God Uses Everything--February 26, 2021

 God Uses Everything--February 26, 2021

"At the same time pray for us as well that God will open to us a door for the word, that we may declare the mystery of Christ, for which I am in prison, so that I may reveal it clearly, as I should." [Colossians 4:3-4]

I heard someone say once that preachers are like butchers--they use everything.

There's probably some truth in that comparison, too, in the sense that nobody really wants to watch a sausage or a sermon being made.

But while it is certainly true that preachers potentially "use everything" they encounter or live through as people-watchers to become later sermon illustrations, parables, or object lessons, I think it supremely true that God uses everything.  And maybe the greatest learning of faith is coming to see that God has a way of taking the things we are certain are too useless, worthless, damaged, or broken, to be good for anything, and using them for good we never expected.  God, more so than the preacher or even the butcher, really does use everything.

That's what strikes me about these few verses from Colossians.  We hear Paul asking his readers to pray for him, but interestingly, the prayer is for God to use his current situation for spreading the Good News--not necessarily for a change of that situation.  Paul asks the Colossians to pray "that God will open a door for the word," not necessarily that he would be set free from imprisonment.  He prays for God to use the circumstances, rather than dictating that God has to change the circumstances.  That's a big difference.

We're used to presenting God with an itemized wish-list of things we need God to do for our own benefit: find me a parking spot, keep my list of people happy and healthy (with a sort of shrug of indifference about everybody else), make my political party win, increase the value of my portfolio, help my way of life and privilege to remain unchanged and unchallenged.  That sort of thing.  On most days, we don't dare pray for God to use the things that we may not like for the purposes of speaking grace to someone else in the world--and yet that is exactly what the apostle dares us to do here.  Instead of treating God like the speaker-menu at the drive-thru, to whom we present our demands, the Scriptures invite us to offer God our circumstances in faith and to trust God to make of them what God will.  In other words, to use everything.

So while it is certainly possible that God could have responded to an imprisoned Paul's situation by arranging for Paul to be set free, it is also possible that God used that imprisonment for Paul's faith to get through to his guards, so that the news of God's grace in Christ would spread throughout the empire, right under Caesar's nose--and on Caesar' dime, too!  (Something like that seems to be the case, in fact, if you read the letter of Philippians!)  And instead of Paul just saying, "Hey everybody, please pray that God springs me from jail--if we get enough of us doing it, God will make it happen," like some sort of spiritual Groupon offer, Paul asks his readers, "Pray that God will use this my situation in a way that I can be useful--so that love will be shared more fully with everyone."

And maybe in a way, that's the most we can dare to hope for in this day: that God would use us, just as we are, in our current circumstances, for the sake of the Kingdom.  It's funny--for all the vaguely spiritual self-help books out there and all the guides for "Christian" ways to find a mate, land a job, or grow your wealth, the New Testament really doesn't offer much direction for finding a spouse (and it's honestly pretty ambivalent on whether romance is all it's cracked up to be), and almost discourages attempts to grow your wealth.  The Bible can't honestly be turned into a scheme for making God change your circumstances or situation; instead, it points us to a God who takes us as we are and brings good we never expected from things we thought were unusable.  If I am convinced that God's job is to make my life to fit my expectations, I should be prepared for disappointment--God ain't my personal genie.  But if I can see that God's work is to take the pieces of my life, my world, and my deepest self and use them as they are, in transformative ways, well, then every day is full of possibilities.  But it means learning to change the way we pray, from, "Give me this thing I want so my life will be better," to "Here are things I can't make heads or tails out of--can you bring good out of them for the sake of sharing your love and your good news with others?"

And God will.  God absolutely will take the things we thought were garbage and junk and transform them into channels for loving the world.  The question is whether we'll consciously let ourselves be a part of what God is up to when it happens.  That's how God is--God uses everything.

Lord God, make of us what you will. We dare to trust ourselves to your good hands.

Keep Breathing--February 25, 2021

Keep Breathing--February 25, 2021

"Devote yourselves to prayer, keeping alert in it with thanksgiving." [Colossians 4:2]

This verse makes me think of cartoon fish.

One particular cartoon fish, as a matter of fact--it's Dory, from Pixar's Finding Nemo.  Dory is the often absent-minded blue tang, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres in the movie, whose repeated motto is simply this: "Just keep swimming."  Whatever happens, you just keep swimming.

For a lot of fish, in fact, swimming is life--literally.  Sharks, for example, have to keep moving all the time even when sleeping, in order to keep moving water through their gills so they can breathe.  Swimming isn't just about transportation--it is the means for life itself.  So whether they are animated talking characters or real-life creatures, fish are born swimming from the moment they hatch, and they just keep swimming through whatever else comes their way.

It's that idea of "keeping on" that seems important to focus on for today.  Our verse for today is translated in the NRSV as "Devote yourself to prayer," but the verb in the original Greek is more literally something like, "Keep holding on in prayer," or "Continue in prayer," or "Be ye persevering," if you like the King James style language.  But the idea is the continuity--this verse assumes we are praying, and so tells us to "just keep swimming" with it.  It's not about starting a new habit, or finding time in our already busy schedules to add one more new thing.  It's about continuing in something we are already doing.  And that makes this verse, not so much a scolding finger reminding us to do our spiritual homework, but a word of encouragement telling us we're doing good so far and to keep at it.  

I don't know about you, but that makes a world of difference to my ears.  These days it seems we are all being asked to take on more--just one more task, one more role, one more commitment--and to do it with utter devotion, while we are still supposed to keep doing everything else with the same 110% attitude as well.  And that just gets wearying.  But in this verse, we aren't being told to add one more thing, but rather to keep doing the thing that is already as essential as breathing.  Keep on praying, Colossians says, like Dory the fish saying, "Just keep swimming," or like you might say to a child getting overwhelmed with anxiety, "Just keep breathing."

Keep on praying.  Bring whatever is on your mind, your heart, your to-do list.  Not as one more item on the endless "to-do" list, but as the perpetual rhythm of give and take, inhaling and exhaling, breathing in and breathing out.  It's not about getting the words right or looking religious.  It's about staying in constant contact with the One whose presence brings us to life, who fills and animates us like oxygen in our lungs.  

Keep on breathing, dear ones.  That is, keep on praying--through everything.

O Lord, we come to you--or rather, we say we are coming to you as if you weren't already immediately as present to us as the air--seeking for you to sustain us.  Keep on filling us with your presence, bearing our hurts and worries, and animating our hearts to live and serve fully.

For the Lord--February 23, 2021

For the Lord--February 23, 2021

"Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything, not only while being watched and in order to please them, but wholeheartedly, fearing the Lord.  Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. For the wrongdoer will be paid back for whatever wrong has been done, and there is no partiality.  Masters, treat your slaves justly and fairly, for you know that you also have a Master in heaven." [Colossians 3:22-4:1]

Sigh.  Ok, this is a challenging passage for about a million reasons.  And to be very honest, we don't live in a time or culture known for its ability to handle nuance, critical thinking, and self-reflection very well, so it's hard to find a venue to dig through the many layers, both of history and of interpretation (and misinterpretation), which have piled up over the centuries like strata of rock and which make it harder to hear these words in their context, and harder still to make the leap to our day and hear what they might say to us.  It can feel so daunting (or foolhardy) that it can seem better to the preacher just to skip a passage like this--and I get it.  This is a minefield.

And yet, we have committed to walking through this book of the New Testament and wrestling a blessing from it wherever we can.  So let's roll up our sleeves and try.

So at the outset, let's just get a couple of really quick but really important guardrails set up.  These each warrant a full conversation on their own, but we're going to use broad brushstrokes here today.  The first thing we need to be really, really clear about is that the Greco-Roman world of the first century practiced slavery in a way that was different from what was practiced for centuries in the United States. (That doesn't let first-century people off the hook--it just means that what happened in our nation's history was, in some significant ways, much much worse than what was the widespread practice in the Roman Empire when Colossians was written.) Our nation's history is mired in chattel slavery in which people were stolen--primarily from Africa--and then enslaved in such a way that their children were doomed to be enslaved as well in perpetuity, quite often then sold off as property, raped to produce more enslaved people, and hunted down by armed patrols if they dared escape.  Enslaved African Americans had their families destroyed for the sake of profits by white slaveowners, and for a very long time, our entire economy depended on this system, creating wealth in the North and in the South that was built on the backs of slave labor.  And perhaps cruelest of all, all of this was done while white preachers regularly told their congregations and enslaved people that the entire system had God's blessing on it, and in fact that God willed for enslaved people to be enslaved.  Bible passages like this one were regularly used (or rather, abused) as endorsements of that system, and often the cruelty and injustice of the American slave economy were ignored.  To this day, the ripple effects of that systemic sin still affect our culture in ways that are so pervasive it is very easy for people like me to imagine they aren't even there, the same way a fish doesn't know it's wet because it is swimming in the water that's all around.  And, just for the record, all that system, was and is wrong. It is always sinful, wicked, damnable, evil, and opposed to the way of Jesus and the Reign of God--full stop.

The slavery practiced in the Roman Empire during the time of the New Testament was still rotten, but was much more of a hodge-podge.  One could become enslaved when your nation was conquered by a neighboring nation, with the possibility that in the next war or raid, you might be freed and brought home.  One could end up as an indentured servant--bascially a debt-slave--required to work off your debts for a period of time. (We can talk about whether that in and of itself is morally just, too, but at least we need to acknowledge that it is different from being born a slave.)  Slavery wasn't tied to particular race in the ancient Roman world, either, so people of all sorts of ethnicities were enslaved, and not necessarily visibly distinctive the way the American practice made "black" equivalent to "enslaved" in so many places.  Because sources of slaves were so common in the Empire (anybody who got conquered or captured by pirates could end up enslaved) and because the buying and selling of slaves was permissible, one doesn't see the same amount of "masters" using enslaved women as "breeders" to produce more slaves by rape, either, in the ancient world.  It was a terrible system, then, too, but it was different from what was practiced in the United States for centuries.

Last, we need to say that while this one passage from Colossians does certainly address the practice of slavery in these verses, it is hardly the only voice from the Scriptures on the subject.  The whole story of the people of Israel in what we call the Old Testament springs from God's freeing the Hebrews from slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt, and freedom from slavery is a recurring theme throughout the Hebrew Scriptures.  (There is a reason that white slaveowners often cut out the Old Testaments from the Bibles they gave to the enslaved people on their plantations, after all.)  So even as we focus in a moment on this passage from Colossians, it is hardly the loudest or most significant voice in the chorus of the Scriptures on the subject--and it is worth remembering that Scripture always speaks as a multiplicity of voices that need to be heard together, not just picking one verse I "like" and using it to ignore the ones that call me out on things I don't want to deal with.

I know that's a lot of background to wade through.  And at the same time I know it's hardly scratched the surface of each of the issues that we can't avoid dealing with.  But we needed to at least have said those things so we didn't just skip verses because they make us squirm or because we don't know how to deal with them. And we couldn't afford to just focus only on some quick warm, fuzzy pick-me-up that didn't at least touch on the real harm that previous generations of Christians have done by misusing these verses to justify the practice of slavery rather than to offer a way for enslaved Christians to survive with hope when they found themselves held in captivity and forced labor.  And sometimes each of us needs to let ourselves be humbled by the realization that I am not at the center of every Bible verse or story--sometimes I need to consider that someone else, whose situation or circumstances of life are different from mine, need to be at the center.  

So for all those dangers from centuries past that we are trying to avoid in approaching this passage, what are we going to make out of it?  What does it say to us, who are neither enslaved nor (God forbid) in the position of owning another person, to read these verses?  I want to suggest that there is a great power here in the idea that when we choose to do good work in our lives as a way of loving God, it has a way of liberating us from the other forces around us that push on us. It can seem like a subtle shift, but it is an important one:  when we choose to see our daily tasks as acts of loving God by loving our neighbors, then whatever power a supervisor/boss/overseer (or in the case of enslaved people, masters) previously had to intimidate me is lost.   To see one's work as a way of loving God--done "for the Lord"--can be a way of strengthening one's spirit to keep it from being broken.  It is a way of helping us to see the dignity and importance of what we do, even if we feel like are unappreciated, exploited, or taken for granted by those above us in positions of power.

I know there are obvious and critical differences between having a paid job, however low-paying or unappreciated one may feel in it, and being enslaved.  But it seems that in both cases it is very easy to feel trapped, like your worth is determined by the profits you bring into the boss, and that there's no way for things to ever change.  Lots of people working minimum-wage jobs feel like their work is dismissed as unimportant or that they are less valuable as people because their job pays less, and that they are stuck between a rock and a hard place working harder all the time but feeling like they are losing ground rather than getting ahead in life.  And in the midst of that, these verses from Colossians at least offer the possibility that I can do the work I do as an act of love to God, in a way that gives my work honor and dignity no matter how rude the customers are, how low the pay is, or how mean the boss might be.  It gives me a way of seeing something noble in work that doesn't often get regarded as noble.  And by focusing on Jesus as we do thankless or unpleasant tasks, then whatever abusive words or belittling customer complaints or weariness we have to put up with lose some of their ability to pull us down.  By seeing our work as a way of loving God, it's like knowing that when we go through bad situations in our work life, that God sees and can hear us saying to God, "I am doing this, not for the boss' sake, or because I'm afraid of this customer, but for you, God.  This is my offering to you."  And that has a way of taking away the harmful power of abusive bosses, soulless corporate entities, or crude customers to intimidate or dehumanize us.

And maybe that's it: we human being keep inventing new and terrible ways to dehumanize each other in society--from the ancient evils of slavery to the modern bleakness of having to work multiple low-paying jobs to feed your family and keep the lights on while being treated like a cog in a machine for someone else's profits.  But when I choose to see my work as an offering to God, it has a way of thwarting the attempts to dehumanize me: it helps me to recover seeing the dignity in doing good work for a good God, no matter what anybody else says or does to me to try to belittle me and what I do.  And that--that is much needed good news for folks feeling desperate and unappreciated.  It doesn't give the rest of the system permission or divine blessing to take advantage of people, neither by enslaving them or trapping them in dead-end work, but it does give us a way of coping when we do feel trapped.  Seeing my work as an offering to God makes no other person my "master"--what I do is a precious offering to God that nobody else can steal the value of or belittle.  

There--a blessing wrestled from the text after all.

Lord God, we offer today to you all of who we are and what we do.  Help us to see the worth and honor in what we do when we are feel lowly and less-than.  And help us to empower others when they are treated as less-than as well.

The House Around the Faucet--February 19, 2021

The House Around the Faucet--February 19, 2021

"Wives, be subject to your husbands, as is fitting in the Lord.  Husbands, love your wives and never treat them harshly.  Children, obey your parents in everything, for this is your acceptable duty in the Lord.  Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart." [Colossians 3:18-21]

Did you ever see that commercial where the couple finds their ideal kitchen faucet in the store, and then tells their architect to design a house around that?  That's not just marketing genius (I mean, now I want one of those faucets, too!), but it's not a bad way to think of these verses from Colossians.

Because, for all the ways we can get ourselves lost in the weeds over the ways verses like these have been abused and mishandled in the past to justify all kinds of mistreatment of wives and children in the name of "obeying" and "being subject," this passage isn't about giving anybody permission to dominate anybody else.  Just the opposite, in fact.  This passage, following as it does from the previous verses about doing everything we do "in the name of the Lord Jesus," are sort of like putting Jesus at the center of our lives, and then building everything in our households around Jesus.  

Let me say that again.  Like the faucet in the commercial, these verses from Colossians call us to reimagine everything--every relationship in our lives, in fact--around who Jesus is, and who we are because of him.  And it's just that--because of who Jesus is, the sort of person he embodies and the kind of love that is his, nobody has permission to dominate anybody else.  In fact, serving and self-giving love that honors the other is the hallmark of all of our relationships.  We're building a household around Jesus, and Jesus doesn't use his authority or position to dominate, but rather to serve.

For an embarrassingly long time in the last two thousand years, Christians (honestly, it's been mostly Christian men here) have misappropriated passages like this with a bit of interpretive sleight-of-hand to make them sound like the New Testament requires women to be demure and unthinking automatons or children to be nothing more than free labor for their parents.  We have had too long of the misreading of passages like this to make them sound like this is a ranking of power and importance in a family, and that adult men are supposed to dominate and dictate, and everybody else just falls in line.  

On top of that, we live in a culture and in a time that often teaches boys that being "a man" is primarily about being toxically aggressive jerks who threaten and intimidate their way into getting what they want, rather than recognizing Jesus' kind of maturity doesn't have to bully anybody, but rather chooses to serve, to love, to be vulnerable, and to uplift and honor others rather than needing to be "top dog" himself.  And then add the further assumption our culture makes that a nuclear family of mom, dad, and then 2.5 kids, and a dog (white picket fence recommended) is the only way a family can look, when in actuality, the biblical writers often assumed families included extended connections of grandparents, in-laws, grown siblings, and cousins, all living in the same immediate area, if not in the same house.  We end up with a pretty distorted picture that imagines the "one right way" to do family life is for an obnoxiously dominating male to boss everybody else in the family around while he smokes his pipe and puts his feet up, rather than a vision that is centered on Christ-like love.

So, let's be clear here.  The Bible doesn't have a single "one right way" for your family to look, and this isn't giving a prescription for who is allowed to work outside of the home, or how you arrange the responsibilities in your household.  Instead, I want to suggest that this passage from Colossians suggests a center--Jesus himself--around which all of our other relationships are shaped, and through which all of our relationships are seen in a new way.  So instead of parents seeing themselves as bosses or rulers of a household (the way in the ancient Greco-Roman mindset, children were basically seen as expendable non-persons until they came of age), we will see the role of parent through the self-giving love of Jesus. That doesn't mean parents are supposed to spoil their children to become entitled brats, but rather that parents see their role as servant-leaders who use their position in the family to empower and shape their children with Christ-like love, too.  And instead of imagining that this passage dictates that women are supposed to be silent and subservient like shrinking violets while men are supposed to be domineering and overcompensatingly macho, I want to suggest that the letter to the Colossians envisions everybody starting with the question, "How does Jesus love?" and letting that guide their actions.

For at least the bulk of my lifetime, it seems that Christians have been known for loudly insisting that every family fit one preconceived cookie cutter design that never really came out of the mouth of Jesus (who, by the way, was neither married nor a parent, and still was able to live a wholly meaningful and good life, as it appears was also the case with the apostle Paul), rather than asking the one question the Scriptures do actually dare us to ask: "How do my relationships look different in light of the way Jesus loves?"  There can be a lot of variety in what our closest relationships in life look like in answer to that question, so it's not a cookie-cutter sort of question.  Instead, we are called day by day, even as the shape and arrangement of our families may change over time, to ask that question--What will my relationships look like if they are built around the character of Jesus?--and to let our lives reflect the answers, moment by moment, day by day, decade by decade, all our lives long.  Jesus is the faucet you build the house around.

This is really what the New Testament says about family life:  start with Jesus, wherever you find yourself in a family, and let Jesus' kind of love shape the way you live out your relationships.  That's what is worth investing our time and attention on today.

Lord Jesus, you whose lordship looks like footwashing, and whose reign takes the form of a cross, shape our love in light of who you are.

Not for the Cupholders--February 17, 2021

Not for the Cupholders--February 17, 2021

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

What’s the point of a car? And here’s a hint—don’t say cupholders. 

For that matter, don’t say, “To make my neighbors envious,” and don’t say, “Impressing potential dates.” Also out is, “Good investment.” 

Come on, the point of a car is transportation. And while there may well be times when you just drive around for the sake of driving around, most of your car time is spent actually GETTING SOMEWHERE that you want to end up… or need to end up (like work), at any rate. The point of a car is to get you somewhere, and a car does it more quickly and with less mussed hair than if you had walked in the rain or ridden a motorcycle to get there. A car is for getting there… wherever there is. 

So, if I asked you, “Where will you go on vacation when the pandemic is over?” and you answered me, “Oh, we'll take the car,” and said nothing else, I would think you had missed the point of why cars exist. I’m frankly less interested in which vehicle gets you there—I am asking where “there” is. 

Same thing if I asked you, “Where do you go when you leave the house in the morning?” Even though it would be technically accurate, I guess in a sense, to say, “I get in the car,” the real thrust of my question is, “What is your destination—are you going to work? To school? To run errands? The moon, or possibly Mars?” 

So we are clear, then, at this point, I hope about the “point” of a car. And I hope we are just as clear about what I would mean if I asked you where you go when you first head out the door in the morning. The car is a means, a vessel, quite literally a vehicle, for getting you to the main thing, the main reason, the real purpose of your trip. 

So then, what if I asked you, “What is your life for?” 

What if I asked you, “What is ANY life FOR?” 

Here’s a hint—don’t answer, “To find more places to set my drinks.” And don’t answer, “To make my neighbors envious,” or “Impressing potential dates,” either. 

But for that matter, don’t tell me about making money or earning a particular promotion at work—that’s not really what life, anybody’s life, is about. And don’t tell me that the point of your life is to become the head of the PTA or to teach your kids to make THEIR lives all about money or promotions, either.  Nor is it enough of a life's purpose to just get your political party's candidates elected, or to help your company destroy its competition, or to just get to retire somewhere sunny.  

The point of life is not—like you may have thought in high school—about being popular. It’s not—like you thought in your 20s—about proving to your parents you can make it on your own. It’s not—like you thought in your 30s—about manufacturing the cookie cutter life of “success” with 2.5 kids and a dog. And it’s not, as the 40s and 50s often have it, about making a name for yourself at work, finding a new love interest (you know, when you've grown bored with the old one) and piling up money for a cushy retirement in your 60s, 70s, and 80s. 

To say that any of those things are “the point” of life is like saying the point of a car is to have nice upholstery, a decent stereo, or plentiful cupholders. To say that the “point” of your life is to make more money, rack up more titles, or improve your social scene is like saying the place you “go” in the morning is “your car,” rather than the actual place to which you DRIVE your car (i.e., a job, an errand, a family member’s house, etc.). It’s forgetting that there is an actual destination in mind, which is the reason for getting IN the car in the first place. 

So when the writers of the New Testament asked themselves, “What are our lives… for?” they ended up all coming to the same one-word answer: “Christ.” 

Note (said the religious professional) I did not say, “Going to church,” although there are reasons for that just as there are reasons for putting gas into your car every week. Note also that I did not say simply, “Getting to heaven,” because the Bible sees eternal life as something that begins even now and that we aren’t just biding our time to get Somewhere Else. 

The point of life, for us as followers of Jesus, is Christ himself. To know him, to be known by him, to become like him, and to experience being held by him even when we are decidedly UN-like him. To share the connection we have found in Christ with other people. To participate in what Christ is still doing in the world around us, moment by moment, day by day. To reconcile the way Christ reconciles. To lift up the stepped-on people like Jesus. To have full and deep connection with the Father and at the same time to be grounded in the Father’s love deeply enough to include the outcast and the left-behind people. All of that is the point of life. Yours, and mine. 

That means it may… or more likely may NOT, have a lot of time spent inside the four walls of a church. Most Christians will have to spend the majority of their time in workplaces, homes, and at the store, but bringing Christ into those places as they go. 

That means it may… or more likely may NOT, be that your job has anything to do with “ministry” as most people define it. Most Christians are actually secret agents who do their jobs while having a calling beyond contracts and paychecks to use their work life for the Kingdom. 

That means the whole purpose of your life is not, first and foremost, your job. Or supporting your political party's candidate in lock-step. Or getting rich. Or retiring to Florida (Lord, have mercy, no!). Or even making your kids "successful." Our fullest and deepest purpose is about the sort of people we become, as we are held by the one who loves us: our purpose is Christ. 

It’s fine if a lifetime also includes other things like promotions and retirement savings and all the rest—but just remember, those are cupholders on a car. They are fine accessories, but the point of the car itself is to get you somewhere. 

Today, go where God is leading you. But remember that the point of the journey is not to stay in the car forever. 

Lord Jesus, keep us focused on you as our goal and purpose in life, so that we can see everything else in its right place.

What Is Worth Saying--February 16, 2021

What Is Worth Saying--February 16, 2021

"Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God." [Colossians 3:16]

It's not about having the "right" (or not) to say whatever you want.  It's about knowing what is worth saying in the first place.

This is something that American Christians like myself sometimes have a hard time being clear about, because we are taught from a very early age to see everything--and I mean everything--in terms of negative freedom.  "Nobody can tell me what to do!"  "It's my right to do as I please!" "I can say whatever I want, and nobody should have the ability to scold or chastise me for saying anything I feel like!"  It's all freedom in the negative sense--insisting that someone else can't stop me from doing what I want.  But honestly, the Christian faith has never been all that interested in just negative freedoms; you don't find the writers of the New Testament, or certainly not Jesus, going around insisting they can do or say whatever they want in the name of "their rights."  Instead, you get Jesus creating a community that asks, rather differently, "What is worth us speaking?  What message of good news is worth having our lips?  What songs of praise, what tunes of liberation, can we not keep from singing?"

And that's a question we need to get better at asking, especially these days.  Sometimes we get so hung up on demanding that we have the freedom, the "right," to say anything we like--even when it's mean, hurtful, incorrect, harmful to others, or just plain untrue--that we don't bother to ask what the biblical writers, like the voice here from Colossians, think is worth our spending our breath to speak.

It is true, of course, that we live in a country that prides itself on rules (in particular, the First Amendment to the Constitution) that say the government cannot "abridge" the right to freedom of speech.  And that's all well and good--there are lots of reasons we don't want the government to throw people in jail for criticizing their leaders, or speaking up for the oppressed, or saying something provocative.  History is littered with examples of the dangers of giving powerful people the ability to silence their critics, or to burn at the stake the ones who dared suggest that the Earth went around the Sun, for example.  But there's a huge difference between saying, "The government can't throw me in jail for saying something mean or unpopular" and deciding it's a good idea to deliberately be a jerk, or hateful, or cruel to someone else.  In other words, just because the government can't punish me for saying terrible things (at least most terrible things--I can still theoretically be punished for shouting "Fire!" in a crowded theater, or for provoking a riot, and rightly so), it doesn't mean it's a good idea for me to say terrible things.  We live in a country where I can't be thrown in prison for using a racial slur, for example, but if I talk that way, it is a good and right thing for other people to call me out on it and to refuse to do business with me until I understand why it's wrong and change my behavior.  We live under a set of laws that says I am legally permitted to say factually incorrect things, but no one is required to give me a platform or a megaphone to amplify my voice when I tell misinformation, or worse, lie to people.  But the better question is this:  what is worth me saying?  What is worthy of being found on my lips, if I claim to be a disciple of Christ?

And for the followers of Jesus, that's just it--this was never about demanding our "rights" to have the freedom to be mean or hateful.  It's always been about choosing the right words--Christ-like words, in particular--to be found on our lips, rather than rotten ones.  It's fine that we live in a country where we are legally permitted to be hateful jerks to other people, but that doesn't mean it is the right thing to be.  We are called to Christ-likeness.  We always have been.

That's the missing piece for so many conversations I hear these days.  We can be so quick to snap at someone who holds us accountable when our words are hurtful or harmful to someone else, when maybe what we need first is to listen to their point and be considerate of the power of our words to build someone else up... or to tear them down.  We have this tendency of lashing out at the people who love us enough to tell us when our words have caused harm to someone else (or to them directly), and we end up shifting blame to them for being "too sensitive," or "too worried about being politically correct," or "too easily offended," when maybe they cared about us enough to try to get us to stop being inconsiderate jerks to someone else we hadn't given thought to.  And that's just it--when I focus on the rights-based negative freedom of "You can't tell me what to do, and you can't stop me from saying whatever I want!" I am making myself the center of the universe.  Christ himself begs to differ--he is the true center of all things, and because of how he loves, he calls me to put the needs and well-being of others before my childish impulse to say every stupid thing that pops into my head.

So when the writer of Colossians here says, "Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly," it's not simply a matter of memorizing and spitting out Bible verses (because, again, let's be honest here--Bible verses can be "weaponized" in ways that don't fit with the character of Jesus, and he will have no truck with that).  It's instead about letting Jesus' way of speaking becoming our way of speaking.  It's about letting the song on our lips be one of the Good News of God's grace in Christ, rather than insisting we have the "rights" to say things that are mean, spiteful, hateful, or untrue.

In a way, it's rather like that cliche saying you find on internet memes and social media that goes, "In a world where you can choose to be anything, be kind."  For the followers of Jesus, it's never been simply about having the negative freedom to say whatever cruel, destructive, ignorant, or hateful thing you want--it's about the positive freedom for something.  It's the freedom for speaking love, singing grace, shouting hope, whispering peace, declaring forgiveness.  So, in a culture where you are allowed to say anything... what is worth saying?

When I put my thoughts through that filter, it changes how I speak.  It's not about any nefarious or overbearing outside forces "censoring" me--not the government, not some imaginary guardians of political correctness, and not the fellow with the bleeping button at the FCC.  It's about me doing the difficult but important work of asking, "What speaks goodness into the world, rather than rottenness?  What will build up? What will speak of justice, of mercy, of Christ?"  And with that reframing, it becomes clear: this has never been about demanding the right to be arrogant jerks or hateful bigots in the name of "freedom."  It is always about letting the word of Christ dwell so richly in us that Christ-like words come from our mouths, in speech and song and shout.

That's the kind of person I want to be.  Today, and every day.  How about you?

Lord Jesus, reign in our speaking, our thinking, our singing, and our loving.  Guide what we say, and open our ears to hear the insights of others who help us to see how our words affect others.

Be the Difference--February 15, 2021

Be the Difference--February 15, 2021

"And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body.  And be thankful." [Colossians 3:15]

I need to tell you two stories.  Both are true.  Both were from conversations I got to participate in or overhear in the last week.  (And both may have some details removed for the sake of doing my best to respect all persons involved.)

So, I was visiting an older member of one of the congregations where I serve--a woman who is a great-grandmother herself, and whose grandchildren are all grown.  And while I sat at this woman's pleasant kitchen table, one of those grown grandchildren happened to stop in to visit, too.  She lives in the city now, and had been raised with some kind of church affiliation in a different branch of the Christian family tree, and she sat around the same table with us as I visited.  And although this was my first time ever getting to have any kind of conversation with her, at some point in the visit she talked about how she had felt distant from organized religion since her parents stopped making her go, mostly because she had only ever experienced religion as a way of scolding people or getting lost in its own rules, its rituals, and its own rules about its rituals.  And when I invited her to share Communion, she was surprised that I would still include her, after she had been so honest.  It was a pleasant surprise to her, but then she said something that has haunted me since.  She said, matter-of-factly, "I didn't know there were Christians like this.  I never really have talked much religion with my Gram here (the grandmother whom I was visiting) or did much church stuff with her side of the family, but I never knew that there were Christians who weren't just upset all the time toward people who weren't exactly like them."

Wow.  That was disheartening to hear, but some part of me just wanted to tell myself, "Well, as she says, she hasn't had a very wide experience with many Christians.  Maybe she just got burned early on and never dared to explore beyond what she was first introduced to." 

But it wasn't more than just a few days later that I happened to be a few feet away from another conversation, with completely different people, twenty miles from that kitchen table.  And this time, it was a room full of Respectable Religious people--folks who dutifully serve their churches, know their prayers, and wear their crosses around their necks.  And out of nowhere, a conversation started up about whatever thing in the news had upset this informal gathering lately, and out spewed not mere anger, but sheer spite. Whoever started the topic was mad about the events of the day, and when someone suggested, "Maybe things will quiet down and we can just get along," the comment came back, "No--you have to fight!  We have to show them we're not done!  We can't let 'em think they've won!" And my heart just about sank to the floor, overhearing the vitriol from folks who each would say they love their Jesus and serve their churches faithfully.

Like I say, I've removed some specifics, because in a way it doesn't exactly matter what news item from what day in what place was aggravating them.  But what just lands like a one-two-punch in the gut for me was the rapid-fire succession of two instances of completely unrelated people, in entirely different communities, with entirely different issues, where the only common thread were the presence of people who called themselves followers of Jesus, and in both of these snippets of conversation, the people called "Christians" were the sources of meanness and strife, rather than the voices of Christ-like peace.  

Too often, that's all we're known for, we church folk, we Christ-followers: as the source of spite in situations, rather than the salve. Too often we forget our calling--which is also a grace to us--to embody Jesus' kind of peaceable reign that rises above needing to answer evil with evil, meanness with more meanness, rancor with rancor, to avoid looking "weak." 

It haunts me that there are surely countless granddaughters of nice octogenarian ladies whose only experience of Christians is, "They're the ones who are always angry at others--and that's why I don't want to be one of them."  And it haunts me that there are countless other gatherings of Respectable Religious People whose first impulse when things don't go their way is, "We have to look tough and fight their fire with fire; we can't look weak, or they'll think we're losers!" like they were all a bunch of junior-high school boys worried about being picked last for dodgeball.  It grieves me that for so many people, not far away in some foreign place but right here in a place that tells itself it is "Christian," people experience actual Christians as sowers of animosity and anger, rather than agents of peace.  It breaks my heart, too, knowing that for so many people, being a Christian is the last thing they want to do... because they have known too many Christians whose lives were marked by spite rather than love.

So when I hear these words from Colossians calling the early church to "let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts," I hear it with an urgency that goes far beyond our usual religious sentimentality.  So often, "peace" is one of those nebulous, fuzzy, vaguely emotional words we through around that doesn't make any difference in our actual lives.  But these words from Colossians call us to something vital--something the world is aching for but so often finds sorely lacking us.  The writer to the Colossians isn't merely saying, "Feel peaceful," or "Think peaceful thoughts," but rather, "Practice the way of Jesus--a way of life that seeks to restore broken relationship rather than to dominate... a way of life that looks to welcome people in rather than looking for ways to stand in condemnation over the."  It's about a whole way of life--and it's a way of life that sets aside the need to look "tough" or like a "winner," a way of life that isn't based on a never-ending cycle of "getting them back."  It's a kind of life that finds ways to invite and include rather than to keep people out.  It's a life that is less interested in punching back "because they hit us first" and more interested in breaking the cycle.  It's a life that is willing to risk being called "soft" or "weak" or like a "loser" for the sake of being the mature person, rather than needing to prove our toughness all the time.

And that, honestly, is a beautiful and compelling kind of life.  It really is worth it.  It really is revolutionary.  It really is worth giving your whole life to.  And the world so deeply needs it.  The world needs us to practice the peace and peaceableness of Jesus, and it needs us to step up today.  The world around us--not just in the abstract, but people you and I know and talk with every day--has seen already too much meanness, and too much of it has come from people like us... people who are us, when we have let spite stifle the peace of Christ in us.  

People are watching us, listening to our conversations around kitchen tables and in the next room, and looking to see whether this Jesus we talk about makes us more kind or cruel, more merciful or mean, more petty or peaceful.  And after letting them down plenty of times before, we can start again--today--and let Christ's peace reign in us. We can be the alternative to meanness that the world is aching for.  We can let the peace of Christ rule in our hearts, and be the difference someone else is waiting for.

Lord Jesus, let your peaceableness become our way of life, now and always.

Difficult, But...--February 12, 2021

Difficult, But…--February 12, 2021

“As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.” [Colossians 3:12-14]

Nobody is saying it is easy. Just that it is worth it. 

I’m not usually one to go looking for deep spiritual truths in Will Smith-driven summer blockbusters, but you can learn that lesson from the 1997 hit Men in Black. There’s a scene pretty early on in the movie where Will Smith finds out he has been invited to join an elite—but absolutely top-secret—agency that handles trouble from space-aliens who are living among us on Earth. Like everything in life, the offer has pluses and minuses: if he takes the job and puts on "the last suit you’ll ever wear” (the stylish but non-descript black suit and tie is the uniform of the Men in Black), he will get to see unbelievable sights, do incredible things, and know secrets that most of us poor unknowing schlubs couldn’t dream of. But on the other hand, it will mean leaving behind a whole life, and his old identity—his old job, old interests, old clothes, and old name. Even his fingerprints will have to be erased. 

So before he makes the decision (and given that there have been a couple of sequels and now a reboot to the movie, you already know that he decides to do it), Will Smith’s character asks Tommy Lee Jones, a veteran member of the Men in Black, “Is it worth it?” And carefully but confidently, Jones gives his answer, “Oh, yeah, it’s worth it… if you’re strong enough.” 

Well, there’s the rub. Putting off the old self (even, like in the movie, literally having your old identity erased from every record or memory) and putting on the new self in Christ is not easy stuff. And it’s not easy precisely because it requires love. And Christ-like love—love for neighbor, stranger, and enemy, as well as for those we are privileged to call sisters and brothers in Christ—is tough stuff. 

Not because it requires heroics, mind you. Christ-like love is tough for almost the opposite reason—it requires ordinariness. Paul says we are to clothe ourselves “with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.” Those would just be empty words or concepts if they didn’t show up in the little actions, the small but powerful words, the extra bit of attention shown to someone when you were already busy, the willingness to go out of your way or inconvenienced without getting a parade thrown in your honor for doing it. Love—the kind we are clothed with in Jesus—is difficult to practice, because it’s not about cliché, choreographed (and often empty and faux-heroic) gestures like heart-shaped boxes of chocolates or sweeping string music in the background. It’s about the little moments, the details, where compassion is practiced. It’s about the little trespasses being forgiven without drama or a fuss. It’s about small moments of patience, where you are willing to be delayed or put to a bit of trouble or go out of your way, regardless of how you feel about doing it. It is about the small moments of courage when you speak up for someone else, even if you run the risk that others won't like it, or when you call out the casual mean-ness you've heard another would-be follower of Jesus use against someone else.  These are moments that come and go, and it is their smallness that makes them challenging--there's usually no fanfare or drum-roll, only the calling to be decent and kind when no one else is looking.

Practicing Christ-like love is hard because it summons us out from the limelight and onto our knees at the water basin, or behind the scenes, or just plain out of notice. That is, of course, the very nature of love, which isn’t all that interested at pointing to itself, but is much more interested in turning toward the other. That will chafe against every instinct in our bodies and spirits, which want to make a mark and leave an impression and get the recognition for all the important “stuff” we do around here. So, yes, it will be hard for us to “clothe ourselves with love”… but it will be worth it. 

This conversation—the one we are having right now—is what makes this whole business about “clothing yourself with love” more than just a lovely bit of poetry. We could just have left it at that. We could have just said, “Oh, isn’t it nice to talk about love, and let’s pretend we’re all just draped in love, wrapped up in love, swathed in love…” and never gotten around to actually saying or doing what love really looks like. We need to be clear then in this moment. If we are going to proceed any further in the Christian life—today, or ever—we have to understand it will mean learning the hard work of loving people, in all their (and our!) messy details, at inconvenient times, even when they won’t understand or see what you are doing. 

It is hard to take off the old self and put on the new. But is it worth it? 

Yeah… it’s worth it. The love of God is strong enough. 

Lord God, clothe us with your love, and let it pull us into your mission in the world today.

Dismantling Racism... Among Ourselves--February 11, 2021

 Dismantling Racism...Among Ourselves--February 11, 2021

"In that renewal [in Christ] there is no longer Greek and Jew, circumcised and uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave and free; but Christ is all and in all!" [Colossians 3:11]

It wasn't enough just to avoid saying bad things about "the other." What was necessary was to affirm that Christ was present in them as well.  The Gospel itself demanded no less.

Let me say that again: it was not enough for the authoritative voice of the apostle Paul simply to stay quiet and insist, "I'm not saying anything that is racist against Gentiles myself personally!"  But rather the apostle here insists on dismantling the prejudices that were present in the early church where he saw them in other people.  It was not sufficient simply to keep his head down and claim he wasn't guilty of perpetuating bigotry against people outside of his own ethnic-religious-cultural group, because staying silent when you know rottenness is happening quite often gives tacit permission for the rottenness to continue.  Not speaking up to say, "This is not acceptable.  This is not the way of Christ," is going to send the message that it is ok, and that it is compatible with the way of Jesus.

But we don't have silence here from these verses from Colossians.  We don't have permission to say, "As long as I'm not making things worse, I'm in the clear and off the hook."  Instead, here from the text of the New Testament itself we have a clear precedent of opposing what we would call today racism and of positively affirming the full presence of Christ in people from every background, nationality, skin color, culture, language, and way of life.  

This is actually a really important point to be clear on, especially as 21st century Americans as we continue to have a long overdue reckoning with the way racism still divides and festers among us.  In this moment of our society, a number of prophetic voices--most of them Black and Brown voices, to be quite honest--have spoken about the need to go beyond saying "I'm not racist," to actively striving to be "anti-racist."  The difference is the same as what we noted above in Colossians.  We don't hear Paul letting himself off the hook and saying, "I know that some Christians speak ill of Gentiles, but I don't, so I don't have to speak up to discourage or stop it when it happens."  We don't see Paul saying, "Well I have never personally told a joke about those Scythians, so this isn't really a problem."  Nor do we see Paul saying, "Look, those uncircumcised Gentiles have already gotten a free pass by being allowed to believe in Jesus at all--now they're demanding I eat with them and celebrate that Christ has welcomed them even with all their non-Jewish, non-kosher practices?  You can't make me do that!"

No, as these verses from Colossians illustrate, it's simply not enough--it is not the call of Christ--to be silent in the face of the demeaning of others, or the subtler ways others are left out and marginalized because they are "other."  Maybe Paul himself came to learn that as he reflected on his own life, when he had been the one holding people's coats while a lynch-mob stoned the early Christian community organizer Stephen to death.  On that day (see the end of Acts 7 for that story), Paul himself wasn't throwing rocks, but his silence gave consent to those who became a violent mob.  He could say, honestly, "I didn't throw any rocks myself," but very clearly, Stephen was killed with Paul's approval and with his tacit direction, shown precisely in his silence while the rocks were flying and Stephen was breathing his last.

However many years later after Stephen's death this letter was written, the same lesson hangs in the air:  saying your hands are clean because you didn't personally throw any rocks is a lie.  And when it comes to the racial divisions that beset both the early church and today's church, the same is true: it is not enough for Christians simply to look away while other people demean and degrade people of racial minorities or from disempowered groups.  Followers of Jesus are called to speak up and insist positively the abiding presence of Christ in all, and to speak against attitudes, actions and policies that perpetuate that racism.

It's not that early Christians forgot their backgrounds or pretended they weren't there.  Gentile Christians continued to "be Gentile"--it's not something you can "repent" of.  They continued to eat Gentile foods and wear their hair and clothing in Gentile ways.  The Jewish Christians continued to worship in the Temple and many kept kosher and circumcised their sons.  When the voice in Colossians says the old categories aren't there anymore, he doesn't mean to pretend everybody thought or acted the same--he meant we were no longer allowed to pit one way over the other as supreme while the others were all inferior.  It was about stopping any one group from misusing power over against another, and about including people as they were.  That's radical--and it's here in the New Testament itself.

For a lot of us who find ourselves, simply by the color of our skin and the position in society were born into, in positions of privilege, it can be really tempting to tell ourselves, "As long as I don't personally say mean things about people whose skin color is darker or whose language is different from mine, that's all anybody can ask of me." It's tempting to say, "Hey, I'm not flying a Confederate flag myself, so I can't be asked to risk losing friendships when someone else flies it or puts it on their vehicle!"  But the Bible here itself calls us out and says, "Yes, you can be asked to do those things.  In fact, God insists on that and of more from you.  Christ himself calls you to affirm his holy and good presence in those who have been treated as inferior or less-than for generations, and you are called to be a part of the change."  The New Testament itself calls us beyond letting ourselves off the hook by claiming, "I don't say racist things (out loud), so I'm not the problem," to see our silence as permission for racism to continue wherever it festers.  And the Scriptures themselves call us beyond that silent complicity to actively dismantle the power of racism wherever it is--including in the church itself.

That's hard.  I know.  It means being honest about things we want to ignore or sweep under the rug.  It means being able to recognize that people who are "nice" a lot of the time can also still be capable of perpetuating rotten beliefs and mindsets, which become even more rotten practices and systems.  It means loving folks enough to honor what is good and noble in them and also to call out the prejudices in one another when we see them.  It means letting other people see our own blind-spots and helping them to excise the cancer of bigotry from ourselves, when we didn't want to admit it was there.  It means acknowledging when in our lives we might not have been throwing stones, but we were quietly holding coats and letting the rocks fly with our tacit permission.

And it means we dare to believe the Good News that these verses from Colossians proclaims: in all of us, with whatever background, whatever language, culture, nationality, or ethnicity we have come to Christ, Christ is here, present in all of us.  Let us dare to live like it is true.

Lord Jesus, give us the grace to see your presence not only in those who are like us, but also those who are different and those we have too often treated as less-than.  Give us, too, the courage to see our failures, our complicity in the past, and the opportunities to start in new ways to honor all people as made in your image.

How To Be Truthful--February 10, 2021

How to Be Truthful--February 10, 2021

"Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have stripped off the old self with its practices and have clothed yourselves with the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge according to the image of its creator." [Colossians 3:9-10]

I really hope it would have gone without saying, but just in case--we are meant to be truthful with one another. In fact, we are called to be truthful with everybody--it's not just a perk for fellow in-group members in Club Jesus that we refrain from lying to each other.  It's supposed to be our hallmark way of relating to everybody else, too. The line attributed to Benjamin Franklin is correct: honesty is the best policy.  Full stop.

I would further hope we didn't need additional elaboration, but just for clarity's sake, that means for followers of Jesus we don't give ourselves permission to lie or deceive others even when we think it will serve a purpose that would benefit us.  We don't lie even if telling the truth seems scary.  We don't lie even when the truth presents us with inconvenient facts we would rather ignore.  We don't lie even when the truth makes us look bad.  And we don't lie even when everybody else seems to think it would be politically expedient or help your group, your agenda, your party, whatever.  The followers of Jesus are meant to be different in the world, and one of the ways we are meant to be different is our commitment to truth-telling over power-grabbing, because we are convinced that being truthful people is a power of its own kind, one with greater impact and endurance than conventional power.

All of that is, I hope, self-evident.  But we may need to push just a bit farther on two related points that we don't always get around to discussing.  The first is the "why" of truth-telling.  Why should we commit to being truthful, even when it is costly?  Why should the followers of Jesus insist on being able to look everybody in the eye with our words?  These verses from Colossians help put it into focus: it's because we are being made more fully and more deeply into the image of the God who created us... and God is perfectly truthful.

This is an important thing to consider, because this means that truth-telling not simply about avoiding punishment for lying.  Of course, as children, many of us were brought up with strict rules that came with punishments for lying, and as children, we often need those clear negative consequences to help shape us into people whose default setting is truth-telling.  But ultimately, the goal of our parents and families isn't just to make us afraid of being caught in a lie (and if all we have are punishments, it will just teach us to get better at lying without getting caught, rather than giving us a positive reason to tell the truth).  Parents want their children to grow up into mature people who value truth and commit to telling the truth themselves, yes, even when it means admitting things we did not want to face or take responsibility for.

And the letter to the Colossians says the same thing: he doesn't say, "Don't lie to each other, or else you'll go to hell," but rather, "Don't lie to each other, because lying is part of the old self we are growing out of, and the new self is made in the image of God, who values truth--and who is The Truth."  And maybe this is a point we don't often consider--that God is wholly truthful.  Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther once wrote that on the days when all he can think of are the many ways he has messed up, turned away from God, done wrong, and sinned, the thing that gives him hope is God's truthfulness--he says, "I know full well that I have not a single work which is pure, but I am baptized, and through my baptism God, who cannot lie, has bound Himself in a covenant with me, not to count my sin against me, but to slay it and blot it out."  In other words, Luther knew that his hope was grounded in being able to trust God's promise to wipe out our sin--and that only works if we really believe God is trustworthy.  If there are loopholes or escape clauses in the fine print, or if it turns out that God doesn't really mean what God says, then we can't have any confidence in our forgiveness or redemption.  But if indeed God is truthful and reliable, then we can stake our lives on the promises God has made to us.  And as Colossians points out here, if God is truthful, then we who are made in God's image and being renewed in that image daily are called to be truthful as well.

Okay, again hopefully, this is all pretty straightforward: Christians (especially!) are to be truthful people, and not merely because we're afraid of the punishment for lying, but because of who God is.  Hopefully all of our heads are nodding in agreement so far--this is Basic Theology 101.

But the harder thing, especially in a time like ours, is the "how" question.  How can we be truthful people--because we live in a time when it is very easy to believe that even facts themselves are not very solid, or where I can ignore your facts and provide my own set of "alternative facts" if I do not like the implication of yours.  We live in a time when it is dangerously easy to find ways to dress up lies in a veneer of fact or something that sounds like fact, and then convinced ourselves we are being completely honest.  We live in a time, too, when it is terribly tempting to ignore what someone else says because we disagree on some things, and therefore tell ourselves that nothing they say can be relied upon--they're just "one of THOSE people" who can never face "the truth" (that we believe we possess exclusively).  And boy, if that isn't a recipe for trapping ourselves inside echo chambers, I don't know what is.  We end up then refusing to listen to voices who might challenge our thinking--precisely because we are afraid that they might challenge our thinking!  And on the flip side, we tell ourselves that we can trust anything said, posted, shared, or claimed by people we do like, because we want to believe that anything they say is true.  And we end up passing along things that are either partially false, misleading, misrepresentations, obfuscations, or decontextualized, and we don't stop to check or verify what we say because we want our claims to be true--you know, because it makes "my side" or "my group" look better, or puts me in a position for greater power or influence.

And this, I am convinced, is the greater challenge of our time--not the temptation to tell outright lies, like "The cat is brown" when it is clearly white, but rather the insidious temptation to share things that claim to be truth without our actually checking to see if it is truthful, both in letter and in spirit.  We live in a time when churchgoing Respectable Religious people all around us still say or post online that they are mad at fact-checking sites because they are just going to censor their opinions (which sounds rather to me like demanding the right to tell untruths).  We live in a time when conspiracy theories--from the laughable and harmless, like Bigfoot, to the downright dangerous and violent, like QAnon--are hugely popular, and because some of them seem basically powerless it is easy to ignore the danger of all of them.  They all start with the willingness to make claims of truth without actually backing things up, investigating, or confirming the things we say, and instead blurt out the things that adherents "want" to be true.  And while it is certainly a wicked thing to lie to someone when you know you are telling them a lie, it is equally dangerous--and out of character with Christ--to pass along things that are not true that we could have easily checked before sharing, or simply not amplified at all if we don't know something to be true.

Honestly, I don't know how we expect neighbors to believe the Good News we have to share about God's love in Jesus if they can't trust what we say.  I don't know how we think we can look our children in the eye and have them believe us when we tell them we love them if we also are sharing things--often online, but also in water-cooler talk at work or on our lunch breaks as well--that we don't bother verifying because we want it to be true and it fits the narratives we already have in our heads.  We need to take the time to stop and either verify what we say or share, or just err on the side of not sharing if we can't know something for sure.  That's not censorship--that's being responsible with the truth.  That's not silencing free speech--it's the wisdom of knowing when to keep our mouths closed about things we don't know about.  

Part of the way we are made to be different in the world as followers of Jesus is that we should be able to bear both hearing and speaking truths even when they are uncomfortable, because we are convinced that Christ's love is unshakable even through difficult realities.  And part of what will help set us apart from the noise around us is if people come to know that when we do speak up, we are telling the truth.  We talk a great deal in this country about having the inalienable right to speak, but you earn the right to be heard by someone else by showing you are truthful.  The followers of Jesus need to be known, not just for being loud (as all too often we are only that), but for being honest--even when it means owning our mistakes, admitting our failures, facing inconvenient facts, and acknowledging truths that make us squirm.

So while I hope it is an obvious thing to say we Christians should be known for not lying, let's think this one through all the way down to the bedrock and look at the ways we are called to ensure that what we say is truthful, or just not say it.

Lord Jesus, you who are the truth, give us both the courage and clarity to be truthful people in all we say and do.

Where to Look--February 8, 2021

Where to Look--February 8, 2021

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory. Put to death, therefore, whatever in you is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry). On account of these the wrath of God is coming on those who are disobedient. These are the ways you also once followed, when you were living that life. But now you must get rid of all such things--anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language from your mouth." [Colossians 3:1-8] 

So... what kind of stuff is "above"? 

If we are being advised not to focus on what is "earthly," but rather to focus on what is "above," because, as Colossians puts it, that's "where Christ is," we should probably get clear on which things go in which pile... because it's not really what we might think at first. 

To get the obvious ones out of the way, it's not merely a matter of altitude. We are not being told to avoid thinking about soil, or grass, or cars and trucks in favor of clouds, rainbows, and hot air balloons. That should go without saying, but to be honest, sometimes religious folks have added confusion there by depicting heaven as a bunch of people sitting on clouds. 

And compounding that, an awful lot of the last 2,000 years of Christian history has involved people saying, "Don't make too much of a fuss about the terrible things that happen in this world and in this life, and don't try to make things any better, because one day we'll all just be enjoying the afterlife in the sweet by and by." That led to a pattern of telling slaves, for example, just to accept their lot as slaves in the American south, despite the fact that they'd been ripped from their families and treated as property, and all the while the master-approved (white) preachers would tell them just to accept being enslaved and instead to think about having a nice time in heaven one day. It led loud religious voices in Germany in the 1930s to persuade the people in their pews just to look the other way as yellow stars were starting to appear on people's clothing... and then as those people started to disappear. And in so many cases, the official response from the church was, "We aren't supposed to get involved in these earthly situations--we're doing what the Bible says and only thinking about 'the things that are above'." That was a rather convenient way of reading the Bible, since it let Christians off the hook for speaking up on behalf of others who were endangered or pushed to the margins. 

Maybe we need to actually listen to what Colossians has to say, though, rather than assuming for ourselves that we know what counts as "the things that are above" versus the "what is earthly." Because the writer hasn't left us to guess--he's given us a whole list. We just don't often take the time to keep reading. If we keep going in Colossians 3, even though many English Bibles make it the start of a new paragraph, we see that the writer keeps on describing what "earthly" things and mindsets he has in mind (this is also a time to note that the verse numbers, chapters, paragraphs, and punctuations are not original to the New Testament text, but have all been added by later scholars, translators, and students of the Bible trying to get at the intent of the originals, which would have all been written in all capital letters with no breaks for sentences, paragraphs, or verses). 

And in the following sentence, the writer says, "Put to death, therefore, whatever is earthly: fornication, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed (which is idolatry)." And then about a sentence later, he rattles off "anger, wrath, malice, slander, and abusive language" along with lying as things we are supposed to leave behind like a set of old dirty clothes, so that we can put on the new life in Christ. 

Well, if that's the situation, then all this business about "what is above, where Christ is" and "what is earthly" doesn't teach us to ignore the present life or the present world--not at all! Just the opposite, rather--Colossians is very much interested in what we do and how we engage people in this life. The idea seems to be that there are two ways of living in the world--one that is focused on getting as much for yourself as you can, even if you have to resort to lying, deception, malice, and manipulation to get it, and the other that is modeled on Christ's way of life, which seeks the good of all with kindness and generosity. The "earthly" mindset treats everybody else as objects simply here for our gratification (so really this business about fornication and impurity are like greed in a sense--they are both about treating others as objects and amassing as much for ourselves as possible). And the Christ-like mindset (what Colossians calls "the things above") is centered on the good of all, just like Christ was willing to lay down his own self-interest and valued others enough to treat them with honesty, integrity, compassion, and love. The "earthly" mindset says that the ends justify the means, so you can be as crooked, deceptive, and manipulative as you have to be in order to get people to do what you want or give you what you want. And the Christ-like mindset says, NO--because other people matter as much as I matter, I don't have permission to deceive, trick, lie, cover up, scheme, swindle, or trick other people, and I don't have permission to just use them for my own purposes. The creed of the "earthly" mindset is "Me-and-My-Group First!", and the motto of the alternative is, "Love like Christ: everybody, everywhere." 

Nowhere does this voice from Scripture say we should just ignore the rottenness around us in this present life and instead distract ourselves with thoughts of floating of puffy clouds after death. Rather, it's about how we live this life now, in light of Christ's resurrection. And maybe that's the key here. If Jesus is still dead and in his grave, well, there's no particular reason to give his voice any more weight or authority than any other dead teacher from the dustbin of history. But if Jesus is alive and risen, then maybe (definitely!) he really knows what he is talking about, and the point of life is not merely to acquire and accumulate more stuff, more pleasure, or more conquests before our final breath! If Jesus is alive, then maybe he really can be trusted to tell us that the "Me-and-My-Group-First!" attitude is a distortion of what we were made for. 

So today, instead of hearing "set your mind on things above" and thinking it lets us off the hook from the hard work of living with integrity in a world of greed and avarice, or gives us permission to ignore when terrible things are being done around us so we can just think about clouds and rainbows, let's actually listen to the voice of Scripture. And the message there is clear: the choice is whether we will wallow in the kind of self-interest that says "Me-and-My-Group First!" or dare to practice the kind of Christ-like mindset that says, "I will be good to all, because that is how the risen Christ has shown love to me already." Colossians says that we have already died to that first way of life--we just have a habit of limping along like zombies in that old way of thinking. What if we dared to believe that it is true--we don't have to keep going back to the old rottenness. What if we trusted that Christ has raised us from the dead-end of treating other people as objects, and instead let him teach us how to live fully in love for all? 

Lord Jesus, since you have raised us with you, teach us how to put away the old way of life, and to walk like you do, in love for all.

The Game-Playing Is Over--February 5, 2021

The Game-Playing Is Over--February 5, 2021

"If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as though you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations, 'Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch'? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use; they are simply human commands and teachings. These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-imposed piety, humility, and severe treatment of the body, but they are of no value in checking self-indulgence." [Colossians 2:20-23]

Okay, I'm just going to say this once: life is not an eternal game of Twister. Breathe yourself a sigh of relief.

Do a thought experiment with me, if you would. My kids are going through a phase these days where they are periodically obsessed with the game Twister.  Yes, you know--the one with the slippery vinyl plastic mat with multicolored dots on it.  And they will, out of nowhere on an evening, get out the Twister mat and insist that I spin the spinner and call out which body part has to touch which color dot: "Right foot green!"  "Left hand yellow!" and so on.  That's all well and good, and they usually get bored with it after about fifteen minutes (longer than I would give that game, personally).  

So far, so good, right?  They're playing the game just fine, and then when it's done, we put all the pieces back in the box until they want to do it all over again the next night.

But what if--and here's where I need your faithful imagination for this thought experiment--what if they never let the game end, even when they went on to other parts of their day?  What if they insisted on calling out body parts and colors and would only let themselves touch, say, a red sock that had been left on the floor, and reached over to find a blue chair they could rest their hand on.  What if they tried to go to school, or do their homework, or live their whole lives, only allowing a hand or a foot on the officially declared color objects they could find around them?  

It would be pure insanity, right?  I mean, sure, you might applaud their dedication.  Or you might say, "Wow, those kids sure are getting a workout finding random objects or properly colored floor-tiles to leap onto, but that's got to be difficult to do while still paying attention in school, getting dressed, or living your life!"  It would be kind of impressive for about a minute, until you realized what a colossal waste of time and effort it was, you know?  And not only that, but pretty quickly anybody who tried this would discover that they couldn't actually live much of their lives any more--you can't help a friend move, or make a meal to bring to the homeless family in shelter, or go for a normal walk in the forest, or swim at the beach, if you are constantly holding yourself to made-up rules about putting your extremities on color-coded dots.  You would be putting in all that effort for rules you don't really have to follow, and all the while you'd be pushing yourself to exhaustion in the attempt and missing out on the real joys of life.  What a waste that would be--all from being unable to recognize that you weren't bound to the arbitrary rules of a game you had finished playing.

Okay, well, if we can recognize how foolish and tragic that situation would be, then we're already on the right track for understanding these verses from Colossians.  In so many words, the apostle says, "Life isn't an eternal game of Twister--you can stop pretending that you are required to fuss over what you do and don't touch or eat or handle!  You're not required to observe those rules!"  In particular, he's probably addressing the issue that the early church wrestled with about whether Christians who came to faith in Jesus but who hadn't been Jewish first were still required to obey the covenantal rules of ancient Israel when it came to ceremonial cleanness and uncleanness. There were also groups who took those rules even further than the letter of the Torah and made them into prohibitions against associating with people known as "sinners," or outsiders, foreigners, strangers, or other people who might themselves be unclean.  You see this controversy in the gospels a good bit, where the Respectable Religious Leaders are upset at Jesus for hanging out with the wrong crowd. In their mind, he's risking making himself ritually unclean, like he is tainted or contaminated by being with the wrong people.  And yet Jesus saw that he was specifically sent to the ones labeled as sinners, unclean people, outsiders, and outcasts.

That, I am convinced, is why these verses from Colossians basically say the same: no--you don't have to worry about avoiding touching things that are unclean, or being friends with someone who isn't on the Approved List, or associating with people who have been told they are unacceptable.  You don't have to worry about those things, because life isn't an eternal game of Twister, and you don't have to live as though those rules constrain you.  You are free--free to go where Christ's love leads you... free to accept people like Jesus did... free to let go of losing any sleep over whether a "sinner" has touched that plate you were going to use, or whether you're sharing a table with a "foreigner" or if the stranger in line ahead of you at the grocery store is "clean" or "unclean." We aren't playing by those rules, and you don't have to live like they hold you in.  

And when we hear these verses in that light, it really does take a weight off of our shoulders.  If the Christian life was never really about avoiding red pen marks on our Heavenly Permanent Record, but really about the freedom of loving everybody because Jesus has loved us first, well, then there's a lot of stuff we just don't have to worry about anymore--no matter what the Respectable Religious People of any time or place say.  We are freed to meet people where they are, and to love them as they are, and to share tables and tears and time with them as we all are, because it turns out the old rules of Twister about where we are and aren't allowed to go do not hold us back.  The game playing is done.  We can step out into real life.  We are free.

Go, use that freedom to follow where Jesus leads you.  Go, knowing you don't have to impress anybody else--not even God.  Go, trusting that we can plant our footsteps where Jesus has stepped ahead of us--even if it's walking out on the water.

Lord Jesus, help us today to be free from worries about things that don't last, so that we are freed to love people who are of infinite and eternal worth to you.