Breaking the Cycle--September 1, 2020

Breaking the Cycle--September 1, 2020

"When Silas and Timothy arrived from Macedonia, Paul was occupied with proclaiming the word, testifying to the Jews that the Messiah was Jesus. When they opposed and reviled him, in protest he shook the dust from his clothes and said to them, 'Your blood be on your own heads! I am innocent. From now on I will go to the Gentiles.' Then he left the synagogue and went to the house of a man named Titius Justus, a worshiper of God; his house was next door to the synagogue. Crispus, the official of the synagogue, became a believer in the Lord, together with all his household; and many of the Corinthians who heard Paul became believers and were baptized." [Acts 18:5-8]

The old saying is true: you don't have to attend every argument you're invited to.

In fact, sometimes the refusal to sink down to the level of the name-callers and saber-rattlers is the most powerful response to an instigator you can offer.  Sometimes the way we refuse to get drawn into a fight turns out to be the way we break the old cycles of hatred, too.  And maybe your mature silence in the face childish trolling will turn out to be the thing that persuades someone to listen when you do speak.

I stumbled upon this passage from Acts today unintentionally, as it turns out.  I was flipping through my New Testament, and the pages happened to fall here, as I was trying to get further toward the back to one of Paul's letters.  But the part where it says that Paul "in protest shook the dust from his clothes" caught my eye, and I had to read more to remind myself of this story that I hadn't read for years.  It caught my attention because it is almost word for word the way Jesus had taught his original group of disciples to respond in case a town rejected them when they came as strangers bringing news of the Reign of God.  He had told them not to call down fire from the sky (the way they sometimes wanted to do), and not to yell back, or fight, or demand their "rights" while they brandished swords or clubs, but rather, simply to shake the dust of the town off their feet in protest, and then move on.  In other words, when someone tried to bait them into hostility or violence or even childish name-calling, they were to refuse to accept those terms of engagement, and to move on.  When someone else goes low, the followers of Jesus are to go high.  They could register their discontent by shaking off the dust, and then move on, rather than getting drawn into a hateful exchange that would poison their own hearts, too.

I think we sometimes forget that, especially in this sharply polarized time.  We forget that when we give into the impulse to lob insults, or resort to untruths, or threaten somebody with violence, in the name of trying to defeat them, we have actually already lost.  In the attempt to hurt someone by hurling venomous words or actions at someone else, we end up poisoning ourselves, too.  Like Dr. King put it so well, "I have decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear."  And when we resort to the same childish name-calling or dangerous weapon-waving (the kind that fills our screens all the time these days), I don't think we realize how toxic that becomes for us ourselves, not merely the people we think we are trying to intimidate or insult.  We become poisoned.  We become part of the problem.

And here in this little scene from an obscure chapter of Acts, we get a glimpse of a real-life alternative.  Paul is met with hostility, and instead of digging his heels in and yelling back, or pulling out his sword and insisting he was going to "defend his rights" and fight off anyone who tried to confront him, or some such nonsense, Paul let his walking away be his protest.  They were inviting him to a fight, and he didn't have to accept the invitation.  They were trying to goad him into giving in to hatred, and he wouldn't do it.  He walked away.

The stakes don't have to be so big for us still to practice the same non-violent approach.  It doesn't have to be the verge of a riot like happens so often in the book of Acts (and interestingly, the book of Acts records how often a peaceable sermon or speech on the street corner from Paul was framed as a "riot" by his opponents), or like the tense confrontations unfolding in places like Portland and Kenosha in our day.  Even just the tiny slights, the hidden jabs, that you face in the course of a day. When you have been trying to be respectful of strangers and wearing a mask in public and someone mutters under their breath that you're part of "that cult," you have the choice of making this a fight, or in continuing to love your neighbor even if they don't get what you are doing or why you are doing it.  (That's the beauty of kindness--the other person doesn't have to appreciate it for you still to act with compassion; they don't have the power over you to kill your love.)  Or maybe it's the willingness to take a deep breath and pray, "How can I respond like Jesus?" before firing off the snarky comment to someone's social media post.  Or maybe it's just that the angry, pot-stirring meme someone else invites you to forward comes to a halt when you see it and you refuse to share it yourself.  

You get to voice that you do not agree, but you don't have to let them pull you into a fight like you're Marty McFly in every single Back to the Future movie.  You don't have to get goaded into answering their childishness with some of your own.  You don't have to dignify their provocations with a response.  Paul's approach, shaking the dust off his feet, allows him to make it clear he doesn't agree with them, but he won't let them provoke him into attacking them, and then giving his opponents more ammunition to attack him with.  Paul knows they want him to lash out--that will confirm their suspicions that he's just a rabble-rouser and a trouble-maker, and they are looking for reasons to hate Paul, to dismiss him, and to ignore him.  Paul just refuses to play their game, and he refuses to be pulled into their kind of a fight.

Look, I get it--these are days when tempers flare and our nerves are running out of patience.  We get touchy about masks and school re-openings and who did or didn't come to your event because of coronavirus, and that's not even touching yet the polarized opinions about protests across the country, police actions, protestors and counter-protesters, or the hot mess that is an election season.  Feel what you feel, own your convictions, know why you believe them, and, yes, much like the letter we call First Peter says, be ready to give an account for why you believe what you believe.  I don't think Paul's example here is meant to silence anybody--but rather to call us to speak without perpetuating the cycle of hatred.  Paul says what he needs to say, and then he won't let himself get dragged into a fistfight.  He won't let himself become captive to someone else's hatred and bitterness.

Let's face it: the divisions we live with and walk amidst these days are not all heal-able by only sharing puppy dog pictures and rainbows on your social media, and we're not going to be able to persuade folks who disagree with us as long as we each just retreat to our own echo chambers of voices, news sources, and pundits who reinforce the things we already want to believe.  There's more to healing our divisions than a single conversation over a cup of coffee can fix.  But we can at least resolve not to make things worse.  We can commit not to feed the beast, not to perpetuate the cycle, and not to sink to the level of the pettiest and most childish among us.  We don't have to accept the terms others engage us with.  And even if others won't hold themselves accountable to make their points with facts rather than with fear, or to back up their claims with solid reasons and data, or to listen openly to others who disagree with them, we can still commit to doing those things.  We can be the ones who won't get suckered into a fight.  We can be the ones who won't agitate a tense situation with saber-rattling.  We can be the ones who blow out the matches being tossed so casually around powder kegs.  We can be the ones who respond to hatred with love, to threats with intentional silence, and to provocation simply with the dust shaken off of our clothing and sandals.

And maybe in that silence... that distance... that little bit of breathing space... we can all find the tension level ratcheted down a little bit, and can get to a place of listening, of reasoning together, and of empathy.  Even those meager milestones may be far down the road, but at least we can be a part of moving in the right direction.

I don't know what kinds of tiny aggressions and little slights are coming your way today--and I'm aware that there are a lot of those that I don't pick up on because they're not aimed at me.  But it does seem to me that we empower those who most want to draw us into a bitter (and bigger) fight when we let them provoke us to hatred or threats back at them.  And maybe the best way to leave open the possibility of things being put right is to break the cycle of hatred when it turns toward us and we are expected to volley it back with force.  Today, the choice may just be between being drawn into that pattern of bitterness on the one hand, and being free to be fully alive as we step back on other.

You don't have to give anybody else the power over you to make you hate, or threaten, or bully. You are free, and empowered, to break the cycle.

Lord God give us the wisdom, the love, and the strength to know when not to engage with the voices that want us us to sink to their level.

More Than Looking "Tough"

 More Than Looking "Tough"--August 31, 2020

[The LORD said to Ezekiel:] "Now you, mortal, say to the house of Israel, Thus you have said: 'Our transgressions and our sins weigh upon us, and we waste away because of them; how then can we live?' Say to them, As I live, says the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but that the wicked turn from their ways and live; turn back, turn back from your evil ways; for why will you die, O house of Israel?"

Just for the record, God doesn't have a quota of arrests to make, defendants to prosecute, or criminals to sentence.  Neither does God take some kind of perverse satisfaction in watching us suffer, not even in the name of "justice."  And mind you, that's not just my personal wishful thinking on the subject--it is, to hear Ezekiel tell it, God's own stated policy.

So, all apologies to the well-known Jonathan Edwards and his famous sermon, "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," it just isn't true that God "holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some detestable insect, over the fire." Nor is it true, as Edwards went to insist, that God "detests you," or "looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be thrown into the fire."  And is just isn't so that God's eyes "are too pure than to bear to have you in his sight."

Of course, for a very long time, a very many members of the Respectable Religious People's Association have been convinced that this is exactly God's position, and that God is merely a sort of divine umpire, calling balls and strikes without interest in the outcome of the game, or like God is simply a cold, indifferent executioner, whose job is to dole out death-sentences to the guilty without batting an eye about it.  So often the position of the Respectable Religious Crowd is that God secretly savors our sin, because it means God gets to zap us with the fury of divine justice.  

I think a lot of us have been taught somewhere along the way that God has some need to look "tough" and "strong" and that God needs to look like a hard-liner on "law and order" for the sake of the divine reputation, and therefore that God has to make an example of sinners, rule-transgressors, and law-breakers.  Once you've messed up, that's it--you're done.  That's certainly what the prophet Jonah wanted to be true when he was sent announcing judgment and destruction to the people of Nineveh--he wanted so badly for God to be merciless in frying the wicked sinners of that pagan enemy city.  And yet, of course, Jonah had a sneaking suspicion all along that God was not--and is not--actively rooting for our destruction.  Jonah knew, deep down in his bones, that God's nature is gracious and merciful as well as loving justice, and that God looks for ways to redeem, to pardon, to forgive, and to start over with us.

That's the same thing that Ezekiel hears from God here.  God tells the prophet that while there are consequences for wickedness, God is at the very same time actively rooting for us to turn from that wickedness and to be brought to life again.  More than just "rooting for us," God is actively working to get us to see the ways we have harmed others, to own up to it, and to take a new path.  God is actively working for us to be brought to life--not standing by and sharpening his executioner's sword while we get ourselves deeper into sin.  In other words, God is biased--yes, biased!--toward saving and redeeming and resurrecting us.  God is at work pulling, cajoling, persuading, and grabbing hold of us, and all people, to get us to turn from the ways we break relationship with God and with other people.  There is no quota, no number of cases God needs to close, no tally of convictions God needs to clinch, and no push to look "tough on sin" for the sake of God's reputation.  God is willing to risk looking like a pushover who is "soft on sin" and who gives mercy out extravagantly, for the sake of saving us.

This is amazing news.  We live in a time when everyone is obsessed with appearances--with manufacturing a strong reputation and curating just the right public image.  We live in a time when it advantageous to look powerful and strong and to crack down on those deemed as rule-breakers and trouble-makers in the name of "law and order."  And if you are obsessed with whether other people perceive you as being "tough" and "strong," you will have no room for mercy, no time for reconciliation, and no willingness to see the ones in your target sights as beloved and infinitely precious.  But God, according to the prophets, is willing to sacrifice a reputation for being "tough on sin" by going publicly on record saying, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but want the wicked to turn and live."  God would rather have us alive than have God's ego stroked or reputation burnished.  

God would rather have you and lose "face" than lose you and look tough.

Let me say that again, and let it sink in: God would rather have you, even if it costs God the appearance of being tough, than to lose you and keep a fearsome divine reputation.  God would rather have you.

And God would rather have all of us.  God would rather that all the mess-ups, the rule-breakers, the failures, sinners, and troublemakers be given life than to have someone to zap.  In fact, Ezekiel says, God would prefer there would be no one to zap at all.

I have been remembering these days a phase I went through as a kid, when I tried to get my grandparents to quit smoking.  (This seems to be a thing you go through at around eight or nine--my kids are going through it now, reminding all the adults they meet, including us non-smokers, that smoking is dangerous.)  I can remember having a conversation with my Grandpa and my Grandma with all the righteous indignation a third-grader can muster where I said, "I think smoking is bad for you.  I don't think you should smoke."  And when I said it, it wasn't because I wanted to be mouthy or rebellious to my grandparents.  It wasn't because I wanted to embarrass them or make them suffer.  It was because I loved them and wanted them to live, and everything my eight-year-old mind had learned told me that their smoking was a danger to themselves, to each other, and to me when I was in their home.  In other words, as awkwardly and as clumsily as I did it, I was asking them to turn from their choices because I loved them.  I didn't want them to suffer for having smoked for so long in the past--I just wanted them to quit so they could live and I could have the time with them.

I think something like that is what Ezekiel has in mind.  God isn't looking to puff up the divine ego by taking cheap shots at us, and God doesn't punch down to us in an attempt to look strong.  God pleads like a little kid who doesn't want the grown-ups to get cancer.  God does everything God can think of to get us to see the ways we are harming ourselves and each other, so that we can turn and make new choices.  God is daily mounting an intervention for all of us, compelling us to see how we are destroying ourselves and others in our current actions, so that we can stop and change and have life in the fullest.

That's not a God who capriciously dangles us over the fire as Jonathan Edwards pictured.  That's not a God who is more interested in looking tough than in saving lives.  Rather, the God who speaks through the prophets is forever willing to lose face if it means gaining us.  The God we meet in the Bible isn't like the Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis, who objectively weighed the souls of the dead to determine who was worthy of the bliss of the afterlife but didn't really care what the outcome was.  The God of the Scriptures cares.  The God of the Scriptures is biased toward life.  The God of the Scriptures is on the side of mercy.  The God of the Scriptures loves you more than the idea of looking like a "law and order" kind of deity.

And that is our hope.

Today, may we have the courage to see the ways we are caught in rottenness so that we can turn, find mercy, and begin again.  May we be brought fully to life by grace.

Lord God, bring us face to face with our rotten ways so that we can be led to change and brought to life.

If You Have Had Enough--August 28, 2020

 If You Have Had Enough--August 28, 2020

"To you I lift up my eyes,

    O You who are enthroned in the heavens!

As the eyes of servants 

    look to the hand of their master,

as the eyes of a maid 

    to the hand of her mistress,

so our eyes look to the LORD our God,

    until he has mercy upon us.

Have mercy upon us, O LORD, have mercy upon us,

    for we have had more than enough of contempt.

Our soul has had more than its fill 

    of the scorn of those who are at ease,

    of the contempt of the proud."  [Psalm 123:1-4]

 

It's okay to be weary.  It's ok to tell God that you are.  

It's okay to tell God you are worn down and threadbare in your soul.

It's okay if the only words you can find to bring to God are, "I've had enough of it all."

Look, the writers of the Bible, like the poet praying in this psalm, all give us permission for that kind of stark honesty with God.  And if all you can muster as you look up to the heavens is, "Help me out--I'm dying here!" well, here is the example of one of our ancestors in the faith.  We have been given the words of this and so many other ancient songs of lament to borrow and to make our own.

I know that a psalm like this may not seem very cheery.  That's ok.  Sometimes the point of passages like this from the Scriptures is the freedom we find in being able to be honest about how worn down we are. There are a lot of times when life itself isn't particularly cheery.  

And there are times it is especially difficult to be in one of those dark valleys when others look at you and can only hear complaining they cannot understand.  "I've never had that problem," they say, "so it must not be a real burden."  Or it goes, "I've never heard of that," or "I don't see it," or "But you look fine."  Or you'll hear the voices whisper, "This was never a problem I ever heard anybody make a fuss about before--why is this an issue now?"  You get the sense that the psalmist here knows what that's like--that's what it means to feel like your soul has had "more than its fill of the scorn of those who are at ease."  And, of course, that's the height of privilege, isn't it--to believe that because something isn't an issue to you that it must not be an issue for anybody else.  Well, the psalmist knows what it's like to have the privileged look down on you or think you are being overly dramatic.  When others can't understand your pain, they have a way of assuming it isn't real, when in actuality they're the ones deficient in empathy.  But it still hurts you all the same to be dismissed like that, doesn't it?

So this is a prayer for people who have been in that weary place, that tired place, that place that is exhausted from caring, from struggling, from trying to do right in the world, and having others still not get it.  And if you have been in that place--or maybe, if you are there right now, tired of the non-stop rottenness around us in the world, and feeling ready to just quit--there is life to be found in a prayer like this one.  The life comes, first, from being able to say out loud to God all the things that weary you, like the poet does in this psalm.  That's powerful all by itself, because as we bring things to God, there's no need to brace yourself for criticism or counterattacks.  God doesn't add scorn to your weariness, and God doesn't belittle or shrug off the pain we feel.  But also, there's life to be found in these words because God is committed to being on the side of restoration for the weary, the side of lifting up those who have been stepped on, the side of lifting up the bruised reed and carefully tending the flickering flame so its light will not be lost.

And the psalmist here knows that--he prays without pulling punches, getting right to his need.  And it boils down to this: "God, I look to you the same way a servant-girl looks to the matriarch of the house for help, and I need help.  I'm worn down, and I need rest.  So help me.  Just help me.  Show me mercy, because I am just about ready to give up."  There is no promise of offering future sacrifices in return for help today.  There is no pleading on the basis of past good behavior, as if God owes it to the one praying to help.  There is simply the weariness itself--the weariness of tying to do right in a world where it seems rottenness runs amok, and the weariness of bearing with others who can't understand why you're worn down.  And on the basis of that weariness itself, the voice praying trusts that God will be moved to help.

So today, if you find yourself in that place of exhaustion, for whatever reason (and there are a lot of reasons these days), then hear these words offered up for you: it is ok to be tired.  It is ok to be ready to give up.  It is ok to feel like the burden of it all is too much to bear.  And at the same time, the good you do in the world is worth it.  The time and energy you take to show love, to offer forgiveness, to speak truth, to serve a stranger, to help lift someone else's spirits--these are blessed gifts you make possible, and the world would be the poorer without you. Take the time and the space to catch your breathe, to rest, to be restored.  Because we need your voice when you are ready once again--we need it to speak compassion, to shout for joy with someone else's celebration, to weep with another person's sorrow, to call for justice for those who are wronged, and to raise questions of the greedy, the militaristic, and the proud.  We need your voice, your fire, your love. But everything in its time, weary beloved one. Everything in its time.

And on the other hand, if you find yourself doing fine but you know someone else around you is weary like the psalmist here, then maybe your calling is to speak those words of permission and affirmation to them.  Maybe you will be the reason someone else can carry on when they were on the verge of giving up.  Maybe you will be the way God shows mercy to another soul that has had more than its fill of heaviness.  Maybe you will be God's gift of renewal for someone who is exhausted.  Maybe you will be the agent of a little resurrection today.

Either way, the God who is mercy will be busy today, giving rest, giving peace, giving life.

Lord God, we are tired.  Renew us.  For your mercy's sake, help us in our weariness, this whole tired world.  Bring us to life.

A Wearied God--August 27, 2020

 A Wearied God--August 27, 2020

"Your new moons and your appointed festivals
    my soul hates;
they have become a burden to me,

    I am weary of bearing them.

When you stretch out your hands,

    I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers,

    I will not listen;

    your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves; make yourselves clean;

    remove the evil of your doings

    from before my eyes;

cease to do evil,

    learn to do good;

seek justice,

    rescue the oppressed,

defend the orphan,

    plead for the widow.

Come now, let us argue it out,

    says the LORD;

though your sins are like scarlet,

    they shall be like snow;

though they are red like crimson,

    they shall become like wool."  [Isaiah 1:14-18]

All the volumes of systematic theology, all the seminary classes, and all the years of Bible study insist that God can't get tired--and yet here through the words of the prophet Isaiah God confesses to being worn out by shows of Respectable Religion that ignore the needs of the neighbor.

"The One who watches over Israel will neither slumber, nor sleep," says the psalmist, and that is true--and yet, look here, God has gotten tired and worn down from putting up with our empty shows of piety when they come without a commitment to doing justice.

Creating the universe?  God does it with mere words: "Let there be..."  No trouble.

Saving the enslaved from the clutches of the murderous, greedy, and cruel hand of Pharaoh?  No sweat, not a problem.

Bearing the sins of the world, enduring a torturous death at the hands of the empire, and entering into the gloom of the grave?  God does that, too, without complaint.

But what makes the God of the Scriptures weary... is religious people who ignore the needs of the vulnerable and who aren't bothered by the blood on their hands.  That, the prophet says, is a burden more than God will bear.  As someone whose job is often described as "religious professional," those are difficult words to read--but there they are, staring back at me from my Bible, no matter how much I wish they weren't there.

And maybe that's the real tragedy Isaiah is getting at here.  It's not that God is opposed to prayer, or sabbath, or even religious festivals and solemn assemblies.  It's that we have a way of thinking that if we do those things rightly (or frequently enough?), we can stop paying attention to the suffering going on outside the stained glass windows.  We think that as long as we talk the religious talk, as long as we make a show of our prayers in public, and work to give our organized religion a more powerful perch in society, then we are given a pass when it comes to caring about the people who were gunned down in the street last night... or who will go to sleep with empty bellies tonight... or who don't know where they'll find shelter for their kids tomorrow night.

But when you yourself are comfortable, it's easy to think you don't have to worry about "those people" and "their problems."  It's easy to believe that they must all deserve whatever happened to them, or that they should have just made better life choices, or that they must be lazy... or criminal... or just "bad people."  We pile up reasons not to have to care about our neighbors, and we layer them on top of excuses not to have to do anything about their situations, because, well, after all, it doesn't directly affect me.  And the weight of all that rationalizing is just too much burden for God to bear.  Here in the opening chapter of Isaiah, God just up and says, "I'm not going to carry these any more for you, and I'm not going to lug around the pious posturing you've been putting on me.  I'm just done with it all."

You'll note, I hope, that what God is finished with is all of that empty religious talk--not the people who suffer... and not even with us, even in our complacency.  God is definitely done with our attempts to hold up shows of religiosity like a prop, but God is not done with those whose sufferings we have been ignoring.  Neither has God given up on us, even if that's what we deserve.

And this is the miracle of grace.  Despite the fact that all of us Respectable Religious folk have spent some effort in our lives ignoring the needs of our neighbors and pretending injustices weren't there, God is willing yet to start over with us.  "Though your sins are like scarlet," says the prophet in that famous line, "they shall be white as snow."  God is willing to forgive, to begin again, and to bring us to life again, when surely it is more than we deserve.  But it will mean facing up to the things we have been ignoring.  It will mean no longer hiding behind talk about "maintaining our religious heritage" as a way of avoiding having to deal with the victims of violence, the pull of our greed, and the sufferings of our neighbors.  We will have to face both the people we have ignored and our own past patterns of shrugging them off. We will have to hash it all out with God and own that indifference as sin.  And that may be an especially difficult price to pay, because we have a tendency to think that as long as I haven't directly harmed someone else, I haven't "sinned," whereas the thing God is so upset about is our numb complacency while others die or starve or go without.  Indifference is sin, too.  Apathy requires repentance.  Saying, "It's not my problem," is in fact what makes us part of the problem.

The wonder of grace is that despite all those sins we have tried to hide behind public displays of religion, God offers us the hope of beginning again.

Let us not waste it.

Maybe we have to hear the brutal truth that we have wearied God with our attempts to look religious, in order to know what grace it is that God is willing yet again to carry us into a new future.

Lord God, bring to an end our shows of religion so that we can do the work that has mattered to you all along, to love our neighbors as you do.

A Lesson from the Emperor--August 26, 2020

 

A Lesson from the Emperor--August 26, 2020

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." [Romans 12:21]

You can really learn a lot from a wicked space sorcerer, if you're willing to pay attention in the right ways.

Okay, I'm going to lay my late-twentieth-century-sci-fi-nerd cards on the table and share a Star Wars anecdote.  You don't have to have ever seen one of the eleven-and-counting Star Wars movies to follow this, I don't think.  But just to bring everybody up to speed, the ominous villains of the Star Wars movies are the evil Galactic Empire, headed most famously by the iconically masked enforcer Darth Vader, and above Vader himself, the mysterious berobed Emperor Palpatine.  The Emperor is not only politically powerful (he is the Emperor, after all), but is a master of the ways of the Dark Side of the Force, which gives him seemingly magical powers like shooting lightning out of his hand, telekinesis, mind manipulation, and a host of of other tricks up his long black sleeve.

Emperor Palpatine is particularly dangerous because he is willing to play the long game--he doesn't just think of immediate gratification or short-term wins, but strategizes for bigger victories even if they take years or decades to accomplish.  He is insidious that way, and I think that's part of what makes the Emperor one of the all-time great movie villains.

But most insidious of all, I think--and this is where there is a lesson to be learned for us non-Jedi folks--is that the Emperor is most interested in getting his opponents to give into hatred--to "turn to the Dark side," as they say in that Galaxy Far Far Away--which allows them to become his minions.  The Emperor wins if he gets good people to accept the ways of evil, even if he doesn't kill them.  The Emperor wins by getting his enemies to allow themselves to fight him on his terms--to use hatred and anger as their means of attacking him.  Because once they do that, they have already given him the victory.  There's even a climactic scene in The Return of the Jedi where the hero, Luke Skywalker, is finally facing down the menacing Darth Vader, and while the Emperor watches the battle of clashing light sabers, he starts encouraging Luke to kill Vader--and to use his hatred to do it.

That's the master stroke--and I can remember as a kid seeing that scene and having it blow my mind.  Why would the head villain be telling the good guy to kill the second-worst bad guy?  Why would the Emperor be willing to sacrifice his fearsome apprentice, Vader, to the hero we have spent three movies rooting for?  Because he knows that getting the hero to use hatred, fear, and anger means the hero becomes a tool of the Dark Side.  Losing Vader but getting a new recruit with even stronger powers would be a strategic win for the Emperor, and so he cheers Luke on to kill Vader, and to let the hatred flow through him, to feel the power of that hatred, and to channel the power of his fears.

And it almost works.

This, I believe, is the biggest danger to our souls here in the real world, too--to be so fiercely opposed to the ones we see as "enemies" that we are willing to resort to hatred, fear, and anger to fight them.  When we think we are fighting for good but allow ourselves to use evil as the means to accomplish it, we have already given the battle to the powers of evil.  And the powers of evil in the real world are at least as smart as the ones from Hollywood blockbusters--the Emperor is only that clever because real people in the real world have experienced that same cunning pull of evil.

That's why it is such a vital move that Paul makes when he tells the Roman Christians, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." He's not merely saying, "You need to out-muscle evil with your sheer brute force," but rather he's saying, "Don't let evil infect you so that you do evil things in the name of doing good."  It's about refusing to accept evil as a means.  It's about refusing to allow hatred, fear, greed, and ambition to become natural to us.  It's about refusing to resort to rottenness as a means to winning--because we know that once we have given in on that point, we have already lost the battle that really counts.  The Emperor knows that in the Star Wars movies, and so he knows it is a long-game win if he can get Luke to kill Vader by giving into hatred.  And the powers of evil right now know the same is true--if they can get us to be ok with hatred, to accept a strategy of fear, and to be willing to win at the cost of our character, then evil has already won.

That's also why the early church was so unswervingly committed to a policy of loving their enemies, from the days of Jesus himself on throughout the New Testament and early church (somewhere along the way this was forgotten or silenced, but that's probably a conversation for another day's devotion).  The idea of loving enemies doesn't mean you help your enemies do evil things, but it does mean that you won't do evil things to them as a way of fighting their evil.  It means we will tell the truth, so far as we know it, even when it may make people squirm--but we will not tell lies as a way of getting ahead.  It means we will advocate for what we think is right, but we will not sell out for the sake of getting power or influence.  It means we may disagree with people, but we will not allow ourselves to hate them.  It means we may speak directly and argue passionately for what we think is right, but with the willingness to be shown where we are wrong, rather than to ignore anything that doesn't already reinforce what we want to be true.  It means we can own where we think we are right, but also that we be willing to let others show us where we have failed or fallen short.  It means refusing to turn some group of people into scapegoats for others to be afraid of, and instead seeking the good of all. And it means once and for all being done with Me-and-My-Group-First thinking that is used to justify hating anybody who falls outside the boundary lines.  It means that every day, we are Luke Skywalker, having to make the choice of whether we will resort to evil means as a way of winning, or whether we will be wise enough to know that option smells of sulfur and would actually make us tools of evil itself.

All of that is what Paul has in mind when he writes, both to those first-century Christians and to us reading over their shoulders two millennia later, "Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good."  The moment we tell ourselves it's OK to nurse a little hatred or sell our integrity for the sake of personal or political advantage, we have already let evil win.  So don't let yourself play the game by the rules evil has handed you.  You do not have to accept those terms.  None of us has to listen to the Emperor's smiling lies.

You and I, we are free--free to love.

Lord Jesus, give us both the wisdom and the courage to know how to say NO to the strategies and tactics of evil, and instead to say YES to your path, all our days.

Losing Our Way to Victory--August 25, 2020

 

Losing Our Way to Victory--August 25, 2020

"Then Jesus told his disciples, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?'" [Matthew 16:24-26]

Okay, a quick refresher, in case you're ever invited to my house for game night: the point of the game Uno is to get rid of your cards first.

Every so often when we get the family around the dinner table for game night, we have to remind everybody (myself included sometimes) about how the game of the night works.  Some games are about acquisition--you try to get as much as you can for yourself--a higher score of points for bigger words in Scrabble, a larger portfolio of investments and money in Monopoly, or even the whole deck of cards if you are playing war.  A lot of games are like that--they are about getting... taking... accumulating.  It can be easy, if you are used to playing those kinds of games, to just let that become your default mindset for every game, and then, without thinking, you end up stuck with a pile of cards in a game like Uno, and then it dawns on you--this is a different sort of game entirely.

It does take a certain amount of un-learning to play Uno, and other games like it, because we can get stuck in the mindset that winning always looks like "getting."

And maybe we have the same problem when we actually take the time to listen to Jesus.  Because Jesus is convinced that being his follower means un-learning what the world has taught us about the "point" of life.  Over against all the other voices loudly telling us that the point of life is to get as much as possible for yourself, and to look as tough and strong and threatening as possible in order to keep what you have taken, Jesus says that our kind of winning looks like losing.  Our kind of winning is Uno-winning--the victory that comes in giving yourself away.  Our kind of triumph looks like a cross--not in crucifying or destroying our enemies, but in Jesus being crucified at the hands of his enemies and praying for their forgiveness as he bleeds out.  To the world around, that looks like nonsense--but to followers of Jesus, it is the key to life.

And of course, the stakes are so much higher than a game.  If I forget how to play Uno on family game night, the only danger is that one of my kids gets to say "Uno" before I do, and maybe they get bragging rights during bedtime snack.  But in life--oh, dear ones, the stakes are so much higher. It really is a question of what we orient our lives toward.  It really is a question of whether we think the goal, the meaning, and the purpose of life is looking like a "winner," on the world's terms, or whether we see God's upside-down power and beauty in slf-giving love.

This feels to me like it should be already a settled subject.  This talk about "taking up your cross" to follow is so essential to Jesus' teaching that it seems to me like every churchgoer, every Christian, everyone who has ever sat in a pew before or read from one of the Gospels before, should "get" that much.  It is so very very fundamental that I really find myself getting frustrated and disappointed when other self-described disciples of Jesus speak and act in ways that run counter to this.  And what saddens me--what truly disheartens me on an almost daily basis lately--is how frequently people I know, people with who I have prayed, people who name the name of Jesus and confess him as Lord alongside me, in their very next breath will say and do things that are mired in the "Me-First," "I-Need-To-Look-Like-A-Winner" mentality.  I find myself grieved, more often than I would like to admit, over how easy it is for church folk to fall into using the language of "We've got to be tougher--we've got to show others how strong and powerful we are." I lament how often I see church folk smiling approvingly at (or liking and sharing on social media) the kind of angry bluster that peddles fear of "those people" who they think are a threat to our comfortable position... or who feel the need to make threats like, "There's a storm coming... and one day, we are going to rise up and take back what's ours!" while thinking they can baptize that thinking and call it holy.

That isn't the way of Jesus. It is the opposite. It is quite literally anti-Christ.

And to be honest, if I didn't already know Jesus better (from actually reading the gospels), if that kind of angry, boastful, saber-rattling attitude was my first introduction to people who called themselves followers of Jesus, I wouldn't want anything to do with Jesus, with his story, or with is followers.  To be perfectly frank, it is religious people who talk about coercively "taking their country back" (whatever that means) that make it harder for me to be a Christian in this time and place.  It's not some imaginary threat of atheists coming to take away my ability to pray... it's not some ominous "them" who are ominously coming to hurt the Bible or hurt God.  It's not, as I also sometimes hear, weak or cowardly churches who are the problem by not standing up enough for their supposed "rights" to gather for worship without masks or any concern for their neighbors.  No, if I can lay all my cards on the table here (so, "Uno!", I guess), what makes it hardest for me to be a Christian in this moment of history in this particular culture are religious people who shout about wanting to look like winners, rather than actually listening to Jesus himself saying, "Losing is the key to winning.  Take up your cross.  Let the rest burn down."

Today, then, I need to ask--both for you to hold me accountable, and for each of us to commit to listening to Jesus again with open ears--that we allow Jesus to help us un-learn the garbage we've been taught about how life is supposed to work, and instead to learn his path.  Help keep me honest, and when I slide back into the attitude that is centered on Me-and-My-Group-First, or on fear of losing a comfortable position, and on looking like a "winner," I ask you to smack me upside the head in love and call me back to take up a cross rather than to take up arms.

It will be hard sometimes for us to live this way, over against the other voices.  It will feel like swimming upstream.  It will look like we are giving all of our cards away when everyone else is playing to keep theirs.  The question to ask, though, is simply this: who knows best how this game called Life works?  Maybe we should trust that Jesus knows what he's talking about.  Maybe the point of life all along has always been about giving ourselves away in love.

I dare say it's worth a try. Help keep me honest about it.

Lord Jesus, turn us around when we are aimed in the wrong direction, and help us to unlearn the old ways of living our lives, to be pointed in your orientation toward self-giving love.

Like Praying for Rain--August 24, 2020

 

Like Praying for Rain--August 24, 2020

"And may the Lord make you increase and abound in love for one another and for all, just as we abound in love for you."  [1 Thessalonians 3:12]

Remember the wise words of the theologians in the old hair band Boston:  "It's more than a feeling."  Love, that is.  Genuine love--the kind worth praying for, like Paul does here--isn't reducible to a surge of endorphins in the brain, or a feeling of butterflies in your stomach when someone walks into the room.  Genuine love is more than feelings, more than momentary glances, more than a good time on the weekend.  Love, despite what so many other power-ballads and hair-bands would have us believe, is always more than a feeling. At least, any kind of love that has staying power has to be more than just a feeling. Boston was at least right in that regard.

But... then what is the kind of love worth praying for?  What does Paul mean when he prays that these dear friends of his would abound in love for one another--and for "all"?

That's really what's poking at me this morning--what do we think Paul is asking for when he prays that the Lord would increase the love of the Thessalonians Christians for each other and for the wider world? Well, surely it's not about romance--that's obvious. Paul doesn't have much use for all the pretending and preening and posturing that goes along with romance. And of course, he's talking to a whole congregation, and not to just a doe-eyed couple. But Paul is also not going to settle with mushy sentimentalism with the whole group, either. He's not praying that they would all simply feel all warm and fuzzy toward each other. Paul doesn't seem particularly interested in having the Thessalonians get butterflies in their stomachs whenever one of their fellow church members walks into the room, and he's not praying that they start pining for him while he is away. It's about more than emotion--it's about showing up for each other. It's about something with staying power. 

Praying for someone else to have a more intense feelings, more passionate emotions, and then calling that love is a little like looking at your parched field and praying for a single severe thunderstorm to come and water your failing crops. A single intense microburst of rain, like the kind that has been teasing our county over the last month without a really good soak, can actually do more harm that good, washing away dry soil, cutting channels, and then still leaving the ground thirsty. What you really need is a long, steady rainy season, even if any single shower is never that intense. That's more like what Paul is praying for. He's praying for rain, enough rain to keep God's plantings green and thriving, rather than a single deluge that might overwhelm the roots and wash away the good soil. 

For Christians to keep praying like Paul does--that God would keep us increasing and abounding in love--is to keep looking out at the field and praying for rain. We are not so much interested in a single burst of intense emotion in church, or even that people walk away from our Sunday services having had a warm feeling. We are looking to the heavens for the kind of sustained rainy season that will keep us growing, even if the growth is slow and almost imperceptible to the observing eye. 

When we ask what we Christians have to offer the world, the answer always has to be more than a feeling. What we hold out to the world--and what we have first received from God, truth be told--is a long, steady, increasingly growing love that shows itself in our willingness to give ourselves away and to show up for others. We have lost something if all we have to say is "Come to my church--it will make you feel good." We have so much more to offer, because we continue to be watered by the sustained showers of a God whose love does not blow through town and then dissipate like a sudden storm. 

Today, let us keep praying for rain... and let us be examples for each other of the love that acts for and stands with others for the long haul. 

Dear Lord, let us never settle for love as a mere feeling--let us be caught up in your sustained, and sustaining presence, so that our love will grow and overflow, even day by day, even little by little.

Freedom FROM... and Freedom FOR--August 21, 2020

 

"Freedom FROM... and Freedom FOR"--August 21, 2020

"For you were called to freedom, brothers and sisters; only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for self-indulgence, but through love become slaves to one another. For the whole law is summed up in a single commandment, 'You shall love your neighbor as your self.' If, however, you bite and devour one another, take care that you are not consumed by one another." [Gal. 5:13-15] 

Maybe Janis Joplin was right:  maybe "freedom's just another word for 'nothing-left-to-lose'." 

Freedom is one of those words that gets thrown around in conversation in America almost to the point where it loses its meaning. What do we want? "Freedom!"  What do we stand for? "Freedom!" "Freedom" gets invoked as the goal for everything from the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s marching to end segregation to present-day rallies of people who don't want to be inconvenienced by wearing masks during a pandemic. But what is this reality called freedom that we're so quick to shout about? So often, our picture of freedom has to do with not letting anyone tell us what to do, or being able to do whatever we want whenever we feel like it. And the story that often gets told in America is that freedom is our goal--the purpose and meaning of our lives. We are told to believe that freedom is an end in and of itself, rather than a means toward something more important, more vital, more life-giving.

But maybe that's the problem.  Maybe we've been thinking of freedom the wrong way... possibly for a very, very long time.  Maybe so long, in fact, that we have stopped considering that freedom might be more than just the angry insistence that no one can make me be kind to someone else (which, on the face of it, sounds like a sort of jerkish thing to dig your heels in on).  Maybe we made such a fuss for so long about what we think we need to freed from that we haven't given much thought to what we are freed for.

And the trouble in all of this is that freedom doesn't make much sense as an end in itself--we've got to ask, what is the point of freedom? Some might argue back that the "point" of freedom is to be able to do whatever we want, but that only begs the question--what is it that we truly want? Or maybe more to the point, what is it that we truly need, what do we ache for? And what is it that freedom allows us to move toward? We are often so quick to assert what we are freed from (as in, "You can't tell me what to do!" or "I'm free from your authority over me--I don't have to listen to you!") that we miss the more important question of what we are freed for (as in, "Without the old constraints on me, what am I able to do now that I couldn't before? What will I use my freedom for?). The real life-giving question is that second one: "What are we freed for?"  Once you've established you're free to do what you want... what is worth spending your day, your time, your love, your energy, your lifetime, for?

This is really where Paul is headed with this passage--after having fought so hard with the Galatians to let it sink in that they really are free in Christ from the old constraints of the law and the old barriers to community, Paul wants the Galatians to understand that freedom easily gets distorted if pursued just for its own sake. So easily in the name of "protecting our rights" or "proving our independence" or "not letting anybody tread on me," we trample on what really is worth having--the grace of being able to love others together in community. We can become so consumed protecting our own freedoms that we isolate and insulate ourselves and in the process cut ourselves off from everyone around us. We preserve our calendars so we don't have to give up our precious free time to invest in the needs of others; we hold back on sharing the concerns on our hearts with others because we don't want to let down our facades of independence. We refuse to be inconvenienced for someone else's sake, and so we make a fuss about wearing a mask in public.  And we get in a tizzy, especially many of us Americans, about not wanting to lose our freedoms, when sometimes what we are most deeply and truly aching for is the connection that comes from serving someone else. 

If you ask Paul, freedom is not something to pursue as a goal--it's a channel along the way, a condition that makes it possible for us to be drawn into the new reality of God's community that we are most deeply in need of. Freedom is worth having only insofar as it frees us up for love--to be loved freely (and to allow ourselves to believe that God really does love us in freedom apart from our earning) and to love others freely in Christ (no longer with the constrictions of race or class or gender or outsider status). So yes, we are free in Christ, and amen to that--but we are free for something, for someone, too. We are freed for love of neighbor, of stranger, of enemy. We are freed in order to be the people we are aching to become. 

So, with all due respect to Janis, freedom is more than just having nothing left to lose--maybe really, it about the ability to be brave enough to give yourself away in love.

Today, what are you freed for? Or better yet, whom are you freed for? How can you use the freedoms you have in this day (freedoms that are part of the political realm we live in, but also the freedom we have from God in Christ Jesus) to be drawn more deeply into love and to draw others in love? What kind of freedom could you find today in serving someone else? Risk it today.... 

Great God who is our Goal and our Journey, keep our minds straightened out about what is means and what is end in our life, and lead us to freely follow you until we are united at last with all your freed ones.

God Isn't Hungry

 

God Isn't Hungry--August 20, 2020

"I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God--what is good and acceptable and perfect." [Romans 12:1-2]

To be clear, God isn't hungry.  Not even peckish, not even a little bit.  

In other words, God doesn't need to be fed... or fueled... or powered up... by our sacrifices.  That's not how God works.  Plenty of gods and goddesses in ancient pantheons were thought to need sacrifices to keep them appeased, or their celestial bellies filled, but not the God we meet in the two Testaments.  The God of Abraham and Sarah, of Moses and Miriam, and of Jesus himself, doesn't get hungry, and doesn't need to be fed. 

While we are on the subject, neither does God just arbitrarily demand sacrifices from us out of some cold, logical calculus.  God doesn't demand a pound of flesh, like Shakespeare's Shylock, and God doesn't require our contributions in order to get some kind of heavenly response.  God isn't like the Soul Stone of the Marvel superhero movies, which requires the seeker to sacrifice the life of the one you love the most (as its mysterious guardian on Vormir says, "a soul, for a soul") in order to possess it.  That kind of transactional plot twist makes for a good summer blockbuster, maybe, but it's terrible theology.

And yet... the God we meet in Jesus does indeed call forth sacrifices from us.  No, more than that--this God calls us to be sacrifices!  What on earth can that mean?

Well, let's look at the other qualifier that Paul gives us here in Romans.  We are called to offer ourselves as "living sacrifices," rather than dead ones.  There is no demand of blood, or meat for the altar fire to fill the nostrils of the divine. Your heart doesn't have to stop beating to be a living sacrifice--in fact, it's about how God will use us precisely with our hearts beating, our hands serving, and our muscles working in showing love. There is no talk of God needing payment, or of our sacrifices providing fuel to power God up for answering our prayers.  God doesn't need us to die in order to make something else happen.  Instead, it's really the opposite: offering ourselves as living "sacrifices" to God means letting our minds be renewed and our whole selves be brought more to life!  We are not made less by becoming living sacrifices--we are made more than we were before: more alive, more in tune with God's justice and mercy, more connected to God's goodness and grace toward all people.  God's goal is not to sap our strength to power up some divine project--but to make us actually more invigorated and enlivened by letting God shape our hearts and direct our priorities.

I think that's really what's at stake here in the idea of "renewing your minds." It's not about proving our love to God by memorizing Bible verses, but about letting God's priorities become our priorities... it's about letting God's way become our way, rather than me getting to keep my self-centered, "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking that bellows, "No one can tell me what to do!"  When we fall into those mindsets, we are less alive.  When we let God shape our thinking, our loving, and our acting, even that act of surrender makes us more fully alive.  That's what this is all about.

So here's the sacrifice: to be a living offering to God means we give up our old self-centered mindset that is only interested in what's "good" for me or what's "convenient" for me. But it turns out that the life lived bent in on self is a waste anyhow--when God pull us outside of ourselves, it's like being yanked out from the deadly pull of a black hole in outer space.  We are pulled into life that is fuller, love that is deeper, meaning that is richer than just angrily insisting, "Nobody else can tell me what to do." So it's a sacrifice, but it's rather like being asked to give up the bottle of poison you've been nursing sips from for too long, and instead being given clean water to drink and discovering that you are more alert, refreshed, and energetic because of it.  It means letting go of all the Me-First programming the world has done its darnedest to instill in us, and letting God write new words on our hearts that lead us in a way of love.

But at no point does God need us to give up our vitality in order to feed the Almighty--God isn't hungry, and doesn't need our death to sustain divine life. God, instead, is calling us to new ways of being more fully alive, like a chrysalis becoming more fully alive as it opens into a butterfly.

Come, dear ones.  Let's be fully alive today--let us allow God to reshape our minds and hearts and actions into the way of love.

Lord Jesus, we offer our deepest selves to you--make of us what you will--even as you make us more fully alive.

Jesus' Calling Card... and Ours

 

Jesus' Calling Card... and Ours--August 19, 2020

"After Jesus had left [the district of Tyre and Sidon], he passed along the Sea of Galilee, and he went up the mountain, where he sat down.  Great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the maimed, the blind, the mute, and many others. They put them at his feet, and he cured them, so that the crowd was amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel." [Matthew 15:29-31]

Life is Jesus' calling card.

If you want to be about the work of Jesus, then spend your energy on bringing other people more fully to life. That's where to look for him: look for the folks that get labeled as "broken people," and you'll find Jesus at the center of that crowd.  And somehow, just by being near him, people are more fully alive.  Seriously, it's like everywhere Jesus goes, there are little resurrections happening everywhere, all over the place.

Stay with that thought for a minute.  Of all the things you could do to summarize what Jesus is all about, when it's the Gospel writers' turn, they talk about Jesus making people more fully alive.  There's no talk about Jesus teaching people how to manage their money better, or how to leverage their connections to get more political power.  There's honestly (maybe even embarrassingly, for folks in the Respectable Religious crowd) very little teaching about proper religious technique, hardly any preacherly moralizing about good behavior, and absolutely no talk about what anybody has to do to make God love them.  You won't even find Jesus talking about having a "personal relationship" with him, or about anyone "inviting him into their hearts," and you'll find precisely zero times that Jesus offers a path to more personal wealth.  That's just not Jesus' trademark.

Jesus' telltale signature is life--deeper, wider, fuller... for anybody and everybody. No strings.  No catch.  No subscriptions or fine print.  Just taking what is dead in us and bringing us more fully to life.  Like a doctor practices medicine on her patients, Jesus practices resurrection on anybody around.

This is what he's called us to be a part of, too.  Not propping up an institution. Not using our influence as a means of getting more political power for our own benefit.  Not selling religion like it is a consumer product.  And not even recruiting fresh membership for a club called "church."  He has called us to be a part of his movement that exists for the purpose of bringing people to life--not just people who sign on the dotted line to join that movement, either, but everyone and anyone around.  Like Bonhoeffer said, the church is the one organization on earth that exists for the sake of people who are not yet a part of it.  We aren't here just to keep the club running for another season.  We are here to let Jesus bring others to life through us.  Using our talents, our resources, our time, our love, our listening ears, and our words.  

That's life-giving news for me to hear, honestly, especially in these days when a pandemic makes it hard to look at sparsely populated pews and think we are being successful.  It's hard to feel like we are doing "enough" if our calendars aren't full of meetings and our rooms aren't full of small groups chugging along with churchly business.  But hold on a second--as lovely and fine as those things may be, none of those are what Jesus has called us to.  His calling card is bringing people to life, not talking people through a meeting.  His purpose is about resurrections big and small, not trying to set new records for church attendance.  And his place for work is not in an Official Religious Location, like a church, a temple, a synagogue, or a shrine, but right in the midst of hurting people.  There is his sanctuary.  There is where Christ holds office hours.  

If that's true, then our work following Jesus won't be just in a church building or seated in socially-distanced pews.  And our success will not be defined in terms of whether we could, against all medical wisdom, pack hundreds of people into our worship spaces for services that put others' health at risk in the name of "defending religious freedom."  Rather, we'll be bringing people to life wherever we are--or, more accurately, the living Jesus will be bringing people to life in and through us.  It will happen when you take the time to comfort someone whose heart is breaking... or to listen to someone and help talk them through a really difficult time they are going through.  It will happen when you offer love and grace to someone who is dead certain they are not worthy.  It will happen when you forgive someone who has deeply hurt you, and when you speak up in solidarity and stand with someone who has been hurt and forgotten by others.  It will happen when you serve, when you make a meal for a homeless family, or make time for your kids.  It will happen just when you do your job well in ways that make life better for other people, or when you write a note for no reason to someone just to brighten their day.  

All of these can be the places where the living Christ works a little resurrection in and through you and me.  We just have to remember that's what we're really here for.

Life is Jesus' calling card--may it be ours, as well.

Lord Jesus, use us in this day to bring others more fully to life, in whatever ways you will.

Being the Alternative

 

Being the Alternative--August 18, 2020

"Conduct yourselves wisely toward outsiders, making the most of the time. Let your speech always be gracious, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how you ought to answer everyone." [Colossians 4:5-6]

It's about more than mere niceness.  It's about the power in our words either to bring others to life... or to make us all a little more dead inside.

Please don't hear these words from the letter to the Colossians as just a lecture about having manners and being polite.  It's not about etiquette--it's about being people who resist the temptation to use words as weapons, and instead to use them as instruments of healing... as vehicles for grace.

Look, I know it is so easy to believe that talk is so cheap these days as to be worthless. We live in a time when the headline-makers just blurt things out that then have to be walked back, spun by handlers, qualified, or denied.  We live in a time when it is easier to just keep yelling, meme-sharing or tweeting terrible things about people you don't like than it is to have an honest conversation.  And for sure these are days when it's supremely tempting to use words as weapons to attack, smoke screens to distract, or walls to divide us, rather than to use them as bridges to connect us.

Ok, that may sound naive.  I know that the solution to the many ways we are fragmented and fractured these days is not simply to talk it all out over a cup of coffee one afternoon, and then all our disagreements will evaporate.  I know, too, that it is possible in this day and age to become so certain of your "rightness" that all the talk, all the facts, and all the data-driven insight in the world won't persuade you to listen anew.  At some point we just harden ourselves from having to think critically, listen open-mindedly, or reflect honestly, and we dig our heels in against anybody who says anything that even remotely challenges the self-reinforcing sense of "rightness" we build around ourselves.  I know all of that happens, and I fight it every day in myself, too--so I know that talking isn't magical.  

But I also know it was just as fractured, just as hostile, and just as closed-minded to live in the Roman Empire in the first century... and the first followers of Jesus knew it was an uphill battle to get their neighbors to listen to them when so many of them were trying to run the Christians out of town and brand them as troublemakers.  And yet those first generations of Christians didn't give up on the power of their words.  And they did not desert their calling to resist the hostility of the world by refusing to resort to that hostility themselves.  They answered the rottenness of their persecutors, not with insults and name-calling or by spreading unfounded rumors and conspiracy theories about them around town, but by choosing to use their conduct to communicate grace.  They refused to weaponize their words--they didn't spread misinformation about the ones who threw them in jail, they didn't demean the people who were hostile toward them, and neither did they let hatred come out of their mouths or from their pens.  And by doing that, they offered an alternative.

Maybe that's the key.  When we commit to using words as bridges rather than walls, and when we listen in order to earn the right to be heard, we offer an alternative to the childish name-calling and demeaning lies that spread everywhere else.  We can be a resistance to the tidal wave of rottenness that sometimes feels like it is overwhelming.  Each of us, by our choices to use words honorably, gracefully, truthfully, and vulnerably, can be a part of turning that tide back.  Every choice you and I make to listen first changes the conversation with others.  Every time we treat others with respect in our words, even when it is not shown back to us, helps to make another world possible.  Every time we defuse the temptation to resort to name-calling or prejudice and instead engage people with decency and compassion, it reveals the contrast with those whose are morally and emotionally bankrupt.  We can offer the alternative that this vitriolic time needs--not simply an alternative of Side B yelling at Side A instead of Side A yelling at Side B, but an alternative to the assumption that everything is a battle with sides to vanquish.  Maybe we don't have to accept the premise that my goal is to demolish those who disagree with me or disrespect me, rather than to persuade and get them to consider a new possibility.  Maybe, in fact, in the end, I will learn and grow, too, and will change some of how I think, as well as changing someone else's mind.  But the ways we speak to others, even when we strongly disagree, is part of the way we make things change--part of the way we make things better.

Just think about it for a moment: what if you were the one who all your coworkers knew as someone who wouldn't allow trashy insults to be thrown around?  How might that change your workplace?  What if you were known in your family as the person who didn't laugh along when someone else told a racist joke?  What if your "friends" on social media knew you weren't going to share the misinformation, the name-calling, or the just plain crude things they posted?  Maybe these are little things, and maybe sometimes it will feel futile to keep resisting the meanness and bitterness that is out there.  But we will keep at it, because we dare to believe that's part of how Christ can be seen and heard in us.

Like I say, this is about so much more than just remembering our manners--it is about offering to people around us an alternative to the trash-heap of a shouting-match we all seem to be stuck suffering through.  We can be the alternative.  Your words today can be resistance to the rottenness.  Your listening ears can be what builds a bridge rather than another damned wall.

Lord God, as you took Moses' rough speech and made him to stand before Pharaoh with power and grace, take our words and our hearts so that we may be winsome, truth-seeking, and grace-filled as well.

Be the Moon--August 17, 2020

 

Be the Moon--August 17, 2020

"But everything exposed by the light becomes visible, for everything that becomes visible is light.  Therefore it says, 'Sleeper, awake! Rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.' Be care then how you live, not as unwise people, but as wise, making the most of the time, because the days are evil." [Ephesians 5:13-16]

It matters, what we do with this day.  It matters, how you and I use the hours, the minutes, the breaths, of this day.  Use them like they count. They do.

I don't mean to say that if we don't get a certain number of good deeds done before the clock strikes midnight, we'll be kicked out of the Heaven Club. I'm not saying you have to "save" a certain number of souls before the end of the month or else lose stars in some future crown. We aren't spiritual salespeople who have to make a quota in order to keep our jobs like some kind of religious version of Glengarry Glen Ross (and there is no Alec Baldwin speech prompting us to "Always Be Converting," either).  But I do mean to say that each day, each moment, is a chance to reflect some light into the world, some goodness, some beauty and truth and compassion--in a word, to reflect Christ.  And in a time when it seems so easy just to stir up the rottenness around us, to add to it with more bitterness or crudeness, or to give up trying to change any of it, it is a precious and necessary thing for us to make the most of our time reflecting Christ.

We don't do it in order to "get" something--neither to avoid having something taken away.  It's not a transaction; it's not a deal or a scheme or a quid-pro-quo.  It's because the world is a better place where there is more of Christ's light reflected into it, the same way the world looks more beautiful in the blue glow of moonlight than when the moon is hidden behind clouds.  You and I are called to be reflectors of Christ's light, like the moon reflects the sun.  (And maybe as a helpful reminder of how grace works, consider that the moon itself is a mostly dingy gray ball of rock--its shine says more about the brilliance of the sun than it does about our own virtue.  Sometimes all it takes is our willingness to show up and let Christ's light just bounce off of us, rather than our own incandescence.)

And when there is more of Christ's light shone into the world, it's rather like something that is dead being called forth into life again.  When we take the time, when we make the effort, even in little ways to reflect the character of Jesus into the lives of people around us, it's like a little resurrection happens.  And the light that brings is worth it, no matter how small or short-lived it may seem.  I think that's what these words from Ephesians are getting at: that it is worth making the most of every opportunity to do good, to offer kindness rather than meanness, to offer blessing rather than curse, to support those who are weak, to practice generosity, to speak up against crookedness, hatred, and greed, and to love the people God sends across your path.  It is worth it, always, to let Christ's life-giving light reflect onto us and into the world, even if you and I don't immediately "get" a reward for it or receive applause.  It's not about us, really--it's about letting Christ's light bounce off of us.

There is so much that is discouraging these days--so much self-centeredness, so much vitriol, so much spite and simmering hatred, so much sheer heaviness to living in this time.  And it can be easy to let that get us down... to make us want to give up, to make us doubt whether it is worth trying again, to make us feel like our actions and choices will just be swallowed up in the cloud cover of a starless night.  I know. And at the start of a new week, it can feel especially daunting to have to brace ourselves to start all over again in the work of reflecting Christ when so many of the loud voices around us seem to drown out all the other sounds in the noise of their obnoxious un-Christ-likeness.  But the writer of Ephesians offers a new way of thinking of it, one that doesn't have to be exhausting or draining for us, but rather, freeing.  It's about letting Christ--who is risen, alive, and well--illuminate us, rather than about us generating our own light.  It really is like being the moon: we just commit to keep showing up, and Christ like the sun radiates goodness and mercy both on us and then beyond us to others.

That means today, we are simply called to face each moment of the day with one clarifying question: "How can I, right now, let Christ be seen more clearly in me?"  It doesn't mean I have to help so many elderly folk across the street to earn my Good Deed Merit Badge. It doesn't mean I have to get so many new people to join my church or pray the right prayer to come to Jesus.  It means that in every moment, I have the opportunity either to be more like the character of Christ or less, to show more light or less, to embody the way of Jesus or settle for something lesser.  It means I will keep showing up even when it is difficult, and in those places and situations where we are fighting against the current of crookedness or cruelty around us, rather than give up.  But we keep at it--exactly in the places that need the light--because the world is a more beautiful place when Christ's light is shining on it, rather than not.

That's why we keep going.  We are just glad to have more light in the world, and it is a gift of grace to get to be the moon.

Lord Jesus, shine on us and then reflect your goodness into the world you so love. Let us be a part of your work of bringing beauty and grace to all creation.