Dissidents for Love--October 30, 2020

Dissidents for Love--October 30, 2020

"Do not be astonished, brothers and sisters, that the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life because we love one another.  Whoever does not love abides in death.  All who hate a brother or sister are murderers, and you know that murderers do not have eternal life abiding in them. We know love by this, that he laid down his life for us--and we ought to lay down our lives for one another." [1 John 3:13-16]

Yesterday, in the place where I live, the local newspaper's social media feed had a local commenter proudly say he was calling for his friends in the KKK to come to town and have a march and to teach a "good old fashioned 1950s lesson."  Literally.  Sincerely.

Earlier that same day, I was driving down the main street near where one of the congregations I serve is, and there, flying proudly two doors past the Dollar General was the Confederate flag--one of three I saw either on houses or vehicles in the space of about an hour of doing errands.  Meanwhile, the story on the national news playing in my car was an interview with someone in a self-styled "militia" group that is making plans for fighting a second civil war.  Honestly.  Truly.

Beneath all of that was the background noise on the radio, on the TV, and on social media that seems to go on all the time these days: the sheer hatred for people who look different, think different, vote different, or love differently.  All of that in the space of twenty-four hours.  Or, as I am getting used to calling it, an ordinary Thursday.

We are all so used to the mean-ness, even as the volume turns up day by day the closer and closer we get to the end of election season, that maybe we have just decided that this kind of raw animosity can't be avoided... maybe it's just the nature of living in a "vibrant democracy"... or maybe it's always been this way.  And so we are left with the choice either to just leave that noise in the background and get used to it, or we stick our heads in the sand and pretend it isn't there, or we are tempted to fight fire with fire and join the meanness and cruelty with some of our own.  That'll show 'em, right?

I would like to propose an alternative: we can refuse to play the game.  We can resist the deep-rooted, encroaching hatred that is all around us and right next door by boldly practicing love and calling out the vile hatred that has free rein these days as opposed to the way of Jesus:  that is to say, to name it as anti-Christ.  Whether it is motivated by racism, partisan gamesmanship, or any of a thousand kinds of bigotry, we can resist it by refusing its terms and offering an alternative.  We can say "No" to the many systems that feed and fuel our divisions--which, in turn, parasitically feed on the meanness that comes out of those division.  We can be dissidents against all of it--dissidents for love.

I am convinced that the first disciples of Jesus understood their calling in similar terms.  You hear it here in these words from the book we call First John, a book written to a community that was feeling the hatred of the world around them, and yet which was called to respond to it with love.  Responding to hatred with love doesn't mean you are endorsing or permitting the hatred shown to you or voiced around you--it means you refuse to sink to the level of hatred yourself, and you respond by standing up for the ones who are targeted by the hatred.  It means you don't let the folks threatening violence provoke you into threatening violence back.  It means you don't let them drag you into name-calling if they call names first.  It means we teach our children differently, and we help them to see why we are doing things differently.

The early church very definitely saw themselves as a minority voice that was called to be different from the world--and in particular, the empire--around it.  They understood that Rome saw them as a threat because they announced that Caesar didn't bet their allegiance, the markets saw them as a danger because Christians valued people over profits, and the Respectable Religious Leaders saw them as troublemakers because Christians included all the undesirables and unacceptable people from every nation and language and culture, just as they were.  And even though the early church knew it had a target on its back, they also knew--because of voices like First John here--that answering all that hostility with hatred of their own was counter to the way of Jesus.  We are, after all, followers of Jesus, and that means Jesus isn't merely our mascot, but the quarterback and the coach--he calls the plays, and he sets the strategy.  And if Jesus says we respond to hatred by offering love (which he does), then that's what we do.  And if we catch folks who name the name of Jesus or drape themselves in the trappings of our religious faith also trafficking in that kind of hatred and self-absorbed meanness that is so prevalent these days, First John tells us to call it out as counter to the way of Jesus.  We are called to be dissidents against the many, many voices that want us to think that such self-centered "Me-and-My-Group First" hatred is both acceptable and inevitable.  And in truth, it is neither.  

It doesn't have to be this way.  The world doesn't have to be marked by such raw hostility, such naked fear and suspicion, and such opportunistic division.  We can't force others to be kind--or even merely polite or civil--but we can offer an alternative.  We can model that there is another way.  We can show that other way in the efforts we make to seek the good of people who are different from us, in the ways we ask the ones we disagree with to help us understand their perspectives, in the ways we refuse to add fuel to the fires around us and starve the hatred of oxygen to keep burning.  We will show it in the choices we make--from the small acts of paying for the coffee of the person after you in line at the drive-through window, to the big policy choices we support that shape the character of our whole community or country--that put the needs and interests of others before our own.  We will be a reflection of the love that has first been shown to us in Jesus--just like First John says, "we know love by this, that he laid down his life for us," and therefore we will lay down our lives for one another.  That doesn't just mean a willingness to die for someone, but a willingness to live for others--to make choices in ways that put their interests before our own profits, that seek to help others even when it doesn't benefit us directly, and that model the same for our children and grandchildren.  All of that is what it can look like to dissent from the hatred it seems so many around us think is inevitable.  All of that is what it might look like in this moment to be dissidents for love.

We will need each other for this--it is downright impossible to do it alone for very long, after all.  But together, in whatever ways we can be connected--in person, through prayer across the miles, in the messages of encouragement we can send each other--we can resist the power of hatred and embody the alternative.  That is to say, we can embody the way of Jesus.

It is going to mean we not let ourselves become desensitized to the hatred around us.  We are not given permission to shrug our shoulders and say, "That's just how it is these days," nor are we given permission to run away to some imaginary place where everyone is nice all the time or to just turn off the news because it makes us uncomfortable.  We are called to stare the meanness in the face and kiss it on the lips back to startle it awake so that hardened hearts will be transformed.

I don't know what will await us in this new day--but I can guess.  And in the face of it, we can love.  That is our dissidence.  That is our answer.

Lord God, give us the courage and strength to answer the casual hatred around us with love.

Daring to Un-Learn--October 28, 2020

 Daring to Un-Learn--October 28, 2020

"Happy are those who consider the poor;
     the LORD delivers them in the day of trouble.
The LORD protects them and keeps them alive;
     they are called happy in the land.
     You do not give them up to the will of their enemies.
The LORD sustains them on their sickbed;
     in their illness you heal all their infirmities." [Psalm 41:1-3]

There are folks who woke up hungry today.  And here I get fussy when we only have two kinds of lunch meat, or only one kind of cheese, in our fridge to make a sandwich.  Maybe I need to re-examine my priorities and make choices that will allow neighbors in my community to feed their kids, rather than finding myself in a drive-through line ordering a super-sized burger and fries.

There are folks who woke up afraid today.  Some are worried about their kids being safe at school, whether from sickness or a shooting.  Some are afraid of the world they will leave behind to their kids, and what kinds of disasters their descendants will have to face that we did not prepare them for or protect them from.  Some are afraid of being separated from their kids and wondering how or when they'll see them again.  Some are afraid of losing a job... or getting evicted... or the bank foreclosing on the farm... or any of a million other worries that keep them up at night.  And here I get bent out of shape about the mere inconvenience of having to go back for my mask when I leave it in the car by accident before going into Walmart.  Maybe I need to quit pretending I am suffering hardship and think for a moment about the countless fears I pretend do not exist around me.

There are folks who started their day heartbroken today. Some are grieving a death that has left fresh scars on their hearts today, others the end of a friendship.  Some are saying goodbyes to what is familiar, and others feel trapped in a familiar despair they can't climb out of.  And here I like to complain about whatever minor hassles or inconveniences I dealt with yesterday.  Maybe it is time to consider the needs of others before I cast myself as the martyr.

My guess is it's not just me, either.  We all have this tendency to think our own troubles need to be the center of attention, and that gives us the right to act in our own self-interest.  But honestly, the Scriptures keep turning our attention beyond ourselves and to consider the needs of the folks on the margins, the ones most at risk, the ones who are more vulnerable to the troubles of life than we are, and to act for their benefit first before our own.  In fact, the Bible has this unsettling way of connecting the way we treat those most on the margins with the way we treat God.  

From these words from the psalmist, who announces God's blessing for the ones who look out for the poor (or the Hebrew could be translated "the weak" as well), to the line from the Proverbs that giving to the needy is like lending to God, to Jesus' well-known declarations in the Sermon on the Mount that the poor, the hungry, and the grieving are specially cared for and blessed by God, the biblical writers keep turning us beyond our own little (and honestly, often rather petty) concerns to the needs of those who are most vulnerable.  Maybe we've never taken an honest look at it before, or noticed how deeply that idea is embedded in the Scriptures, but now is a good time to look... to notice... and to be changed.

What the Scriptures call for is nothing less than a rearrangement of our values, a reordering of our priorities, away from seeking merely what is "good for me" first and toward seeking what protects and supports those most in need around me--even if it may mean I am called to greater inconvenience, or hassle, or struggle, or sacrifice.  Yes, you read that correctly:  I am convinced that the Scriptures dare each of us to put the good of the most vulnerable, the poor, the weak, the sick, and the marginalized, before our own self-interest.  And taking that seriously will change an awful lot of how I live my life.

And honestly, I think it will mean nothing less than an un-learning of what we have come to expect as business as usual.  We have been taught to conduct our business in terms of what helps MY profits, to instruct our children to look out for their own interests first rather than the other kids', and to cast our ballots and support political parties based on what we think will help ME and MY interests most, with the thought that whoever has the most numbers at the end of the day is the most important and should get their way accordingly.  And the more I read the Scriptures, the more I am convinced that way of thinking and seeing the world is just plain dead wrong.

Let's pull at this thread a little bit: what if I didn't see every decision through the lens of, "How will this help me make more money?" or "How will this help increase the resale value of my home?" or even, "How will this increase MY happiness?" and instead asked, "What will my actions do for a kid who slept in a car last night?" or "How will my choices affect the family that's living on the fence line of a chemical plant?" or "How can I make life better for some farmer half a world away trying to feed their family and take care of the soil for the next hundred years?"  I know these are not our usual ways of thinking, but maybe that is part of the problem of modern life. We have settled for asking the wrong questions, and so it should come as no surprise that no matter what our responses to them, we get wrong answers.

I am reminded of Wendell Berry's absolutely glorious poem, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front," in which he suggests we ask a different set of questions to measure our choices.  Instead of asking what is immediately profitable or popular or fashionable or politically savvy, Berry says, "Ask yourself, Will this satisfy a woman satisfied to bear a child? Will this disturb the sleep of a woman near to giving birth?"  In other words, rather than the same old questions we so often use to measure our lives and direct our choices--questions like, "Which job will make me more money, regardless of what it does to my soul?" or "Which political party will help me and my narrow interests?"--Berry dares us to think about how our choices will affect those who raise the next generation who will come after us.  

I think something like this is the right set of questions to be asking.  And yet I know it is scary to learn a new set of questions.  We are used to the old ones.  We are used to evaluating our lives and seeing our world only in terms of "What will help me get richer, be happier, or hold onto my status?" And honestly, to have the Bible come along and say that the right questions are more like, "What will help the homeless mother care for her sick kid today?" and "What will be best for the planet you will hand to the neighbors of your great-great-grandchildren?" well, that just pulls the rug out from under us.

Well, good.  Maybe we need the rug pulled out from under us to get us to think in the right terms.  

Today is a day to start that change of thinking.  Today is a day to realign our values with what the writers of the Scriptures call us to. Today can be the beginning of the end of our old (and tired) selfishness that can only see as far as our own bank balances or our own job security but cannot consider someone whose needs are greater than our own or whose lifespan extends beyond our own.  Today can be the beginning of our attempt to consider the needs of the poor, the needy, the weak, the sick, and marginalized before our own narrow benefit--and to find that as we do, we are somehow more in tune with the ways of God... and thereby somehow made more alive.

Lord God, rearrange our priorities, our values, and our loves to look like yours--beyond our own profit, security, or illusions of happiness to the wholeness that comes from loving the neighbors you have sent into our lives.

Burdens and Bodhisattvas--October 22, 2020

Burdens and Bodhisattvas--October 22, 2020

"Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ." [Galatians 6:2]

Quick Bible quiz:  Do you know how many times the New Testament instructs Christians to wear a cross necklace?  

How about how often Jesus tells his followers to recite a creed or invite him into their hearts and accept him as their savior?

How many times does the Bible instruct the people of God to share a meme on social media with a picture of Jesus on it, and that anyone who doesn't must be ashamed of Christ or not have the "guts" to share it?

If you guessed zero for all three, you're a winner!  

But when it comes to consciously choosing to bear the heartaches, the burdens, and pains of others, well, it turns out that is the beating heart of what living faith actually looks like.  Like the apostle Paul says, "Bear one another's burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ."

I needed us to take this moment for clarity, though, because to tell the truth, looking around at what often passes for the hallmarks of Christianity, you'd think that list of jewelry and social media posts or formulaic faith-statements were the most important thing to following Jesus.  But it turns out that Jesus is far less interested in how we "project" the persona of being devout, and far more interested in how we love--and more specifically than that, how we choose the way of suffering rather than our own self-interest or self-indulgence.  That's the sine qua non of the Christian life, according to the apostle, rather than our religiously-themed fashion accessories or the pious posts we make on social media.

Following Jesus, quite simply, means the commitment to love, broadly and deeply--and that sort of love means the choice to enter into the sorrows, the troubles, and hurts of others, rather than avoid them.  It may even mean we put on hold (permanently, if need be) the distractions and amusements that look like more fun, in order that we can be truly present for one another in our needs and times of weariness.

Simone Weil said much the same quite beautifully; her insight is often translated from the French this way:  "The love of our neighbor in all its fullness simply means being able to say to him, 'What are you going through?'"  That's it--that's the step that love takes, and therefore that is truly indispensable to following Jesus.  It is about love, not simply in the abstract sense of "I will try and be nice to everybody," and not in the emotional sense of willing yourself to "feel" a certain way bout everyone, and not even in the patronizing sense of needing to zoom in to every situation to "fix" other people so you or I get to be the hero, but love in the sense of entering someone else's pains and walking with them in them.  It is the conscious choice--which becomes a lifelong commitment, in all honesty--to forgo focusing on our own entertainment, our own goals, our own fun, or our own achievements and awards, so that we can be available for the neighbor.  I suppose that is why this sort of love looks so much like Jesus--he was always letting himself be stopped, turned in a different direction, and interrupted to be present for whatever the person or situation in front of him needed.  I don't think that was a lack of forethought on Jesus' part--I think it was his intentional choice about his way of life.  

We Christians aren't the only ones with an idea like this, of course.  Perhaps we could learn from our Buddhist neighbors, for example; in the Mahayana tradition of Buddhism, there is the notion of becoming a bodhisattva--that is, someone who is able to attain the level of enlightenment called nirvana, but chooses to delay doing so out of compassion in order to help and relieve other suffering beings.  And rather than getting uncomfortable with the idea that we Christians can learn something like this from a different faith, I want to suggest that seeing this same notion in other faiths can help us to see that the same idea has been speaking to us from the pages of our Scriptures as well.  Paul seems to say that bearing the burdens of others is exactly what the "law of Christ," or "the way of Jesus" if you like, looks like.  That sounds like the conscious choice to take on more difficulty, more shared sorrow perhaps, more inconvenience, in order to bear the burdens of others, and in the process, we discover that is exactly when and where we are most fully alive.  That's the mystery, I suppose--that the life that really is life is found precisely at the point of giving it away, rather than holding on to one's own interests.

It reminds me of a line from Marilynne Robinson's absolutely glorious novel Gilead, where her narrator (who is an old preacher) says, "I heard a man say once that Christians worship sorrow.  That is by no means true. But we do believe there is a sacred mystery in it, it's fair to say that."  Maybe that is the task of this day, and the calling of the whole rest of our lives--to willingly, intentionally direct the course of our lives along the paths that will take us beside others in their sorrows, not because we have to "save" or "fix" them, and not because we need to wallow in misery for its own sake either, but because in a sacred mystery, Christ is revealed there most powerfully as we share the brokenness and mend the wounds each of us carries.  It may mean we make the deliberate choice to forgo other ways our lives could have gone, and other paths we might have taken, but we walk through those valley-of-the-shadow-of-death times with others because paradoxically, we find that we are all brought to life by sharing that journey.  

Maybe the Christian life, then, has very little to do with making sure other people know we are religious, and everything to do with knowing that no one is truly whole until we are all truly whole... that my present-moment happiness is a hollow husk until the suffering of all is healed.  What will you choose, then, to do with this day that will have been worth spending your hours on?  What will you choose to do with the course of your whole life?

Lord Jesus, bring us to life in the full as you lead us to choose to bear the burdens of those who suffer today.

Becoming Wise--October 21, 2020

Becoming Wise--October 21, 2020

"...We have not ceased praying for you and asking that you may be filled with the knowledge of God's will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, so that you may lead lives worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, as you bear fruit in every good work and as you grow in the knowledge of the God." [Colossians 1:9-10]

I used to define being a grown-up in terms of the perks and possessions people seemed to get when they reached a certain age.  Driving--check.  Voting--check.  High school diploma--check.  Others didn't come with a fixed number of years, but still seemed like things you just got when you were finally an adult:  you get a car, or you get your first job, or you buy a house, or your find the perfect person for a romance in your life.  And add in a steady income, a couple of kids, a white-picket fence, a dog, and a favorite vacation spot, and you have arrived at grown-up-ness. Fast forward a few decades, and then the new round of perks are senior discounts and AARP memberships.  Right?

Forgive me that naivete, but honestly, that's so much of how I think a lot of us were taught to think of maturity.  It was a matter of getting things, or getting relationships, whether or not you had even the slightest clue what to do with them.  

Well, like I say, I am often slow on the uptake and late to the party, but none of that is right.  I mean, and forgive me here for being blunt, but that whole list of the cookie-cutter picture of adulting is such... a shallow and privileged picture of life, isn't it really? At least to hear the voices from the Scriptures tell it, being grown-up--at least in the sense that really matters--has almost nothing to do with what you have, whether materially or relationally, and virtually everything to do with what sort of people we are becoming.  That is to say, it is about becoming people whose lives are shaped like Jesus' life, and whose love takes the form of Jesus' kind of love--but that happens without regard for what stuff you own or even what relationships you are in.  

Jesus, after all, was notoriously homeless, jobless, perennially penniless (having to fish for coins from the actual mouths of fish from time time time), as well as spouseless and childless, too.  And yet, Jesus seems to be the gold-standard for what it looks like to be a really truly mature--or wise, in the best sense of that word--human being.  Not in the sense of shrewd or savvy or good at self-interested game playing.  I mean that Jesus is wise in the sense of really knowing how to be good at being human.  

On the flip side, I know a lot of people who check all the boxes for "stuff to have"--they've got the job in upper management, a vehicle that runs, a home they own without fear of immediate foreclosure, a dog, a romance, and even the white picket fence--and are still depressingly immature about what actually matters in life.  I'm in that spot, too, more often than I'd like to admit--I've got an awful lot of the things that childhood Me thought made you a "grown-up," and yet I've got an awful lot of immaturity in my soul to work through.

Maybe what we need to consider is that being mature, being wise, and being at last finally half-decent at being human, was never about having to get or acquire or achieve any of those things we were told as kids "made you an adult."  And maybe instead, we discover that we become better at being human the more our lives echo Jesus' life, Jesus' way, Jesus' love.  Or as the letter to the Colossians puts it, that we may "lead lives worthy of the Lord" and may be "filled with spiritual wisdom and understanding."  That's not about memorizing esoteric mantras to recite in meditative rituals, or getting a degree in abstract theology--it's about learning to train our hearts to love the way Jesus does, and our minds to see the world the way Jesus sees it.  We become wise, not when we know the answer on tonight's Final Jeopardy! clue, but when we respond to suffering like Jesus does... when we find courage to speak up to bullies like Jesus does... when we get upset over the things that break Jesus' heart... when we learn to rest in our beloved-ness entirely apart from our having or not having the job, the house, the car, or the spouse.  None of those were necessary for Jesus to be Jesus, and Jesus (for whatever else we confess about him) is the best person at being human that humanity has ever known.

And the way we get better at being like Jesus, honestly, is to live, to practice, to see and study his examples, to watch and learn from other disciples around us who are trying and stumbling and starting over again alongside us, and to be in conversation and connection with the living Jesus as we go.  We pray, trusting that Jesus speaks in the exchange, and that he is shaping us through the conversation.  We study the stories of how Jesus interacted, loved, healed, forgave, wept, and ate with people, so that we can get those moves into our fingers like a piano student practicing the notes on the page over and over until they become a part of you.  We discern and ask and talk with other disciples, other Christians, especially the ones who inspire us because they actually reflect something of Jesus into our lives.  And along the way, we discover we put less and less emphasis on having the right alignment of possessions or relationships going just the right way in our lives, and more and more on what kind of people we ourselves are becoming.

I think the writer of Colossians wants us to dare that kind of life.  I think he is convinced that we become most fully alive--and in a sense, our best at being human--the more we let our lives become shaped by the way of Jesus.  And I think that's really what it is to be wise.  Not about book knowledge or business savvy, not about having it all, owning it all, or achieving it all.  And not even about getting your life to fit a cookie cutter expectation, even though an awful lot of popular religion seems to be peddling that as God's best-selling product.  It's about learning how to be as fully human as possible--by letting ourselves be as fully like Christ as possible.  Never to earn our way into a club, but to become what we were meant to be all along, like an acorn growing into an oak.  That's what it is to be wise.  That's what it is to be grown-up in soul.  That's what's worth spending not just today on, but our whole lives.

May it be said of us that we were striving for wisdom... striving to be better at being human... striving to be like Jesus.

Lord Jesus, teach us your kind of wisdom, and make us to be like you, so that we can be fully alive.

Faithful Fernweh--October 20, 2020

Faithful Fernweh--October 20, 2020

"Do not remember the former things, or consider the things of old.
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.
The wild animals will honor me,
the jackals and the ostriches;
for I give water in the wilderness, rivers in the desert,
to give drink to my chosen people,
the people whom I formed for myself
so that they might declare my praise." [Isaiah 43:18-21]

There is a word in German for which there is no good English equivalent.  And it has been echoing in my ears lately, pulling me forward.  It is teaching me about the nature of hope, and about the direction in which faith moves us.

It's the term "fernweh," and it could be roughly translated as "far-sickness," as in the opposite of "homesickness."  It is, I suppose, a sort of longing, something like wanderlust, to go to a new, perhaps unknown, destination.  Or, as I like to phrase it, it is a homesickness for a place you have never been.

And the more time I spend in the Scriptures, the more I think that is the orientation of the whole story of God and creation, from Genesis to Revelation (and beyond that, to Maps!).  The whole arc of the Bible traces a forward-moving line to a new destination that is somehow home--somehow the right place, even if it is a place the people of God have never been.

It is the movement from Ur of the Chaldeans, where Old Man Abram had grown up,  toward the new and "promised" land that God showed.  It was the migration after that to the temporary refuge of Goshen during the famine that brought Abraham's great-grandchildren to the outskirts of Egypt.  It was the promise of a journey out of slavery into the unknown wilderness and at last to a homecoming in the land the Israelites had waited for.  And it was the journey both into exile for a time, and then, for a new generation that had never known it, the return of the exiles' children and grandchildren back to a land their parents and grandparents had called home, but which was new to them.

And all of those journeys toward a new place that was somehow home point ahead toward God's vision of a whole new creation where both God and humanity will unpack their things once again, and then at last be home in a place we have never been.  The whole Bible points us forward, rather than backward, to a new thing, a new place, a new reality.  Maybe the whole life of faith is learning to let God kindle in each of us a homesickness for a place we have never been, but which is somehow still home. And then all along this life's journey, that fernweh of faith leads us to be unsatisfied with the world as it is, so that we keep striving to make our lives here and now reflect the Reign of God toward which we are pulled--as Jesus taught us to pray for that Reign to come "on earth as it is in heaven."

We need regular reminders of that pull to a reality in our future, because otherwise, we are constantly tempted to make idols of the past--a past which is somehow always rosier in our memories than it actually was in lived experience.  You see it everywhere, the sentimental nostalgia for "the way things used to be," which we selectively remember, or only ever saw partially in the first place.  Everybody has their own (mostly imaginary) picture of that time in the past when things were "great"--and of course, we rarely stop to seriously inquire whether it was really great for everybody, or if it came at a price for somebody we have chosen not to remember.  And then we become suckers for anybody who promises us a taste of those "good old days"--whether it was ten years ago, twenty-five years ago, fifty years ago, or further back.  (For a case study in being disillusioned about the imaginary "golden ages" when things were really so great, so watch the 2011 Woody Allen movie Midnight in Paris, about a man who magically can go back to his ideal time period in his ideal city, only to discover that the people there are longing for a time further back, and that those people are wistful for an even earlier time as well--no one is ever satisfied, and everyone is convinced things were better "back then.")

The prophets were regularly the ones that got called upon to step up with a bit of honesty about how things in whatever golden age of Israel's past weren't really so golden.  And they were also the ones God raised up to offer a new vision of something God was about to do that was genuinely good.  "Do not remember the former things," says the voice of Isaiah 43, "I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth--do you not perceive it?"  It is the voice of faithful fernweh--a pull toward a new creation and a new kind of community, one which does not exist yet and which perhaps never has, but which God is bringing into being.

It is rather like that beautiful, haunting line of Langston Hughes:  "Oh, let America be America again--the land that never has been yet--and yet must be, the land where every man is free...."  Hughes saw that we have never quite lived up to the vision sketched out in our foundational documents as a nation, but he was convinced we were being pulled toward that future.  The direction to look, then, was not backward, to some perfect moment in the past when everything was right, but toward the horizon, toward the vision of a community where justice and peace were really at home.  Or, as a song of Billy Joel's put it into my ears in childhood, "You know the good old days weren't always good--and tomorrow's not as bad as it seems."

If even the Piano Man can see that the direction to look is forward, rather than backward, maybe we should listen.  Perhaps we need the prophets again to speak, and for us to listen to their old announcement of a new destination. Perhaps we need to be shaken out of our idol of nostalgia for a selectively-edited "great" time of the past to instead allow God to turn our attention forward.  Then instead of spending our energy, our time, and our resources trying to get "back" to some time we cannot reach any longer, we will let God lead us toward the new thing God is doing.  And perhaps we will dare to let God kindle a little faithful fernweh, so that we can let go of the resentments that build up in us when it turns out we simply can't make things be like we remember them being once upon a time, and instead, to begin to live now in light of that future day when lambs and wolves lie down in peace, when weapons are beaten into plowshares, when death is vanquished, when tears are wiped away, and when God is all in all, as the Scriptures describe it.

Perhaps, if we are straining forward to glimpse that future reality that is somehow home, we will begin to be more fully alive even now, and a little resurrection will begin among us on this day, too.

Lord God, make us forever dissatisfied with all that is not yet your new creation, so that we will press on forward toward the fullness of your Reign, rather than looking backward hazily to what we cannot get back to.  Lead us to that reality for which you have made us, in which we will all be home at last.

Ahead, Beside, Within--October 19, 2020

Ahead, Beside, Within—October 19, 2020

“And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:22-23) 

Jesus rules like oxygen. And we are made for breathing. 

Oxygen, of course, is one of those absolutely, non-negotiably, irreplaceably essential things for human beings to survive. You could say in a very real sense that it runs our lives, in that we depend upon it for our very survival. It dictates to a fair degree what we can do and how much we can do it, as well as where we can go—after all, you can’t go to places where there’s no air unless you bring your own supply of oxygen with you. They say you can live for more than a week with no food, and even a day or two without water. But without oxygen, you’ve got mere minutes—seconds, maybe. Element number 16 calls a lot of shots in our lives. 

And yet at the same time, interestingly, oxygen fills us. It is within us all the time, and in a very real sense, it becomes a part of us. There is oxygen around me in the atmosphere, but then there is oxygen within me inside my lungs, brought inside our chests each time we inhale. And then at a yet deeper still level, there is oxygen that becomes me—the oxygen that goes from my lungs into my bloodstream and into my cells. At some point in that process—maybe somewhere between lungs and arteries—we don’t think of it as just “air” anymore, but as part of ourselves. You are what you eat, but you are what you breathe, too—it just becomes a part of you, in a literal, chemical sense. 

So at the very same moment, it is true to say that oxygen is a substance other than me, directing where I can go and what I can do, and it is also a substance within me, filling me and enlivening me. 

This is the way Paul talks about Christ himself. He both rules over all things as “head,” but he also “fills all in all.” Both of those together are essential for the Christian life. 

To say that Christ is our head means that we place ourselves under his direction rather than simply our own best hunches about life. Left up to our own self-centered thinking or gut impulses or willpower, we would run amok, stepping on each other, taking from each other, turning deaf ears on people around us, holding grudges and wreaking revenge on all the people we think have wronged us. But as disciples looking to Jesus to be our head, our Lord, we are learning to follow his way of life and to make it our own. And so you find Christians doing strange (to the surrounding world’s eyes) things like giving their time up for people who need them, feeding the hungry, living among the sick and heartbroken, forgiving their enemies, speaking the difficult truth when it would be easier to tell a pleasant-sounding lie, loving those who have been unkind or indifferent, and sharing generously from their possessions. We do those things, not because it is our own natural disposition to do any of them, but because we disciples are daring to live with Jesus directing our steps, toward the needs of the neighbor around us, and away from self. 

And at the same time, Christians don’t merely believe that Jesus is a cosmic drill-sergeant barking orders at us but leaving us to fend for ourselves to do what he commands. That was the trouble with the Law—it is great at barking orders to us (“You shall not steal! You shall not murder! You shall not envy what your neighbor has!”) and it’s great at showing us where we fail at doing what it orders (“You just stole! See? You just did what I told you not to do!”). But the Law could never change our hearts or actually enable us to do what it told us to do. The Law doesn’t dwell within us. But Christ does. Christians believe that Christ really does fill us, and that we really are able to live different lives because the Spirit is within us. That means it’s not just up to me alone to find the courage and strength to love, to give, to forgive, and to follow—but Christ within me fuels me while at the same time Christ ahead of me guides me and Christ alongside me walks with me.  Christ makes us fully alive.

Christ is all around—and we need him in all those places. As we dare to pray today for Christ to guide us and direct our steps, we can take confidence, too, in knowing that he fills us to make it possible for us to go where he leads. Breathe deep in that assurance.  Let Christ fill you like oxygen, so that you and I can be brought to life again in this day.

Christ our Lord and our Strength, be within us, beside us, and ahead of us—and everywhere else we need you to be. Be like the air we breathe, and the rush of a wind filling our sails.

Worse than Cussin'--October 16, 2020

 Worse Than Cussin'--October 16, 2020

"Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all.  If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." [Romans 12:17-18]

It wasn't the profanity.  It was the sociopathy.

Honestly, when I found myself behind a truck the other day whose bumper sticker proudly brandished a four-letter word as part of its tagline to support a particular political candidate, it wasn't the potty talk that caught my attention.  It was the rest of the slogan that broke my heart.  There, below the candidate's name were three words in clear white text: "F--- your feelings." And what absolutely disappoints me about our common life together isn't use of four-letter words (although that is indeed a separate conversation and reason for disappointment), but the default assumption that the feelings, needs, or perspectives of others don't matter.  It wasn't the casual cussing--it was the casual hatred that brought me up short.

Look, don't get me wrong--I'm not happy that we are living in a time where I have to be careful where I drive with my kids in the car for fear of them reading yard signs and bumper stickers that are all plastered with words we have told them are inappropriate for them to say and then having them ask me, "Why is it OK for our neighbor to say it?"  But long ago, I made my peace with the reality that some folks' vocabulary are as rough as as corn cob, and I have to know when a situation calls for coarse language, and when it doesn't.  (And always in the back of my mind are the words of my grandfather, who used to say that using profanity is a sign that a person is either not intelligent enough or articulate enough to find another way to say something.  But I know nobody is going to hell for their bad language.) Even though people are constantly apologizing for their language when they realize they've let a bit of potty talk slip out in the presence of the preacher, I've heard all of it before.  That doesn't surprise or shock scandalize me. It wasn't the pearl-clutching profanity, but the willful, consciously hateful self-centeredness that the bumper sticker (and its owner) were modeling for the world that cut me to the quick.

And what was so disappointing was how completely, diametrically opposed that way of thinking is from the way Christians are called to see the world.  From the first decades of the Christian community, we have been taught to do exactly the opposite of the bumper sticker's advice.  We are called precisely to consider the feelings of others, the needs of others, and the perspectives of others.  That doesn't mean we will always agree with others (obviously), and sometimes we need to be able to say loudly and clearly where the lines drawn by our convictions fall.  But we are still called to frame our thinking, always, in terms of, "How will this affect others?  How will this either build other up or tear others down? How will this show Christ for the world?"  Or as Paul put it once to the Romans, "Never answer someone's rottenness toward you with rottenness of your own, but instead consider what everyone will regard as being noble and decent, and respond that way."  That wasn't limited just toward our conduct toward other Christians, and it wasn't given with exceptions for "When I don't feel like it" or "When it's hard" or "When it's on my car, truck, or chariot."  As followers of Jesus, our orientation is always meant to be outward to include the needs and feelings of others, not limited solely to ourselves.  

And in fact, contrary to the conventional wisdom of bumper stickers and yard signs everywhere, the ability to consider other people's feelings and needs is actually what reveals your strength, not your weakness.  It is not weak to have empathy. It is not cowardly to consider how your words and actions affect others.  It is not a sign of being a loser when you put the interests of others before your own.  At least not for the followers of Jesus.  For us who name the name of Jesus, empathy shows you are strong enough to share someone else's suffering with them.  For us who follow Christ, the choice to be kind reveals the depth of your character.  For us who are striving to reflect the character of God into the world, the "who-cares-about-your-feelings" attitude isn't a sign of being a winner--it's a sign of being a pompous jerk.  And what breaks my heart is that these things should be obvious to us--this isn't some complicated mystery of faith like the Trinity or the divinity of Christ, and it's not something that Christians are split on historically, like how many sacraments there are or what the right way to baptize is.  Love for others has been the hallmark of a Christian understanding of strength and character for twenty centuries, and yet we live in a time where a terrifying number of voices around us are actively teaching us--and our children--not to care about others or their feelings.  And they are doing it proudly, from the loud voices on our screens to the stark messages on the backs of vehicles in traffic.

Look, I get it that in the final weeks of an election season, everybody feels keyed up to pull out all the stops to get their candidates elected.  I get it that everybody feels passionately, and believe me, I have plenty of angst pent up inside me these days, too.  But there is going to come a point where this election cycle is over, and we are still going to need to live with each other. There is going to come a point where we have to be neighbors and live with one another.  There is going to come a point, too, when I will have to have a face to face conversation with Jesus and take responsibility to own up to every word that I have spoken, every action that I have taken, and every choice that I have made.  And, past the fuss over four-letter words, I can't imagine having to tell Jesus I actively encouraged, supported, or taught others in his name not to care about others or their feelings.  I just can't do that.

So, if you are still reading, please hear me now.  This is more than a mere call to election-season civility.  This is more than just a pastor shaming people for cuss-words on their cars.  It's about the rottenness in our hearts, and about how willing we are becoming to let that rottenness advertise in our lives if we think it will upset someone with different politics from yours.  This is about the kind of people we are, deep down, and what attitudes we allow to take root in our deepest selves--not just in late October of an election year, but all of our lives long, and for the generations that are watching us.  I will have wasted my life if at the end of it, all I can say is, "I never cared about anybody else's feelings, because I'm free to be a jerk to everyone!"  But if any one of us has helped shape someone else's heart to lead them to consider the needs and feelings of others rather than just their own, that will have been worth a lifetime of bearing with the disappointment and heartache of seeing such meanness around us.

The world needs your decency today.  Future disciples need your example, in words and actions, of going out of your way to consider the feelings of others, not to dismiss them.  And, I suspect, the face in the mirror needs you to be the kind of person you can look in the eye and say, "I lived my life in ways that Jesus is proud of."

In the face of so much unbridled self-centeredness and raw hatred, be a light of difference today, even when that hatred is aimed your direction and right in front of your face.  Or, as the apostle once put it, "Do not repay evil with evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all."

Good Lord, help us to use our lives and this day, this moment even, to consider the needs and feelings of others rather than only our own.  Let us love like you.

For All--October 15, 2020

 For All--October 15, 2020

"So let us not grow weary in doing what is right, for we will reap at harvest time, if we do not give up. So then, whenever we have an opportunity, let us work for the good of all, and especially for those of the family of faith." [Galatians 6:9-10]

It's everybody.  It really is.  This is one of those times where we really need to be clear and let it sink in:  "all" means "all."

When Paul the apostle looks out at which people on planet Earth are to be candidates for Christians to do good for, he throws up his hands and says, "Well, shucks--it's all of 'em.  It's all of us.  It's everybody."

Part of the way you know that is that Paul then mentions that other Christians are an obvious subset of that "all."  He says, "Let us work for the good of all," and then just in case you thought he only meant, "Let's work for the good of just fellow Christians..." or "Let's only look out for the interests of our group..." or "We're only supposed to take care of our own," he adds, as if to make it clear just how wide "all" really is, "especially for those of the family of faith." 

In other words, he's saying it's obvious we will already be looking out for people who are already in our group; that's sort of a no-brainer.  But Paul pushes us beyond those boundaries: we are called to do work for the good of all, an all which includes-but-is-not-limited-to other Christians who are "like us."  Here from the earliest generations of the Christian community, we were being taught to think beyond "Me-and-My-Group-First."  Looking out just for the interests of in-group members is just a vision too small for us.  

We are dared to dream bigger, wider, and deeper than just taking care of our own.  But we live in a time when it has become not just normal, but seen as patriotic and virtuous, to champion only doing good for "your own group first."  We have forgotten--or stopped listening--to the calling Paul gave us from the beginning.  Paul's words here put us to shame: we are called to do good for all, including people whose faith, whose language, whose skin color, whose nationality, whose culture, are not our own.  We are called to love and serve all.

In an earlier age, that's what we were known for, we Christians.  I am reminded of what a pagan Roman emperor, remembered now as Julian the Apostate, wrote about our ancestors in the faith.  Writing to another official in the empire in the year 362, he called out Christians (whom he referred to as "Galileans" because of Jesus' ancestral home) and noted that "...the impious Galilaeans support not only their own poor but ours as well, all men see that our people lack aid from us."  It used to be our calling card that we didn't just focus on ourselves.  It used to be the thing that Christians were known for that we didn't just support the voices that promised to make things easier for Christians, but that we spent our resources to supports others who weren't Christians.  It used to be our reputation that we were the ones helping out everybody's poor, not just covering our own bases and helping fellow "club members."  That was the thing that made us stick out like a sore thumb to this pagan emperor, who otherwise hated Christians because he feared we were pulling the Empire away from its former "greatness" and he wanted to restore that era of long-lost pagan Roman "greatness" once more.  But he had to give it to us "impious Galileans"--we put the Romans to shame by our generosity.

That is the legacy we were meant to inherit.  It is still ours for the claiming if we dare to practice it.  We have been called into the great relay race of doing good for all that has been going on for two millennia now, and this is the moment the baton is being passed to us.  It is our choice in this moment, and every day of our lives, whether to aim our efforts at the measly, embarrassingly small self-centered thinking of "Me-and-My-Group-First!" or whether we will again capture the watching world's attention by committing to choices, actions, and words that do good for all, not just people-like-us.  It is not a single day's or single moment's choice, but a daily commitment to keep doing what is right, what is good, what is generous, for all people, not just what is convenient for me or beneficial for people in my tax-bracket/nationality/religion.  

I don't know about you, but I don't want to be a footnote in history that is remembered for being the time period when Christians were selfish jerks.  I want to be a part of that great human chain of saints whose vision was expansive enough to include others who aren't "like us" or part of our group.  I want to be a part of a movement in the Kingdom of God whose graciousness is so notorious that we would make the modern day emperors call us "impious Galileans" all over again and think we were fools, suckers, and losers to give good things to others without seeking anything in return.  I want us to be known for loving ALL.

That, it turns out, is what the Scriptures have been calling us to all along.

Lord Jesus, keep our vision as wide as yours to include all, and give us the strength not to grow weary in doing what is good for all people.

Every Day's Endorsement--October 14, 2020

 Every Day's Endorsement--October 14, 2020

"And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him." [Colossians 3:17]

I want to live in such a way that I don't need a yard sign or a belligerent social media post in order for other people to tell who or what matters to me.  I want people to be able to see from my actions and hear from my words what matters to me, and I want to be the kind of person whose words and actions point in the same direction.   And I want that direction to point as much as possible in the same trajectory as Jesus moves in.

In other words, I want to be able to live each day in such a way that when I get to the end of it, I am able to stamp "Approved by Jesus" over it all.  Or, maybe to put it more accurately, I want to live in such a way that Jesus can endorse what I have done, what I have said, and how I have loved.  I want, not just to tell myself that Jesus approves of how I act and speak (because, hey, we're all great at fooling ourselves), but to become the kind of person in whom Jesus can be seen clearly--and where I am getting in the way of that happening, for Jesus to smooth away my rough edges and turn me around to point in the right direction where I am off course.

And honestly, I think that's actually a lot closer to what the letter to the Colossians means when it says, "do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus."  I think it is less about using Jesus as a magic talisman to cover everything we do in the veneer of religiosity, and more about acting in such a way that Jesus can put his name on what we do and how we speak.  It is about every day's endorsement, every word's resonance, every choice being in line with the way and character of Jesus.  

I know I'm going to mess up at that, but that's the goal.  That's the mark we're aiming for.  

And that means I do NOT have permission to bracket certain parts of my life out and say, "Well, these parts of my life I can be a jerk in..." or "Look, this is just business, so I need to be as cutthroat and self-centered as possible, because that's how the world works."  I do NOT have permission to be ok with hatred or taking advantage of other people, and I am NOT allowed to support cruelty toward other people or harm to my neighbors, whether or not their situations directly impact mine or not.  I am NOT allowed to give a pass to others being crude or crooked or deceptive either, even if I think they can do me favors. I am NOT allowed to turn away from the rottenness around, either, and pretend it's not there because I would rather it not be there. And I am NOT free to put my own interests above the needs of the people God puts in my path.  At least, not if I am looking to live in a way that I can write Jesus' name on the way I have spent a day or the words I have spoken.

We Respectable Religious folks get into a heap o' trouble when we read this verse the other way around, and treat it like we just need to say, "I do this in Jesus' name" and then everything is fine.  And we've got a bad track record over the last two millennia of misusing Jesus' name and falsely claiming Jesus' endorsement on our own pet agendas.  

In the fourth century, Constantine claimed he had a vision where a voice from heaven showed him a symbol of Jesus' name and title (the "Chi-Rho", which kind of looks like an X and a P put together, but which is a shorthand for the name "Christ" in Greek) and then told him, "Conquer in this sign."  And he did just that--killing his enemies and taking the throne of the Roman Empire and claiming that he had Jesus' endorsement on the conquest.  It was the beginning of a terrifying marriage of the cross and the very empire that had put Jesus on one of those crosses, and it became the rationale for Crusades and countless armies draped in crosses for centuries, all convinced they had God's blessing to conquer.

A thousand years or so after that, it was the Inquisition torturing people to make them profess faith in Jesus, and burning them at the stake if they wouldn't believe what they told them to believe--all done with the claim that they were doing it "for the Lord" and "in Jesus' name," and that therefore it was right and good.

Not much longer after that, colonizers and conquistadors from all over Europe sailed to the Americas and to Africa, telling themselves that they were doing the Lord's work as they enslaved, brutalized, tortured, and plundered the peoples they encountered, all because they had put crosses on their sails and convinced themselves that the expansion of their power was in the service of "Christendom."

And in our own nation's history, a terrifying number of Respectable Religious People invoked Jesus' name and blessing over their enslavement of other people, and they were convinced that God endorsed the whole system, because it kept the economy humming.  And later generations of those Respectable Religious people then went out after their church services, all dressed in their Sunday best, to attend lynchings--all smiling as they posed for pictures because they were convinced that Jesus' name could be stamped over what they were doing for the sake of promoting "law and order."

What makes us think we are free from the dangers in our day, too, of taking our own agendas and assuming they are blessed because we have invoked Jesus' name over them?

There's just too much evidence of our repeated habit of fooling ourselves. And then, once we have convinced ourselves that our cause is righteous, we give ourselves permission to do terrible things (things which are terribly un-Jesus-like, as well) as long as we say, "This is for Jesus" as we do it.  And while I would hope that I wouldn't get duped into thinking that any of those terrible things done in Jesus' name in the past were actually honoring to Jesus, that's exactly what is so frightening to me:  the people throughout history who have sent invading armies or condoned slavery or tortured people all "in Jesus' name" were convinced they were doing right.  They were convinced you could do whatever made you look greater or stronger or tougher or wealthier, and as long as you said, "I'm doing this for the Lord," it was glorifying to God.  So what will keep me, or you, or any of us from making our own terrible mistakes invoking Jesus in our lives?

Well, let me suggest that this verse from Colossians points us in the right direction, if we are willing to hear it rightly.  Instead of saying, "Whatever I do is OK as long as I slap the words, 'In Jesus' name' at the end," or "This is for the glory of the Lord," without reflection, the question we should be asking is, "Would Jesus be willing to attach his name to this?"  The right question is, "Will Jesus actually endorse the words about to come out of my mouth?  Will Jesus support the hateful meme I'm about to share on social media?  Will Jesus endorse the action I am thinking about taking?"  And if the answer is no, then we don't do it.  None of it.  Ever.  If we're not sure, we talk with others--people who have shown us the face of Christ in their own lives, people who we respect as wise and decent--and talk with them about it.  If you're still not sure, there's no reason you can't just hit the pause button some more.  If something in your gut says, "This ain't Jesus," then hold off on saying or doing or sharing it!  It really is that simple.

I know these are days when everyone feels like "those people on the other side" (on whatever issue, at whatever level) are doing something shady or bad or immoral, and that therefore you have to return fire in kind.  They are mean and crude, so you have to be mean and crude back.  They say something that gets under your skin, so you fire back the same way.  But followers of Jesus aren't given that permission to sink to the level of the lowest common denominator.  We don't get to say, "They did it to me, or they did it to my side, so I get to do it to them!"  We are always held--always--to the standard of, "Will Jesus endorse what I am saying?"

So today, the question to ask as we navigate through all that this day will bring is simply, "What will Jesus be willing to put his name on?" when it comes to our words, our actions, and our choices.  You and I don't have to fall for the childish taunting of your social media "friends" whose posts start with drivel like, "I bet you don't have the guts to share this, because you're afraid of offending someone!" and we don't have to sink to the level of the worst impulses inside us.  We don't have to be duped by the voices that have just dressed up crude selfishness, greed, and meanness with a cross on the outside.  We don't have to be taken in by the huckster promises that talk about promoting "religion" or "faith" or "God" in generic terms but which look nothing like Jesus.  We just don't have to fall for those any more.

We don't start with our own agendas and then slap on Jesus' name as a backing for why it must be ok--we start the other way around, with asking what Jesus would be willing to have his name associated with, and we go from there.  That's the vision: being people who get Jesus' endorsement every day.  Let's go to it today.

Lord Jesus, direct us today so that our lives reflect your way of love and truth, so that we will wear your name with integrity today.

A Guitar Full of Paper Clips--October 13, 2020

A Guitar Full of Paper-Clips--October 13, 2020

"As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides everything for our enjoyment. They are to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life." [1 Timothy 6:17-19]

Imagine something absurd with me for a moment. Imagine I get my acoustic guitar out, and I notice it's hollow on the inside, and I think to myself, "I know--that would be a great place to store stuff!" And so I start cramming that guitar full of whatever small possessions I can find: pencils and pens, sticky notes, tissues yanked from the box, thumbtacks and paper clips. And laughing in triumph, I think to myself, "Look at all this stuff I have amassed for myself--and nobody can take it from me, because I've squirreled it all away here in the soundbox of my guitar!"

And you would think, watching this scene unfold, "What an absolute moron that Steve is!"

You would be right. Stuffing your guitar full of paper-clips is an act of monumental buffoonery, because it makes both the paper-clips and the guitar unusable. Now, none of it is going to work rightly, because I have tried to hoard what is not meant to be hoarded, and I have filled what was meant to be kept empty.

Take a look at that sentence again:  none of my possessions would be useful in this scene, because I would have hoarded what is not meant to be hoarded, and filled what was meant to be empty.  

I'm not sure we are trained to think in those terms, honestly.  I'm not sure we are taught that it is not always a good idea to amass more and more for myself. We have even less instruction in the possibility that some things in life are meant to be held empty.  Instead, we are told over and over that the way to "win" in life is to acquire and accumulate, endlessly hungry and never satisfied. And we are told that it is nonsense to build your life around giving toward others rather than holding on to as much for yourself as possible. We have been raised in a system that told us you were the winner at life if you stuff your guitar full of office supplies, and then of course we are then set up to teach our children to do the same with theirs.  Trouble is, we end up with a deathly silence instead of music, because we have all ruined our instruments packing them full of things we have hoarded.  And then we wonder why we are joyless and full of strife in our communities, convinced that we should be happy because we've got lots of "stuff" and confused because we're not.

I want to suggest that the New Testament has been telling us all along why we are so out of sorts.  The letter we call First Timothy says it plain as day:  the life that "really is" life is not a matter of acquisition, but of self-giving.  And when we get it backwards (like so many voices around us are actively training us to do), we end up ruining the good things entrusted to us by hoarding what is meant to be shared, and filling what is meant to remain empty.  We end up with guitars that won't play, and paper-clips we can't actually use because were too obsessed with keeping them all.  We end up less than fully alive.

So when the pastoral voice in these verses says that those who are rich in the present world are to be generous and share their possessions, it is for the good of both the giver and the receiver.  Those who receive get enough to eat and to feed their kids--they are brought to life.  And those who give have their guitars emptied out a little, which is exactly what their instruments need in order to be able to make music the way they were meant to.  The goal is for everyone to be resurrected from our different kinds of deathliness.  And maybe one of the epiphanies we are each waiting to have is the realization that each of our well-being is connected to the other's: those who are drowning in possessions, dying of affluenza, need to be brought to life by giving away what was never meant to be hoarded forever.  And those who are dying of hunger, drowning in the world's indifference, need to be brought to life by receiving the gifts God intended us all to share anyway.  When I share what I have with you, I honor you and regard you as worthy, as accepted, as companion.  And when I receive from you what you would share, I honor you and regard you as well--because sometimes what the would-be giver needs is the opportunity to give.  In that endless circle of sharing, we are all made more fully alive--we each pull each other a little out of the grave.  And maybe, just maybe, we get a glimpse of what God's own life is like in the Triune loop-de-loops of self-giving between the Persons we have come to call Father, Son, and Spirit.  Endless giving, endless receiving, endless honoring of one another in the flow.  That sounds, quite honestly, divine.

Perhaps we would do well on a day like today to hush those voices inside us that want to immediately react to a passage like this by saying, "No one can make me give what's mine to somebody else who doesn't deserve it!  It's mine!  They didn't earn it!  That's not the American way!" and instead to listen to what the apostle has to say here.  After all, whether it is or isn't "the American way" to hoard or to share isn't really the issue at hand.  We're not promised that "the American way" will love us into resurrection.  We're not told that anybody's flag will give us the life that really is life.  Instead, we are told here by the apostle that the same God who gives generously to all of us has made us to share in that generosity with one another, because that is the point of life itself.

We are told, in other words, that it is high time for us to empty out our guitars of the paper-clips we have been hoarding in there, both so that the office supplies can be used as they were meant to, but also so that we can strum along with the music of God at last.

Today, may your paper-clips be accessible and ready to be used, and may your guitar be empty enough to play a tune for everybody around.

Lord God, empty us where we need to be empty, and allow both us to share what you have entrusted to us and to receive what you have sent others across our path to give.

Driving in the Rain--October 12, 2020

 

Driving in the Rain--October 12, 2020

"Finally, beloved, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things."  [Philippians 4:8]

I've had more than a few conversations with folks lately who feel helpless these days--maybe we all do in some moments.  The anger, the bitterness, the mean-spiritedness, the tidal waves of misinformation thrown at us on a million subjects, the many ways that crooks seem to get away with their crookedness, the shadiness and self-interest on display from very public places, and the assumption that everybody's hands are dirty so nobody can speak up and say, "This isn't right!"--well, it all has a way of overwhelming us, and we can feel like we don't know how to put one foot in front of the other.  Or maybe, like driving during a torrential downpour, we aren't sure which direction is forward--and which could be sending us off a cliff.  It's hard to know how to navigate in times like these, and honestly, I don't see an endpoint when the fog will all magically lift.  We are going to have to learn the skills for driving in the rain.

And the best counsel I can give, both from the Scriptures and from about twenty-five years of driving, is this: it’s about orientation. 

It’s about keeping pointed in the right direction along the way, and using whatever pointers and guides you can get as you go. That’s what Paul is talking about. And it’s why he often talks about the Christian life as a “walk,” which is to say, we are headed somewhere, and we are already on the road now. 

It’s about, as I say, orientation. 

In the most basic sense of that word, to be “oriented” is to be pointed east, the direction of the sunrise. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is to have a sense of which way is east, and from there to be able to tell which way the other cardinal directions were pointed. That information is really only useful if you are traveling somewhere, and you need to get your bearings set. But if indeed you are on a journey, say a “walk,” or even a drive in the rain, especially to somewhere you have never been before or by a route you have never taken before, having the right orientation—the right sense of direction—will help keep you headed where you need to go. 

Now, there is an obvious way of knowing where east is—the sunrise—but there are also times when you can’t gauge where the sun has risen from, times like, noon, for example. So you might have a whole list of possible ways to know which direction is “east.” Aside from the sunrise, you can look for Venus in the morning sky. You can get out your trusty compass and keep the needle for north always to your left and for south always to your right. When I was a kid and we would vacation on the shore of Lake Erie, you could always get your bearings by keeping the lake in perspective—it was always north, so if the lake was on your left, you were pointed toward the east. I suppose if you were a Scout and you knew to look for the right kind of moss growing on the north side of a tree, you could get your bearings that way, too. 

The point here is that even when it comes to your literal geographic orientation, you might have several different things to focus on, all of which can serve to keep you pointed in the right direction, even if the most obvious one, the sunrise, is useful when you’re awake to see it. And in the rest of those times, you could look to the other kinds of signs—the compass, the location of the lake, the Morning Star, Venus, on the horizon, or whatever other landmarks you might have. 

This is really the same kind of direction Paul gives to us today. When it comes to being pointed in the right direction—or what the early Christians would have called “walking the Way”—Jesus himself is our obvious clue. Christ himself grounds us and orients us and gives us our bearings. Consider him the sunrise, if you like. And when we keep Christ in focus we can know where we are pointed and what we are sent to do in the day before us. 

And when I say that we “keep Christ in focus,” I mean something more than just spouting vague concepts like “just be loving” or “do the right thing,” because, truthfully, we don’t know what “loving” or “right” looks like, really, apart from seeing Jesus live it. The world’s picture of “loving” is quite often about what “feels good at the moment,” while Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection show us a different picture of “loving.” Jesus shows us that love means a willingness to suffer, a willingness to give ourselves away, and a willingness to be fiercely faithful even when love is not returned to us. Same with talking about doing “the right thing.” Lots of people do downright awful things convinced that it’s okay because they are “right” or that their actions are justified by the outcome they are hoping for.  Lord help us with even vaguer concepts like "greatness"--the world absolutely loves to talk about how to be great, how to attain greatness, and how you should want greatness, too, and yet it is a "greatness" that runs completely counter to Jesus' picture of greatness, which shows up in serving, in love, and in doing right by other people, rather than a win-at-all-costs scorched earth gamesmanship.  We've got competing pictures of what love, decency, truth, and greatness look like--and when that happens, we are called to keep looking to Jesus to point us in the right direction again.

Like Eugene Peterson says, "Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meanings of words."  And that means Christians are people who are learning to let Jesus show us what “love” and “right” mean, along with words like “truth” and “justice” and “mercy” and “integrity.” Jesus is our primary way of being oriented, and, when we get off course, of being re-oriented. If Jesus is our sunrise, then the Christian life is that daily re-gathering of our bearings and letting Jesus get us pointed in the direction he is walking. 

But like with the sunrise, we have other secondary ways available to us to confirm our direction. And when it’s noon, say, and you missed the direction of the dawn, or when it's thundering and pouring so hard you can't see very far in front of you, you rely on things like compasses or GPS, or the yellow stripe in the road, or the location of the lake. And you trust that those things are ultimately going to agree with what you would learn from the sunrise. In the end, the location of the lake and the direction of the sunrise should both lead you to the same conclusion about which way is east. 

And so it is in the Christian life, too. If Jesus himself is our sunrise, then there is a whole long list of other things that offer navigational help, too. Paul describes them this way: “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable…” Paul’s point is not that we can just chuck Jesus for our bearings and just go with what our gut tells us is “right,” but rather than if something is really true or pure or just or good, in the end, it is going to line up with the character of God we have met in Jesus—his radical self-giving love, his welcome of the stranger and the outcast, his standing up for those made into victims, his willingness to serve in humility. In the end, if something really is true, it will point us in the direction of the living God, too, anyway. Or, as Thomas Aquinas once put it, “Every truth without exception—and whoever may utter it—is from the Holy Spirit.” 

In other words, if you missed the sunrise this morning and you are still looking for east, you can use your compass and it should give you the same correct answer. 

For us as Christians, in those moments when we are really struggling to see where Christ is leading us--especially in times when we feel overwhelmed with a tidal wave of rottenness and lies, Paul invites us to take a look at the other signs around us by looking at whatever other things, or people, around us have shown us goodness, purity, truth, and justice before. They may be secondary signs to navigate by, but they will do until the next sunrise, when we will see once again clearly which direction the true Bright and Morning Star is shining from, and we will be re-oriented for the new day. 

Sometimes it's hard to know where the sun is for all the storm clouds, but if we don't drive too fast for our brains to process what we are seeing, we can get our bearings from the lines on the road, the guardrails along the berm, and the lights up ahead.  Keep your orientation, and let those things keep reorienting you when you are afraid of going off the road.  And we keep on keeping on until the rain does let up, or the daylight finally gets through.

Lord Jesus, give us your direction today, using whatever means you will. But keep us on your Way.