Somebody You Know--December 1, 2021

Somebody You Know--December 1, 2021

Somebody you know is waiting.  Waiting to be remembered.  Waiting to get some sign of friendliness, some assurance of their worth, some message from another soul that says, "You are not forgotten."

Someone you know, even if you do not know them very well or go back a long way, is waiting for some acknowledgement of all the heartache they are nursing, all the effort they are giving to the world, all the burdens they have been carrying for too long.  

That somebody--or maybe there are several (it seems likely; after all, life is hard)--isn't looking to have you swoop in to fix all their problems.  But they are waiting, longing even, for you to reach out and say, "I see you."  Someone is waiting for you to check in with them.

Today, the dare for each of us is to do just that--to check in on someone.  Nothing more, necessarily--this isn't about you or me casting ourselves as the hero or the savior out of pity.  But also, nothing less--that is, it will take us actually reaching out and making contact.  Good intentions don't even get us outside our own heads.  Well-meaning but forgotten plans don't make a difference.  Actually picking up the phone, or better yet, talking to someone face to face, or even sending a text message if nothing else--actually making contact with someone who might just need to hear that you were thinking of them and wanted to check in.  That goes a very long way indeed.  

And, in God's cleverness, it might also give us a deeper understanding of what we are hoping for in this season of Advent.  We are longing, with our ancestors in the faith going back for generations, to know that God sees us... that God remembers us... that God has not left us to fend for ourselves.  Sometimes what we need is simply the assurance that God loves us enough to stay connected with us... because sometimes we feel awfully forgotten or alone.

This is one of those things I think we sometimes miss each year as we rush toward Christmas, ticking each day off our calendars once we hit the start of December.  We don't even have to wait four full weeks to get to Christmas Day now, and yet our ancestors in the faith waited their whole lives--and longer--to see some whisper of a hint that God was still moving in the world.  We sing, "O come, O Come, Emmanuel, and ransom captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here..." but maybe it doesn't sink in that those were centuries (centuries!) of people's longing and waiting to hear from God that they were not alone.  They were willing to be patient with God, but sometimes, if they were really honest, it felt like God was ignoring them, or that God's messages weren't getting through.  They needed someone--some prophet or poet or leader--to tell them, "God sees us.  God loves us.  God knows what we are going through and shares it with us."

When we remember that part of our faith story, maybe we'll be able to recognize how often any of us may find ourselves in that place. We need to know someone else sees.  We need to know someone else cares.  We need to know we haven't been forgotten or pushed off to the side or left out.  We need someone to check in on us. Maybe nothing more--no agenda, no favors to be asked or fixes to be applied.  Just the presence of someone else saying, "I was thinking of you and wanted to hear how things are going for you."

And from there, well, maybe it's just conversation.  Sometimes someone has been left feeling invisible or forgettable for so long they can hardly believe it when you take the time to say, "I want to know what's going on in your life!"  Sometimes they are so used to putting up their own defenses they don't know how to respond to genuine care, and you have to be patient with them.  Sometimes the other person needs permission by your willingness to check in on them to unload the things that have been weighing on them, and then to let them go like chaff in the breeze.  Like I say, it's not about you or me getting to swoop in to save the day or "fix" someone where we think they are broken--it's about sharing what they are going through, as a reminder that they are not forgotten by God.  The apostle puts it like this:  "weep with those who weep, and rejoice with those who rejoice."  To do that, we have to be checking in with one another to know which is called for.

Just imagine what ripple effects you may have on someone else's life--what a chain-reaction you may trigger, just by the willingness to send a message, leave a voicemail, or start a conversation.  The world teaches us to keep our troubles close to the vest, like we are all playing a bad hand of cards and have to keep our best poker faces.  But to break through those defenses and let someone know you care about them, without being condescending or patronizing, but just to remind them they are important to you--that changes things.  It reminds the other person--and you as well!--that none of us is in this life alone.

I can't help but think of those words from Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer's poem, "Belonging," on a day like today, where she writes:

"And if it's true we are alone,
we are alone together,
the way blades of grass
are alone, but exist as a field.
...When we feel alone,
we belong to the grand
communion
of those who sometimes feel alone.
we are the dust, the dust that
hopes,
a rising of dust, a thrill of dust,
the dust that dances in the light
with all other dust, the dust
that makes the world."

Someone you know feels like that lonely blade of grass, that isolated speck of dust, and could really use your presence to connect with them while they "mourn in lonely exile here."  You could be the one who shows up on the edge of their awareness, like a prophet to forlorn Israelites in Babylon, to say, "You are not alone.  I am with you, and because I am with you, you must also be in the presence and under the care of the God who led me to reach out to you, too."  

You could be the one who makes all the difference in the world to someone today.  Take the chance.  Embody hope for them.

Lord God, help us to see and to call to mind the people on the periphery of our awareness who might need to know they are beloved today.  Give us the courage and the time to reach out.

Gathering Seeds--November 30, 2021

Gathering Seeds--November 30, 2021

We are about as far away on the calendar as you can get from planting season, I know. And I'll wager that the harvests from your own garden this year are all far in the rear-view mirror.  But I'm going to ask you to try something today that is intentionally out-of-step with the usual rhythm of planting and harvesting: start planning your garden for the year ahead.  Even go ahead and start gathering seeds. Do it as a spiritual exercise--as a way of learning what it feels like to live in hope of a coming future.

Most of us who aren't professional farmers have lost (or never had) the skill of living our present-tense lives in light of an unseen future, or of how that calls for both action and patience.  But for people whose livelihoods are built around sowing now what will be reaped in time to come, life is constantly pointed in the direction of a day that has not yet dawned.  Followers of Jesus could stand to learn that--or to rediscover it.

In a way, that's what this season of Advent does for us: it reminds us that our lives are always oriented (a word which originally meant "pointed toward the direction of the sunrise," appropriately enough) toward God's new day, and God's new creation.  We stake our lives on the promise that God is making all things new, and that in the mean-time, we are called to spend our resources (time, money, energy, and love) in light of what will last into that new creation.  That sounds to me rather a lot like gathering up seeds and sketching out a plan for a garden bed, even while the winter is just beginning.  It is an act of hope to envision tomatoes, cucumbers, and sunflowers precisely at the time when the ground is freezing.  It is an act of faithful defiance of death to imagine there will be more to be said after January winds and snows do their worst.

So, go ahead: get out the graph paper. Sketch out a drawing.  Check the shed or the discount displays at your home-and-garden store for seeds.  Read up on how far apart to space your seeds and do the calculations for how many you'll need.  Even start your list of friends you'll bring zucchini to come summertime.  Do something, in other words, that requires hope and patience at the same time--remembering, perhaps, that in languages like Spanish, the same verb means both "to hope" and "to wait."  

And then notice what happens to you as you start to picture that future.  Even in winter, you'll start looking at the ground of your future garden differently.  You'll be careful what you dump there, or what messes you leave on that ground.  You'll watch where you step.  You'll begin to picture what it will be like on some gloriously warm June day to watch sprouts, or what it will smell like to have the scent of fresh tomato leaves impressed on your hands.  You'll treat the ground itself like it is special, even if there's nothing in the soil there yet.  But you'll know that it is special, even now, even at this moment, in light of what will happen in that patch of earth.  

And as you do, you'll also find your patience being stretched and increasing your flexibility, much like stretching the legs in your muscles enables you to run without getting a charley-horse.  The more we train our spirits to do things now even if we can't see or feel the "pay-off," the more we teach ourselves that there are things worth doing apart from instant gratification, the more we'll be able to see our day-by-day choices as part of God's Reign.  I'm reminded of those lines of Wendell Berry:

"Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns. 

Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years."

That's what it looks like to live now in light of a promised future--even if that future is far down the road.  And when we do that--even if it starts in small actions like the gathering of seeds for a springtime garden, it will change us.  We'll start seeing all of life differently-- every interaction, every day, every choice, as a chance to act in light of a promised future.  We'll see relationships with other people in light of knowing we'll be neighbors in the new creation--and so we'd better find ways to be neighborly to them right now.  We'll see acts of generosity toward strangers--the gift tags at the Salvation Army or for local school kids who are in need, or the donation to the homeless ministry in your community--as seeds planted for the sake of their future, even if you never get to see (or receive credit) for the goodness you place into their lives.

In a culture that focuses on immediate pay-offs, instant gratification, and fast profits, you and I can be people who choose to be deliberately out-of-step.  We can be ahead of the curve--gathering seeds for a garden we cannot yet see, whose produce we will gather in time as well.  And when we take those small, concrete steps, action like seeds themselves, we let God shape our spirits to embody hope that the world needs.

Let it start small.  Let it start today.

Lord God, enable us to act now in light of a future we cannot yet see, but which we trust you will bring to fruition.  Shape us by your promises.

 

Practice Transformation--November 29, 2021

Practice Transformation--November 29, 2021

I don't believe in magic anymore, but I do believe in miracles.  In fact, I believe they are more common than we are used to thinking.

I don't believe in spells or incantations or lucky charms, but I do see wonders all around me every day--and I believe we are invited to participate in them.

And I want to begin this Advent season with such an invitation--to be a part of a wonder, a piece of something so amazing, despite its commonness, that it certainly feels close to "magic."  I want to extend to you the invitation to practice a bit of transformation.

This season, we want to invite you to a faith that goes beyond merely thinking religious thoughts or feeling spiritual feeling.  We want to dare something that looks like embodying the Good News.  Carrying it in our bones.  Letting it direct our words, our actions, our hands, and our feet.  Being the presence of the Gospel for people around us, and enacting it with our own bodies.  The world around us, after all, has had more than enough of empty talk, and the loud, angry voices bombarding us from screens and social media all around don't make us more like Jesus, but rather they have a way of bringing out the worst in us.  So in this year ahead, know that you are invited to be a part of practicing what we believe is true--about the way of Jesus, about the Reign of God, about the depth of grace and the relentlessness of love.  In other words, an embodied gospel.

And I want to invite you to let it start with something surprisingly close to magic, but something very, very real.

I want to ask you today to consider the spirituality of recycling something--something you would otherwise probably just call "trash."  Yep--an empty can that once held green beans or creamed corn. A plastic bottle.  A glass jar.  A cardboard box from some Christmas present you have already had shipped to your home.  Find it.  Pick it up.  Set it where it can be recycled--whether picked up by a truck as some communities have, or taken to a recycling center as some do, or choosing to re-purpose it yourself by cleaning it and using it again.  But actually do it.  Physically take the old thing and make the choice to do something with it rather than letting it go to the landfill or the burn pile.  Let it become more than a good intention--let it become an action, even if a small one.

Now, please don't get me wrong.  I don't believe for a second that I'll save the world by taking one empty water bottle and putting it in a blue bin for recycling rather than in a trash bag or a dumpster.  And I promise you I will not lead you into such illusions, either.  I don't want us to get sentimental about tiny gestures.  But I do want to get spiritual about small actions... which become habits... which in turn become our way of life and our character.  

And there is indeed something spiritual--something deeply Jesus-like, I would say--about the seemingly insignificant choice to reuse or recycle something.  That's what I want to explore.  

Here's what I mean. The Scriptures, both what we call the Old and New Testament alike, speak of God making a "new heavens and a new earth"--a whole new creation.  You can find it scattered throughout the oracles of prophets like Micah and Isaiah, throughout Paul's letters, in the words of Jesus, and as the closing visions of the book of Revelation.  But that "new creation" isn't about throwing away this world or the beings who dwell in it--it is about transformation.  It is about taking this world, with all its scars, all the ways we have mistreated one another, all the wounds we have inflicted on one another and on the rest of the masterpiece itself, and making something new out of it... but with the same raw materials.  It is the risen Jesus stepping into the room with a new body but keeping the scars.  It is about crafting a New City "coming down out of heaven" (Rev. 21) but then filling it with us--you and me and all the rest of us humans from the "old" creation, as fragile and vulnerable as we are. It is about taking swords and beating them into plowshares, and spears into pruning hooks.  In other words, recycling.  Or, maybe because that word seems so mundane--it is about how God practices transformation on the whole cosmos.

That, we Christians believe, is the destination--the purpose, the goal, you could say--of all creation: to be made new in God's goodness.  Not lost or burned up or destroyed, but re-made.  Renewed.  Sure, re-cycled.  To recycle something is to say, "This physical thing, however it has been spent, marred, emptied, or broken, is still good, still of worth, still of value, and still worthy of care."  And maybe, in our choice to take things the world would say "aren't worth the effort" of recycling, we can practice a bit of defiance, a bit of holy resistance, against the ruthless logic of "what's good for business" or "what is profitable."  Maybe when I take the time, and energy, and effort to cart a tub full of empty bottles to the recycling center, I am saying, in effect, "I don't care whether it makes anybody any more money, but I believe the world is beloved of God, and this small action is a way of honoring what God has made and called good."  Maybe when I take the objects that were ready to be thrown out and give them a new use, or make them into something new, it is a way of training my soul to see what God intends for all creation.  Maybe when I take the jar out of the trash but instead take the time to rinse it and set it aside, I get the tiniest glimpse of God's choice not to give up on creation--or on us--but to love us enough to enter into the mess we have made and redeem, reclaim, and renew us.

Maybe I don't really understand what the Christmas story is about until I can see in it how God took an empty food trough and re-used it to become the crib of the Messiah. Maybe my small act of re-purposing, re-using, or recycling something will teach me about how God promises new creation through that same child from the manger.

And if that happens when I save the empty tuna can to be melted down and made into something new, or restore a pair of worn-out shoes that were ready for the dumpster, then I'm not merely recycling--I'm practicing transformation.  That is a small daily habit, sure.  But it is also a holy wonder I am invited to join in.  And it is a way of moving hope from being just a bit of head knowledge to something that moves in my hands.

We pray:  Lord God, train our hearts for hope of new creation by training our hands to reclaim what the world calls trash for new purposes.

The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

The Taste of Cherries--November 22, 2021

"Pilate entered the headquarters again, summoned Jesus, and asked him, 'Are you the King of the Jews?' Jesus answered, 'Do you ask this on your own, or did others tell you about me?' Pilate replied, 'I am not a Jew, am I? Your own nation and the chief priests have handed you over to me. What have you done?' Jesus answered, 'My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.' [John 18:33-36]

For a brief window of time, my kids absolutely refused to try real cherries, because they had only ever had artificial-cherry-flavored medicine, which they understandably hated.

Just sit with that for a moment.  They refused the genuine thing--actual, dark red, fresh, still-on-the-stem cherries (we're not talking those unnaturally bright ones from the jar here)--because all they had ever known was a terrible counterfeit that came with the bitter taste of "cherry" cough syrup.  For the longest time, all my wife and I could do was to assure them that real cherries tasted different, and so, so much better than the artificial flavor of medicine, and to keep inviting them to try some.

Blessedly, at some point, my son and daughter were brave and curious enough to try an actual fresh cherry, and they have been gobbling them up each summer when they are in season ever since.  But the disgust that came from only having had a poor substitution for the real thing has stuck with me for a long time ever since... because we keep doing the same to the reality Jesus calls the "kingdom of God."

All of human history has been lived in that window of time before tasting the real thing... and all we've known are pretenders and frauds.  Of course, if all you've had is the artificial, you'll never recognize the genuine article; in fact, you'll likely think the real is the fraud because it doesn't look like what you expect, or taste like what you were used to.  That's how we end up crowning Caesar and crucifying the Christ.  

Maybe it's not surprising that Pontius Pilate, the imperially-authorized Roman governor, should be so confused about who Jesus is and the Reign of God he embodies.  After all, Rome is one in a long line of empires past and present that conquer, dominate, kill, and steal to prop themselves up. You would expect someone like Pilate to be utterly confused about Jesus, who is basically a homeless street preacher with a penchant for hanging out with nobodies.  But even Jesus' innermost circle of followers seem dangerously wrong about how the genuine Reign of God operates.  After all, as Jesus tells Pilate, "If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over..." and of course, that is exactly what had happened just a matter of hours before he said it.  There they had been in the garden earlier that evening, and when the police and their lynch mob arrived to arrest Jesus, when Simon Peter decided to take "law and order" into his own hands and started swinging his sword at them, assuming that Jesus endorsed his plan.  Jesus had to tell even his closest followers, including Peter himself, that they weren't to deputize themselves and take up weapons in some misguided attempt to preserve the Kingdom or protect the King.  They had become so used to violent (counterfeit) regimes that they assumed God's Reign worked the same way. No wonder the world around so often thinks God is just an even bigger version of Caesar or Pharaoh: religious folks have been claiming to have God's endorsement to kill in the name of preserving order since Simon Peter's self-appointed vigilantism in the garden.  We have fallen for frauds so badly we don't recognize the genuine Reign of God standing in front of us because the One who brings it looks like an unarmed loser.

As Robert Farrar Capon put it so powerfully, "We crucified Jesus not because he was God but because he blaspheme: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's that he wasn't what we were looking for.  Our kind of Messiah would come down from the cross.... He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying."  And that's just it: we are so used to counterfeits we assume that if Jesus is a real "king" he'll be like what we're used to: locked and loaded to destroy evildoers and crush his enemies in the name of Law and Order, rather than laying down his life in suffering love with hands that are empty, save for the nails.  It's like we've only ever had "cherry-flavored" medicine and assume that the actual fruit is a fake because it doesn't taste the same.

The Good News on a day like today, then, is that no matter how wrong we get it, Jesus insists on being the real deal, whether we like or not, and whether we recognize him or not.  Jesus insists on being a different kind of king, regardless of whether Pontius Pilate or Simon Peter is the one who wants him to fit their mold.  And he keeps pulling us into his upside-down kingdom--only to have us discover that we're the ones who have been turned the wrong way all along.  The Reign of Self-Giving Love is the right-side-up way, and it always has been, just as it always has been God's way.  We're the ones who have had it wrong--not Jesus.  We're the ones who have never tasted an actual fresh cherry off the stem.  Jesus is the real deal.

Today, rather than trying to make Jesus fit our expectations (and always having it leave a bitter taste in our mouth), what if we let Jesus show us what God's Reign is like on his own terms--and then let that change the way we see everything else... and how we live in a world full of phony kings and kingdoms?  What if we were curious and brave enough to taste the real thing Jesus offers us?

Lord Jesus, show us again your strange (to us) way of reigning in the world... and help us to step into that Reign with your kind of love.

An End to Flags--November 18, 2021

An End to Flags--November 18, 2021

"I saw one like a human being, coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed." [Daniel 7:13-14]

It's for everybody.  That great and promised Reign of God where all things are put right--it is, in the end, for everybody: for people from every nation, every tribe, every ethnicity, every language, and every people-group.  In the end, all those lines we have been drawing between one another to keep each other out or keep ourselves divided will be erased, and all will be drawn into the encompassing claim of God's Reign over the whole creation.  For whatever else that means, it sure as heaven tells me that our present-moment experience of being sorted into different squabbling nations, states, and parties with their own allegiances and loyalties will not be the end of the story.  There will come an end to our divided humanity.  There will come an end to our various flags.

The biblical writers, like the visionary speaking here in the book of Daniel, aren't upset or outraged by that claim--they are hopeful about it.  They see it as a sign of God's ultimately victory, and of the promise that God will gather all peoples together in the coming of Messiah--the promised "anointed one" who would reign, not merely as king of Israel or Judah, but would gather in all nations, in all their variety and diversity, into a new dominion that would last forever.  Christians have for two thousand years now pinned our hopes on the conviction that Jesus is that Messiah, and that his way of bringing about this universal Reign of God doesn't have anything to do with imperial armies conquering their foes but with a cross and empty borrowed tomb.  Our deepest hope, one sustained for countless generations before us, is of a coming day when our old divisions are set aside, even if we remain different in appearance, language, and culture, and where we no longer need to rally around competing banners, teams, parties, sides, or nationalities.

To be sure, there's a certain kind of limited unity you can have when you've got a flag in common--but it's always dependent on having somebody else to see as an outsider.  "To be on the Blue Team means you're not on the Red Team!"  To belong to one nation means you have to see others as enemies, opponents, and competition--their success means your failure, and your victory means their defeat.  We've been dividing ourselves under different banners and along different lines forever, we humans. Sometimes the threat to outsiders (those with different flags) is subtle and implicit--sometimes it's outright nasty.  In the days of the American Civil War, for example, you not only had Union armies marching under the Union flag (what we would call the American flag today) and the Confederate flag marching under their colors, but you had a number of instances of Confederate-sympathizing families who would fly a "black flag" from their poles as a sign to strangers that they were not only not welcome, but would be given "no quarter" and would be killed on sight if you came to their door.  It wasn't merely a symbol of one team or side rather than another--it was a outright declaration that if you weren't of "their kind" they would take no prisoners but only ruthlessly kill those who came near.  It is a sobering thing to see the return of such black flags in yards once again, I confess.  Heaven help us.

All of this is to say that our hope as Christians has to be that at some point, somehow, God will be able to overcome the divisions that have set us drawing lines between each other and seeing our siblings as enemies to be defeated since Cain first rose up against Abel.  Our hope is not that one day there will be an American section of heaven, kept separate from Kenyan heaven or Indonesian heaven or Colombian heaven.  Neither is our hope that only people from one nation will be there (we Americans tend to assume it will only be Americans, of course).  Our hope has to be big enough to dare to imagine that at the last, God's Reign gathers in all those disparate groups and makes us one in serving God's good purposes sharing in the common humanity we have as people made in the image of God in the beginning.  

In Dr. King's words, "God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and in the creation of a society where all [people] can live together as [siblings], where every [one] will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality."  For King, of course, that vision of a future Beloved Community shaped actions now--the goal of combatting racism and segregation, for example, was not only to free Black Americans held down by Jim Crow, but also to free White Americans who were trapped in the soul-distorting role of looking down on their neighbors.  The goal of the Beloved Community isn't to have one group prospering in wholeness at the expense of the other, but for each to be freed from the various ways we are disfigured by enmity and hostility.  In other words, we are called to work for the good of all, even those who have cast themselves as your enemy, because we dare to believe that at the last those lines between us will not hold, and our various banners will be set aside.

If our lives as Christians are aimed toward a future with that kind of hope--where Christ is Lord of all and draws all peoples, nations, and languages together in a renewed creation--then it will change our priorities and cut away our pettiness between one another.  It will mean we begin to picture a life without having to see "the other" as "the enemy." It will mean we dare to believe that even the folks we have the hardest time getting along with are still beloved of God and will be included in the reach of God's Reign.  Ultimately, to hope for Jesus' kingdom will mean we will lower whatever black flags we have been flying from our hearts and burn them to ash, and instead to see the people God sends across our paths today, not as "enemy" or "threat," but as people whom Christ, the "one like a human being," is gathering alongside us in the infinitely wide Reign of God.

There will come an end to flags in the end--thank God.

Lord Jesus, gather us together in your love for all peoples, and help us to live now in ways that anticipate your Reign that includes all nations and languages.

God at the Department of Transportation--November 17, 2021

 

God at the Department of Transportation--November 17, 2021

"The LORD is my shepherd, I shall not want.  He makes me lie down in green pastures; he leads me beside still waters; he restores my soul. He leads me in right paths for his name's sake." [Psalm 23:1-3]

You know what I am grateful for?  Cross-walks.

I am grateful, in all honesty, that human beings have agreed to this convention where a community of people trusts their local municipal government to mark out lines at intersections for people to cross so they don't get hit by oncoming traffic.  I'm grateful we have collectively agreed to obey stop-lights and traffic signals when we are the ones driving, so that the pedestrians crossing will be kept safe.  And I'm grateful that we teach our children when they are the ones walking to wait for the sign (or, in some of the cross-walks where I live, for the voice of "Jimmy Stewart" as well) to indicate when it is safe to go in the narrow pathway between the white painted lines.

That's a good system.  And I am perfectly content to trust my local town council or the crew from the Department of Transportation to figure out where there is enough potential danger to tell us all where to walk, and where to stay in the lines.  In fact, I have never, not once, heard anybody decry crosswalks as "government overreach" or "tyranny" or an "oppressive mandate," because, honestly, we've all been the pedestrian, grateful for a place and time to cross a busy street--and probably because we have all been the driver before, too, realizing just how close a call we might have had with someone jaywalking across the middle of a busy city block.  

Honestly, could you imagine the utter idiocy of someone protesting that their "rights" were being infringed because they wanted the "freedom" to get hit by a car and walk wherever they damn well pleased in the name of liberty?  No, of course not--being directed to do something that is the right thing to do isn't tyranny--it's how we learn to do the right thing. All of that is to say, having someone else guide you onto a good path isn't a bad thing, just because someone else is telling you to follow it. It does not require defiance that pretends it is noble martyrdom or "I can do what I want with my feet"-style stubbornness. Sometimes exactly what we need is a trustworthy voice saying, "Walk here--this is a safe way to go."

I know there is something in our national culture that just like to rebel at things because we think that makes us noble or independent or strong, but sometimes it just makes us jerks who don't know a good thing that is being placed in our hands--or at our feet--for free.  That is to say, sometimes we are like wayward, easily agitated sheep who need a good shepherd. And that's part of what I think we need to hear again in these familiar words of the Twenty-Third Psalm: it's the notion that God directs us on good paths, because on our own we are often too stubborn, too ornery, too self-involved, or too foolish to figure out where to cross the street.  We need God, like the local Department of Transportation crew, to mark out where it is good and right for us to put our feet and step through potential danger.  We need God to do more than offer friendly suggestions or the invitation, "I think everyone who wants to use the cross walk should, but I think those who would rather cross in the middle of the busy city street are free to do so as well." We need a God who, like any shepherd worth their salt, moves us in the right direction and doesn't leave us to our own misguided devices.  That's not God being a "tyrant" or a "dictator" or anything--it's God being a good shepherd.  A good leader and ruler.  It's the Divine as the Department of Transportation--directing us where it is good and right to go, and keeping us from endangering ourselves or others by doing so.

Looking ahead to this Sunday when our church tradition focuses on the Good News that Christ is King (which is why we call it "Christ the King Sunday," creative folks that we are), I think that's something I have often missed seeing the importance of.  As an American Christian I have been taught to be all too skeptical of any voice, from anywhere, claiming they have the authority to tell me what to do--and sometimes, let's be honest, we end up treating God the same way.  We have a tendency to think that God doesn't get to tell us what to do if we don't like it... or that God's intention that we live in justice and mercy with one another has to be run past me for my vote of approval.  But that's the thing--God does not need my approval to be God, and God does not need to ask for my support before issuing commands like, "Love your neighbor."  These things are not up for debate or a vote--they are the order of the day in the Reign of God.  God gets to tell me where the right paths are, and I need to learn to trust that God can see further down the road than my sheep's perspective can see.  

In a culture like ours that seems to deify the motto, "I'll choose my own path, thank you very much, and nobody can tell where I have to go," it's worth remembering that when we do pick our own path, some pedestrian often ends up getting hit by a car.  But if we can see the value of having an authority decide where we need a cross walk, maybe we can see the good news in having a God who shepherds us in "right paths," even "making us to lie down" when we would otherwise get ourselves or the rest of the flock in deep trouble.  Like the old saying goes, "If Jesus is your co-pilot, you and he should switch seats."  Every time I head down my own way and treat God's voice as just a "helpful suggestion" that I am free to ignore, I find myself in danger before long.  Maybe, if I can see the good of having my local town council tell me where it is safe to cross the street, I can rediscover the good news of a God who shepherds me "in right paths for his name's sake," too.

Maybe you can, too.  Today, let's step out into the day, no longer with the childish defiance of adolescents looking to rebel against whatever directs we are given, but with the trust that God knows where the cross-walks ought to be... and God will lead us to live, act, and speak where it is right.

Lord God, be our shepherd, be our king, be our guide, and lead us in right paths today, in spite of our stubbornness and selfishness.

Why He's Worthy--November 16, 2021

Why He's Worthy--November 16, 2021

"To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.  Amen." [Revelation 1:5b-6]

The usual thinking says you only get to be in charge if you are a winner, that it is victory over your opponents that makes you the rightful authority.  In the old days of kings and queens with squabbling factions and armies, you knew who was the sovereign by looking for who was left standing after they faced off in battle or a duel between contenders.  In other, perhaps less-respectable chapters of history, you took the throne by assassinating your predecessor or launching a coup to overthrow whoever was in charge before.  Even in our time and place, we still have a system based on winning--although our approach has something to do with elections rather than bloody battles, at least theoretically. We may use the polling place as the site of the conflict now, but there is still ruthless strategy about whose votes will get to count, how to arrange the field in the favor of your "side," and how to keep as many of your opponents' supporters from being counted. We are so used to defining the qualifications for being in charge in terms of "defeating the other guy" that we probably have a hard time even imagining that there could be any other way.  How else would one decide who is qualified to be the ruler, unless they have shown themselves to be a winner?

But Jesus is different--and the early community of his followers understood that.  The community that handed the book of Revelation onto us understood that Jesus' kind of kingship is completely different.  It's not derived from a victory on a battlefield where he killed his enemies--my goodness, there's not even a hint of Jesus zapping his foes in the name of "self-defense."  Jesus doesn't conquer any enemy lands or assassinate would-be competitors.  He doesn't even appeal to winning more votes than his opponents (after all, Rome's promise of "bread and circuses" always had mass appeal).  What makes Jesus worthy of "glory and dominion forever and ever" is... his self-giving love.

Notice that: the writer of Revelation gives praise to Jesus--and counts him worthy of being Lord of all creation--not because of looking like a "winner" at all, but because he was willing to lose everything for our sake.  It is because he "loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood"--that is to say, it is the choice to lay down his own life for ours that makes Jesus Lord. It is Jesus' willing to lose--to lose big and to lose it all--all the way to a borrowed grave, that makes him the rightful sovereign of God's upside-down kingdom.  It is what Frederick Buechner called "the magnificent defeat" of the cross--where Jesus doesn't kill his enemies or even escape their grasp with his life, but dies at their hands for their own sins--that makes Jesus king.

In a culture like ours that sees everything--literally everything, it seems--as a competition to be won or lost, and that certainly still thinks of leadership in terms of "defeating the other guy" (rather than--gasp!--the notion of "who can build consensus"), Jesus is beautifully subversive.  He brings about God's Reign, where the last are first, the nobodies are treated as somebodies, and the arrogant and proud are taken down a few pegs, and he does it without having to defeat somebody else on a battlefield.  It is his love that makes him worthy, and it is that same self-giving love that has grabbed hold of us, motley crew that we are, and made us into his kingdom.  

What would it look like if we stopped seeing things in terms of who we can defeat or who we have to overpower in order to look strong?  What could happen if we no longer had the impulse to have to look tough or threatening or intimidating to anybody else? And what might happen if we defined a leader's authority, not in terms of who they can "win" against, whether by percentages of polls or weapons drawn, but in terms of how they give themselves away in love for all? How will we be changed by giving our allegiance to Jesus, who doesn't think in terms of killing others to save his own skin, even when faced with enemies who want to kill him? And how will we be different because we confess the crucified rabbi Jesus as Lord of the universe, not in spite of the cross, but exactly because of it?

Go... be different.  Let the strange sovereignty of the King who reigns from a cross make you stand out from a world bent on "winning."

Lord Jesus, shape us in the likeness of you kind of kingdom, where love leads us to lay our lives down for others rather than taking life to preserve our own.

Jesus the Truth-Teller--November 15, 2021

Jesus the Truth-Teller--November 15, 2021

"Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth." [Revelation 1:4b-5a]

This coming Sunday the church does a wonderfully provocative thing: we confess and celebrate Christ Jesus as King, exactly because he looks nothing like the powerful, privileged, and politically potent people.  It is actually one of the reasons I find practices like the church's liturgical year (so often treated as just "too confusing" or "outmoded and irrelevant to what people want these days") to be exactly what we need.  We desperately need the reminder, constantly, that the real and true ruler of the kings of earth doesn't coerce, doesn't threaten, and doesn't carry a weapon, much less rattle a saber.  He just keeps telling the truth.

That is such a beautiful and strange notion, isn't it?  That Jesus is worthy of our allegiance and praise, not because he is louder than others, or because he dominates and crushes others, but because he is "the faithful witness"--the One who just keeps telling the truth about things, and who lets that truthfulness be enough to win the day.  It is amazing to me that the early church, threatened as it was by the brute military force and relentless propaganda machine of Rome, recognize that Jesus triumphed over the Empire by refusing to play by its rules.  He simply kept on speaking, and doing, and embodying, the truth, even when it got him into trouble with the authorities.  And that relentless truth-telling, that insistent honesty about ourselves and about God that was Jesus' way of showing his true authority.  

Jesus is the one, after all, who doesn't go toe-to-toe with the Romans by riding into the Capital City on a white horse like the occupying Roman governor would have--he borrows an ornery donkey and mocks the puffed-up pageantry of the Empire as he does it.  Jesus is the one who doesn't bargain or threaten or yell when he is on trial before Pontius Pilate.  There are no whipped-up tears from Jesus on trial before Pilate, nor does Jesus go railing on a tirade trying to force his way on others in the name of national unity.  Jesus' sole weapon is to tell the truth, and his willingness to bear in his body the costs of telling that truth.  That is decidedly un-king-like--and that is exactly why we confess this "faithful witness" as "ruler of the kings of earth."

We live in a time when truth-telling seems awfully rare, or naive to believe in. In a time like ours when you can choose whose version of the facts you want to listen to, and thereby remove yourself from ever having to hear anything unpleasant or that runs counter to the narrative you want to tell yourself, it seems awfully weak to insist that the truth matters.  In a time when we easily confuse "complaining from a place of privilege" with "telling it like it is," it sometimes feels like we don't really care about who is being honest--just who sounds the most incensed and angry.  In a time when we often feel like courts and courtroom antics are more about putting on a convincing show than about getting at justice, it can feel hopelessly naive to believe in the power of a "faithful witness" rather than the power of the violent to cast themselves as victims.  And in a time when folks get headlines for insisting they should be able to impose their particular religion on everybody (while claiming to name the name of Jesus), it seems incredibly counter-cultural actually to follow the way of Jesus, which doesn't coerce or threaten or cajole.  He just tells the truth... 

It's worth sitting a while with this idea, I think.  What makes Jesus different from the echo chambers and spin-doctors of our time, as well as the Roman military-and-propaganda complex of the 1st century is that he is utterly committed to the truth, at whatever cost it brings.  One of the ways we get better at learning the way of Jesus, then, is actually to practice truth-telling, and with it, truthful listening, to others.  It will mean we make the attempt intentionally to get outside the echo chambers of our consumer-chosen news and media bubbles, to listen to voices that we know will challenge us.  It will mean we find the courage to admit where we were wrong, or where something we thought at first turned out not to hold water after all. It will mean we are willing to learn from people we didn't think could teach us anything... and also to be able to see places in ourselves where our thinking is less than solid.

Of all the titles we church folk ascribe to Jesus--King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Mighty God, Savior, Healer, Great Physician, and the like--maybe today is the day to recover and to think about the way the ancient community that gave us the book of Revelation saw Jesus: as "faithful witness" who was, by virtue of that relentless truth-telling, worthy of being ruler of the kings of the earth.  What would it look like today for us to be people committed to embodying the truth like Jesus?

Let us dare it today.

Lord Jesus, let us embody your way of telling, and of doing, the truth, in love.

A Graceful Goodbye--November 12, 2021

A Graceful Goodbye--November 12, 2021

"I appeal to you, brothers and sisters, bear with my word of exhortation, for I have written to you briefly. I want you to know that our brother Timothy has been set free; and if he comes in time, he will be with me when I see you. Greet all your leaders and all the saints.  Those from Italy send you greetings. Grace be with all of you." [Hebrews 13:22-25]

Grace gets the last word.  That seems right.

Seven months ago--to the day, actually--we began this journey through the book we call "The Letter to the Hebrews."  And now, coming to the final few parting notes our anonymous author is making as he closes his "brief" (thirteen chapters!) message, the last of the last things to be said is to speak grace to them.  And, perhaps just as appropriately, grace is also the most certain of all the things spoken in these last moments.

It's funny to me in a way how we've gotten to know something of this author, the unnamed writer of this book, and to learn how his mind works, what is important to him in his understanding of the faith, and what he wants us to carry with us--and yet we don't even know his name.  That's pretty unusual for the New Testament.  With most of our books in the New Testament, we have at least some hint of a tradition of who wrote them, or who was a source, or who was remembered in connection with them.  Tradition connects the gospels with Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Paul signs his letters and has a distinctive style to his writing. Even the fever dream we call the Book of Revelation gives us the name of the dreamer, whom we know as John the Seer.  But this book just got right to a running start without even so much as a "Hi, I'm Apollos (or James or Bartholomew or Priscilla), and I'd like to share some of my thoughts with you."  We don't know who wrote this book which which we've been engaged in reflection for more than half a year!

And for that matter, we don't know much more about the details he references in these closing sentences.  We can guess from the allusion that "Timothy has been set free" that this could be the same Timothy who shows up from time to time in other New Testament letters, although that would be another educated guess rather than solid fact. We can guess that "set free" implies he had been imprisoned for his faith, especially since this book spent so much time talking about being willing to suffer for our faith.  But beyond that?  We're just speculating who the recipients are, and who their "leaders" might be, as well as who the folks in Italy are who are sending their greetings.  We call this book the letter "to the Hebrews," but that's not because we have the original mailing address on the envelope--it's just a guess that the readers of this book would have been thoroughly immersed in the ritual and scriptural traditions of Israel, because the anonymous author assumes they know what he is talking about.  But we don't even know where those readers were--Jerusalem? Galilee?  Damascus?  Some synagogue in a small town now lost to memory?  We just don't know.

So... we don't know who wrote the book, or to whom he or she wrote specifically.  We don't know where either sender or receiver were located, or the exact group of people around them as they wrote and read what we now have in our hands.  But we do know this--grace gets the last word.  The end of the book, the very last sentence, speaks God's grace--God's freely given goodness--into the lives of "all" the people the book was sent to.  That is solid.  That is certain.  That is more than a speculation.

I think there's something fitting about letting that be our ending point in this series, too.  There's very little you and I might know about each other, from where I am writing to where you are reading, or what other troubles and joys are going on in your life right now.  Even when we see one another face to face, we often have only the smallest glimpse of what others around us are going through but don't share below the surface.  

But what we do have for certain is grace.  What you can depend on, even when you don't know much about me, is the gift of grace that doesn't come from me, but from God.  And God's way of being extravagantly generous to us apart from our earning or deserving is something you and I can depend on.  Grace is a good place for us to leave things for now, because it's the one thing we can count on, in a world full of uncertainties.

So, at least as far as this devotional series in Hebrews goes, we are at the end of one journey, with another new one to start again in a new week.  But for this moment's good-bye, let's part ways as our unnamed friend in this book has done, as well.  Grace be with you all.  Always.

Lord God, give us your grace, wherever we are, and whatever our needs.  And let that be enough.

The Velveteen Benediction--November 11, 2021

The Velveteen Benediction--November 11, 2021

"Now may the God of peace, who brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, the great shepherd of the sheep, by the blood of the eternal covenant, make you complete in everything good so that you may do his will, working among us that which is pleasing in his sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be the glory forever and ever.  Amen." [Hebrews 13:20-21]

It's about so much more than we usually settle for.  The Christian life, that is.  We have a way of zeroing in on just one part of a bigger whole and missing just how big a promise, and how deep a gift, is given to us through Jesus.  

Because in the end, the Good News is really about being made whole... complete... fully ourselves and fully alive.  It is about all of us becoming Really Real, so to speak.

Far too often, you hear the Christian faith either reduced to a matter of post-mortem fire-insurance (how to get to heaven when you die) or made into a pawn of political parties who aim to get more voters and dollars to support their platform by casting themselves as the "godly" choice.  But when you hear the writer of Hebrews talk about it, you see the Christian message is about so much more than getting into a celestial country club after you die or winning political power in this life.  It is about how all of us become wholly holy, how we are made complete and thus more fully alive.

I can't help thinking, then, about that beautifully wise passage from The Velveteen Rabbit about how the toys of the play room become Real.  You probably know that speech of the Skin Horse to the title character. When the Velveteen Rabbit asks about how to become real, and whether it happens all at once or slowly, the veteran voice of the play room says, "It doesn’t happen all at once.... You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don’t matter at all, because once you are Real you can’t be ugly, except to people who don’t understand."  And of course, that's just it--it is Love that makes you beautiful, Love that makes you really Real, Love himself that makes you finally, at last, complete.

That's what we are aiming for in this life, as well as in the life beyond the grip of death.  We are seeking to be whole at last.  Complete.  Really real.  That is so much more than just making sure we've reserved a spot in heaven, or leveraged our piety for political points.  It is what life itself is really all about.  That's what the writer of Hebrews blesses us with here--he calls on the living God to make us "complete" all the way down to our actions and choices in every day.  He doesn't stop with wishing, "May God let you into heaven when you die," or "May God help you fight a culture war and take back your country in the name of your religion," or any such rubbish.  He gives us a benediction of wholeness: that we would become--even if it takes a long time, as the Skin Horse cautions it might--Really Real.

In the end, however, becoming Really Real isn't so much about our effort to rack up brownie points with God or accrue political capital with a base of voters.  It's about what Love does to us--how Love makes us to become most fully ourselves. We should be prepared, then, to have Love reshape us, into the likeness of Love himself, Jesus.  Our sharp edges will be worn down, and most of our hair will have been loved off, to borrow the Skin Horse's way of talking, as God's own hands hold us and mold us and bring about a new creation within us.  We will find our own selfishness and bitterness worn down.  We will find our capacity for love and empathy strengthened.  We will find that the things which never really mattered have all been stripped away.  And instead we will be the kind of creations God has meant for us to become all along--fully alive, fully loving, and fully beloved.

When I think about what the point of being a Christian is these days, that's what captures my faithful imagination.  I don't think about, "How to get to the VIP room in the afterlife?" and I sure as heaven don't think about, "How can I leverage my religion to score political points and get my party more raw power or influence?"  Rather, I find myself like the Velveteen Rabbit, longing to be Really Real, and convinced that the love of God in Christ Jesus is making me just that--what I have been meant to be all along.

That's worth giving my life to, as far as I can tell.  That's how we become whole... complete... real.

Lord Jesus, make us as Really Real as you are, shaped by your cruciform love.

Naming Our Need--November 10, 2021

Naming Our Need--November 10, 2021

"Pray for us; we are sure that we have a clear conscience, desiring to act honorably in all things. I urge you all the more to do this, so that I may be restored to you very soon." [Hebrews 13:18-19]

Just when I think this older brother in the faith has run out of things to teach me, BAM, he pulls a life-changing piece of wisdom out of his robe and takes me to school all over again.

And honestly, I think it's this lesson, here in the back half of the last chapter of the book we have from him, that directly impacts me more than any we have looked at so far.  I mean, sure, it's been interesting to hear the writer of Hebrews draw insights and conclusions from the seemingly tiniest and most obscure details from the saga of ancient Israel.  But so often, those insights just stay as "head knowledge" that doesn't move to my heart or my hands.  Today, he has said something that can't help but change me... if I dare to let it.

For one, this is the first time in this entire work that the writer (so far anonymous) has pulled back the curtain, so to speak, to acknowledge himself.  And it's a little bit jarring honestly, for him all of a sudden to use the first-person-singular, "I," and to ask for people to pray for him and those with him, after twelve and a half chapters of "they" or "he" or "God" or "Christ" doing things.  It's rather like when a TV or movie character breaks the "fourth wall," as they call it, and looks right at the camera to talk to the people watching, whether it's Matthew Broderick's Ferris Bueller or Woody Allen's Alvy Singer from Annie Hall, or whatever other shows and movies do the same trick.  So now all of a sudden, the narrator of this letter finally speaks to us and acknowledges that he's a person who has been writing all of this to us.

And what's more--he writes now to ask us a favor.  He writes, no longer as wise teacher explaining the Scriptures and mysteries of God to us, for our benefit, but rather as someone in need of prayer himself.  He writes to ask us--we who have been reading, pondering, and sometimes scratching our heads at his teaching--to pray for him.  That is a humbling thing to do, if you are the one used to praying for others, teaching other people or doling out the things you think you know about God.  It is a reminder that he needs help as well--and his honesty to recognize his own need for others to pray for him is an example for us, too.  It sure is for me.

It's not that the writer of Hebrews is now in some terrible trouble or moral dilemma.  He doesn't write asking for help because he has committed some terrible sin or faces some specific problem and doesn't know what to do.  He says, rather, he's convinced that he has a clear conscience--that he can "look everybody in the eye," as it were.  And yet, it is just at those points when we are pretty sure we are on the right track in life that we especially need others, both to keep their eyes open where we may yet have blind-spots, and to pray for us.  

What amazes me about this short couple of sentences is the posture of humility that our author takes.  He has arrived at a position of some maturity in faith and life, and yet that doesn't lead him to think he's got all the answers and none of the weak places.  He doesn't say, "Since I've got a clear conscience, I don't need you all to spend a moment's thought for me or my needs, because I'm covered.  You all just worry about yourselves."  Rather, he invites--he comes out and just plain asks--for his readers to keep praying for him, including that he and his readers would be reunited.  That maturity, the kind that keeps recognizing humbly the need for others to pray and support and direct us, is such a rare bird, especially if we are in a time of life where we think we know what we are doing and "have a clear conscience."  Those times can be especially dangerous for us to get set on a dangerous or bad path, exactly because we've told ourselves we have all the answers and don't need help anymore.

One of the odd blessings, on the other hand, of going through seasons of deep trouble and turmoil is that they have a way of removing our pretensions that we have all the answers.  When you are struggling through a life crisis, grieving a deep loss, regretting a bad decision that has blown up in your face, or wrestling with a major temptation in your life, there's at least some likelihood you'll recognize your need.  It's the publicly hated tax collector who can only muster the prayer, "Lord, have mercy on me, a sinner," whom Jesus says goes home justified from worship, after all, while the Respectable Religious person who prattles on about his own virtue and greatness is really just praying to himself.  

All too often, I think we succumb to the temptation of Respectable Religiosity, the temptation that says, "You already believe in God, and you have not made the mistakes of THAT person, or THOSE people over there--you really probably don't need any other help from here. Just trust your own gut to guide you." And because we have told ourselves we don't need any direction, any prayer support, any accountability, we end up assuming whatever our Respectably Religious gut says, we must be in line with the way of Jesus.  And once we've made that move... disaster awaits. I don't know how many times I've been absolutely devastated to see folks I have known and cared for, people who grew up in church and consider themselves devout and pious, spouting terribly un-Christ-like things, whether in conversation with other like-minded folks, on social media where they seem to be spoiling for a fight, or on the flagpoles and car bumpers they have access to.  There comes to be this disconnect where folks sometimes think they don't need anybody else--or even God--to correct them where their actions and attitudes have turned in the opposite direction of the God we know in Jesus.  And when that happens, it is often more difficult to get through to hearts that are hardened than to reach someone who knows they have messed up and can only muster, "Lord have mercy on me..." as their prayer.

And of course, the moment I start climbing up on my own high horse to be disappointed with others whose hypocrisy breaks my heart, I run the risk of missing my own rough edges that require Jesus' correction and sanding down.  The moment I want to go off on my own jeremiad over the person with the cross around their neck and the Confederate flag in their yard, or who seems to think "Me and My Group First" lines up with the way of Jesus, or the petulant name-calling on social media from folks who also proudly boast of "loving God" in the same breath, the writer of Hebrews brings me up short.  I have to keep asking others to pray for me, that God will direct me in good directions and help me to love my neighbors.  The moment I decide only to look at what other people are doing that disappoints me, I run the risk I will not be able to see the ways my choices, my words, and my actions break God's heart, too.  That doesn't mean whatever mean or rotten things other folks are doing (thinking they have clear consciences while they do them) are OK--but it means that my first responsibility is to look honestly at myself and ask for God's direction where I am out of step or off course. The moment I think I'm righteous enough not to need any help is likely the moment I'm most in danger of losing sight of Jesus.  A critical change happens when I move from, "I am a religious person, and therefore have all the answers," to "I am trying my best to live and love like Jesus, but I could be wrong, and so I need the help of God and others."  That's the change the writer of Hebrews offers to us today with his own example.

So help me, dear ones.  Help me out.  I'm going to borrow a page from the writer of Hebrews unabashedly, and I'll invite you to do the same in your own lives.  Ask the people around you to keep you in prayer, especially at the times you think you've got all the answers.  I ask you, too, to help me as well: pray, certainly, and where you see I am missing my own blind-spots and rough edges that keep me from being like Christ, help me to see them... so that I can grow.

And when we all do that together, I suspect we'll find ourselves recipients of more grace than we realized we needed--the grace of being beloved even when we are wrong... and the grace to grow and mature out of old and rotten ways into the new life we are given in Christ.

Lord God, help us all.  Where each of us is walking in love, strengthen us.  Where any of us are out of step with your Reign, bring us back into your cadence.  Where I am unable to see my own need, smack me upside the head with reminders and wake-up calls to see clearly and truly once again.

The Ones Who Reflect Jesus--November 9, 2021

The Ones Who Reflect Jesus--November 9, 2021

"Obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and will give an account.  Let them do this with joy and not with sighing--for that would be harmful to you." [Hebrews 13:17]

Before we go any further here, there needs to be a disclaimer: I'm a pastor.  That is to say, I am also supposed to be a leader in the disciple communities where I live and serve. And of course, that means there's a certain inescapable weirdness about reflecting on a verse telling other people "obey" their spiritual leaders... because I am one. And sometimes I get things wrong. (The writer of Hebrews is certainly not talking about civil leaders in this passage--rulers like Caesar or local puppet-kings installed with Rome's permission could hardly have been described as "keeping watch over your souls."  We'll have to talk about the role for deference to civil authorities in another conversation.)

So, yeah, let me just own my own awkwardness digging deeper into a verse that begins by saying, "Obey the spiritual leaders who are keeping watch over your souls," because that just seems ripe for abuse from would-be "spiritual leaders" who misuse their authority, swindle their supporters, or manipulate the minds of those who listen to them.  The call to "obey your leaders" can so wrong in so many ways, I'm tempted to just skip over this verse because I don't want to get entangled in any of them.  

After all, how many church leaders once upon a time in our own country directed their congregations to help catch and recapture people who had run away from enslavement, and did so with deep conviction they were doing God's work, certain that they had a stack of Bible verses to back them up?  How many pastors told their congregations it was wrong to stand up to civil authorities backing segregation in the South during the Civil Rights era, or sinful to oppose Mussolini's fascism in Italy or Hitler's Nazism in Germany in the 1930s?  How many bishops and popes told their people it was God's will to go off and fight Crusades and take up weapons in the name of Jesus, despite Jesus' insistence to his followers that we not take up arms for his sake?  How many pastors today think they have God's authority when they tell their congregations it is sinful to wear a mask to protect your neighbor, or that it is "the mark of the Beast" or a wicked infringement on your "freedom" to go get vaccinated from COVID?   How many pastors, priest, bishops, district superintendents, or whatever other titles they might use, have done deep damage to the people in their care with bad theology, or because they claimed to have expertise in counseling when they really didn't? How many have left people's souls broken and hurting, convinced they were unlovable and unworthy of grace? How many spiritual leaders were sure they had all the answers... only to discover later that they were wrong and had fooled even themselves into believing their own hype?

Clearly, there are so many ways that spiritual leaders can lead people astray--whether knowingly or unintentionally--that some part of me keeps wanting to answer back to this verse from Hebrews, "Hold your horses!  What will stop bad leadership from causing real damage?"  And yet... the writer of Hebrews is hardly naive.  He knows full well how easily leaders can mess up--and he seems to take it for granted that leaders are accountable for the harm we cause to others' souls. And still he insists that it is worth listening to those who are good and genuine leaders.

I want to suggest that even for all the ways we pastors and spiritual leaders can screw things up, all of us who follow Jesus need others to help guide us--even if the guides themselves are not perfect.  We need people who are skilled at living the Jesus way of life, and who can help shape our lives in his likeness.  That's what leadership is supposed to look like in the Christian community.  The Scriptures don't define good leaders by how much money they make for their churches, how big the crowds are that line up to hear them, the cleverness of their sermon illustrations, or the influence they wield in the halls of power.  Rather, the biblical writers suggest we need leaders who can help us to be more like Jesus... even when that's a struggle.  Or maybe, especially when it's a struggle.

I think that's actually the most important reason for having leaders in Christian community whom we trust enough to follow their directions.  It's that sometimes, the thing that Jesus is calling me to do is not easy or fun, and I will look for any way to avoid it, ignore it, or pretend it isn't there.  Sometimes I know Jesus wants me to do good to people I don't like... or people I don't think are worthy of my care... or people who live far away and won't give me credit for it--and if it were up to just me and my own selfish perspective, I wouldn't do what I know Jesus is calling me to do.  Sometimes just taking a vote among a bunch of selfish people doesn't yield wisdom--it just produces more selfishness with the veneer of democracy.  What we need is the authoritative voice of women and men who cay say with integrity, "It doesn't really matter if you feel like it or not, or even if a majority of you agree on something, if it isn't in the character of Jesus, we're not doing it."  We need people who can call us out and help us recognize our blind spots, because on our own I'll never see my own.

All of this is to say that, despite the many ways leaders blow it, all of us Christians need good trustworthy leaders who have authority that comes from their integrity to be able to direct our actions, thoughts, and choices to be shaped more like Jesus.  When their own lives show us the face of Christ, we will trust them to help smooth away the places in each of our own hearts and lives that are out of step with Jesus and the Reign of God that he brings. 

So, yeah, this is going to be one of those times when two things are true at once: yes, sometimes (maybe even often) Christian leaders fail at being good leaders who are actually like Christ.  And at the very same time, we need people who are further along the road that we currently are who can guide us along the way, and it's worth following their direction and accepting their counsel if we've seen the face of Christ in them before.  I know as a pastor myself writing, all of this can sound terribly self-serving, like the preacher is just telling people, "You should listen to me--look the Bible says you have to!"  So let me bracket myself out of the equation here and leave it at this: where you have been blessed with good and faithful women and men who show you the way of Jesus authentically in their lives, trust them. Follow their direction and listen to what they have to tell you, even if at first you don't understand, or even if it sounds difficult.  Let the people in whom you have seen the face of Christ help shape the reflection of Christ in you as well.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage and humility to trust the good leaders you place in our lives who care for our deepest selves.  And give those leaders the courage and humility to lead while remaining correctible themselves.  Help us all--we need each other, and you.