Breaking the Old Pattern--May 1, 2023

Breaking the Old Pattern--May 1, 2023

"It is a credit to you if, being aware of God, you endure pain while suffering unjustly. If you endure when you are beaten for doing wrong, what credit is that? But if you endure when you do right and suffer for it, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, so that you should follow in his steps." [1 Peter 2:19-21]

I do believe that this is Christianity at it most subversive and most powerful.  When the Christian community actually follows the way of Jesus and breaks the cycle of returning evil for evil and violence for violence, it shakes the foundations of a world built on revenge and fear.  And let's make no mistake about it--that is the world in which we live, and that kind of shaking is precisely what the followers of Jesus are meant to do in it.

At first, though, it might seem just the opposite.  It might sound like this biblical voice is just saying to give in to evil and let it run roughshod all over you, and everybody else, without any comeuppance.  And that sounds like a recipe for leaving all the world's injustice and rottenness in place, unchanged and unquestioned.  It could sound like First Peter is just counseling early Christians to grin and bear it when the world wrongs them, and just to hope for a better shake in the afterlife.  I know it can sound like that because for an awful lot of the last twenty centuries, a large number of Respectable Religious Voices have used passages like this for that very purpose--to quiet the victims of injustice into sheepish acquiescence.  And I am convinced that is decidedly NOT what First Peter is really up to.  I believe he is actually showing us how radically the way of Jesus shakes up the status quo, rather than reinforcing it.

And that's because the usual pattern in the world for dealing with someone else's trespass is to lash back out and to get "even," only for that response to provoke an even stronger counter-response [in the name of getting even for getting even], and before long, we have spiraled out of control with each move and countermove attempting to one-up the opponent.  You hit me, so I punch you harder.  You push back with even greater force, and so I respond by hurting someone you love as well, or destroying something valuable to you.  And then you feel you have no choice but to cause more pain back to me, not only for the sake of revenge, but to make up for losing "face" and because you don't want to look "weak."  And so the cycle of violence feeds back on itself like the old ouroboros--the mythical serpent that devours its own tail.  That never works out well, and it leaves us only hurting and seeking to hurt others.  Like the old line attributed to Gandhi puts it, "An eye for an eye only leaves the whole world blind."  But as long as we are convinced we have to look "tough" to get ahead in this world, we'll keep that terrible cycle going.  As long as we believe the lie that being brave means hitting back on the enemy's terms, we will keep reinforcing the terrible old patterns that have plagued us since our first ancestors figured out how to weaponize sticks and stones.

So this is where the witness of New Testament voices like First Peter turns all of that upside down.  First Peter reminds us that our calling is, first and foremost, to love like Jesus, not to make ourselves look "tough" or to get "even" and call it seeking justice [they are not the same].  And First Peter knows, too, that refusing to answer evil with more evil is not the same as saying the evil was OK, or giving it a pass.  It is rather about refusing to accept the terms of engagement that evil sets, and refusing to play by its rules.  As Walter Wink once put it, "Evil can be opposed without being mirrored.  Oppressors can be resisted without being emulated.  Enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed."  Real change for the better is only possible when we refuse to perpetuate the old cycles that keep us hating and hurting each other, and that means at some point, someone has to break those cycles.  At some point, in other words, someone has to determine in advance, "I will not hold the wrongs done to me against those who have done them."  Someone has to be willing to take seriously that God's kind of love does not base present action on the past actions of others.  Jesus' kind of love is not hemmed in by what someone's past actions have earned them--rather it opens up a new future by not keeping score.  Justice can be attained without sinking into revenge, and reparation can happen without it curdling into "getting even."

And the need for this kind of radical breaking of the old endlessly viciously circles is immense.  We are watching every day on the news the tragic consequences of a way of life built on "They threaten me, so I've got to get them" thinking.  Especially when the feeling of being "threatened" is based on fear that we have weaponized, I can give myself permission to see anyone around me as a threat I have a "right" to stop before they hurt me.  We are witnessing what happens when people believe they have a right, not merely to get even, but to get "pre-venge"--to stop them first before they have the chance to harm me, even if the one I see as a "threat" is really a harmless stranger.  We have been barraged with story after story recently of strangers making innocent mistakes--ringing the doorbell and the wrong address, pulling into a driveway at the wrong house, and the like--and having someone shoot and kill them, because they perceived the person at their door or driveway as a threat... and they were convinced they were justified in answering that threat with more violence.  And it always dresses itself in the garb and pretext of being justified--"I was afraid, and so I shot him because I thought he was a threat to me."  "They were on my property, so I had to counter that offense with retaliation."  All of it is the same tired cycle of revenge and fear that we've been stuck in from our earliest ancestors.

But it doesn't have to be this way.  And the voice in First Peter has been telling us all along that we do not have to give into that impulse to get revenge.  We do not have to get sucked into the vortex that says, "You have to get them... even if you strike first, it's allowed because you can't let them win."  We do not have to become so misguided by fear and anger that we shoot first and never get around to asking questions.  We do not have to keep repeating the cycles of violence and vengeance--and it can start now, with the choice not to keep record of wrongs, and not to demand revenge.  In other words, it starts with taking Jesus' kind of love seriously.

Look, I don't know what dangers or unforeseen situations may be in store for us in this new day.  And I will not pretend that this world is not still full of violence, terror, and evil.  What I can say is that First Peter--who is neither naive nor ignore about that evil--still calls us to give our allegiance to the way of Jesus over and above our impulse to get even or answer the world's evil with more evil.  We do not have to do that any longer.  The way of Jesus calls us to break that old pattern with something new--the Reign of God that is grounded in graceful love.

That's the revolution the world needs.  And in Jesus and his followers, it has already begun, in all its disarming power.

Lord Jesus, give us your kind of courageous love that refuses either to answer evil with evil or to preemptively lash out at those we might have seen as threats.

The Currency of God—April 28, 2023

The Currency of God—April 28, 2023

“…and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” (Ephesians 4:32)

In the United States, we use “dollars.” In Mexico, it is “pesos.” In most of western Europe, it’s the “euro,” and in the UK, it is still the old British “pound.” And of course these days there are more confusing and slippery things called "cryptocurrency" like Bitcoin, which you might find anywhere on Earth. But what is the currency of the Kingdom of God?

Maybe that seems to be a materialistic-sounding question. After all, surely the right “religious” answer is to say that they don’t have money in heaven, because there will be everything that we need or want right at our immediate disposal, provided by an almighty God. Right? Or maybe it sounds too worldly to think in terms of needing to buy and sell things in heaven in the first place.

And, yeah, that’s probably true. But I don’t quite mean “currency” like that. And I don’t just mean to be talking about “heaven”. I don’t mean to say that we will all get heavenly ATM cards upon our deaths and will have to conduct business transactions in some new kind of paper money or digital wealth. I don’t believe that we will arrive on the scene there in glory and have some kind of angelic account manager tell us our balance in “heaven points” and then tell us what prizes we can get with those points, like the teenager behind the prize counter at Chuck-E-Cheese telling you what you get for all your skee-ball tickets.

Let me refocus our terms here: when I say “currency,” I mean the common way, or mode, of conducting relations with each other. We have a common currency in this country, the dollar, so that I can use the same green piece of paper when I buy a coffee from you that you can then use to buy flour for bread with, or whatever. In a single country, we all use the same kind of money as our currency, so that we don’t have switch things up and exchange our money every time you cross a state line, or so that we don’t have to fall into the barter system, either. Having a common currency means that I can interact with you (buying/selling/whatever) on the same terms (dollars, for example) as you then can use with somebody else. You’re not trading sheep’s wool for wheat to me, and then having to trade the wheat for eggs and milk to someone else, all in an elaborate chain of transactions when all you really wanted to end up with was some bacon. A common currency means that the way I relate to you is the same way, or means, I relate to everybody else.

So…what about in God’s Reign? What’s the means, the common “currency,” if we can talk about it that way, for the way God’s people relate with each other? And what’s the common currency for how God relates to us?

In a word, grace.

This verse from Ephesians today makes the connection for us—that we are to relate to each other on the same terms, and with the same basis, as God has chosen to relate to us. The NRSV translates it, “forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.” And that’s the basic gist of the Greek, but Paul’s original word-choice is interesting, and a little bit more nuanced. A woodenly literal translation of the Greek here would say, “…gracing each other just as God in Christ graced you.” Obviously “forgiveness” and “grace” are closely related—you could say that forgiveness is about putting away the wrongs of the past when you don’t deserve it, and grace is about any kind of gift given to you beyond your earning. But just hear the phrasing again when the literal “grace” language is there: we are supposed to grace each other, in the same way that God relates to us on the basis of grace. That’s currency talk. That’s about a common means of relating to each other. And notice how Paul believes (as Jesus taught, too, by the way) that our forgiveness of each other is meant to be part of a seamless whole with God’s forgiveness of us. I don’t get forgiven by God and then have the right to be a merciless bean-counter with you. Grace is our common currency among the people of God.

One of my all-time favorite songs by the band Switchfoot has this refrain:

“In the economy of mercy, I am a poor and begging man;

 In the currency of grace is where my song begins.

 In the colors of your goodness, in the scars that mark your skin

 In the currency of grace is where my song begins.”

That’s what Paul is talking about here, too. It’s the answer to the question, “How does God manage the divine economy?” Is it a barter system? Do you have to trade in certain good deeds to earn a trip to heaven? Is it in sacrifices offered up at an altar or an offering plate? Does God’s economy run on having enough prayers said on a given subject to get God’s invisible hand to move? Is it all just based on something like karma, where every good deed nets you a prize and every bad deed has a punishment waiting for you in the wings? And are we supposed to relate to each other the same way, too, only doing good things for others to pay them back for something good they have done to us? Are we supposed to live in a barter-economy with our love, too, where we only show kindness to the people we think “deserve” it, or only the people we think will one day do something kind to us?

No, no, no! A thousand times, no!

God’s way of relating to us, which then becomes our way of relating to each other, isn’t based on winning prizes with good deeds, or trading favors. It’s not about what is earned, deserved, merited, or bought. It’s about what is freely given, from me to you, from you to me, from each of us to everybody around us—because it is first freely given from God to us all.

In a word, it’s about grace.

Lord God, as we receive all good things from you by your grace and kindness, let us deal in the same currency of grace for the people around us.

So... What Next?--April 27, 2023

So... What Next?--April 27, 2023

"Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God." [1 Peter 1:22-23]

What do you do once you realize you don't have to keep looking over your shoulder?

What do you do when it occurs to you that you don't need to run and hide from divinely-thrown lightning bolts to smite you for some past secret sin?

What would you spend your energy on if you knew you didn't have to save it all for carrying the weight of every past failure on your back?

Or, to put it in the classic wording of the late Gerhard Forde's question, "What will you do, now that you don't have to do anything?"

We will love.

To hear First Peter tell it, it's just that obvious, and it's just that simple.  We love--deeply and genuinely--because we no longer have to live under the constant worry of being condemned by God.  And with that fear put away and left behind, we find we really are freed to love.

For the past several days, we've been taking a closer look at the passage many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  And in those days, First Peter has been abundantly clear that God has chosen not to hold our sins, our mess-ups, and our worst moments against us.  We have been set free, First Peter said, like captives held for ransom and liberated.  And even more amazingly, First Peter has told us, God made that choice not to hold our wrongs against us from before the foundation of the world, but rather set in motion the whole sweep of salvation history to rescue us.  All of that is the starting point, the given, of the Christian story.

And now the question is, what next?  What do people do who know that they are not being targeted from on high or condemned from some celestial throne room? Well, we are finally able to love others genuinely without trying to calculate whether we are being "good enough" to cancel out some of the red marks on our permanent records.  In other words, the train of thought isn't complete until it arrives at love, like the plant hasn't arrived at maturity until the new shoots give way to blossoms and then in turn to fruit.  Love is where the Christian life is headed, and forgiveness is what makes it possible for us to love others genuinely.

Understanding that is key, because we are otherwise likely to make one of two big theological mistakes in our lives.  One is stopping short and reducing the whole of the Christian faith to simply, "You're already forgiven, so go ahead and be a selfish jerk--there's nothing more to following Jesus than just hearing the sentence that you're forgiven.  See you in heaven."  And the other is to get it all backwards and think that forgiveness of sins can be achieved by being loving enough, like getting paroled for good behavior.

First Peter help make it clear for us: the next step beyond hearing you are redeemed is to realize that you are now freed for something--for love.  And it always goes in that direction: grace makes us capable of loving, because grace is what assures us we don't need to use our good deeds as bargaining chips to get time off of our sentence.  There is no jail time.  You are not condemned.  You do not have to worry about someone finding you out and reporting you to the Heavenly Prison Warden, and you don't have to hope that you get bonus points for helping that senior citizen across the street or returning that five-dollar bill you found on the street corner.  You don't have to worry about "points"--God has already decided not to keep score or count beans, so you are actually free to love people for their own sake, not as props in your merit-badge-earning.

When we treat loving others like it's a way to impress God, it turns out we aren't impressive and we're not actually loving others, either--we're just using them as means to an end.  But when we start from the point of knowing we don't have to earn points, then love for others is at long last actually love--the conscious choice to seek the good of others for their own sake, not just for our own ulterior motives.

Today, then, knowing we are free from having to impress God or reduce our sentence, let's use this day well, wisely, and freely... for love.

Lord God, you have already freed us from sin's grip--enable us to see ourselves as freed for the embrace of love.

 

From Before the Beginning--April 26, 2023

From Before the Beginning--April 26, 2023

"[Christ] was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. Through him you have come to trust in God, who raised him from the dead and gave him glory, so that your faith and hope are set on God." [1 Peter 1:20-21]

Before God said, "Let there be light," God had already decided to set aside our sins and not to hold them against us.  From the instant creation began, God was already committed to setting us free from the power of sin and death, even before we had gotten around to getting ourselves entangled in their grip.  And when the Big Bang itself was still only a gleam in the eye of the Divine, God knew the worst we would do and forgave it all in advance through Christ.  The ransom was pre-paid, so to speak.

To take that idea seriously--that God knew what we would do and was prepared to go to a cross for us in Christ from the foundation of the world--is really kind of mind-blowing.  We have to stretch our imaginations to conceive of God's existence "before" there was a thing called "time," so a time before time... or perhaps outside of the way we experience chronology. And the idea that God, whose Being is outside of time as well, knew even prior to our existence how we would break God's heart, harm one another, and wreck God's creation, and still went ahead with making the universe and loving us unconditionally?  That is just more than our brains can bear.  Imagining God existing outside of time and space strains our ways of thinking like reading about Einstein's theory of relativity and string theory and black holes and quantum mechanics.

And yet... in a way, it is so utterly simple and relatable, too, that it makes perfect sense.  When my daughter comes to me, having calmed down from an outburst earlier in the day, and says, "Dad, I'm sorry--do you forgive me?" my answer is always, "Yes, I have forgiven you already."  In a sense, to be a parent is to make the choice to forgive the meanest words, the most hurtful actions, and the gravest wrongs our children can commit against us, even before they have done them.  From the first night they are laid in their cradles and cribs, you make the commitment to love your children unconditionally and to be a safe place for them to land, risking that they might make terrible choices or break your heart repeatedly.  And you forgive it all in advance, just as our parents did for us when we were still in diapers... and just as God has done from before that first flash of light when darkness gave way to dawn.

That is simply the way unconditional love works--that is part of what makes it unconditional, after all.  There will certainly be mess-ups, and there will need to be correction when those mess-ups happen. But the choice to love means the choice from the beginning not to let those mess-ups be the last word with the beloved.  God's kind of love sees the heartache in advance, rather like any parent can see in advance that the innocent faces of infants will grow up into mouthy teenagers who will hurl cruel words, or lie to their parents, or get themselves into trouble and need to be bailed out.  And love chooses to endure the pain of it anyway, not to hold those future wrongs against the beloved [even though we know they are inevitable], and still to remain committed to us.  That is the way God loves us, every instant of our lives, and indeed from beyond time itself in eternity.  

So let's be clear about the story we tell: the Christian gospel is NOT that after God made the world and we sinned, God had to then decide if we were worthy of saving until Jesus came along and persuaded God to accept his death instead of ours. No--God never needed persuading. The choice to love us, even if it came through a cross, was made from before the beginning, and God decided not to hold our worst actions or choices against us, but rather to set us free from being trapped in them.

I wonder what would happen if we saw one another as people who are so fiercely loved.  It wouldn't excuse the rottenness we do to one another and perpetrate against each other, but it would remind us that our worst is never the last thing to be said about us.  God's determination to redeem us from the foundation of the world means that God has gone through with loving and liberating us even knowing our worst actions--and yet that God wouldn't let that be the end.  It's not that the wounds we all inflict on one another [and which others have inflicted on us] are insignificant--it is that God refuses to let them be the end of any of our stories, and God has been committed to that promise from the beginning.

At least part of what that means is that none of us is reducible to our worst actions or biggest mistake, and that God has been forever committed to loving us despite our greatest and gravest sins.  It is worth remembering that before any of us writes someone off forever as beyond forgiveness--ours or God's.

After all, God has decided that you and I are never beyond forgiveness, either.  I suppose that means nobody can really "fall from grace," because grace is the word for God's commitment from the foundation of the world to catch us even before we've begun to teeter, and God's refusal to let the fact of our failures prevent God's hand from swooping underneath to bear us up.

What if we treated everyone we met as someone so pre-emptively loved by God?  And what if we had the confidence of knowing we are so loved as well?

Lord God, enable us to believe your promise to love us and your commitment to redeem us even in advance of the heartbreak we cause you.

Bailed Out--April 25, 2023

Bailed Out--April 25, 2023

"You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish." [1 Peter 1:18-19]

You have been set free.  As in, it is already accomplished.  As in, your release has been secured, the fines are paid, you've been bailed out, and the door is open.  You are already freed.

The trouble is, so often, we refuse to believe such news is a present-tense reality, and we keep staying stuck in old ruts thinking we have no choice but to remain trapped in the same old deathly cycles and the same old miserable habits we feel trapped inside.  And, to be honest, often Respectable Religious Leaders aren't very helpful, because they've [ahem... we've] often mangled the Good News to sound like it only speaks to our future after death, like it's about one day being free in heaven rather than knowing we have been redeemed now.  And as long as we think that "freedom" is just off in the future, it will always seem out of reach, conditional, and hypothetical.  It won't seem real to us until we understand it is already accomplished on our behalf.

There's a great line of the late theologian Robert Farrar Capon that comes to mind. He's reflecting on a passage from Paul's letter to the Romans where the apostle says, "There is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus," and Capon says this:  

"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'."

That's the idea here in what we call First Peter, as well.  Our release from captivity is already accomplished.  God doesn't dangle it out in front of us like a carrot to a harnessed donkey, saying, "If you work hard enough for long enough, there will be a treat in store for you," but rather, "You can rest already--I've already redeemed you."  

Frankly, that's just the opposite of how so much of life in this world works.  For centuries, people found themselves in debt-slavery [or, politely, "indentured servitude"] where the hope of being freed was contingent on doing enough labor from the one who held your contract.  In our day and age, people find themselves burdened with huge student loans that keep them struggling along for decades with the hope that one day, they might be able to climb out from under the mountain of debt they are struggling with.  Companies tell employees to keep working loyally, and eventually [after they've "paid their dues"] they'll be promoted to a corner office or a better salary... only to find that the pay-off keeps getting pushed further into the future.  We are used to those kinds of arrangements, where the hope of release or freedom or "making it" is held out in front of us as something just over the horizon, but that we never seem quite able to reach, like chasing after the setting sun.  But the God we meet in the Scriptures doesn't work that way--from God's standpoint, we are already free.

And that, dear ones, is because God doesn't view us as a means toward an end, but as people worthy of love apart from what we can "do" for God or what God can "get" out of us.  When you are working for a company or trying to pay off an indentured servitude contract, your worthy is tied up in how you can benefit the boss.  Your work has a cash value to it, and you matter only insofar as that relationship is profitable to the ones holding the contracts.  But God's love doesn't hold debts against us like that, and God doesn't see us in terms of what God can "get" out of us. God's love--like all genuine love--seeks our flourishing, not our financial contributions to the bottom line.  And so from God's vantage point, the only thing love can do is to declare us already freed, rather than holding our release hostage as something we have to work for or earn.  You are already freed, and God has paid whatever price was necessary to accomplish it.  God has paid that price in Christ, because God loves you.  

Today, we are called to step out into the world taking God's gift of freedom seriously--knowing that God has already secured our release, and there are no strings or fine print.  And then, for others around us still stuck in the old mindset of thinking that God is just one more boss or master to be impressed, we are sent to bring the same message First Peter gave to us:  you are already set free.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to live in the freedom you have already accomplished for us.

The Compassion Is The Point--April 24, 2023

The Compassion Is The Point--April 24, 2023

[Peter said to the crowd]: “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.” Now when they heard this, they were cut to the heart and said to Peter and to the other apostles, “Brothers, what should we do?” Peter said to them, “Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ so that your sins may be forgiven; and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit. For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to him.” [Acts 2:36-39]

It's not a matter of finding loopholes or manipulating ambiguous wording in a contract.  It's God's deliberate, intentional choice to show grace to the very ones responsible for crucifying Jesus.  When Peter offers forgiveness, grace, and welcome in the community of Jesus to the crowd in Jerusalem here, it's not begrudgingly as though some obscure fine print forces him to let them in. It is Christ's conscious choice to include them.  The kindness isn't an accident or a side-effect--the compassion is the point.

That is to say, this is not a biblical version of the movie Air Bud.  Yes, that Air Bud--the 1997 live-action movie with a golden retriever who plays basketball on a team with human kids. In case it's been a few years since you've seen that cinematic classic [or somehow managed never to have seen it at all], there's a key scene pretty early on in the movie when the team wants to sub in the dog "Bud" to play for them in a game, and the referee has to decide whether Bud can play or not.  And despite the protests from the opposing team's coaches that this sounds preposterous, the referee consults the rule book and decides to let the dog play, based on the logic that "Ain't no rule that says the dog can't play basketball."  And so, Bud is allowed to play for his team, based on a technicality that creates a loophole big enough to drive a Mack truck through.

It makes for an entertaining premise for a kids movie, I suppose, but let's be clear that the organizations that set rules for sports leagues certainly can't have intended dogs to play, even if they didn't explicitly rule them out.  There surely aren't any rules written "in the book" that forbade players from riding horses on the court, or insisted that the court not be filled with orange Jell-O, either.  The rule book at best just had ambiguous silences, not a deliberate welcome.  So, sure, the refs can say, "Ain't rule that says he can't," but that somehow doesn't quite feel as strong a case as if there were an actual statement in the book that said, "Animals, including golden retrievers, are welcome to play alongside human players, even if the opposing team thinks it sounds ridiculous."  It's a movie--and a whole mess of sequels and spinoffs, actually--premised on an absurd reading of what a rule book doesn't say.

So it's really a big deal to discover here in the book of Acts that God's welcome explicitly includes the very people who had conspired to have Jesus crucified.  These words, which many of us heard just yesterday in worship this Sunday, make it clear that Peter was addressing the same group of people who had cried out, "Crucify!" on Good Friday, and that they are being included in the offer of grace through Jesus.  It's not a matter of ambiguous wording that shoehorns them in; it's not a technicality.  It's not a loophole.  Peter doesn't say, "Well, I guess there isn't a rule that explicitly forbids you from coming to faith in Jesus, so it looks like God HAS to let you in, if you apply for it and get your paperwork in order."  Rather, Peter says, "Every one of you: the promise is for you and for your children, as well as everyone whom the Lord calls to him."  It's an explicit act of inclusion, not a dubious twisting of fine print or an argument from silence.

The very cornerstone of the Christian church's story is God's choice to forgive the unforgivable, include the unacceptable, and welcome those who had quite clearly rejected Jesus already.  Whatever else we say about this community called church [and the ways we have sometimes not lived up to that legacy], we can't pretend this isn't God's intentional policy from the get-go.  God refuses to hold the guilt of crucifying Jesus against the crowds who had been there calling for his death, and God doesn't just write those folks in Jerusalem off as irredeemable.  Nope--the promise is for them... and for their children... as well as for those who are far off [for us Gentiles, that last part is our explicit welcome, too].

If we are going to take Peter's Pentecost sermon seriously, we are called to move beyond vague and ambiguous Air-Bud-type "loophole" words of welcome [like, "Well, I guess there isn't an explicit rule saying you can't belong, so I guess we HAVE to let you have a spot in the back pew as long as you don't make a big deal out of it..."].  We are called, like Peter, to find the people who have reason to believe that they are unacceptable and unworthy and to tell them, with the same authority Peter has, "Every one of you:  the promise is for you... and for your children... and for all."

That's how God's love works, after all--it doesn't hold any of the past against us, so that all of us can be drawn into the grip of God's grace.

Lord Jesus, help us to speak a clear word of your gracious welcome, rather than staying safe in ambiguous silence.

God's Standing Invitation--April 21, 2023

God's Standing Invitation--April 21, 2023

[Peter said to the crowd in Jerusalem:] “You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because 

it was impossible for him to be held in its power." [Acts 2:22-24]

This is not a sentencing--it is an invitation.

At first blush, the difference between those two kinds of occasions might seem obvious, but we need to be clear about what we are hearing right here.  If we heard these words of Peter as a condemnation with a closed door, it would be utterly damning and hopeless for those he's addressing.  But if we hear this as Peter saying, "Even though you had God's own Son in your midst, and you not only dismissed him but handed him over to execution, God is still inviting you," then this is the most hopeful word of grace those people had ever heard.

That really is the difference. At a sentencing, a judge is simply decreeing the already-determined consequences which the convicted person must face.  By the time of a sentencing decree, a verdict has already been reached, guilt has been determined, and all that remains to be seen is how severe the punishment will be.  How much money will be fined from the guilty?  How long will the defendant serve in prison?  But there's not much hope at a sentencing.  Rather, the judge reminds everyone in the courtroom that the sentence issued is a consequence of having committed the offenses that were adjudicated i the trial.  

And certainly, at first, we might think that's what Peter is doing here.  In this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday, Peter reminds the people listening to him that many of them were the same ones who had been stirred up back on Good Friday, just a few weeks earlier from this passage, and called for Jesus' death.  These are the same people who had given into their worst impulses and asked for Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be crucified.  These were the same folks--all of whom believed in God and knew the commandments and practiced their piety with great devotion--who had become a lynch-mob crying out for the Empire to torture and kill Jesus, even though they all knew he hadn't done anything worthy of that violence. And with all of that build-up, you might expect Peter to say ominously, "Therefore, the Almighty Judge sentences all of you to eternal suffering," or "Consequently, I sentence you all to burn in hell..." or even just a dramatic, "Bailiff, get these guilty criminals out of my sight and let them rot in prison..." 

But this isn't a sentencing.  These people, who do have blood on their hands for their actual participation in Jesus' death, are not being excluded from grace, but invited into it.  Peter mentions what they are all complicit it, not to damn them in despair, but expressly for the purpose of saying, "I know you are the very ones who called for Jesus' death, but the life he now makes possible is for you, too."  It's as if to say, "I know the worst you've got on your record, and it doesn't change things.  The offer still stands."

We hear a lot in these weeks after Easter of moments when the risen Jesus or his messengers come to make amends and reconcile with the people who had betrayed Jesus. And at each turn, God widens the circle and pushes the boundaries to include more and more of those who have done worse and worse things.  On Easter Day, Jesus had appeared to the group of the disciples altogether, who had abandoned Jesus in the garden--and there, Jesus' message told them that he was including them in his new kind of life.  Then, John the Gospel writer gives us a story where Jesus takes Simon Peter aside to reconcile with him personally, giving him the chance to affirm his love and allegiance for Jesus three times--once for each denial on the night of Jesus' arrest.  But so far, those are offenses of silence: they were times the disciples failed to speak up for Jesus or let him down.  Now here in the book of Acts, we get a story from the day of Pentecost--a mere fifty days after that first resurrection morning--and the same Peter who had been forgiven by Jesus is now announcing to the same crowds who had cried out "Crucify him!" that God isn't holding that guilt against them.  They, too, are included in Peter's invitation to be a part of the new thing God is doing through Jesus and his followers.  They, too, are invited to be baptized into Christ. They, too, are recipients of God's standing invitation.  If that isn't a clear sign of God's refusal to keep score or hold our wrongs against us, I don't know what is.

It had to have been scary for Peter, but it also had to be hard for him not to be overcome by bitterness and self-righteousness.  After all, the people in these crowds hadn't just passively failed to stick up for Jesus [like he and the other disciples had]; they had actively sought his death.  And when you are talking to people who have caused deep hurt and pain, whether to you or to someone you care about, it is very hard to even imagine offering something good to them.  It almost feels like you're saying the pain they caused doesn't matter, or the hurt inflicted on your loved ones can be forgotten.  It can be terribly hard to see someone who has hurt you or someone you care about as also being included in the offer of God's grace.  And yet, if the resurrection means anything, it is that God refuses to let the worst we can do be the last word on the subject.  God insists that even our worst acts of violence and most despicable choices are not stronger than God's will to bring life out of death.  That means that even for a lynch-mob with Jesus' blood on its hands God offers a new beginning.  That is only possible if God is willing to set aside our sins and start over with us.

And of course, that is precisely what the Gospel tells us God has chosen to do.

We will always still need truth-tellers who can hold us accountable to face up to the evil we have done and the rottenness in which we are complicit, so that things can be put right that we have damaged or harmed.  But the question is whether that truth-telling means the end of the story, like a judge reading a sentencing decree, or whether we can allow it to be the beginning of a new story where broken things are healed, harm is given reparation, and even past perpetrators can become a part of new creation.  That is the vision the resurrection of Jesus makes possible--and that is what makes it good news to know that God does not keep record of our wrongs against us.

What will we do with an offer like that... today?

Lord Jesus, enable us to work for the reparation and restoration of all creation, and to accept your invitation to be a part of that work which you have already begun right now.

"Tickled"—April 20, 2023

"Tickled"—April 20, 2023

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even in now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials, so that the genuineness of your faith—being more precious than gold that, though perishable, is tested by fire—may be found to result in praise and glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed. Although you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and rejoice with an indescribable and glorious joy, for you are receiving the outcome of your faith, the salvation of your souls.” (1 Peter 1:3-9)

There’s a mouthful there, I’ll admit. But woven through that dense little paragraph is this idea of joy that comes from loving Jesus, even when we can’t see him in the room. And that is a powerful idea. If you want to have a life filled with joy, love Jesus.

But you don’t get joy by trying to make yourself joyful, the same way they say you can’t tickle yourself. Scientists say your brain is wired to anticipate how your own touch should feel, so you can’t surprise your body into an automatic response of feeling tickled. Well, same with joy. It takes you by surprise from a blind spot. Sort of like the old John Lennon lyric, “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans,” joy is what happens to you while you are busy being focused on loving someone else.  Joy, in other words, is generated by love and moves outward like love, in all directions.

In other words, you don’t “get” joy or “achieve” joy by aiming for it. You don’t pursue joy like a goal to be checked off a to-do list. In fact, there’s really no point in trying to make yourself joyful by chasing after this or that—not a new job, not a bigger house, not a new significant other, not a better parking space. You don’t reach joy by searching for joy, actually—joy enfolds you when your focus is turned to loving Jesus, and loving the way Jesus loves.

Why is that? Well, maybe part of it is just the nature of joy, which always points beyond itself and leads us beyond ourselves, too. Joy isn’t getting to hoard the last piece of cake for yourself—joy is when you have the last piece of cake and you like it so well that you choose to share it with someone around you because it is simply so good you can’t keep it to yourself anymore. Joy isn’t when I get what I want—joy is when some energy bubbles up inside to know that you have helped someone else whom you love to be lifted up, even just a little bit. It’s always aimed outside of me. That’s why you never reach joy by aiming for joy—joy comes along for the ride when you are aiming to show love. But the moment you do something just for the sake of the “good deed vibe” you think it will give you, or do it just for other people to notice, or so that you get proper credit for it, the joy turns to ash in your mouth. It shrivels like a balloon with the air sucked out, or like a sail that’s been turned in the wrong direction and so loses all of its wind—because the moment you try and make yourself joyful, you are aiming your focus back on yourself.

Curiously enough, the Founding Fathers of our country may have unknowingly admitted as much when they talked about “the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, rather than just saying that we have the “right to happiness.” Happiness is one of those things you can keep chasing til you are blue in the face, but it’s always like running after the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Saying you have the right to pursue happiness is a little like saying you have the right to chase your own tail—sure, you can try, but you’ll never catch it, and if you do, what will you do once you’ve got it?

Joy doesn’t work like that. Joy comes from being pointed beyond yourself to someone else—in other words, it comes out of love. (Note: in the passage from Galatians where Paul lists off the “fruit of the Spirit,” that love just flows right into joy… hmmm, almost like Paul knew what he was talking about, eh?) So for our passage today from 1 Peter, which many of us heard this past Sunday as well, there is this central theme that we can have great joy now, even in the face of suffering trials, because we love Jesus. (Of course, we love Jesus because he first loved us, so this always really starts with God…) But when you love, you aren’t aiming your attention at yourself, which is exactly what makes your heart ripe for joy to spring up.

Today, what would it look like if we thought less in terms of “What will get ME the most happiness and joy?” and more in terms of simply, “How can I love Jesus, and love the people Jesus brings with him into my day?” As we dare to try it, I dare say we’ll end the day simply… tickled.

Lord God, keep us pointed beyond ourselves so that we can love you more fully and be surprised by the joy that sneaks up on us when we are looking the other way.

There Is No Ticket Counter--April 19, 2023

There Is No Ticket Counter--April 19, 2023

"But Thomas [who was called the Twin], one of the twelve, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, 'We have seen the Lord.' But he said to them, 'Unless I see the mark of the nails in his hands, and put my finger in the mark of the nails and my hand in his side, I will not believe'." A week later his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were shut, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' Then he said to Thomas, 'Put your finger here and see my hands. Reach out your hand and put it in my side. Do not doubt but believe.' Thomas answered him, 'My Lord and my God!" [John 20:24-28]

It's not our faith that makes God's forgiveness possible, but the other way around.  It's because God chooses to set aside our failures with grace that we are able to believe.  If we weren't clear about that already, Thomas' story here shows it to us for sure.

Here in this scene from the same story many of us heard this past Sunday, we get our heads on straight by the way Jesus initiates things with Thomas.  He doesn't chastise Thomas for not believing well enough, strongly enough, or correctly enough; rather, Jesus meets him at his place of honest skepticism and lets faith grow from there.  Jesus starts by assuring Thomas that he's not holding his past doubts ["Unless I see the nail marks for myself I won't believe!"] against him, but instead has come to enable Thomas to trust that Jesus is indeed alive and risen.  

This is important for us to understand, because honestly, a lot of times we Respectable Religious Folk get it backwards.  Sometimes we make the Christian faith sound like a transaction between us and God, where our belief is the currency that we trade in, like ticket and Chuck E. Cheese, for prizes of grace.  Believe well enough, or firmly enough, we say, and then your sins are forgiven.  And we end up packaging it in the slogan, cribbed sloppily from the sixteenth-century reformers, that says, "We're saved by faith."

But of course, the Reformers like Luther, Calvin, and the rest didn't mean to say that our believing the correct facts about God earns God's forgiveness.  After all, forgiveness, like all forms of grace, cannot be earned--that's part of the definition.  And second, those voices of the Reformation understood, too, that even our faith itself is a gift we receive from God in Christ, not something we present to God as our accomplishment in exchange for prizes from under the glass ticket counter.  Faith doesn't start as our bright ideas about God, for which we win a reward, but as the new creation made possible by God's coming to us first without holding our doubts or disbelief against us. In other words, God doesn't wait until we believe correctly enough to forgive our sins or skepticism; rather, it's God's coming to us while we're struggling that enables us to believe and trust God.  That's what makes the Christian story good news rather than a deal we transact with God.

And it's that willingness of God to come to us without preconditions or grudges, that leads Jesus to appear for Thomas' sake a week after that first resurrection day.  A Savior who kept score and held our failures against us would have left a note under the door to the upper room that said, "When Tommy gets his act together and can recite the catechism or at least the creed, then I'll make another appearance."  A Savior whose forgiveness was contingent on proficient faith would have given a theology exam for Thomas to take before letting him know he was in the club.  But that's just not how God's kind of love works--it doesn't withhold acceptance until we've proven our worth, but announces that we are already accepted even before we can believe it's true... in order that we can come to believe.  Getting that straight is a matter of putting the horse before the cart, and it makes all the difference in the world.

Today, a lot of the folks we'll cross paths with have gotten it in their heads that God's waiting on them to believe well enough or hard enough before telling them they have enough faith points to win the big box labeled "Salvation" up on the top shelf of prizes.  And that not only sucks us into the vortex of constantly fearing our faith is never good enough, but it also just doesn't align with the way the risen Jesus shows up for Thomas while he still can't bring himself to believe the resurrection.  Today's a day for us to be clear that it's God's grace that makes our faith possible, not our faith that wins us a clean slate from the Almighty.  Today's a day for us to tell someone else who needs to hear it that there is no ticket counter... and there never has been.

Lord Jesus, meet us where we are, and let your grace call forth faith from us to follow you where you lead us.

The Chain-Reaction of Grace--April 18, 2023

The Chain-Reaction of Grace--April 18, 2023

"When [the risen Jesus] had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, 'Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained'." [John 20:22-23]

This is nothing short of a new creation.  

In an echo of the Genesis story where God makes the first human out of the dust of the ground like a potter fashioning clay, and then breathes into the lifeless body of earth [in Hebrew "adamah"] to bring Adam to life, Jesus now shows up among his lifeless, hopeless, aimless followers, and breathes on them the very Spirit of God [again, just like in the Genesis creation storytelling] so that they come to life again.  The risen Jesus now raises others around him to life out of their deathliness, like resurrection is contagious when he's around.  He breathes into them like the Creator at the beginning, and all of a sudden, everything is new.

And did you catch what Jesus says immediately after breathing out the Spirit onto his disciples? The mission to speak forgiveness anywhere and everywhere.  Once again, the resurrection of Jesus makes possible a new start, not just for Jesus... and now it's clear that it's not just for Jesus' inner circle of followers, either.  Wherever Jesus' followers go, they are sent with the same Spirit and empowered to declare the same forgiveness that Jesus spoke to a band of disciples in that locked room.  And, as we've talked about already in this story, Jesus' very presence there in the room communicated grace to those disciples. Rather than coming for vengeance to settle a score with the disciples for having abandoned and denied him on the night of his arrest, Jesus declared from the outset that he had come in peace and was not holding their failures against them.  Jesus' presence spoke forgiveness for the disciples, and so it makes perfect sense that he now calls them to pass along that forgiveness to whomever they encounter.  If the risen Jesus isn't holding the disciples' wrongs against them, then our calling includes releasing people from the baggage of guilt they've been carrying around, too. It's really all the same motion, spreading outward in all directions like ripples in a pond or a shockwave when a bomb goes off.  It's just that where Jesus sets things into motion, nothing gets destroyed, but rather creation begins anew.

In a sense, none of this should be surprising to us.  After all, we borrow the pattern of Jesus' words in prayer on a pretty regular basis, and in the familiar cadences of what we call The Lord's Prayer, we ask for forgiveness in the same breath that we own our own calling to forgive others.  That idea--that God's forgiveness of us is inseparable from our calling to forgive others--is woven throughout Jesus' teaching, parables, and instruction to his followers, too.  But here in the locked room of Easter evening, it's helpful to see this as something life-giving rather than burdensome.  

I'll be honest--sometimes, when I pray those words on Sundays, "Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us," it can feel ominous, like God is likely to reinstate my sins and cancel my forgiveness if I hold a grudge.  It can feel like the process has to start with me and my capacity to forgive someone else that then earns God's forgiveness of me.  But as we hear Jesus' commission to his disciples here in this scene, it's clear [if it weren't already] that it's God's forgiveness that sets the chain-reaction of grace moving, and that our calling to declare others forgiven is simply carrying the momentum that Jesus has already begun.  In other words, God's forgiveness of us isn't contingent on how well I forgive others, but just the opposite--God's already-declared forgiveness of me empowers me and frees me to declare God's forgiveness to others.  Because God isn't holding my failures against me, I'm freed to tell others that God's forgiveness frees them as well... and then they are set loose to do the same everywhere they go.

So, wherever you and I go today, how might we communicate that grace to the people around us?  When we find people still worn down and weary from carrying all the baggage of their life stories, how might we take Jesus at his word and tell people, "You are free--you are forgiven?"  And how might a little bit of God's new creation take shape when we do?

Lord Jesus, bring us to life out of our deathly despair again as you breathe your gracious Spirit into us again today.

Coming in Peace--April 17, 2023

Coming in Peace--April 17, 2023

"When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Judeans, Jesus came and stood among them and said, 'Peace be with you.' After he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side.  Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord.  Jesus said to them again, 'Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you'." [John 20:19-21]

You know the scene--it's been played out in some form or another in a hundred variations on TV and movies.  The spacecraft ominously hovers over the ground, while tense music plays in the background.  The army has cordoned off the landing zone, and representatives of Earth's leaders [or just of the country where the ship lands] stand at the ready, flanked by soldiers and s to greet whoever--or whatever--disembarks from the flying saucer.  Then, often with a hiss of steam or smoke, and a flash of lights, the strange silhouettes of alien visitors emerge, and then proceed down a landing ramp onto the ground.

And in the span of time between the arrival of the alien craft and the moment of first contact, the question just hangs there in the air: why have they come?  Are they here to conquer?  To exterminate?  To broker an alliance?  To use us as guinea pigs or collect us as specimens?  Could they be reliable if they say they have come with good will? And then, classically, the alien delegates say [sometimes sincerely, and sometimes with ulterior motives], "We come in peace."  

There's something of that same tension for the frightened band of Jesus' disciples on that first Easter evening, isn't there?  They are already afraid of what the outside powers might do to them if they were found out.  The disciples had seen the horror of what the brutal Roman army, the ruthless religious police, and the bloodthirsty lynch mob could do when they laid hands on Jesus.  And so, of course, they were afraid of going out of doors and being caught themselves--they could end up on crosses just as easily. But beyond that fear is a deeper, more ominous anxiety, because they have heard the rumors by Sunday evening that Jesus is alive again.  They just don't know what to expect from a resurrected Jesus.

After all, the disciples all remember how they had left things with Jesus, in the last moments they were all together.  While a handful of the women in Jesus' circle stayed with him at the cross, Jesus' hand-picked group of twelve had all abandoned him, despite insisting that they would all face death before denying him.  Some had just slipped away into the night out of fear when the police and the mob came for him in the garden, and some [ahem, Peter, the "rock" of the church] outright denied even knowing him.  They had literally left Jesus hanging, and many of them had either implicitly or explicitly said they had nothing to do with Jesus--and then he died.  So now that there are rumblings that the tomb was empty and Jesus is on the loose, there's got to be some of that sci-fi alien visitor movie vibe in the room when Jesus just appears out of nowhere, through locked doors, to find them.  Why has he come? What does he want from them?  Is he angry for their betrayal and abandonment?  Has he come for revenge?

With all of that in mind, it makes perfect sense then that Jesus' first words to these fearful disciples is to say, "Peace be with you."  It's not just a throwaway greeting.  It's not a scornful, "Where WERE you guys when I needed you?"  There's no scolding, "Didn't you believe me when I said I would rise from the dead?" And there is no hint at all of, "You thought you could hide from ME, did you?  Well, I've come to settle a score..."  Rather, Jesus says, reliably and emphatically, "I come in peace."

The risen Jesus' first impulse when coming face to face with the whole group of his gathered disciples is to assure them that he's not holding their past failures against them--and he never did.  Jesus does not weaponize the past, but lets it go.  In other words, resurrection and release from guilt go hand in hand. Jesus doesn't rise from the dead in order to get revenge on his faithless disciples [or his murderers], but rather announces that he has come to give them peace.

And almost as if to make sure they didn't miss it or dismiss it as a perfunctory greeting, Jesus says it again: "Peace be with you."  He makes it clear that not even their fearful abandonment of Jesus when things were at their darkest will exclude them now from his community, his new life, or his peace.  And if even that can't get you kicked out of Christ's grace, I can't imagine what any of us can do or say [or fail to do or say] that could exceed the limits of his reconciling presence.  All of this is to say that the resurrection of Jesus is what assures us that God's love in Christ will not let go of us and will not hold our past against us.  God's kind of love just doesn't hold onto our mess-ups that way, and the risen Jesus brings no resentments inside that locked room on Easter evening.

Taking that seriously in our lives will set us free, too.  It means there need be no fear that Jesus has come to zap us like an invading space alien in a movie.  There is no plot twist that he's really out to get us, and there are no shoes waiting to drop.  Jesus has left our past failures behind, and he's not bringing them up any longer.  Instead, he comes in peace.

For so many people around us, all they've heard from Respectable Religious people is to be afraid that God is going to zap them for all their past, present, and future wrongs, unless the adequately go through whatever steps or jump through whatever hoops they have in mind when they talk about "repentance."  Did you pray the right prayer, did you do enough to show God you are serious about changing your ways?  Did you mean the apology sincerely enough?  Did you believe hard enough in Jesus?  Jesus' disciples in the locked room do none of those things, and Jesus doesn't even wait around to be invited into the room, or into their hearts. He comes in and announces peace and forgiveness first, knowing that's the first step to getting them to unlock the door and head out into the world with the same message.

So for you and me today, our calling is much the same--to dare to trust what Jesus says to us, and then to help other people to know what Jesus makes clear from the first words out of his mouth:  he comes in peace.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust your promise of peace and forgiveness, so that we can pass it along to everyone around us, too.

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners--April 14, 2023

God in the Hands of Angry Sinners--April 14, 2023

"So if you have been raised with Christ, seek the things that are above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things that are above, not on things that are on earth, for you have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ who is your life is revealed, then you also will be revealed with him in glory." [Colossians 3:1-4]

From God's perspective, we're already risen from the dead--how about that?

I mean, just on the face of it, that's a strange idea to our ears.  After all, every time I check my wrist or my neck, I can feel my own pulse.  Everything my senses tell me says I haven't died yet, and therefore I can't already be raised from the dead [as much as some part of me really likes the idea of a shortcut that detours around death and skips right ahead to resurrection].

But it's even stranger--and also more wonderful--to think about this bold claim at an even deeper level.  If God already "thinks" of us as people who are raised to new life with Christ, then God has definitely put away all of our past mess-ups, trespasses, sins, iniquities, and omissions.  Even right now.  Even the worst of the worst stuff.  Even the things I haven't gotten around to doing wrong yet.  All of it has been left in the grave that we've already been raised up out of, because we've been joined to Christ Jesus, who is alive and risen from the dead.  And since Jesus is alive, the writer to the Colossians says, we're already joined with him in resurrection life, too, from God's perspective.  Nothing can keep us stuck in the grip of the grave, because Jesus has already taken us by the hand.

If that sounds too good to be true, I know at least one reason why: centuries' worth of Respectable Religious People [including some very well-known preachers] built their careers and brands on ingraining the opposite in us.  Plenty of pulpit-pounding sermons have ominously warned hearers that if they did this, that, or the other thing [or took the "wrong" position in a culture-war issue, or voted for the "wrong" candidate, loved the "wrong" people, or even got baptized the "wrong" way] they were in danger of being cut off from Christ and lost in death forever.  Jonathan Edwards, the well-known New England preacher of the eighteenth century, famously preached to a congregation full of worshipers that God "holds you over the pit of hell, much as one holds a spider, or some loathsome insect over the fire, abhors you, and is dreadfully provoked: his wrath towards you burns like fire; he looks upon you as worthy of nothing else, but to be cast into the fire," in his sermon "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God."  And of course, there are infinite variations still today.  The trouble is, none of that thinking seems to be ready to take these words from Colossians seriously.  Because here the writer to the Colossians just comes out and says, "God already counts you as risen from the dead along with Christ, even right now while you're living your life."

In other words, from God's vantage point, there is no spider-dangling over the flames and no threat that Jesus' people might not really be Jesus' people after all. Nope, from the perspective of the living God, it's a done deal and a fait accompli: you have been tethered to Jesus forever, so that wherever he goes, you go.  And since Jesus has come through death and into resurrection, well, God sees you in the same terms.  Raised already, seated with Christ, and past the reach of guilt, shame, and sin.  God has already decided not to keep a record of the wrongs we haven't even gotten around to doing yet--all because of Christ who holds us with him.

Taking that seriously today means, first of all, a HUGE sigh of relief.  And second of all, it keeps us from mistakenly picturing God as some kind of split-personality or abusive spouse who flips from being tender to terrifying without any notice.  God is not at one moment salivating at the prospect of watching you burn in hell, and then the next moment affectionately calling you "My beloved."  God, rather, has joined you to Christ, and sees you with the same risen beauty and Jesus' own resurrected self.  And if we've gotten ourselves persuaded that God is as capriciously cruel as we can be to each other, then maybe the problem is that we've remade God into our own distorted reflection, rather than actually hearing the amazing grace that's been shouting to us from the Scriptures all along.  Maybe the issue is that we've put our image of God into the hands of angry sinners, who can't help but assume that God is as vengeful, erratic, and petty as we are in our worst moments.  And maybe today is the day for us to hear the New Testament's promise that God has already counted you among the guests at the heavenly banquet, and that as far as God is concerned, you are already seated with Christ at the place of honor there.  

You don't have to be afraid of God zapping you anymore.   Maybe someone you will cross paths with today needs to hear that news, too.

Lord Jesus, enable us to believe that we are joined to you in both life and death and into resurrection, so that where you are, we can count ourselves too.

Releasing Our Old Animosities--April 13, 2023

Releasing Our Old Animosities--April 13, 2023

"Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. That message spread throughout Judea, beginning in Galilee after the baptism that John announced: how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power; how he went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him. We are witnesses to all that he did both in Judea and in Jerusalem. They put him to death by hanging him on a tree; but God raised him on the third day and allowed him to appear, not to all the people but to us who were chosen by God as witnesses, and who ate and drank with him after he rose from the dead. He commanded us to preach to the people and to testify that he is the one ordained by God as judge of the living and the dead. All the prophets testify about him that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name'." [Acts 10:34-43]

The resurrection is for everybody. That includes people far off who had no interest in or awareness of Jesus or the God he represents, and it includes his own people who rejected him and put him to death.  Talk about a God who doesn't hold grudges.

These words, which many of us heard this past Easter Sunday, come from the mouth of Simon Peter, whom we noted yesterday received his own declaration of forgiveness and welcome from the angelic messenger at the empty tomb.  Despite his own denial of Jesus, the risen Jesus made a point of including Peter in the invitation to a resurrection reunion.  And now, some time later in the book of Acts, the same Peter realizes that God's ability to set aside the past didn't stop with him.  Now, as he comes to understand that God's gospel welcome includes both Gentiles and Jewish people like himself, it dawns on Peter that God has put away the past enmity that deemed Gentiles as unacceptable and unworthy... and also that God is not holding the crucifixion against the crowds who cried out for Jesus' death, either.  

The very same townspeople in Jerusalem who had been swept up in the moment to call for Barabbas to be released and Jesus to be killed are the very same ones that Peter and the rest of the apostles offered grace to after Jesus' resurrection and invited to trust in God's forgiveness.  God had clearly set a policy of not holding their sins against them--just as Jesus had prayed in his dying moments.  And then as the news spread beyond the reach of Judea and Jewish communities, Peter understood that the old animosity against Gentiles had been set aside now, too.  There was no one beyond the reach of God's invitation, no one whose past was being held against them, and no one against whom God was holding a grudge.  That's just how God loves--the past is set aside, and God does not keep record of our wrongs any longer.

So much of human history is marred by our refusal to do the same.  So many of our conflicts, wars, and simmering hatreds are handed down from one generation to another with the unquestioned premise of, "They are our enemies because they've always been our enemies."  So many atrocities have been committed, and so much blood has been shed, all justified [feebly] with the assumption that "THOSE PEOPLE are always wrong, always worthy of our hatred, and always on the wrong side."  In my lifetime alone, that has included the "troubles" between Protestants and Catholics in Northern Ireland, the Rwandan genocides between Hutus and Tutsis, seemingly unending clashes between Israelis and Palestinians, a wave of bigotry-fueled violence against people of Asian ancestry in the midst of COVID, and a host of other long-simmering forms of racism, xenophobia, bigotry, and ingrained hostility.  And of course, plenty of other variations on that same terrible theme have played out in generations past, from Jim Crow segregation, Japanese internment camps, and the willful extermination of Native peoples in this country's history to countless other wars, genocides, and pogroms across the globe.  We seem to be unable to escape the impulse to fixate on some other group and declare them our eternal enemy, even if it has been so long we have forgotten what started the fight in the first place... or even if we have erased from our history books that we were the ones who fired the first shot.  God, however, makes possible a break from the old unending cycles of vengeance.  God makes possible a new kind of life together, where the old animosities no longer drive us to repeat the violence or hatred of our forebears.

For us on this day, it's worth taking a close and honest look at where we have been carrying around old animosities--whether personal grudges or the patterns of hatred and bigotry that have been implicitly taught to us without even realizing it--and to put them aside as God has.  If God has chosen not to hold grudges against either the crowds of Jerusalem who had called for Jesus' death nor the Gentiles who had been hostile to the Jewish people for centuries before that, then we have no grounds for nursing our old pet hatreds.  God's kind of love doesn't keep those old records--it is time for us to let go of ours as well.

Lord Jesus, free us from the weight of old animosities we've been lugging around for too long without realizing it.  And give us the honesty to see where we've been clinging to that kind of hostility so that we can let it go.