Things Left Unsaid--Devotion for June 1, 2023

Things Left Unsaid--June 1, 2023

[Jesus said to the disciples:] "I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now. When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you." [John 16:12-15]

You could always tell you were getting close to the end when the sneakers came off. You knew when an episode of the classic kids show, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, was nearing the last minute or so, our old TV friend Mister Rogers would sit on his bench, untie his tennis shoes, and sing the closing song.  It was practically a liturgy.  And as part of the generation that grew up on that Presbyterian pastor of the airwaves, I can remember the words by heart.  He would sing to us, watching at home, moments before walking out his television house door, a promise:

"I'll be back, when the day is new,
And I'll have more ideas for you.
And you'll have things you'll want to talk about--
I will too."

It made the ending not so sad--maybe even a little bit hopeful.  It was an assurance that there was more to come, that the relationship (such as it was between a TV personality and watching children) would continue, and that there would be more to discuss and share together.  And it was a brilliant move on Mister Rogers' part, because it allowed a generation of kids to be able to think about endings in a new way, without despair, while holding onto the promise that there was more to come.  In fact, it was precisely the fact that there were things left unsaid that gave us reason to believe there would be more conversation: it was like Mister Rogers was saying, "We can't be at the end of our friendship, because we haven't talked about all the things on each of our minds.  So of course, we'll get together again."

Well, in so many words, that's how Jesus speaks to his disciples.  There is more to come--you can know it for certain exactly because we haven't talked about everything you have questions about, and there are still things I want to share with you but we haven't had the chance for all of it yet.  Jesus prepared his disciples, not just for the idea that he wouldn't be with them in the same way (after the cross and resurrection), but also for the idea of facing the world even without having all the answers yet.  The Spirit would keep speaking.  There was more yet to be said, and there were more things they would come to learn.  But in the mean-time, they would have to learn to be OK with not having the whole picture, and trusting that Jesus did.

That's something we still struggle with, isn't it?  We want to imagine there's some way to have all the answers, all correct, right now.  And then, of course, we can be in control.  We want to imagine that at some point, the last open question was answered, the final right answer was given, and the last unknown variable was solved, all in time to make inside the covers of our Bibles.  It's tempting, isn't it, to believe that every possible question or situation just needs the proper Bible verse thrown at it, because then we wouldn't need to wait on the Spirit anymore.  The Spirit will have no room to surprise us, no ability to show us a deeper reality, no need to lead us into the unknown--because it will all be known, answered, diagrammed, and resolved for us.  And if we are honest, some part of us wants a reality like that, where we're never called to trust that we'll be given the insight we need at the right time, and where we never have to admit in humility that we don't know it all.

Jesus, however, isn't offering us that kind of arrangement.  He doesn't say, "Wait until the Answer Book is finished--then you'll be able to confidently beat people up with the Bible verses you'll have weaponized, because you'll have control."  Rather, he tells his followers that the Spirit will keep speaking, and we'll have to keep listening, because we can't bear it all at once. (Perhaps, like T. S. Eliot said, "Humankind cannot bear very much reality.")  So Jesus himself doesn't believe the solution is to wait for a Book of Easy Answers (and he certainly doesn't think of the Scriptures that way), but rather to trust that the Spirit will keep telling us what we need to know as we go.  That's hard for us, because it means we'll never be in the driver's seat or calling the shots--we'll forever be trusting the Spirit to give us what we need, step by step, moment by moment, and situation by situation.

But, for those of us who know the Mister Rogers closing song, that also offers us hope.  It means that Jesus isn't done with us--because there's more yet to be said, more to be learned, and more to be shared.   At no point does Jesus say, "Here's the last answer to the last possible question, so now that you've got all the correct responses, you're on your own." Rather, he tells us to trust that the Spirit will give us the truth we need at the right time, and will keep speaking even now more than two millennia later.

It does mean a shift in our faith to learn to be OK with taking this life of following Jesus one step at a time.  We've wanted to have an answer book we can control, which won't ever have new information added or new questions explored (and so sometimes we try and pretend that's what the Bible is for), and instead Jesus gives us a Person--the Spirit--to trust to keep speaking as we face new situations and deeper realities. If we're going to be Jesus people, we're going to have to learn to receive what he gives rather than what we thought we wanted.  But, to be honest, he hasn't failed us yet... even if he hasn't been our genie granting our wishes for answers and control.

So let's trust today that where we need it, Jesus will give us the ongoing truthful voice of the Spirit.  Let's trust that when the time calls for it, the Spirit will direct us, give us new realizations, and move us in new directions that we cannot even imagine yet.  And let's trust Jesus promise that there is more to be said, so we can take the next step out the door and into the neighborhood.

Lord Jesus, give us the direction of your Spirit where we need it today, and allow us to accept the pace at which you give it.

The Naked Truth--May 31, 2023

The Naked Truth--May 31, 2023

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you. And when the comes, he will prove the world wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because they do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father and you will see me no longer; about judgment, because the ruler of this world has been condemned." [John 16:7-11]

I used to think the old fable of "The Emperor's New Clothes" was too preposterous a tale to take seriously.  Then I became an adult--particularly an adult in the age of social media--and it became clear just how easily we can be duped into believing the naked ruler is wearing fine royal robes, just because somebody else says they believe it, too.  Ours is a time of conspiracy theories, outlandish claims, and news stories spun into distortion.  And to see how quickly a false claim or a big lie can go viral, we've got to admit that even in the "information age" we would likely find ourselves amid the crowd cheering for an emperor in his birthday suit and swearing up and down he's dressed to the nines. And that means we need someone who can tell us the truth, even if we don't want to admit it, that the emperor is wearing no clothes.  

In the old fable, of course, it's a little child in the crowd who hasn't yet learned to give in to the social pressure of agreeing with what everyone else says, just because everyone else says it.  And to be sure, there is something to be said for the way children sometimes cut through the pleasant deceptions and euphemisms of adults to say things as they are.  But there are also plenty of times when children get swept up in the same fantasies and falsities as their parents, because they trust what the grown-ups around them say. For every incisive youngster who tells it like it is, there are two more who are wholeheartedly believe in the Tooth Fairy because the grown-ups told them it was real. Blessedly, the Tooth Fairy is a basically harmless ruse--but sometimes the deception is devastating. (There was a reason, after all, for the use of groups like the Hitler Youth or the child-soldier armies in the Rwandan genocide--if you persuade children from a young age to believe what you tell them, you can make them agreeable to horrible actions and ideologies.) Like the old line of Voltaire's puts it, "People who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."  In other words, we can't count on there always being a plucky and guileless child in the crowd to speak up--sometimes the little moppets have been brainwashed like the adults...or by them.

That's why, as uncomfortable as it might be to face, we need the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus sends.  At least part of the Spirit's work among us is to show us the places we've gotten swept up in the crowd, fawning over a naked emperor's invisible regalia.  And make no mistake--as much as we don't want to admit when we've been fooled, it is a deep act of love on the Spirit's part to free us from the illusion of the mob.

When we forget that, we turn the Spirit's work of truth-telling merely into spiteful scolding.  But Jesus says that the Spirit's presence among us is a gift, because we are constantly pulled by the crowd who insists the emperor has the nicest set of robes on, and we are called to be people who can say he doesn't have a stitch on.  That's why there is sometimes hostility between the prophetic voices that really come from God and the world's so-called "conventional wisdom."  Nobody likes to be told they've been hoodwinked, and the Spirit's job is to be willing to take all of that pent up hostility that comes from being a voice of truth.  Like the old line attributed to George Orwell goes, "In a time of deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act."  The prophets of Israel's past who were led by the Spirit to help the people see when they'd been bamboozled by the lies of idols and empire all faced rejection, torture, or death.  Jesus, too, for that matter, doesn't go the cross on charges of being too milquetoast--he has upset the Powers That Be and the Respectable Religious People because he is willing to tell them where they've fallen for lies.  So it shouldn't surprise us that Jesus says the Spirit of truth will end up showing the whole world where we've gotten it wrong. And it shouldn't surprise us that the world is going to reject that Spirit, exactly because the Spirit shows us where we've got it wrong.  The emperor is never going to see clearly because his power clouds his vision.  The crowd is not reliable, either, because people get swept up in believing whatever they think "everybody else says."  We need a voice who is reliable... who will tell us the truth when we can't see it ourselves... and who loves us enough to be honest.  That's why we need the Spirit whom Jesus gives.

For us on this day, the challenge is to remember that the Spirit speaks to us, and not just to "those OTHER people out there in the world."  The Spirit isn't our possession, repeating only what we've taught, like some heavenly parrot.  Rather, the Spirit keeps speaking to show US as well as the whole wider world where we've been hornswoggled by comforting or self-serving lies.  And the Spirit keeps doing that because God loves us--and when you love someone, you seek to be honest with them.  God loves us--and indeed the whole world--enough to be honest with us. And when we know that love is unshakable, we can bear to hear the Spirit's voice telling us the emperor is wearing no clothes.

Today, know you are loved enough for God to keep raising up truth-telling voices by the Spirit.  Today, let us be brave enough to listen when they speak.

Lord God, enable us to listen to the voice of your Spirit when you are showing us truths we needed to face but have not wanted to admit.

The Spirit of Truth--May 30, 2023

 

The Spirit of Truth--May 30, 2023

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Advocate, to be with you forever.  This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him.  You know him, because he abides with you, and he will be in you." [John 14:15-17]

It's easy to think that it's more "loving" to tell people what they want to hear, isn't it?  After all, telling people what they want to hear, even if it doesn't line up with reality, makes us feel like we are being "nice." And we do have a way of confusing being "nice" with embodying love.

But on second thought, "niceness" has a way of staying shallow--talk about the weather and summer vacation plans, but nothing beyond the surface.  And genuine love insists on depth, which means being willing to tell the truth--and to hear the truth.  That's why, even when it means having difficult conversations, Christ's kind of love will always seek to be honest.  That's why, when the apostle Paul sketched out descriptions of what love is like, he includes the notion that "love does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth."  Or actually, to be a bit more precise with the Greek Paul uses, love "does not rejoice in injustice," but rather "in the truth."  As we continue working our way this year through that description about love from First Corinthians, we'll now turn to that idea for our devotions in this season of Pentecost.  We need to take a deeper look at how love means truth-telling [and in particular truth-telling over injustice], because we know the pull of hiding the truth in the name of being "nice."  

And that's why our conversation for today takes us here, to these words from John's Gospel as he prepared his disciples for a new chapter in their relationship together.  Jesus is hours away from his betrayal, arrest, torture, and death, and he knows that even after the resurrection, there will soon come a point when he won't be with them as one person around the table as they've come to know him.  So he prepares them for a new way to be in connection with God--and therefore with himself.  He tells them that he is sending them the Holy Spirit.  Church folks know the storytelling--we all just retold in this past Sunday on the Day of Pentecost, where we heard again the story of tongues of flame and apostles empowered to speak in other languages so that all could hear about "God's deeds of power."  But sometimes we are so quick to assume we know that story that we miss out on something important about how Jesus talks about this Spirit, who is given to us.  Jesus insists that the One whom we also call the Holy Spirit is also "the Spirit of truth."  And I suspect it's worth unpacking what that means.

Jesus tells his disciples that they will not be left alone or orphaned, because they'll have "another Advocate," who will remain with them forever.  And then he identifies this One who will come alongside them to counsel, to guide, and to defend them [the idea of an "advocate" here is like a defense attorney, actually, and someone who stands with you in solidarity] as the "Spirit of truth."  This Spirit won't just be physically limited to being in one place at a time, as Jesus had been, but will be "in" you--present among all of the disciple community.  That, of course, would be a huge help once the disciples found themselves headed in different directions to bring the Gospel to every nation and people in all directions.  It meant that they didn't all have to keep going to back to some central location where the Spirit held office hours.  

But the Spirit is more than just a warm fuzzy feeling of God's presence. Jesus is convinced that the Spirit has something to do with making us into truthful people: that is, people who do not merely speak accurately [although that's a part of it, to be sure], but who live in ways that align with the truth, and who are willing to see the worth truthfully, rather than through rose-colored lenses or the slanted bias of self-interest.  The Spirit is the One who enables us to be pulled out of our own little myopic perspectives, which to be honest, can sometimes be uncomfortable.  Nobody wants to admit they don't see the whole picture.  Nobody wants to consider the possibility they might be wrong.  And it is deeply frightening to most of us to entertain the idea that someone with whom we sharply disagree might have something to tell us that we cannot see from our vantage point.  We are afraid, to be honest, of talking about truth if it means considering we don't already have all the answers under our control.  And so Jesus knows that what we need is the promise of One who will be with us--who will not abandon us, no matter what--who will make us brave enough to face all that.  God's Spirit is the Spirit of Truth because God's presence gives us the courage to admit we do not already know it all.  

If genuine love requires us to tell and to hear the truth, rather than pleasant lies, then love is also what makes that truthfulness possible, because when we know we are loved unconditionally and irrevocably, we can bear to face even the truths that don't make us look good, and the insights we didn't know we needed.  Because we have been given that love--promised to us by the Spirit who will not abandon us--we can be people who face the truth bravely, both to tell it and to hear it.  Because we are held by the Love that will not let us go, we can endure coming to terms with facts that make us uncomfortable, realities that stretch our understanding, and truths that break open our prejudices and presumptions.

Today, we can lean on the Spirit Jesus has given to make us brave enough to be truthful.

Lord Jesus, let your Spirit's presence open our ears and eyes with what you would have us see.

Follow the Prostitutes--May 26, 2023

Follow the Prostitutes--May 26, 2023

[Jesus said:] "What do you think? A man had two sons; he went to the first and said, 'Son, go and work in the vineyard today.' He answered, 'I will not'; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the second and said the same; and he answered, 'I go, sir'; but he did not go. Which of the two did the will of his father?' They said, 'The first.' Jesus said to them, 'Truly I tell you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God ahead of you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him; and even after you saw it, you did not change your minds and believe him." [Matthew 21:28-32]

How's that for proof that God doesn't hold our past against us?  Jesus pictures the line of people queued up into the kingdom, and says the prostitutes and tax collectors are at the front of the parade, while the Respectable Religious people are at the back of the procession.  The folks everyone in Jesus' day would have branded as the most notoriously sinful and salacious people around were the ones who took up the invitation to a new beginning when it was offered to them, and God was willing to put aside any hindrances that would have stopped them from coming.  Meanwhile, it was the people who projected piety in public who never thought they had a need to start over, and so they passed by the chance to begin again.

All this Eastertide we've looked at the way God's kind of love lets go of resentments and releases us from the baggage of our sin.  And here on this last day before a new season and a new focus in our year of Learning Love begins, it's worth listening to Jesus' bold statement here: follow the prostitutes into the kingdom--they were the ones who took the offer of grace, while the Celebrity Spiritual So-and-Sos never wanted to admit they were desperate for that same grace.

And notice here, Jesus doesn't make those who were labeled notorious sinners into second-class citizens of the Reign of God.  He doesn't say, "Well, of course, the religious people still get top billing, because they were already so holy. I'll pity you sell-outs and sex workers and let you in the gate, but you'll have to be at the back of the link after all the truly 'good' people are in..." Jesus really is convinced that God isn't holding any of their past messes against them, no matter how complicated or deep-rooted those messes have been.  When the invitation to turn in a new direction, to be a part of the Reign of God, was offered, the people who felt most at a dead end were the quickest to take the offer.  And so, like the thief on the cross next to Jesus, desperate for a lifeline and leaping out into the arms of grace, it was the outcast and ostracized folks who jumped at the chance to be included after spending so long on the outside looking in.

This is what makes the Gospel good news, and not just a program for self-improvement.  It's in God's promises to give us a truly brand-new lease on life that frees us from the things others don't want to let go of.  It's not about having to feel a certain amount of guilt or jump through enough hoops of remorse to rid ourselves of the shame of where we've been--it's all about the promise of God not to keep track of how many times we got lost on our own in the far country.  It's rather like that line from Mumford and Sons' song, "Roll Away Your Stone," which goes:

"It seems that all my bridges have been burned,

But you say that's exactly how this grace thing works.

It's not the long walk home that will change this heart,

But the welcome I receive with the restart."

That's just it--the Reign of God offers a welcome and a new beginning, despite the ways we've gotten ourselves stuck in dead ends and ditches.  And by releasing us from those things, it really is like a brand-new life offered to us, a resurrection in the present moment, rolling away the stone that had kept us in the grave and letting us at last be free.

Now, here's the thing: someone you know is just aching to know that kind of new beginning.  Someone who might cross your path tomorrow, maybe even today, has been looked down on for so long and written off as a hopeless screw-up, and they have a hard time not agreeing.  But you could be the one who speaks the new beginning--you could be the one making the invitation to them into God's grace.  You might be the one today who doesn't treat them like a second-class citizen or a "less-than" sort of person, and you can be the one who tells them they have permission to begin again.  

Maybe as church, too, it's time for us to stop once and for all trying to make ourselves look holier by kicking out the ones with too much scandal attached to their stories.  Maybe it's time to quit pretending we don't need the new start of grace ourselves.  Maybe it's time to set aside our starched and saintly black and white dress clothes and to follow behind the motley and multicolored rainbow procession of anybodies and everybodies, the "dropouts, the losers, the sinners, the failures, and the fools," as Jon Foreman sings it in "The Beautiful Letdown."  Maybe today's a day to quit pretending we're holier than anybody and just take the free offer of a new beginning, even if we've been playing the religion game for decades.  

Maybe today's the day to get in line behind the tax-collecting schemers and sellouts, and follow the prostitutes into the kingdom of God.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to believe you are not holding our failures against us, and give us the love to help others set aside the baggage they are ready to leave behind, too.

Ever the Lamb--May 25, 2023

Ever the Lamb--May 25, 2023

Meanwhile Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if he found any who belonged to the Way, men or women, he might bring them bound to Jerusalem. Now as he was going along and approaching Damascus, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice saying to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” He asked, “Who are you, Lord?” The reply came, “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting. But get up and enter the city, and you will be told what you are to do.” [Acts 9:1-6]

Like a recurring melody in a great symphony, we keep coming back to the theme of God's enemy-embracing love that doesn't keep score or hold grudges, but perhaps it's has never been so dramatic, so striking, a love up to this point. 

Earlier in this season, in Sunday worship and in our devotions, we heard Peter's sermons on Pentecost and then before the religious leaders, how he labeled his hearers as complicit in the death of Jesus--and then at the same time held out the offer of God's gift of new life in Jesus to those same ones who bore their share of responsibility for Jesus' suffering. And as the storytelling in the book of Acts continues, there have been moments where Jewish Christians made the choice to welcome Samaritans who had come to faith in Jesus, even though those two groups had nursed a deep hatred for one another on ethnic and religious grounds. 

But this may be the first time that someone who so actively was set as an enemy of Jesus is met with the transforming love of Jesus. Those earlier stories hint at forgiveness and love for the enemy, but maybe we could dismiss them as just hints or minor themes in the bigger story. We might have dismissed those as minor grudges or small potatoes in terms of resentments.  In other words, maybe we could have denied that loving enemies is central to our faith if we only had those other stories from earlier in Acts. But once we hear the words from heaven, "I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting," and then the call to be a servant of this Jesus, there's no denying it any longer. Love of enemies, love that doesn't allow itself to be consumed with bitter resentments, is at the crux (literally) of our faith because Jesus himself has loved his enemies.

We sometimes are willing to grant that Jesus loved his enemies right up to his death--we think of the line, "Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing," or the offer of mercy to the thief on the cross, maybe, as quintessential examples of this kind of love. But what does it mean that even after the resurrection Jesus is still loving enemies, and not just vaguely ignoring them, but actively seeking them out and calling them into belonging in the new community with a new purpose? See, sometimes, you hear people talk about as though Jesus had some death wish and was willing to do all sorts of crazy, unwise things in order to get to a cross. Maybe we would be tempted to see his forgiveness from the cross or his teaching on enemy-love as just part of a program that would ensure he would die. And then, we might like to think, once Jesus was raised from the dead, he would again be a macho, tough-guy type who meted out justice and zapped his enemies. (You sometimes hear this in talk about Jesus' coming again—"He came like a lamb the first time, but when he comes again, he will be a devouring lion!" Never mind that in the book of Revelation, there is an announcement that the Lion has arrived, and when everyone looks to see him, they see nothing but the slain-but-living Lamb!) It would be tempting to think that Jesus' bit about loving enemies was just a hiccup that made his passive death on the cross possible, but now that Easter has come, we're back to business as usual and the normal order of kill-or-be-killed. At least it's a way of life we're familiar with, a logic we have been trained in.

But with Saul's call experience on the Damascus road, it is clear that Jesus is still the Lamb: risen and victorious, yes, but still wearing the scars of slaughter, and still committed to loving enemies. God's new way of doing things in Christ is to love enemies and to transform them by that love. As Luke notes here, the first Christians were called followers of "the Way," and it seems clear today that this "Way" was not just a mental acceptance of certain facts about Jesus, it was about being pulled into a certain kind of love that Jesus makes possible, the love that includes neighbor and stranger and enemy together. It is not just a minor theme of Jesus before he died, it is the fabric out of which our own salvation is woven. This same Saul, who finds himself a reconciled enemy of God, is the one who will later point out in his letters that God loved us while we were "enemies" of God, every last one of us (see Romans 5), and that because of this, we too are called to "bless those who persecute us" (Romans 12). These ideas are not unrelated—they are two sides of the same coin! God has loved us even when we were enemies, and that divine love has transformed us—and still is transforming us. And part of how we are transformed is to be made vessels through which God's enemy-embracing love transforms others. Paul/Saul did not just invent this idea out of thin air, and he did not just write this kind of theology abstractly without having really lived it. He could speak of Christ's love even for the most ardent persecutors of Christ because he had been one and found himself changed by this experience on the Damascus road. And he could speak of the new order of love in the Christian community because he had found it happening in his own life.  Paul becomes the first one to make the connection and put it into words: because Christ has loved us without resentments for our hostility toward him, we are called to love without resentments toward others as well, even those we would call our "enemies."

These ideas are not just intellectual theories or abstract thoughts—Saul lived the story of God's enemy-reconciling love in his real, flesh-and-blood life. And this story invites—no, it calls—us to live in that same new order of things, the order we call the kingdom of God. After all, as Revelation tells us, too, the One whose kingdom it is, who sits in the midst of the throne, is still--and ever--the Lamb (Rev. 5:6).

O Love that will not let us go, hold onto us today in all the twists and turns of this day. Open our eyes to see the ways you have loved us, and then open our hands to extend the same kind of love for those with whom we are estranged, so that together we may all be transformed into the likeness of your Son, the one who called on the Damascus Road and who calls to us on Main Street as well.

The Ground Zero of Grace--May 24, 2023

The Ground Zero of Grace--May 24, 2023

"After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, 'Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him'..." [John 17:1-2]

To hear John our narrator tell it, Jesus chooses the path of the cross without resentment or bitterness, but as his unique glory.  He doesn't face down arrest, torture, and betrayal with anger at his disciples for bailing out on him, or at the world's sinners for needing redemption in the first place, or at the Father for somehow putting him in this predicament.  Instead, again, as the Fourth Gospel tells the story, Jesus steps into this moment knowing it will allow him to give life to his people, and choosing it in spite of the pain that comes with it.

Jesus' kind of love counts the cost, and is willing to pay it, because he is convinced that you--and a world full of us--are worth it.  This is how he loves.

This is one of those details that's worth unpacking, because it's easy to overlook.  You may well have heard these words this past Sunday as part of worship, and it's quite possible you might have heard Jesus speak about his "hour" having come, and thought nothing else of it.  But in John's Gospel storytelling, the notion of Jesus' "hour" means something very specific.  Jesus' "hour" is the time of his suffering, crucifixion, and death [although we certainly know, too, that the resurrection lies through all of those].  It's not just a synonym for "opportune time," or "the right moment;" it's always about the cross.  So here we have Jesus, knowing full well that he is headed to the cross, but not trying to get out of it or take others down with him while he suffers.  He is willing to bear the trauma of it all without blaming anybody or lashing out.  And it is this very thing--Jesus' willingness to choose to lay down his life rather than seeking to get even with the ones who have led him to this moment--that is Jesus' glory.  This is what makes the cross beautiful, even as it is terrible.  This is what makes Jesus' kind of love glorious--he doesn't hold resentments against the world for whom he dies.  It is worth the loss for him because it means he gets to give life to us. 

In some ways, anyone who has ever loved a child knows something of that same glory.  Parents choose to lose sleep getting babies, or when their child calls for them in the night, sick or scared.  Teachers pour themselves into plans and lessons and patient care for their students, even knowing full well the students will not recognize all they've done or the hours and money they've given up for their students.  Aunts, uncles, and grandparents give up free time to go watch baseball games or dance recitals, all with complete willingness to do so, because they want the kids to know they are loved.  That is, in a very real sense, the glory of being a parent, family member, teacher, or other caring adult.  You choose a certain amount of inconvenience, suffering, or difficulty, but you choose it exactly because you want to give some of your own life to the children you care about.  And maybe at some point, those kids look up and realize just how dearly they have been loved all along... and they learn to do the same for future children in their lives. I don't know another word for that but "glorious."

In any case, those gifts of lost sleep, spent time, purchases for supplies, and everything else are offered to those who are loved without resentment or accounting.  They are simply part of what it looks like to love a child, and they are given freely.  If you know what that is like from your own life, then you've been given a glimpse of how Jesus' love works.  His love for us comes without those resentments even when it costs him, and it comes without keeping score or bitterness at the loss.  He so seeks our joy and our fullness of life that he is willing to spend his own our behalf.  And he would not have it otherwise.

This is the kind of love into which we are called, as well, because we have been loved by Jesus.  Just like children who grow up knowing they are loved are meant to grow into being loving adults for another generation, we who have been loved by Jesus are now called on to grow into that love for the people around us.  

And in the times we can zoom out our frame of reference for a moment to see how our love fits in a chain reaction of love that goes all the way back to Jesus at the center as the Ground Zero of grace, we come to see the beauty of it all, like ripples in perfect circles on the surface of a pond, or the geometric patterns of dancing droplets when a raindrop hits the surface of a puddle.  It is, quite simply, glorious.

May we participate in such glory today.

Lord Jesus, let us face this hour with your own kind of gloriously unbegrudging love.

Bearing Hardship, Not Inflicting It--May 23, 2023

Bearing Hardship, Not Inflicting It--May 23, 2023

"Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ's sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed." [1 Peter 4:12-13]

For the early church it was a given that they would face hostility and suffering in the world; when they did, they took it as evidence that they were learning to love like Jesus.  We live in a time, however, when many Respectable Religious voices get all bent out of shape any time they are inconvenienced or have to share positions of privilege; and those things happen, they cry out that Christians are being "persecuted" when they're actually just being reminded they're not the only people around.  Maybe it's time to listen again to those first Christians.

In all seriousness, sometimes I wonder what writers like the voice of First Peter would say if he read or heard some of the posturing of modern-day church folks in America.  While it is certainly true that there are countries in the world where publicly professing Christ will land you in jail or worse, that's not what is happening in our country.  Not even close.  And yet, to hear many leaders of churches and para-church organizations, the church is "under attack" because things aren't "like they used to be."  You'll hear complaints that too many stores and public places are open on Sundays. You'll hear people upset when there is any acknowledgement that people of other faiths have different holidays or dietary rules they follow.  You'll hear lamenting over declining church attendance--and then hear it blamed on active persecution of the church rather than people being turned off by the hypocrisy and self-centeredness they see so often in churches.  And of course, every December you'll hear people bemoaning a "war on Christmas" every time they are reminded that not everyone in their community celebrates Christmas.  In a lot of ways, we church folk can be very bitter, very resentful, and full of a sense of entitlement, when we're not really being persecuted.  Rather, we are being asked to make room for others with the acknowledgement that there are others here.

We don't know for sure what kinds of "fiery ordeal" the readers of First Peter were dealing with.  Some scholars think that they were living through an early wave of officially anti-Christian persecution from the Empire.  Others suggest it might have been more local hostility when they'd get run out of town or expelled from a larger region or province.  To read the book of Acts, after all, the early church got a reputation for "turning the world upside down" and "disturbing the peace," and they were regularly imprisoned, beaten, tortured, or in some cases killed for that reputation.  Those, of course, are serious hardships to live with--certainly a far cry from throwing a tantrum when someone wishes you "Happy Holidays" in mid-December.  But what amazes me is the perspective that the New Testament cultivates in the face of those hardships.

These words from First Peter, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, start with the very real experience of suffering in the Christian community. But instead of channeling that pain into rage, vengeance, or whining, First Peter reframes it and suggests that enduring that hardship might just be a sign that these Christians are facing hostility the way Jesus did--with a refusal to hold grudges or return evil for evil.  Notice--he's not telling them to be thankful THAT they are suffering, but rather, he suggests, "Maybe this is evidence that you are growing in Christ-likeness; after all, Jesus went through pain and suffering, too, rather than lashing back at those who were hostile to him."  It's not the pain we're supposed to celebrate--it's the hope that we're becoming more and more like Christ, and that the enduring of suffering may be a sign we're actually growing up to love and live more like Jesus.

What is especially telling to me is that First Peter doesn't tell his readers to get up in arms about it, or even to be surprised about it.  He assumes that there will be hostility from the world, and he also seems to assume that their response to that hostility can be part of their witness.  If they respond to the hostility of others without seeking revenge, then their actions become a reflection of Christ.  On the other hand, if the Christian community started up their own little militia to kill the people who were harassing them, they would be destroying their witness to Christ and showing how unlike Jesus they really were.  

First Peter doesn't assume that Christians are in power in his situation, nor does he think that's the solution.  He doesn't say, "Since you are facing hostility from non-Christians, then you need to take political power for yourselves, and then you can round up your enemies and jail them, exile them, or get rid of them once and for all." Rather, he assumes that our way of witnessing to the love of Jesus is... to love like Jesus.  That is to say, sometimes we'll be called upon to bear hardship rather than to inflict it on someone else.

And in our day and age, when many certainly can remember a time when things were different [when stores were closed on Sundays, or when Christianity was seen as the "default" setting, or church attendance was higher, or whatever], it's worth remembering, too, that the New Testament doesn't assume Christians will be the only ones at the table.  Just the opposite--they start from the assumption that we're a voice from the margins, a minority report in the midst of other groups, beliefs, and communities.  And rather than plot out a course for Christians to dominate the world or to take political power for their own advantage, voices like First Peter see our role simply as being like Jesus.  The right question is not, "How can we Christians leverage positions of power or privilege to keep things comfortable for ourselves?" but rather, "How can we respond to others like Jesus, even when they are hostile toward us?" And maybe it also means recognizing that sometimes the most Christ-like thing we can do in a culture that is increasingly not Christian is to make room for neighbors around us at the table we're already at, rather than to silence them because "they" aren't "us." 

To hear First Peter tell it is, letting go of the bitterness and resentment over hostility from the outside world can lead to joy.  It can give us hope that we are being made more like Jesus [which is really what this whole Christian faith is about, right?], and it can free us from being petty or entitled.  That sounds like a better posture to face the new day, doesn't it?

Let's dare to give it a try.

Lord Jesus, enable us to face hostility with your kind of grace, and to be willing to be inconvenienced or to make room for others rather than to bear grudges toward them.

Even When We Don't Get It--May 22, 2023

Even When We Don't Get It--May 22, 2023

So when they had come together, they asked [Jesus], “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…” [Acts 1:6-7]

To me it is always reassuring to see that even the hand-picked followers of Jesus didn't "get it," and that he was willing not to hold that against them. It's not that I like to gloat in the failures of others, but rather that it says there is hope for me, someone who so often doesn't "get it" either. This is one of those moments. Here are the apostles whom Jesus is about to send out into the whole world with the news of the Kingdom and of the resurrection of Jesus, and they still miss the point of what Jesus is all about. It would be enough to make me worry, if I were Jesus, whether I was making a wise move leaving the movement in the hands of these largely thick-headed followers.

What's the issue? Well, the disciples have seen Jesus throughout his whole ministry, and not once did Jesus indicate that he was about to overthrow the Romans in a violent revolt, or take the crown for himself, or build an army for God, or "take back their country for the Lord," or even impress people with his own glorious power. And beyond that, they have heard Jesus say that the way he would bring about the kingdom was through his death and resurrection, not in spite of it. But the disciples just want everyone else to see that they backed a winner—that they bet on the right horse. The disciples want Jesus to show power as they know power and kingdoms as they know kingdoms, and they are thinking that maybe now, this is their moment to "restore the kingdom to Israel." Now, they think, they'll get their rewards. Now, they'll get their heavenly prizes. Now, they'll get… and then they fill in the blank with their wildest dreams.

Or, maybe they won't get those things, after all, because Jesus just isn't interested in declaring a war of armies with Rome. And Jesus isn't interested in making himself a king like Herod or a governor like Pilate. Jesus has bigger fish to fry—but the way Jesus will go about his work will not look like it is very impressive at all. He is about to leave the work of the Kingdom in the hands of these same former fishermen and tax collectors who just don't get it for so much of the time. No, Peter, there will be no Inaugural Ball. No, James and John, there will be no fire or lightning called down from the sky to show people who's boss. No, Matthew and Andrew, we will not be marching our soldiers and parading our tanks down the streets to strike fear in the heart of our enemies. No, we will let the when and the how and the where of the Kingdom of God be left in the hands of God. God will reign over all things when all is said and done, Jesus seems to say, but it will be on God's terms, not ours. And God seems surprisingly crafty at picking the terms that we least expect—and even that most offend us. 

Jesus just isn't interested in "taking his country back for God" with weapons and wealth, but instead inaugurates God's Reign in the self-giving love of a cross and empty tomb.  And now, despite the fact that his followers still don't get it, he entrusts them to reflect that Reign by speaking the truth and welcoming the unworthies and healing the broken. Peter and the gang are fighting the temptation of picturing a swelling army and the flash of shiny armor and flaming angel swords, and Jesus has in mind something closer to the Island of Misfit Toys. No, children, it's not up to you to tell God how or when or where to "restore the Kingdom." It is all so much intriguing, if also comically misguided, theorizing from these disciples. If they'd have been listening to Jesus at all up to this point, they might have even heard the strange-sounding news that the Kingdom was already breaking out among them like a holy rash.

And yet... it is precisely among these trigger-happy, foot-in-mouthed disciples who seem like failures for a fair amount of the time that Jesus knows the Spirit will come. He doesn't hold back their past [or present] misunderstandings against them, but chooses still to work with this dense bunch of disicples. Despite the fact that they disappoint at every turn—and in truth, so do we—Jesus does not think it's too much work for the Spirit to handle. As much as it is hard for us to be the waiting ones in life, when the word from Jesus is to be patient. But perhaps it is also true that Jesus is doing a good bit of waiting, too—that he is the one patient with these disciples, refusing to give up on them even when it seems they've not been listening much at all, and that Jesus is waiting alongside us until we are ready to receive what he has to give. The Spirit will be poured out on these disciples soon enough when he speaks these words that many of us heard this past Sunday, and Jesus is willing to be patient with this band so that they will be ready for the gift.

In this day, too, our hope is in the same patient, unresentful Christ, who bears with our questions that sound foolish—and often reflect the fact that we've not been paying much attention at all to Jesus. Our hope is that the same Jesus who refused to scrap his whole mission when the disciples still didn't get it (even after the resurrection and forty days' worth of "convincing proofs") is the same Lord over us. We may be stumbling through the process of discerning just what Jesus is up to among us and in us, and yet the story Luke gives us is of the risen Jesus as one who can bear with our rather slow learning curve. Jesus' vision and work will not be held back by our bumbling in the big picture, and yet Jesus is also able to wait with us, to wait alongside us, to wait for us to let our ears and eyes finally be opened to what he has been saying and showing us all along. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the rise of a political party to wield power for the truly religious people. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the protection of one country at the expense of all others. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like me getting a cushy, luxurious life while others are left starving and ignored. No, children, the Kingdom will not even be reducible to higher attendance and offerings at my local congregation. Jesus just plain has bigger fish to fry than any of those. But even though we keep missing the point about what it is Jesus intends to do among us and through us, we get an assurance in this story that the risen Jesus bears with us in all our comically-misguided theorizing and will continue to pour out the Spirit to drench us in the power and presence of the Kingdom of God. Yes, even on a day like today.

Good Lord, you bear with us better than we can bear with ourselves. Give us not only the peace of knowing your patience with us, but also then give us open ears and eyes to recognize the Kingdom you are unleashing, the Kingdom you brought near in Jesus, the Kingdom you bring to the world even through the likes of us as we share your Word, your love, and your ways. We ask it in the name of your patient Way, Jesus.

Where Jesus' Mouth Is--May 19, 2023

Where Jesus' Mouth Is--May 19, 2023

[Jesus said to his disciples:] "I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live." [John 14:18-19]

Without even knowing their context, these words of Jesus are absolutely a beautiful promise.  It is certainly a great comfort to hear Jesus tell his followers that he will neither abandon them nor let death get the last word over them.

But when you realize that he makes that blanket promise knowing he is talking to people who will all abandon him and leave him to face death alone to save their own skins, it becomes a declaration of unfathomable grace.

These words, which were part of the Gospel reading for many this past Sunday, come from Jesus' last words to his inner circle of disciples on the night in which he was betrayed.  This is the night many Christians recount each year in Holy Week as Maundy Thursday, and as John's Gospel tells it, is the night Jesus washed his disciples' feet, well aware that he was also washing the feet of his betrayer.  This is the night we remember as Jesus' last supper with his disciples, in which Jesus tells his disciples [as Matthew tells the story], "You will all become deserters because of me this night." And in that scene, when Simon Peter insists he would never abandon Jesus, Jesus tells Peter that before the night is out, he'll have denied him three times.  This is the same night when, John's Gospel later insists, "Jesus, knowing all that was to happen to him," still steps forward into the danger when the lynch mob and the temple police come, in order to protect the very disciples who will bail out on him and scatter in mere minutes.

And, of course, they do.  Jesus' community of disciples--those who have become like a found family to him in their time together--do abandon him.  To Jesus, it almost had to feel like being orphaned--losing the ones who had been his circle of support and love, all in a blur of their fear.  The gospels, for all the different details they recount about that night, all insist that Jesus knows ahead of time where things are going. And yet, not only does he go through with it anyway, but he promises his disciples not to do to them what they are about to do to him.  "I will not leave you orphaned," has a very different ring to it when you know the one saying it is fully aware he is about to be abandoned... and that he's saying it to the very same ones who will abandon him. "Because I live, you will live," hits our ears with different power when you realize Jesus is saying it to people who leave Jesus to die in order to try and save their own lives.

This is what the Christian faith is really all about, though, isn't it?  It's always been about God's love as we see it in Jesus, and that love simply will not let our failures set the terms for our relationship with God.  Jesus will not let the disciples' impending desertion hold him back from sticking it out with them.  He will not let the trouble and death they give him over to be the way he treats them.  He will not hold their sins against them.  And this story makes it clear that Jesus doesn't forgive sins in the abstract, as hypothetically possible infringements of celestial rules, but as one who knows personally what it is like to be hurt by those sins.

That also means that Jesus' teaching [and the teaching of numerous voices across the New Testament, as we've seen in recent weeks in these devotions] not to return evil for evil has also been tried in the crucible of real-life experience.   This is an important thing to note, because sometimes people will dismiss Jesus' teaching about loving your enemies and doing good to those who persecute you as a bunch of naive wishful thinking from someone stuck in an ivory tower.  If you assume Jesus never had to actually put his money where his mouth is, you can give yourself permission to ignore those teachings about not seeking revenge and write Jesus off as someone who doesn't know how things are in "the real world." But when you realize that the Jesus who preaches against scorekeeping and bean-counting in the Sermon on the Mount is the same one who lives out that same kind of love when his closest friends abandon him, it is all the more compelling.  Jesus never calls his followers to do something he hasn't done already first--and he calls us to a love that doesn't keep score because he has loved us the same way, all the way to a cross.  

Today, hear Jesus' words as spoken to you, and for you: he does not abandon us or leave us orphaned, no matter what we do or how we flake out on him.  And at the same time, hear Jesus' silence where we might be tempted to insert guilt-trips or passive-aggressive jabs: Jesus doesn't say to his disciples, "I won't leave you or forsake you... unlike SOME people around here are about to do to me." He knows, but he doesn't weaponize that knowledge against them... or us.  There is love spoken where we have not earned it, and silence where others might condescendingly scold.  This, dear ones, is how we are loved.

This, dear ones, is the love we step into on this new day.

Lord Jesus, enable us to love as you have loved us first--beyond our failings, our fickleness, and our faithlessness.

Risking It For Love--May 18, 2023

Risking It For Love--May 18, 2023

"For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God's will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God. He was put to death in the flesh, but made alive in the spirit..." [1 Peter 3:17-18]

Okay, let's get this clear from the beginning here: it's not that God demands a certain amount of suffering from people, or that God requires we endure pain to prove our commitment.  Rather, it's that God sends us as witnesses of love into a world full of cruelty, hatred, and cold indifference, and that may well mean we absorb pain as we do God's will in the midst of it all.

If your neighbor's house is on fire, I suppose you could risk getting burned if you ran in to their family room and attempted to steal their TV set... or you could risk getting burned running upstairs to rescue the kid who is calling for help from a bedroom window. The first one is certainly not God's will, but I think you could make a case that the Spirit might just be directing you to help the child, even if that means taking on personal risk for the sake of love.  Or in a similar way, when the thieves attack the man on the Jericho Road in Jesus' famous parable, they risked injury or suffering if he would have landed a few punches or kicks on them when they attempted to rob him.  Meanwhile, the Samaritan traveler who stops and helps him once the robbers have left him for dead also took the risk that this could all be a trap, and he did incur a loss from the money, time, and resources he spent on caring for the neighbor who was injured.  And clearly, Jesus thinks that the thieves aren't models of doing God's will, but the Samaritan man certainly is.  So yeah, sometimes doing good will carry with the risk of a certain amount of suffering.  And to that extent, as people called to risk showing love in a world of pain, we might say that God's will calls us to be willing to endure that pain for the sake of others.

But let's be clear that First Peter is NOT insisting that God demands our suffering to satisfy some divine sadistic streak. Nor does God require our pain to make us "tough" or "worthy" or "acceptable." God does indeed call us to love, though, and that love might well lead us into places of suffering. And God calls us into that love without keeping score or accounting how much others owe us for our trouble.  When the neighbor's kid is calling for help from the burning window, I don't call to mind all the times his football ended up in my yard or the time he toilet papered my tree--I go to help.  When the Samaritan stopped to help the Jewish man laying at the roadside, he didn't get held up by grudges from all the times Judean people had mocked him, ignored him, or insulted him--he helped.  Love that is genuine is going to risk suffering, and it will even risk suffering for the sake of people who have inflicted suffering on us before, whether great or small.  First Peter is calling us to that kind of genuine love.

And of course, he doesn't just use hypotheticals with a neighbor's house catching fire, or a thought experiment about a traveler on the Jericho Road.  First Peter points us right to Jesus, who "also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God."  And this is the gospel difference: Christ Jesus has already shown us this kind of love before we've done a thing.  Jesus doesn't wait to see if we'll turn out to be decent and loving people, and then decide that makes us worthy of dying for--he has already gone into the burning building to rescue us without any checking of the heavenly ledger.  And once we've been claimed by such mercy, how can we not respond to the world around with the same love that risks pain and doesn't count costs?

This is really what the Christian faith and life hangs on--it is the discovery of how we have been loved, and how that love shapes us in its own likeness.  It is in the realization that we've been loved by God without any divine bean-counting or grudge-holding, so that we are now free to love the ones around us with the same kind of reckless abandon God has shown us in Christ.  Today, that might not send you into a burning building or down the Jericho Road, but it will certainly send you across the paths of others to whom we are called to reflect God's own wildly free love.

Have your eyes open--the ones to whom God is sending us may be just around the bend.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage that comes from knowing we are your beloved to risk pain or hardship for the sake of loving others around us without keeping score.

Still Our Revolution--May 17, 2023

Still Our Revolution--May 17, 2023

"But even if you do suffer for doing what is right, you are blessed. Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord.  Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence. Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame." [1 Peter 3:14-16]

The first Christians weren't naive.  They knew that the world was a dangerous place and their presence in it would provoke hostility and hatred from others.  And yet knowing that, they made the choice in advance not to lash out at the meanness of the world, but rather to answer evil with good.

This was their revolution.  It is still our revolution.

I don't say that to be melodramatic, but quite sincerely.  The early Christians did something truly radical by deciding together not to let themselves be provoked into fear, hatred, and hostility of others, even when the outside world treated them with scorn and intimidation.  They prepared themselves for the likely possibility that naming the name of Jesus would get them into trouble.  They steeled their resolve ahead of time not to let fear make them violent, and not to let the anger of others provoke them into being rude or dehumanizing in return.  Those early Christians, to whom the letter of First Peter was written, took so seriously that Christ's kind of love doesn't hold grudges or keep record of wrongs, that they were willing to stake their lives on living the same way in a dangerous world.

That's what this passage from First Peter, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is really doing.  It's training followers of Jesus to be prepared for encountering hostility in the world, and it's equipping them [and us] for responding without becoming hostile ourselves.  And at the bottom of all of it is the core conviction that Jesus' way of responding to others' animosity was not to sink to their level or keep clinging to resentments for their mistreatment.  Because Jesus' love didn't keep score that way, then we Christians who claim to be Jesus' followers will respond like him. And the key to that, as First Peter tells us, is to be prepared for it.

To do that, First Peter helps his readers [including the twenty-first century ones] think through different scenarios, and to use our faithful imaginations to game out what it could look like to respond with the kind of love that doesn't hold grudges.  So, for example, if we find ourselves suffering for doing what is right [say, standing up to bullies, or speaking up for the outcast, or being made fun of or called "weak" or "losers" because of our commitment to love like Jesus], First Peter reframes the situation to say, "These are exactly the kinds of situations and people that Jesus called "blessed."  And what do you know, but that is exactly the sort of re-imagining that Jesus does in the Beatitudes--declaring that the persecuted, the peacemakers, and the lowly are blessed.  That doesn't excuse what others might be doing to you, but it gives us a way of responding that doesn't sink to their level. It's a way of saying, "I won't let your poor treatment of me lead me to treat you poorly in response.  I will not go low just because you do.  I will go high."  It's much like that insight of Robert Hayden, who said, "We must not be frightened nor cajoled into accepting evil as deliverance from evil. We must go on struggling to be human, through monsters of abstractions police and threaten us."

First Peter knows, too, how easily we are led to return evil for evil or violence for violence when we are afraid--when we let the "fight or flight" impulse control our actions and choices.  So he reminds us that we do not have to fear what they fear, and instead, we can respond in ways that show Christ.  And then when he directs us to be ready to give "an accounting for the hope that is in you," he follows it up with the reminder that we are called to speak in ways that are gentle and reverent, rather than mocking, belittling, belligerent, or crude to others.  That's important, especially in this age of social media trolls and anonymous commenters, because it is easy to think we have to attack others into faith, or view evangelism an argument to be won rather than a love to be shared.  In a time when everyone else is lobbing insults and profanities at the people they don't agree with, First Peter calls us to break that cycle and to refuse to do the same back to someone else just because they've done it to you.  We offer an alternative by embodying love that doesn't return meanness for meanness and hatred for hatred.

And that's it: we don't really change things if we amplify people's rottenness toward us with more rottenness of our own.  We have to subvert the tactics others use by offering a different way, something other than fight or flight.  Like the 20th century Jesuit writer Pedro Arrupe put it, "To be just, it is not enough to refrain from injustice. One must go further and refuse to play its game, substituting love for self-interest as the driving force of society."  That's what makes this ancient document hiding out in the back of our New Testament so revolutionary--First Peter's voice has been training the followers of Jesus on how to break the cycles of vengeance and vindictiveness for twenty centuries by daring us to respond to the hostility of others with the love of Jesus.  Growing in love is going to do that do us--it is going to make us more like Jesus, more capable of responding to the dehumanizing tactics of others with the genuine humanity of Jesus, the incarnate presence of God-with-us.  And for a world that is tired--exhausted--while it looks for an off-ramp from the spiraling cycles of getting-even and hitting-back, this is just the revolution we need.

Let's get to it.

Lord Jesus, give us the calm to our spirit to think, prepare, and respond to the meanness of the world with the goodness you have shown us--and let it change everything.

Growing into Love--May 16, 2023

Growing into Love--May 16, 2023

[Paul said to the people of Athens:] "Since we are God's offspring, we ought not to think that the deity is like gold, or silver, or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of mortals. While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent..." [Acts 17:29-30]

For all the cute smiles, big eyes, and their way of saying the darnedest things, children can be just plain selfish. And I say that, not only as a parent, but as a former child who now realizes that I could be pretty self-absorbed.  

Look, I'm not here to bash "this younger generation" as somehow particularly more guilty, even though I know it's fashionable to criticize whoever is the youngest for not being as virtuous, dedicated, or polite as their forebears.  I think it's just a human thing--we start out with a predisposition to think we're the center of the universe, and it's only with the course of time and development of maturity that we learn to think of others more empathetically.  And because we don't see all the complexity of the grown-up world, we often don't realize how much those grown-ups are doing for us, all the time, when we are the kids.  Dinners get made and dishes get washed, seemingly by magic, or we assume that the adults who do these things for us do them because they think they are fun.  Clothes, shoes, toys, and food all appear without our awareness of the labor that went into earning the money that bought them and then went to the effort of getting them.  And pretty much we can be oblivious to anyone else's concerns but our own as kids.  

Now, our parents, our grandparents, and the rest of the circle of people who have loved us into being, they all know this in advance.  [They realize, if they are wise, that they were once the childishly self-absorbed ones themselves, once upon a time.] And yet that community of adults who love us chose in advance not to kick us out of the family, or to hate us, or to give up on us even at our most insufferable moments.  They looked forward to a time when we would grow into maturity, and they chose not to hold every little slight against us.  [To be sure, there are plenty of times that children have to deal with consequences of their actions and words, but there's a world of difference between that and being expelled from the family or cut off from love.]  In other words, the ones who loved us when we were at our worst were willing to overlook those times, to decide not to hold them against us, in the hopes of our arriving at a future time when we had outgrown those childish modes and left them behind.

In other words, while it is reasonable for parents or grandparents to expect their kids to grow into kind, responsible, and thoughtful adults themselves, those older generations are willing to put up with a lot of garbage in the meantime until the youngers ones come into their own.  There will come a time for what the apostle famously called "putting away childish things," but the way to get there is a posture of grace that doesn't keep weaponizing the wrongs of children.

If you and I can recognize that we have been loved this way in our own formative years, and if perhaps you know what it is like to extend that same graciousness to children, grandchildren, nieces, or nephews of your own, then you're in the right frame of mind to understand the claim here from Paul's speech in Acts 17.  Many of us heard this story this past Sunday, where Paul speaks with the people gathered at the Areopagus.  And in this passage, Paul makes the claim that God has treated all of the world with the same gracious lack of grudge-holding that our parents extended to us.

All of us--that is, every human being of all times and places--are offspring of God, Paul says.  We are God's own children, in other words--and like children, we can be pretty self-absorbed and oblivious to what's going on around us.  We aren't very good at picking up after ourselves; we can be rude and obnoxious.  And we're always pushing at boundaries thinking they don't apply to us.  All of that, on a worldwide scale--and yet, Paul says, for all of human history leading up to the coming of Jesus Christ, God was willing to put all of that on hold.  No grudges held. No guilt piling up for centuries of human crookedness. No accruing compound interest on our mounting debts to God for our sins and trespasses.  God chose not to keep record against humanity because, well, we've been like immature children... who are nevertheless children of God.

Our parents and grandparents were willing to be gracious with us as kids, not because we were "never really that bad," but because we were their children and they loved us--and love doesn't keep record of wrongs, in order that we might grow into maturity.  And Paul says that all of humanity counts as "God's offspring," so God has been forbearing with all of us, too.  And now that Christ has come into the world, there is a new way of being.  We are invited to grow out of the selfishness that made us little stinkers as kids and to step into a mature kind of love that cares for others, views the world with empathy, and, yes, knows how to bear with the selfishness of a new generation of little ones.  As with children growing into maturity, God's intention is not to leave us self-absorbed and immature forever, but to bring us to loving the way God loves--which is to say, the way Jesus loves.

With the coming of Christ into history, humanity has a new opportunity to grow up in love, and to see the ways God's love has been gracious with us all along--not holding our wrongs against us, and not letting our past wrongs disqualify us from growing up into Christ-likeness.  Now, Paul says, we can see how we've been show grace.  And now, at last, we can act like people whose love has come to maturity.  

Sometimes what it takes to love others without keeping score or holding grudges is to see how many times someone else chose not to keep score on you when you didn't even realize it. In other words, when we see later on with clarity how we have been loved without our awareness at the time, we become capable of loving [as God does] without needing to keep a tally of demerits or deserving.

I'm reminded of the closing lines of Ada Limon's achingly beautiful poem, "The Raincoat," where she reflects about sacrifices her mother made for her in childhood when she had medical issues and her parents got her care she needed.  Limon writes about one day, now as an adult the same age as her mother was in those childhood memories:

"I saw a mom take her raincoat off
and give it to her young daughter when
a storm took over the afternoon. My god,
I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her
raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel
that I never got wet."

That's just it.  In our times of childish irresponsibility and oblivious self-absorption, we don't realize how much others are doing to love us into being--and how they do not keep score at all they are doing for us.  But the circle isn't complete until, through the eyes of mature love, we see how much was done for us, and we become capable of loving as we have been loved first.  We can turn in a new direction--which is what "repenting" is really all about--and we can grow into the love we have first come to know maturely in Christ.

Today, with courage, let's take an honest look at our past and see how God has set aside our immaturity and selfishness without zapping us for it--and let's grow in a new direction, toward the love of Jesus, like sunflowers straining for the sun.

Lord Jesus, thank you for the ways your love did not keep score against us. Let us grow now to love like you--to love the way you have first loved us.