courage not to be threatened by the idea that someone else thinks differently.  Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther taught that part of keeping the commandment against false witness means trying to find the best possible light in which to see the actions and choices of other people around us, even when it is hard.  And I think there's wisdom in that.

Third, let me suggest we not assume the worst in those we disagree with, unless we have firm, verifiable facts or logic to support that.  In particular, I mean for us to practice what a professor of mine at seminary use to say: "Never attribute to malevolence what could be attributed to stupidity."  In other words, most of the time, the people who do things we don't like are not TRYING to be rotten, wicked, and evil--they are trying to do good things, but either the way they are trying to get them done, or their assumptions about what "good" means are different from ours.  That doesn't make our disagreements go away, but it does change their nature.  Most of the time (note, I say most, not all), the people you cross paths with who think differently from you are not intending to be evil or wicked or rotten. When I make the effort to at least look for what might be leading someone to think as they do--or better yet, when I dare to have the conversation with them, rather than putting words in their mouths--I find it is a lot hard to just make sweeping statements about how evil or crooked they must be.

Now you'll notice that all of this so far suggests I should be having a lot more conversations with people I don't agree with or don't like, and a lot less time spent in echo-chambers that will only reinforce what I already think or put the worst possible spin on those outside my little cliques.  And, just to be clear, things like social media are not great for opening me up to honest conversations, because their whole business model and product are built on algorithms that feed me more things that are like what I already have shown that I agree with.  That means in this day and age it is more important than ever to have check points with people, sources, and thinking that stretches me beyond what I am used to, so that I don't end up assuming everyone who thinks differently from me is the devil.

All of this is hard work, I know.  And I say all of this to myself before anybody else--because this is hard stuff for me on a daily basis.  And most days, at some point, I blow it, and I find myself terribly disappointed, both in other people and in myself.  This stuff ain't easy.  But it seems to me that if we confess Jesus as Lord, we are bound to actually listen to the things he says and does, and in this case, that means allowing the possibility that people who don't fit in "my group" are still a part of Jesus' group... and that people I don't like or agree with can still be a part of God's vast and inclusive work of bringing the world more fully to life out of death.

So let me ask all of us to a great long-term project of holding one another accountable.  Let me ask you to hold my feet to the fire where you see me refusing to give the benefit of the doubt to others, and let me ask you to do that kind of honest self-reflection yourself.  We will still find there are plenty of folks to disagree with in life.  But I suspect we will disagree differently... with less vitriol and bitterness and with more patience and empathy.  And I suspect, too, we will all find ourselves a little more humbled and graced to see just how big a roster Team Jesus has.

Go team Jesus.

Lord Jesus, help us out when we think we know better than you.  Help us to sort through what we believe and think and do in the world, and help us to give grace to others, too.