Believe You Are Graced--September 1, 2021

Believe You Are Graced--September 1, 2021

"By faith Abel offered to God a more acceptable sacrifice than Cain's. Through this he received approval as righteous, God himself giving approval to his gifts; he died, but through his faith he still speaks." [Hebrews 11:4]

I have these childhood memories of periodically sitting down with my grandfather or grandmother, or with my mom, and paging through family photo albums.  Every so often, some grown-up in my life would get out this overstuffed volume with mostly black-and-white photos of people I had never known, or maybe whom I had met once at a family reunion.  And they would tell me the stories of these people--the great-aunt who served during World War II, or my grandfather in his sailor's uniform before going off to the Pacific theater, or the well-dressed people in wedding photos from my great-grandparents' generations.   I can still remember the smell of those old pages, it turns out.

Those names and faces usually came with descriptions, stories, or remembrances, which my mom or grandparents would supply.  "This was your great-grandfather--I remember him doing such and such..." or "This was what your grandfather looked like when he was a boy--look how much he resembles his brother!"  I would hear stories of how these people had worked hard, endured a Depression, made their homes, and lived their lives.  And the point of all of this storytelling, I'm pretty sure, was to help me to know whose lives had shaped me and my background.  The virtues they embodied--hard work, diligence, duty, and such--were handed to me as a legacy to carry and take up in my own life.  The challenges they endured were laid out for me like a bar to be cleared, as if to say, "You come from a long line of people who have faced difficult circumstances--you will be able to face whatever comes your way, too."

Well, the writer of Hebrews here is about to do the same with us--what we call the eleventh chapter of this book (remember, chapter and verse notations are later inventions we have come up with to help find our way in these documents) is sort of a trip through the family photo albums of the people of God.  And rather like sitting with a grandparent or parent and learning the stories that go with the names, the writer of Hebrews wants us to remember particular things about the family of faith we come from.  He wants to highlight how our ancestors among the people of God all lived by faith--they staked their lives and made their choices in light of the God in whom they trusted.  And again, much like my own grandfather telling me stories to help shape the kind of person I would become, the writer of Hebrews wants to shape us into being people of faith by remembering where we come from in this legacy.

The starting point of this family album goes all the way back to Abel, remembered in Genesis as one of Adam and Eve's sons, the same son killed by his brother Cain (in a fit of jealousy over who was more acceptable to God, sadly).  And while we get very little biography of Abel in the Scriptures (kind of like the distant ancestors in your family tree might only be known by a few scraps of fact and personal data), our writer here wants us to see all of what Abel did in terms of his faith.  He offered up gifts of thanks to God from his flocks and herds out of faith and gratitude to God.  He saw his life as a gift of God, rather than something he had achieved or earned, and that affected how he used his possessions.  That's living by faith.  And so, even though his life was cut off early by his envious brother, his life "still speaks" to us even now.

Sometimes I think we misunderstand what it means to live "by faith," and we need correctives like these remembrances from the family photo album of God's people.  We can turn "faith" in a matter of reciting correct dogmas in a creed, as though God were something you could reduce to memorized creeds or theological propositions.  Or we misuse the word "faith" to mean some particular partisan political affiliation, or an opposition to scientific discoveries, or a reckless attitude about public health (as in, "We have faith, not fear, so we're not going to get vaccinated for COVID and say it's about our devotion to God!").  But each of those twists or narrows what faith really looks like as a way of life.  For Abel, who didn't have any catechisms or creeds to recite, faith looked like living your whole live understanding your existence as a gift of grace, which calls forth gratitude as a response in love.  When Abel brought some of his flock to God as an offering, nobody had told him he "had to," and there wasn't any kind of "commandment" given about bringing offerings to God.  There weren't any instructions requiring payment for sins, either.  All we can reliably say from Abel's story is that he understood his life as a gift of God, and he sensed that such a relationship of love called forth a response of gratitude.  He took it by faith that his life was a gift of grace, rather than just assuming, "I exist, but I don't owe anybody anything, and nobody can tell me what to do."  

If we bracket out God from our lives, it becomes really easy to say, "I'm on my own in life, and so is everyone else--it's a dog-eat-dog world out there, so we all have to do whatever things we have to in order to save ourselves.  There's no one looking out of any of us, so it's survival of the fittest, and I can't dare share with anybody else or give up anything of mine, because that would show weakness."  If we live our lives simply on the evidence of nature's indifference and human cruelty toward one another and other creatures, we might tell ourselves we have no reason to be kind, to be compassionate, to see someone as a higher authority than ourselves, or to do justice when it is not in our immediate self-interest.  We can be real jerks sometimes, to be honest.

But to live by faith, like Abel does, is to understand that life itself is a gift, and to then live all of our lives in response to the Giver, who has brought us not just into existence, but into relationship.  Such a life requires courage to believe we are indeed beloved--and to see others as beloved as well, but that is the kind of life that leaves an impression on the world long after our days are past. 

Today, live like you are beloved by the Creator of the universe, and like your life itself is a gift.  That's how we will live by faith today.

Lord God, give us the courage to live, to act, and to choose in this day as though everything is a gift of your goodness... because it is.

The Courage to Believe--August 31, 2021

The Courage to Believe--August 31, 2021

"Indeed, by faith our ancestors received approval. By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was made from things that are not visible." [Hebrews 11:2-3]

In a world that so often prizes assembly-line uniformity (usually for the sake of maximizing profits), it is an act of courageous faith to believe that you are not a mistake, but a masterpiece.

And you are.

But believing that you are a creation of God rather than merely a product for consumption or a means of production for increasing the third-quarter earnings is a countercultural thing to do.  Believing that each of us, in all of our uniqueness, are creations of God, rather than cosmic accidents, is a big deal.  It changes how we understand our own worth and value, and how we see everybody around us, as well.

Think about it for a moment: for an awful lot of human history, worth or acceptability has been based either on "usefulness"--how much you can contribute from your talent or labor--or on "sameness"--how much you like the other members of the in-group, versus how different you are.  People in your same tribe or clan or ethnicity could belong--and were worth fighting for, because they shared enough sameness that matched your group's required defining traits.  But those who were deemed "other"--whether because their skin was darker, their language was different, their customs were unusual, or their way of life was deemed "strange"--they were seen all too often as hostile outsiders or dangerous deviants.  In that kind of mindset, people who varied too far from the the cookie-cutter pattern have to be labeled either troublemaking misfits or outright enemies.  

But to claim, as Christians classically have done, that God has made each of us, as well as the whole universe, means saying that each of us bears God's image, and all of us belong.  In a world that decides worth based on how much you fit in according to some visible trait like height or facial features or weight or skin color or wealth or gender, it is a radical--and necessary--thing to say that God has created us each as infinitely precious works of art.  You, in all of your you-ness, and me in all of my me-ness, regardless of our being "marketable."

Sometimes Respectable Religious folk spend all their time thinking about creation as a belief only about the distant past.  Christians have come to be known sometimes for yelling angrily about whether it took six twenty-four hour days, or whether there were dinosaurs on the ark, or whether you can count as a true Christian if you also accept the scientific consensus that the universe is billions of years old rather than six thousand.  And all of that bellowing generates a lot of heat but very little light.  Meanwhile we haven't been nearly as good at talking about how our belief in God as creator means that each person is of infinite worth and value, regardless of their contributions to the economy and apart from what their consumption adds to the GDP.

Our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, however, offers a really good insight when it comes to creation.  In his Small Catechism, when Luther looks at what it means to say we believe in God the Father, who created heaven and earth, he points us first toward our own lives:  "I believe that God created me, together with all that exists...." In other words, before wild speculation about the origins of the universe eons ago, he points us to look at our own existence as a gift of God.  You and I are here, not because we are profitable to our bosses, or because we are cosmic flukes, but by God's gracious choice to make us in all of our us-ness.

Recognizing that is a statement of faith--it is something we dare to believe, something we dare to trust, over against all the other voices that think we only exist to contribute to someone's bottom line, or that we are valuable only based on our sameness to some cookie-cutter template.  When the writer of Hebrews talks about living by faith, he starts here:  by faith we have a different understanding of ourselves--we, along with all the cosmos, have been fashioned by God, not only the accidents of history, the quirks of physics from after the Big Bang, or the utility we are ascribed by the market.  Surely history and physics are also part of the story of how we came to be here, but we are more than those things can say about us.  We are more than particles and energy.  We are more than a cash value.  We are more than what we appear to the outside observer.  We are creations of the living God.

It can be hard to live like that is true, both for our selves and for everyone else.  But it makes all the difference in the world at least to try.

Let's go face the world now... as the image-bearers of God's own creative presence, going into the midst of others who bear God's image, too.

Lord God, help us to believe we are your creations, and not merely accidents, flukes, or interchangeable parts in a machine.  Help us to be our unique selves, uniquely reflecting your goodness.

Hammer Advice--August 30, 2021

Hammer Advice--August 30, 2021

"Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen." [Hebrews 11:1]

So, let's imagine you're hanging a piece of artwork in a big heavy frame, or a mirror, or something like that, on your living room wall.  What holds it up?  What keeps the painting or the silvered glass from falling down and breaking?

I guess one answer could be the nail that you use to hang it--but that is really only a partial answer at best.  Yes, you probably hammer a nail into the wall to hang the frame onto, but the placement of the nail determines whether it will stay up or not.  Pound just into the crumbly dry wall of your living room, and it won't bear much weight--the object could just rip out of the wall and come down landing with a crash (maybe when you've just gone to bed for the night so it wakes you up and scares the willies out of you, too!).  But if you make sure you are getting the nail into a stud behind the dry-wall, your painting will stay up securely on the wall practically forever.

Same nail, either way--but the difference is what it is anchored into.

I want to suggest that something like this is the real catch when talking about faith.  Faith is an awful lot like a nail--it is a tool of holding onto something you can't see.  Now, whether you can hang your life on that faith depends a great deal on what the "something" is that your faith is fastened to.  Some things look sturdy, but turn out to be as chalky as dry wall; they won't hold much weight at all.  But place your faith, however seemingly small it might be, into the reliable character of God, and it turns out that God will hold you.

Faith, in other words, is less matter of how tightly we are holding with our sweaty little grip, and much more about whether we are secured in God rather than in something else that will let us down in the end.  And, to be sure, because the God in whom we are dared to place our trust exists beyond our senses, it can feel like a risk to place our trust in God.  Like the writer of Hebrews says here, we are talking about the conviction of "things not seen."  You might knock on the wall with your ear pressed against it to listen for where the support beams are, or you might get out your trusty stud-finder, but it's still something of a gamble to set your nail where you believe a stud will be.  And yeah, trust in God is a lot like that--it can sometimes feel like stepping out into thin air, or taking a leap into the darkness and expecting to be caught.

Until you actually take the step of putting the hammer to the nail's head and start to sink it, you'll be left wondering, "Is there going to be something solid to hold this nail and bear the weight I intend to set on it?"  Until you actually feel the nail catching as it digs into the lumber behind the finished wall, it seems reckless to try. But in a sense, all of us are hanging things on the walls of our lives--you can't live in this world without having a certain amount of trust placed in something.  The trouble is so many of us place our trust in so many untrustworthy places.

It's the market and its promises of a nest-egg for your retirement, or the assurance of the Dow Jones that your investments will do nothing but grow.  It's the myths we tell ourselves about how to have a happy and successful life--which so often let us down abruptly.  It's the cult of personality around a politician, or the polished agenda of a party, which all turn out to be disappointments at some point or another.  It's the grandiose talk of the "American Dream," and the related notion that you can win yourself some happiness in life by buying the next big thing or acquiring the next great status symbol.  All of those look solid, but they prove unreliable, like hammering a nail into chalk and expecting it to hold.

But the God who stands behind and underneath everything else in the world turns out to be worthy of our trust.  We can live securely anchored in God, and a faith rooted in God will bear an awful lot of weight.  Again, it's not about how strong or great my faith is--it's about whether the One in whom I trust is strong enough to hold me.

That's part of why the Bible can have such expressions of faith as Thomas, skeptically insisting he needs to see the scars of the risen Jesus... or the father who says to Jesus, "I believe! Help my unbelief!" or the angry grief of Mary and Martha, who are upset at Jesus for not showing up to heal their sick brother, only to find Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead.  God can work with our wobbly faith, because it's not really about our grip on God, but about God's ability to hold onto us.

And this also gives us a really crucial framing for how we talk about "faith" and "fear."  In the era of COVID, it's really tempting for religious folks to turn "faith" and "fear" into opposites in the sense of saying, "If you're worried about getting COVID, or concerned about passing it along to a sick adult or an unvaccinated child or neighbor, you must not really believe in God."  Sometimes, "Don't be afraid--just have faith" is abused to sound like being reckless or inconsiderate of our neighbors is an indicator of our belief in eternal life (and yes, some actual governors of states have said as much in recent days).  Look--if the choice is between "fear" and "faith," of course people want to see themselves on the side of "faith." The trouble is that faith in something that isn't worthy of your trust is going to put a hole in your wall and a broken mirror on your floor before long.  Putting your faith in something or someone who is not reliable isn't a good exercise of faith, much like hammering a nail into Styrofoam or fiberglass insulation won't hold any weight.  Just saying, "I believe I'll be fine--I have faith" isn't really trusting in God--it's making up a wish and then telling yourself it will come true because you believe in it.  And that's not Christian faith--that's a load of dingoes' kidneys.

We don't get to put words in God's mouth that we wish God had promised, and then insist that we can cash a check that God hasn't really written.  I don't get to say, "I have faith that God will give me a million dollars on my pillow in the morning," and then expect it to appear when my alarm goes off, and I don't get to say, "Jesus has saved me from sin, and therefore I can't get COVID, either," because that ain't the promise Jesus has made us.  That's pretending there's a stud behind the dry-wall just because you want there to be one.  But you can't hang a mirror by nailing into a wish, and you can't secure a bookshelf solely on the holding power of your good intentions.  It matters Who we trust.  It matters in Whom we are anchored.

Ultimately, the promise we hang our lives on is that God will go through the difficult stuff with us, not that we won't have to face the difficult things "if only we believe."  When markets and empires and wishful thinking all let us down, the living God proves reliable to hold us.  That's what our faith is rooted in--or rather, that's Who our faith is rooted in.

Today, maybe it's a good idea to examine again what and who we place our trust in, and which are the things or voices in our lives we might want to think again before putting any weight on.  Maybe today is a day to double down on our trust in the living God to hold us an to bring us through.

Lord God, help us to trust you and your voice, above the background noise luring us in other directions.

Dirt Under Our Nails--August 27, 2021

Dirt Under Our Nails--August 27, 2021

"Do not, therefore, abandon that confidence of yours; it brings a great reward. For you need endurance, so that when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised. For yet 'in a very little while, the one who is coming will come and will not delay; but my righteous one will live by faith. My soul takes no pleasure in anyone who shrinks back.' But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved." [Hebrews 10:35-39]

As I write, there are sunflowers outside my living room window.  They are blossoming gloriously in all sorts of shades, from golden yellow to rich warm ochres to a variety in mahogany, too.  And they are towering over my head--all just the way sunflowers are meant to be.  They are what I was hoping for back in May when I cleared a small rectangle of ground and scattered seeds into the freshly tilled earth. This is the season I have been waiting for all along.

But like almost anything worthwhile in this life, those blossoms have been a long time coming.  And most of the work and waiting have been mundane, tedious, and tiresome.  Most of the work in tending the patch of sunflowers has been in the hot sun, without glamor or glory, getting dirt under my fingernails, pulling pernicious weeds, keeping deer and rabbits out, and wiping sweat from my brow.  This is just the nature of things--the nature of nature itself, actually.

I have been learning again this summer that this is so often what faith looks like: the day by day persistence in labor that might not look like it is doing anything, in the confident trust that the waiting and working will come to fruition beyond my own ability or power.  It's the willingness to keep going out into the garden, getting soil worn into the lines on my hands, sweat dripping off my forehead, knowing that there won't be any blossoms for a long while--and doing the good work of weeding or watering anyway.  We keep doing it--even though there are months of work without seeing results.  We keep at it, trusting that our efforts will be a part of the miracle God's creation pulls off by turning a tiny seed into a towering sunflower.

I think that's the way we have to understand this talk from Hebrews about the reward that comes from our enduring faith.  It's not like God is giving unrelated prizes to bribe humans into virtuous behavior. The gospel's promise is not a deal like, "Get a good enough score on your theology exam, and then you'll get a heavenly vacation as your winnings." It's more like gardening--you plant a sunflower seed and tend it, and what do you know, at the end of the season, you get sunflower blossoms to enjoy.  The "reward" is perfectly fitting for the labor, because it is the outcome of the labor itself.  Faith is the trust that earthy tasks done on hands and knees like digging and planting can be used in the process of creating a blossom on top of a stalk rising ten feet in the air.  And for us as the people of God, our trust is in the God who brings blossoms out of seeds, wine out of water jars, Lazarus out of the grave, and something good out of our meager efforts.  

On most days, Christian life will look embarrassingly ordinary, and easily overlookable: small acts of kindness, quiet words of comfort, a choice to speak truthfully, a choice to listen carefully, an effort to serve, or a silent wait with someone who needs you to be with them as the presence of Christ. But we dare to believe that in God's hands, such low-to-the-ground actions are a witness of God's Reign of love in all the world.  We trust that God will work through such humble raw materials as our words and actions, and that out of them God might just pull up a sunflower or two.  So we keep at it, through the growing season that we call life, even on the days it doesn't look like our efforts mean anything, and even when the work is tiring and thankless.  We keep at it because we trust the God who has called us to such work, and who meets us in those earthy places where love leaves the smell of humus on our hands.

Lord God, enable us to trust you and your power to bring wonders from our daily work to witness to your kingdom.

The Company of Left-Handed Fencers--August 26, 2021

The Company of Left-Handed Fencers--August 26, 2021

"But recall those earlier days when, after you had been enlightened, you endured a hard struggle with sufferings, sometimes being publicly exposed to abuse and persecution, and sometimes being partners with those so treated. For you had compassion for those who were in prison, and you cheerfully accepted the plundering of your possessions, knowing that you yourselves possessed something better and more lasting." [Hebrews 10:32-34]

The followers of Jesus aren't weak when they choose the path of suffering love.  They're not losers when they put the interests of others before their own comfort.  They just know something that the so-and-sos can't believe to be true.

Ok, let me back up for a moment.  In fact, let me stick a pin in these verses from Hebrews for a moment entirely and recount a great scene from a great movie--the sword-fighting, swashbuckling duel between Inigo and the Man in Black from early in The Princess Bride.  I promise no spoilers, but as these two thrust and parry (and flip!) across rugged terrain on the edge of a cliff, at one point, the Man in Black asks his opponent, "Why are you smiling?"  In reply, Inigo says, "Because I know something that you do not know--I am not left-handed!"  And with that, Inigo the Spanish fencing master tosses his sword from his left hand into his right, and goes on the offensive with renewed ferocity and improved skill.  He had been intentionally fighting with his weaker hand all along.  (Of course, this leads the Man in Black to reveal his own secret as well--he is not left-handed, either, and with a similar flourish, takes his own sword in his right hand and proceeds to dominate once again.)

I love the scene, and the movie, just at the level of pure entertainment, but also for the theology of it.  I love the notion that you might be intentionally combatting opponents with a strategy that looks like weakness, or even like defeat, but with the sly smirk of knowing something that those opponents don't know or can't believe.  I love the idea that you might just knowingly, even strategically, choose to embrace what looks like foolishness as the way to victory, as a way of disarming those arrayed against you.  In fact, that's been the strategy of Jesus' followers from the earliest generations.  We are the company of left-handed fencers, so to speak.  We are a cadre of specially trained holy troublemakers, whose way of responding to evil in the world is to respond with goodness rather than more evil, who meet hatred with love, and who answer violence with a refusal to hit back with more violence.   We are disciples learning from a Lord whose way of countering the brutality of an empire and the ruthlessness of a religious lynch-mob was to lay down his life in self-giving love rather than kill or threaten or conquer.  We are a community of people convinced that God's way of accomplishing victory was a cross and resurrection, rather than a gun or a spear.

In other words, we are in on a secret--THE secret of all secrets, to be honest.  We are the ones with a sly smile of awareness that the most powerful force in the universe is love that endures suffering rather than cause it, even if the world around us thinks that is nonsense.  We're the ones smirking because we know the world thinks we are weak, when we are simply refusing to play by its childish rules.  

And the early church understood that its witness, its way of life, was inseparable from the way of Jesus, which meant the logic of a cross rather than a cudgel.  So when the writer of Hebrews talks about dealing with hostility and persecution, he simply presumes (correctly) that his readers all understand they are committed to bearing suffering as their way of combatting evil.  The early church didn't demand special treatment or protections or privileges in society, and they didn't put their own comfort above the well-being of others.  They were willing to be made fun of, excluded, or imprisoned, as their way of exposing the corruption and futile bluster of the powers of the day.  And their refusal to sink to the level of those bloated imperial powers by lashing out with violence in return for violence or evil for evil was a conscious choice--it was their way of victory, rooted in the victory of Jesus the Crucified and Risen One.

Those early Christians knew something that we, in a more comfortable and complacent time, have all too often forgotten.  They knew that God's Reign is made visible, not in conquering armies, vast piles of wealth, or angry mobs storming the halls of power with weapons in hand--God's Reign is revealed in barely noticed actions of chosen suffering... in solidarity with those who are being stepped on... in a willingness to bear hardship rather than answer hatred with more hatred.  In the twentieth century, they would have recognized the power of God in a Baptist preacher sitting in a Birmingham city jail, rather than in the presence of those who locked him up as a troublemaker.  In our day, they might point us to the small but significant choice to wear a mask for the sake of a neighbor at risk for COVID, or the work of those helping to settle Afghan refugees in our communities.  Or maybe it's in the willingness to partner with the folks treated by others as less-than.  Or it's the choice to welcome the visitors who come into your church holding hands who have been turned away by too many other respectable religious people.  Maybe when you and I refuse to give into the "Me and My Group First" mentality, or when we speak up for someone who has been told they don't matter, maybe then someone will see the same Reign of God in us as well.

The world will watch these small actions--the fundraiser for helping foreign refugees, the willingness to be inconvenienced for the sake of someone else's well-being, the intentional choice to include the folks too often left out--and think that we look "weak" or "foolish."  But don't you worry.  In fact, we can smile about it--we know something they don't.  We know that God's design is to redeem the world and reign in it through such signs of supposed weakness.  We are the followers of Jesus: the company of left-handed fencers.  We choose what the world thinks of as losing, or weakness, or foolishness--we choose the way of suffering, self-giving love, even for those who do not share our faith in Jesus--because that is the way of Jesus himself.  That is the way of the cross and resurrection.

Go ahead, let the angry and short-sighted voices of the world call us "sheep" or "losers" or "weak."  We will smile, lovingly, over the knowledge that this is exactly what God's Reign looks like, because our lives will look like the strong and self-giving love of Jesus our Shepherd, whose victory came on a cross. We are in on the secret--God's victory comes through the left-handed way of suffering love.

How will we show it and share it this week?

Lord God, give us the vision to see your victory in small acts of self-giving love... and then to make those actions our way of life.

More Than Shallow Sorries--August 25, 2021

More Than Shallow Sorries--August 25, 2021

"For if we willfully persist in sin after having received the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins, but a fearful prospect of judgment, and a fury of fire that will consume the adversaries. Anyone who has violated the law of Moses dies without  mercy 'on the testimony of two or three witnesses.' How much worse punishment do you think will be deserved by those who have spurned the Son of God, profaned the blood of the covenant by which they were sanctified, and outraged the Spirit of grace? For we know the one who said, 'Vengeance is mine, I will repay.' And again, 'The Lord will judge his people.' It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." [Hebrews 10:26-31]

I read someone's insight recently on social media (I think she was a mom) that said simply, "Don't say, 'I'm sorry' and then go right back to doing what you said you were sorry for." Man, that hit home.

It's not merely meaningless to say you are sorry for something if you never actually stop doing it, it's actively making things worse to offer an empty apology.  That cheapens the power of your words and gives the person to whom you are apologizing have a false hope that you are going to stop hurting them.  If you're going to say you are sorry for something you have done or said, there has to be a change in what you do and say from now on, or your words are a cruel joke.

That's true whether we are talking about your kids or mine, insisting they will not hit or harass one another and saying a quick "sorry" when they are caught, only to make a fist all over again as soon as they think you're looking the other way, or whether it's the loved one who keeps saying they'll quit drinking, or shooting up, or whatever, but never actually gets the help to break their addiction's hold on them.  It's true whether it's the abusive spouse who says, "I'll never hit you again," every time, but never seems to mean it, or the well-meaning Respectable Religious person who keeps saying they love God while also willfully ignoring the ways their casual bigotry hurts the people God has sent across their path.

In other words, don't trust the person who says, "I swear I'm sorry for setting fire to all those houses down," if he's holding a can of gasoline in one hand and a lit match in the other, or you're going to get burned.

Well, it's no less true if we're the ones starting fires that threaten to burn down our relationship with God, too.  If we really get it that we have been given a new beginning with God, where our crookedness and self-centered ways have been put behind us and set aside, it's like we are rejecting the gift of that forgiveness when we keep turning back to it. The same way it would break your beloved's heart to tell them you were done cheating on them, only to run off with a new fling next weekend, we break God's heart to keep turning back to the ways that have separated us from God before.  God keeps offering us a new future, and we have a way of running back to the same dead-end pasts we were stuck in before. But God wants more for us than just to hide behind shallow sorries.

That by itself is bad enough, but so often our dead-ends are also harmful to other people around us--people whom God fiercely loves.  When we keep turning back to old patterns that hurt others, God is especially upset, like any decent parent is.  If my son says he's sorry for hitting his sister, but then goes and hits her again a minute later, the problem isn't just that he has broken relationship with me, but that he has hurt her, again, too. And if we fool ourselves into thinking that God's forgiveness means we are free to keep being rotten jerks to other people who are beloved of God--a group that includes literally everyone--we have another thing coming.  

See, that's it--all this talk from the writer of Hebrews about the seriousness of continuing in sins isn't just a matter of God having a fragile ego or looking to zap people out of some bloodthirsty need for arbitrarily punishing people.  It's that God knows us, including the loopholes we look for and the mental tricks we try to pull.  And God knows we have this impulse to skip out on the hard part of mending broken relationships--actually putting things right and turning from the harm we have caused in the past--and wanting to jump right to saying we're forgiven and therefore not responsible for setting things right.  And God doesn't want to see use the language of grace and forgiveness as license to step on other people with impunity.  God is willing to bear an immeasurable cost in order to mend our relationship, but God is not willing to make someone else bear such a cost when we try and use, "But I said I'm sorry!" as a cover for going back to the same old destructive ways that hurt others.

I don't think the writers of Scripture want to make us live in fear of some divinely-thrown lightning bold of punishment out of the blue, but I do think they want us to understand that God cares about the people who get hurt when we keep turning back to our old dead-end ways.  And because God wants justice for them as well, we don't get to use some cheap sense of "mercy" as permission to keep stepping on other people or ignoring their needs. It's because I love my daughter that I don't let my son off the hook with a quick insincere, "Sorry" muttered while holding her in a headlock, or vice versa.  It's because God loves the people harmed by my selfishness, apathy, or hatred that God doesn't just let me mouth a memorized prayer of religious jargon like "repentance" and "confession" while leaving my heart, my mind, and my actions unchanged.  And it's because God loves me--and you, too--that God isn't fooled when other people try to do the same.  It is God's love for us all that insists justice has to be real to protect the people my actions would hurt, and it is that same love that insists forgiveness creates a new beginning for us, rather than an excuse to go back to our old death-dealing ways.

And when I think about this passage in that light, I get why the writer of Hebrews is so quick to insist that our actions still have consequences, that our choices always matter, and that living as forgiven people is meant to be a way forward rather than a detour backward.  And I am glad that God cares that way, about all of us.

Lord God, let us receive your forgiveness as the gift of a new beginning, rather than an excuse for more of the same old rottenness we were stuck in.

Provocateurs of Hope--August 24, 2021

Provocateurs of Hope--August 24, 2021

"And let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another and all the more as you see the Day approaching." [Hebrews 10:23-25]

It's funny, the places where life springs up, in the face of emptiness.

I was on a Sunday afternoon hike with my family last fall, and we ventured to the spillway at the end of a lake created by a local dam. I was struck with awe, both at finding a place I never knew existed, despite being so close to to where I live, and also to see this huge sloping pile of boulders, sections of concrete, and layers of exposed rock, designed to channel an overflow of water away from more vulnerable ground. This is a place that has been created to be pounded by torrents of water when necessary, to redirect the rain and runoff and to prevent the kind of dangerous flooding our part of Pennsylvania has lived through in waves before. So it is a spot where there isn't really supposed to be beauty. It's a place that is supposed to be barren, almost in a sacrificial way, so that other ground and other places can remain undamaged by a sudden deluge.

But when we found a place to sit for a bit of an afternoon that day, I was caught by surprise. There was an unexpected weed--a single, stubborn stem with a smattering of small yellow flowers straining up toward the sunlight--and it was growing straight up out of a crack in the rocks, with no soil, no nearby pool of water, and little direct sunlight.

It didn't just surprise me, or make me laugh--although I did. That little weed provoked me... in a good way. It worked its little roots not just into the crevice in the rocks, but into the folds of my brain, and it's been growing there ever since. That defiant little sprout with the yellow blossoms became for me a picture not only of hope but of the way hope, at its best, is provocative. Ever since I laid eyes on it, that image has been poking at me to think and act in ways that do the same in my world: to be a presence of life, against all odds, in the midst of what seems dead.

It seems to me, too, that the early followers of Jesus saw their calling in similar terms: we are called to be provocateurs of hope, people whose presence in the world serves as a contrast to the deathliness, and an alternative to the mean-spirited selfishness that is all around us. We are called to be people who spark acts of defiant hope in others as well. The flower's mere existence has been working its way into my soul over the last several months, pushing me to look for ways to bring expressions of life and hope into the world around me. And if I keep trying, maybe eventually I'll get it right and raise some little yellow blossoms up through the cracks in the limestone of someone else's barren soulscape. And maybe then they'll do the same for someone else. And who knows, but that before long one little weed may have ended up provoking quite a harvest of hopeful actions and words farther than any of its seeds could be carried by the wind.

When I hear these words from the book of Hebrews, I get the same picture in my mind. "Let us consider how to provoke one another to love and good deeds." It's an underground movement of compassion. It's an insurgency of goodness. It's about little provocative acts of hope that become contagious--and which at the very same time expose how much of the ground around us is hostile to that liveliness.

Look, it's no secret that the setting in which the early church grew up was a pretty hostile environment. The letter of Hebrews talks about persecution, torture, and imprisonment as things happening to people because of their faith in Christ. The Empire, on the one hand, was starting to crack down on these Christians because they seemed to be associated with disorderly conduct and riots, and they wouldn't give their undying allegiance to Caesar. And on the other hand, the guardians of Respectable Religion were upset at Christians, too, because they said scandalous things like saying the Son of God got strung up on a cross. It was dangerous being a Christian in that setting, and the danger made it easy to want to give up. Lots of those first generations of Christians would have found it very tempting to say, "You know what? This is an inhospitable environment to try to flourish it. We might live for a while and then get crushed in a deluge the next time there's a crackdown from Rome. Let's not even try." And yet, they didn't give in to those temptations. They kept on spurring each other on, provoking goodness out of each other and inspiring love in one another. And that, in turn, made the watching world take notice.

I want to suggest that this is our calling, too. Look, I get it--there are lots of things to be cynical about. There are a lot of things to be grieving over. We're disconnected and disjointed from people we used to be very close to, and so far the year 2021 seems to be doubling down on how 2020 has made it difficult to nurture those relationships. We're touched by turmoil all around--those whose livelihoods are precarious, those who are anxious about a new school year with viral variants on the rise, those bewildered by the chaos in Afghanistan or the disasters in Haiti, and those who are just afraid and depressed and anxious all the time. We're tired--and we've been exhausted for too long already. It feels like a wasteland, sometimes, to look around. I get it. I feel that, too.

But for us who name the name of Jesus, I think we need to be clear on whom and what we expect to come through for us, and we need to be honest about who and what will not be dependable sources of hope. And that allows us not to be disappointed when it turns out the ground around is bare rock without any soil--we will be able to find a crack to plant our roots in, and slowly but surely, those little roots can widen the crack and break the rock itself into pieces. We can be clear in a moment like this where not to put our hope, and to know in whom we can and do place our hope.

The writer of Hebrews wants to be clear that when we have rooted our hope in Christ, we can be honest about all the way the world around us is barren and cold... and we can keep straining up toward the light anyway. When we are rooted in Christ, we will be less let down when others don't come through--our hope will not have been in them. Once we are clear what our hope is actually placed in, we can bloom in unlikely places, and our presence in the world can provoke hope in other people. 

And that's the right spirit in which to think about why we do good for others--it's not about earning anything, or racking up imaginary points with God, or winning a spot in the afterlife. It's about letting the things that have first provoked hope in us also provoke hope through us for others. When someone has done something to show to love to us, it has a way of making us want to show love to others. When someone does something that inspires us, it has a way of nudging us to inspire others. That's how this works.

So go ahead, be a weed sprouting up through the cracks in the boulders. Let the simple fact of your existence be a wonder and inspiration to those who see you. Be a provocateur of hope.

Lord God, let our roots find strength in you, so that we can bring hope to others, too.

Hold On Hope--August 23, 2021

Hold On Hope--August 23, 2021

"Let us hold fast to the confession of our hope without wavering, for he who has promised is faithful." [Hebrews 10:23]

There's a lyric stuck in my head as I write these words, a recurring refrain from a 90s pop ballad by the band Guided By Voices.  It goes simply, "Everybody's gotta hold on hope, it's the last thing that's holding me." There's something to that refrain, as circular as it sounds: you hold onto hope, and discover that it's hope that is holding you.

I think that's something like the way Christian hope works--we hold onto hope, because the One on whom we pin our hopes is holding onto us.  We keep the faith, to borrow a phrase, because the One in whom we place our trust is faithful--that is to say, reliable, dependable, and constant. And it's because our hope is in that particular God that we keep holding on.  

Hope--all hope--has an object, like an arrow has a trajectory it is moving toward.  And it is that forward motion that makes hope different from wishful thinking. Just having a groundless want for things to get better will set you up for disappointment time and time again. Merely having, a la Fraulein Maria in The Sound of Music, "confidence in confidence alone" won't do the trick, any more than wishing for a sunny day tomorrow will make it so.  Christian hope isn't about forcing ourselves to see the sunny side of things or telling ourselves that every glass is half-full.  It isn't about somehow willing good things to happen by the power of positive thinking, either.  Like the old line of Lesslie Newbigin says, "I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist:  Jesus Christ is risen from the dead!"

That's just it: our hope isn't grounded in circumstances going our way or external events happening as we would have wished, but rather in a person who is constant.  It's because Jesus is faithful that I can keep holding onto Jesus, even when my hands are getting tired and slippery from sweat.  We hold onto hope in him, because we discover at the very same time that Jesus--in whom we have placed our hope and our trust--is holding onto us.

So what practical difference does a Jesus-rooted hope make in our lives?  Let me suggest a couple of ways.  For one, on the days when it feels like our best efforts aren't making a difference, or when the world's troubles are just too much in the face of our tiny efforts, a hope that is tethered to seeing outcomes change is going to be overwhelmed like a lifeboat in a tsunami. When we look at how daunting it is to take care of the world in which we live, when it seems like our individual efforts are tiny and negligible, it can feel like it's no use trying to limit how much energy you use or choose where it comes from, or like there's no way to stop the rise of ocean levels or the growing intensity of storms--so it's worthless even to try.  But if my hope is grounded in Jesus (who is faithful!), then I will be able to keep doing the things I know to do in order to be a good steward of the world around me, and to trust that those things are not in vain--that they are somehow gathered up in God's work to heal and restore and mend creation.  

Or if I watch the news and feel overcome at the tragedy of seeing so many desperate people in Afghanistan trying to flee an oppressive new government, or the amoral domination of warlords, or the chaos left in the power vacuum there, I can just feel like it's pointless to try anything, because it's all too complicated and above my pay-grade to meddle with problems bigger than I can understand.  But a Jesus-rooted hope can simply say, "How will I act in ways that align with the Jesus in whom I place my hope?"  And then, regardless of how daunting the Big Picture problem is, I can do what is within my ability to work on--whether helping to settle refugees in my area locally, writing and lobbying my representatives to help evacuate those seeking refuge, or donating money to relief and rescue operations I know I can trust.

In every situation, there's an important difference in rooting our hope in Jesus, compared with basing our hope on whether things seem to be going our way at the moment.  And what we are given in Jesus is a hope who will not let us down.  He takes our efforts, even when they seem like tiny sparks, barely visible against the vast gloom around, and he gathers them into his work to make all things new.  And because we know Jesus won't give up on this whole hurting world, we can find the courage to keep holding on to him, and adding our efforts to what he is up to in the world.  

When the need of the world or the troubles in our lives seem so big they threaten to swallow us all up, the writer of Hebrews sounds an awful lot like a 90s pop song:  we hold onto Hope himself, knowing that he's the One who is holding onto us.

And he is enough.

Lord Jesus, be your faithful self for us, and make our efforts for good to be a part of your work to make all things new.

A Standing Offer--August 20, 2021

A Standing Offer--August 20, 2021

"Therefore, my friends, since we have confidence to enter the sanctuary by the blood of Jesus, by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain (that is, through his flesh), and since we have a great priest over the house of God, let us approach with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." [Hebrews 10:19-22]

It's funny how often we miss out on time with the important people in our lives because we just assume they're always around and always will be.  You know what I mean?  There are people in all of our lives that we just sort of count on as important fixtures in our lives, but because of that constant background presence, we sometimes forget to take the time for checking in with them.  We forget to hit "pause" every so often to set aside the time for the people who love us.  Not because they will need favors done for them, or because we are saving up relationship points for the times we'll need their help or advice, but just to connect with them.  It's so easy to treat those people in our lives as being "there any time I need them," that we rarely actually make the time to seek out conversation, or their wisdom, or just their listening ear.  It's not so much that we take those people for granted, necessarily, but more that we don't want to take advantage of their time by talking with them about every little thing on our worry list... so we end up never taking the time at all.

And that, I must say, is a shame.  The people who love us want to be available to us.  And as many times as they may tell us, "You never need to have an official reason to call, or to check in, or to say hi," we sometimes still slide into that kind of unintentional distancing, where we slide away from people who would always be happy to share a coffee or a phone call or a face to face lunch.

We never mean to lose touch.  And we don't intend to grow distant. But we do end up missing out on the people who are there for us.  Those people don't mean to make us feel guilty or embarrassed or upset for not checking in or picking up the phone with any certain frequency--but they do want us to know we're there.  No pressure--only the standing offer of availability.

The writer of Hebrews wants us to know that there is a standing offer from no less than the living God for that availability, too.  None other than the Creator of the universe invites our ongoing conversations, our half-formed questions and nagging worries, our flightiest thoughts and our most serious burdens.  And there are no conditions, no prerequisites, no fees, and no catches.  God wants it all.

After having spent so much time in his train of thought showing how Jesus removes whatever barriers or obstacles there might have been between us and God, the writer of Hebrews gets to the takeaway of all of this: there is nothing preventing us from coming to God with whatever is on our hearts or minds or nagging at our guts, so there is every reason to bring it all to God.  There is no need to worry that God will turn us away like the ominous floating head of the Great and Powerful Oz in Emerald City, and there is no possibility that God will be too busy to listen.  No gatekeepers will turn us away, and no secretary will put us on hold.  God is available, and that is a standing offer.

Sometimes what it takes with our circles of friends and family is just an occasional voice or a friendly nudge to remind us, "Hey, why don't you make the time, why don't you take a moment, to check in with the ones you haven't talked to in a while."  No guilt or need for making excuses--just the friendly reminder that people who care about you would love to hear from you, but often they are waiting for it to be a good time for you to talk.  

So maybe what we are being given today is the reminder that we don't need to wait for a life crisis, or a milestone of faith, or a birthday or a new year, or a particular holy day in the church calendar or anniversary of a big event in your life, to just take the time to check in with God.  Maybe what we need is just the nudge of an older brother in the faith like the writer of Hebrews saying, "There's never a bad time to talk with God--why not now?"  And I suspect that when we do, we'll be able to pick up right where we left off, and discover that God has already been cheering us on, lifting us up, and guiding our path without our even realizing it. Because... it turns out that checking in with God isn't because God needs to be updated on the events of our lives--we're the ones who have the need to bring our lives into God's light.

Anyway, it's a standing offer.

Lord God, thank you for the freedom to come to you in anything, with whatever is on our minds or hearts.  Let us make us of that gift today, just as we are.

Picking Up the Pieces--August 18, 2021

Picking Up the Pieces--August 18, 2021

"And the Holy Spirit also testifies to us, for after saying, 'This is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord: I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds,' he also adds, 'I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more.' Where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer any offering for sin." [Hebrews 10:15-18]

If my kids are being careless in the kitchen and knock a mug onto the floor, I will insist that they help with the broom and dustpan to pick up the pieces.  And certainly, I will want them to learn to be careful, not just in kitchens, but wherever they are, and to take responsibility for cleaning up messes when they contribute to them.  But I'm not going to hold it over them for the rest of their lives, demanding payments of $4.99 every morning to keep paying for that mug over and over.  I won't keep on bringing up "the one time they broke that mug" over and over, either, to embarrass or shame them, or even to make a lighthearted joke.  I won't introduce new people to my kids by saying, "And these are my children... who once broke a mug in the kitchen when they were goofing off."  That's not how decent parenting works.  

And the reason for that is love.  Love is more interested in how relationships continue rightly into the future than in rehashing the past for personal profit.  Sure, I want my kids to become mature humans who can own up to their mistakes and repair what they break--but I will love them even now while they are learning that.  I need them to know that the relationship will continue, even after a broken coffee mug, a broken curfew, or a broken heart.  I need them to know that my love for them is not dependent on their capability to pay for the ceramicware they break.  And I need them to know that our relationship is not defined by their clumsiest moment, or by their most thoughtless actions, or their meanest words.

This is the nature of how forgiveness works: it is not saying that whatever infraction has been done by the person who wronged you was OK. It is saying that what they have done doesn't have to define the future, neither to keep you as permanent victim nor to cast them forever as the irredeemable villain.  Forgiveness opens up the future by saying that your relationship will not be reduced into a monetary transaction to pay back lost damages from the past.  Forgiveness says, "I am done demanding further compensation for what you did. I will not weaponize the past. Let's move forward."

Now, to be sure, forgiveness needs truth-telling as well.  I can't ask forgiveness if I cannot bring myself to admit that I have caused you harm, and I will probably bristle at your attempts to offer me forgiveness if I won't admit what I've done, either.  But truth-telling doesn't have to lead to demanding a pound of flesh for compensation.  Seriously, my kids don't need to be forever shelling out allowance money for a mug--they need to see how their actions caused the accident, to contribute to cleaning it up (and if possible, gluing the pieces back to together so it can at least hold pencils), and to make plans for how to avoid this happening again.  But I need them to know that I love them more than the cash value of a coffee mug.  Forgiveness is what tells them the relationship is more important than seeking those damages.  Forgiveness is what says, "I'll absorb the loss because I value you more than the broken pieces."  Forgiveness is what says, "I am done demanding payment."

I expect that none of this is particularly novel for parenting--this is pretty standard, I imagine, in households with small hands and breakables.  But what surprises me is how often we fail to make this same connection to God.  We who know the power of forgiveness in our relationships with our children, grandchildren, spouses, and friends--we have a hard time seeing that God chooses such relationship with us as well.  We have a hard time seeing that God is less interested in extracting payment from us as restoring relationship with us, and so we end up picturing God as some Divine Accountant who insists on itemized listings of every liability we have incurred and every transaction of payments back.  We end up assuming God is more interested in the heavenly ledger books being balanced than in assuring us our relationship can continue.  And we end up talking about the Christian faith like it is primarily about how to pay off a greedy Debt Collector in heaven, rather than about living in the family of a God who loves us more than the cash value of what we break in the kitchen.

The writer of Hebrews has tried to be clear to us here on this point, if we will give him a listen. Here he is quoting a passage from the prophet Jeremiah, who promised a day when God would both forgive our past infractions and also consciously choose not to remember them anymore in a sort of chosen forgetfulness.  God refuses to weaponize our past failures against us again--or like the old line says, in forgiving us, God takes the past and buries it with a shovel... and then buries the shovel. And in the words of this passage, where there is forgiveness, there is no longer any need for offering anything up in repayment or restitution.  Forgiveness itself, in the Greek of the New Testament, comes from the word for "letting go."  Sometimes we forget that God chooses to let go of whatever debts or rightful claims God could make over us, because God would rather hold onto us instead of a bunch of freshly counted beans.  That's how forgiveness works.

Think of what that means if we let it sink in.  It would suggest, not only in our relationship to God, but even in our society's way of thinking about infractions against the law and even criminal justice, that the goal is restoring relationship and setting things right again, not necessarily about paying some societal "debt" behind bars for a certain amount of time.  It is easy, given our current criminal justice system, to reduce actions to quantifiable sentences of jail time--as in, "That robbery was worth the equivalent of ten years in prison," or "That person owes society his whole life because of what he has done, so we have to execute him in the name of settling the score!"  But all of that suggests that there is some eternal accounting department that must be satisfied, rather than a God who wills for relationships to be restored and for wrongs to be set right.  Those are two very different pictures of God, to be honest.  One suggests that the math adding up correctly is the most important thing, and the other suggests that God would rather have us than the $4.99 for a new mug.

If the work of justice systems is to repair what is broken, to restore what has been taken away, and to make relationships possible again, then it will change how we see people who have made bad choices, broken laws, and caused harm.  It will mean we see them--gasp--as God does, which is more like children in a household who are loved even when they break things or hurt each other, rather than as irredeemable wretches.  Where there is forgiveness, there is no more offering for sin.  Where there is forgiveness, we no longer have to define people by their worst moments or biggest failures.  Where there is forgiveness, there is hope for the future, and for a beginning again.

How can you and I be a part of helping other people (and maybe ourselves, too) to pick up the pieces and begin again, rather than dooming other children in the household to being branded with their worst mistakes forever?  How can we be a part of God's eternal restarting with the world... today?  That seems a good way to spend this day.

Lord God, give us the hope and courage to begin again today--with you, and with one another.

Done--August 17, 2021

Done--August 17, 2021

"And every priest stands day after day at his service, offering again and again the same sacrifices that can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, and since then has been waiting until his enemies would be made a footstool for his feat. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified." [Hebrews 10:11-14]

Jesus "sat down," not because he was tired, but because he is done.

That's good news, according to the writer of Hebrews, because it means Christ's work is complete.  Finished.  Accomplished.  Done--in the sense that it cannot be undone.  Jesus doesn't let himself get caught sitting down on the job, so if you catch him seated, it must mean that the work is done.

We've heard something like this already from this book, so maybe this is a moment to ask: just what is it that we think Jesus has accomplished? What is it that is complete and irreversibly accomplished?  How is it that the universe really is a different place, given the way the world looks?

I ask these questions with the cynicism that my generation has learned as we have come of age, when so many times we had been told by Authoritative Voices that things would at long last be different... only to see the tired old ways come crawling back.  At the end of the Cold War, it was touted for a while that we had reached "the end of history"--as if to say, there would be no more struggle, no more war, no more brewing tensions between superpowers, because a clear winner had emerged.  That was not so--old animosities were replaced with new ones, and it turns out that the old ones just came back with different branding.  

We have lived through seemingly unending wars.  And even now, as headlines lament the fall of the Afghan government and the end of the U.S. military presence there while the Taliban takes power once again, it occurs to me that nearly half of my life has come and gone with our armed forces fighting this particular war.  Not just a war, or several wars, but twenty years of this particular war, as we watched cities captured by armies wearing American flags, and then have seen those same cities retaken by other flags.  I can only imagine the feelings of desperate frustration and futility of friends and acquaintances I know who have given years of their lives in active military service during those decades, seeing things that seemed "accomplished" become undone before their eyes.

So, forgive my skepticism, but I have lived through an awful lot of times when someone said, "It's complete--finished!" only to discover that it wasn't really time to sit down.  I can't help but ask the question, then, of Jesus as well:  what is it that Jesus has accomplished that cannot be undone?

And maybe the follow-up, is whatever Jesus has accomplished really and truly irreversible? I ask because I have lived through too many times where something touted as "foolproof" wasn't able to withstand my own foolishness.  Is Jesus' offering of his own life somehow even able to withstand my own blundering, my own persistent selfishness, and my own way of getting myself into new trouble?

The writer of Hebrews says, Yes.

Yes, Jesus' accomplished work ends the need for anybody to offer anything to restore relationship with God for my sake.  That is over and done.  In other words, there is nothing I can do to make God's love let go of me.  There is nothing else left for me or anybody else to do to complete the deal--it is sealed and done.  There is nothing I can forget or fail at that will reverse God's fiercely faithful commitment to me--and to all of us.  Not even my own rejection of God's love will undo God's insistence on loving me.

That means, to ask an old question, if someone wonders, "Can a person lose their salvation?" the writer of Hebrews comes down hard on the side of a loud and clear, "No."  You can't undo what Jesus has already accomplished.  Like the cry from the cross, "It is finished," these verses from Hebrews insist that Jesus has done something to restore us to God regardless of whether we think anybody else is worthy of such a gift, and even regardless of whether I think I myself am worthy.  God has taken the initiative and accomplished it all without needing my help for the heavy lifting, and without needing me to approve of the plan.  Done is done, and Jesus' work is done.

And if that is true, then maybe the only real question left is the one I have heard attributed to the late theologian Gerhard Forde, who framed it this way: "What are you going to do now that you don't HAVE to do anything?"  If I don't have to waste my energy, worry, time, or resources trying to make God like me when God already loves me, then, my goodness, I am free to stop worrying about points for myself and am free to love the people around me, gracefully and with reckless abandon.

The world is going to keep making empty promises to us of things it says are "done" once and for all, which keep needing to be redone or recaptured or remade or repaired.  Save yourself some heartache and stop believing them when they say those missions are accomplished.  But all the same, remember, too, that Jesus' work really is done, and that there is nothing on God's green earth--or anywhere else, for that matter--that can reverse what Jesus has completed for you and for me.

Done is done.  Thank God.

Lord Jesus, thank you--all we can do is to say thank you back for all you have done for us, accomplished once and for all in Jesus.  Now, let us use this day and this life for the sake of others whom you love.

The Bringer of Newness--August 16, 2021

 

The Bringer of Newness--August 16, 2021

"When he said above, 'You have neither desired nor taken pleasure in sacrifices and offerings and burnt offerings and sin offerings,' (these are offered according to the law), then he added, 'See, I have come to do your will.' He abolishes the first in order to establish the second. And it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all." [Hebrews 10:8-10]

I think we are more afraid than we let on that things could be different.

And I think we are afraid even to face the reality of what it costs God to bring the newness we deeply need but also deeply fear.

Because, at least as the writer of Hebrews has insisted, it costs God everything.

We heard in the opening verses of this book the bold idea that Jesus is the very fullness of God's being, like the perfect and complete image of God, rendered, not in oil paints or pen and ink or photograph, but in a human life.  Jesus is what God's melody sounds like, so to speak, when played in the key of humanity.  And yet this Jesus is offered up as the way to end the old arrangements that have kept us at odds with one another and with God.  Jesus bears our own deathliness as the way of ending our hell-bent self-destructiveness.  His own death isn't meant to prop up the old systems that required constant refueling with more death, but rather to bring an end to them.  The death of Jesus--as the writer of Hebrews calls it, "the offering of his body"--doesn't mean, "Look, here's another sacrifice, so let's keep this whole sacrificial system going forever," but rather the opposite.  The cross is the sacrifice that ends all sacrifices, and the system around which people had built their lives (and their pictures of God) that was grounded in those sacrifices.

In a way, this whole passage reminds me of a bit of Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address.  Given just a few days before the surrender of Lee and the end of the war, Lincoln did an interesting bit of national civil-religion theology.  He said that the terrible system of slavery needed to come to an end, and that it seemed the cost in blood and treasure of the war itself might just be the necessary payment for bringing that wicked system to an end.  Lincoln offered the possibility that it might be God's will that "all the wealth piled up by the bondman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil be sunk," and that "every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn by the sword."  In other words, Lincoln was framing the Civil War itself as the means of ending the cruelty and injustice of the system of slavery that had been in place for centuries before.  And while we can certainly discuss some other time how much Lincoln saw the war in terms of ending slavery at the beginning, versus how much that became a convenient framing as the war went on, it's at least fair enough to say that at the end of the war, he understood that the outcome would make possible the abolition of slavery everywhere in the Union.  The war became the price for ending the enslavement of millions, as Lincoln saw it, even if no one exactly knew why such a price had to be paid.  

Now, of course, part of what made that chapter in American history so precarious is that for an awful lot of our ancestors at that time, the idea of ending "the way it's always been" was so scary they couldn't even imagine a new ordering of things.  They couldn't imagine a new way of building an economy that wasn't based on exploiting the labor of enslaved people, or the cheap goods that came from that labor.  They couldn't imagine a new ordering of society where people were not deemed less-than because of their ancestry or the color of their skin or the curl of their hair. They couldn't imagine an end to the old system, and so they feared what it could look like to see it crumble.  (And for that matter, whatever glimmers of that "newness" there might have been in the Reconstruction era were stifled shortly after when White southerners took back power and brought back much of the old system with new names and subtle differences.)

I think the writer of Hebrews sees something similar going on in Jesus' death at the cross.  In Jesus' death, we have God's willingness to pay the ultimate price in order to end the old system that seemed dependent on death.  God doesn't demand a certain number of soldier die on a battlefield to rectify things, as Lincoln speculated in his address.  But rather, God offers God's own life in the person of Jesus, as the means of bringing sacrifices to an end, once and for all.  And it really is nothing short of tearing apart an old system and bringing about a new order--abolishing the old and bringing forth something new.

It can seem pretty surprising to consider that as the Bible tells it, God is the One tearing down those old systems, and God is the One bringing forth newness. We are so used to thinking of God as the white-bearded fellow tasked with propping up whatever the status quo is, and that God's job is to keep things the way they are.  We are used to picturing God as the one who makes things "go back to normal," or who restores things to some "good old days" way we picture in our memory.  But more often than not, the Scriptures speak of God as the breaker of old systems, the abolisher of old orders, and the creator of the new.  And Jesus is the face of that newness.

As someone who knows how comforting it can be to clutch onto the familiar--or at least how relatively comfortable we can tell ourselves we are with the devil we know rather than some future we cannot picture--I get it, how frightening it can be to think the sentence out loud, "It doesn't have to be this way."  I know how scary it can be to see the old systems we've been stuck in for a very long time rooted out and pulled down, because at least we know how those routines go.  But maybe today is a day to allow God to bring some newness to us, and to hear God's assurance that we don't have to be afraid of it.

In fact, maybe today is a day to recognize the lengths God has gone to and the costs God has paid to make that new creation possible--a creation, and a new kind of relationship, not built on death, but on the end of death.

What else could that newness look like for us today?

Lord God, bring your newness among us today, and give us the courage to embrace it.