Learning How to Human--March 31, 2023

Learning How To Human--March 31, 2023

"Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness." [Philippians 2:5-7]

I sometimes think that the hardest part of the Christian faith isn't the mind-boggling doctrine that Jesus reveals the very nature of God, but rather the uncomfortable truth that Jesus has to show us how to be human, too.

Divinity, after all, is mysterious and distant and infinite and eternal--we expect it to be beyond our paygrade. We assume that we would need some additional guidance from an expert to understand what God is like. But being human? That is literally our job. That is--or at least it should be--our bread and butter, our most basic fundamental proficiency. Being human should be, should be, right in our wheelhouse.

And yet, if we are really honest with ourselves, we'll admit that we are not terribly good at this thing called humanity, and we really do need someone to teach us collectively how to be fully what we were meant to be. We need, for lack of a better term, human lessons.

In addition to revealing what the very face of God is like, Jesus gives us the fullest sense of what it really means to be human. That's here at the core of these words from Paul's letter to the Philippians, words which Paul is likely quoting from an even earlier hymn source. Jesus shows us what it really means to be human. And if our way of being human runs counter to Jesus' way of being human, we are missing something important. That's why Paul can say so bluntly and directly, "Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus." In other words, "If you want to know what it looks like to be fully human, start living and thinking, speaking and acting, in ways that echo what we saw and know from Jesus." Jesus is the teacher of this course in humanity, even if we already think we are experts on the subject.

These words, which will be read as part of worship for many of us this Sunday, show us that at the heart of Jesus' way of being human is a love that puts others first, a love that isn't puffed up in arrogance or shriveled up in self-interest, but is alive and thriving in self-giving.

So what does Jesus have to show us about our own humanity? What do we have to learn about how to be fully human? When Paul thinks about it, he puts it in simple terms: others first. Jesus shows us how to be fully human, not with elaborate displays of religiosity, feats of physical strength, intellectual argumentation, or silent meditation, but in the actual lived practice of putting others' interests before our own. Paul doesn't see this as a "special" quality of Jesus, reserved only for messiahs or prophets, but basic humanity for all, and essential for all of us in how to truly be human.  To be human as God created us is to be oriented beyond just "me" and "my rights" or "me-and-my-comfort" or "me-and-my-wallet," to love others.

That means, too, that in the moments and situations where we refuse to consider the interests of others as more important than our own, we will be failing to be fully ourselves, fully human. Where we shout loudly, "Me and My Group First," we are not modeling true greatness at all, but in fact we are revealing how empty and deficient our humanity is. We were not made to look out simply for ourselves. We were not made to do it, as the old song puts it, "my way." We were made for putting others first, as they are also made for doing the same for us in a living, flowing, vital community.

This is a really important point to be clear about, because sometimes we religious folk seem to think that we are supposed to put others first as a way of impressing God or earning ourselves some "heaven points." You'll hear folks sometimes talk about being good or being selfless in order to get themselves a "crown" in heaven. But that's not at all how Paul sees it. The reason to care for the interests of others is not as a means toward some other reward. The reason to put others first is not so that they'll "owe" us and one day we'll be able to cash in on favors. We are called to put the interests of others before our own because that is how Jesus shows us how to be human. To put myself first--my wants, my security, my personal wish-list--misses the point of what we are made to be.

Jesus comes into human history, as human as you and me, not only to bring us face to face with God, but to give us at last a clear picture of ourselves--to show us what it means to be really and fully human. He doesn't come with an angry look and a furrowed brow to say that if we aren't well-behaved enough we will lose our heaven points and get kicked out of the club--he comes to show us what we were made to be, how we were made to give ourselves away, and how we were made for being filled back up again by the living God in one great, never-ending flow.

One of the things the New Testament writers are absolutely clear on is that Jesus is what it looks like for God to take on humanity. That is what makes the Good News possible--that God has entered into our existence, that God has embraced us as we are, and that God goes all the way with us even to human death on a cross to save us. And at the same time, that also means that Jesus shows us what being human was really all about all along, and he offers us the way to be pulled out of our self-centered, Me-First misery, to be fully what we were meant to be all along.

Listen today for the voice of Jesus. Look today for the way of Jesus. In the ways Jesus put others before his own needs and interests, Jesus hasn't done anything beyond our ability--in fact, he is showing us precisely what we were meant for in the first place.  He is teaching us how to human... by embodying for us how to love.

Lord Jesus, you who came among us as one of us, give us the ability to live in the freedom of being for others, and to find what we were meant to be all along.

Until Shift Change--March 30, 2023

Until Shift Change--March 30, 2023

"I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I hope; my soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning, more than those who watch for the morning.  O Israel, hope in the LORD! For with the LORD there is steadfast love, and with him is great power to redeem. It is he who will redeem Israel from all its iniquities." [Psalm 130:5-8]

I've been mulling over that phrase here, about "those who watch for the morning."  And I'm not sure how we're supposed to picture that.  

You can be leisurely watching out on some peaceful vista awaiting the sunrise, or you can be the night-watch looking out through the city gates to keep an eye out for invading enemies or besieging armies.  You can be busy through the night-watch, like third-shift emergency room staff who are trying their best to patch up every bleeding wound and broken bone until the day-shift comes in with the morning to take over for you so you can get some rest.  Or you can be waiting around with nothing to do, either calmly or fidgeting, knowing that something is looming on the horizon.  Sometimes you're both at the same time, I suppose, like people prepping for landfall of a hurricane or who can't sleep on the night before some major event.  You search for peace in fits and starts, carving out little moments of rest between bouts of anxiety, and grabbing a moment here at there to catch your breath while other things are moving all around you.

I was just listening yesterday to the poet Clint Smith sharing a poem on the radio, entitled, "For the Doctor's Record: Follow-Up," where he reports that "last night" a boy had been shot to death "who could have once been me or might one day be my son," and then follows up that detail with these words:  "I haven't cried in a long time. There have been 11,315 sunsets since I was born. And I haven't stopped to watch any of them."  And I can't help but hear in those words this deep unease at the pain of the world alongside the awareness that he has never felt able to rest or let his guard down for a moment long enough to watch a sunset.  I hear in those words an ache to be able to watch for the morning with hope, rather than with heartache.  I hear in those words the weariness of living in a world where we almost fear hearing the news in the morning for dread of what tragedy will have happened before the sun came up--where the latest school shooting was, which tyrant invaded which neighboring country, or which friend or neighbor got a terrible diagnosis.  We are all, in our own ways, watching for the morning with a strange mix of anticipation and despair.

And what I hear back from the psalmist, who is another poet weary of keeping his eyes open through the night, is an honest hope--one that is more than wishful thinking, but also one that hasn't given way to petrified cyncism that nothing can ever get better.  The poet is waiting for God to act, "more than those who watch for the morning," and I suspect there is both the urgency of wanting help for the hurts of the night and the expectation of something good and brilliant like the sunrise in that waiting.  I get the sense, like Clint Smith's poetic narrator, that the psalmist knows all too well the terrible things that happen in this world, and he is aching for things to be put right... and also is too weary to try and shoulder it all himself to fix things.  Like the graveyard shift nursing staff in the ER, he is looking for someone to relieve him of duties and to let him rest assured that everything has not fallen to him alone to take care of.  I'm reminded of the old line attributed to the late Pope John XXIII, who supposedly would pray at times of great distress, "I'm going to bed, Lord--the church is in your hands."  Maybe the psalmist has that tiredness in his bones, where he needs to know it's not just up to him to put everything right... which means waiting for a changing of the guard and being relieved of duties for the night.

It is hard, I will be honest, to be at peace with waiting when terrible things are happening all around in the world.  Or maybe, it's easy to do the sort of waiting that lets ourselves off the hook and says, "Nothing can be done to make things better, so I give up trying.  I'll just keep passively wishing over here by my comfortable view."  And maybe it's also easy to get stuck in the frantic "I-have-to-do-it-all-to-save-the-world" mentality that burns us out.  And instead, I think the psalmist here invites us to see that we are not alone in working to mend the hurts around us.  We wait for God, but not like we are sitting on our hands or twiddling our thumbs.  We believe that God's heart aches for every young man shot in the night, every student or teacher killed in a mass shooting during the day, every house blown up by invaders' missiles, and every despairing heart that shrugs in nihilism believing nothing will ever get better.  And if that is the God we believe in, then our waiting for God is neither wishful thinking nor pious escapism.  It means that where we have the ability to heal and mend and care for others, we do that--until our shift of duty ends, so to speak.  And at the same time, it means we can take the moments and times we need to rest, to catch our breath, and maybe to watch a sunrise, knowing that our work is a part of God's bigger work to mend the entire universe. Perhaps then we can see that our labor, suffering, and sorrow over the pain of the world is caught up with God's own labor, suffering, and sorrow over that same pain--and that God has gone to a cross over it, too.

It can feel pointless, hopeless, or impotent to believe that God's way of dealing with the terror of the world by suffering love and a cross rather than conquering armies is worth trusting in.  I think the psalmist knows the difficulty there of trusting in God without letting that become permission to do nothing. And yet surely he also knows it is impossible to keep going when you think you have the responsibility to do everything.  Maybe living in the in-between place, where we do what healing work we can while calling on God to move and act where we cannot, is what it means to "wait for the Lord."

Lord God, teach us how to wait for your action in the world, and teach us what you would have us do in the mean time while we wait.  Give us peace where we are weary, and renew us for when your work will come through our hands.

Praying from the Pit--March 29, 2023

Praying from the Pit--March 29, 2023

"Out of the depths I cry to you, O Lord.  Lord, hear my voice! Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplications! If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, Lord, who could stand?  But there is forgiveness with you, so that you may be revered." [Psalm 130:1-4]

If God were in the business of keeping score and counting red-ink marks on our permanent records, we'd all be out of luck and out of hope. But--because God apparently isn't interested in "marking iniquities" [that's biblical-speak for that permanent record business], we are freed to call out to God just as we are, even if it's the deep hole we've just dug ourselves into.

That is, we come to God on the basis of our need, apart from any need to prove our "worthiness" or to elbow someone else out of the way for a spot in line.  And the same is true for everybody else.  It's not the "worthy" or the "holy" who have God's ear--it's the needy and the hurting, even when we've caused our own need and hurt.

I find that simply breath-taking, especially to see that it's here in the Scriptures--this is not merely the wishful thinking of a desperate sinner hoping God will bend the rules, and it's not a bunch of modern-day theological game-playing.  It's right there in the psalms: "If you, O Lord, should mark iniquities, who could stand?"  In other words, "If you kicked out everybody who messed up, there would be nobody left."  And yet, the praying poet starts with the unshakable conviction that he can cry out to God from the pit he's in--whether that's a literal ravine, a dark night of the soul, a deep season of depression, or raw grief from losing someone to death.  Whatever the situation, the psalmist believes that God will hear and care, and no matters of past sins or present circumstances stop up the divine ears.

This is a pretty big deal, and it's something we need to be clear about as Christ-followers, especially as we head into the central story of our faith in Holy Week next week and focus again on the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  Centuries before those events, an Israelite poet prayed with assurance knowing that God's saving help wasn't reserved for some elite group of select sinless people, but keeps reaching for us even if we've gotten ourselves back into the pit so many times we've lost count.

So when we talk about Jesus laying down his life for us on the cross, or about God's victory over death in the resurrection, we've got to be clear that these are not rewards for the holy but redemption for the hurting.  Jesus doesn't lay down his life with an asterisk and fine print, saying, "I'll die, but only for the ones who have stayed out of trouble well enough," but insists that it's God's love "for the world" that is revealed in the cross--even when that world seems hell-bent on its own destruction.  God doesn't announce through the angels on Easter morning, "There is eternal life available, but only for the Top One Hundred saints,  so keep those holiness scores up there if you want a spot on the list."

And because of that, there is no room--and no need!--to compare ourselves to others, put somebody else beneath you because you have decided their sins are worse than yours, or treat the body of Christ like an exclusive country club for the spiritually elite.  Because God isn't in the business of comparing our heavenly report cards or "marking iniquities" in the first place, there's no reason and no point to disparage other people in the attempt to make ourselves look better by comparison.  God's not keeping score--we don't need to, either.

And if God's not tallying up a record of our sins, infractions, and trespasses, then I guess we don't get to be gatekeepers trying to keep out others we think are less worthy than we are.  That's not how it works--God has always been attuned to the needs of the suffering and the hurting, rather than giving out gold stars or lumps of coal.  What if, today, we dared to believe that was true--and treated other people in light of that truth, too?  

What if our prayer today wasn't, "God, you should listen my prayer and grant my requests because I'm so much holier than THOSE people," but rather, "God, hear the cries of all of us who are in the depths today--and reach us with your grip of grace"?

Let us dare it.

God, hear the cries of all of us who are in the depths today--and reach us with your grip of grace.

Beyond Our Power--March 28, 2023

Beyond Our Power--March 28, 2023

"Then [the LORD] said to me, 'Mortal, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are cut off completely. Therefore prophesy, and say to them, Thus says the Lord GOD: I am going to open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people, and I will bring you back to the land of Israel. And you shall know that I am the LORD, when I open your graves, and bring you up from your graves, O my people. I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live, and I will place you on your own soil; then you shall know that I, the LORD, has spoken and will act, says the LORD'." [Ezekiel 37:11-14]

Watch out--the first step is a doozy.

The first of the Twelve Steps, I mean--in an addiction recovery program, like Alcoholics Anonymous.  The first step is especially hard, because it means letting go of the illusion that you're in control of things.  "We admitted we were powerless... and that our lives had become unmanageable."  That's how it starts--not with a vow to "just try harder," or a recitation of the old poem Invictus, "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul."  No, instead, recovery has to begin with the honest recognition of our powerlessness, so that we can finally quit wasting our energy pretending we've got our stuff together.

In so many ways, that's all of us human beings, too--whether or not you're officially in a Twelve Step Recovery program.  Left to our own devices, we're all pretty well powerless, and our lives are just about unmanageable, too--except we tend to want to fool ourselves and everyone else around that we're all smashing successes.  We want to picture ourselves as the doctor who saves the patient in the nick of time, or the firefighter who comes out of the burning building at the last minute, carrying the rescued child. We don't want to consider that we're the patient on the table or the person carried out of the flames.

But the Scriptures telling us the uncomfortable truth: we are not spiritual Boy Scouts earning heavenly merit badges to make it to the next rank up; we are more like old chalky bones needing to be raised to life again through a power beyond our own.  We're Lazarus, waiting to be called to life again--which isn't something we can achieve by our own power.

Maybe that's what makes it so hard to admit we are powerless like Ezekiel's valley of bones: it means that we bring nothing to the table but our helplessness.  Bones, after all, can't even ask for help or healing.  A sick person might have the bright idea to call for the doctor.  A child trapped in a burning house can shout for help.  But bones?  They don't even know their predicament--they can't even ask for help in the first place.  God has to give it without being asked first.  God has to step in and raise the dead, without waiting around for the bones to get their act together and request a resurrection.  That means--gasp--God's work to save us doesn't depend on our being bright enough to request it, good enough to earn it, or pious enough to invite Jesus into our hearts first.  We are powerless, and our lives are unmanageable, after all.  We need a God who is willing to raise us from the dead without needing our initiative to kickstart it or to invite God into our hearts first.  We need a God who redeems even before we realize we need redemption.  

That was certainly the hard pill that the exiles had to swallow in Ezekiel's day.  After generations of thinking they were invincible because they had God on "their side" or because of their national wealth or their armies or their weapons or their own generic "greatness," they were brought face to face with their own helplessness.  Babylon, the empire du jour, had trampled down their city walls, burned their Temple, overrun their armies, and plundered their wealth.  It was as close as you could be to national death--to being just a valley full of old bones.  And it was at that point--but not before--that God could bring about a resurrection and bring them home again.  Resurrection, by definition, is only for the dead, and therefore must be given and cannot be earned, initiated, or even asked for.  But that's exactly when God's best work gets done.

If we, like the ancient exiles sitting in Babylon, don't bring anything to the table to earn or initiate our own resurrection, then that certainly removes any ground we have for looking down on anybody else.  Bones don't get to brag, and the femur over here doesn't have reason to think it's better than the tibia further down on the pile.  We're all just in need of a power beyond ourselves to bring us back to life. If I want to grow in love, it will mean abandoning the illusion that I'm more worthy of God's love than you or anybody else.  

Today, then, is a day for honesty... with ourselves and with God, so that we can be honest with everybody else, too.  We are helpless on on our own--but that doesn't need to make us despair for even a split second, because ours is a God who meets us exactly at our helplessness.  The thing that changes for us, though, once we are able to admit that we are powerless and that our lives have become unmanageable, is that we don't have to try and compare ourselves to anybody else, push them down, or puff ourselves up.  We can leave that kind of arrogance behind as one more coping mechanism that never got to the root of the problem anyway.  And instead, with open, empty hands, we will at last be ready simply to let God resurrect what is dead in us--and to rejoice when God does that for others around us, whether or not we thought they were "worthy" of it.  

O living God, we find ourselves resurrected by your power and your life-giving Spirit--thank you.  Thank you.  Thank you.  Allow us to quit pretending we have come to life in you by our own achieving, so that we can celebrate as you call others to life all around us, too.

An Ace Up God's Sleeve--March 27, 2023

An Ace Up God's Sleeve--March 27, 2023

"The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. He led me all around them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. He said to me, 'Mortal, can these bones live?' I answered, 'O Lord God, you know.' [Ezekiel 37:1-3]

The longer I continue in this life's journey with God, the more I come to believe that faith starts, not with what we "know" about God, but with the humility to say, "I don't know, God--but you do."  Faith, in other words, doesn't start with our cocky certainty about how God works, but rather with giving God the room [or recognizing that God already has the room] to surprise us.

And honestly, I think faith doesn't only start there--mature faith has learned how to let God keep surprising us, too.  A growing and deepening faith doesn't look so much like a catechism of memorized answers, which confine God to stay inside the boundaries of theological theses and philosophical propositions, but rather looks like a relationship that knows the Divine well enough to know that there's always an ace up God's sleeve.

That is most certainly where the prophet is by the time we get to the vision here in Ezekiel 37, words that many of us heard yesterday in worship.  He has known the living God long enough not to put anything past the Almighty... and knowing that the moment you decree God "can't" do something, or isn't "allowed" to do something [you know, because of "the rules"], God tends to take it as a personal dare to do the very thing you said God couldn't or wouldn't do.  That's why Ezekiel has learned that when God asks a question, especially something that sounds like a loaded question, it's best not to pretend to have more answers or more certainty than you really can claim.

When God shows Ezekiel a valley full of chalky old dry bones and asks, "Can these bones live again?" the obvious answer would have been a resounding NO.  No, old bones cannot come to life again.  No there is no hope for scattered skeletons.  And by extension, the obvious answer should have been NO, there was no hope for the scattered fragments of the people of Judah, whose nation had been destroyed and whose citizens had been taken into exile in Babylon.  By all reasonable accounting, the nation was, to be blunt about it, dead.  

And that's really what's behind God's question and the imagery of dry bones.  They are a stand-in for the exiled people of Israel and Judah, and they were certain that there was no hope for them.  Their nation and all the things they built their identity on [their Temple, their capital city Jerusalem, their way of life, and their king] were gone, and they were certain that their covenant relationship with God was permanently and irreparably broken. The idea of a new beginning and a new relationship with God was as absurd as the idea of dead bones becoming living people again.  So when God asks Ezekiel, "Can these bones live?" Ezekiel and all of his fellow exiles would have heard it with the same force as, "Could there ever be a new beginning for us as a people?"  And the obvious common-sense, rational answer to both questions should have been, "No."

But of course, Ezekiel has known God for long enough not to fall for the obvious answer, even when anything else seems impossible.  He knows that God doesn't ask a question like that without a reason, and usually the reason involves up-ending our old assumptions.  So Ezekiel lets humility direct his answer:  "O Lord God, you know."  That is to say, "Everything else would have told me there was no hope, but you are the God who does impossible things, and you would move heaven and earth for the sake of your beloved, so I won't put anything past you any longer."  Ezekiel's faith is mature enough that he's ready--maybe even expectant--for God to surprise him, even if it means admitting he doesn't have all the answers.

That's really what God's people keep coming back to, isn't it?  Throughout the Scriptures, in the stories of ancient Israel through the gospel adventures of Jesus and the witness of the early church, we are most in closest [and most honest] relationship with God when we abandon all arrogance and pretense and let ourselves be surprised by the ways God's strong love does the impossible.  Or, as theologian Douglas John Hall puts it, "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.”

It's the same humility in faith that leads Peter to call out to Jesus, "If it's you, Lord, call me to come to you out on the water." It's the same openness for God to do a new and impossible thing that leads the Ethiopian eunuch to ask, "What is to prevent me from being baptized?" and Philip to go ahead and baptize him, even for all the long list of reasons that "the rules" say he can't.  And today we are again dared to let our love of God be humble enough to be open to God's surprising actions that push the boundaries of what we thought possible.

On this day, the living God just might pose some equally impossible sounding question to you, too:  "Mortal, will you love those you have written off as unacceptable and unworthy?"  "Disciple, could my grace give a new beginning for someone you have written off as beyond hope?"  "Child, could there be hope where you have given up, and new life for you right now?"  When it happens, may we have the maturity of faith to know how, like Ezekiel, to answer humbly:

"O Lord God, you know."

Surprise us, O God, as you will--and let these hearts of ours be ready for you to move in ways we did not expect, but which turn out to be completely faithful to your character.

Lives of Shadow and Sun--March 24, 2023

Lives of Shadow and Sun--March 24, 2023

"For once you were darkness, but now in the Lord you are light. Live as children of light--for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and just and true." [Ephesians 5:8-9]

It's worth remembering that the name attached to the letter these verses come from is none other than the apostle Paul--the formerly infamous persecutor of the church and enemy of the way of Jesus.  Floating around in the background of these few sentences are the memories of how even someone dead-set against Christ could come around 180 degrees, and conversely, how someone who was a crucial leader in the early church could bring the baggage of a violent past and still be accepted.  Paul hadn't reasoned his way into Christianity or made the choice by his own intellect to believe in Jesus--it was the living Christ who knocked him off his high horse, grabbed hold of him, and claimed him. Paul's own life story made it clear that being brought into the light isn't an accomplishment to brag about--it's a gift of grace.

That's vital if we want to hear this talk of leaving the shadows and living in the light without it all going to our heads and making us unbearably arrogant.  And seriously, that is easy to do with such stark imagery.  It's easy for church folk to cast ourselves as nothing but good and holy and righteous, and the world as totally evil.  It's easy to split the world into neat and tidy categories of "light side" and "dark side" like we're living in a Star Wars movie talking about the Force.  And it is awfully tempting to cast everybody else that I don't like as "trapped in darkness" while I envision myself as the hero wearing the white hat from the old Westerns.  

But maybe a more honest way of seeing ourselves is as people who struggle with the ongoing pull in each direction... and who know that Christ has called us and claimed us to belong in the family of God even in the midst of that tension.  We live each day as a composite of shadow and sun, Christ-likeness and crookedness, love, apathy, and hate. Like Alexander Solzhenitsyn put it, "The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either – but right through every human heart…even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained. And even in the best of all hearts, there remains…an uprooted small corner of evil."  It's all there, inside us, swirling around and struggling--and yet, we dare to believe that God's claim on us is real, sure, and unwavering even while we wrestle with them. 

After all, if the apostle Paul himself could be claimed by Christ even when he was completely turned away from the way of Jesus, surely God's grace can claim us wherever we are in that struggle, no matter how much we keep turning back into the shadows.  In my particular branch of the Christian family tree, the Lutheran way of talking about this is that we are always "simul justus et peccator," which is to say we are simultaneously sinful and justified. God's claim on us that puts us in right standing with God and pulls us out of the shadows comes even while we remain sinners who keep sinning.  It means that God's claim on us comes regardless of the ways we keep clawing our ways back into the gloom.  And that also means that we don't get to wear the title "children of the light" as a badge of honor like it's something we've earned for our goodness or purity--it's a gift God gives us despite the ways we still keep giving in to our worst impulses.

Day by day, God keeps turning us around, pointing us in the direction of what is "good and just and true," and calling us to BE what God says we already are.  But our belonging doesn't depend on how well we do at that; it's not even a matter of being "mostly sunny" rather than "mostly gloomy."  And once we are clear about that, we can strive for that goodness and truth and justice without either worrying about our final test scores or looking down on someone else we don't think is as virtuous.  Being a "child of the light" is not grounds for arrogant self-congratulation, but a recognition of the power of God's love to take hold of us even while we're turned away from the sun.

So on this day, our calling is to dare to believe what God says about us and trust that we are made for goodness, justice, and truth.  And when we let God's claim on us take hold, we'll find ourselves embodying that goodness, justice, and truth.  But we won't use our status as God's children as a reason to be jerks toward other people or look down on them.  We won't pretend that we've earned our position in God's family; we'll see it as a gift we have received.  And maybe then we can see everyone else who crosses our path as a candidate for God's generosity--and maybe we just might be the people God has sent to reflect a little light their way.

Lord Jesus, let us reflect the light you have first given to us, without pretending it is our creation.

Right Before Our Eyes--March 23, 2023

Right Before Our Eyes--March 23, 2023

"Some of the Pharisees said, 'This man [Jesus] is not from God, for he does not observe the sabbath.' But others said, 'How can a man who is a sinner perform such signs?' And they were divided. So they said again to the blind man, 'What do you say about him? It was your eyes he opened.' He said, 'He is a prophet'." [John 9:16-17]

It's not a lack of piety or belief that keeps people from recognizing the saving power of God in this story; it's arrogant religious certainty.  That's the tragedy, and the warning for us. Sometimes the Respectable Religious People are so unquestionably sure they know who is a "sinner" that they are unable to acknowledge the miracle in their midst that has come from God's own hand.  And it quite literally a damn shame when we miss it.

This is one of those realities we have a hard time wrapping our minds around, because most of the time we'd think it's a good thing to have strong faith, sure convictions, and solid confidence in what we believe.  And, sure, all of that is true.  Waffling faith that keeps looking back or is afraid to step out of the boat and onto the water is not a virtue.  But when faith curdles into dogmatism--when our faith shifts from being focused on God to being focused on our rightness about what we think about God--we can end up missing what God is actually doing among us, because we've filtered out anything unexpected from our view.

That's what has happened in this story: some of the Respectable Religious People have pre-decided that nothing Jesus does can be good or holy or from God, because he has healed someone on the sabbath day.  And this is the hitch--they've decided that their interpretation of what the sabbath commandment means is unquestionable, and therefore when Jesus does something that breaks their interpretation of the rule, they are dead certain that he's broken the commandment... and therefore is a sinner... and must hate the word of God.  Funny, isn't it, how we so easily make that leap from "we disagree about what this religious commandment means" to assuming "because you and I disagree, YOU must be wrong, YOU must be the sinner, and YOU must reject the word and authority of God." Jesus, of course, doesn't do any of those things, despite the fact that he believes the sabbath commandment allows for healing and restoring life--in fact, that is the purpose of sabbath in the first place.  The trouble here with the Respectable Religious People isn't that they take their faith seriously and care about practicing their piety--it's rather than they are unwilling to even consider the possibility that they could be wrong in their interpretations... and because of that, they set themselves up to miss out on the presence of God's saving power in their midst.

And of course it's easy for us 21st century church folk to rag on this particular group of Pharisees in this particular episode, and to miss the way we do the very same thing.  It may not be a miraculous restoration of sight that happens in the course of this day, but all too easily, we make decisions in advance of who "must be" a sinner because they disagree with us, and therefore, we assume they are not only wrong but opposed to God and God's ways.  And instead of seeing other people who differ as people who love the same God we do and who are striving their best to live out their faith in that God, we end up saying, "Because we disagree, YOU are wrong--and since I love God you must HATE God."  We end up parting company with folks who are striving their very best, just as surely as we are striving our best, to seek the will of God and love the way Jesus loves.  And we end up letting our faith become rigid and brittle like a weathered old wooden beam, rather than flexibly strong like a living oak that can sway in the breeze without snapping.

This is at least part of why it is so vitally important for love to include intellectual humility rather than unquestionable arrogance.  Arrogance isn't just bragging about my accomplishments: it's also what happens when I am so certain about my rightness than I cannot fathom even the possibility that I could be wrong, or that I could have something to learn.  And it's not just bragging that kills Christ-like love--it's when I allow my rigid certainty to keep me from seeing others as people through whom God might be moving, people whom God is healing and saving right now, and even people through whom God might be teaching me something.  When our faith is no longer teachable and correctible--when I am unwilling to hear someone else's perspective or see how another person views things--I should be worried that my faith is no longer in God, but in my own certainty.  And that kind of certainty is an idol of the most insidious kind.

Today, without becoming spineless jellyfish who have no substance or convictions, perhaps it's enough for us simply to practice the humility that dares to say, "Maybe I'm not right about everything--and if I'm not, how would I know?"  Maybe before we leap to saying our disagreements automatically mean that THOSE PEOPLE must hate God or reject the Bible, we could stop and ask, "Is there the possibility that I have something to learn here--and could I be at risk of missing out on what God is up to?"

A story like this one says to me that Jesus is willing to go out of his way to help us to remove those filters we've put up that keep us from seeing God moving in unexpected ways.  Maybe today's the day we let him in close enough to restore our vision to see God's goodness where we didn't think it could be found, right before our eyes.

Jesus, break down the arrogance in our minds that keeps us from seeing where you are at work, and keeps us from recognizing the people through you are trying to get through to us.

Telling Your Truth--March 22, 2023

Telling Your Truth--March 22, 2023

"They brought to the Pharisees the man who had formerly been blind. Now it was a sabbath day when Jesus made the mud and opened his eyes. Then the Pharisees also began to ask him how he had received his sight.  He said to them, 'He put mud on my eyes.  Then I washed, and now I see'." [John 9:13-15]

The old line goes, "Evangelism is one beggar telling another where to find bread." 

I've always loved that way of putting it, because it reminds me that my job is not to have all the answers or think it's my job to dole out heavenly goodies.  I am a recipient of God's good gifts, and the most I can do is to tell others where I have found them being given away.  

And that truth is both humbling and freeing.  It's humbling, on the one hand, because it means acknowledging that I don't have all the answers and am not in control; and it is freeing because it means realizing I don't have to have them all or be in control.  I can just tell the truth I know about the grace I have been given.

One of the things I love about the man in this story from John 9 is that he doesn't have anything to prove to anybody, and he doesn't need to make anybody think he's got it all figured out.  He doesn't know what Jesus looks like [at this point in the story].  He doesn't know how soil and spit produced sight.  He's not an expert on whether it is, or is not, a violation of the sabbath commandment to restore someone's eyesight on the day of rest.  And he doesn't know what else to say about Jesus other than that he must be a prophet.

But for all that this man doesn't know, he is neither ashamed nor apologetic.  He is comfortable enough in his own skin to say, "Here's what I don't know, and then here's what I do know: Jesus put mud on my eyes, I washed, and now I can see."  He doesn't have to pretend he understands how it worked.  But he doesn't have to hide what he has experienced just because he only has his own experience to share.  The man tells the truth he has to share--"Now I see"--even if he can't explain the miracle or dissect the divinity of the one who worked it.   But once he has shared what he can speak to, he doesn't need to silence anybody else [even though the Respectable Religious Leaders will do that to him], and he doesn't need to weaponize his words against others, either.  Neither does he start a crusade telling other people living with blindness that they must have done something wrong because their experience doesn't match up with his.  The man can speak to what he knows and leave it there--this isn't a contest or a battle or a war.

There is something we can learn from this man's way of telling his story without turning it into a culture war.  All too often, modern day Respectable Religious Folk still talk about sharing what we have come to trust about God like it's a "battle for the truth" or a "war against the people who have it wrong," when the man healed by Jesus doesn't fall for that kind of thinking.  He can tell the truth he knows without arrogance [like he's got everything figured out] and without fear [because he doesn't have to pretend to have all the answers].  I wonder what it would look like for us to hold onto both of those day by day.  We don't have to pretend we are Bible experts, professional theologians, or perfect peaches in order to tell people what we have received from God in Christ.  We can say, confidently and graciously, how we have come to know love beyond earning and grace beyond calculating.  We can talk about how Christ's presence in our lives gives hope and direction.  We can tell others about the fullness that surrounds us in the community of Jesus' followers, who share joys and sorrows and ordinary times along the way with us.  And we can do all of that without having to get up on any high horses as if we're the only ones with anything to say, or that everybody else who says anything different is wrong.  We can tell the truth we know without getting defensive, because we're really just beggars telling other beggars where we've found bread.

What would it look like if we started there today?  What difference could it make for someone around us if we were willing to share what Jesus has meant to us--without having to make it into a battle or a war of words?  What might happen in this day if all you have to worry yourself about was telling the truth you have to share, and nothing more?

Lord Jesus, free us and humble us to be able to share what you have done for us without thinking we have to have all the answers.  

Dirt Under Divine Fingernails--March 21, 2023

Dirt Under Divine Fingernails--March 21, 2023

"When [Jesus] had said this, he spat on the ground and made mud with the saliva and spread the mud on the man's eyes, saying to him, 'Go, wash in the pool of Siloam' [which means Sent].  Then he went and washed and came back able to see..." [John 9:6-7]

Jesus chose mud.

Just sit with that thought for a moment.  Of all the possible means and methods he might have used to help the man in front of him, Jesus chose to make mud and get his hands dirty.  And, not to put too fine a point on it, but mud made from his own spit and the soil of the dirt road.  Jesus chose that.  For whatever else that fact means, it says that Jesus is not above that kind of messy, grubby kind of work if it is in the service of loving another person and revealing the character of God.

That's the connection I think I have overlooked in all the times I've read this story before over the years: it's that Jesus' choice to heal this man in literally the earthiest way possible is also meant to show us the beating heart of God.  Just before this passage, in the verses we looked at yesterday, Jesus told his disciples, "We must work the works of him who sent me while it is day."  And then the very next thing he does is to stick his hands in the mud he's made on the ground with his own saliva as his way of healing this man.  What Jesus does is meant to be a picture of God's own kind of love and power--that is to say, it's not just Jesus who is willing to get dirt under his fingernails: God is.

Think about it: Jesus has the power and authority to heal by just speaking the word.  He could have silently willed for the man's eyes to work, or he could have even just laid hands on the man.  He does all sorts of things all the time when he heals people--sometimes, to the hear the Gospels tell it, he doesn't even have to be in the same building or part of town as the person he's healing.  But here, Jesus chooses something earthy, something humble, something messy--not because the mud is magic, but because Jesus has come not only to heal, but to help all of us to see what God is like.  And as Jesus shows us, God's way of being among us is in earthiness, lowliness, and humility.  Jesus doesn't have to make spit-mud because that's the only way to give this man his sight; he shows us that the very Creator of the Cosmos and Ruler of the Universe is willing to enter into the mess with us.  Jesus gives us a living picture of the God whose love doesn't blush at the thought of spit or soil or mud-caked hands.

And I think that's worth paying attention to, because we are so used to lesser "loves" that won't come close.  We are used to the celebrity or politician photo op, where a Big Name stays at the soup kitchen or the disaster response shelter long enough to get a picture taken.  We are used to people who throw money at problems but never darken the door of the actual programs or agencies they supposedly support.  We are all too familiar with how easy it is to offer electronic well-wishes or social media "thoughts-and-prayers" that stay safely on a screen but never lead us actually to connect with the people we say we care about.  And here Jesus makes a point of saying, "That's NOT how God's love works."

God's love, as Jesus shows it to us, is more like the willingness of parents not only to take pictures of their cute babies in fresh onesies, but also to change diapers.  It's more like the willingness of a good friend to sit at your side while your nose is running and your tears are streaming down your face, no matter how unbecoming or unsanitized it seems.  It's more like the snap action of a stranger to perform rescue breathing or chest compressions on someone who has collapsed and needs CPR until the ambulance can come.  In these moments, genuine love isn't ashamed to be in the midst of our messy humanity--and Jesus shows us that this is what God's love is like, too.  Jesus doesn't just drop a couple of shekels in the man's begging bowl and say "Good luck," and he doesn't choose a no-contact way of healing the man, either.  Jesus chose mud... so that we would know that God isn't afraid of the mud, either.

What could it look like for us to show that kind of love in our actions and presence today?  If we, like Jesus and his first disciples, have been sent to "work the works of him who sent" Jesus [that is, God], then how might we love in that same kind of un-haughty, unpretentious way that is willing to get into the mud if necessary for the sake of our neighbor?  When we are tempted to keep other people [especially folks who are different from us in some way] at arm's length, how might we instead let love lead us close? And how might that also help peel away our own sense of self-importance and climb down from whatever pedestals we've put ourselves on?

Today, we are indeed called to act in ways that reveal the heart of God for the watching world.  And since Jesus has made it clear that God's love isn't too proud to get into the mess among us, we should expect to get dirt under our fingernails, too.

Lord Jesus, lead us to follow where you go and to love humbly like you do, wherever that takes us.

Digging Up A Bad Foundation--March 20, 2023

Digging Up A Bad Foundation--March 20, 2023

"As [Jesus] walked along, he saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked him, 'Rabbi, who sinned, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?' Jesus answered, 'so that God's works might be revealed in him, we must work the works of him who sent me while it is day; night is coming when no one can work. As long as I am in the world, I am the light of the world'." [John 9:1-5]

I'd like to submit this conversation into evidence for why good theology [and bad theology] matters.  I know that in this day and age it is easy to dismiss theology as either fanciful nonsense or intellectual ivory tower stuff that doesn't connect at all with real life, but a scene like this makes it clear that the things we think about God [and humanity, creation, and life] have the power either to build up or destroy, to help us grow in humility and love or to become permission for arrogance or hate.

When I was a high school student and friends or classmates found out I was discerning a call into ministry, the running joke was that I would grow up and work in a "religion factory"--the gist of their joke being that studying religion or theology was a useless and impractical pursuit because there is no such thing as a factory where you can get hired to build "religion."  And in that sense, they were right.  But the more I pay attention to the ways folks use--and quite often mis-use--their thinking about God to determine the ways they treat other people, the more I wish that all of us spent more time critically thinking through what we believe about God and why... because the consequences are profound.

This opening scene from the story many of us heard this past Sunday is a case in point.  Upon crossing paths with man who had been reduced to panhandling for food and spare change, who was also born blind, Jesus' disciples immediately go into armchair-theologian mode and pose a loaded question to Jesus.  "Rabbi, who sinned, that this man was born blind?"  And notice: these are Jesus' own hand-picked disciples; this is not a case of the Respectable Religious Leaders setting Jesus up with a trap question, as they sometimes do.  This is not someone trying to trip Jesus up with a "gotcha" question. These are Jesus' own students and followers, who have been with Jesus for some time already, and who still are convinced that this is how God operates in the world.

Right off the bat they have made assumptions about what is going on here.  They were doing theology [badly] and didn't even realize how those assumptions got their question off on the wrong footing from the beginning.  They have offered Jesus two options, and both are wrong.  Their assumption is that the condition of being born blind is a punishment from God [already wrong on so many levels], and that therefore the only question left to ask is whose sin this is punishment for.  Did he somehow sin in utero, or did God possibly punish people in advance of sins they would commit?  Did his parents sin, and thereby pass along wrath to their children?  These are the options they present Jesus with, not even considering that hey, what if blindness isn't a punishment, and what if God is not in the business of zapping people with maladies every time they mess up?

The thing that gets me about this whole opening scene is that the disciples don't even realize how much baggage they are bringing to the situation.  They don't realize how much they are unquestioningly assuming when they frame their question. They have already decided in a sense how God operates in the world--and thereby they have set themselves up to look down on some people as divinely-judged sinners, simply by the way they have set the question up.  Even before Jesus gets a word in, the disciples have taken their theological starting point--namely, that physical disability is invariably a sign of God's judgment for specific sins--and let it filter their view of reality.  Their starting point about God means any time they see someone with some severe physiological condition, they'll assume this is a punishment from God.  And conversely, they'll see anyone who is not affected by a medical condition as marginally better or more righteous; after all, at least they're not being punished with an illness, right?  And of course, presuming that most of the time these disciples are themselves in pretty good health, that conveniently allows them to cast themselves, not just as "good," but as "better" than others they cross paths with.  The disciples may not realize they are doing it, but their own theological assumptions are teaching them arrogance that sees themselves as better and other people as inherently less-than.

Now, I would hope it is obvious that Jesus shuts down all of this thinking.  He rules out that God is to be found in this situation as the judge handing out a sentence for sin, but rather that if you're going to find God here, it will be in the healing of this man and the doing of good.   [This is kind of like the old line of Mr. Rogers that when tragedy happens, we look for "the helpers" who are repairing and restoring.]  Jesus isn't just giving the disciples an answer for this specific man in front of them, but he is pulling apart their whole theology to get out the poorly laid foundation they have built it on.  Jesus tears down the disciples' bad theology that unwittingly taught them to see others as "less than" and instead insists that God is to be found in mending rather than in zapping.  Their assumptions about God are not only incorrect; they are also bending the disciples' hearts and lives toward arrogance rather than in the direction of love.  Our theology always shapes the kind of people we are becoming. And while nobody is saved by their theology [or damned by their bad theology], God does care about the kind of people we are becoming. God's love not only forgives us and claims us, but also reshapes us and forms us in the likeness of that love.  So bad theology matters, because it has a way of giving us permission to hate some people, or to shrug off other people in apathy, or to see others as inherently less worthy of care and dignity.  And that matters to Jesus, because those people matter to Jesus.

Today, it is worth looking more closely at our own assumptions about God and where they come from, and to see how our theology sometimes leads us away from love and into arrogance.  Where that is happening, maybe it's time to let the living Jesus start pulling down the structures, worldviews, and thought-patterns we've built on top of shoddy foundations, so that he can build us anew in the likeness of his love and goodness.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to let you help us re-examine what we think, what we believe, and what we unquestioningly assume, so that we see the world through your eyes rather than our own filters.

The Enemy in the Mirror--March 17, 2023

 
The Enemy in the Mirror--March 17, 2023

"But God proves his love for us in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us. Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from wrath of God. For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life." [Romans 5:8-10]

I can't help but think of the punchline of that old Pogo cartoon that goes , "We have met the enemy... and he is us."

That line lands like a punch for me, not just as a riff on the words of Oliver Perry from the War of 1812, but as a wake-up call.  When we talk about people being "enemies," it's not just other people I don't like.  I have been... and sometimes still am, "the enemy."

Even when it comes to God.   Yikes.  That's a hard pill to swallow.

It's hard--but necessary--to hear that the "enemies of God" aren't some OTHER people, you know, who don't measure up to MY expectations or seem worthy to ME.  I've been the "enemy of God"--and yet, that never stopped God from loving me, not even exactly at the point where I've been turned away dead-set against God's ways and love.  God's love includes enemies... which includes me.

That has a way of humbling us, doesn't it?  It sure is easier on the ol' ego to imagine that "the enemies of God" are some a separate group of people from me. We can imagine that there's God and me on one side of a chasm, and then over there, across the abyss, there are some pitiable, pathetic "others" who are far, far away.  It's easy to think that at best God might sometimes choose to throw "those people" a bone, and at worst that God has those "enemies" locked in the divine target sights and is preparing to unleash a ruthless, bloodthirsty assault of lightning bolts or locusts at them. Good respectable religious folks have a way of assuming that they are already rubbing elbows with God--it's just those OTHERS who are so far off and in need of a smidge of divine pity... or a dose of divine vengeance. "We"--you know, as in, "God and me and the other good, respectable religious people"--we get to stand in judgment of the ones "WE" have deemed as God's enemies. 

And in that moment, God turns to us and says, like in the old joke, "What do you mean, 'we'?"

See, it's not that Respectable Religious people are all close to God while there are a bunch of miserable wretches far off somewhere else. We were all--Respectable Religious folks, too--distant, estranged, and even, to borrow Paul's word for it, enemies, of God. And God just wouldn't take no for an answer--God wouldn't let our estrangement be the last word on the subject.

That means from God's perspective, all of us messy humans have in some way or another turned from God and crossed our arms in defiant rebellion. We have all, on our own, wandered away from God. And we keep doing it. It's not just that Christians say, "I used to be a rotten sinner, but now I'm a perfect peach!" Rather, it's that we are constantly making ourselves enemies of God all over again, and God keeps on being determined to love us even as enemies.

This is the radical idea from which the whole Christian faith flows: God has chosen to love us even while we were and are enemies of God--all of us. If that doesn't let all the air out of our arrogant self-righteous religiosity, I don't know what will. God practices the same enemy-love that Jesus taught about--in fact, that is the whole point of Jesus' teaching: that we are to love our enemies because that is exactly God's policy toward a whole world full of stinkers, sinners, "those people," and estranged messes. God's love did not wait for us to turn to God first. God's love did not wait for us to start to behave first. And God's love still does not turn off and on like a faucet depending on my behavior, my closeness to God, or my religiosity. God's love embraced me--and you, and all of us--as Paul notes, "while we were still sinners," and indeed "when we were enemies" of God.

So not only does God embrace what it "different," but God even unabashedly embraces us when we have set ourselves dead against God's goodness. Even in our acts of betrayal. Even when we are going further astray. Even when we are in the far country envying the pig slop.

For folks who have been hanging around the church for very long, it is very easy to think that the church is the club for good boys and girls who from time to time raise a bit of money or take an exotic field trip of charity to donate our used clothes with the real messes.  Or, even worse, the watching world has heard us do nothing but condemn the ones we've labeled sinful slobs, worldly lost souls, or rejected reprobates.  But the apostle here says that we're all the sinful slobs, the destitute distant children who ran away from home, the ones who stopped answering God's phone calls. We've met the enemy, and it's us--we've been the enemies of God.

And yet, that's not because God declared it so. We made ourselves enemies, estranged, and outcast, and God just wouldn't stop loving us anyway, not even as enemies.

So before anybody groans or rolls their eyes and complains, "Why do we always have to talk about God loving the Bad People when I'm one of the Good Guys?" as they tip their imaginary white hat, we should be clear: we are the ones who have been estranged from God, and we are the ones who have been shown mercy. We are the distant ones who have been brought near. We are "those people", too. And that means we don't get to start judging who else is too far to be within the reach of God's mercy. If God's love went to a cross for us when we were enemies of God, well, then, God's love went to a cross for all the other enemies of God, too.

That's how grace works--the worthiness of the recipient is not a factor in the equation. The goodness or badness of the beloved is not the issue. Even as enemies, Christ gave up his life for us. And in that moment--at the cross--God once and for all declared an unending love for all the ones labeled "other" or "enemy." Not just folks wearing black cowboy hats and twirling their villainous mustaches. No just people far away on the other side of the chasm. Right there in the mirror.

When we realize that we've been the enemies of God--who are loved yet enough for Jesus to lay down his life for us while we were enemies--it removes any ground we thought we had for looking down on anybody else.  You can't get any worse or more estranged than being an enemy--and yet, it is precisely "enemies of God" for whom Christ gave his life.  May that love change our perspective in this day.

Lord Jesus, help us see the lengths to which your love has gone for us... so that we may extend love to those around us we have been tempted to look down on or keep at arm's length.

Like a Sprout Through the Concrete--March 16, 2023

Like a Sprout Through the Concrete--March 16, 2023

"Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing in the glory of God. And not only that, but we boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." [Romans 5:1-5]

In a culture that is practically obsessed with teaching us to brag about our own greatness, it can be difficult to move against the stream without giving in to arrogant ego-inflation.  But it's even more difficult to keep your head above water if you do go along with the constant flow of "Look-at-me-I'm-great" messaging we get from everywhere else, from folks showing off the fancy dinner they cooked or ordered and posting photos on social media, to demagogues at podiums preening like peacocks as they take credit for accomplishments they had little to do with, to the voices at work telling us we have to keep doing more and more to make a name for ourselves and get the company more and better PR.  It can feel like we are constantly under pressure simultaneously to DO "great" things and to PROMOTE ourselves so that everybody else around will know about just how "great" we are.  And it is absolutely exhausting to keep at both.  You can try it for a while, but it hollows you out before long, and you find yourself empty inside a highly polished, but eggshell-fragile, surface you've projected for the world to see.

And then along comes a voice like the apostle Paul's, who poses a question that shakes all of that to its foundation by asking, "What if you just didn't have their game?  What if you didn't have to keep inventing reasons or accomplishments or accolades to boast about?"  In fact, Paul turns the tables and suggests that if anything, we can boast about how good God has been to us even in the midst of all of our weakness, struggle, and suffering.  Instead of arrogantly advertising to the world, "Look how great I am!" Paul dares us to imagine being the voices who say, "Look at how good God is, since God has loved me as I am, and God's power is able to take even my worst moments and raise up hope in the midst of them like seedlings through cracks in the asphalt."

That's part of the delicious irony of Paul's choice to use the word "boast" here in these verses from Romans 5--words many of us heard this past Sunday.  He says that we followers of Jesus have grounds for boasting, but it just about takes the word "boast" and turns it inside out.  Instead of "look-at-me-I'm-so-great" kind of thinking, Paul says that even the things others would look down of us for don't need to make us ashamed.  We don't have to hide our struggles; we don't have to cover over the messes in our lives, or the sources of our pains.  We don't have to invent some fake version of ourselves to make us the envy of our neighbors [and enemies], because we know, fundamentally, that we are already beloved of God as we are--and such love can bring promise from pain.

The thing is, it's really easy in this life to take our successes and turn them into reasons to get puffed up while looking down on others.  It's dangerously tempting to look at your title at work, the degrees on your wall, the size of your house, or the newness of your stuff, and to tell yourself, "I did all this--my awesomeness made this happen!" and from there to tell yourself that all the good things in your life are your just reward for being so great.  And from there it's barely a hop, skip, or a jump to infer the opposite--that others who have less, earn less, or struggle more are also getting lesser things as a "just reward" from the universe because they aren't as good as you.  It is really easy to take my successes and treat them as proof I'm better than the next person, and their struggles as evidence that they're lazy, or immoral, or just plain bad.  Grace has a way of clarifying things, though, and reminding us that the good things we know in this life are gifts of God--and that they are never meant to be hoarded as "just" for me.  Grace helps us to see how empty is really is to brag about ourselves or puff ourselves up, but rather to see in our times of deepest struggle that God is committed to staying with us... so that we can hope.

I know it can be hard to read these words about "boasting in our suffering" and how "endurance produces character" and not hear it as that line of Friedrich Nietzsche that "anything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger," just telling us to fake a smile, suck it up, and toughen up so we can keep bearing the beatings life sends us.  But I don't think that's really what Paul has in mind here.  I think Paul has in mind, rather, that when you are so exhausted from putting up a fake, polished version of yourself in order to impress others, you can finally discover that God is actually building something good, worthy, and solid in us even though the things we used to cover over or hide.  It's not that every instance of suffering automatically makes you tougher--it's that God promises not to leave us to fend for ourselves but takes even the hardships of life [that we used to be embarrassed about showing to the world] and makes a new creation out of us.  And when we realize that it's all about God's gracious power working through us, we lose all grounds for arrogantly puffing ourselves up, because it's clear that "success" [whatever that means] isn't a reward for our awesomeness, and "failure" [again, whatever that means] isn't punishment for being inadequate, either. But in that very same instant, we are freed from having to gin up applause or "wows" from anybody else, because we are already beloved by God as we are.  God's love has never been contingent on us "making the grade" or "becoming a success" or "winning" in life, but rather has been at work all our lives long even taken our most painful experiences and deepest struggles and fashioning a new creation out of them.

Knowing that allows us to simply stop playing the game of approval-seeking that everybody else seems to be stuck in like a hamster wheel going nowhere for all of that furious spinning.  So maybe today's the day we can be done with the exhausting and fruitless labor of "looking like successes" and use that newly freed-up energy to let God transform our struggles into something new... like a sprout through the concrete.

Lord Jesus, keep us grounded in your love so that we can let you make new creations out of even our deepest struggles.

Control We Never Had--March 15, 2023

Control We Never Had--March 15, 2023

"Just then [Jesus'] disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, 'What do you want?' or 'Why are you speaking with her?' Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city.  She said to the people, 'Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?' They left the city and were on their way to him." [John 4:27-30]

It's not just who Jesus includes as recipients of his grace--it's who he includes to share his grace with other people as his chosen messengers.

That's the turn this story takes at this point in the gospel, and I expect that sometimes, this is the part that we get hung up on.  Jesus doesn't just offer his gift of life to the Samaritan woman at the well--he equips her and sends her out as his messenger to others as well.  That's a big deal: she isn't just a recipient of God's love in this story--she becomes the face of it for her neighbors when she runs back into town, leaving her water jar behind, with the open invitation, "Come and see..."  Jesus isn't embarrassed to be seen with her or to acknowledge that he knows her.  He doesn't hesitate to let her be his public ambassador or the voice of his message, even for all the barriers and social expectations that were still at work in that setting.

This week we've already explored some of those barriers and the ways Jesus just crossed right through them like they weren't even there [because they hold no power over him].  We've seen how other people from Jesus' background would have been scandalized at the thought of crossing into Samaritan territory for any reason at all.  We've seen how the racial prejudice and fear of "the other" had nursed animosity between those ethnic groups over centuries, and how that by itself would have held many back from taking a seat at that well.  And we've looked, too, at how Jesus crosses the gender lines that would have kept men from talking to women in that context, as well as the fact that Jesus doesn't shame her or scold her for her past marriages or who she loves now.  All of that is pretty radical stuff if you think about it.

But now Jesus doubles down and allows her to be the public face of his ministry in that town.  That's where some people might get upset with his actions, honestly.  It's one thing to say that anybody can receive grace--after all, we're all sinners in need of God's forgiveness, right?  But to say that anybody--even this woman with the "wrong" ethnicity, culture, and religion, whose relationships don't fit the cookie-cutter mold--can be the one to speak for Jesus and offer his grace to others?  Well, that's the straw that breaks the camel's back for some.  And of course, that's precisely what Jesus does, even when the other disciples are astonished, uncomfortable, or upset with it.

Now, you'd think that having had this story told and retold to us for two thousand years, we'd learn from it and stop telling Jesus whom he can--and cannot--call to bear his good news.  But even in our own country's history in the last century and a half, we've been doing the same.  For a long time in many Christian denominations, people of African lineage could be told the gospel [at least an anemic version of it that still made room for enslavement], but those same denominations would not let those same voices preach the gospel to others.  For a long time, as well, women could listen to sermons and receive the sacraments, but their church hierarchies would not allow them to bear the Word or preside at the Table.  Even now still, church bodies are finding new variations on the same old hypocrisy that says, "We give permission for you to hear Jesus' message, but you are not worthy of speaking it to others," in spite of Jesus' habit of commissioning and calling folks that others deemed unacceptable.  Jesus doesn't tell the Samaritan woman, "I'll let you believe in me, but don't you dare tell anyone else who I am, because you're one of THOSE people."  Instead, Jesus tells his own disciples that when they're sent out to share the good news next, they'll be batting clean-up and finishing the work that this woman has begun, like reapers harvesting where someone else has first planted.

Today, the challenge in front of us is to let go of our need to control who WE think is worthy--both of receiving God's love in Jesus, and of sharing that love with others.  Because it turns out, it's not up to us to get to decide who is worthy, and it never has been.  That's always been Jesus' prerogative, and he has a way of choosing precisely the people we would have left off the list.  

Maybe it's time to quit fighting him on this one.  

Maybe it's time to listen to the voices he has put around us already.

Lord Jesus, be patient with us as we struggle to let go of control we never had in the first place, and instead to receive with joy the voices you send our way to speak your good news.