Adding Our Harmonies--June 1, 2022

Adding Our Harmonies--June 1, 2022

"What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each.  I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth.  The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each." [1 Corinthians 3:5-8]

We live in a culture that idolizes celebrity solo acts, but needs more symphony ensembles.

I don't mean that we only need more orchestras to play classical music (although I'm all for that), but more that our culture teaches us to long for the spotlight ourselves when we could really use more people willing to contribute their small part to a larger whole that brings a bigger beauty than any individual could have done alone.  Our TVs run a seemingly endless parade of reality singing competitions where solo voices compete for one prize, but there's no primetime programming that shows the hard work and dedication of people working together to let each person's gifts improve the others. We teach our kids to want to be rock stars, TikTok sensations, or internet celebrities, when there is something so much more powerful, so much richer, that happens when my abilities can be directed to enhance yours, and yours can bring out the best of someone else's, in a great chain of collaboration.  In short, we need an orchestra's worth of love, where violins are supported by violas, where flutes and clarinets each get their moments with the melody, and where cellos, basses, trombones, and timpani are glad to add their low notes underneath as well.

I say this with the recollection of years spent in the string bass section of the high school and college orchestra, and with the awareness that a lot of the time, my part didn't sound very good on its own, until it was combined with the rest of the orchestra.  There was something almost miraculous about rehearsals where we would put things together for the first time, and I would discover how my little runs of low notes fit into the larger piece.  I might have practiced my own part to play it as well as I could, but only when it was put together with all the other instruments could I experience the true beauty of the music.

If you ask a symphony musician what the point of their practicing is, they will gladly tell you that it's to create something bigger than any one musician can do alone.  The best orchestra members aren't trying to grab the limelight for themselves, but see their work as contributing to something more than the sum of their parts.  They find a joy and a purpose apart from how much attention they get for their own part, but for how the whole thing comes together.  It's the same with the audience--nobody goes to the symphony and says, "Wait til you hear how the bassoon player plays a B-flat!" or "I only come for the third trumpet  player on the right--he's gonna be a rock star!"  You go to listen to the way each individual contribution becomes gathered up in real time to create something more moving and more powerful than one lone musician can create by him or herself.  The music itself, and the opportunity to create something beautiful, is the reason to play--not the chance to become a diva or a star.

And if we can understand that same sense of the fullness that comes from each person contributing to the beauty of the whole, we can understand Paul's sense of why we each offer our abilities and labor to the community called church.  None of us is here to become a celebrity solo act.  We are here for the sake of something we may each add that makes the whole more beautiful.  Our individual abilities, talents, time, and work mean something, but the goal isn't to leverage them into status and to become a "star," but so that they can make something more beautiful that is worth creating, regardless of getting credit for it.  

There's something truly freeing about that perspective, too--it means we aren't trying to do something big or important for the sake of getting noticed, or to earn someone else's approval.  It's simply that we see the work of the Reign of God is so compellingly beautiful that it's worth each of us giving our lives to, without needing to be in the limelight for doing it.  When you live your life aiming to get the credit, attention, or approval of others, you're bound to be forever unsatisfied, and every bit of effort has to be thought of in terms of what it "gets" you.  But when you see yourself as a musician in an ensemble, you get a sense that it's a gift just to be allowed to participate and make your music.  You get a sense that you are blessed to be able to get to give what you have to offer, and to see how your pieces make the whole better, while others' additions enrich what you bring.  Rather like Walt Whitman offers in his poem, "O Me! O Life!" when he lays out the question, essentially, of why he (or anyone) should bother continuing on with life in the world despite its sorrows, toils, and weariness, the answer comes like this:  "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

To be a Christian means learning to let go of the celebrity solo-act mentality, and instead to see that it is worth spending our lives building others up, strengthening one another's gifts, and playing our parts of the sheet music, regardless of getting credit or becoming a sensation.  The music we create together is worth giving our energy and time for.  Or, in Paul's gardening imagery, it's worth it, whether you're the one planting or watering, to spend yourself in growing something good and worthy and beautiful, even if you don't get to be the hero at harvest time.  The goal isn't to point to ourselves, but to contribute a verse to the great play, to add our harmonies to the symphony God is conducting.  And when we can ditch the tired culture of celebrity for that kind of life, we are not only free--we are fully alive.

Lord God, enable us to offer what we have and what we are to the new song you are bringing about while the watching world listens.

"They" Are Us--May 31, 2022

"They" Are Us--May 31, 2022

"...for you are still of the flesh.  For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations?  For when one says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely human?" [1 Corinthians 3:3-4]

It is deeply immature--and at the same time disappointingly common--how frequently we human beings only know how to define ourselves in terms of who doesn't belong in our little group.  We fracture so easily along different fault lines--family, tribes, and clans; language groups and ethnicities; political ideologies and party affiliations; and denominational or theological sub-groups.  And quite often, we define those group identities in the negative--who we aren't, or who we don't want to be associated with.

Spend any time at all in the institutional church and you'll see it with terrible speed and clarity.  There was a time, for example (and for some it hasn't changed), when Lutherans would tell you their Lutheran-ness basically meant, "Well, we're NOT Catholic!"  Not a positive statement of what DOES matter about the Lutheran way of being Christian, but only a negative--a line making it clear who DOESN'T belong.  And to be perfectly honest, Lutherans today are just as likely to do the same now, but against other Lutheran groups.  You'll hear things like, "Oh, we're Lutheran--but not THAT kind of Lutheran, don't worry!"  and then you'll hear some straw-man criticism of whatever Lutheran group you don't like.  "THOSE Lutherans over there are too liberal," or "THAT group of Lutherans isn't welcoming at all," or "THESE Lutherans won't let you take communion if you come there," or "YOU can't be a REAL Lutheran if you don't also have some German or Scandinavian heritage in your family tree."  

It's not just my tradition, of course--although Lutherans have been playing this "us-versus-them" game for five hundred years, so we're quite good at it.  An awful lot of Christian groups, denominations, and labels owe their existence to one group deciding they didn't want to associate with THOSE people anymore, and then starting their own little club.  The Southern Baptist Church as a denomination was formed when white Baptists in the American South wanted to preserve the institution of slavery in their states.  The African Methodist Church (AME) was formed because white Methodists wouldn't let Black Methodists sit with the rest of the congregation, and so they were forced to start their own congregation where their dignity could be upheld.  In the 20th century, you had denominations split over whether it was permissible to consider the scientific data about evolution, whether it was permissible to use the study tools of biblical criticism when reading and interpreting the Scriptures, as well as whether women were allowed to serve as pastors and leaders.  We are still splitting and fracturing today, with new issues threatening to fragment Christian groups even further--whether it's about the question of inclusion of gay or lesbian Christians, the political leanings of a denomination, how churches responded to the COVID pandemic, or what style of music will be offered in their worship.  And so much of it, regardless of what the presenting issue is, ends up becoming an "us" versus" them sort of thing.  So many times, one group leaves (or is forced out) because one group doesn't want to be associated with the other anymore... or even doesn't want to be associated with people who can tolerate being around "those people," however they are defining it at the moment.

One group breaks away from another and then basically defines themselves in terms of who or what they are NOT, and to read Paul here, it sounds like we've all been doing it since the beginning.  It's not that Paul doesn't care about theological precision or that there are no boundaries at all for what constitutes Christian community.  But Paul is really disappointed when we let our core identity be rooted in division--when we draw lines of "us" and "them" and define "our" group solely in the negative terms of who we are NOT, or who CAN'T come to our club house.  In the first century at First Church of Corinth, they were drawing lines based on which pastor they aligned with:  "I'm a Paul-kind of Christian," or "I'm Team Apollos," or what-have-you.  We're still doing the same twenty centuries later, but we've just made the names or rationales sound more sophisticated.  "We can't be in fellowship with people who are like THAT," you'll hear.  Or "If you're going to include THOSE people, or if you're going to include people who are willing to include THOSE people in their own congregations, well I'm going to take my offering check elsewhere." We all insist that OUR splitting is for good acceptable reasons, but so often they all just sound like the old "HE-MAN Woman Haters Club" from the Little Rascals--a group only defined by who can't come.

Of course, in the old comedy bits of Spanky, Alfalfa, and the rest of the "Our Gang" kids, it was meant to be ridiculous.  We were supposed to understand that defining your group solely in terms of who doesn't belong is childish, immature, and embarrassingly foolish.  The tragedy is that we don't seem to have learned to see how immature--or to use Paul's language, "fleshly"--that kind of thinking is.  If you keep trimming away all the people you see as "them," before long there's nobody left to belong to your "us."

I know these are days when it is so terribly easy to be polarized, or to talk about getting along in only naive and empty kinds of ways.  I don't think Paul wants to gloss over disagreements or pretend it's easy for us to find ways to get along.  But I also think Paul would warn us very strongly about the dangerous road we have already set ourselves on once we accept the terms of defining "my" group in terms of who doesn't fit in.  Jesus, after all, has a way of going and standing on the other side of the line any time we draw lines between "us" and "them."  Or maybe, to Paul's point, Jesus has a way of showing us that "they" are a part of "us," too, whether we realize it, acknowledge it, or like it.  It's Jesus claim that makes us belong, not whether anybody else says so.

Maybe today's a day to do some honest reflection on how each of us understands our identity--what is it that makes you you, or us us?  What positive traits, commitments, or traditions do we hold onto, and why?  And how can we move beyond the immature thinking that defines in terms of division and creates an identity based on who doesn't belong?  Those are questions worth thinking about, and then maybe today is a day to reach across the lines we had accepted for too long as permanent.

Lord Jesus, ground us in your love, your way, and the identity we find in you.

The Good of Growing Up--May 27, 2022

The Good of Growing Up--May 27, 2022

"And so, brothers and sisters, I could not speak to you as spiritual people, but rather as people of the flesh, as infants in Christ. I fed you with milk, not solid food, for you were not ready for solid food.  Even now you are still not ready..." [1 Corinthians 3:1-2]

The thing is, some matters in life are not questions of "right" versus "wrong" so much as they are of "mature" versus "immature."  

For example, while we might say it is always morally wrong to sell crystal meth to children, steal money from an orphanage, or poison the town well, some things are actions you grow out of or grow into. When a baby or a toddler acts selfishly or only wants their own needs taken care of, it may be annoying, but you chalk it up to age-appropriate childishness.  But when you become a parent or caregiver, you have to grow out of a "Me-and-My-Wants-First" mindset.  You learn as you mature that other people matter as much as you do, and that your needs and wants are not the only ones to be considered.  So while you might not fault a baby for being fussy about getting fed first at meal time, you would expect an adult to know better, and sometimes to make sure others are served first, and then to wait for their own plate to be filled.  It's not a shame for a preschooler to be immature or childish, but it is when a grown-up cannot act like a grown-up.

I think that perspective is important as we read Paul here, or else we'll misunderstand his point.  Sometimes we draw a rigid line between the categories of "spiritual" and "fleshly," like one is good and one is evil, and we end up with all sorts of terrible theology (and practice).  You end up painting yourself into the corner of saying all physical reality is bad, or sinful, or wicked, and some sects over the centuries have gone off the deep end there and taught that even being physically embodied beings was the work of some lesser, "evil" god, and that our goal should be to aspire to the purely spiritual realm of thought, ideas, and beliefs.  That ends up taking the position that it was a mistake on God's part to make the smell of rain, or the taste of raspberries, or the refreshing peace of a good night's sleep.  

The writers of the Scriptures don't take the position that this physical existence, with these bodies of flesh and blood, are bad or wicked or evil.  What they do want us to see is that a life lived solely for our animal needs and impulses is terribly immature.  The difference between being "spiritual" and being "fleshly" then, isn't that the "flesh" is bad, so much as it is a terrible shame for your body to be an adult but your soul to still be stuck in childish immaturity.  If I'm stuck in petty squabbling, immature divisions, or childish self-centeredness, it's a sign I'm immature.  To be sure, immaturity needs to be addressed, corrected, and outgrown--but that's different than giving up on me because I'm irredeemably evil.

And as Paul writes to the folks at First Church of Corinth, that's where he's coming from.  He's not writing to damn anybody to hell, but to point out where they are still acting like spiritual toddlers--or even infants, really!  They are still so stuck in childish and self-centered ways that Paul can't really dig into the deeper, more complex richness of the Good News--at least not until he's addressed the very basic things they still have to grow into.  He has to still feed them milk, like a nursing mother, because they aren't ready for solid food yet.  And again, that's not a condemnation--after all, it's appropriate for babies to be fed milk.  But part of being human means growing up into maturity, and eventually you discover that you need to get nutrition from other sources.  And at the same time, it means continuing to get the nourishment you need from milk all the way into adulthood--after all, we may stop nursing when we grow out of infancy, but we still need the calcium, protein, and other nutrients we get from milk and dairy all our lives long.  In a similar way, we never outgrow our need for the sheer basic essentials of the Good News of Jesus--but as we grow up in that faith, we come to discover a richness and a fullness that we could not have appreciated earlier in our faith journeys.

Just like we can say it's a shame to stay childish in things like manners or personal responsibility, it's a shame if I stay immature in my faith--say, only ever seeing the Gospel as a post-mortem life insurance policy, or as a gimmick to earn heavenly rewards.  But at the same time, when we see those differences as degrees of maturity rather than one person being "good" and one being "evil," it allows us to give the grace to let people grow, rather than writing them off as forever lost.  

Sometimes I wonder if that's not a bad posture these days, especially when it is so easy to become polarized with scorn for people whose faith leads them in different directions or to different conclusions.  Perhaps instead of seeing me as right and good (we always want to see OURSELVES as in the right, after all) and others as evil and sinful, we might do well to ask if it's a matter of maturity in faith.  Perhaps they--or we... or both of us--have some growing up to do in some area, and instead of being hopelessly lost and reprobate we may need some deeper growing up in our faith.  That still allows us the room to offer and to receive critique from one another, just like I would critique and correct my kids from being childish at the dinner table, or like I can use correction and redirection from mentors to me as well.  But it also means we see in one another the possibility of growing out of our childishness and growing into maturity.  That's a strategy we're not always mature enough to attempt... but maybe it's worthy a try.

Lord Jesus, lead us from childishness to maturity as you will, and give us the grace to bear with one another as we all grow up in faith.

A Lesson from Who-Ville--May 26, 2022

A Lesson from Who-Ville--May 26, 2022

"Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things, and they are themselves subject to no one else's scrutiny.  'For who has known the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?' But we have the mind of Christ." [1 Corinthians 2:14-16]

It's kind of like the Grinch.  You know the story, whether you first knew the storybook, the classic animated short with the voice of Boris Karloff, or any of the various reboots of more recent decades.  The Grinch is Dr. Seuss' Christmas-hating creature who plots to "steal" Christmas from the citizens of Who-ville by taking their trees, toys, and treats on Christmas Eve.  And when Christmas morning dawns, the rotten, mean ol' no-good Grinch expects to hear cries of anguish and sorrow from little Cindy Lou Who and all the rest of her village... only to discover the Whos are all singing joyfully to welcome Christmas without any of the loot the Grinch pilfered in the night.

And for a moment, the Grinch is absolutely befuddled. He just cannot understand the Whos' behavior, and it seems like utter nonsense that they can still be celebrating Christmas, which as Seuss put it, "came without ribbons, it came without tags. It came without packages, boxes, or bags."  He just doesn't "get" it, but meanwhile, there are the Whos in Who-ville, who do not care at all whether the Grinch thinks they are foolish, and who understand that Christmas means more than the decorations, food, or presents.

The lesson is a bit obvious, and by now it's been made and re-made so many times that there's no surprise to the ending for most folks.  But that moment of sheer dumbfounded confusion on the Grinch's face--in whichever version you're looking at--is close how Paul describes the watching world and its confusion over the community of Jesus.  We've been brought, not just into a new organization or institution, but a whole new way of life and thinking.  We are called to see the world differently, and it will look like nonsense to an outside observer who doesn't "get" it.  For people who have been indwelt by the Spirit of God, that means we'll celebrate it when we see things like love, joy, peace, gentleness, patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control take shape in us (you know, the "fruit of the Spirit" as Paul will call it elsewhere).  The world looks at those things and may just dismiss them as nonsense, or as traits that make you look "weak" or like a "loser," rather than as the gifts of the living God.  And that means we'll have to decide if we will let the world's scoffing or mockery poop our party, or whether we'll continue to sing regardless of what any Grinchy voices think or do.

A great deal of the life of faith is learning to see the world differently because of Jesus--sometimes in a way that looks completely upside down, to be honest.  And then as we learn to see things through the lens of Jesus (and to act differently in light of the way of Jesus), the next challenge is to learn to be comfortable enough in our own belovedness that we are OK with being seen as foolish, weak, or like losers in the world's eyes.  Once we no longer care how the world's Big Deals judge us for loving others, for seeking the good of all, and for being people of peace and justice, we are free.  

And you never know--it might just be our willingess to look foolish by loving like Jesus that finally gets through to someone else who has been stuck in the world's "Me-First" selfishness and obsession with violence.  After all, once the Grinch sees what has happened with the Whos and that his worst attempts to wreck Christmas could not stop them from receiving its truest joys, Dr. Seuss says that his heart grow three sizes that day.  Maybe your and my willingness to look foolish or weak regardless of anyone's approval or understanding will be what draws someone else into the way of Jesus themselves.  

What do we have to lose?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to look foolish to the watching world as we seek to love with your vulnerable, generous, courageous goodness.

Aliens and Oddballs--May 25, 2022

Aliens and Oddballs--May 25, 2022

"Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God. And we speak of these things in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual things to those who are spiritual." [1 Corinthians 2:12-13]

Every so often, the United Federation of Planets teaches me some good theology.

I came of age in the era when "Star Trek: The Next Generation" was on the air, so in addition to having seen the original Star Trek series, with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock and Lieutenant Uhura and the rest, I tuned in regularly to watch Captain Picard and his crew aboard the Enterprise meeting new species and exploring, as they say, "strange new worlds."  But to me, it was always interesting to watch how those new life forms tried to make sense of the crew of the Enterprise, and the principles of the Federation they represented.  That show wasn't just about "us" meeting "aliens," but about what happens when the aliens discover "us"--and about how strange we might seem to them.

In particular, I was always taken when the new aliens-of-the-week would be surprised that the crew of the Enterprise didn't use money or work for paychecks.  In the future imagined by Gene Roddenberry and company, the United Federation of Planets has attained a level of technological advance where there is enough food and resources for all, so there is no more need for currency or trade.  They "replicate" their food, they have all their needs met, and they share abundance.  But to alien cultures who are still bent on acquisition of wealth, it seems like nonsense.  They are puzzled that the crew of the Enterprise isn't more interested in making money, selling their technology for a profit, or creating scarcity to make their resources more valuable.  And when you see a scene like that play out, it becomes obvious that the differences between these different alien cultures aren't merely a difference in language, but in the basic assumptions of their way of life.  The Enterprise crew sees the cosmos from their own vantage point--that there is abundance for all, resources can be shared, and they can respect and partner with others they meet.  And the aliens they meet come with their own different view of the universe--some more war-like and bent on conquest, some more market-minded and looking to make themselves rich, and others with more mysterious agendas.  

It's that difference of fundamental operating principles that strikes me as helpful for our conversation here in First Corinthians.  Paul sees the Christian community as guided by something essentially different from the logic of the world around.  The "spirit" of the world brings its own reasoning and way of doing things, and quite often that's the "way" of empire, of violence, of domination, and of hoarding.  The logic, or "spirit," of the world says things like, "Might makes right," or "Everyone has to look out for their own interests first!" or "There's only so much to go around, so you've got to grab as much as you can for yourself." You know the litanies of the world's liturgy.  We hear them all the time.  But from Paul's vantage point, we who follow Jesus have been given a different source of guidance--one which is not a "what" but rather a "Who"--the very Spirit of God.  And God's own Spirit has a different kind of logic, one which often runs counter to the ways and assumptions of the wider world.  

That means sometimes we are going to be like Captain Picard and his crew on the Enterprise, looking odd to the watching world who find our ways strange and nonsensical.  Like meeting aliens who are only interested in making profits or stoking wars, we are going to have to explain to others that our animating power is not the quest for more money or empire-building, but the Spirit of God.  And that means we'll have to be prepared to look weird, like we are the aliens and oddballs, because we are no longer driven by the logic of the world of money and militarism.  And instead of demanding that others recognize that "we" are right and "they" are wrong, it will mean that we learn to live as a sort of scandal or puzzle to others who can't quite figure us out.  It's like the old insight of Emmanuel Cardinal Suhard, who wrote, "To be a witness does not consist in engaging in propaganda, nor even in stirring people up, but in being a living mystery.  It means to live one's life in such a way that one's life would not make sense if God did not exist."

The characters on the Enterprise can share their resources and technology, labor without thought of getting rich, and show concern for others in need because they are living within a system where there is enough for all and things like money are no longer necessary.  That makes them look strange and even foolish to beings who don't understand.  The only way it can possibly make sense in the Star Trek universe to live with such generosity is if you really do have a way of life (in this case, provided by technology) that allows you no longer to worry about scarcity and to be free to share.  And for the followers of Jesus, the only way our lives of generosity and love can make sense is if there really is a God whose graciousness to us allows us to share abundantly with all, too, without needing to slide into the world's endless quest for "more."

Today, then, it's OK if our lives look weird to others who watch our choices and wonder why we aren't constantly driven to get "more" or why we're committed to compassion and goodness for others.  Let the world wonder, "What's in it for them?"  Let them ask, "Why would they do this if they don't get something out of it?"  Let them puzzle over the living mystery of our lives, which will only make sense in the end if God not only exists, but has given us a Spirit with a different way of living than the old routines of the world.

Go ahead, be different today as the Spirit leads you to be.  Be blessedly weird.

Spirit of God, direct our lives and our actions in light of who you are, rather than the ways of the world systems around us.

It Takes One to Know One--May 24, 2022

It Takes One to Know One--May 24, 2022

"For what human being knows what is truly human except the human spirit that is within? So also no one can comprehend what is truly God's except the Spirit of God."  [1 Corinthians 2:11]

They can program a computer to play chess like a master, even to beat the best human players.  But beneath the rules of logic, lines of code, and computerized algorithms, the computer doesn't really know what it is to be human.  And while they are also quite good at making computer-generated images that look like real people, or can even simulate natural conversation, it's still all just a set of artificial responses.  There is something quintessentially different about the experience of being human and the programmed outputs of your smart speaker, your digital assistant on your phone, or the bot accounts on social media.  Corporations may want us to start to think of these products of theirs as living beings, even with giving them names like, "Alexa," or "Siri," or trying to fool us with profile pictures that look like real people, but there is something unique about being human that just can't be programmed or coded.

Plenty of ancient and medieval philosophers have taken a shot at explaining that fundamental difference about being human.  They drew up complex diagrams and concocted ontological schemes differentiating a "soul" from a "spirit," and setting apart both from the physical part of us, like they were organs you could dissect on a frog in high school biology.  I'm not so sure that it's quite that cut-and-dry, but I do think that there's something... essential... to us as creatures that makes us qualitatively different, not only from rocks and trees and clouds, but also from birds and rabbits and lions--and also from whatever unseen beings there are out there, and whatever simulations we create on a computer.  I don't know how best to express it, other than saying the "you-ness" of you is something special, distinct, and unique to you, and that maybe all of us human beings have something that makes us "us."  The peculiar mix in humanity of physicality--we eat, we sleep, we love, we labor, and we suffer--as well as our capacity to think, imagine, feel, dream, and wonder--makes us different from a chess-playing computer and a flowing river.  That particular stuff about us is what I think we have in mind when we talk about "the human spirit."

And for our purposes today looking at First Corinthians, it seems that Paul is saying there are some things that it takes another human to really understand about being human... so he can make a parallel point about how we come to understand anything about God.  There are some things that your smart speaker, "Alexa," just won't understand--it can tell you tomorrow's weather or play back to you the last ten songs you requested over the last month, but it doesn't really understand what it is like to be human.  There are times your dog can tell if you are sad or excited, but your dog doesn't really understand it if you are feeling unfulfilled in your job or having strains in a friendship.  Some things just take another human to understand.  And by the same token, there is something that seems just about universal in being human across times, eras, and cultures.  So while my dog, who is just in the other room right now, doesn't understand human heartache or complex moral questions about good and evil, I can read the thoughts of other humans from centuries in the past who lived thousands of miles away, and can share something of their common humanity as they share their insights, questions, and thoughts.  There are some things about being human that take another human being to understand, that you just can't get a rock or a tree or a dog or a computer to understand.  That's not meant to be an insult to rocks, trees, dogs, or computers--just that we are distinct in some ways. It's more just a way of saying, like the old cliche, "It takes one to know one."

So, here's the rub.  How can anybody claim to know anything true about God if God is fundamentally "other" to us?  If I can't reasonably ask my dog to help me work through my grief or identify dysfunctional patterns in my family system, because my dog isn't human, then how can I possibly think that I could understand the ways of God, when by comparison I'm a whole lot further away from being God than my dog is from being like me?  Like the old line from the book of Isaiah puts it, "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord."  If I can't expect a robin outside in the tree to understand my small talk as I walk past, what makes me think that I have a chance at understanding the depths of who God is?

Paul has an answer, of sorts.  Paul says that just like there is some shared reality we might call the "human spirit" that allows me to understand the feelings, thoughts, and insights of another human being, even if we are separated by time or distance, that God's own Spirit can search the depths of God.  And this same Spirit relates to humans, reveals the heart of God, and, we could even say, inspires.  Without the Spirit making known what is deep in the heart of God, we could only be guessing about how God operates in the universe.  And we humans do get ourselves into trouble (and some pretty bad theology) when we make the mistake of assuming that God is just a "big" human, with our same human insecurities, fears, greed, shortsightedness, and limits of linear thinking.  Read the old myths of gods like Zeus and Jupiter for those kinds of deities, and you'll see they basically took us at our most capricious and imagined ornery humans with superhuman powers.  If we just take human logic and assume that God must be like us, we'll only ever recognize a god of our own construction.  That's like confusing a mirror for a window and assuming the face you see is someone else rather than your own reflection.

But God has a way of getting through to us.  God's own Spirit makes God knowable.  God's own Spirit can speak to our hearts about the heart of God.  God's own Spirit can show us the things we never would have figured out for ourselves, like the preposterous sounding news of a God who saves the world from a cross, or a Lord who reigns in serving.  God's own Spirit makes it possible for us to say, "Here's news that we never would have come up with on our own or invented with our own faculties--God has redeemed the world with suffering love that dies for us!"

So yeah, I can't expect my smart phone, my dog, or my houseplant to really understand me--and yet I can dare to believe that we can understand something deep and true about God.  That's not because I'm so smart, but because God chooses to reveal something about God's deepest self through the Spirit.  And that's good news.

Lord God, show us yourself by the gift of your Spirit today.

Open to Divine Surprise--May 23, 2022

Open to Surprise--May 23, 2022

"But, as it is written, 'What no eye has seen, nor ear heard, nor the human heart conceived, what God has prepared for those who love him'--these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God." [1 Corinthians 2:9-10]

Here's a bit of free, if unsolicited, advice for your soul: don't let your faith get so rigid with certainty that you are no longer able to let God surprise you.  A faith that can no longer be stretched by the unexpected ways of a God beyond our grasp isn't alive, but has fossilized; that kind of stiffness isn't a sign of strong, healthy faith--it's rigor mortis.

I say this because sometimes we confuse stubbornness with devotion and assume that "real" faith has to have all the answers figured out and put together in a tidy system, with no room for the unknown or mystery.  It is terribly easy in this day and age to reduce Christianity to a fixed set of positions you are "supposed" to have on various political, cultural, and economic hot topics.  There's little room for nuance sometimes--or it is seen as being wishy-washy.  And there is even less room for critical thinking that sees in shades of gray, or just doesn't have definitive answers.  

A faith like that--where everything is pared down to a set of fixed talking points or flashpoints in someone's culture war--is not open to being surprised by God, because it assumes it already has all the answers it needs.  And once you've convinced yourself that you know all the answers, you are not going to be interested in listening to someone suggest that there are more questions, more wonders, or more mysteries.  If you're satisfied with shallow piety, you'll always be threatened by the voices that say, "Let's dig deeper... let's have a closer look... let's dare to ask the questions we were afraid to say out loud."

What a gift, then, to hear the apostle Paul point out how essential the notion of divine surprise is for real, living faith.  Instead of insisting he's got all the answers, or that the pinnacle of faith is when you know with certainty all that God has up the divine sleeve, Paul relishes the idea that God's goodness is beyond our grasp, and God's designs are beyond our easy answers and shallow talking points.  Paul insists that if we've got it figured out completely, you can be sure that "it" ain't God, because God's graciousness is always more than we can sense or think or feel.  God's power for generosity, as the letter to the Ephesians will tell us, is always "more than we can ask or imagine."  So to be in right relationship with this God, then, is always going to mean that we need to be open to being surprised by God.

An honest reading of the story of Scripture certainly shows us how often God insists on moving in surprising directions and acting in ways that leave even the most pious scratching their heads and saying, "I wasn't expecting that."  From the unlikely choice of a couple of wobbly-faithed octagenarians named Abram and Sarai to build a nation out of, to the liberation of their descendants from slavery centuries later, to the arrival of the Messiah as a suffering servant rather than a conquering king, to the radical inclusion of outsiders and anybodies in the new community called "church," God has always been stretching our capacity for what is possible.  God has a way of doing what we think can't be done and crossing the lines we think are fixed and impenetrable.  Honestly, it almost seems that in the Scriptures, as soon as someone says, "Ok, but surely God is not allowed to include THEM, or forgive THIS, or work through THOSE people, or accept THAT," God takes it as a personal dare to do the very thing we thought impossible, unacceptable, or inconceivable.  And just when we tell ourselves, "Fine, God has surprised people before, but finally NOW we have the last and final word and no changes are coming--God cannot surprise us anymore!" God shows up again with another ace up the divine sleeve, and we find our old theological certainties yanked out from under us.

So one of two things can happen in this day: we can either keep repeating the cycle of decreeing limits on what we think God is allowed to do, or to whom God is allowed to bestow goodness and grace, only to have ourselves proven wrong again when God up and does the thing we thought was out of bounds... or we can let ourselves be intentionally open to divine surprise.  That means a certain humility before we start worshiping our own sense of "rightness."  And it also means a shift in the way we see our faith, so that the goal is no longer perfect certainty in all things--as if you have really only reached mature faith when you stop having questions or wonder.  Instead, the goal of faith is an openness to that Mystery, a willingness to let God stretch our minds and hearts wider and deeper than we thought possible.  The goal isn't to reach a fixed point, but to let God continue to move us, in C.S. Lewis' imagery of heaven, "further up and further in."  

Now, if we dare to choose that kind of openness to letting God surprising us, it will mean we have to let go of some sacred cows.  We will have to surrender control (or the illusion that we ever had it) over what God's plan or designs are, and we will have to allow God to reserve the right to be generous to folks we don't think are deserving.  We will have to resist shallow, uncritical, and pat answers when deep wrestling and mystery are required.  We will have to say, "I think it may be more complex than that," when other religious voices try to shoehorn our faith into a political party's talking points.  And it will mean learning to be OK with saying, "Here's what I think about this part of my faith... but I'm open to being surprised."

Let's see what happens when we dare to keep our faith flexible enough to let God stretch it where God sees the need.  Let's allow God to surprise us.

Lord Jesus, do your amazing work among us and in us--beyond our asking or our imagining.

The Big Reveal--May 20, 2022

The Big Reveal--May 20, 2022

"Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom, though it is not a wisdom of this age or of the rulers of this age, who are doomed to perish. But we speak God's wisdom, secret and hidden, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this; for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory." [1 Corinthians 2:6-8]

I've got to tell you: I have come to love that feeling of getting to the end of a mystery story and seeing how all the pieces fit together.  Especially if the storyteller is a good one and the clues have been there in plain sight all along, there is a feeling of surprise and satisfaction all at the same time.  Whether it's a classic whodunnit novel like Agatha Christie or the adventures of Sherlock Holmes, or a intricately plotted movie that keeps you guessing like Knives Out, The Sixth Sense, or The Usual Suspects, I get such a kick out of witnessing a story unfold and trying to figure out what's going on as I'm seeing it or reading it, and then usually to have the big reveal in the end show me how much of the truth I had missed along the way.  I love it.

And to me, the best part is that moment after the climax of the story where we are shown all the things that had pointed to the conclusion all along, but that we might or might not have understood as the plot unfurled.  You see all the details that might have seemed innocuous or irrelevant before, the mannerisms of characters that had seemed curious but forgettable before, or the seemingly random objects or events from earlier in the story that now take on a whole new significance.  Often, a sentence from one point in the action comes back with a new meaning, or you realize that what a character had said meant something different from what you expected when you first heard it.  I just love those moments, and I truly admire the authors or film directors who can pull it off with panache. 

I should probably also confess that for a lot of my life I didn't think of the Bible as a book that told that kind of story.  I thought, like many, that the Bible was basically a reference book, like a dictionary, almanac, or cookbook, where correct answers were found, and that there was no development of a story, so much as a collection of truths to be learned and rules to be followed.  (I can remember, in an earlier chapter of my life, learning that old saw that the word "Bible" was actually an acronym that stood for "Basic Instructions Before Leavingt Earth," which not only made it sound like the Christian faith was only interested in preparation for an afterlife, but also that the Bible was primarily an instructional booklet rather than a story, much less The Story.)  But to hear Paul tell it here, the message of Jesus is in fact one of those "Aha!" plot twists that reveals a mystery that all of history has been leading up to.  

In other words, as Paul says to the Corinthians, all of human history has been a story in which God's movements and actions have been sometimes obvious and sometimes hidden, but they make sense in a whole new way in light of Jesus.  And once Jesus--the Crucified Savior--comes on the scene, pieces of the puzzle come together, and odd extraneous details now are revealed to be deeply important.  And much like happens at the turning point of a mystery novel or suspense movie, we discover that the truth has been there the whole time, but we didn't know how to hear it against the background noise.  We didn't see how to make sense of what had been there for us to see all along.

In particular, the "mystery" revealed in Jesus is that God has always chosen to work in what we call upside-down ways--lifting up the lowly, welcoming the outcast, feeding all abundantly, siding with the enslaved rather than the enslaver, humbling the arrogant, blessing the ones deemed nobodies, and bearing human violence and death.  We might not have recognized it, because we still so easily soft-pedal those parts of the story and turn up the volume on things that make God seem just like us at our worst: vindictive, spiteful, angry, and litigious.  We have remade God in our own image as the scowling bearded fellow from the Sistine Chapel, and we have invented the notions that God is stingy with good things, transactional in blessing only those who do something for God first, and itching to zap some pitiable sinner.  We have basically re-imagined God as just an emperor on a cosmic scale--like Caesar, Nebuchadnezzar, or Pharaoh, but just over the whole universe.  (And honestly, that's kind of what the ancient Greeks and Romans did when they imagined gods like Zeus or Jupiter, who were plenty powerful, but basically capricious jerks.)  But in Jesus, we come to see that God has always been just what Jesus has told us and shown us--the Merciful One who sends good gifts like sun and rain even on selfish stinkers... the Vulnerable One who risks being rejected... the Audacious One who welcomes outcasts and forgives sinners... and the Faithful One who keeps promises even if it costs God everything.  In Jesus we see what the Hebrew Scriptures (what we sometimes call the Old Testament) have been saying all along about God, but so often missed:  God has always been about the work of lifting up the lowly, feeding the hungry with good things, cancelling debts, liberating the oppressed, and breaking the weapons of the oppressor.  God has always been holding out the vision of a new creation where wolves and lambs can lie down in peace, where swords are beaten into plowshares, and where mercy and justice are our way of life.  God has even always been the sort of Person who bears our pain and death.  So when Jesus comes along and is revealed to be God's Messiah from the cross, it might feel like a gut-punch of a plot-twist, but it's really been God's way all along!

That should also put to a stop all our silly and arrogant thinking as Christians that "the God of the Old Testament" is different from "the God of the New Testament," as sometimes Respectable Religious folks like to say in churches.  Sometimes you'll hear that the God of the Old Testament is mean, cruel, and legalistic, and then Jesus came and sold us a nicer model as the New Testament's God of mercy and kindness.  But that's not what Paul says.  Paul says that God has been leaving the clues and showing God's character all along--but we haven't been able to put the pieces together until Jesus brings it all into focus.  Jesus' coming--and in particular, the way the cross makes sense of Jesus' mission--helps us to see what was true about God from creation on forward.  Jesus is the big reveal that helps us to see what we had been overlooking, and what we had ignored as extraneous.  Kind of like how those old-fashioned tinted cellophane 3-D glasses used to make the red and blue lines of a picture transform before our eyes into a three-dimensional image when you would put them on, Jesus reveals what we had not seen about God until his coming.  And not because the truth about God's character wasn't there all along, but because we couldn't make sense of what was right in front of us.

Like Robert Farrar Capon writes in his classic, The Mystery of Christ... and Why We Don't Get It, "The mysterious, reconciling grace that was revealed in Jesus is not something that got its act in gear for the first time in Jesus; rather, it is a feature of the very constitution of the universe--a feature that was there all along, for everybody and everything. And it was there, Christians believe, because the Person who manifests himself finally and fully in Jesus' humanity is none other than the Word of God, the Second Person of the Three Persons in One God who is intimately and immediately present to every scrap of creation from start to finish." 

In other words, Jesus doesn't show us a different God from the God we meet in creation or in the story of Israel--but rather, Jesus shows us that God's heart looks like Jesus' heart all along, even if we didn't realize it before.  All of creation is the work of the same God who is willing to get strung up on a cross for the sake of that creation.  Every moment of history is held in the hands of a God who was willing to also take nails in the human-divine palms of Jesus.  If we didn't know it before, now with the Big Reveal in Jesus, we can and do.  

And now, the challenge and invitation of each day is to see everything through the lenses Jesus gives us, and to watch as what had been confusing, colored lines become an image with new depth and dimension.  Now that we've seen who God is in Jesus, we can see all the signs we had been given along the way of God's cruciform character... and we can face the day to come with the same kind of love.

Lord Jesus, help us to see your fingerprints all through the world and the story of the Scriptures, and help us to see the day in front of us in light of who you are, too.

A Table for Beggars--May 19, 2022

 

A Table for Beggars--May 19, 2022

"And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest on human wisdom but on the power of God." [1 Corinthians 2:3-5]

This is where so many of us get hung up with Jesus: we don't want to let people see Jesus as "weak," because we are afraid it will make US look weak.  We don't want to recognize that Jesus' way is the way of suffering love, because it looks like weakness, or because it makes Jesus look like a "loser," or because we think we need to project being tough and powerful ourselves.  Or at most, we'll treat the cross of Jesus like a special exception--that it was OK for Jesus to die on a cross, but that we are not meant to look weak, or foolish, or like "losers" ourselves.  No, no no--we can't have people thinking we are anything but successful, strong, and sure of ourselves... right?

And, to be sure, sometimes that is exactly how the watching world looks at the Gospel.  Ted Turner, famous media mogul and billionaire, once famously remarked that in his opinion, "Christianity is a religion for losers."  The problem is that so often we think it's our job to make ourselves look like powerful and strong "winners" to refute him, when maybe the good news is that Turner was exactly right: the gospel claims that losers like us are beloved and claimed as we are, because God has taken the side of losers by becoming one just like us and saving the world through death rather than through killing. 

The world's logic just can't process that--it can only imagine "winning" (however we define that) as the key to being important in life. And so, the world says, we have to show that we have bested someone else, dominated someone else, or have more than someone else in order to, you know, "win." Once we accept the world's logic, the crucified Jesus will be a scandal or something we want to sweep under the rug.  We're afraid that if our Lord is recognized as a loser who died on a cross instead of the one doing the crucifying of his enemies, we'll be seen as losers, too.  It's just as Robert Farrar Capon said about our secret wish for Jesus to really be an invincible superhero like Superman:  

“We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God 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 just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”

And part of what makes it so hard for us to admit that Jesus' way looks like defeat is that we know we are called to follow that way.  We know that if Jesus' presence in the world looks like weakness to the bullies and big deals of the world, then we'll risk looking weak, too, for following Jesus' footsteps.  And so often, we are so terribly insecure that we really do care what other people think about us rather than about what Jesus has already said about us.  

Paul, however, gets it.  Because Jesus' way is not the bombastic shouting or angry threatening of the ones who think they are "great", Paul doesn't do those things, either.  He didn't blow into town in Corinth pointing at his own impressive status, or listing his advanced degrees, or talking about how much money he had.  He came, in his own words, "in weakness"--the opposite of the smooth-talking snake-oil salesman, the podium-pounding politician, or the arrogant emperor.  He came, not trying to intimidate or impress, but simply offering the news of Jesus, and letting the authentic Spirit of God show up in the Spirit's own ways.  Like they say, good evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread--and that means acknowledging your own empty hands rather than pretending you are self-sufficient.  It means letting our own weakness become a bridge to connect us with other people, rather than thinking we have to hide it from them.

It reminds me of a conversation I got to be a part of recently in a committee meeting.  We were talking about the disconnect between how the world around often sees Christians (hypocrites, judgmental, starchy, or like holier-than-thou know-it-alls, and such) and how Jesus wants his followers to be known for love (see John 13). And blessedly, one wise voice around the table said it in a way that sticks in my memory:  "We're all a bunch of screw-ups and losers, and it's ok to be that with us, too--Jesus loves us still.  That's our message to the world."  In so many ways, that's what Paul is talking about.  His approach when sharing the good news of Jesus with other people didn't shy away from admitting his own weakness, fragility, and foibles.  In fact, we let those be our connecting points--so that others can know that if Jesus loves us exactly at all the places we feel like screw-ups and losers, then Jesus' love will meet others there, too.  It's another way of saying, "I've been a beggar, and Jesus welcomed me at his table and has shared his bread with me--and there's a place at the table for you, too."  Jesus has never been ashamed to say, "I was hungry and you gave me food," too, for that matter.  So we're in good company if we are at his table for beggars, which turns out to be his feast of victory.

Maybe there's someone you will cross paths with on this day who is waiting for you to tell them the same.

Lord Jesus, let us own our weakness unashamed and unafraid, so that we can point to your way of meeting us in weakness, loss, and death at the cross.

An Alternative to Campaign Promises--May 18, 2022

An Alternative to Campaign Promises--May 18, 2022

"When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." [1 Corinthians 2:1-2]

On the days when my faith is at its most wobbly and I ask myself why I continue to do my best to keep following the way of Jesus, one thing that grounds me again is the simple realization that the New Testament writers just do NOT sound like politicians campaigning for office.  That's part of how I know there's something to the Gospel: it ain't a stump speech full of empty campaign promises.

I say this with a recollection from just yesterday, our state's primarily election day, as I was walking into my polling place, where a campaigner for a candidate for state office was outside trying to drum up last-minute support with assurances of how their candidate would do such great things, and "Wouldn't you like to support him?"  And as I overheard the campaigner's spiel about how their candidate's agenda would help "save" America, I thought to myself that if I weren't already opposed to this particular candidate's platform, this spokesperson's big talk would have pushed me away even further--if for no other reason than that it felt so cheap and hollow.  So much talk about how "strong" and "great" they would make things hit my ears like so much bluster and hot air, rather than substance.  And as I think about the short snippets I heard just walking in and out of the door, it dawned on me just how un-like the posture of Saint Paul the whole scene was.  Paul makes a point not to peddle empty promises or schmaltzy rhetoric about God or about this new religion he's come to tell you about.  All he talks about is Jesus--and there is no Jesus other than the Crucified one, as far as Paul is concerned.  

In other words, Paul knew that it sounds empty, shallow, and fake to try to persuade people on big promises or cheap appeals to being "strong" or "successful" or "great," if only you'll support his candidate Jesus for Lord. And instead, Paul focuses on the very thing that makes Jesus look, to the watching world, like he is a weak failure of a nobody.  He centers on the cross.  And he does not, not as some fine print he'd like to skip over or sweep unde the rug, but as the very heart of the Christian message.  God's way of reigning and rescuing the world is not through conquest or domination, not through strict enforcement of rules to make us into well-behaved little boys and girls, and not through the usual means of military might, economic power, or overwhelming coercive force.  God's way of reigning the world is the preposterous notion of dying for it at the hands of the rulers of the day, absorbing the empire's violence into himself, and breaking its power in death and resurrection.  It is decidedly NOT through the means of what we usually recognize as "success," "strength," or "greatness."  And so Paul doesn't try to sell the gospel in those terms, because he knows they are just so much hot air.

It is easy to lose sight of this in our day, when so many voices confuse Christianity with the usual modes of getting things done in our culture. We are so used to the stump speech making grand (and vague) promises of success, or loud angry bluster stoking violence against "those people" who will take away our strength or our power or our greatness, that we might miss how that whole way of thinking runs counter to the way of Jesus.  And here the contrast could hardly be any clearer: rather than the last-minute attempt to gin up support for a candidate with glittering generalities and appeals to strength and power, Paul zeroes in on Jesus the Crucified, the One whose way of saving the whole world (not just America, mind you) is the self-giving love and rejection of violence that looks like failure and weakness to the watching world.

After hearing so many religious hucksters in my day who peddle a version of Christianity that sounds just like one of those polling-place campaigners, sometimes I forget--the real gospel sounds nothing like those diatribes.  The real gospel sounds like Jesus, the Crucified One, and it is exactly because of that difference that I find myself drawn back again to it and to Jesus himself, over against a world full of pompous pundits and campaign noise.

What I need is exactly what Paul has given us: the word that God has saved the world by dying for it already. That doesn't sound like a campaign promise--that sounds like news of something already accomplished.

Lord Jesus, keep me centered on you today, especially over against all the noise and bluster around.

Dictionary Versus Cookie Dough--May 17, 2022

Dictionary Versus Cookie Dough--May 17, 2022

"He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, 'Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord'." [1 Corinthians 1:30-31]

There's an old line of Eugene Peterson that has stayed with me over the years--the late theologian and prolific writer once said, "Jesus is the dictionary in which we look up the meanings of words."  I am convinced that he is right.  The challenge is to take his point seriously, even when it challenges my old thinking, habits, and actions.

What he means, of course, is that for the Christian community, we don't start with our own personal definitions of things like "wisdom" or "justice" or "goodness" or "love" and then shoehorn Jesus to fit our expectations.  Rather, just the opposite--we look to the way of Jesus to show us what love is really like... to see what God's kind of wisdom really is... and to have our old notions of "justice" or "holiness" or "goodness" stretched, expanded, or even broken open.  

So, for example, instead of starting with the assumption that being "holy" means refusing to associate with "notorious sinners" or people who don't believe in God or think differently from what you believe, we look to Jesus and see that whatever else holiness involves, it certainly included hanging out with all the outcasts, sinners, and "those people" who were around to have dinner with back in the first century.  That's important, because sometimes we get the idea that being made "holy" (or, to be fancy about it, "sanctification") means increasingly withdrawing from the world, condemning everyone who is different, and baptizing your own hatred as righteous indignation.  But if we start with Jesus for the shape of holiness, we'll get a very different picture--we get the very embodiment of God getting a reputation for hanging out with "tax collectors, prostitutes, and sinners," touching the unclean lepers, and striking up conversations with foreigners over again the protests of the "holy people."  See the importance of letting Jesus be our dictionary, rather than making him fit our mold like cookie dough cut out into the shape you wanted?

Paul says much the same here, but not just about holiness--he points out that Jesus shows us the shape of redemption, the form of wisdom, and the meaning of justice (the same word as "righteousness" in Paul's Greek).  So rather than us assuming we know what justice looks like (and often it involves punishing "bad" people and demanding satisfaction of wrongs and repayment of debts), we look to Jesus, who shows us a surprising picture of God's kind of justice, in both his words and his actions.  And for Jesus, "justice" turns out to look a lot more like making sure everybody gets enough to eat, forgiving debts outright, and showing mercy to the vulnerable, than it does zapping people for their wrongdoing.  The question is whether we start with our own preconceived notions, or let Jesus redefine the terms for us.

The same is true with wisdom as well.  As we've been noting over these last several verses from First Corinthians, the world brings its own assumptions about what is the "smart" thing to do, and conventional wisdom often has the ring of "You gotta get THEM before they get YOU in life!" or "More is always better!" or "Me and My Group First!"  But if we start with Jesus to define wisdom, we get the sense that in God's Reign, we put others first and seek the well-being of all rather than just ourselves, we find freedom in letting go of possessions rather than hoarding them, and we refuse to answer evil with evil.  It's all a matter of whether we let Jesus shape our assumptions, or use our assumption as a lens to see (or distort) Jesus to line up with those expectations.

The really scary thing, of course, is that in both cases, you end up convincing yourself that your actions are in line with Jesus--if we let Jesus shape our way of seeing the world in the first place, of course, we hope that our lives will come to be more and more Christ-like.  But it can (and sadly does) happen the other way around, too--when I make my mental picture of Jesus fit my already existing assumptions, prejudices, political agenda, and economic interests, I'll find that my version of Jesus never challenges my greed, hatred, fear, or hypocrisy.  I'll have cut all of those out of my cookie-dough Christ.  Much like Anne Lamott says, "You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do." That, of course, is how you end up with churchgoing devout people naming the name of Jesus who are convinced that their Savior endorsed slavery, Jim Crow, and the extermination of indigenous peoples in our own country's history, or the Nazi war machine during World War II or apartheid in South Africa, or the Crusades, or all sorts of other atrocities all propped up by church folks who were sure Jesus was on their side.  And that possibility scares the willies out of me, if I can be honest.

So today, the challenge for you and me both is to be people who keep going back to Jesus to redefine terms for us--to show us again in his actions and words what real love, genuine justice, and authentic holiness looks like.  And the hope is that we will come to become more and more like him, rather than distorting Jesus to fit our expectations.

Today, let's look up the most important words of this day's need in the dictionary whom we confess as Lord--Jesus the Crucified One.

Lord Jesus, break free of the expectations we try and confine you within, and instead shape our view of the world in light of your character.

God's Calling Card--May 16, 2022

God's Calling Card--May 16, 2022

"Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God." [1 Corinthians 1:26-29]

You and I are evidence of the table-turning ways of God.

Wow. You. Real, actual you. And real, actual me. God's call to us--not just people in Bible times, or halo-marked saints from oil paintings, or famous heroes from history, but us in all of our ordinariness--shows the world how God operates. And God's ways are always to take the foolish and the frail and the forgotten in order to let some of the hot air out of the puffed-up, the proud, the pompous, and the powerful. Paul says that the very fact that we have come to faith in Jesus is evidence to the world of God's upside-down ways.

You could say it's God's calling-card--this divine habit of taking the ones looked down on by the strong, the powerful, and the elite and calling them to belong in God's Reign. Like the old Zorro stories where the masked vigilante hero leaves behind the letter "Z" slashed into the scenery to "sign his work," or like the two robbers in the movie Home Alone who always leave the water running in the faucets of the houses they break into, so that people will know they've been hit by "The Wet Bandits," God has left a calling card, a way of working in the world, by deliberately NOT calling only the so-called best and brightest, but intentionally calling anybody and everybody "beloved". That's you and me. We, just in the very fact of our belovedness without riches or political power or social influence, we are how God deflates the arrogant and turns the usual order of things upside down. We are the way that God shames the strong and shows the world's "winners" that they are not nearly so special as they like to tell people they are. We are the evidence that none of their accumulating, blustering, fist-shaking, or intimidating really had any sway in the big scheme of things--because here we are, ordinary and unassuming, and Christ has called us--chosen us!--to belong to his movement.

Think of it--it's really quite a beautiful design on God's part, how God both lifts up the people who have been told they are nobodies and silences those who have puffed themselves up as "somebodies." God does it by picking... us. And God calls us without auditions, without being impressed by our skills, our charm, our net worth, or our job titles. God calls us and loves us in all of our wonderful ordinariness, as a way of telling the Big Deals of the world that they aren't such big deals after all. And that turns out to be part of how God is changing the world--by creating a totally new kind of community, in which we no longer fuss over who has more money or who wields more influence. God is creating a fellowship of the ordinary, so that we will understand that our belonging has everything to do with grace and nothing to do with our raw talent or even our greatest achievements.

It's a bold--and I dare say risky--plan on God's part. Risky, not because God can't do amazing things through ordinary people without having an elite team of the smartest, strongest, richest, and most successful people... but because we still keep missing the point of how God operates and we Christians keep falling into the same old thinking that being a Big Deal is important. We do it institutionally as "The Church" when we play games like, "Whose Congregation Is Bigger?" or when religious-sounding hucksters on TV sell the message that "God wants you to be rich." We do it when pastors give up on their call to be Elijahs to the Ahabs of the day because they (we) would rather have a seat at the table of power rather than risk being called "irrelevant." We do it, each and every one of us, when we try and puff ourselves up to make ourselves feel better, or more significant, than our neighbor down the street. Day by day, followers of Jesus miss the point of the fact that we have been called, just as we are, in all of our ordinariness--and that this is God's choice. We fail to see that this is part of God's surprising way of redeeming and restoring the world--by calling the nobodies and telling them they are beloved somebodies... by choosing the ones who have been overlooked or unseen in order to send a message to the ones who want to keep putting themselves in the center of attention. We miss the sheer surprising genius of it, and instead so often we still play by the world's rules that you have to convince people you are a "winner" or a Big Deal in order to matter... when God has actually bent over backwards to show us that we are beloved just as we are.

And yet, for all the ways we miss the point, God does not give up on working with--and through--us. That's one of the risks, you could say, of not going with only the best and the brightest and the most well-skilled and charismatic: God deliberately runs the risk that we will miss the point of what God is doing by having called us in the first place. God chooses to work through us, despite how dense we can be, even when our dense minds miss the beauty and the wonder of a God who loves and works through people who are not necessarily the brightest bulb in the bunch.

We, in all of our thick-headedness, are the calling card of a God who deals in reversals.  And any time you see the weak lifted above the strong, the outcasts welcomed while the elites and celebrities drop their jaws, or the last put ahead of the first, it is Christ "signing his work" like Zorro and his rapier.  The turning of tables is God's signature move.

So even when I have missed the point and give in to the old thinking that says only the Big Deals, the "strong," and the "winners" matter, God doesn't "uncall" me because I don't "get it." God chooses and claims and calls a world full of us who don't "get" it on our own. And that is the wonder of grace--the God who calls us doesn't select only from the Varsity Team, the Honor Society, or the Homecoming Court. The God who calls us in Jesus doesn't get impressed with any of them. The real living God who calls you just loves... you.

Own it today. Know it. And know that nothing else is needed but that love, that call, that Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to hear that you have claimed us as we are, and help us to see the ways you love us despite our drawbacks, limitations, and frailties.

The Foolishness of God--May 13, 2022

The Foolishness of God--May 13, 2022

"For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. for God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." [1 Corinthians 1:22-25]

My kids were just about the ideal age to be the target audience for the Disney movie "Frozen" when it came out, and I have to admit, too, that movie surprised me.  For one, I guess I never expected to see my son as a preschooler belting out "Let It Go," or even Olaf the talking snowman's song, "In Summer," at the top of his lungs around our living room. But it was the ending that really threw me for a loop, because all of my expectations for how the story was "supposed to go" were turned upside-down.  And honestly, I'm really thankful for that.

Now, the movie's been out for nearly ten years and has spawned a sequel, tv spin-offs, and countless other merchandising opportunities, so you may well already know the big twist.  But--spoiler alert--I was floored that the movie's climactic moment of heroism wasn't a battle where a valiant knight or warrior or fought off a villain, or where some variant of Prince Charming kissed an endangered princess.  Instead, (again, spoiler alert), Queen Elsa is saved from an unexpected opponent when her sister Anna sacrifices herself in an act of self-giving sisterly love.  The love that saves the day isn't shallow romanticism, and the triumph of good doesn't come at the point of a sword, but in fact destroys the villain's sword against the ice that Anna becomes at the final moment as she succumbs to a frozen heart.  It took all the old tropes about fairy tales, especially decades' worth of Disney-fied fairy tales, and turned them upside down.  It wasn't what anybody was expecting--and yet, it was exactly the kind of story we were hungry for without knowing it.

I can remember sitting in a darkened theater, my jaw hanging open, as I realized that this story wasn't what I was expecting, and that it wasn't what I had seen a million times before in children's animated movies.  The character who seemed to be breaking toward being cast as a tragic villain is rescued, the most naive and self-absorbed character turns out to be selfless and brave, and nobody needs to kiss or kill their way into victory.  It was marvelously refreshing.

Something like that is what Paul wants us to see in the Christian story as well.  The gospel is centered on God's victory, to be sure, but it is a strange and unexpected kind of victory.  It's not won by supernatural spectacle, raw political or military power, or advanced technological know-how and strategy.  God's victory, God's strength, and God's wisdom, are all seen most clearly, not on a cosmic battlefield, not in a duel of wits like a chess match between good and evil, and not even in some obvious gesture of derring-do.  Jesus doesn't slay a dragon or rescue a damsel in some tower while riding up in gleaming armor--he dies. And not just that he dies, he dies with utter shame, humiliation, brutality, and dehumanization from the powers of the day.  He dies at the hands of the empire, which gloats and worsens the pain in every way it knows how, as a way of intimidating and threatening everybody who see this wretched human form lynched on a stake of wood.  And even though it certainly seems like an utter loss and a humiliating defeat for God, the scandalous news is that this turns out to be the very way God triumphs--even if it's not what anybody expected.

I love the way former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams puts it:  "Jesus crucified is God crucified, so we believe. Jesus is the total and final embodiment in history of God's loving mercy; and so this cross is a unique, terrible, extreme act of violence--a summary of all sin.  It represents the human rejection of love. And not even that can destroy God: with the wounds of the cross still disfiguring his body, he returns out of hell to his disciples and wishes them peace...whatever the deficiency and the drying up of the human capacity to love, the killing of love by pain, there is still, at the heart of everything, a love that cannot be killed by pain."  That's it--it's the surprise victorious ending nobody saw coming, because we have all been conditioned to expect that winners kill their enemies rather than dying for them, and we expect obvious heroics when God prefers to overturn our expectations with a win that looks like loss and a divine comedy that at first only reads as a tragedy.

We still live in a world where it the default expectation is that winners have to humiliate and demolish the losers.  We still live in a time where demagogues like to brag about their greatness, their power, their influence, their wealth, and their genius--only to have the gospel come along and tell us that is all the exact opposite of the way of God.  To a world that proudly sings, "They'll know we are winners by our power," the community gathered around the cross sings an alternative song in graceful defiance:  "They'll know we are Christians by our love."  We have learned that tune from Jesus, the Crucified One.  We have seen in his way the surprise victory of God.

Now our challenge is to sing it wherever we go--both to a skeptical world full of empires and big deals who still think they need to demolish and intimidate, but also to fellow respectable religious folks who have been swindled into that kind of antichrist thinking and believe it is God's way.  It's time--as Queen Elsa might sing to us--to let go of that old, cliche and deathly way of thinking and living our lives.  It's time to tell the story of God's unexpected victory through a cross.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage and joy to sing your surprising song to a world still caught in the old ways of domination and fear.