The Power of Strong Promises--July 1, 2021

The Power of Strong Promises--July 1, 2021

"This was confirmed with an oath; for others who became priests took their office without an oath, but this one became a priest with an oath, because of the one who said to him, 'The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind, You are a priest forever'--accordingly Jesus has also become the guarantee of a better covenant." [Hebrews 7:20-22]

Promises are made of mere words, but they are strong words.  That is especially so when the One making the promise is the living God.

Even just in ordinary human relationships, I would always trust a relationship where someone was willing to go on record making a promise, like a vow or a contract or a covenant, more than I would trust the durability of a relationship where one or both people aren't willing to make that kind of commitment.  When I see couples move in together and still intentionally decide not to make the promises we call marriage to one another, I get really worried for their sake--not because I'm worried that a lightning bolt will strike them down, but because I've seen it enough times to know that someone's likely to get their heart broken.  Choosing not to make promises of faithfulness to one another when there's the option of doing so sends the message, "I still feel like I'm not in this for the long run," or "My staying here depends on my feelings, which may or may not stay the same."  And I've seen too many times before when one person thinks the other is committed, but just doesn't want to make the promises official, only to end up thrown away later like they're chopped liver.

I've seen plenty of times, too, where even the ties you would assume should hold because of biology end up fraying because there isn't a lived-out promise.  I've seen families where biological mothers or fathers ditch their kids after they've met someone else, and the kid ends up falling through the cracks, left to be raised by grandparents or foster families or aunts and uncles, because the parents didn't sense that they were bound and obligated to care for the children they had brought into the world.  I've seen parents leave behind families because someone new came along and swept them off their feet, and again, the children are left to pick up the pieces on their own, when they should have been able to count on their parents to be there for them.  And I've seen what it's like for a friendship to end because there's no guarantee from a promise that it will last and someone new comes along to pull one off in a new direction, leaving the other in the rear-view mirror in a cloud of dust.

And on the other hand, I've heard people making serious promises to each other, or to children, or to the people they are elected to serve, or the congregations they are being ordained to shepherd, and there's something powerful about those words of commitment.  To be sure, there are plenty of times where promises, vows, and covenants fail, too--whether it's marriage or an oath of office or an adoption finalization--but when someone has made the most solid, most public, and most serious commitment they can, it means something.  There are seasons of life when the promises alone are what keep people in the relationship, and by keeping at it, they work through until there are better times.  It's harder to bail out on a child when you've made the promise out loud, "I will care for this child forever."  It's harder to bail out on a relationship when you have done more than just move in under the same roof with them.  It's harder to betray the people you are sent to serve if you have made a promise before God to do right by them.

And in a sense, that's all that the writer of Hebrews is saying here about the difference between Jesus and the priests from the tribe of Levi throughout Israel's ancient past.  For generations, the only thing that made somebody eligible to be a priest was coming from the right biological line--if you were from the right family in the right tribe you were part of the priesthood, whether you took that seriously or not.  And while some of those were good and faithful servants who cared for the people well, some didn't live up to that family legacy, and they took advantage of the people they were supposed to care for like shepherds.  If there is only ever just some unspoken expectation, it's really easy to bail out on a relationship or a responsibility.  But where there is a promise, like a vow or an oath, it's an awful lot harder to just bail out on the ones to whom you have committed yourself.  That's what makes Jesus' love for us so compelling: he hasn't just said, "I'll stay with you for as long as I feel like it, until someone else comes along," but rather, "I am bound by an unswerving promise to love and serve and redeem you."

The bottom line is this: Jesus hasn't just agreed to move in with you because it seems convenient or prudent given the circumstances; he has promised to stick with us regardless of how the circumstances may change.  Jesus knows that a vow is so much more than just a piece of paper--it is the way of showing those you love that there is no length you are not willing to go to for the sake of those whom you love.  

In a world and in a time where relationships and people are treated like they are disposable, it's a beautiful thing to know that there is no level of commitment that Jesus shied away from for your and my sake.  Jesus is committed to being with us, caring for us like a faithful servant-leader and shepherd, come what may.  

Maybe that kind of assurance is just what someone you know needs to hear about. Maybe you'll be the one to tell them.

Lord Jesus, give us rest in the assurance of your unconditional love.

A Better Hope--June 30, 2021

A Better Hope--June 30, 2021

"There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual (for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God." [Hebrews 7:18-19]

Look, here's the thing that a lot of us Respectable Religious folks just don't want to admit:  merely having a lot of rules doesn't actually make anybody a better human being.  Having rules can't fix a broken relationship--not between two people, and not between us and God. Having more rules can't make you more lovely or more worthy of love or capable of love, either, for that matter.

Rules, commandments, and laws can only measure and scold.  They can show if I have lived up to expectations or not.  They can make me feel bad or guilty for failing or crossing the lines that they draw.  But they can't actually change me. The speed limit sign along the side of the road can only threaten that there are consequences for getting caught going faster than the number on the sign, but actually caring about the safety of the people in my car and in other cars on the road enough to keep within the speed limit has to come from somewhere else.  Love is necessary to actually enable me to change my actions and take the foot off the accelerator; rules can only make me afraid of getting pulled over.

When it comes to us and God, the same is true.  Rules can't make me love God if my heart if hardened, and rules can't help me start over if I've already broken relationship with God and need a new start.  Rules can show me where I have missed the mark (like if the commandment says, "Don't steal," and I have stolen something, the rule forces me to face the truth that I broke it).  But rules by themselves cannot make me into the kind of person who doesn't sin again my neighbor by taking what is theirs.

Along the same lines, rules can't earn love from God, because love is not a reward given in exchange for services rendered or for acceptable behavior.  Rule-following never brought anybody to God, because God doesn't make rule-following a pre-requisite for God's choice to love us.  But on the other hand, sometimes rule-following can become an obstacle between me and God, when I fool myself into thinking that God loves me because of my good behavior rather than out of sheer grace.

Our older brother in the faith Martin Luther had a powerful insight about the ineffectiveness of rules and commandments compared with the power of God's grace.  In his list of talking points that we call the Theses for the Heidelberg Disputation, Luther writes this:  "The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this one,' and everything is already done'."  That's just it.  Rules and commandments at best can only shout and bellow and warn, but they can't, on their own, get through to my heart.  What it takes is a Love that meets me and embraces me where I am, even in all my failures and willful rottenness as well, and embraces me, and from there, such Love is able to transform me in its own likeness.

For the writer of Hebrews, all of this is to say that Jesus' coming makes it clear that God doesn't intend to simply yell the old rules (which we were never very good at keeping anyhow) even louder than before, to intimidate us into obedience.  Rather, Jesus shows us that God would rather find a way to get through to these hearts of ours that are so often curved in on themselves, than to just leave us with commandments we will never be able to keep. God has decided to love us apart from our ability to keep rules or stay inside the lines--that's what makes the Good News of Jesus actually "good" and genuinely "new" rather than some stale old recycled and repackaged religious self-help. Jesus gives us "a better hope" than that, as the writer of Hebrews puts it.

It's not that rules like "Don't be envious of what your neighbor has" or "Love your neighbor" are bad policy; it's rather than just saying those are the rules won't automatically make me live by them.  The law isn't bad, but rather, as the writer of Hebrews says, it is weak and ineffectual.  It keeps barking, "Do this!" and "Don't do that!" and some rebellious and ornery part of me wants to do the exact opposite just for spite sometimes.  But love--the kind we find has already embraced us in Jesus--disarms that stubbornness in my heart and helps me to see I am already in the arms of the living God.  I don't have to keep the rules as a way of getting God to let me in closer, because I have already been brought to the very heart of God.

And when it dawns on me that this is how I am loved already, things begin to change in my stony heart.  Maybe yours too today.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the better hope you give me, the one grounded in your love and promise rather than in my capacity to keep rules.

Eligibility Requirements--June 29, 2021

Eligibility Requirements--June 29, 2021

"Now the one of whom these things are spoken belonged to another tribe, from which no one has ever served at the altar. For it is evident that our Lord was descended from Judah, and in connection with that tribe Moses said nothing about priests. It is even more obvious when another priest arises, resembling Melchizedek, one who has become a priest, not through a legal requirement concerning physical descent, but through the power of an indestructible life. For it is attested of him, 'You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek'." [Hebrews 7:13-17]

You want to know that the people you place in important positions are truly eligible to serve in them, right?  That just makes sense.

So, for example, you want someone teaching high school level Spanish to be fluent in written and spoken Spanish, with numerous years of training in the language, maybe some lived experience in a country where Spanish is the primary language, and probably some training in how to teach as well, as opposed to, say, someone who had only just watched a couple of episodes of Dora the Explorer.

Or if you are looking for brain surgeons, you surely want there to be a rigorous accreditation process by which physicians are trained and taught and then are able to gain an expertise in working with human brains (while keeping the humans who are currently using those brains alive).  If the board tasked with certifying brain surgeons says someone is not qualified, I don't want them anywhere near my noodle, if you get my drift.

Even in our form of government, the Constitution of the United States has requirements for eligibility to serve in different roles of elected office.  The president, for example, is required to have been born in the United States, be at least thirty-five years old, and have been a resident for fourteen years in the United States.  And while from time to time insidious conspiracy theories peddled by charlatans crop up to try to make people doubt whether all those requirements have been met, you really can have peace of mind in knowing that your leaders are truly eligible to serve.  

But, for a moment... do a little thought experiment with me.  Consider our nation's first president, George Washington.  He was certainly old enough to meet the age requirement, but did he technically meet the others?  He was born in Virginia, but when he was born, Virginia wasn't yet a state in the United States--it was, of course, still a British colony!  And when he was inaugurated in 1789, it had only been 13 years since the signing of the Declaration of Independence!  So even if you count that earliest date as the founding of our country, Washington himself couldn't have been a resident of the United States for fourteen years yet, because there hadn't even been a "United States" for that long!  And yet, obviously, nobody thought Washington was not eligible to serve as president.  No, they just all knew that his claims to eligibility were older and even more fundamental than the rules and structures set up by the Constitution.  Maybe everybody after Washington could check all the boxes, but for him, everyone understood he was a special case--he was eligible because he was, in a sense, the one who had even made it possible for us to have a constitution as a nation separate from Britain.

Maybe in a similar way, you could imagine a university back in the 1950s having a special guest lecture on the subject of the theory of relativity, and inviting Albert Einstein to be the presenter.  While it would be technically true to say that Einstein never studied the theory of relativity when he was in college (or to note that he didn't even have a high school diploma!), he would obviously be qualified to teach on the theory he came up with--it didn't exist as a subject when he went to college because he himself developed it!  He would be qualified and eligible to be an expert, even if he didn't check the usual boxes for the requirements, because he would be the source of the subject matter himself.

Well, in a way the writer of Hebrews thinks about Jesus in the same way: no, he's not a member of the tribe of Levi, from which the priests were selected in the religious systems of ancient Israel, but in fact, Jesus is still eligible to be our great high priest because he belongs to a yet more ancient--even eternal--sort of priesthood.  The writer of Hebrews has been making the case that there before there was even a tribe of Levi to begin with, there was this enigmatic figure, Melchizedek, who could be a priest without the right qualifications as laid out in the Torah.  So, something like our thought experiment about George Washington or Albert Einstein, Jesus can be eligible to be our intercessor before God, not because he is from the right biological family, but because he is a part of an even more fundamental and foundational kind of priesthood.  Jesus, by his very nature as God and human, is in a position to be the priestly mediator we need even without being a descendant of Levi.  After all, he is the very incarnation of the eternal God who has always been and always will be!

So while it is indeed important to have confidence that the people you place in roles of leadership are truly eligible to serve in them, with Jesus you can really rest assured.  Jesus doesn't fit inside the expectations of the rules, because he himself predates the writing of the rules.  He doesn't have to operate within "the system," because he is as eternal as the One in whose name the system was created.  He can go before God on our behalf because he is God-with-us.

Rest easy, dear ones. Rest easy.  Jesus is up for this responsibility.  He can handle it.

Lord Jesus, give us rest in knowing you are able to bear what we need you to bear for us.  Thank you, Lord.  Thank you.

A Shock to the System--June 28, 2021

A Shock to the System--June 28, 2021

"Now if perfection had been attainable through the levitical priesthood--for the people received the law under this priesthood--what further need would there have been to speak of another priest arising according to the order of Melchizedek, rather than one according to the order of Aaron? For when there is a change in the priesthood, there is necessarily a change in the law as well." [Hebrews 7:11-12]

Sometimes you have to do more than just replace one broken piece; sometimes the whole system needs to be changed.  And Jesus has come, not as a new replacement cog in the same old machine--he brings a whole new creation with him.

And honestly, that's scary to a lot of us.  Keeping and maintaining a routine we know is at least familiar.  But replacing it altogether with a new way of doing things... that makes us nervous.  I get it. I mean, we're all creatures of habit.  We get fussy when our computers or phones install a software update, and we have to learn a whole new arrangement of buttons and screens and processes--even when those are clearly meant to make our technology work better.  

People (at least the ones who controlled the levers of power) were furiously opposed to big changes in their way of life in the American South when the civil rights movement called for an end to Jim Crow and segregation, because they knew it would mean a change to the systems they had built their lives around.  Even folks who considered themselves nice, Christian, and "without a racist bone in their bodies" were upset at the idea of having their order of the world shaken by replacing an old system with a new one, even if some part of them deep down understood that it was wrong to disadvantage Black neighbors in their schools, businesses, and housing options. 

For that matter, reaching back centuries to what we now call the Protestant Reformation, there were plenty of folks who saw abuse and corruption in the church of the medieval era, but who didn't want to go pulling at threads to speak up about them, because they knew that once you pulled at the thread of saying, "Why are we raising funds for extravagant building projects by selling people get-out-of-purgatory papers called indulgences?" you were going to unravel entire theological systems based on earning and meriting God's grace rather than receiving grace as a completely free gift.  Part of why many were afraid of joining reform movements like Martin Luther's (or Calvin, Zwingli, Knox, Wesley, and leaders in other places) was that they realized that they were calling for a whole new systemic way of understanding the world and God ourselves, and folks were scared about all that newness.  It's always easier to slap a band-aid on something and wish it would go away than to do the honest work of dismantling what is broken and building something new.  But it's never a wise move in the long run.

So much of human history has been just that, though--us trying to tape or paper over things that were deeply broken, rather than seeing where a whole new system was needed--a whole new way of ordering our lives and shared world.  And when voices come along saying that we need more than a replacement of a single part, but that the whole mechanism isn't working anymore, we tend to want to silence (or even crucify) those voices.  There's a terrible truth to that line of the Joker's in the movie The Dark Knight:  "Nobody panics when things go according to plan--even if 'the plan' is horrifying."  Slavery lasted for centuries in this country because folks accepted and then became invested in the system it was built on, and then legal segregation lasted a hundred years after that because people--perhaps nice, but often cowardly--were afraid of envisioning a new system where things were different.  And today we're all invested to one degree or another in a system where one person can order anything to be shipped to their house overnight on a whim while others go hungry at night, a system in which I can complain about not having enough options for shows to watch on my rectangles of technology while other folks are fleeing from crushing poverty in their home countries.  Why don't things change, if we can all agree that hunger or poverty or greed or violence or racism or xenophobia are bad things?  Because at some level, we have become invested in a system that operates with those bad things in place--and we are afraid of a shock to the systems we benefit from.

I want to suggest that the arrival of Jesus on the stage of human history is about a change of systems, rather than merely replacing one faulty piece with an identical new one.  The writer of Hebrews sees something like that, even down to the level of the kind of priesthood Jesus brings.  Our author says that the old system--what we call the "levitical priesthood" because it was ostensibly built on the family line of the tribe of Levi--was itself insufficient for humanity's needs.  It wasn't just that you had one or two bad priests who were "bad apples" or didn't do their jobs well--it was that the whole system wasn't really able to deal with the estrangement between God and humanity.  It was passable for a long time as an institution in ancient Israel's history because it reasonably pointed toward the reality of a God who forgave sin and called for justice and righteousness, but it was never the fix it sold itself as.  There was always a need for a better system--a whole new kind of priesthood.  And Jesus, the author of Hebrews says, brings that whole new system, grounded in himself.  The writer of Hebrews knows that we don't just need a new person to sacrifice animals in a new way, or to light incense or wear robes with better technical proficiency.  We have needed a whole new system--even though it is scary for humans to have an old system dismantled because we were invested in it.

So today let's be honest about the courage it takes to follow Jesus.  Following Jesus will call forth from us the bravery to imagine new systems, new arrangements, and new ways to organize our common life, and it will mean the dismantling of old systems--even ones we have gotten invested in.  But if we can now look back and see other times in human history when we needed nothing less than a systemic overhaul, then maybe we can dare to open our lives up to the ways Jesus will rearrange things among us today.

Lord Jesus, bring your newness in all the places we need it.

Where the Water Flows From--June 25, 2021

Where the Water Flows From--June 25, 2021

"It is beyond dispute that the inferior is blessed by the superior. In the one case, tithes are received by those who are mortal; in the other, by one of whom it is testified that he lives. One might even say that Levi himself, who receives tithes, paid tithes through Abraham, for he was still in the loins of his ancestor when Melchizedek met him." [Hebrews 7:7-10]

Water flows downhill. Everybody knows that, right?  Everybody knows that water moves from the higher ground to the lower ground, just as part of the rules of physics.  So if you found yourself plopped down alongside a creek you had never seen before and someone asked you to figure out which way was the higher ground, even if the terrain looked roughly level to your eyes, you would be able to tell by the direction of the water flowing in the creek.  It always moves from the higher spot to the lower spot.  Once you know that, you can figure out your bearings.

Blessing is like that.  It flows like a river, from wellsprings of abundance to places where it is most needed.  It moves from a source toward the thirsty lowlands and parched souls that need it.  Blessing flows, in a manner of speaking, from high ground to wherever is downhill.  In other words, you never find a Bible story where God is all tired out and needs a recharge, like Popeye in search of a can of spinach, and then seeks out worshipers to offer blessings and to power the divine back up again.  God is not an internal combustion engine--God doesn't need to keep getting refueled by the piety or prayers of people.

So, much like our little thought experiment about an unfamiliar creek, if you happened upon a story where two unknown characters were present, and you didn't know their relative status or relationships to one another, but then one blessed the other, you could figure something out.  The "greater" offers blessing to the "lesser," as the writer of Hebrews frames it.  Blessing seeks the places where it is most needed, in other words--where it is most lacking.  You can't hoard blessing, and you can't hold it back as your personal possession, either.  It moves, like grace and like rain water, through your fingers when you try to control it.

With that in mind, the writer of Hebrews applies that same thinking to the story of Abraham and the mysterious figure of Melchizedek whom we've been talking about lately.  And in the one scene in the whole Bible where Melchizedek appears, he is named as a "priest of God Most High" who offers a blessing to Abraham, the patriarch of all the future tribes that would come to call themselves Israel. So, who's the "greater" of these two?  This passage from Hebrews says, basically, "Trace the flow of the blessing to its source--the greater blesses the lesser, like water flowing from high ground to the valley.  Melchizedek is the greater, and even our great ancestor father Abraham is aware that he himself is the one in the position to receive blessing from this curious figure who emerges for just one story.

All of this is part of our author's way of making it clear that we're not settling for something less by placing our faith--and all of our chips, so to speak--on Jesus.  For the early Christians who saw that following Jesus meant moving beyond the religious systems they were used to, and the way those systems helped them to make sense of their world, it was kind of scary to imagine leaving behind what they knew.  Confessing Jesus as Son of God and Messiah meant acknowledging that they could connect with God apart from the whole set-up of temples and sacrifices and priests who worked in the temples and offered the sacrifices... and if that's all you had known all your life, it would seem frightening and disorienting to think of leaving those things behind.  And quite likely, you'd be wrestling from time to time with doubts about whether the whole system of temples and sacrifices and priests was more solid, more dependable, and more reliable than the scandalous message of a God who saves the world by dying for it as one of us, without any of the usual accessories of religion.

These words from the author of Hebrews are meant to assure us that placing your trust in Jesus isn't somehow settling for some cheap knock-off of some true divinely-endorsed religion and all its priestly trappings.  Jesus can be a priest--an intermediary for us between God and human beings--without coming from the family line of Levi, the same way that Melchizedek was a priest without being in that family line either.  And in case anybody wondered whether that still meant settling for a counterfeit or a "lesser" intercessor, our author has gone to great lengths here to make the case for saying that Melchizedek was greater than Abraham, and therefore than Abe's great-grandson Levi, and also therefore all of the descendants of Levi who became generations of priests.  In other words, with Jesus, you're not settling for less--you're moving from the creek to the spring that feeds it.

For us, the question may look a little different, but it's still there.  You probably don't lose sleep at night worrying whether you should be presenting more goats or pigeons to a local levitical priest just to hedge your bets in case it turns out Jesus isn't the real McCoy.  But sometimes we do have to trust that Jesus is really enough, apart from our shows of piety or our practice of being respectably religious.  Sometimes we do have to trust that Jesus is enough, even without the trappings of institutions and liturgies and church-life.  Jesus, and not organs or praise bands, not candles or video screens, not bishops or councils or elders or committees, not vestments or altar calls, is enough.  If the idea of living in the way of Jesus without those other things seems scary, ok, fair enough, let's name that and own it.  But don't worry that you're settling for less if you only have Jesus and end up losing the rest.  Jesus is the spring where the rest of the water comes from.

Lord Jesus, help us to trust you... and to trust that you are enough.

The Outlier--June 24, 2021

The Outlier--June 24, 2021

"See how great he [Melchizedek] is! Even Abraham the patriarch gave him a tenth of the spoils. And those descendants of Levi who receive the priestly office have a commandment in the law to collect tithes from the people, that is, from their kindred, though these are also descended from Abraham. But this man, who does not belong to their ancestry, collected tithes from Abraham and blessed him who had received the promises." [Hebrews 7:4-6]

I know this can sound really obscure and complicated, but it all comes down to this: God reserves the right to work outside of the systems and structures we expect God to be limited to.

Yes, all the names thrown around even in just these few verses can be hard to keep track of, like listening to Supreme Court wonks throw around the case titles of famous precedents in their casual conversation, or overhearing a row full of super-fans arguing over inside baseball.  But let's try and get to the bottom of this passage, so that we'll maybe understand why this was so important to the writer of these words.  And maybe we'll see, too, the beautiful freedom of God to work outside the lines we have drawn, over and over again.

Okay, so the bigger picture question the writer of Hebrews is trying to answer is something like this:  how can Jesus be like a "high priest" if the actual high priests of ancient Israel all had to be descended from a particular family line, which was different from Jesus' genealogy?  How can we think of Jesus as like a high priest, interceding for us and bearing our sins before God on our behalf, if he wasn't from the right tribal lineage?  

If that seems like a strange question to our ears, maybe we can reframe it a little bit into the ways that our institutional religion sets apart leaders.  For all the differences between church denominations, there is at least usually some expectation that pastors and preachers have some formal training before they step into a pulpit to speak, "Thus says the Lord."  For many, like me, it involved masters-level work at seminary, a hundred hours of Clinical Pastoral Education beyond that, a year of internship, and before all that a bachelors degree and a couple of dead languages.  Churches often come to expect that God only works through people who have those kind of qualifications, or that only congregations led by people with those kinds of degrees on a wall are "valid."  We end up arguing, too, over who has to lay hands on the newly ordained ministers, and just how far back the chain of succession with those hands has to go.  And in a lot of places, that means the unspoken (but still very official) theology is that God isn't allowed to work through someone who doesn't have the title Master of Divinity after their name on their business cards.

So, what if someone came along and insisted that God had worked through a dear lady who had been teaching Sunday School for years but never had completed high school, much less college and divinity school?  What if someone came along and said, "This person here hasn't been able to go to seminary, but they understand the needs of their community and congregation, and they are attuned to what God is doing here for good!"?  What if there were folks who didn't go to seminary for four years but who were courageous and bold enough in their faith to invite a neighbor to worship and to tell them that God's love included them, just as they are?  Could we dare to say with confidence, "Yes, God is using this person, even though they don't have the usual credentials we look for?"

Well, something like that is the driving question here.  If Jesus isn't officially a member of the ancient tribe of people from whom the priests were chosen (that would be the tribe of Levi), then is there some way he can actually be like a priest for us?  Can he still be God's chosen one to be our go-between, bringing our needs and prayers and confessions to God, and speaking a word from God where we need to hear it?  Can Jesus still be worthy of our trust and allegiance if he isn't from the official family where priests come from?

And for the writer of Hebrews, the answer is a resounding yes!  All of this talk of the mysterious figure of Melchizedek is meant to show that there was historical precedent for this other means of being a priest of God.  Even though the later commandments would insist on a certain set of qualifications (coming from the tribe of Levi, being male, wearing certain vestments, and so on), the writer of Hebrews says, "Well, okay, yes, but before all of those rules were given, there was this Melchizedek person who appears out of nowhere and doesn't check all those boxes, and yet he is regarded as a true priest of the same God!  In fact, the writer of Hebrews goes on to say, in a way, that Melchizedek person is regarded as greater and even more important than the priestly line from Levi, because even dear old father Abraham, the patriarch of their faith (and the great-grandfather of the original Levi) paid tribute and gave tithes to Melchizedek.  The writer of Hebrews sees all of this as evidence that Abraham, their ancestor, recognized the greatness of Melchizedek, and also the validity of his being a priest.

Again, I know it's easy to get lost in all those names and offices and tribes and hierarchies, but it comes down to this: for folks who were sure there was only one acceptable path to serving God and God's people, and that it came only through one certain system and religious structure, the writer of Hebrews says, "Look at your own story--there have been other ways in the past!  God was never bound to stay inside the lines of our system, even if God also does use people in that system as well!" For the purposes of the book of Hebrews, this is all laying the groundwork for showing how Jesus can really and truthfully be called our "great high priest" even though he doesn't check all the boxes for people's expectations of what a great high priest is supposed to be.  When the rules say, "You're not eligible if you're not from Levi's line," the writer of Hebrews says, "Well, wait just a second here--what about Melchizedek?  In fact, isn't that guy even greater than the whole system of Levi's descendants?"  And from there, all the writer of Hebrews needs to do is to connect the dots to Jesus.

But maybe, too, this is a reminder for all of us--and respectable religious leaders of institutional churches like myself especially--that God is free to call people and use people beyond my expectations or judgments of worthiness.  In fact, to hear the Bible itself tell it, that's what God has done in Jesus, who doesn't fit the bill to qualify for being a priest. And yet, like the proverbial stone that the builders rejected, here Jesus has been made the chief cornerstone and the great high priest of all humanity. 

So, sure, the seminary-trained person in the alb or preacher's robe on Sunday mornings can be used by God... but so can the single mom who is willing, God love her, to teach kids about the story of God in Sunday School. God can use the person who has high-tech video screens, professionally trained guitarists and drummers, and a trendy hipster goatee, but God can also use the person whose church building doesn't have electricity, much less the internet, and who doesn't care about being trendy or polished. And yes, the person with the pointy hat and hooked stick (sorry, the mitre and crozier of a bishop in some traditions) can be used by God, but so can the woman starting a store-front church in a busy city neighborhood with nothing but a couple of folding chairs and her faith that God has called her there.  If Jesus can be the outlier, then maybe so can anybody.

Keep your eyes open for how God uses people both inside and outside the structures we expect.  God will be in all of those places, choosing people to lead and pray and shepherd others through life.

Lord God, be your free self with us and work in unexpected ways and through unexpected people... even like you did in Jesus.

A Biblical Deep Cut--June 22, 2021

A Biblical Deep Cut--June 22, 2021

"This 'King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of the Most High God, met Abraham as he was returning from defeating the kings and blessed him;' and to him Abraham apportioned 'one-tenth of everything.' His name, in the first place, means 'king of righteousness;' next he is also king of Salem, that is, 'king of peace.' Without father or mother, without genealogy, having neither beginning of days nor end of life, but resembling the Son of God, he remains a priest forever." [Hebrews 7:1-3]

Sometimes the lesser-known things have a beauty and a power all their own.

In the world of popular music, they call it a "deep cut"--the tracks on an album that weren't released as radio singles and maybe didn't top the Billboard charts, but are known and loved by a band's biggest fans.  So while an awful lot of people know the Beatles for "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" or "Hey Jude," deep cuts like "I Will" or "Julia" or "Oh! Darling" reward completist listeners.  The thing about a deep cut on the back-half on an album is that you're probably hearing a musician be more creative, maybe a little less studio-polished and re-packaged or over-produced to sound "like a hit," and more like the sort of artist they actually are.  It may take a little more work to get into those songs, because they're less likely to be three-chord bubble-gum pop, and maybe a little more complicated, but they reward you with repeated listenings and a little bit of patience.

So with that in mind, allow me to offer a bit of a biblical deep cut in the opening of the seventh chapter of what we call the letter to the Hebrews.  Our writer gave a nod back in the last verse of chapter six to Jesus being a "high priest according to the order of Melchizedek," and he seemed to think that was a helpful illustration of who Jesus is.  The trouble is, for most Christians I know, Jesus is the obvious chart-topping name, but the name Melchizedek leaves us scratching our heads.  Jesus is a high priest according to what now?  Who is this Melchizedek person, and why do I need to know about him in order to know more about Jesus?

Okay, buckle up for a crash course introduction to this deep cut of the Bible.  Way back in the book of Genesis, we get some episodes where dear old father Abraham is gallivanting across the land of Canaan to rescue his nephew who had been captured by some neighboring rulers.  After Abraham's side wins the victory, Genesis 14 says that Abraham's allies are sort of taking a victory lap and deciding how to divide the spoils from their battle, and a mysterious figure appears out of nowhere, introduced to us only as "King Melchizedek of Salem, priest of God Most High."  This previously unknown figure comes out with a celebratory meal of bread and wine (Christians go "Wink, wink" at this point), and pronounces a blessing on Abraham.  In response, Abraham gives one-tenth of all the spoils to Melchizedek, and refuses to take any of the rest for himself.  And that's it.  That's all we get of this seemingly random obscure figure named Melchizedek.  It's the only story he's in for the whole Bible, with only one or two other places in the Bible where he is referenced to at all--and even those are only on the basis of this one story, this deep cut of the Bible.

The writer of Hebrews, however, sees something important in this strange figure who is somehow both a priest and a king.  In particular, our author sees some important foreshadowing of the person of Jesus in Melchizedek.  For starters, it's his name and his title:  the name "Melchizedek," as our verses here note, means, "King of Righteousness," and the city over which he is king, Salem, (later Jerusalem), means "peace."  So here you have this person, many centuries before Jesus, who is supposed to be a "king of peace" and "king of righteousness"--and the writer of Hebrews is setting up the pieces to be able to say that Jesus really fully embodies what this Melchizedek person could only have hinted at.  Also curious for his purposes is that we get no other mention of a family line for Melchizedek, not ancestors, and not descendants.  We get no record of his birth or of his death--it's almost like he's eternal.  Again, the writer of Hebrews is just sketching out that this obscure biblical figure sure seems to foreshadow and hint at what Jesus eventually fulfills.  Jesus, the Scriptures attest, really is the eternal Son of God.  And Jesus really is the King of Peace, and the Ruler of true Justice and Righteousness, where Melchizedek could only point forward to those realities in the one story he makes a cameo appearance in.

Our author is going to build on all of this, especially because he is going to answer a question that really would have been an issue for fellow Jewish readers and listeners back in the first century.  They would have been asking how Jesus can be a priest for us--to intercede for us with the Father--if he wasn't from the tribe and family ancestry where the priests came from in ancient Israel (namely, the tribe of Levi).  We'll have to give this deep cut another listen as he goes further in the coming verses to see where he goes with this, but you can see him laying out the pieces of the puzzle now.  Like a good attorney building a case in the opening statement, laying out the issues and beginning to make the logical connections that he'll rely upon as he goes along, the writer of Hebrews is setting the table, so to speak, for the rest of the argument he's making.  But it starts with just calling to mind a lesser-known figure, Melchizedek, and helping us to remember (or to learn for the first time if you'd never heard this story) that the Bible has precedents for other priestly figures who have the authority and blessing of God, and who might just have been placed in those ancient stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs to point ahead to the One in whom we have come to know real peace and genuine justice--even Jesus.

And maybe we can come to a deeper understanding of the power and beauty of who Jesus is from a further look at this mysterious figure from the mists of Israel's ancient storytelling.  If it is worth knowing Jesus more deeply, then it will be worth it to take a deeper dive here into the story and meaning of Melchizedek.

So... more tomorrow, then.

Lord God, help us to know you, not only through the stories we have heard a million times before, but through the lesser-known faces and names of our family history as your people.

A Brick in the Doorway--June 21, 2021

A Brick in the Doorway--June 21, 2021

"We have this hope, a sure and steadfast anchor of the house, a hope that enters the inner shrine behind the curtain, where Jesus, a forerunner on our behalf, has entered, having become a high priest forever according to the order of Melchizedek." [Hebrews 6:19-20]

There is a beautiful ritual that takes place on Sunday mornings these days in one of the congregations I serve.  It began humbly and unofficially out of necessity about a year ago, as our congregations reopened for the first time in the midst of COVID.  In a time when everyone was trying to minimize contact with common surfaces like door handles, we just decided that on Sunday mornings, we would prop the heavy wooden front door of the church building open with a brick, right in the little crevice the door and the front step make.  The original thought, of course, was to allow folks to enter without continually having to handle the same antiquated door handle, which is clumsy, clunky, and sometimes requires a pretty strong pull while pushing the button for your thumb, too.  But since then, even now that there is less concern about surface spread of COVID, and even now that we let the door close once the service has begun, I still love that sight--of seeing a door propped open with a brick.  It says to me, "We are going to extra lengths to let you know that the door is open for you."  That speaks a word of welcome to me... and of hope.

Watching the early arrivers on Sunday prop the door open with that brick for all who will come sends a message.  It's like a visual reminder that those who enter a place first are called to help make it easier for those who come after them to come in as well--just like the old-fashioned courtesy of holding the door by hand into a restaurant or bank office for the next person who is coming up right behind you.  It suggests something relatively permanent--like the door is open for you, whether you are fast or slow, old or young; whenever you get to the threshold, the door will be open to you.  And in contrast to the congregations I know that have gone through a whole phase of "We-have-to-lock-our-doors-once-the-service-starts-becuase-we-are-afraid-of-a-mass-shooting-incident," along with arming their ushers and such, I love the countercultural vulnerability of the brick in the doorway.  It says, we'd rather err on the side of letting someone know they're welcome here, rather than closing ourselves off in fear.  And I love that.  It is like an unspoken testament to the unconditionality of God's love, and the recklessness of God's grace.  I need that.

That's what I picture these days, too, when I read these words from Hebrews.  It starts with the knowledge that God's promises are certain, and because of that solidity, we know God's door is open.  Or, to borrow the imagery from our passage, it's like knowing you've got an open doorway into the holiest place in the Temple.  Our worship spaces are designed differently these days, but in the days of the Temple in Jerusalem (of which the Wailing Wall on the Temple Mount today is all that remains), at the very innermost heart of the Temple was a chamber called the "Holy of Holies," or the Most Holy Place.  It was designed to be symbolic of the place where God's presence dwelt with the people, and in Israel's ancient memory, it's where they kept the actual, honest-to-goodness Ark of the Covenant with the tablets of stone and other assorted mementos from the wilderness days.  Because this place was deemed so sacred, the Holy of Holies was cordoned off with a curtain (you might recall the curtain being torn in two when Jesus dies in the gospel accounts--same one), meant to symbolize a barrier, or distance between the Almighty God, Yahweh, and the people.  Even the high priest--symbolically the holiest one in the nation--was only permitted to enter once a year, on the Day of Atonement.  Otherwise, the room was closed off, and no one was permitted to enter the holy space of God's dwelling.  But the writer of Hebrews takes that image and lovingly sets a brick in the doorway.  He says that our hope in God's promises, a hope we have made real and solid in Jesus, is like having a large hefty object to prop the way open--you know, like an anchor--holding open the curtain and guaranteeing us access to the very presence of God.  To hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, being in the presence of God is not a matter of the luck of the calendar, and it's not dependent on our fickle hearts, either--rather, in Jesus, God has pulled aside the curtain (or ripped it in two, if you like), and set a blessedly hefty brick in the door jamb to assure us that the way is open.  Jesus has gone ahead of us, like the high priests of Israel's ancient memories did, but instead of shutting the door once he's inside like you might expect one of us to do, he has propped open the way to let us know we can come inside, too.

In a time when the voices of Respectable Religious Professionals make headlines for scheming to keep out the ones they think are big ol' sinners from coming to Jesus' table (let the reader understand), the voice of the Scriptures themselves points to how Jesus himself has opened the way to God's very presence, and wedged a chunk of brick in the way to keep the door open for us all.  That's what grace looks like, dear ones.  And that is just what I need every day of the week.

So whether or not your church building's doors are literally propped open on Sunday mornings, remember this--to hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, the entrance to the presence of God is already being held open by none other than Jesus himself.  You are welcome in the presence of God.

Lord Jesus, help us both to trust that you have opened the way to us to come before the very presence of God, and help us to keep that way open for all who are looking to come in after us, and who are hoping to find the door held wide.

Because We Need It--June 17, 2021

Because We Need It--June 17, 2021

"Human beings, of course, swear by someone greater than themselves, and an oath given as confirmation puts an end to all dispute. In the same way, when God desired to show even more clearly to the heirs of the promise the unchangeable character of his purpose, he guaranteed it by an oath, so that through two unchangeable things, in which it is impossible that God would prove false, we who have take refuge might be strongly encouraged to seize the hope set before us." [Hebrews 6:16-18]

Let me tell you about Charlie the Stegosaurus.

When I was a kid--couldn't have been more than six or seven years old--my mother made me a stuffed dinosaur out of primary-colored cloth, whom I proceeded to name, "Charlie." (You know, like you do.)  Charlie was unquestionably mine, made literally by hand as a gift from my mother for Christmas, and there was going to be no doubt that Charlie was mine.  Literally no one else on earth had this dinosaur, unlike, say, my G.I. Joe or He-Man action figures, which were all identical to millions of other exact copies available at toy stores and malls across the country.  Charlie was uniquely mine.

But, being a kid of six or seven years, I was worried.  How could I know that there was no possibility that Charlie could get confused with someone else's stuffed toy dinosaur?  What if we went to a park and some other kid's mom had made him a blue stegosaurus?  What if we got them confused and didn't know whose was whose?  (Maybe I had recently seen The Parent Trap and had this irrational fear of identical things being unwittingly switched?)  I wanted a further step, in writing, to make it clear that this particular plush blue stegosaurus was my Charlie.

So I asked my mother to print the name "Charlie" on the bottom of his bright red cloth belly, and my mother smiled, hoping that would satisfy my need.

It did not.  I was worried about the possibility that some other hypothetical child who also had the same taste in stuffed dinosaurs, and whose hypothetical mother also made them an identical stegosaurus, would also have picked the name "Charlie" and had it written on his dinosaur's belly, too.  

So I insisted that my mother write, "Stevie Bond's Charlie." on this toy's underside... which she did.

And then I insisted on the date--just to distinguish mine, in case the other (again, still completely hypothetical) kid was also named Stevie Bond.  My mother, God love her, indulged me.

She even added a heart at the end to make it utterly completely undoubtedly unique, and with that she assured me that this dinosaur was unmistakably mine.  No further graffiti on the belly of the dinosaur was necessary, she assured me.

Well, of course, none of those additional things were necessary for the dinosaur's sake.  He was already mine simply by virtue of having been given it by my mother who made him.  Charlie the Steogsaurus was mine all along as a free gift, simply on my mother's say-so, and because of her labor to stitch it together for me.

The writing?  That was all because of my need to be super-duper absolutely sure that this gift belonged to me--even though the giver herself had already assured me it did.  But she was willing to to through all that extra rigamarole because of my need to have assurance that it was so.  And so, because the nature of the giver was gracious, and because she wanted me to be at peace, rather than obsessed with worry that this gift might somehow disappear on me, she went to those extra lengths.

It turns out that God is a lot like the mother of a six-and-a-half year old kid who is fussing over the need to know his stuffed dinosaur is really his forever.  The writer of Hebrews talks about the way God makes promises, and God ends up sound a lot like my patient mother, going to extra lengths to make sure we know that those promises are secure.  That's why there is this whole business about how God makes oaths and swore by God's own self back in earlier biblical stories.  It's not because God needs all those extra gestures to make some heavenly magic work; it's not that oaths are like spells governed by invisible forces.  It's that God knows how to speak our language, to approach our level, and to relate in our terms.  God knows that we human beings have developed special ways of assuring each other when we really mean our promises (this is necessary in a species like ours, because we are so very adept at lying), and so when we really really really mean something, we swear an oath or sign a contract or seal a covenant or notarize a document.  All of this, from God's vantage point, is rather like a little kid asking for all sorts of tedious wording written on the bottom of the gift that was already his, but God is willing to indulge because we need the peace of mind.

So ours is a God who swears that the promises God makes are true, not because God needs the oath to keep heaven accountable, but because we are the sorts of insecure little children who are terribly afraid the promises won't hold... and God wants us to know we can trust a divine promise.

In an important sense, so much of what we do in our worship life as Christians is just like that--they are words we need for our sake, not for God's.  God knows our sins before we have spoken them out loud--but we need to admit them, lay them out, give them to God, and hear God's forgiveness, because we need the assurance we are forgiven.  We need to be re-storied into life by the Meal of Jesus, not because God needs us to keep offering some kind of ritual sacrifice (which was, in fact, what some of medieval theology taught), but because this is God's gift and we need to be fed and forgiven again.  We need the assurance of God's love spoken to us, not because God needs to be reminded to keep loving us, but because we need to know it hasn't changed.

All of this--like so many words written in black Sharpie ink on the belly of a plush stegosaurus--is what God does for us, because of our need.

What a gift of grace it is to know we are loved like this.  And what a gift it is to know God is willing to keep on assuring us of the certainty of God's promises.

Lord God, we admit that we are needy--indulge us and assure us that your love is certain, your promises unfailing, and your faithfulness is unrelenting.  Go to those lengths, we dare to pray, because we need it.

How We Know--June 16, 2021

How We Know--June 16, 2021

"When God made a promise to Abraham, because he had no one great by whom to swear, he swore by himself, saying, 'I will surely bless you and multiply you.' And thus Abraham, having patiently endured, obtained the promise." [Hebrews 6:13-15]

What does somebody say to bolster their opinion with the appearance of popular support when they don't have facts to back their words up?  "People are saying...."  Lord, have mercy.  That phrase by itself, or its variations like, "I hear many people thinking..." or, "Lots of very smart people are asking..." or "Everybody is saying that..." should be a red flag right from the start that the rest of that sentence needs further scrutiny, right?  

Who are these people--do we know?  What makes them qualified to say what they think "everybody" is saying?  How many people makes for "many"? And sometimes, you know you just get the sense that the person insisting that "people are saying," whether it's a politician at a podium, a talking head on cable news, or an acquaintance in a one-on-one conversation, is really just trying to voice their own opinion without attaching their names to it.  So, here's a free rule of thumb for public conversation:  if you're listening to someone who says, "People are saying," but they can't or won't back that up with how many people, who they are, or what their experience is on the subject, take their words with a sizable pinch of salt. This is the challenge for people who want to be wise, informed, critical thinkers in a world full of voices that just say things without evidence or logical support.  And in the age of social media and the blurring of opinion and news, it's hard to be a discerning listener and to know whose voice you can trust, and on what basis.

Now, on the other hand, it turns out that God--the actual Creator of the universe--has the opposite challenge.  God never gets fooled by hucksters and snake-oil salesmen, because already knows the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.  But how does God convince us that God's words and promises are sure?  In a world full of liars and their Big Lies, spin doctors, and propaganda, God knows that we have reason to be skeptical of the claims that seem to come out of nowhere, especially the ones that sound too good to be true.  So when God makes a promise, God swears--not on a Bible or to some other god or even on your great-grandmother's grave--but by God's own self.

The writer of Hebrews calls attention to this move on God's part from the story of Abraham and Sarah back in Genesis.  When God had made the promise to the wandering migrant couple that they would one day have children, and a land of their own, and blessing for all peoples, it raised the question for Abraham, "How can I know this is for real?"  After all, it was a promise seemingly grounded in sheer grace, rather than anything that old Abe had done to deserve it.  And there was no evidence to back it up--how could he trust a promise that sounded so outlandishly impossible and too good to be true?  At one point in the storytelling, in fact, (see early in Genesis 15, if you want to check), Abraham even brings his doubts right in God's face and says, "How can I know that you're telling me the truth, and that this big promise of yours is real?"

And God's answer is to swear an oath--but an oath that invokes God's own being, rather than someone else.  For us human beings, our usual way of backing up our claims is to reference some higher authority--whether that's appealing to someone who is an expert in the subject you are talking about, citing a governmental authority, or calling on the divine as a witness to your oath.  The basic gist of an oath, after all is to say, "If I'm lying, or if I flake out on my commitment, may my God or gods judge, punish, or zap me in the following ways..."  That works for humans, who presumably stand under the authority of God--or, depending on one's religious persuasion, gods, goddesses, or the Force, or whatever other Higher Power one may name.  But if you actually are God, and you are trying to get through to human beings who are skittish about believing you, after having been let down and disappointed before by so many makers of empty promises, the way to assure a human you love that you are telling the truth is to swear an oath by your own self.

Now, just to be clear what that means on God's part, both in the story of Abraham and for us, it means that the living God invokes self-destruction rather than unfaithfulness to a promise.  Like a kid on the playground swearing the old, "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye" is invoking the heavens to kill or harm himself if he isn't telling the truth, God's vow to Abraham is basically saying, "I will be torn apart before I give out on you.  I will die before I prove unfaithful.  I will choose death rather than bail out on you."  That's how God gets through to cynical hearts like ours who have been burned too many times by liars to trust a voice out of nowhere.

Wow!  That is how you are loved.  That is the length God will go to--and has gone to--to make it clear that God's promises are sure, and that God is telling the truth to us.  Death before unfaithfulness. Death before breaking a promise.  A cross rather than giving up on us.

I  can't stop the talking heads, advertiser, social media posts from your angry racist uncles, or bloviating demagogues from making absurd claims that don't hold water, while they appeal to a vague "people are saying" kind of reasoning.  But we can, like the writer of Hebrews, point people to the way God makes promises--and the cross that stands as evidence of the lengths God will go to in order keep them.

And that may just be enough, even in a world full of empty talk and shallow nonsense.

Lord God, help us to trust in your promises, and to be voices of discernment and truth against all the loud claims and big lies around us.

Paciencia Y Fe--June 15, 2021

Paciencia Y Fe--June 15, 2021

"And we want each one of you to show the same diligence so as to realize the full assurance of hope to the very end, so that you may not become sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises." [Hebrews 6:11-12]

Patience... and faith.  Faith... and patience.  Or in Spanish, paciencia y fe.  They are two sides of the same coin, maybe, the way of life how the people of God keep on keeping on, especially when it is hard to keep going.

There's a song from Lin-Manuel Miranda's musical In the Heights (now just recently released as a feature-length movie) where the wise voice of Abuela Claudia sings that refrain, one she learned from her own mother in the storytelling:  "Paciencia y fe... paciencia y fe."  Patience and faith.

I remember first hearing that song not long after the musical itself came out (there's a resident Broadway lover in our house, to whom I am married) and being surprised that even my rusty high-school-level Spanish lessons were able to recognize those words and translate them, like a prayer in the middle of all that spectacle and movement.  The woman's song, and her repeated creed, "Patience and faith," comes hard-earned from a lifetime of struggle.  I think that's what makes those words more than a throwaway tagline or an easy slogan.  People who know the importance of "patience and faith" are people who know trouble and weariness--and who have been carried through them time and again.  It never occurred to me, though, until this moment that Abuela Claudia's words might be echoes from this passage from Hebrews, but here are those words again:  faith and patience.  Patience and faith.

We don't know for sure what struggles the first hearers and readers of these words were going through.  It's quite possible they had lived through the upheaval and struggle of an immigrant like Abuela Claudia--certainly many of the early generations of Christians knew what it was like to be forced out of one community and to move somewhere else, whether because of famine or war or pockets of persecution.  It's quite possible those first hearers knew what it was to scrape by in life just to make a living, like Abuela Claudia and her mother before her do in the musical; one of the notable things about early Christianity was just how much it appealed to the poor and enslaved classes of people in the Empire.  It's possible, too, given some hints later on in the book of Hebrews, that those first hearer were living with fears that the Empire or a spontaneous lynch mob might round them up and throw them in jail--or kill them for being troublemakers.  Whatever the struggles they were facing, the writer of Hebrews urges them to follow the examples of those who went before them and who lived by--you guessed it--patience and faith.

What's interesting to me is that even so early on in Christian history you have voices like this one telling the community of Jesus' followers to be prepared for the long haul, rather than just saying, "It'll be fine--Jesus will be back any day now, so we won't have to worry about life's troubles for much longer."  The writer of Hebrews knows we are in for a long-distance run rather than a sprint here, and so there's no magical thinking or merely wishing away the difficulties.  You don't hear our author using faith like a talisman to ward off troubles, and you don't hear him saying, "Well, if you believed hard enough, you wouldn't be suffering like this," or the equally tempting (and equally wrong) statement, "True believers don't have to go through such difficulties--your struggles must be God's punishment for your lack of faith or sin or doubt."  No, our author takes a long view of history, informed by our ancestors in the faith, and knows that sometimes walking the journey laid out before is just unavoidably challenging.  And when that is the case, we are called simply to keep putting one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, even when we can't see our destination... and even when we aren't quite sure how we'll get there.  We walk with faith, and with patience.  Paciencia y fe.

You need both of those together, or else something short circuits.  If all we ever got was the parent-like instruction to be patient, but never a promise that there was something worth being patient for, it would seem like we were being set up, like Sisyphus in the old Greek myths, for labor that never ended and struggles that would never give way to rest.  Patience, after all, is a cousin of endurance, but even a marathon eventually comes to an end when the runners can cross the finish line and be done.   The writer of Hebrews reminds us that as we are following in the footsteps of those who have modeled faith and patience for us, we are headed in the same direction as they were, toward inheriting the promises they strained toward.  We aren't just treading water, in other words--we are going somewhere... somewhere that feels like home.

On the other hand, if all we have is the word "faith" but no context that it will require patience from us, we have a way of cheapening "faith" into sounding like we think God is our genie who will grant our wishes just because we pray for them.  I was in a conversation not long ago where someone said, surely meaning well, that, "If we say we believe in God and just pray for no one to get COVID at our event, then no one will get COVID."  That sounds to my ears less like faith and more like a distortion into wishful thinking.  Faith, after all, is trust in a WHO, rather than a blank check for getting a WHAT you want.  Faith in God knows God to be good and able to do things beyond our ability, but that doesn't mean we get the thing we want to happen just because we prayed for it.  I think the writer of Hebrews would remind us in times like those that faith also involves patience--and sometime that patience means living with things that aren't the way we want them to be yet, whether it's a lingering pandemic, or a struggling economy, or the frustration of waiting to see the results of your hard work and diligence.  We need both.

I suspect that somewhere in your life you need the reminders of both of these today, too.  So take these two gifts as the family inheritance of those who have gone before us and found that, together, they are able to keep us going on days when our strength feels spent and our joy may be flagging.  Take the gift of patience--the ability to wait in peace for God's moving to become clear, and the endurance to keep going when it would be easier to give up.  And take the gift of faith--the capacity to trust in a God whose hand is not always visible to our eyes, and who remains faithful even when we do not see how God will make a way.

Patience and faith, dear ones.  Paciencia y fe.

Lord God, enable us to keep going through the weary places of this day, this season, this life, knowing that you carry us along the way, and that you are bringing us toward your good and promised homecoming.

Keep It Up--June 14, 2021

Keep It Up--June 14, 2021

"For God is not unjust; he will not overlook your work and the love that you showed for his sake in serving the saints, as you still do." [Hebrews 6:10]

I need to say this, because I need you to know it is true:  what you do matters. And the efforts you make, even just in the course of an ordinary day, to bring goodness, joy, love, and truth into the world through your words and actions and choices, those are beautiful and blessed.  They matter.  They are worthy of being named and celebrated and honored.  And they are not in vain.

Now, I also need to say this next thing, because it is easy to misunderstand that first point.  What you do matters, but not in the sense that your actions are what saves you, and not in the sense that your good deeds rack up "heaven points" while your sinful deeds cost you "demerits" toward some final eternal score tally.  The New Testament has no room for that sort of bean-counting theology, and anyone who says differently is trying to sell you a load of dingo's kidneys. No, no, no, a thousand times no.

And yet... we still need to be able to say that our choices, our actions, and our efforts to show love in this life--they mean something.  And it is worth building your life on showing love--to God, to neighbors, to strangers, to enemies--even though it's not about achieving some post-mortem heavenly high-score.  It matters, because love matters.  It always matters, even if not in the ways we think at first.

This seem especially important to say at a time like this, when it can be so easy to feel like any one of our efforts are futile.  In a time like the last year and half, when so much of our usual connections with others have been strained, it has been easy to feel like nobody else cared, or nobody else was making an effort or saw the worth in the work you were doing. It has felt sometimes like your best attempts to bring light into the world ran headlong into a brick wall of gloom and were swallowed up in shadow.  Sometimes maybe it felt like you were the only one in your circle of coworkers or neighbors willing to go to any trouble to help protect neighbors from sickness.  

Maybe you were the only one willing to risk looking silly or foolish, or to go beyond what was comfortable or convenient in wearing a mask or getting a vaccine or making sure to check on a neighbor who needed some human connection.  Maybe there have been times lately when you felt like the only one who cared when someone else was picked on, or insulted, or belittled, and you wondered if it made any difference to show support and love to the people in the crosshairs  Maybe you have wondered why others in your circles of friends... or family... or <ouch!> church community haven't been upset at the casual racism woven into so much of our common life... or at the indifference toward neighbors struggling with homelessness or addiction or violence and abuse.  Maybe you have been faithful in some ministry of caring, without recognition or fanfare, and you have felt like you were on the verge of burning out, and you have wondered, "Did any of my effort matter?"

If it's any consolation, preachers feel like this a fair amount.  Sometimes we feel like we have done our very best to speak a word from God about the extravagant, persistent love of Jesus, only to feel like we haven't gotten through, or we weren't as clear as we thought we were, when the listening world continues to be as self-centered and hateful as ever.  It's really easy for any of us to wonder, "Does our effort mean anything?"  It's really easy to ask, "Can my attempt to speak love, feeble as it is, be heard at all against all the angry noise around us?"

So the writer of Hebrews wants us to hear--you and me included here--a loud and clear YES.  Yes, your efforts matter.  They are not in vain--even if you can't see the impact they make.  Even if sometimes it seems futile to be a voice of love in a culture that seems hell-bent on finding new way to hate each other.  Even if it is fashionable to ignore unpleasant truths about ourselves, it is worth it to insist on speaking the truth--and demand that it not be banned from being told.  Even it feels lonely to be the only one you know who cares about something, it is worth it to be someone who cares.  Even if you have tried you very best, and your very best efforts still look like failure or disappointment, it is worth it make the effort of love anyway.

And that's because this is precisely the way love works.  A system of points will only care about the outcome of our efforts and whether they are measurably, quantifiably successful or not.  But our efforts to show love matter, whether they look "successful" or not, because that is the nature of love.  So even if you really are the only one speaking up or taking the time or putting forth the effort in some way, your work matters.  It is precious to God... because God loves you.  And because God refuses to let those small actions, simple words, and little choices be lost in the sight of eternity.  They matter.  And so do you.

Please know that today, no matter what else comes, and no matter what other people do or don't do.  What you do to bring goodness and love into the world as a reflection of God's own goodness and love, it matters.  Keep it up.

Lord God, help us to trust that you can take our small and feeble efforts and weave them together into the whole of your Reign of justice and mercy for all.

Grace Like the Rain--June 11, 2021

Grace Like The Rain--June 11, 2021

"Ground that drinks up the rain falling on it repeatedly, and that produces a crop useful to those for who it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it produces thorns and thistles, it is worthless and on the verge of being cursed; its end is to be burned over.  Even though we speak in this way, beloved, we are confident of better things in your case, things that belong to salvation." [Hebrews 6:7-9]

The question is simply this:  what will do with the goodness God showers on us day by day?  What will we allow that grace to bring forth from us? And when we see noxious and pernicious weeds like hatred, greed, indifference, and just plain mean-ness growing up out of our hearts' soil, will we leave them to take over, or will we allow the hands of a good Gardener to root them out?

Our author here has painted a clever word-picture for us, and he has said something profound about God's grace in the process.  He talks about ground that gets sustained, reliable, plentiful rain, and how well-watered ground can bring up good plants (say, the sunflowers or tomatoes or corn that you planted), as well as giving rise to thistles and thorns.  The rain isn't a reward for good plants growing, but rather the gift of rain is given first.  From there, the question for the field you've tilled is, "What will come up out of the soil in response to the grace that falls like rain?"

Right off the bat, the order of things there should get our attention. We are so used to a world that thinks (and teaches us to think) in terms of transactions where good things only come as rewards for good behavior, rule-following, or productivity.  We are used to hearing things like, "If you produce well, God will reward you," or "If you all will be good little boys and girls, then God's grace will be given to you," because that's how so much of business-as-usual in our culture works.  But the writer of Hebrews turns that around and says we've been getting the cart before the horse--grace is poured out on us lavishly, like an afternoon rain shower in June, before the good plants or spiky weeds start poking their sprouts out of the ground.  Grace comes first!

And then the question becomes, what will we do with the grace God gives us day by day, moment by moment, all our live long?  It is possible that we will recognize how extravagantly and unabashedly we have been loved and respond by letting that same love blossom in us in our actions and words and practices toward others.  It is possible we will be moved to live in thanks and praise out of grateful awareness of how God loved us first.  It is possible we will let God's generosity bring forth love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and more from within us.  And it is also possible that we will waste such good gifts from God and become entitled, or self-centered, or hateful, or greedy.  We may let ourselves slide into thinking we're better than other people... or that we have earned our good things while others have just been lazy leeches.  We may think it's ok to hoard the good things God gives us rather than recognizing they are meant to share widely and deeply with others.  God takes the risk, so to speak, that we will be selfish jerks rather than humble and decent neighbors to the people around us.  God takes the risk that we will misunderstand divine goodness and think it is something we have earned with our religiosity rather than received apart from our behavior.  God takes the risk that we will turn our focus toward getting more, accumulating more, dominating more, and hoarding more, rather than on trusting that God will provide what we need and living with open hands to share.  This is the divine gamble in God's choice to lavish goodness on us all prior to our bearing fruit for good or ill.  Like Jesus says, "God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous alike, and is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked as well as the well-behaved people."

Jesus, of course, does not think this is a mistake on God's part, or a bad policy from heaven, but in fact the touchstone of God's heart: God's reckless and unconditional goodness.  It has to be given with the chance that we'll abuse it, waste it, or take it for granted--that's the nature of grace.  It has to be poured out like rain on us all, because that is the very nature of grace.

So... when we realize what sheer kindness and utter goodness we are given day by day in this world of beauty and possibility, the only question that remains is what we will do in response to the gifts that have been poured out upon us.  And where we see the first sawtooth leaves of some vicious thistle erupting out of our hearts, will we pull them out to make room for something good God is growing in us?

I hope so.  I hope you and I will recognize, too, that God is in the rain.

Lord God, weed out what is not planted by your love in us, and as you lavish your grace on us, let us respond with love, with thanks, with praise, and with goodness to all.