Where We Give Our Hearts--September 30, 2022

Where We Give Our Hearts--September 30, 2022

"Therefore, my beloved, flee from the worship of idols." [1 Corinthians 10:14]

The obvious ones are easy, honestly.

A golden calf, a statue of King Nebuchadnezzar that the Babylonian army forces people to worship, or even old Pharaoh claiming the power of the divine for his right to enslave people.  They're all false gods, and you know it pretty easily, because they overplay their hand.  They're just so obvious about it.  Those are the idols we have a sporting chance of knowing not to worship.  If there's an actual statue, or totem, or symbol they want you to give your heart and your allegiance to, you know something's fishy.

The trouble comes with the more subtle idols--the ones with just enough marks of the genuine article that it's harder to spot a counterfeit.  It's when someone takes the language, or name, or trappings of the real and living God and uses them dress up a faker, that's when it gets harder to know we've been suckered into give our hearts to a fraud.  It's what happens when we let the God we know in Jesus be co-opted and pirated to repackage something lesser--that's where we so easily get tripped up.  In fact, even in the original Golden Calf episode from ancient Israel's memory back in the book of Exodus, the way Aaron sells the golden statue is by selling everyone on the idea that this shiny cow is the same "god" that brought them out of Egypt.  It's got just enough veneer of the real living God--who actually did bring them out of Egypt through the Sea and out of Pharaoh's clutches--that the people lose their ability to distinguish between the invisible, intangible Yahweh and a statue made from their melted jewelry.  Once the people are told that this is the same God they've always known--just now in convenient portable statue form!--they're hooked, and they'll give their hearts and allegiance to the statue.  Aaron doesn't need to invent a new god to get the people bowing down--he just has to get the people's religious "brand loyalty," so to speak, while leaving the substance of the real God behind.

I think that's the thing that Paul is most worried about as well, too--not that the folks in Corinth will give up on Jesus for some newly invented deity, but rather that they'll get hoodwinked into following after some counterfeit version of what Jesus is all about.  Paul has already spent a whole chapter insisting that idols of other gods and goddesses aren't real anyway, since there is really only one God and only one Lord, Jesus, back in what we call chapter eight.  And back there Paul seemed to be echoing what his readers in Corinth already knew and understood--so I don't think he is worried as much that they'll go back to worshiping Zeus or Asherah or Apollo or what-have-you.  I do think he is worried that they'll fall for a counterfeit Christ, and some sloppy fake gospel that leaves us unchanged.  I think Paul is more worried about an idolatrous version of Christianity that doesn't reorient our hearts away from "Me-and-My-Group-First" thinking and toward the others-first way of life that actually looks like Christ.  I think Paul is worried about us confusing our safe, unchallenging mental pictures of Jesus with the real deal, who constantly surprises us, disarms us, redirects us, and moves us to tears with the depth of his love.  

And honestly, I think that's the bigger worry we face as Christians in this day and age.  It's not the danger that we'll pitch Jesus altogether in favor of some newly minted deity--I think ours is the day when we are tempted with counterfeit Christs who look and sound nothing like the authentic Jesus: the one who isn't interested in building an empire or setting up a "Christian" nation, but rather who reveals the Reign of God among the nobodies and the outcasts, the sinners, the failures, and the fools.  Surely ours isn't the only time in history that has been susceptible to that particular temptation: we've been doing it for most of the last two millennia, every time we confuse political power with the way of Jesus, every time we try and domesticate him to be our mascot or our genie to grant us prosperity and luxury, and every time we co-opt Jesus to endorse our pre-existing agendas and platforms.  Every time we ask Jesus to bless killing, to rationalize our greed, or to endorse the way of empire, we reveal we've got a counterfeit dressed up in Jesus' robes in our minds.  These are the truly powerful idols, because they come wrapped up in garb we think we recognize from the real Christ.  These are the most dangerous idols to be reckoned with, because they are the ones subtle enough to fool us, at least some of the time.

Today, my guess is that we don't have a strong pull to give our hearts to a statue of Pharaoh... or Nebuchadnezzar...  or even a golden calf.  But we do keep letting ourselves get bamboozled into falling for pretenders stamped with the name of Jesus.  Maybe today is a good day to point ourselves back to the real deal--the Love who first called us and whose name we still bear--so that we might learn again to recognize the genuine Jesus from the fakes we keep confusing him for.  Maybe it's a lifelong commitment to keep close to the real and living Jesus, so that we won't be fooled anymore to give our hearts to another lesser savior, and instead find ourselves held always by the real article.

Lord Jesus, keep showing yourself to us, so that we can be clear and grounded in you, amidst all the ways we fall for pretenders around us.

"Through," Not "Out Of"--September 29, 2022

"Through," Not "Out Of"--September 29, 2022

"No testing has overtaken you that is not common to everyone. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tested beyond your strength, but with the testing he will provide the way out so that you may be able to endure it." [1 Corinthians 10:13]

There's a lot in here, both of really powerful promises and really tempting ways to mis-read this verse.  And a lot of well-meaning Respectable Religious people have done an awful lot of damage by casually slinging around sloppy paraphrases of this verse like, "God won't ever give you any more than you can handle," and end up just breaking the spirits of people who are feeling overwhelmed and hear that line as a pious way of saying, "Suck it up and tough it out."  So, both because of the ways this verse can get misused, because there is still such deep and powerful hope to be heard in it, let's give it a closer look together.

First off, even though there's some pretty dense theology in here, at the center is a very simple point on which everything else is built:  God is faithful.  That by itself is a place worth spending some time in.  When we get to the big Questions about God and life, and we find ourselves asking, "What is God like?"  Paul would tell us that at the top of our list of answers is "faithful."  God is supremely faithful--the maker of durable promises.

That doesn't necessarily mean we will always (or even often) know how  God will turn out to keep the promises made to us.  Lots of folks in the first century were pretty sure that a Messiah was promised to them, but then again, nobody was expecting him to show up as a peasant baby who would grow up into a carpenter-rabbi and save the world by getting nailed to a cross.  In hindsight, the eyes of faith can see that God was being faithful to ancient promises, but wow, it sure came in a surprising way.  Theologian Douglas John Hall offers a good point about that.  He writes: “The disciple community believes that God reigns, all contrary evidence notwithstanding. But God, as God is depicted in the continuity of the Testaments, is never quite predictable—or rather, only this is predictable about God: that God will be faithful.”

Faithful and predictable are not the same.  We step into this day assured of the first, but never the second.  We step into this day, perhaps with a Plan A of what will happen, and what we think we expect God to do in our day.  We pray petitions seeking to help us keep our routines in place--"Dear God, give me strength for this next task that is on my list," and "Lord, help me get through the day until I can rest and put my feet up tonight..."  And those are fine and appropriate prayers for us to offer.  But God reserves the right to be at work among us in ways we could have scheduled or rehearsed or planned for.  And yet the who of God--what God is like, and God's character--remains faithful, true, and constant. 

We are not promised, in other words, that we Christians can know what is coming our way in a day.  We get no secret knowledge or inside track.  We don't get to know the what, but we are assured of who it is that goes with us through whatever it is that comes our way.  God is faithful.  Always has been, always will be.  

So then, we need to get ourselves clear on what is, and is not, being promised to us.  On a first read, our minds mind latch onto "he will provide the way out" and assume that Paul is now committing God to helping us avoid trouble in this life.  We might well imagine that God has a secret shortcut to skip through the trials we face, and that Christians need only show their membership cards or perform the secret handshake, at which point God will pull back a curtain and show us a discrete back exit that will take us straight to sunny days.  Or maybe the more science-fiction-minded among us picture this as a promise to "beam us up," Star Trek style, out of trouble--whether we imagine the "beaming" is to heaven or to let us retreat away from the concerns of others in the world and to stay tucked away in our our insulated lives.

But none of those are the way the God of the Scriptures--the God of the wilderness wanderings and the God of the cross, too, mind you--operates in the world.  There is no back door shortcut hidden behind the curtain.  There is no magic prayer by which we can be "beamed out" of life so that we don't have to face... well, whatever it is we are afraid to face.  Rather, the pictures we get in Scripture are of a God who meets us in the face of trouble and stays with us--to bring us through it, rather than without facing it at all.  We tell the stories of the God who went with the wandering Israelites, even though it was a forty-year journey; the God who met Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire and preserved them in it, rather than snatching them out of the flames; the God whose way of salvation was not to beam saints out but to come into our world and our lives in the human flesh of Jesus, and to die here with us.  Easter, in other words, is only possible after coming through death; you cannot get to an empty tomb without a cross, and there is no shortcut given to Jesus to avoid that.

Our God, then, has made of a point of being faithful by being with us.  God is indeed faithful, as Paul insists.  But that faithfulness might not look like what we expect.  I might pray, "Dear God, please let me not have to have this difficult conversation with so-and-so..." or "Dear God, please just keep everyone I know healthy forever so that none of us ever has to deal with the pain of sickness or grief."  But God's way of being faithful might not be to spare us those troubles--but rather, it is much more like our God to go through them with us.  God doesn't keep us out of pain, but--according to Paul--makes it possible for us to endure. 

So as we start this day, we do not have to waste time or nourish false hopes and keep our eyes peeled for where there might be a back door hidden behind a curtain.  The way of our God--God's modus operandi, if you will--is not to give club members the secret shortcuts, but to be with us making it possible to endure.  That will change how we pray, today, too--so that we will perhaps no longer selfishly pray to be spared any inconveniences, but instead will ask for God to abide with those who are hurting today, and to give us the strength to be used for their sakes, too.  And it might even change the way we see the world this day--no longer as a place to be escaped, but as a creation God is so faithfully committed to redeeming that he sticks it out with us here, even for all its slings and arrows.

Today, let us get our prepositions correct:  we are not an "out-of" kind of people; because of Christ, we are "through" people.

O Living God, bring us through this day.  Give us what we need to live where you placed us, and give us the faith to trust that you will meet us here in our wilderness days, in the fire, and wherever else the day finds us.  And grant, Lord, that as others see us, no longer afraid to stay in the world with all its brokenness, they will come to know something of your abiding and faithful love that sticks it out with us.  This we ask in the name of Jesus, the one who came to be with us, and who went through death into resurrection for us.

A Change of Posture--September 28, 2022

A Change of Posture--September 28, 2022

"So if you think you are standing, watch out that you do not fall." [1 Corinthians 10:12]

It's when we're sure we've got all the answers that we are most likely to get something wrong.  And it's when we're proud of how holy, righteous, and religious we are that we're actually most at risk of serious sin.

By contrast, the Scriptures keep telling us, when we're honest about just how uncertain, doubtful, and fragile our faith it, we're on more solid ground with God.  And it's when we can be truthful with ourselves about our failures and mess-ups that we are most able to let God's forgiveness get through the cracks in our armor [like Leonard Cohen sings, "There's a crack in everything--that's how the light gets in."].

You see it all over the stories, the encounters, and the words of Jesus.  There's the proud Respectable Religious Person, praying proudly to God and patting himself on the back for his piety, his rule-following, and his superiority to everyone else around... while next to him is this sell-out tax collector who's been vilified by everyone around him who can only bring himself to mutter, "God, be merciful to me, a sinner."  And Jesus insists that it's the second one who goes home right with God.  There's the returned prodigal son, who's blown his whole fortune in a far-off country after dishonoring and disrespecting his dad, being welcomed and embraced by his father who throws a party of the return of his lost child, and there outside the party is the older brother who insists he never did anything wrong, bitter and resentful with his own self-righteousness that he can't bring himself to join the celebration.  There are the proud, mocking religious leaders, confident they have won out over Jesus as he bleeds out on a cross... and there to the right of him on another cross is a desperate and dying criminal who pleads for mercy and is promised by Jesus, "Today you will be with me in Paradise"--an assurance of both grace for the criminal and of victory over death for Jesus.  

Over and over again, like the old proverb puts it, "pride goes before a fall," while a little humility has a way of helping us keep our footing.  That's particular true for the people of God.  We are often at our worst when we assume we have only answers to give, but we can be a presence of grace when we are willing to listen to others and to be honest about our questions, doubts, and fears, too.  Here in First Corinthians, Paul has been reminding his readers about how many in the story of ancient Israel were overconfident that they had God in their back pocket, only to discover that they were never the ones in control of God.  And the ones who were sure they had God all figured out discovered that the divine was not their mascot, their genie, or their magic totem to do with as they wished, but rather that God did not take kindly to people thinking they could boss God around or take God for granted.  That wasn't just true of the wilderness generation--it continued to be [and still continues even now] to be the perennial temptation of Respectable Religious People. Over and over again, the guardians of Official Religion--the priests, in particular the ones wedded to the official king-approved worship centers--chase away the prophets who were sent to them, confident that they already knew what God wanted and unwilling to hear a minority report.  And just as surely, over and over again, it's the "nobodies" who are lifted up in the story of God's people--the ones who come with empty hands and questions, rather than shaking fists and overconfidently certain answers.

It's sad how often, though, the followers of Jesus want to take the role of being "gatekeepers of the answers" rather than "fellow seekers and beggars and misfits." Not long ago, I read someone comment how their strongest impression of the most vocal Christians around them was how "they are the people who never ask any questions," but rather always seem ready to elbow their way into a conversation to tell everyone else The Way It Is.  And it occurred to me that there have to be an awful lot of folks around whose first impression of the church is that we so often set ourselves up as "the righteous and upstanding ones who are experts at being good and godly" rather than as fellow strugglers who are constantly limping from wrestling with God and yet who are forever beloved at the same time.  And I'm reminded of the wisdom of those last written words of our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, who wrote just before died, "We are beggars. This is true."  

There's such a vital difference between those two postures--the arrogant self-righteousness of "I've got it all figured out, and you may come to me for answers," and the honest humility of saying, "I'm stumbling my way through this life of faith, too, but I will walk with you as we try to go where the wounded feet of Jesus have left a path."  And it occurs to me that we don't just land in that place of humble truth-telling by accident or random chance--it is an approach to living in the world that we can practice.  It is, to borrow an older word, a spiritual discipline--something we can develop and deepen in our character.  

And I wonder if that's not a bad place to spend some time in this day.  What would it look like for us to cultivate some honest humility that allows us to be curious and name our questions rather than insist we have only answers... that allows us to be compassionate rather than condemning anybody who is not on the same footing as we are... and that allows us to be truthful about our struggles, our sins, and our insecurities, so that we can welcome other fellow strugglers rather than pushing them away?  What if, when we looked out at the troubles of others or the problems of our neighbors, our first response was not to get up on our soapboxes to tell the world, "Well what you need to do is..." but rather first to ask, "How did we get here?  What is it like to be in the situation of my neighbors?  How can I walk with them in this time?"  That might just make a world of difference to them--just the difference they need.

Changing our posture in the world that way takes time, self-restraint, and a willingness to listen before we speak.  We are going to mess up at it--sometimes we'll still blurt out the unsolicited "answers" and advice that nobody asked for, or we'll reveal ourselves to be hypocrites who mess up on the very things we've been scolding others for.  But it doesn't mean it isn't worth it to work on that change of posture.  It just means that like all things worth doing, we need to let it take the time it takes.  I won't pretend to be an expert on that [that would sort of defeat the point, right?], but I will say that part of what makes it easier to work on ourselves this way is to do it together--with voices like Paul's as a sounding board from the past, and with other fellow strugglers who are sinners-and-saints-at-the-same-time, ready to listen, to share their stories, and to draw out my questions.

Today, rather than tripping over ourselves in overblown self-righteousness, what if we were honest about how much of this life of faith is one step forward, and a step or two back, and then another step forward again?  What if we gave that same grace to others around us, too?

Lord God, walk with us today, even at our slow paces, and let us encourage the ones walking behind us, rather than condemning them for not keeping up with us.

The Reason for History--September 27, 2022

The Reason for History--September 27, 2022

"Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, and they were struck down in the wilderness. Now these things occurred as examples for us, so that we might not desire evil as they did. Do not become idolaters as some of them did; as it is written, ‘The people sat down to eat and drink, and they rose up to play.’ We must not indulge in sexual immorality as some of them did, and twenty-three thousand fell in a single day. We must not put Christ to the test, as some of them did, and were destroyed by serpents. And do not complain as some of them did, and were destroyed by the destroyer. These things happened to them to serve as an example, and they were written down to instruct us, on whom the ends of the ages have come." [1 Corinthians 10:5-11]

Look, I'll be the first to admit that as I keep going in the journey of faith, I'm going to keep making new mistakes and messing up in different ways; but I don't have to keep mistaking the same old mistakes all over again.  And I certainly don't have to repeat other people's mistakes as my own.  That by itself is reason enough to learn history.

Maybe it's really that simple.  I know this passage can feel kind of dense, with lots of ominous warnings from a laundry list of obscure references of past events from the history of Israel.  But the point is obvious--while our ancestors in faith may have really screwed up their relationships with God over and over again, from chasing after other gods, to trading faithfulness for casual sex, to grumbling in doubt against God's ability to provide, we don't have to make those same mistakes.  We are capable of learning from the stories of those who came before us, and we can make different choices.  We are not, in other words, doomed to repeat the wrongs, sins, and missteps of an earlier time.  In fact, knowing their stories is precisely the best way to help us learn so that we can avoid their mistakes and failures and try a new way--to clear a new path forward.

That's true in a family system, to be sure.  In even just the decade and a half or so that I have been in congregational ministry, I have gotten to see multiple generations of families deal with the traumas that have come before--sometimes with the intentional choice to turn over a new leaf and break with old dysfunctions, and sometimes with the unintentional sway of inertia just to repeat what the previous generation suffered.  I've seen family systems in which an older generation struggles with alcoholism or substance abuse, and then their children and grandchildren make the conscious choice to break the cycle and not to get sucked into those same addictions... and I've seen family systems where kids and grandkids perpetuate the same tragic arcs of their parents and grandparents and can't seem to understand why the bottle or the pills or whatever else has such a hold on them.  I've seen families in which patterns of emotional or even physical abuse get reinforced, and a later generation learns to inflict what was once inflicted on them... and I've seen families where those who were abused as children dedicate themselves to ensuring that their children will not have to go through what they endured.  But so often, the key difference is being able to truthfully and courageously tell our stories, and to make the choice to learn from those who came before us, including learning what not to repeat from an earlier era.

At the end of her powerful book, Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, a history of racism as a socioeconomic structure in American history, as well as in India, author Isabel Wilkerson offers a surprising possibility of hope--but a hope that is contingent on people in the present moment telling the truth about our story and making the choice not to repeat old patterns that caused so much pain and suffering in our nation's history.  She writes these poignant words:

"We are not personally responsible for what people who look like us did centuries ago. But we are responsible for what good or ill we do to people alive with us today.... We are responsible for our own ignorance or, with time and openhearted enlightenment, our own wisdom.  We are responsible for ourselves and our own deeds or misdeeds in our own time and in our own space and will be judged accordingly by succeeding generations."

I know that Wilkerson is telling a different story from the saga of the fickle, wandering Israelites.  And while telling our American history truthfully is different from Paul's recounting of the mess-ups of ancient Israel, they both bring us face to face with the same truth: we may not bear guilt for the choices others made in the past, but we do bear responsibility in the present for learning from the sins of the past so that we do not make them all over again, and so that we can turn in a new direction, a good and right direction, with the paths in front of us.  For Paul, that means in particular that we keep our eyes on Jesus rather than selling out to the idols and counterfeit offers of lesser loves that are out there in the world around us.  It means we will risk believing that Christ knows what he is doing with us, even when the road is hard and it feels like we are wandering in the wilderness.  It will mean we will trust God to provide us with what we need and surrender all attempts to hoard the manna for ourselves, which will only rot in our clutches if we tried.  And it will mean we take the time and summon the courage to look closely into the histories we find ourselves entangled in, whether the ancient saga of the people of God stretching back to before Pharaoh's Egypt for us as the people of God, or the stories of settlers, sojourners, slavers, and the enslaved in American history.  We do not bear responsibility for how others' actions brought us to this point in history--but we do bear responsibility for what we do with this moment and this place where we find ourselves.  The question is whether we will be brave enough to tell our histories truthfully so that we can chart a new course right now.

May we be given such courage to hear our stories rightly, and to make good and wise choices with the next step in front of us.

Lord God, give us ears willing to listen to the histories of those who have gone before us, so that we will not be lured into repeating the mistakes of the past, but will seek to walk in your ways of justice and mercy.

Our Place In The Story--September 26, 2022

 

Our Place In The Story--September 26, 2022

"I do not want you to be unaware, brothers and sisters, that our ancestors were all under the cloud, and all passed through the sea, and all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and all ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ." [1 Corinthians 10:1-4]

We have a hard time remembering that we aren't the beginning of things.  We enter into a story that has already begun, with people who have been wrestling with the living God for thousands of years longer than we have, and in which we only can dare to claim a place in by the grace of God.  We are, in a sense, the current baton-holders in a very, very long relay race--which began long before even the likes of Peter, Paul, James, or John.  Remembering that we find our place in a much bigger, much longer, and much more complex story than we often admit is a part of a deepening faith.  And it's just plain honest.  We are late into a story that began without us; a certain humility is called for.

It can be uncomfortable to let ourselves be humbled that way. It is hard, for example, for folks on this continent to do the honest research to find out whose land we are living on, what Native American nations and tribes lived here, and how they were treated and driven off of it in earlier centuries.  It is hard to admit that the history of this land and this country begins long before ships came across the ocean from Europe, despite the ways it makes us squirm to tell a fuller story that involves genocide, war, broken promises, and slavery.  In the history of the church, too, it is humbling to admit that our various denominations and traditions all trace back further to older ways of being Christian that grew and changed and thrived and messed up, all of them over and over again, long before "my group" appeared on the scene.  Even just in our own local congregations, it is humbling to admit how often we are stepping into a community that can reach back for decades, or even centuries--and the people who were there already will know some things that we may need to just sit and listen to, as we find our place in the family story.

Paul is doing the same here as he moves into this next section of his letter. He wants to make it clear that our arrival on the scene as Christians isn't the beginning of a story, really--we are a part of a saga that stretches farther back for thousands of years, even to the ancient story of the enslaved Hebrews who were set free in the time of Moses.  Paul wants us to see that we are a part of that longer relay race that includes the liberated Israelites who walked through the Sea at the Exodus, who travelled through the wilderness, and who trusted God along the way to provide manna, quail, and water as they went.  Now he's certainly going to remind us, too, of the ways those liberated Israelites also sometimes messed up--whether it was wanting to go back to Pharaoh's Egypt, or making a golden calf to worship, or complaining that God wasn't good enough to provide for them.  But even those episodes are part of the story that has to come before our arrival on the scene as followers of Jesus.  We can't have a place in the story or belonging among the people of God without all those who have gone before us. 

Just in our own lives, it is worth the effort every so often to stop and think of the people whose faith and life made yours possible.  It's worth a bit of grateful reflection for the people who, as Mr. Rogers once put it, "have loved us into being."  That list is a lot longer than we might realize at first--it includes parents, grandparents, and Sunday School teachers, and also Moses and Miriam, Isaiah and Jeremiah, Ruth and Naomi, too.  We are here because of their story, and we have a welcome among the people of God because of those who dared to enter into relationship with this same God before us.  That is a realization to fill us with both humility [that we are not the starting point of this story] and also gratitude [that others' faithfulness made our belonging possible, too]. 

Maybe that's all that is needed in this day: just the recognition that none of us is the starting point of the story of faith in which we find ourselves, but that we belong to a great and beautiful chain of people touched by the grace of God, and to be appreciative of the names and faces, where we know them, who added their links so that there would be a place for ours to latch onto.  And maybe while we are thinking of that great chain of God's people that stretches through time and space, we might think right now, too, of how we will make room for those who will come to faith and to join the story because of us.  How will we make others feel welcome?  How will we nurture the humility to see that we are neither the beginning, nor the end, of this story?  How will we extend places for others grow and learn and connect as others did for us?  And who, on some distant day, will tell their story of faith and name you as one of the reasons they have come to faith in Jesus?

Today, it's worth looking backward and forward just like that.  This is our place in The Story.

Lord God, we thank you for all those who have gone before us whose faith and wrestling with you makes possible our own belonging among your people.

The Tenacity of Grace--September 22, 2022

The Tenacity of Grace--September 22, 2022    

"I do it all for the sake of the gospel, so that I may share in its blessings.  Do you not know that in a race the runners all compete, but only one receives the prize?  Run in such a way that you may win it.  Athletes exercise self-control in all things; they do it to receive a perishable wreath, but we an imperishable one. So I do not run aimlessly, nor do I box as though beating the air; but I punish my body and enslave it, so that after proclaiming to others I myself should not be disqualified." [1 Corinthians 9:23-27]

This life--the life of following the Jesus way--isn't play-acting or shadowboxing.  It matters, and it counts for something, what we do with these lives we have.

Sometimes we can forget that and end up just "playing church," where we treat our faith like a quaint little hobby that doesn't make a meaningful difference in the world or in other people's lives on the grand scale.  Especially for folks in traditions like mine [the Lutheran one that] that rightly emphasize being saved by grace apart from our works, we can end up getting sloppy and thinking our actions don't matter in life.  "I'm saved by grace, no matter what I've done" can easily devolve into, "There's no reason to have any discipline or sacrifice in my life, since God is contractually obligated to let me into heaven when I die already because this one time I recited some words about Jesus."  So Paul is here to call us out when we are headed down that path, and to wake us up if we've let ourselves be persuaded by that train of thought already.

In a way, Paul's point is like being in a marriage.  When two people get married and promise each other to be faithful and to love each other "in sickness and in health," that is intended to be an unconditional kind of commitment.  You can rely on it, so that when the day comes that you get a bad diagnosis, you have assurance that your spouse will be with you to face it alongside you no matter what, rather than bailing out on you because it got difficult.  But it would clearly be a misunderstanding of what those marriage promises mean if someone said, "Because my spouse promised to love me in sickness and in health, I have no obligation to do anything to keep my body in good health or avoid dangerous behaviors that could hurt me!"  If anything, the opposite is true--when you make the promises of marriage to someone, you allow another person to bind their life to yours so you have even more reason take care of your own body, health, and life, if for no other reason than that other people depend on you now.  The promise made to you is unconditional, but it also calls forth a response for you to use your whole life--your money, your time, your attention, your energy, and your health--in the service of the one whom you to whom you have made the same promise.  The discipline that comes with all of that doesn't negate that the promise made to you was unconditional, but the promise of unconditional love doesn't give us permission to be apathetic in our lives, either.  

The Christian life has that same paradox to it.  God's promise of love is unconditional, and it is not dependent on our rule-following, good or bad behavior, or how strong or weak our faith is.  You can count on God to be faithful, and not to bail out on us when things get hard... or difficult... or messy.  And yet, we are called to a certain kind of dedication and urgency with our lives in light of that unconditional love.  We are called to give our selves away as Jesus has done for us.  We are called to the difficult discipline of letting our lives be shaped into the likeness of Christ's love.  We are called to rearrange our priorities, our choices, and our values, around the Reign of God.  But we do all those things, not because we are afraid that if we falter, God's love will have turned out to be conditional, but exactly because we know it is unchanging, unfailing, and unconditional.  We will sacrifice what is easy or comfortable or convenient for the sake of loving other people--not with the fear that if we don't do a good enough job we'll lose out on eternal life, but because we know how we have been loved first.

The tenacity of grace doesn't make the Christian life just a bunch of make-believe, but just the opposite; it makes us tenacious in grateful response.  The assurance that God will never quit or give out on us actually spurs us to the same kind of fierce devotion back to God... and to the world that God loves.  Where are the places we've been missing the point and getting complacent in our love, because [shrug], "You know, God will still love me if I'm an apathetic jerk"?  Where are the places we may need to have Paul wake us up and remind us that this life is not play-acting or pretend, but has a whole new seriousness in light of just how serious God takes the promise to love us?

Let's start there... and be done with the shadowboxing.

Lord Jesus, help us to take seriously the relentlessness of your love, so that we will be relentless lovers of all you place into our lives.

Sitting Out the Culture War--September 21, 2022

Sitting Out the Culture War--September 21, 2022

"For though I am free with respect to all, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I might gain more of them. To the Judeans I became as a Judean, in order to gain Judeans. To those under the law I became as one under the law [though I myself am not under the law] so that I might gain those under the law. To those outside the law I became as one outside the law [though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law] so that I might gain those outside the law.  To the weak I became weak, so that I might gain the weak. I have become all things to all people, that I might by all means save some." [1 Corinthians 9:19-22]

The Good News is that God meets us, accepts us, and claims us, right where we are.  That much is Christianity 101-level stuff, I hope.  But to carry that thought just a bit further, it only makes sense, then, that if we are going to tell that Good News to other people, we'll also need to meet them, accept them, and claim them--you guessed it--right where they are.

That's really the heart of what Paul is saying here, too.  It's not that he's been selling out or chasing after fads to try and sound "trendy" in his preaching or dress.  Nor does he pretend to be something he's not.  This, by the way, is a mistake an awful lot of churches seem hell-bent on making these days--in the name of trying to "be all things to all people like Paul did" we end up pathetically and poorly copying the moves of pop culture in the hopes of making ourselves loo "relevant," but end up losing our authentic voice and witness.  That's not what Paul does.

No, for Paul, it's not about trying to be "cool" in the eyes of whoever is around.  Rather, it's a refusal to get sucked into a "culture war" mentality [which, by the way, is another mistake that an awful lot of churches seem hell-bent on making, too].  Paul doesn't assume that there's only one "way" or "approach" or "culture" or even "worldview" demanded by the Gospel, but rather that just like Christ himself, the Good News comes to us where we are, as we are.  And that gives him immense freedom, then, to connect with people at the points of commonality he can find with people where they are, in whatever culture they come from.  So, to people steeped in the language, traditions, laws, and culture of Judaism and the story of ancient Israel, Paul can keep eating kosher and using rabbinical style rhetoric to speak about Jesus, the promised Messiah of Israel.  And to people who have no background in Judaism, Paul can just as easily eat whatever food happens to be around, even if it's a ham-and-cheese sandwich, and speak of the Savior of the whole world who has rescued us apart from our ability to keep commandments.  

And notice, not only does Paul think it's okay for him to lean into those different cultural connecting points with other people, but he has no problem with letting other people continue to hold to the cultural backgrounds they know.  There is no bait-and-switch.  There is no lecture that "You're doing it wrong--now, unlearn your old culture so I can give you the right one."  There is, rather, the hope that by meeting people where they are and loving people where they are, Paul can get through to people that God in Christ already meets them where they are and loves them where they are, too.  The Gospel gains credibility when the message we bring ABOUT unconditional love can be communicated THROUGH unconditional love.

That's something we could stand to learn from Paul in this day and age.  All too often, church folks cast themselves as the Guardians of Respectable Religion, and with it comes a set of additional cultural baggage we sometimes insist has to be a part of Christianity, when it's really just our own quirky set of preferences or traditions.  In my tradition, pastors and other worship leaders often wear fancy white robes and color-coded accessories that are all tied in with a thing called "the church year." But I would be a damned fool if I insisted that Jesus can only communicate to people by pastors wearing the proper vestments.  In other traditions, you're not really "worshiping" unless you've sung the same short, trite refrain fifty-seven times with your hands in the air while acoustic guitars and hand drums play in the background, or when people insert, "O Father God... O Lord Jesus..." in between every other phrase of their prayers.  But let's not kid ourselves that the New Testament requires any of that.  It's really easy to add the cultural baggage of American society to the Gospel, too--to tell people in other countries that they're not "doing Christianity right" unless they have songs on big screens, or sing in English, or have a particular position on the capital gains tax or the midterm elections. My goodness, in a time when people are getting bent out of shape over a casting of "The Little Mermaid" with a Black actress as Ariel, folks can get really upset when someone points out that Jesus wasn't a northern European with long, wavy light-brown hair in a robe like he's so often portrayed in the artwork in our churches.  But it's all the same mistake--confusing "my cultural lens through which I see Jesus" with Jesus himself.

It's so easy to assume that "our form of Christianity" is the ONLY form of Christianity, because, well, we're used to what we know, and we are really good at making ourselves the center of attention.  And from there, it is terribly tempting to label anybody who doesn't share our same cultural baggage as on "the wrong side," or "distorting the faith," or "not true Christians."  Paul's approach offers us an alternative--we do not have to take sides in someone else's culture wars.  We do not have to [nor do we get to] baptize our partisan politics, our national culture, or our denominational traditions as "the Gospel."  None of those are, because none of those is capable of meeting people where they are, and truly loving them where they are.  But that's exactly what the Good News says and does, because that's exactly what Jesus has done for us.  Paul's approach just puts human skin on it--he embodies the way the Gospel meets us where we're at.

It can be hard for us to take a spiritual scalpel to our piety and see where we've gotten "the good news of Jesus" conflated with "our particular cultural habits and hang-ups."  But that's the kind of work that Paul calls us to, because it's the way to make our witness authentic.  

The only way people can dare to believe the news of a God whose love meets us where we are... is for us to put our money where our mouths are and to love people where they are, too.

Lord God, enable us to love people as you have loved us, and to speak your good news to others with the same gracious acceptance you have first shown us.

Life in the Economy of Grace--September 20, 2022

Life in the Economy of Grace--September 20, 2022

"For if I do this of my own will, I have a reward; but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission. What then is my reward? Just this: that in my proclamation I may make the gospel free of charge, so as not to make full use of my rights in the gospel." [1 Corinthians 9:17-18]

Just about every day on your and my social media feeds, there will be somebody making an ominous warning that goes something like, "If you don't protect your rights and fight fiercely for your freedoms, you'll regret it when they are taken away from you."  And pretty often, that oh-so-serious talk is accompanied by very serious imagery, too--often of an assortment of weapons that the folks who made the meme want to suggest they'll use in the name of "protecting their rights" and "fighting for their freedoms."  It's a pretty repetitive message, honestly, and once you've seen one, you've seen them all.

And then there's Paul, who deliberately says the exact opposite:  "What I want to be absolutely sure of is that I don't make full use of my rights, so that it will be clear that the Gospel is about God's free grace all around."

Honestly, at some point you have to decide which voice you think is the one worth listening to--the anonymous angry meme-makers on social media... or the apostle Paul--because their approaches to living in the world are pointed in diametrically opposed directions.  

For Paul, the issue is how to make sure the Good News of Jesus never comes off as his own money-making venture or a get-rich-quick pyramid scheme, but rather as the freely given announcement of God's freely given grace in Christ.  And in order to ensure that the gospel won't get mistaken for a religious infomercial, Paul refuses to demand his rights to getting paid for his evangelistic work.  It's just part of how the gospel works, because that's how God's economy of mercy operates.  

By contrast, I just saw the other day a celebrity preacher offering a four-day class on "how to pray" that cost $1,500.00 to register for--to which one insightful online commenter replied, "Didn't Jesus already teach his disciples how to pray--and for free?"  Of course, the moment anybody in the watching world hears or sees a promotion like that, they can't help but think, "What a racket that is!"  It smacks of being just a religious cover for a bamboozler, and the ones who peddle it can't help but look like swindlers.  In a world where that kind of messaging is being broadcast out into the world non-stop thanks to our constant flow of information on our various rectangles of technology, it really is refreshing to hear Paul's counter-cultural voice saying, "If start demanding my rights for compensation, it's going to run the risk of making the gospel sound like a grift--so I would rather give up my rights than insist on them, protect them, or God-forbid, fight someone for them."  Paul is more interested in the gospel remaining hearable as the Good News of God's free grace than in becoming petty and defiant about some abstract nonsense regarding his "rights."

And even though our lives are removed from Paul's by some twenty centuries, the need is the same for us today.  In a world that is still full of voices either shouting angrily about "demanding their rights" or smoothly selling people on a pious-sounding con, there need to be voices that speak a different word--a word of grace freely given.  Those voices can be yours and mine.  We can be the ones who forgo our "rights" in order to go out of our way for someone else--because sometimes that is the way of Jesus.  We can be the ones who practice generosity, who share freely, and who don't look to get rewarded for our efforts, as a way of showing people that God's offer of grace really comes without any strings attached.  We can be the ones who embody God's economy of mercy rather than staying stuck in the old logic of "What's in it for me?"  

All of that is possible, but it will mean making the choice every day to listen to voices like Paul's and to spot the examples of people in the same mold, who are more interested in giving away grace than insisting on their rights, so that we can learn from them, too.  And it will be hard, because there are still going to plenty of folks who think we look crazy for those upside-down values, and it will be difficult sometimes to remember which way is truly up for us.

in those times, it's worth it to come back to Paul here in a place like this, and to hear with fresh ears just how radical the way of Jesus really is.  What if the only reward we ever needed was just to know we are participating already in God's economy of grace?

Lord God, make us to be so convinced of your generosity and grace that we can live like they really are enough for us.

The Real McCoy--September 19, 2022

The Real McCoy--September 19, 2022

"If I proclaim the gospel, this give me no ground for boasting, for an obligation is laid on me, and woe to me if I do not proclaim the gospel!" [1 Corinthians 9:16]

There is some news so good that you just can't hold it in.  In those times, you don't care how foolish your uncontainable joy looks to the cool, the cynical, or the disenchanted.  You just can't help but tell people.

You know those kinds of moments:

"The baby is born!"

"I got the job!"

"She got her acceptance letter to college!"

"He loves you!"

"They made it, safe and sound!"

"The war is over; they'll be coming home soon!"

In those times, there is something that compels us to share whatever the good news is, and yet it is also the freest thing in the world.  When you have really good news to share, you can't help but share it, and at the same time, you can't imagine wanting to do anything else in that moment.  You have to tell the rest of the family when the baby is born; you can't imagine not sharing the news about getting into college.  That sort of thing.

The other thing I notice about those times when we have genuinely good news is that whatever the message it, it's not typically conditional, like a deal or a sales pitch; it's a declaration of how things are. Deals are a dime a dozen. They come with strings, conditions, and fine print.  A sales pitch might be delivered with plenty of hype, but it's not really "news"--only the potential of good news, "if only you act now!"  

And to be honest, all those deal-making sales-pitches leave me feeling kind of slimy--like I'm only important to the person speaking if I sign on the dotted line, put money down, or subscribe to whatever they're hawking.  Good news that's truly good and news isn't like that--it isn't conditional or merely potential.  It's a statement about how things are.  You know?  The news that the war is over [when it is, in fact, over] isn't up for debate--it's a reality.  The announcement that someone loves you is a description of what is--becuase if it is made conditionally, "He'll only love you if you do the following three things," isn't really love.  

And that's what makes the gospel of Jesus Christ--when it's the Real McCoy--so refreshingly different in a world full of religious sales-pitches.  The gospel is one of those so-good-you-can't-help-but-share-it announcements [in fact, it is THE epitome of them] that announces what is already true because of God's grace, God's action, God's saving power, and God's merciful intention.  The gospel is decidedly NOT a contract to be settled on or a transaction to be negotiated.  It is about God's unconditional choice to redeem and save the world in Christ, and that means it is about proclaiming "how things are" because of God's grace, not wishfully teasing us about "how nice things could be" if only we would do these religious actions, say these religious words, or think these religious thoughts first.  It ain't a deal--it's a declaration.

I can't help but think of a passage from Robert Farrar Capon's Between Noon and Three where he explores this idea in another passage of Saint Paul's--from the opening verse of what we call the eighth chapter of Romans: "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus."  And Capon, in his usual provocative way, just revels in what Paul is saying--contrary to all the ways Respectable Religious people have tried to water him down or turn him into a snake-oil salesman.  Capon says:

"Saint Paul has not said to you, 'Think how it would be if there were no condemnation'; he has said, 'There is therefore none.' He has made an unconditional statement, not a conditional one--a flat assertion, not a parabolic one. He has not said, 'God has done this and that and the other thing; and if by dint of imagination you can manage to put it all together, you may be able to experience a little solace in the prison of your days.' No. He has simply said, 'You are free. Your services are no longer required. The salt mine has been closed'."

Like all those other times in your life when you have good news of a new reality that you cannot contain, Paul helps us to see that the gospel is a statement of how things ARE between us and God, by God's grace, through Christ's action, not a potential situation we could subscribe to if we will only sit through the time-share rental presentation and then sign on the dotted line at the end.  Like running into the family waiting room and shouting without blushing with embarrassment at all, "The baby's here--and she's beautiful!" the gospel is the announcement of a new thing that has been brought to birth in the world, and it has been accomplished because God has done the sweating and bleeding and gone through the pain and labor to make it happen.  It is God's work, from beginning to end; proclaiming the gospel doesn't end with an added speech to "close the deal," but with the confident trust that the same divine love which is strong enough to redeem us is also compelling enough to open our hearts to believe the news. 

When our life and witness as God's people reflects the real good news, it will always have that feel of announcing "Here's how things ARE because of God's loving work in the world," rather than, "Don't miss out--your chance to sign up is running out!"  So today, the question is simply this:  how can we let our words, our lives, and our actions become embodiments of that Good News?  How will we help others to see, as Capon says, that the salt mines are closed, you are free, and you are beloved?  And how will we move beyond the deal-making sales-pitching religious-speak that so much of the world has heard a million times before, and grown cynical of?

That's the invitation today: to tell the world the baby's been born.  The war is over. He loves you.  He loves you.  He loves you.

Lord God, give us the courage and clarity to proclaim your gospel with our words and our lives today.

The Life Worth Living--September 16, 2022

The Life Worth Living--September 16, 2022

"Do you not know that those who are employed in the temple service get their food from the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is sacrificed on the altar? In the same way, the Lord commanded that those who proclaim the gospel should get their living by the gospel.  But I have made no use of any of these rights, nor am I writing this so that they may be applied in my case. Indeed, I would rather die than that--no one will deprive me of my ground for boasting!" [1 Corinthians 9:13-15]

Death first, before insisting on getting more for himself.  Well, how about that?

It's the sort of thing you have to look at twice or more and pinch yourself to believe is there in the Bible--at least in American culture.  We have built a whole mythology around the importance, even the "virtue," of insisting getting, defending, and fighting for your rights... and here is Paul giving it all away.  It's breathtaking, really.

Truly, it is utterly fascinating to me how a culture like ours, that has lots of voices insisting it is a "Christian" one, doesn't see the contradiction between our national myth of insisting we get our rights, on the one hand, and the New Testament's alternative story of being willing to set aside our "rights" for the sake of others' needs.  We are taught Patrick Henry's line, "Give me liberty, or give me death," but I don't ever remember a sermon, Bible study, or TV preacher pointing out that Paul literally says the opposite: "I would rather die than demand my rights at the expense of my witness to the gospel."

Now, you could say that Paul is being a bit melodramatic here--I mean, honestly, it doesn't need to come to dying.  We're talking about matters of getting compensated for your work.  Paul is talking about waiving the privilege of taking a paycheck for his labor as a servant of the gospel.  And he's been adamant that even though he has the "right" to that kind of compensation, he refuses to insist on it, in order to remove any hint of a whiff of a possibility in anybody's mind that he's just a fly-by-night hustler looking to make a buck off the pious and foolish.  That doesn't have to be a matter of life and death--but Paul does seem deadly serious here.  He wants us to be clear that his sense of entitlement to his "rights" is subordinate to God's economy of grace--and because God doesn't operate on a transactional basis, as if God would only show mercy when there will be a profitable return on the divine investment, then Paul won't play by such rules, either.  "Indeed, I would rather die," he says, than insist on my rights and end up harming my witness.

But maybe Paul is on to something more than being histrionic or theatrical here.  Maybe instead of having to imagine some kind of scenario where a detail of Roman soldiers would arrest and execute Paul for not insisting on taking a paycheck, maybe this is more about the day by day choices we make to die to ourselves and to live for Christ.  Maybe as Elaine Puckett so wisely put it, "When we think about laying down a life for another we usually think in terms of a single event. But it is possible for us to lay down our lives over the course of a lifetime, minute by minute and day by day."

That's just it, isn't it?  We don't have to be facing a Roman cross or the executioner's axe [although, Paul would eventually face that, to be sure] to lay down our lives, but we can choose in this day, moment by moment and day by day, to refuse to demand our "rights" or our "freedom" or what we are "entitled to," and instead to use our energy to seek the good of others, because that is the way of Jesus.  We can choose to waive our privileges and instead to leverage them for the benefit of others who don't have those privileges.  We can be willing to go without a luxury, or to be willing NOT to insist on getting what we think we are owed, if it will mean we can share or help someone else.  Now, that will be countercultural, to be sure--and some folks won't like our suggestion that the way of Jesus is not compatible with a "My rights must come first, and I don't care who I upset" kind of attitude.  And, sure, we need to be prepared to let those folks be upset when we say that following Jesus is what leads us to renounce and relinquish our rights for the sake of others rather than to demand them.  That may be one more way we die to ourselves.  But like Dietrich Bonhoeffer said so powerfully, following Jesus is a life of costly grace--"it is costly because it will cost us our lives, and it is grace because it gives us the only true life there is."

In the end, that's the great realization of the followers of Jesus: that the only life worth living is the one you give away.  Sometimes, in some circumstances, that means the willingness to face the execution squad, like both Jesus and Paul, and a long line of martyrs.  But in many situations, it means the daily choice to lay down our lives, our privileges, and our "rights" for the sake of love.  That is a choice we make now... and in the next moment, and the next hour, and the next day.

What will we do with the moment in front of us?

Lord Jesus, give us the courageous love to give ourselves away for you and for the sake of those you love.

Because Rights Are Not Enough--September 15, 2022

Because Rights Are Not Enough--September 15, 2022

"This is my defense to those who would examine me. Do we not have the right to our food and drink? Do we not have the right to be accompanied by a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? Who at any time pays the expenses for doing military service? Who plants a vineyard and does not eat any of its fruit? Or who tends a flock and does not get any of its milk?  Do I say this on human authority? Does not the law also say the same? For it is written in the law of Moses, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.’ Is it for oxen that God is concerned? Or does he not speak entirely for our sake? It was indeed written for our sake, for whoever ploughs should plough in hope and whoever threshes should thresh in hope of a share in the crop. If we have sown spiritual good among you, is it too much if we reap your material benefits? If others share this rightful claim on you, do not we still more? Nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ." [1 Corinthians 9:3-12]

Sometimes the apostle Paul is crafty like a fox.  He starts leaving a set of tracks going in one direction, and you think you know where he is headed with his train of thought... only to have him take a sharp turn and head in the opposite direction to outflank you.  You think you've got him figured out and just about cornered, and it turns out he's lulled you into a false sense of security and lured you into his rhetorical trap.  Clever guy, that Paul.

It happens here, and once Paul gets going, he just keeps building up steam and momentum until the unexpected hairpin turn at the end.  It starts with Paul laying out a case for his "rights."  In particular, Paul is making the case that as an apostle--someone sent by the risen Jesus to bring the good news to the world--he has the "right" to be compensated for his time, energy, and effort. For that matter, he would have the right to be married, like other early Christians leaders were, too [yeah, that mention of "Cephas" there?  That's Simon Peter himself, whom the gospels also suggest was married.].  And to back up his case, Paul gives other ordinary examples--the empire pays soldiers for their time serving; farmers gets to eat from the produce of what they grow and drink the milk from the cows they raise.  Paul even goes back to the laws of the Torah that allowed an animal being used to tread out grain to eat freely from the grain while it is laboring.  They all have the right, so to speak, to be compensated for their labor.

And, absolutely, just right there, that's a fair point.  Yes, farmers, soldier, and even beasts of burden are all given compensation for their work from the "fruits" of their labor.  So, Paul implies, he also can claim to have the "right" to be compensated, by the congregations he is serving, for the work he does.  Again, that's airtight logic, and I can't imagine anybody in this day and age disputing the idea that people should be paid for their labor.  Got it, Paul-you've convinced us.  You have a right to be paid or compensated somehow for all you are doing for the fledgling church in Corinth, as well as in all the other places you have gone and spread the Good News.

But now, get ready for the rug to be pulled out from under us.  Because after going to great lengths to get us on his side about his "right" to be compensated for his work as an apostle, Paul zigs when we think he is going to zag and says, "nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the Gospel of Christ."  In other words, Paul just spent a paragraph demonstrating that he has a right to something, but then, just when he's convinced us that he does have that legitimate right, he stops and says, "But demanding my rights isn't enough to build a life on--I'd rather spend my energy and time on sharing the Good News of Jesus with people, even if it means waiving my rights."

And I can't help now but think back to earlier in this letter when Paul was addressing the question of having lawsuits between church members, and how Paul had undercut all of their legal wrangling and petty infighting about who is guiltier than whom by simply saying, "Okay, but why not just be wronged?  Why not take the hit and absorb the loss rather than hurt the other person?  Why not break the cycle of transactional thinking?"  In a way, this whole business about not demanding to exercise his "right" for compensation is Paul's way of practicing what he preaches.  Yes, he could insist to the folks at First Church of Corinth that he demands a certain base salary for his work, but he knows that could come across like he's a shady snake-oil salesman just looking to make a buck.  So instead, Paul has waived that right and spent part of his time working a day job [traditionally, folks have translated the word for Paul's trade as "tentmaking," but other scholars think "leatherworker" or "awning maker" are better translations.].  Paul was bi-vocational, as we would say today; he had a day job that paid the bills, and he also worked to plant churches and share the gospel with people.  What Paul is making clear here is that this was an intentional choice on his part--he knowingly, consciously, and willingly waived his "right" to be paid as an apostle for the sake of being a more faithful witness.  By not taking a paycheck for his church-related work, Paul was removing any possible accusation that he was just in it for the money, or that he was pulling a Professor Harold Hill grift like in The Music Man blowing into town to get a bunch of money from some unsuspecting rubes, and then bailing out on the next train to do it all over again.  Paul was more interested in being an authentic witness of Jesus than he was in demanding his rights, and he took that seriously enough to work another job.  That's compelling.

Now, I know it can seem a little odd for me--a paid church employee, who does not have another day job as a source of income--to be singing Paul's praises here for refusing to take a salary for being an apostle.  But I don't think the point here is that everyone has to do exactly the same as Paul in terms of getting paid or not in the church.  [Paul himself has just pointed out that plenty of other apostles were within their rights to have families or to be materially or financially supported by the church communities they served, and he doesn't seem to hold a grudge against them for doing so.]  What I do think is crucial is that Paul is living out the self-giving love of Jesus in ways that make sense for his situation, even when that means letting go of some of what he could be "entitled" to or have a "right" to.  He is using his faithful imagination to think out what form the way of Christ will take in his life, knowing that it will be different than it looks in Peter's life, or Barnabas' life, or for that matter, even in Jesus' life.  Jesus, for example, did get financial support from some of his well-to-do followers, including a number of notable and prominent women, as the gospel of Luke reports.  So Paul isn't even insisting on copying what Jesus did as a rigid rule--he is taking the way of life that Jesus has given us and expressing it in his own way for his own context.  And to be honest, that's really all any of us are called to do as followers of Jesus--to figure out in our situations what it could look like to love the way Jesus loves... including when that means waiving "rights" rather than demanding them.

Today, you and I will have a thousand different opportunities to practice that same kind of love, and yours will look different from mine.  Some people will be in a position to sacrifice their "right" for more money in order to do the work they are called in a setting that pays less than more affluent areas.  Others will be able to give time because their schedules are not jam packed with obligations and commitments.  The particulars will be different--but each of us is called to find ways, as Paul does, to put the way of Jesus into action in our lives, and quite often, that will mean a posture that seeks others' good first.

In a culture like ours that sometimes just shouts so loudly about "defending my rights" that we end up isolated and alone, it is a revolutionary thing to say, "Yes, I have right to this... but I'm more interested in embodying the gospel than demanding some abstract notion of 'rights.'"  But that's what Paul has modeled for us, and he was only just riffing on what he learned from Jesus first.

How will we carry on the same tradition today, and how might we inspire those who come after us?

Lord Jesus, you waived your 'rights' to so many things for the sake of redeeming us.  Captivate us by that love, and inspire us to give ourselves away freely as so many others have done who have gone before us, walking in your way.

Our Living Symphony--September 14, 2022

Our Living Symphony--September 14, 2022

"Am I not free? Am I not an apostle? Have I not seen Jesus our Lord? Are you not my work in the Lord? If I am not an apostle to others, at least I am to you; for you are the seal of my apostleship in the Lord." [1 Corinthians 9:1-2]

In the end, the legacies we leave behind in people are always more important than the ones carved into stone monuments or engraved on metal plaques. In our wiser moments we remember that, even while the wider culture around us clamors for statues, trophies, and getting your name in big gold letters on a building.  But sometimes we struggle to believe it.  Sometimes we need others to remind us about the fingerprints we all leave on each other's hearts.

To be honest, when I read these words from First Corinthians, I think of that 1996 Richard Dreyfuss movie, Mr. Holland's Opus.  In case it's been a few years since you've seen it, or in case you never have, Dreyfuss plays the title character, Mr. Holland, who aspires to be a classical composer but gets a job as a music teacher in a public school in the thought he will only do it for as long as he has to in order to pay the bills before he makes his break.  And, as you might imagine, his aspirations are derailed as life unfolds--raising a family, living through the turmoil of the second half of the 20th century, teaching students, and aging.  At the end of the movie, a now old Mr. Holland is retiring, and a former student [now the governor of their state] addresses an auditorium full of the lives he has touched over the course of his career.  Her speech gets me every time.  She says that even though Mr. Holland never got to be a famous composer or make a fortune, all of those people in the room are his living symphony.  The lives he has left an impression on are the melody and the notes of his opus.  The legacy he leaves is in their lives, and the way those lives now make a difference rippling outward for others.  It is unapologetically a sappy and heartfelt ending as only celluloid can deliver--but it's not wrong.

And as theology, it's actually pretty good.  Paul thinks so, at least.  As he changes gears again in this letter, he now addresses the people in the congregation and has a Mr. Holland's Opus moment. He sees that their own lives, and the fact that they have been drawn into the Way of Jesus, are ultimately the evidence of his ministry as an apostle.  There will be no statues of Paul erected in his lifetime, and I'm pretty sure he wouldn't want one anyway.  Paul would not live to see any churches named after him, and again, I'm absolutely certain he would have been upset if he did.  He doesn't even think of his legacy in terms of the works he has written--even though letters with Paul's name on them will end up being half of the New Testament!  

That's really amazing if you think about it. Here's the one person responsible for more of the New Testament than any other single writer, Christianity's first true theologian, and he doesn't even mention the words he has written as the proof of his life's work.  He speaks of the people.  He thinks of the faces he has known and misses. He thinks of the ways their lives are becoming evidence for others that Jesus is risen from the dead.  He thinks of how their love will be the thing that makes the difference and draws someone else into the community of Jesus.  He sees the ways they extend grace to one another, to strangers, and to enemies, and he understands that those are the most important marks he can leave on the world.  The evidence of the way he has spent his life will be in human beings, not in money, power, fame, monuments, or empire-building.  And he is content with that.

And I hope I can learn to walk in Paul's footsteps, too.  I hope I never become the kind of person who cares about monuments, plaques, or memorials with my name on them.  I hope I never confuse being well-known for making a difference.  And I certainly hope I never become more interested in being remembered for decades than in embodying the love of Jesus right here and now in as many small, overlookable ways as I can.  There will be times when I mess it up and get fussy about wanting recognition in some "permanent" form that's etched in stone or engraved in metal.  But I hope all it will take is the lives of actual followers of Jesus to help me snap out of it and to remember that the most important marks we leave will be on the hearts of others and, hopefully, the ways we have held those hearts as tenderly as Jesus does.

Today, may we approach the work, the conversations, and the opportunities of this day ahead clear-eyed about what matters and what endures--the ways we have loved people, and walked with them to grow in love as well. May that be our life's work, our "opus," and our living symphony.

Lord Jesus, may we be the evidence of your work in the world... and may we spend our energies this day investing ourselves in people rather than monuments or accolades.