God Suffers With--April 30, 2021

God Suffers With--April 30, 2021

"Since, therefore, the children share flesh and blood, he himself likewise shared the same things, so that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is the devil, and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by the fear of death." [Hebrews 2:14-15]

Last week one night, a little past midnight, God taught me something about the way Jesus loves and saves us.  I was a little groggy eyed at the time to understand, but with a few days' hindsight, I see it with a beautiful clarity.

My son was awake in the night with a flare-up of spring allergies.  What started with a runny nose became congestion, which became drainage that then prompted a cough, which made his nine-year-old throat feel sore and head feel heated (though he never got a fever), which in turn made him feel miserable and uncomfortable.  And from there, he got worried--of course, in this era, his fear was COVID, and the fear and generable unpleasantness made him have a hard time falling asleep, which meant that his mind wouldn't let his body relax enough to calm down while we waited for his medicine to kick in.  It became a vicious cycle: the symptoms kept him up, but not being able to sleep magnified the intensity of his symptoms (which really would get better as soon as he could rest and not aggravate them with more sniffling and coughing). And the longer he couldn't fall asleep, the more he was nursing the fear that this wasn't just a flare-up of allergies.  That fed the anxiety, which made it harder to get peace of mind enough to let him sleep... and to let his body rest while the allergy pill cleared his breathing.

You know how those kinds of nights go--whether you've been the one sick, or a loved one was up in the night, you know how the rotten feeling makes you unable to sleep, and the added tiredness makes the rotten feeling somehow worse, which feeds the whole cycle.  You know how fear makes the whole situation worse, too--the anxiety makes it harder to let your brain quiet down, which makes your body unable to settle down, either.

So, my son asked me if I would lay down next to him (this was part of how I really knew he was feeling miserable--when he's feeling well, he's usually Mister Cool and doesn't need help or hugs or stuffed animals).  And so I did.  And I did so knowing full well that the things that were keeping him up would now keep me up--the sniffling that would feed his congestion and the rest would now keep me awake.  The tossing and turning as he tried to get comfortable would also keep me from falling asleep.  And the restlessness that was making him wearier would also keep me from getting rest.  And yet--knowing that I have been the one keeping up someone else who loved me plenty of times before--I knew that my presence was part of what my son needed.  By being present with him--in that time of feeling rotten--it allowed him to feel like he wasn't alone, but was being watched over by someone who was going through it with him.  It let his mind ease into peace... which then let his body sink into relief, too.

In other words, the way to relieve my son of his suffering was to enter into it with him, to be present through it alongside of him, and from there to dissolve the power of his fear and anxiety.  

Something like that is the way these verses from Hebrews talk about what Jesus has done for us: he has shared our humanness, all the way down, so to speak.  He has come to lie down next to us in our sickness, like a parent comforting a sick child by sharing their restlessness, until their presence can bring relief.  Jesus has taken our hurts into himself, shared the dis-ease that troubles us, and absorbed it into himself.  And when fear becomes a vicious circle, ramping up our agitation like a sore throat that gets worse the more you are awake and keep needing to cough, Jesus breaks the power of fear by taking away the finality of the thing we feared the most: death.  And once we no longer have to be constantly afraid of death, we are freed to be at peace in this life.  The agitation and nervous anxiety dissipate, and we can be still, as the scriptures say it, and know the presence of God there.

Jesus' way of saving is to enter into our hurt, our suffering, and our vicious cycle of fear and restlessness that only makes us more on edge with one another.  He has come to be with us through it, and in that presence with us--all the way to experiencing death--he has broken the power death has over us, both over our bodies and our minds.

When you think about how you are loved, then, friends, know this: God in Christ chooses to be with you through our worst moments--the ones thrown at us by life and the ones we make worse ourselves--and has chosen to bear our restlessness, to share our humanity, and to die our death with us, in order to break the power of that death.  You are worth it to God to keep vigil beside, even when our anxious tossing and turning keeps God from peace.  You are worth sharing suffering for. And in the presence of that God who enters our human space to share our human frailty, we find relief.  This is how you are loved.

Lord Jesus, let your love enfold and heal us, now and always.

Beloved and Unashamed--April 29, 2021

Beloved and Unashamed--April 29, 2021

"For this reason Jesus is not ashamed to call them brothers and sister, saying, 'I will proclaim your name to my brothers and sisters, in the midst of the congregation I will praise you.' And again, 'I will put my trust in him.' And again, 'Here am I and the children whom God has given me'." [Hebrews 2:11b-13]

Jesus is not ashamed of you.

Let me say it again, just so we don't miss this truth or its importance: Jesus is not ashamed of you.

And, just for clarity's sake, let me put it in the positive:  not only is just unashamed of you, he claims you like a sibling.  You--yes, you!--in all of your "you-ness," you are beloved by Jesus, and he is unashamed to say it.

I wish that were the kind of thing that didn't need to be said, much less repeated, but for an awful lot of folks out there, the first thing you feel when you think of God, or Jesus, or church, is a gut punch of shame, shame that comes from the sense that somebody thinks you are unworthy of being loved by God.  And that shame then keeps folks from daring to walk inside a church building... or from being honest about themselves with others, even people they hold very close... or from risking to hear more about Jesus.  Once someone tells you, whether in words, in scowls, or in a painfully clear silence, that you are unworthy and unwelcome, it's hard ever to muster the courage to put yourself out there again.  All of a sudden, you're that awkward middle-schooler at the junior high school fall dance licking your wounds when your crush laughed in your face after asking them to dance.  You don't want to set yourself up for that kind of rejection again--especially not from God.

Sometimes even we well-meaning Respectable Religious folks don't help the situation (and I say "we" with the awareness that I have probably fallen into this camp more times in the past than I would like to admit, even if I want to strive to do better).  Sometimes in the name of trying to reach out to people who are burdened by shame, or who have been burned by bad experiences in church, we offer crumbs rather than the feast waiting to be served.  We talk like those wounded people really should feel ashamed of themselves, that they really are miserable wretches, and that Jesus saved them but doesn't really want anything to do with them more than that.  We make it sound like Jesus died for folks that still wouldn't want to be seen with in public.  We make it sound like Jesus might have gone to a few dinner parties with the tax collectors, prostitutes, and notorious sinners of his day, but that he was ashamed for anybody to know he had been there.  And even today, sometimes our talk of grace and mercy makes it sound like Jesus may have gone to the cross holding his nose and looking down on us with disgust as he died.  Sometimes we make it sound like Jesus was willing to stretch out his arms to die for us, but that he wouldn't be willing to wrap those arms around us in acceptance.  And we call that "good news."

The writer of Hebrews begs to differ.  He just says it plainly:  Jesus is not ashamed of you.  He calls you his own.  He calls you his sibling.  He delights in you.

All those other verses he quotes in these few verses are meant to back that point up.  We don't need to get into the weeds of where those quotations come from, or what their original context was necessarily (although, to be honest, the writer of Hebrews does make some surprising interpretive moves there, but that's a conversation for another day).  Suffice it to say that as far as this biblical writer was concerned, the witness of the Scriptures is that Jesus is not ashamed to call us his own family.  We are not simply his baggage.  We are not his unsolicited groupies.  We are not something Jesus feels he has to hide or distance himself from.

He chooses you.  He goes on choosing you, every day, every moment, with a holy and glorious pride that you belong in his family.  Jesus is not ashamed of you, and where we Respectable Religious Folk have given you that impression--whether we knew we were doing it or not--we were in the wrong.  Jesus is not ashamed to call you his own kin.  Know it.  Own it.  Be it, dear one.  You are beloved, and Jesus is unashamed.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your unashamed, unabashed, unblushing love.  Let us share it with the same audacity you have given it to us.  And help us all believe it is true.

The Family Resemblance--April 28, 2021

The Family Resemblance--April 28, 2021

"For the one who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one Father..." [Hebrews 2:11a]

It's more like a family, less like a club.

In fact, to hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, the Christian community is almost nothing like a club, and very very much a family in a meaningful way, even if it's a "found" family or one we have been adopted into.

The train of thought here is that Jesus (the one who "sanctifies," which is a fancy way of saying, "makes others holy") and all of us (the ones who get made holy by Jesus, or to be fancy again, "who are sanctified") are all in one family, with God in the role of parent, and all of us in the role of children.  Jesus is our brother, and our belonging in the family is just as real, just as sure, and just as permanent as his.  

That says a lot right there.  Being in a family implies at least three really big things.  First off, unlike, say, a club, your belonging in a family isn't conditional.  Your club membership can lapse, or if your interests or your address should change, you can always choose to resign from a club.  Maybe you're just tired of stamp collecting or playing cards.  But a family is different--your belonging is a more permanent sort of claim, one that is not up for renewal or review, and one that doesn't depend on you bringing in a certain amount of profits to the company or a certain kind of snacks to the meetings.  Taking that seriously as children of God means that we aren't important to God because of what we can do or bring in or profit God, just like you don't love your children or grandchildren or your dog or your cat because of their contributions to the family income.   Their belonging comes from love, and that love is non-negotiable.  Same with us and God, Hebrews says:  God looks at you as a permanent member of the family as surely as Jesus is.  Since Jesus' spot at the family dinner table is sure, so is yours.

Second, and this is connected to that unconditional kind of belonging, your place in a family is created by grace, not by earning.  It is a gift, not a reward, and it is given, not paid out.  Your salary or wages for your job are part of a transaction--you do the job, you get the paycheck, and if you don't work, you don't get money.  But grace doesn't work like that.  Grace, which is the way God's kind of economy works, doesn't award belonging in exchange for past good behavior, present righteous deeds, or future payments to God.  Grace says, "I love you just for your own sake, and so you belong. No strings."  That's how family works, too--so when we hear the writer of Hebrews say that we are like children in a family with the same Father, it's a way of saying, "Your belonging here is a gift, not something you have to earn or renew or worry about losing.  You cannot lose this love."

And yet at the same time, there is a third reality about life in families that we need to explore--to belong in a family means you are opening yourself up to be shaped in the likeness of other family members.  Not necessarily in physical appearance, of course--although that does happen, too, and sometimes you can spot a Smith or a Jones from a mile away by their family's distinctive red hair or wide smile or green eyes.  But even when a family is made up of people who don't share DNA, our souls kind of rub off on one another.  You take on the traits, for good and for ill, of the people you build your life around (which, while we're on the subject, is probably why changes with those people who are closest in our lives are the most daunting or difficult to live through--like the Fleetwood Mac song puts it, "I've been afraid of changing, 'cause I built my life around you.")  While that can sometimes be disastrous, like a child learning the patterns of addiction or abuse from a parent who is already an addict or an abuser, it can also be wonderful, like when a child learns empathy, respect, or courage from the people in their lives.  And in the household of God, we come to take on the character of God.  We come to share a family resemblance with Jesus.  Our usual word for that is holiness.  We become more and more like the siblings and parents in the household--that's not a matter of earning a place in the family, but rather living into the place we've already been given by grace.

So today, hear it and know it is true: you have been brought into the family of God.  Belonging in this family, unlike a club or a company you work for, is a permanent arrangement given by grace... and yet it is a reality that makes us more and more like the God into whose family we have been brought.  Jesus has claimed us for his family just as we are... and yet his love has a way of making us to be more as he is.

May we, in this day, let Jesus' love shape us to become more like him, even now.

Lord Jesus, thank you for your love that has claimed us, and thank you for the way that same love makes us to be like you.

The Hammerless God--April 27, 2021

The Hammerless God--April 27, 2021

"It was fitting that God, for whom and through whom all things exist, in bringing many children to glory, should make the pioneer of their salvation perfect through sufferings." [Hebrews 2:10]

We were having a really intriguing conversation among our confirmation students the other day in class.  We were talking about what symbols and images best communicate our faith as Christians, and of course, someone rightly said, "The cross!"  Spot on there, right?

But that begs a question that I'm not sure many of us really sit with once we're done with our eighth-grade catechism lessons:  Why?  Why the cross?  Why, of all things we could say or show about Jesus, is the cross our symbol?  What does it say about Jesus that, if we've only got the chance to say or show one thing, our go-to message and insignia is the cross on which he was lynched by the Empire and the Respectable Religious people?  Why not jars full of wine that had just been water a moment ago?  That seems fun and would make him popular!  Why not a boat and a guy walking on water?  That's impressive and awe-inspiring?  Why not even a silhouette of a man on a mountaintop teaching?  That's biblically accurate, too, isn't it?

The answer, I am convinced, is the same thinking as this verse from Hebrews--somehow, more important than producing wine at a wedding or telling a good story, somehow more than his clever verbal sparring with the Respectable Religious Leaders and even more than a manger or a palm branch, the suffering love of Jesus is the key to who he is.  The way that Jesus saves--enduring a cross, rather than being the one crucifying his enemies--is inseparable from the saving itself.  The writer of Hebrews says it "was fitting," as in "in character with," or "just what you would expect, given the nature of who God is," that Jesus' way of saving the world is to give himself away in love, even enduring the shame, the pain, the torture, and the hatred that came with being lynched on a Roman death stake while pious crowds cheered at the triumph of "law and order."  The cross of Jesus--as well as a whole lifetime of Jesus' choice to suffer with others who suffered, as well--says something essential about who God is, as well as what God thinks we need saving from (and what we are saved for).

Let me suggest a thought experiment for a moment to get at this idea a little better.  In this day and age of countless superheroes in movies and on television, you can learn a lot about what a hero is "for," and who they are, by how they go about trying to save the day.  Take Iron Man--the classic billionaire inventor Tony Stark solves problems by building new versions of his suit to defeat whatever enemy he thinks he might run across.  Need to stop a flying enemy?  He builds a suit that can make him fly and take the fistfight to the sky.  Need to wrestle a giant opponent?  He builds a Goliath-sized Hulkbuster suit of armor to fight off that enemy.  Need to fight a bunch of enemies all at once?  He constructs an army of remote piloted suits that can each fight his enemies in hand to hand combat.  Basically, for Iron Man (and Batman isn't really different on this point, either), the problem we need saving from is various kinds of villains, and we need a technological solution to invent the right counter-weapon to stop whatever new weapon the bad guys come up with.  Saving the day is about inventing new ways of punching and zapping, basically.  How about the Flash?  Well, to a superhero who can outrun anybody else, saving people has got to be matter of outrunning whatever the problem is--dashing in to pull someone from a burning building before it collapses, or grabbing the ray gun from the villain's hand faster than than the villain's finger can pull the trigger, or maybe even running so fast he travels through time.  "Salvation," for the Flash, boils down to being faster than the danger he's rescuing people from, and his way of saving is to get people away from the threat. Hawkeye and Green Arrow are archers, so they need to find a way that shooting an arrow at something very well can solve any problem--that takes some clever writing sometimes! And Hulk?  Well, you know--"Hulk smash!" right?  Whatever the problem is, Hulk will just smash his way to save the day.

We could go on ad infinitum with all the pantheon of superheroes across their various multiverses, but I think you'll get the gist here.  It's like the old adage says:  if all you've got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.  If you're the fast hero, you're going to look at saving the day in terms of outrunning the enemy.  If you're the rich inventor, you're going to build a new weapon to stop the bad guys.  If you're the archer, well, gosh-darn-it, you're gonna have to find a way that an arrow can save the day.  And all of these make the assumption that the world can be saved by punching, shooting, or blasting something or someone.

But Jesus' very existence tells a different story.  He's not the one with the hammer--not even Thor's.  He doesn't save the day by punching, kicking, or blasting, and he doesn't seem to think that he can save us by pounding any nails, but by bearing nails instead.  Jesus--and the writer of Hebrews would add that this is true about God's deepest self, too--saves by bearing the worst we can dish out, absorbing it, and breaking its power through divine self-giving, suffering love.  It is "fitting," then, that God's means of salvation looks like the suffering of Jesus, both because the heart of God's own character is enduring, self-giving, suffering love, and because our deepest need isn't for someone to punch the villain but to break the very power of evil by absorbing its full fury all the way to death and rising in reconciling love out the other side.

We do a great disservice to God when we talk like dominating, destroying, and plundering are in character with God's deepest heart.  We end up remaking the living God in the likeness of our culture's lesser deities who need to smash or blast or punch (or inventing machines to do the same for us) in order to "save" the world.  And we also show how much we misunderstand what we need to be saved "from" if we think any amount of killing, conquering, or crucifying will produce that salvation.  If you're the one with the hammer thinking you can save the day by nailing something, but the problem is cardiac arrest on a person's heart, you're not going to help by breaking out your hardware.  But what we have been given in Jesus is the kind of help and healing we actually need--the kind that stares our hatred and evil down with courage and then bears the worst we can do, all the way to death, and then creates a new kind of life as it embraces us and disarms us all at once.

So, why the cross, after all, instead of Peter's sword or David's slingshot or Solomon's chariots and piles of gold, as the emblem of our faith?  Because in the suffering love of Jesus--love that meets us in the mess of this world and holds onto us through it--we get a glimpse of who God actually is.  "Fitting," then, is an understatement--it is not merely "fitting," or even "right and salutary" to say that God saves through suffering love: it is the very heart of God's character and the clearest picture of our what we need.

Lord Jesus, let us our lives reflect the way you save, and let us speak and act in ways that witness to your enduring, self-giving, cross-shaped love.

All We Need to Know--April 26, 2021

 All We Need to Know--April 26, 2021

"As it is, we do not see everything in subjection to them, but we do see Jesus, who for a little while was made lower than the angels, now crowned with glory and honor because of the suffering of death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone."  [Hebrews 2:8b-9]

I don't think I realized as a fidgety seventh grader how much theology was soaking into me from the loudspeakers in the orthodontist's office waiting room.  Some of it's only just dawning on me now.

Seriously, I have a handful of memories of my frequent visits in junior high school of waiting in the lobby of the dentist's office before getting my braces adjusted, and it surprises me now looking back just how much of the soundtrack to those memories is from the smooth-jazz/easy listening radio station they had playing through the speakers in the ceiling. (Maybe there's some rule that in a place like a dentist's office where folks anxious, it's good to have mellow-sounding music to ease nerves before the root canal.)  And while some of those songs that are now burned into my memory haven't yielded any deep insights (I'm not really sure what anyone is suppose to get from "If you get caught between the moon and New York City..." or "Turn around, Bright Eyes..."), I find myself today hearing in my memory's music player the voices of Aaron Neville and Linda Ronstadt singing, with utter earnestness, "I don't know much, but I know I love you.... That may be all I need to know."  (Have I gotten it stuck in your head now, too?  I'm sorry.)

It's that idea from the refrain that keeps coming back: "I don't know much, but I know I love you. That may be all I need to know," that I hear as the undercurrent in this passage from Hebrews.  Except, the writer of Hebrews hasn't pinned his hopes on Linda Ronstadt or on Aaron Neville, but rather on Jesus.  He says it this way: there's an awful lot that seems uncertain, chaotic, and out of our grasp right now--but we do see Jesus, and that's enough.  Knowing that he's come through death into resurrection life may just be all we need to know.

Sounds a lot like that song from the dentist's office to me.  As we've been seeing, the writer of Hebrews has been talking about how in the Scriptures, human beings are given the lofty position of being caretakers and stewards of all the created physical world, and that we are honored in God's sight as beings made in God's image.  But to be honest, Hebrews continues, it doesn't always--or often--look like that.  We human beings can also seem small and insignificant, practically powerless and helpless in the face of Big Problems, from natural disasters to worldwide pandemics to the scourge of war and violence to just ordinary sickness, pain, and death.  As much as the Scriptures have said that the created world is entrusted to our stewardship and care, well, a lot of the time it sure doesn't feel like or look like that.  We watch COVID cases spread in pockets of the world on the news, or hear about another friend or loved one with a cancer diagnosis, or fear another terrible hurricane or wildfire season, and we are reminded that it sure looks like a lot of the world we live in is beyond our ability to control or mend or heal.  Sometimes just surviving seems like it is precarious, to be honest.  So how do we keep on holding on to our faith in God if that part of the story seems so... tenuous?

Well, it's back to the song from the orthodontist's lobby: we may not know much, but we do know Jesus.  We don't see everything in the created world in its rightful place or in a good and sustainable balance--but, as the writer to the Hebrews says, we do see Jesus.  And not only do we see Jesus, but we know that he has come through the worst of the worst we humans can do, and yet his risen life has broken open the power of death.  The rest of the world hasn't caught up to that reality, but it is true and real and worthy of staking our lives on.  We may not know much about anything else some days, but we do hold onto the cross and resurrection as our hope.  We may not see the world yet in the fullness of what it can be, and what God intends that it will be, but we do see Jesus.  And that may be all we need to know, at least for today.

On the days when it can feel futile to keep at the Kingdom work we have been given--the work to heal hurting bodies and broken hearts, to create more just and decent communities, to lift up the lowly and vindicate the ones who have been stepped on, to love the outcast and the unwelcomed, and to embody God's way of goodness and grace to all--we look to Jesus, and we see a reason to keep going.  Jesus struggled through even death itself, and in his endurance, has come through into the beginnings of God's promised future.  When we wonder what difference it could possibly make to take the time to encourage someone, or to volunteer a bit of your time to help a homeless family in your community, or to sit with someone who is struggling, or to be a voice that speaks against racism or prejudice, or to share your faith in Jesus with someone, maybe that's where we find the strength: we can say, even without sounding like Aaron Neville, that we may not know much, but we do know the resurrection of Jesus means death doesn't get the last word.  We may not see the world as God dares to dream it will be, but we do see Jesus.  And that, as the song goes, is all we need to know.

Lord Jesus, keep sustaining us in hope as we strive to do the work and live our lives in ways that embody your good reign of mercy and justice.  And let that be enough.

The Rules of the House

The Rules of the House--April 23, 2021

"Now God did not subject the coming world, about which we are speaking, to angels.  But someone has testified somewhere, 'What are human beings that you are mindful of them, or mortals, that you care for them? You have made them for a little while lower than the angels; you have crowned them with glory and honor, subjecting all things under their feet'." [Hebrews 2:5-8a]

So, we have a recurring conversation at our house between one or both parents and one or both children.  And in some variation or another, the conversation comes back to this:  Mom and Dad are the ones "in charge," but that "in-charge-ness" isn't meant to dominate or bully.  If anything, it means the opposite--we have the responsibilities for making sure every part of the household is attended to, in a way that the children don't have to worry about yet.  

Children in a household have limited responsibilities about their own smaller realms within the house (making beds, putting dirty clothes in their hampers instead of on their floors), which they carry out with varying degrees of success, but the whole household is the responsibility of the parents.  We have to pay the utility bills, make sure there's food in the fridge and the cupboard, find a reasonable temperature to set the thermostat at, and make sure we don't run out of toilet paper, as well as mowing the grass and making sure laundry gets washed.  We mend what is broken, replace what requires replacing or replenishing, give medicines and band-aids for what is hurting, and keep a balance across the physical, financial, nutritional, educational, and entertainment needs of everybody in the household.  Even when grandparents come to visit, the mom and dad of the household still have the responsibilities to make sure kids are bathed and get to bed, dinner is served, and the electricity is on.  So sure, I guess you could say that the parents of a household are the ones "in charge," but it's a mostly un-glamorous servant-leadership, not a cushy life of being waited on by butlers and maids.  

To be a parent is to be entrusted with the privilege and responsibility of caring for a precious treasure and enabling that treasure to become most fully what it is meant to be, in a way that will outlast your own lifetime.  And in a very real sense, that is the kind of servant-leadership the Scriptures talk about for humanity and the created world.  We are caretakers, not exploiters.  We are responsible for the world entrusted into our hands--we are not free to ravage it.

That's the way I think we have to hear this passage from Hebrews, which again, is very interested in talking about the difference between angels and humanity, in order to make a bigger argument yet to come about Jesus--as a human like any of the rest of us, while also being the Son of God.  But everything in its order and in its time:  the first car in this train of thought is the idea that human beings are entrusted with a responsibility over the created world that fits with the way Jesus himself is a servant-leader.  Rooted in the earliest storytelling of ancient Israel's memory is the idea that human beings are made, not as slaves of the gods as, says the Babylonians or Greeks might have, but as co-caretakers meant to steward creation like parents steward a household.  Sure, you can call us "in charge," and you could say that "everything is subject to us," but in the same way that parents are in charge of the whole household--to preserve, protect, build up, and beautify, as well as to enjoy--but not to plunder or ruin.  Or, like you could in a sense say that all the plants in a garden are "subject to" the gardener, and yet the gardener's very purpose is to care for, and even to serve, the needs of the garden, so you could say human beings are entrusted as, well, gardeners, of all creation.   We are not here as God's butlers or slaves, but we are honored with a role of serving the rest of the world.  Like parents are entrusted with the role of raising their children to become mature, good, decent human beings at their fullest potential even after the parents are gone, human beings are entrusted with caring for the world so that it can be its most beautiful and full self beyond our own lifetimes.  We were made for each other, you could say.

For the writer of Hebrews, that notion comes not only from the Genesis storytelling about God creating the world and placing human beings in it as stewards, but also from the lyrics of Israel's ancient song-book, the Psalms.  The quotation used here is taken from Psalm 8 (to be a little more specific than "someone has testified somewhere,"), and it echoes the same idea--that human beings have a place of glory and honor in the world (much as Jesus has a place of glory and honor now in his resurrected Lordship, but that's coming in the next verse) that is best understood as a servant-leadership.  In God's Reign, nobody is a tyrant--not even God, and so certainly not humanity.  In God's Reign, the purpose of power or glory is the responsibility to care for everything entrusted into your hands.  So Jesus' kind of lordship--seen ultimately through the suffering love of a cross and empty tomb--is in the same key, so to speak, as our collective human kind of "rule" over creation: we are meant to care for it, not to despoil it for our own benefit.  We are made to be servant-leaders, providing for the needs of the world around us, helping the created order to flourish and stay in balance, and finding joy in letting other created beings become more fully themselves.  And in so doing, we get a glimpse of God's own joyous glory in having made the world and made us to share in its beauty.  Like parents who smile to see their children grown up into decent and loving adults, or grown-ups who feel a sense of satisfaction to see their household well taken care of, or a gardener beaming to see the prize dahlias blooming come June, we are made to share in God's own delight over the flourishing of beings other than ourselves.  

Let me say that again, just so we don't miss it: our greatest glory isn't in pointing to our own supposed "greatness" or looking out for our own interests first, but in serving other beings (humans, animals, plants, whatever) so that they can flourish as fully as possible.  Like one of our older brothers in the faith from the 2nd century, Irenaeus of Lyons, once said, "The glory of God is a human being fully alive," our greatest glory and honor is in helping other parts of creation to be most fully themselves.  The way to glory is in serving: that is the very fabric of the universe and of God's own being.  Jesus' lordship through suffering love and a cross isn't an exception to the usual order of things, then--it is, in fact, the clearest picture of what real glory and honor are!

Once we get that, then a whole lot of our Christian faith fits together in a way we may not have realized before: the cross and resurrection of Jesus are really of one piece with our human calling to care for creation rather than dominate or despoil it, and both are woven from the same cloth as God's own reign over the universe.  All of them have the same servant-leadership logic of the rules of the house: the ones who are ostensibly "in charge" are meant to give themselves away for the good of all.  Being "in charge" always means serving in love, from parents and families, humans and pets, farmers and their livestock and fields, Christ and humanity, or God and the world.

It does seem more than little appropriate then that as Providence or coincidence would have it, I am writing these words on the day we early 21st century humans mark out as Earth Day.  Because if we take these words from Hebrews and this whole train of thought through the Scriptures seriously, our stewardship of creation isn't merely a one-day-a-year kind of thing, or a side issue for Christians looking for some extra, but very optional, service project or merit badge.  Rather, our calling to be servant and caretakers of the world entrusted to us for the sake of its flourishing long after we are gone is one of the ways we most fully share in the very glory of God. It's more than a once-a-year sharing of ecological memes on social media, or a photo op moment recycling plastic bottles or picking up litter--it's about a whole way of living, a way of arranging our households (in Greek, "oikonomia" or "economy"), a way of ordering our societies, and our generational ways of caring for the world like it is a garden and we have just awakened in Eden.

How might we more fully share in the glory of God today--how might we more fully serve and care for the world in which we have been placed like servant-leaders... like gardeners blushing with joy at the dahlias?

Lord God, enable us to share in your self-giving glory that serves and cares for the world.

Don't Waste This--April 22, 2021

 Don't Waste This--April 22, 2021

"Therefore we must pay greater attention to what we have heard, so that we do not drift away from it. For if the message declared through angels was valid, and every transgressions or disobedience received a just penalty, how can we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? It was declared at first through the Lord, and it was attested to us by those who heard him, while God added his testimony by signs and wonders and various miracles, and by gifts of the Holy Spirit, distributed according to his will." [Hebrews 2:1-4]

Let me put it this way:  if you get excited for the trailer, then don't talk through the movie when it finally comes out.

I was catching up on news the other day, and saw that there's a whole segment of the internet fawning over a new Marvel comic book movie coming out in the fall.  And generating the latest buzz over it was a new trailer for the movie--rave reviews from some, articles exploring and explaining every detail, and lots of people just sharing links with others for how to watch it.  These are folks who take their superheroes--and superhero movies--very seriously, and you can tell because they will savor those two minutes of clips from the movie, poring and obsessing over every shot, every camera angle, and every bit of dialogue.

And I get it: I've been excited about movies, too, and I've been known to geek out before a new entry in a favorite franchise comes out (Batman, Star Wars, and, sure, even all those Marvel movies get me excited).  So I know, then, that the trailer, which absolutely gives you a taste of what's ahead, is meant to get you ready to fully immerse yourself in the movie when it eventually comes out.  It would be grossly missing the point to get excited about the trailer and then ignore the movie, or talk through it, or stare at your phone during the screening, when it finally comes out.  By the time you're in the movie theatre (and here's me rooting for the day when we are all back in movie theatres for our movie watching experience!), you've now paid money to be there, you've committed to spend the next several hours in the darkened theatre, and you've arranged the sitter for the kids.  Don't waste all that by talking through the movie or being distracted, especially not if you were the one engrossed in the trailer when it first came out.

If that logic makes sense, then this passage from Hebrews hopefully will, too.  The idea is simply this: now that Jesus has come, it's like we've got the actual movie that the trailer was pointing ahead to all along.  So it would be a terrible shame to ignore what the trailer was intended to get you ready for.  And as God has spoken throughout history--as the writer of Hebrews put it before, "in many and various ways, through the prophets"--the expectation was that we were supposed to listen.  So, if we knew to pay attention when God was speaking through, say, the poetry of David or the visions of Isaiah, or the commandment to love neighbor in the Torah, well, then, how much more should we be paying attention now that God has spoken to us through the feature-film we have come to experience in Jesus?  And if everybody knows not to talk through the movie trailer when it first shows up online and your movie-fan friend is streaming it on his phone, well, then, we had better not talk through the movie itself.  If everybody knows you're in for a shushing if you talk when someone's watching a two-minute trailer for free, then you should know to expect an even firmer shushing if you start blabbing loudly during the movie everybody has paid to see.

So what does all of this mean, practically for us, on a day like today?  Well, in a sense, it's as simple as this:  pay attention to Jesus.  In Jesus we get the feature-length vision of God's love story with us.  In Jesus we get the fullest depiction of who and whose we are, and of how God's Reign looks in real lived experience.  In Jesus we get the shape of what God's kind of justice, God's kind of mercy, and God's kind of goodness really look like--in ways that everything else before pointed to.  And maybe that analogy of a movie trailer and the movie itself is helpful to tease out a bit--because it reminds us that ultimately, the content of a trailer and the content of the movie are the same.  They are both telling the same story, but of course, there is a fuller clarity about what each shot or scene means in the full story.  That reminds us that Jesus didn't come to invent a new religion (much less to re-brand an old religion!), but rather that the same Reign of God was envisioned from the ancient commandment to love neighbor and cancel debts in the jubilee and the visions of lambs and wolves lying down together in the prophets, all the way through the Sermon on the Mount in Jesus, announcing blessing on the poor and calling us to love our enemies.  There's a through-line all along, centered on God's redeeming love that brings us into a beloved community.

Today, now that we have been given the fullness of the story in Jesus, our verse for today says, "Don't waste this!"  We don't get to say, "I don't really like this thing that Jesus says that challenges me, so I'll ignore this thing about forgiving my debtors." And we don't get to talk over his command to put others' interests before our own because we'd rather shout, "Me and My Group First!" to the person next to us.  We don't get to say that Jesus' love for outsiders, his welcome of the outcast, and his lifting up of those on the margins aren't relevant to us--no, he's the one we've been waiting to see.  He's the one who brings the story in its fullness.  He's the feature presentation.  We can't ignore the one we've been waiting for, even if sometimes Jesus challenges, stretches, or pokes at us.

You and I have been given an immersion in God's own presence through Jesus and his news of God's Reign--let's not talk over it, or miss out on the gift we've been given.

Lord Jesus, help us to listen to you in all your fullness, and to let our lives be shaped by the story you bring us into.

Arranging the Angels--April 21, 2021

Arranging the Angels--April 21, 2021

"Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?" [Hebrews 1:14]

Yep. You read it correctly--the writer of Hebrews has opened up a conversation around the question, "What are angels... for?"

What a strange and delightful question, right?  This is the sort of theological rumination that seems best accompanied either by pint glasses full of beer or steaming mugs full of coffee and tea, as people chat around a circle in comfortable chairs while music plays in the background. Now, don't get me wrong--that's a delightful sort of conversation to get to have.  And if life affords you that chance, for some good old-fashioned "Table Talk," like our older brother in the faith Martin Luther was known to have from time time (his beverage would have been the beer), please do take that chance.  It can be delightful.  But at the same time, this verse from Hebrews seems to be hinting around at a question that feels as odd as asking, "What are giraffes for?" or "Why did God make waterfalls?"

Most of the time, the biblical writers don't really answer questions like this in a head-on kind of way.  They talk about creation as something God made, simply because of God's goodness and infinite creativity, or out of divine love, or even, as one poet put it about the great sea monsters in the ocean, "just for the sport of it" (see Psalm 104:26 for that curious tidbit).  But we don't usually get God saying things like, "I made this sheep to give you wool," or "I made pigs because they're delicious when smoked." Usually, the biblical writers talk about creation--both the parts we can see, and the parts we cannot see--as part of a wonderful, mysterious whole, that God just made for God's own reasons.  Each part connects to everything else, so one part of creation exists both for its own sake, and for how it connects to everything else, but not usually for a single, isolated purpose.

And yet, here's the writer to the Hebrews, just confidently starting out with the assumption that God made angels to serve in ways that help us humans--those "who are to inherit salvation."  I honestly couldn't tell you why God created giraffes, other than that they're cool looking--and yet here the writer of this biblical book seems sure as anything that he knows why angels were made, and it's for our benefit.  How about that.

The idea is amazing, if you think about it.  Our author is saying that angels--these mysterious and glorious beings beyond our perception--find their greatest purpose in serving the interests of beings other than themselves: namely, us.  Their entire orientation isn't for their own self-interest or individual success over someone or something else, but to serve God by serving human beings.  And the writer of Hebrews doesn't look down on angels for that or pity them, as though they get the raw end of a deal there.  Instead, he seems to think that the angelic hosts are perfectly content living their existence wholly in the service of others, without concern for "what I get out of it."   I suspect that's because the writer to the Hebrews knows that God's own nature is much the same--that God's own being is oriented outward in love at all of us--and so it can't be a miserably existence to live your life wholly in love for others, if that's God's existence. And I suspect, too, that maybe we could learn something from the angels that way, as well--instead of always getting sucked back into the perennial human pit of Me-and-My-Interests-First thinking, that we might actually find our greatest fulfillment when we are seeking the good of others who aren't "like us," like the angels do for us humans.

But then there is another thought to take from this verse, too--that God deems us humans as important enough, worthy enough, and precious enough, not only to have gone to a cross for us, but to have commissioned other glorious beings to be our help, to direct in ways we cannot see and will not get credit for, and to serve or speak a word from God in ways we can understand?  How amazing!  That's important, too, because it is very easy to treat our fellow humans like they are mere statistics, or to just become numb when there's new of yet another mass shooting in the news, and to feel like some of us are just expendable that way.  It's too easy to diminish the value of human beings when it is inconvenient to my daily routines or costs the company profits.  But the writer of Hebrews says that God so values humanity--the whole messy lot of us--that God has created other beings whose purpose is for our benefit and well-being.  Don't let anybody else drag you into cynically thinking we aren't important--or that anybody else you will ever meet is not also infinitely beloved and precious as well--because God has arranged for the angels to be here for our sake.

Today, then, that means everyone you meet is so infinitely precious to God that God has prepared a whole host of other glorious beings to be their support.... and it also means that we, like those same angels, find our deepest fulfillment in seeking the good of others who are different from us, without regard for "what I get out of it."  Go, live this day in that knowledge, and see what happens.

Lord God, thank you for the love that values us so immeasurably, and for those messengers and guardians you have arranged to be our support in this life.

The Love Beyond My Own--April 20, 2021

The Love Beyond My Own--April 20, 2021

[About Christ, the Son, God says in the Scriptures:] "'In the beginning, Lord, you founded the earth, and the heavens are the work of your hands; they will perish, but you remain; they will all wear out like clothing; like a cloak you will roll them up, and like clothing they will be changed.  But you are the same, and your years will never end.' But to which of the angels has he ever said, 'Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet?' [Hebrews 1:10-13]

In the end, Jesus' goodness remains.  Jesus' love lasts.  Jesus' reign endures.  Everything else will fall apart, perhaps, but through it all, Jesus persists.  That's why he's worth putting our trust in... and building our lives on... and staking everything else on.  He's the one who remains the same when everything else is turned upside down.

I had this moment over the weekend, watching my son play soccer, when I felt again the ruthlessly fast flow of time.  I was thinking to myself, watching the second half of the game wind down, "It must be almost over," as I saw the kids starting to look tired out and slowing down.  And as that thought crossed my mind, it occurred to me again, that this is exactly how life is, all the time--it is flowing and moving and going by all the time, and there's nothing to be done to stop it.  You can either fuss about how fast life goes and try futilely to stop it or ignore the constant flux, or you can accept it, embrace it, and savor it, knowing that any second now, the whistle will blow and the game will be done.  I've been watching my son play soccer for a few years now, and I know a game flies by... like a season flies by... like a year flies by, and I am just given this precious gift to watch and cheer and support him as he grows--in skill as well as in height!  But his life, and mine, are both in constant flux--always moving, always changing.

And then, still in those fleeting moments as a Saturday morning soccer game wound down, it dawned on me, too, that as much as I want to be the unchanging, permanent, fixed source of stability for my son (and for my daughter) all his life long, that's not mine to get to be--at least not forever.  Our relationship will change--it is changing, and it has changed already--as time goes by.  I used to be the one who got him dressed and carried him in my arms, and already there is much he can do at nine that is far beyond me (these things often involve technology and athleticism beyond my grasp).  Before long he will be taller, stronger, and probably more knowledgeable than I am, and I will feel like I have only blinked.

And as time goes on, our relationship will change in yet other ways. Of course, I will always, so far as I am able, want to be there to love and support him, but I know, too, that my own life will take its own turns.  And there will come points when I am the one in need--when I am the one he waits for while I hobble slowly, or when I am the one who gets sick, or who becomes weak or feeble with age.  I want to be the one who is the same for him, forever, but that's not mine to get to do or to be.  I get to love these children, this family, this world of people among whom I have been placed, but I will change as well.  I can't be the constant--that was never mine to get to do.  And so, as much as I might want to cast myself as the dependable presence in any and all situations, a quickly passing soccer game and the letter to the Hebrews reminds me that I can't.  But Jesus can--and Jesus does--endure.

As we've been noticing over these last few days, the writer to the Hebrews has been banging his drum to show that Jesus is superior to angels in this opening chapter of the book.  And while that might not seem like a particularly pressing question in our day and age, once again, I find myself noticing that we sure do keep putting other things in a higher position--of authority, allegiance, or trustworthiness--than Jesus.  And honestly, if angels aren't more dependable than Jesus, then surely I'm not more dependable than Jesus.  If even the angels falter compared to Jesus' enduring goodness, then I surely dare not pretend that I am permanent and unchanging, as much as I want to be.

And that means in the end, for all the people I love--and all the people I do not yet love rightly, but am working on getting to love rightly--my calling isn't to get people to put their trust in me, so much as it is to let them trust in Jesus, who is infinitely more dependable than I, and who won't age, or get sick, or eventually wear out like a garment.  And maybe, if I may be so bold, that's all of our calling as well.  As parents or grandparents, part of our job is to be worthy of our children's and grandchildren's trust--but it is also more than that, to help equip and prepare our those next generations to know how to live beyond our own ability to fix or solve or protect them, but to commend them into the hands of the One who really is the same yesterday, today, and forever (to borrow a phrase from later in in this same book).  

As people who work at jobs for companies, and as citizens of a state and a country, it's the same--we have a calling, to be sure, to be dependable and reliable for employers and customers, and to be decent citizens who look out for the common good.  But we are also called to point beyond a corporate logo or a national identity to the Reign of God, marked by a cross, that will last even as every nation and company comes and goes on the world stage before getting tossed into the dustbin of history.  And as humbling as it is for me as a parent to know that my kids' future isn't ultimately in me, but in Christ, it's humbling in a different way to know that the world's hope doesn't hang on GM or Apple, Facebook or whatever local industry is having a boom at the moment, nor does salvation depend on the continued existence of the United States, or Canada, or China, or Madagascar.  We change.  Systems, empires, and orders of the day come and go. The whale-oil industry is gone, and so is the Holy Roman Empire, and yet life has continued on. I have to learn to be ok with the things I am used to having around also having their own shelf-life. Our calling is always ultimately to point beyond any of these things to the One whose love endures even when everything else changes, fades, or passes out of existence.

Facing that calling takes courage, because it means being brave enough to face our own limits, our own lifespan, and our own reliance on God beyond our strength or power. But with that bravery we can be what our children, our grandchildren, our neighbors, and the whole world need us to be, rather than what we want to be--pointers to the Love that really does endure.  And with that realization, we are free, too, to enjoy and to savor the moments we get as we get them, cheering and supporting the ones we are here for from the sidelines, for every blessed second of game-play we get with them.

And then, after the whistle blows, we commend ourselves and those we care for into the hands of the One who remains the same, who is our constant: this Christ of ours, whose steadfast love really does endure forever, even beyond my own.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to accept our limitations--in time and power--so that we can point those we care about to your enduring goodness.

Worthy of Our Hope--April 19, 2021

Worthy of Our Hope--April 19, 2021

"Of the angels he says, 'He makes his angels winds, and his servants flames of fire.' But of the Son he says, 'Your throne, O God, is forever and ever, and the righteous scepter is the scepter of your kingdom. You have loved righteousness and hated wickedness; therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions'." [Hebrews 1:7-9]

It's good to have hope--but hope needs to be rooted in someone worthy of our trust, or else we're setting ourselves up for disappointment.

Here in these opening thoughts of the letter to the Hebrews, the author is still making his case that Jesus, the Son of God, is superior to the angels.  And he's trying to show us that the Scriptures themselves point beyond angels to someone even more important, even more righteous, and even more worthy of our hope, namely Jesus. In all honesty, that's probably not the hot-button issue in our day that it might have been in the first century.  I don't run into many people these days in my ministry whose deepest struggle is that they worship angels too much. But, okay, Hebrews, your point is well-taken. Jesus outranks and outperforms the whole heavenly host--fair enough.

But there's another dimension to these words that we might struggle with more, and we need to deal with it.  Here in these verses, the author quotes passages from the Psalms as he's trying to make his case about Jesus' superiority to the angels.  But interestingly, the psalm he's quoting, which begins, "Your throne, O God, is forever and ever..." (Psalm 45, in case you were keeping score) is written as a tribute to one of Israel's kings--it was written about a human ruler!  In Israel's worship life, they often would ask God's blessing, or offer praise to God, for the prosperous reign of their kings.  And this psalm in particular is, if you read it in its entirety, sort of the soundtrack for a royal wedding.  

Okay, so what? Well, here's what I think is worth our consideration today.  Those ancient words of the psalm pinned a lot of hopes on an earthly ruler... and no matter who the king was in Israel, he didn't live up to those hopes.  None of them did.  There was often a lot of wishful thinking that "Maybe the next king will finally get it all right," and it turned out to be just that--a lot of wishful thinking.  Even the ones who were remembered as the best of the best and the most righteous of the righteous (like good ol' king David himself) had some pretty glaring flaws, lapses in judgment, and disastrously bad choices.  The bad ones were outright dangerous.  And seeing these words of effusive praise heaped up on any human leader sounds, well, pretty dangerous, too, if not like outright propaganda.

And this is the move that the writer of Hebrews makes.  He knows, of course, that the words he is quoting originally came from a psalm that was written to celebrate a new king.  And he knew just as well that all of Israel and Judah's kings had fallen short of justice, mercy, wisdom, and faithfulness in their reign.  But the writer of Hebrews doesn't criticize the ancient psalmist for having such lofty hope--instead, he redirects them.  He says, "Maybe this was never about any one king or administration--maybe the kinds of hopes in these words can only be met by God."  He reorients our hope, rather than razing it to the ground.  He helps us to change trajectory--instead of pinning our hopes on some human leader or family dynasty (or political party or platform, in our era), the writer of Hebrews points us to Jesus as the one who really is worthy of the hopes we had settled for pinning on kings, princes, political parties, presidents, and the like.

We know what it's like--if we're truthful with ourselves--to pin too much hope on any human leader, political platform, or personal relationship.  The ancient Israelites did it to their kings, and we do it with our political systems as well.  It's dangerously easy to overlook failures of the figures we like or support, and awfully tempting to make our favorite candidates or parties into savior figures.  And once we've done that, it becomes even harder to pull out of the tail-spin and admit it, so we double down on our misplaced trust and start making golden calves and other idols out of them--sometimes quite literally.  It's a powerful drug, that misdirected hope--it clouds our vision so we don't see what we don't want to have to deal with, and it encourages us to think that the figures I like or have thrown my support to are backed unquestionably by God.  But the writer of Hebrews offers an alternative--instead of giving up hope when one leader or ruler after another lets us down, he points our hope toward Jesus, the Son, who really does embody God's justice, God's goodness, and God's mercy.  Jesus is really worthy of our hope, and if we have been struggling with allegiances to figures who don't--and can't--live up to that trust, Jesus doesn't disappoint. He actually lives up to our faithful expectations.  He really is and does what all the old royal enthronement psalms were wishing for.

So again, maybe our era is not particularly tempted to worship angels, rather than Jesus, but we do wrestle very much with the temptation to pin our hopes on some lesser figure who will inevitably disappoint us.  And when we are in that vicious circle, the voice from Hebrews calls us to redirect our hope into one who is truly worthy of it--the One in whom we see God with a human face, even Jesus.

Lord God, help us to place our trust only in you, and not to fall for the sales pitches or sweet talk of pretenders.

A God With Wounded Hands Up--April 16, 2021

A God With Wounded Hands Up--April 16, 2021

"For to which of the angels did God ever say, 'You are my Son; today I have begotten you'? Or again, 'I will be his Father, and he will be my Son'? And again, when he brings his firstborn into the world, he says, 'Let all God's angels worship him'." [Hebrews 1:5-6]

You know the standard joke about young children and presents--they often make a bigger fuss out of the box the present came in than the gift itself.  Sure, an handmade sweater will keep them warm and reflects hours of time, skill, and labor--but the box and the wrapping paper catch the eye and seem like toys.  There's nothing wrong or bad about the wrapping--it's just that by comparison to the gift, it's well, just the container for the real present, which often comes at a real price in money or time or both.

Nothing against angels, either, but that's basically the point the writer of Hebrews is trying to make here.  Yes, angels are a thing.  Yes, it's cool that every so often they show up in a Bible story--sometimes as mysterious strangers in white robes, and sometimes as Lovecraftian chimeras with frightening animal parts and countless staring eyes (I'm just saying--a cherub in the Bible is more like a sphinx or a creature from a monster movie than the fat baby with wings we've been sold in religious artwork).  But angels aren't the center of the gospel--they are messengers of good news, but not the good news itself.  No offense to the heavenly host, but they're like the box the real gift comes in--they bear the Word of God, but Christ himself, who actually is the Word of God, is the real beating heart of our faith.

Now, there's a part of me that wants to just stop right here and say, "Really?  Really?  We're talking about angels and what level of importance we should put on them in our books of religious doctrine and catechisms?  We're going to talk about invisible fantastical beings that most of us never give a thought to in our daily routines when the day's news is full of such real-life heartache, troubles, and sorrow?  Are we going to debate, like the old medieval scholastic theologians would, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin while mothers are grieving the deaths of Daunte Wright or Adam Toledo, or the lives killed in another mass shooting in Indianapolis overnight?  Are we going to insulate ourselves from having to deal with those brutal deaths and the cruelty of our collective apathy by puzzling over abstract theological questions on this rainy Friday morning?"

And, to be honest... I get it.  I understand the temptation to want to stay safe in the realm of religious trivia and theological minutia, talking about angels, rather than facing the real world, a world in which mothers lose their sons like this all the time, and most of the rest of us just shrug our shoulders or stare at our feet and mutter, "What a shame.  It's too bad nothing can be done to stop this sort of thing from happening."

But on second thought, maybe this is exactly the point that the writer of Hebrews is trying to make.  What sets Jesus apart from the angels, in all honesty, is that in Jesus, we have no less than God entering into the godforsaken mess of our violence, our indifference toward what happens to someone else's kid, and our collective decision to accept a certain amount of death and heartache as inevitable collateral damage.  In the storytelling, angels pop in for a moment to deliver a message and vanish into the realms of glory; Jesus, however, knows what it is to face this world in all our terrible mingling of bloodshed and apathy.  Jesus knows, in a way that angels never do, what it is to have your life cut short as the socially acceptable price of maintaining some illusion of law and order.  Jesus--struck down, empty-handed, on trumped-up charges by the authorities of religion and government--has faced the worst of our human cruelty and sin, in a way that no member of the heavenly host ever has.  That is why he is worthy of our worship.

This is a really important point to grasp, then: our worship of God is not just because God is beautiful and sparkly and lives in heaven.  Angels do that, too, and they are just the messengers, the vehicles for God to communicate.  But the reason we worship the God we have come to know in Jesus is that this God has done something infinitely more costly.  God has become both the Giver and the Gift in Christ, and has faced us at our worst when our impulse was to reject the Gift and destroy him on a cross, like we have done and keep doing to one another in the belief that such a devil's bargain keeps some of us safe at the price of leaving others terribly unsafe.  God has faced, and received, and absorbed, our terrible violence and hatred.  God knows what it is to be discarded as just one more disposable life who could be sacrificed in the name of preserving order.  God knows from experience, in the life of Jesus, us at our worst--and God has remained with us in love.

So even Hebrews, with all its talk about angels and ancient texts, will not let us off the hook for facing the rottenness of the world we keep making for ourselves, and for one another.  Even this dusty old letter from the back of our Bibles that seems so foreign and out-of-touch to us in some ways will not give us permission to ignore or shrug off the litany of names it is so easy to treat as expendable, the tally of lives we are tempted to write off as the cost of keeping things quiet in my neighborhood.  This ancient book reminds us that the only God worth worshiping is not one who pops in to leave us a sticky note before disappearing back up into celestial light, but the One whom we killed in a deadly mix of imperial ruthlessness and ordinary apathy.  And the resurrection of that same Crucified One is the evidence that the love of this real and living God is greater than even us at our worst.

So, sure, don't settle for focusing on angels... or on any other abstract bit of theology to distract yourself from facing the utterly real rottenness among us and within us.  But also, don't forget--that ours is the God who has born that rottenness, and who stands--with empty hands up and outstretched--with Adam and Daunte and George and Breonna and all those who have been told their lives were expendable.  Ours is the God who stands with all the ones who have been told their lives weren't important enough or worthy of preserving... and who raises them up in love with wounded hands.

Lord God, keep our focus on you and on the world you have spared no expense to love, even in all of our terrible rottenness.

When Jesus Sits--April 15, 2021

When Jesus Sits--April 15, 2021

"When he had made purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high, having become as much superior to angels as the name he has inherited is more excellent than theirs." [Hebrews 1:3b-4]

When I sit down, late on a sunny spring Saturday afternoon after mowing grass or doing yard work, it's because I'm tired.  That's not really good news for anybody else--it's just a sign of my forty-year-old tiredness and the need to rest my feet for a bit or cool down with a tall pint of something refreshing in a glass.

But when Jesus sits down, take note. It's a word of good news for the world, because it means his work is done, and he is enthroned to inaugurate the Reign of God.  When the writer of Hebrews says that Jesus, the Son, has already "sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high," it's a way of saying the battle is already over, the victory is accomplished, and the labor that brings forth a new creation is complete.  Like the old Easter hymn puts it, "The strife is o'er [over], the battle done; now is the victor's triumph won! Now be the song of praise begun. Alleluia!" All of that is conveyed in the image of Jesus having "sat down," because it's the standard way folks in the ancient world talked about victorious champions and reigning rulers.  You have to keep standing and on your guard if the fight is still going on, but when the contest is over and a winner remains, you can sit down in confidence.  That's what Jesus has done.

Okay, now, that all sounds great.  It's great to picture Jesus victorious and to sing the well-worn anthems about Jesus' glorious triumph over death, or the feast of victory for our God.  The nerd in me can't help but picture that final scene in the original Star Wars when Luke Skywalker gets his medal of honor for having fired the shot that destroyed the Death Star, and Han Solo gets his for having kept the Empire distracted enough to let him get that shot it (but poor Chewbacca doesn't get a medal, even though he was just as much a part of saving the day...).  The notion that Jesus has begun God's Reign and is already victorious in his resurrection, well, that sounds wonderful.... but--

But, well, here's the thing. If Jesus really has accomplished the victory he has set out to win, well, then we're going to have to give up our notion that we're part of some ongoing crusade that we must win for God.  You would think it would be easy for Christians to just let go and let Jesus be the one to have achieved the victory, but we keep finding ways to insert ourselves into the story as though the fight were still undecided and God needed our power, our money, our political clout, or our angry internet memes to tip the war in heaven's favor.  At one point in history, just a few centuries after Jesus himself rose from the dead, it was Constantine claiming that God's voice had endorsed him to take control of the Roman Empire with the cross as his logo, to kill and conquer with God's supposed blessing.  A few centuries later, we were insisting that Christians had to go fight wars in Palestine in order to liberate "the Holy Land" from enemies in a "Holy War" with the cross as our banner--literally where the word crusade comes from.  The next thing you knew, you had armies of Catholics making war with armies of Protestants across Europe, each convinced that God needed them to win battles to ensure that "God's side" came out victorious.   And once enough European blood had been spilled in those wars, they turned the battle to the Americas, to Africa, and to Asia in a quest to colonize and conquer, once again with the supposed blessing and calling of God.  

In our own era, we've got religious voices insisting that it's up to Christians to fight some kind of culture war, or else... well, or else somehow, they suggest, God's victory could be undone.  Those religious voices warn that if Christians don't exert enough influence to make the rest of society fall in line (often by making alliances with political parties that may or may not actually have anything to do with Jesus), some terrible future awaits--almost as if Christ's victory isn't really assured.

If Jesus really has won the victory already and has, in fact, "sat down" as the true Lord of the universe, then we don't get to inventing our own new pet crusades or culture wars as necessary additions to ensure God's triumph.  The victory is a done deal, and it was accomplished, not by angry mobs starting an insurrection, or enough money being raised for a political action committee, or by Christians needing to arm themselves to fight off their supposed enemies (imagined or real), but by Christ himself, whose way of winning is the self-giving love that goes to a cross and breaks open the power of death through the other side.

Jesus doesn't need us to take up arms to fight for him.  Jesus doesn't need us to give our allegiance to a Caesar or a Constantine or a candidate or a culture warrior just because they drape themselves in the language of religion.  He doesn't even need us to clap hard enough to make Tinker Bell come to life again.  The showdown with death is over. Jesus has already won it and has sat down.

That may be humbling to us who want to cast ourselves as the heroes in the story, rather than the ones who need saving, but it is deeply good news.  The strife really is o'er.  The battle really is done.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to believe your victory really is accomplished already, and let us instead be witnesses to the triumph you have already brought about in the cross.

God's Ongoing Yes--April 14, 2021

 God's Ongoing Yes--April 14, 2021

"... and he [the Son, Jesus] sustains all things by his powerful word." [Hebrews 1:3a]

I used to think that it was kind of cheesy when married couples renewed their vows on the occasion of some round number of years since their wedding ceremony.  

I used to think, "What's the point?  You're already married, and the words of your vows don't have an expiration date, so why go through all the hullaballoo and make people eat mediocre hotel roast beef in formalwear just to watch you make promises all over again?"

And I'm still not necessarily a big fan of the hullaballoo part, or the mediocre roast beef, but I think I've come around on the idea of renewing one's vows.  Just maybe not only for the big milestone years--maybe, like, every day.  Maybe the promises that sustain a relationship are worth renewing every day, every hour, in the choices that spouses all the time to orient their lives for the benefit of the other.  Maybe those promises keep being lived into all the time, and maybe every morning is the right time for renewing them.  Not with an elaborate ceremony, but with the assurance each partner makes to keep showing up for their beloved.  Most of the time that can go without any fanfare... but sure, I guess you can break out the champagne and invite your friends when the odometer turns over to another large round number.

My point in all of this is that enduring relationships--like marriage--aren't just set into motion with a one-time ceremony and then left to their own devices.  Contrary to the popular opinion, a marriage is infinitely more than "just a piece of paper."  Rather, those sort of lasting relationships call forth daily renewal.  They are held, not simply by the force of a marriage license or the efficacy of the preacher's prayers at the ceremony, but by the ongoing sustained commitment of the people in relationship to live out what they have promised.  To be in relationship, then, of any kind--marriage, friendship, family and parenting--is to be constantly making and living out the choice, "I want to continue in this.  I will sustain and nurture this.  I will keep this going."  Leaving it to inertia won't do the trick.  So yeah, maybe every relationship requires either the constant intentional commitment and renewal of the people in it, or it dies, like when a shark stops swimming.

And the reason I wanted to take this detour into relationships is that the writer of Hebrews talks about Jesus and all creation in similar terms: that Jesus continues to keep the universe together by the ongoing, persistent choice to sustain it all. Or in other words, Jesus doesn't blush at all to keep renewing his vows to love the world--in fact, every moment he keeps choosing us all over again in love to sustain the universe at all times.  Yes, even despite the fact that we are often pretty fickle partners in that relationship and keep bailing out on him or harming other beloveds he has committed to in the family as well.  Every moment of history--every instant, every split-second--holds Jesus' renewed promise, his word, so to speak, to keep the universe in existence.

We often assume the world is fixed and solid, that it's permanent and lasts forever because it's made of sturdy stuff, right?  Rocks and boulders, metal and earth, mountains and such?  It all looks like it will just last on its own forever because it's big and heavy and massive.  We figure, if you just leave a rock sitting on the ground, it will just stay there forever, and the world itself must be like that--you know, once it was created, it will just sit there, continuing to exist on its own.  But a more honest look says that at every moment it is God's goodness that keeps the whole universe going.  (Scientists, as you might know, are telling us these days that if you look deep down into something solid-looking, like a mountain, like at the sub-atomic level, you find out that the things we think are fixed and permanent are really mostly empty space and vibrations of invisible "strings" that are ephemeral and fleeting--and yet, the universe persists!)

Think about that: we are here, not just because once upon a time, God said, "Let there be light," and now is stuck with a universe that won't go away, like a stray at the back door looking for scraps.  Rather, we are here because at every moment, God continues to keep choosing to keep the universe together--that every second of every eon of the universe's history is God's repeated, renewed, "Yes" to keep it all here, and to keep holding it all together.  Conversely, if God were not supremely faithful and vigilant, the universe could vanish in the blink of an eye if God simply decided to stop holding it all together.  And yet the fact of our continued existence is a reminder that God goes on choosing us, and Jesus, the very Word of God, is that embodied Yes.

The fact that we woke up today is a sign that God continues to love the world and chooses to commit to it.  This new morning is God's renewal of vows for another day's worth of living.  An that's why Jesus matters--Jesus is God's living, breathing promise with human skin and bones on to keep on choosing us, come hell or high water.  

Your and my very existence are evidence that we are beloved... that we are chosen... that God continues to will us into being--or to love us into being, as Mr. Rogers would say.  Whatever else comes in this day, know that much: in Jesus, God continues to say Yes to you, now... and now... and now.

Lord Jesus, we thank you for our existence, and for your faithful commitment to keep us and to stick it out with us, come what may.