Getting Out of the Tree--Devotion for August 30, 2023

Getting Out of the Tree--August 30, 2023

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works? Can faith save you? If a brother or sister is naked and lacks daily food, and one of you says to them, 'Go in peace; keep warm and eat your fill,' and yet you do not supply their needs, what is the good of that? So faith, if it has no words, is dead." [James 2:14-17]

I'm done with fighting with these words from James like he is my opponent in debate. In fact, I have found an amazing freedom in the discovery that James isn't trying to pick a fight with the gospel of grace here, even though that's pretty close to how I had heard these verses for a lot of my life. If you're willing to join the conversation here, too, I would offer that same freedom for you as well. Or rather, to be clearer about it, I hope we can both hear, you and I, that James has been offering us freedom all along.

So, truth-in-advertising here for a moment. I'm an almost lifelong Lutheran, and the cornerstone of our five-hundred-year-long tradition is the assertion that God has put us into right relationships as a gift of grace through Christ Jesus, and that our part of the relationship is to trust (faith) God's free gift. There is no earning, no achievement to be accomplished, no prerequisite acts of religiosity, and no amount of gold stars, piety points, or heavenly merit to be racked up. It's all a gift, and it always has been. In fact, Luther himself would say, even the ability to receive the gift and the capacity to trust the promise are themselves gifts of God's grace. For all the other things Lutheran Christians can argue about (and there are a lot of them), that's still the beating heart of the Gospel. And it's still a truth I would stake my life on.

That said, we can sometimes get so focused on fighting that particular battle (with slogans like "Grace alone!" "Faith alone!" and "Christ alone!") that we come down with theology paranoia. We can assume every conversation everywhere is really about affirming or denying "The-Doctrine-of-Justification-By-Grace-Through-Faith-Alone", and we start spoiling for a fight where there was no real conflict. Even our older brother in the faith Martin Luther himself couldn't shake the assumption that James was trying to refute the power of God's grace with this passage, and it almost led Luther to propose cutting this letter out of the New Testament. Luther was ready to fight with a biblical author like James because he couldn't hear James' words as anything other than a direct assault on the claim that our salvation is a gift of grace. And so he was prepared just to ignore James altogether and pick sides with Saint Paul.

And again, I get it--on the face of it, it certainly can look like James is arguing against the very thing on which Luther centered the Reformation movement. So it surely would be easy to hear this passage as a shot across the bow for someone committed to the idea that God loves and saves us apart from what we do. But let's step back for a moment and not assume there is an argument where there might not be one. As they say, to the one with a hammer, everything looks like a nail--but maybe this situation doesn't require any pounding or smashing. Maybe James is trying to call us into genuine love, and to free us from playing tedious religious games.

So before anybody starts nailing theses to doors or pounding on tables back and forth in competitive displays of increasing outrage, let's start with this. Picture someone who loves you. A child or grandchild, a spouse, a partner, a soul friend, a parent, or what-have-you. Got someone in mind? Good. Now let me ask: where is that love located? Or to put it differently, how do you know that this person loves you? My guess is that they may tell you in words, but if all you had was empty talk and actions that didn't line up with those words, you would doubt that the words were true. If somebody told you they loved you but were never willing to let themselves be inconvenienced for your sake, or never went out of their way to show you that you were important to them, or if they abused or manipulated you while professing their undying love, you would say that their words are a lie. Their actions don't earn your love in return, but rather they reveal if their professed love for you is real, or just an act. Like the hair band Extreme taught us all in the year 1990, "More than words is all you have to do to make it real/ Then you wouldn't have to say that you love me, 'cause I'd already know."

Or to slightly modify our thought experiment, imagine your little child has climbed up into a tree and is now afraid to get down on his own. You call up, "Jump, and I'll catch you," and your child refuses, because he says he's too afraid. So now you ask, "Do you trust me? I promise I'll catch you!" But as much as your child insists he trusts you, he won't jump to let himself be caught in your arms at ground level. Do the words "I trust you" get him safely to the ground? No--at some point you'll know whether this child's trust in you is real because he'll jump and you'll catch him. In any case, it's your arms that do the saving, but let's not pretend that just saying the words "I trust you" actually mean there is trust. Trust is the leap into your arms.

James is really just saying the same thing. Actually trusting God means letting God direct what we do, because we dare to commit our lives into God's good hands. Caring for our neighbors is one way of actually trusting God, because God has called us to love the people around us. Giving of our resources to help someone in need is a way of trusting God, because it requires that we rely on God to provide for our own needs as well. Refusing to return evil for evil is a way of trusting God, too, because God has dared us to answer evil with good even if that sounds naive and ridiculous to the watching world.

Saying we believe in Jesus but then refusing to take him seriously when he calls us to welcome the stranger, love our enemies, and care for the prisoner or the sick reveals that we don't really trust what he says. And as Dallas Willard put it so directly, "Saying Jesus is Lord can mean little in practice for anyone who has to hesitate before saying Jesus is smart." If we don't think Jesus is trustworthy in how he calls us to live and to follow him, I don't know what it can mean to say we trust him. Faith in Jesus can't be reduced to memorizing a list of facts about him--it is a call to trust the way that Jesus points us in, which always takes the form of embodied action: the act of kindness, the choice for generosity, and the daily practices of mercy, truth-telling, and integrity.

Maybe then James isn't really attacking "faith" so much as he is revealing that trusting God cannot be reduced to merely mouthing words. He is simply pointing out that if we say, "I trust you, Jesus" but are still stuck up in the precariously cracking tree branch rather than leaping into his arms to catch us, we don't really trust. And if we say we believe in Jesus but can't bring ourselves to trust that Jesus knows what he's talking about, we don't really have faith in him, either.

And on that point, even old Martin Luther himself really turned out to be in agreement. As Luther himself wrote, "Faith is a living, daring confidence, so sure and certain that the believer would stake his life on it a thousand times." It's letting go of the tree branch and trusting we will be caught because God has promised to catch us. Letting ourselves be caught doesn't "earn" us any points--that's now this works. Letting ourselves be caught is what it looks like to trust.

Today, let's get beyond memorized creeds as our evidence of faith, and simply leap where Jesus has promised to catch us, and to go where Jesus leads us.

Lord Jesus, we live in a time of empty talk. Don't let us settle for it--help us to trust you enough to live that faith out in our actions, our choices, and our habits.

Better Than Gravity--August 25, 2023

Better Than Gravity--August 25, 2023

"Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and do not rely on your own insight. In all your ways acknowledge him, and he will make straight your paths.  Do not be wise in your own eyes; fear the LORD, and turn away from evil. It will be a healing for your flesh and a refreshment for your body." [Proverbs 3:5-8]

To be honest, I believe in gravity because I don't really have a choice.  Like it or not, understand it or not, I have to operate every day as though there is a force pulling me to the ground so that I don't end up in a neck brace thinking I can fly or leap over tall buildings in a single bound. 

In the same way, I believe that the sun will come up every day (and that with each new day I have to get a certain amount of work done with the time I have in it), because it is unavoidable to do so.  Try as I might to wish the world away when I don't want to get out of bed on any given morning, the world keeps on spinning and the hours still keep ticking away.

There are a number of things like that that require my belief if I want to cope at all with the world as it is.  A lot of them are impersonal forces or laws of physics--gravity, time, my body's needs for heat, food, and water, and things like that.  These are things I believe, not because they care about me, but because they describe the world I live in, and I need to be aware of them if I want to keep living. I don't for a moment think that gravity gives a care about whether I fall or stand upright.  Time doesn't love me, and the sun doesn't have any emotional commitment to the question of how I use my day as it tracks across the sky.  These are impersonal realities, and they will continue to do their thing whether or not I acknowledge them--the only question is whether I will make my life harder by denying their existence.

But I have a different relationship with God.  I am convinced that my trust in God is grounded in something different, something more than gravity, even though it is still a kind of belief.  I believe in the force of gravity, but I know gravity doesn't have an opinion about me--it can't.  But when I say I believe in God, it's more than mentally acknowledging that God exists. It is trust that the God I believe in also loves me, and in fact has loved me first.

When the Scriptures direct us to "trust in the LORD with all your heart," it's that kind of faith.  The writer behind these few verses from Proverbs doesn't simply mean, "Mentally acknowledge the existence of God as one impersonal force in the universe like time, gravity, or the laws of thermodynamics."  No, the wise author wants us to trust that God not only exists but loves us enough to want our well-being and to guide us in good paths.  That's better than gravity, which will still pull on me all the same whether I am walking on solid ground or slipping off the edge of a cliff (even when the posted signs warned me not to stick my toes over the edge).  When it comes to me falling to my death or staying safe on a good path, gravity doesn't have a horse in that race.  God does, and God always seeks my well-being--and not just mine, but the wholeness of all people and of all creation. 

That's why it is worth trusting in God, in the sense the Scriptures mean it.  We sometimes hear this word from the Proverbs and assume that God's help is only held out to us as a reward for being good little trusters.  We can hear it as if the meaning is, "If you believe in God well enough (Hard enough?  Correctly enough?  With enough emotional fervor?), then God will do good things for you in return."  And then it becomes a transaction or a deal, a matter of conditional commitments, like some kind of spiritual quid pro quo.  

But that's not really what's going on here.  The idea behind this passage from Proverbs is more like, "Trust God, because God really is trust-worthy.  Because God actually cares about your well-being, you can trust God to keep you pointed in a good direction."  In other words, because God already loves you (and me, and all of us), you can believe it when God instructs us to orient our lives toward, say, justice and mercy, rather than self-centeredness and cruelty.  And that's just it--all of God's direction to us, whether in the form of commandments like "Don't murder," or "Don't covet what your neighbor has," or in broader terms like "compassion" or "generosity" or "faithulness" or "forgiveness," is all a matter of God guiding us away from the cliff and toward a reliable road.  When God directs us to love our neighbors, or when Jesus elevates that to include loving our enemies, it's not in order to make us earn God's love, but because God already loves us and knows that the best possible life is the one that flows from love of friend and foe alike.  When God directs us to give our resources so that our neighbors can eat, or to forgive the debts of those around us, or to care for the most vulnerable among us (yes, even at the cost of our own luxury or convenience), it's because God knows that these are part of a way of life that means wholeness for all.  And when we can trust that God loves us, then doing the things God directs us to do is no longer a matter of racking up points or earning favor--it's a matter of believing that God knows what is good for all of us, all around.  

Today, there will be things we have to believe in, regardless of whether those realities care about us or not--from physical forces like gravity to the enforcement of speed limits to limited number of hours in the day.  And we will have to accept on faith that these things are there, even though we don't always like them, and even though those impersonal forces don't particularly care about us.  But in the midst of all of those, we are also invited to trust that there is One who does care about us, whose love for us is the ground under our feet already, and who seeks the well-being of all the universe.  Today, let that be the path you walk on, and let's see where it takes us.

Lord Jesus, help us to trust that you have our interests at heart, as well as those of the whole world, so that we can trust what you tell us and go where you direct us.

Honest About Our Doubts—August 24, 2023

Honest About Our Doubts—August 24, 2023

“[Jesus] answered them ‘You faithless generation, how much longer must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.’ And they brought the boy to him. When the spirit saw him, immediately it convulsed the boy, and he fell on the ground and rolled about, foaming at the mouth. Jesus asked the father, ‘How long as this been happening to him?’ And he said, ‘From childhood. It has often cast him into the fire and into the water, to destroy him; but if you are able to do anything, have pity on us and help us.’ Jesus said to him, ‘If you are able!—All things can be done for the one who believes.’ Immediately the father of the child cried out, ‘I believe; help my unbelief!’” [Mark 9:19-24]

This man, this father’s, name was Steve. I am sure of it. I am him.

And he bears your name, too.

Each of us has been in that place of tension in between doubt and faith, of belief and unbelief at the same time. Maybe, to be honest, we live most of our lives there, in that space of believing unbelief in the power of God.  And maybe, when we know we are deeply beloved by God, we are also able to be honest enough to tell God that we struggle with that doubt.  When you know you are loved you can quit pretending and trust that it is safe to be honest with the One who loves you.

That’s what this man’s exclamation really is, too—a statement of utter honesty. “I believe; help my unbelief!” It could be our daily prayer each morning, except that most of the time we are too chicken to be so honest and forthright with God.

We believe—we do—in the living God. We believe that this God we have come to know is faithful, and good, and generous, and merciful, and gracious, and truthful, and powerful. We have a long list of other adjectives to describe what we believe about God, and we have an even longer list of facts and propositions we have been taught about God: that God created the universe, or that God freed a nation of slaves from Pharaoh, or that God came among us in Jesus, or that God can raise the dead. And we really do believe these things about God.

But we also struggle, too.

We believe (so we say) that God made the universe and made it good… while at the same time acting like we own it all, and that all of creation is there for our exploitation, and we have a way of refusing to see the image of God in whatever subset of human beings we don't happen to like.

We believe (so we say) that God set the slaves free in Egypt… while at the same time finding it hard to believe that God really does care about other injustices that seem to go uncorrected, since we see so much wrong with the world and so many people stepped on in life. Or worse yet, we refuse to even acknowledge the ongoing injustices in the world around us, because we are complicit in so much of its rottenness, and we don't want to have to hear the truth about ourselves.

We believe (so we say) that God came among us in Jesus, and classically, Christians have believed it is right to call Jesus as "Lord"… and yet we listen more closely sometimes to the voice of our other lords: the loud voice of Caesar and modern-day demagogues, the tea-leaves to be read about the market, the bank balance, the television commercials and internet ads telling us we need more.

We believe (so we say) that God can raise the dead… and yet we let our spirits be paralyzed with the fear of dying, and we allow that fear to make us see others around us as enemies to be fought and threats to be stopped, rather than neighbors whom God has sent across our path.

We believe, and we doubt.

We trust, and we question. Let us just be honest about that, at least as honest as the father in these verses.

We can dare to be so honest because—as we are learning from this story, and will see even more clearly by its conclusion—it is safe to tell the truth around Jesus. Even when the truth means admitting we have had flimsy faith. Doubt does not stop Jesus. His miracle-working power is not fueled by our faith like gasoline, and he does not need a certain percentage of pure faith, of high-octane belief, in order to complete his divine mission.

Jesus--and we must be absolutely clear about this--is not Tinker Bell. He does not need us to clap and say, “I do believe in pixies!” in order for his abilities to be effective. He is not an engine that runs on our faith. Jesus' power doesn't come from us--not from our believing hard enough or correctly enough, not from our achievements or charitable donations, and not from selling out for more political influence or campaign contributions. If anything, Jesus is a generator that makes our trusting him possible. And that means Jesus is not waiting around for us to believe hard enough, or strongly enough, or well enough, or accurately enough in order to then unleash his divine healing. Jesus can work with doubt-and-faith. Jesus can handle someone who comes to him saying, “I believe; help my unbelief!” Jesus can work with that kind of honesty—it’s the self-deceived religious pretenders who don’t give Jesus anything he can work with. If anything, it's the ones who can admit their doubts who are showing a deep enough trust in him that they can speak those doubts and struggles out loud.  Almost like when your kid is polite and civil around strangers but can lash out at you with their rawest emotions, it can actually be a sign that they feel comfortable enough around you to vent while they don't feel that way around others.  Jesus' enduring love for us makes it possible for us to be honest with him about our unbelief in a way that lets us set aside our religious pretensions.

Today, let us be honest with Jesus… and with ourselves. We come before Jesus—as we always do—with faith that is still fearful, with belief that is still bashful, with courage that is still more than a little cowardly. We are fickle trusters, and we are often half-hearted beleivers. But because Jesus is supremely faithful to us and does not flake out on us, despite our doubting, we have hope. We know we are beloved, even if there's not a lot more we are confident in.  The moment we start looking at ourselves, and at the quality (or lack thereof) of our faith in God, we are going to be disappointed. But the moment we are looking at Jesus, even with a look of caution and doubt in our eyes when we do it, there is hope, because Jesus is faithful, no matter what we bring to the table.

The power is in Jesus. It does not hang on our contributions, which also means that Jesus is not beholden to us for the favors we do for him, the prayers we offer him, or the things we offer him.

The more we come to experience that unrelenting, unwavering trust-worthiness of Jesus, the more we may discover our unbelief giving way to an honest and sturdy trust in him.

Today, what if we did not spend energy or time thinking we could hide our doubts from God, and instead, if we dared to trust that God is strong enough to take them, and gracious enough to bear with them? What would happen if we realized that we do not factor into the equation for where Jesus' power comes from?

What if we let the father’s words about his son be our prayer? Let us find out.

Lord Jesus, we believe. Help our unbelief.

Ecclesiology by Sinatra--August 23, 2023

Ecclesiology by Sinatra--August 23, 2023

"[The believers] devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching and fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.  Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles. All who believed were together and they had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need. Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day, the Lord added to their number those who were being saved." [Acts 2:43-47]

Frank Sinatra once famously sang, "Love and marriage, go together like a horse and carriage, this I tell you, brother--you can't have one without the other."  The whole song just expounds on that theme--that, in the songwriter's eyes, you can't romantically love someone without also having the obligation of marrying them.  In fact, Sinatra double down in the bridge of the song:  Try, try, try and separate them--it's an illusion; try, try, try and you will only come--to this conclusion: Love and marriage..."

Well, let's set aside for a moment the way cultural mores and expectations have changed since the era of that song (and if you would like to have a conversation about why I still think the promises of marriage matter in a time when there is much less social pressure to get married, or if you would like to talk about what makes marriage more than a piece of paper, let me know, and we can have that conversation another time).  For now, what I want to zero in on is the idea in Sinatra's song that these two separate entities, "love" and "marriage" are really not that separate.  In fact, maybe, as the song would have it, one inevitably follows the other.  Maybe they're more like two sides of the same coin.  And maybe there are places in our life of faith that work the same way.

We've been looking all this month at the same kind of connection in the Scriptures to "love" and... "faith."  We've been exploring in passage after passage how the Biblical writers connect believing in God with growing in love, to the point that I hope it's clear that these are really inseparable.  In fact, you get the sense from the book of Acts that the first generation of Christians saw their belief and their practice all as one complete way of life, rather than just a matter of head knowledge or emotions in the heart.  As the narrator Luke notes, the Jerusalem church certainly learned and believed certain things--they were "devoted to the apostles' teaching."  But let's not imagine that was primarily a series of complex lectures in systematic theology--they were telling the stories of Jesus, reminding each other of the actions of Jesus, and passing along the teachings of Jesus.  To be sure, that would have meant also teaching things like, "When he rose from the dead, we became convinced that Jesus wasn't just a prophet, but the Messiah of God!" or even something like, "Jesus is what the heart of God looks like in a human life."  But those were also woven through and through with the practices of living in community.  

The early church wasn't just a primitive theology class--it was a community that learned love together.   They didn't just sit in a lecture hall as Professors Peter or Andrew read from their dissertations.  They shared food. They pooled their resources.  They took care of one another.  And they gave what they had so that others could have enough to live. In other words, they practiced love. And they apparently saw all of that as just as much a part of "being Christian" as it was to sing hymns to Jesus and believe in him as the Son of God.  They would have said you can't separate faith from love, or their relationship with God from their relationships with others.  "You can't have one without the other," as Sinatra crooned.

This is really important to notice, because sometimes in our day we church folks not only make the mistake of separating what we think of as "faith" from what we think of as "love," but we sometimes prioritize "faith" (often reduced to memorizing-the-correct-facts-about-God) over "love" toward other people.  Often over the last two millennia, we have settled for saying that Christianity is just about getting into heaven when we die, and that the way to guarantee you get into the right place when you die is to believe the correct propositions about Jesus, or the Bible, or how old the earth is, or how many sacraments there are, and so on.  And in my tradition, Lutherans in particular have sometimes painted themselves into an additional corner by saying things like, "We know that we can't do anything to earn God's love or favor by our good deeds or acts of love, so we should intentionally NOT talk about any of those things, and instead spend all of our time splitting hairs on doctrinal matters so we can find clearer and clearer ways of believing the right theology."  So we can end up with not only a separation of "love" and "faith," but you also end up smothering the voice of "love" altogether.  And when Christianity does that, you end up with a church that prides itself on its rightness while it ignores the needs of its neighbors.  

In our day we sometimes hear folks complain about the church getting active in matters of "social justice" or "humanitarian relief" because, folks say, the church's only job is preaching the gospel.  But again, that seems like it accepts the idea that there's a split between "faith" and "love" and that we somehow have to pick one or the other.  And it makes it sound like God only cares about the souls of people after they die, rather than the bodies of people while they live, too.  And that's just not what we see in the early church here in Acts.  This snapshot we get from Acts holds "faith" and "love" together, so that the early community didn't even see them as separate subjects, but limbs of the same tree, or maybe motions in the same dance. We learn from the teachers who help us understand what God is like and who Jesus is, and we care for the people around us, who also embody the presence of Jesus for us, too.  Both are true at the same time.  And every time we try, try, try to separate what-we-believe from how-we-love, we discover, like the song says, "it's an illusion."

Maybe the realization we need to recover in this day is that from God's perspective, God is not interested in making just merely people who know things in our brains, but people who live fully in light of Jesus--that will not only affect our heads but also our hands, our hearts, and our homes.

How will we follow the pattern we've seen here in Acts today--how will we connect what we have learned about God in Christ with the choices we make with our money, time, and resources?  And as we live out those answers, maybe we'll discover that our lives feel like they hang together more fully--like what goes on in our minds is really of one piece with what goes on in our actions, checkbooks, calendars, and hearts.

Lord Jesus, take all of who we are--not just what we believe about you, but also how we embody your love.

Faith, Religion, Love--August 22, 2023

 

Faith, Religion, Love--August 22, 2023

"If any think they are religious, and do not bridle their tongues but deceive their hearts, their religion is worthless. Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to care for orphans and widows in their distress, and to keep oneself unstained by the world." [James 1:26-27]

I've heard it so often, I've lost count: "I'm spiritual, but I'm not religious." My bet is you've heard that line, too. Maybe you've said it yourself.

The description, "spiritual-but-not-religious," is one of the ways folks express two things at once: for one, how frustrated, disappointed, and hurt they have been with organized religion like churches, congregations, and the industry of "Christian" products out there, and at the same time, how these folks are still open to the idea that there is more to life than shallow consumerism and hamster-wheel drudgery. For a lot of folks who identify themselves as "spiritual but not religious," they are open to the idea that God is real, and maybe even find Jesus compelling, but have been so let down before by church abuse, religious bigotry, blatant hypocrisy, and the co-opting of faith by political parties that they feel that "The Church" (or any one theology, tradition, denomination, or religious faith) is more trouble than it's worth.

These folks are aching to connect with more than just the shallow stuff of life, but they feel like they've been burned before somewhere along the way, maybe by someone who told them they didn't really belong, or spewed hatred while convinced they had God's endorsement on their bigotry, or had turned the Infinite Mystery of God into a neat-and-tidy system that rang hollow. Maybe they're rightly skeptical of Respectable Religious Leaders (pastors like me included, as well as celebrity church figures on TV, or those who entwine themselves with elected officials or political candidates) who seem to have unquestionable answers, and can bear no doubt or divergence from an "official" version of orthodoxy. Maybe the folks who are "spiritual but not religious" just think any time we try and pin down the divine we are likely to just be making idols out of ourselves. Nadia Bolz-Weber has put it so powerfully before: "People don't leave Christianity because they stop believing in the teachings of Jesus. People leave Christianity because they believe in the teachings of Jesus so much, they can't stomach being part of an institution that claims to be about that and clearly isn't."

So, yeah, if you have ever found yourself in the position of describing yourself as "spiritual, but not religious," there are plenty of folks of integrity, compassion, and yes, of faith, who are right there with you. In fact, it seems to me that James himself, this co-writer of the Bible, has a lot of sympathy for folks who have been let down by the rotten things people say and do in the name of "religion." If you've ever been let down by the ways Respectable Religious folks seem so unlike Jesus, James is right there with you.

But James points us in a rather different direction. He is out to recover the "R-word" by reclaiming what "religion" is all about by pointing us to the practice of love in public action. James doesn't just say, "If you are disappointed with religion, then let's all do our own thing and hope it makes us feel closer to the divine." I think that's because James is not naive, and he knows that we are just as likely to be self-absorbed and hypocritical on our own as we are in groups. And James' problem with "religion" doesn't seem to be the idea of committing to a certain way of life--he just wants to make sure that our way of life is rooted in love for the most vulnerable rather than showing off our piety to impress others (or God). So he sees a value in the habit and rhythm of regularly engaging in certain practices that help us grow in love and help our neighbors--in fact, I dare say that's what James thinks the heart of "religion" is.

If our default definition of "religion" has to do with mindless repetition of empty words, or making dogmatic proclamations for the sake of keeping people out, or ritual acts we think God needs us to perform in order to keep us out of hell, James says we need a different definition, not to give up on the word itself. Interestingly, many think that our English word "religion" comes from Latin roots that mean something like "what you are bound to"--as in, what are the things that bind us to God and to one another. In that case, the right question to ask is, "What is worth binding our lives to?" We human beings can't help but devote ourselves to something; the trouble is that so often we devote ourselves, either to lesser things or outright garbage. We give our time and attention (and money) to countless screens, large and small. We give our allegiance to political ideologies that bring out the worst in us and nurse the apathy and cruelty in us. We recite whole litanies of arrogant and cruel words to one another on social media, insisting we are doing it to defend the cause of righteousness, when really we embarrassing ourselves and spoiling for a fight. We turn our focus onto ourselves, our self-interest, and our own benefit. And then we have a way of dressing all of those things in the language of God to justify ourselves. Well, yeah, of course that kind of "devotion" is rotten!

James reminds us, though, that just because human beings often dedicate their lives to terrible things (or hypocritical things), it doesn't mean the problem is with the idea of being dedicated or devoted to anything at all--it's about what we are willing to devote our lives to. And for James, since none of this is about impressing God, the thing to devote our lives to is the ways we care for those most at-risk and vulnerable in society. Caring for "orphans and widows" is a sort of standard biblical shorthand for God's command that we look out for those who are on the margins in society. In the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament sometimes), there was a standard, recurring principle of providing for "the widow, the orphan, and the alien/foreigner." For James, who sees his audience as the outsiders and aliens living in the midst of a hostile world, the addition of the third, "foreigners," was redundant. But in directing his readers to care for "orphans and widows in their distress," James points us to look out for the needs of those who are least able to provide for themselves and to take their well-being as our own responsibility. James is directing us, in other words, to what modern-day culture calls "social justice."

For James, that kind of "religion" is always done as an expression of the character of the God we believe in. It's never about earning points with that God (that ends up turning other people into pawns in my chess-game to "win" eternal life, rather than people worthy of love and care just by virtue of being alive). But it's also never just about private "feelings"--the kind of "religion" James cares about takes concrete, practical, and public action to care for the people most on the margins around us, because that is where God's heart it pointed, too.

And if that's what James would have us devote our lives to, well, that's something worth binding ourselves to, I think. That's the kind of "religion" that matters, because it is essentially about loving God and loving our neighbors--knowing that we and our neighbors are beloved of God already. James isn't here to give up on the idea of "religion"--just religion done badly, done selfishly, or done hypocritically. And if I use the slogan "I'm spiritual but not religious" to rationalize withdrawing from the needs of my neighbor in the pursuit of my own "inner peace" or fulfillment, I'm missing the point, too, from a different direction. That's why James takes the approach of recovering the R-word--he's ready to give up on all the ways we distort religion into some kind of pious posturing, but he still sees worth in our regular practice to love our the most vulnerable neighbors around us. And the more we make a habit of seeking the well-being of the most at-risk among us--whether it's those more likely than you to get sick with preventable illness, or those more at risk of not having enough to eat, or those most in need of encouragement and love--the more we are shaped by love... for love. That's worth giving our lives to--because that's also what makes us more fully alive as well.

So if you're at that place of being disappointed enough with organized religion that you are ready to give up on the whole project, know that you've got James at your side--but that he points us all the same to a recovered sense of what "religion" was meant to be all along. It's always been about love--the love for God that is expressed in the concrete actions of love for the marginalized folks around us.

When love for neighbors takes form beyond empty wishing or mushy feelings, that's what religion is meant to be: using these bodies of ours to care for the bodily needs of everyone around us. And that--well, that, I can see myself giving my life to.

Lord God, bind us in love toward you and those people whom you love who are most in need of knowing your love. Let that be our religion, and let it be well-pleasing to you.

Open to Surprise--August 21, 2023

 

Open to Surprise—August 21, 2023

“And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD, to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD, and to be his servants, all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it, and hold fast my covenant—these I will bring to my holy mountain, and make them joyful in my house of prayer; their burnt offerings and their sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples. Thus says the Lord GOD, who gathers the outcasts of Israel, I will gather others to them, besides those already gathered.” [Isaiah 56:6-8]

Imagine being told all your life, “This is the way things are. Don’t question it.” and then somehow you become convinced that God is telling you, “I’m doing a new thing—it will shake up everything you thought you knew.”

Imagine having been taught, “God’s Word decrees that People-Like-Us are acceptable, but People-Like-Them are not,” and then hearing a voice you were sure was from God saying, “I am welcoming the People-Like-Them, on my own authority.”

Imagine growing up with your family, your teachers, your leaders, and your whole culture telling you that no less than God almighty hated some whole groups of people, and then getting a message from that very same God saying, “I have invited those very folks to my house.”

Now you’re getting close to what a scandalous thing the prophet is doing here in what we call Isaiah 56. The prophet is telling people who have heard all their lives—and then taught the same to their children—that they weren’t supposed to have anything to do with people from other nations. Gentiles (foreigners) were not to mix with them, worship with them, associate with them, or intermarry with them—and they had a stack of Bible verses to back up those claims. And on top of that, there were folks who were so convinced that foreigners were a danger to the people of Israel and Judah that they drove out all the foreigners they found living among them and tried to split up or cancel marriages where Israelites had married foreign spouses (see Nehemiah 13 if you want to check that I’m not making that part up).

So you had people convinced they had the backing of Bible verses telling them that foreigners were all bad, that they could never belong to God’s people, and that marriages with them had to be stopped. They were certain they were just following the commandments of God, and that was the end of the discussion—sort of an ancient equivalent of the “The Bible said it. I believe it. That settles it.” kind of mentality. And then along comes Isaiah 56—these words many of us heard on this past Sunday—who says, “God is doing a new thing, and the people who had previously been excluded will now be welcomed.” That’s not just about the gutsiest thing I can imagine—it’s also a leap of faith.

The prophet speaking in Isaiah 56 is convinced that he’s not just making stuff up; he dares to believe that the voice prompting him to say that God is now welcoming “foreigners” and “outcasts” is the very Spirit of God. He’s not looking to stir the pot, become famous as a provocateur, or advance his own personal agenda. He would probably rather have lived a quiet life keeping his head down and not upsetting people’s assumptions—he would have gotten in less trouble. And for that matter, Isaiah knows his Bible; he knew the commandments from Deuteronomy about foreigners, and he knew that it was Respectable Religious Leaders who were now trying to split up marriages and kick out foreigners from Judah. The prophet in Isaiah 56 knew he would be accused of “rejecting the Bible” or “disobeying the authorities” by announcing that God was now welcoming foreigners, but he did it anyway—because he was convinced that it was exactly what the living God was directing him to say. It was an act of faith, not an attack on faith, to say that God was doing a new thing.

And yet he did it anyway. That’s exactly what we mean when we talk about faith making love possible. Isaiah didn’t reject his faith in God in order to say that foreigners and outcasts were now to be welcomed—he was sure down to his bones that it was exactly what his faith in God was leading him to say. We Lutherans sometimes talk about having a “Here I stand—I can do no other” kind of moment: those times when you are convinced that God is leading you in a certain direction, even if everybody else in the Respectable Religious community thinks it’s wrong and is threatening you over it. Luther faced excommunication and threats on his life for his moment of conviction; and tradition holds that Isaiah met with even harsher resistance (the Talmud records a tradition that the king had Isaiah sawn in half for his message!). But Isaiah found the courage to speak a word of love to those deemed unacceptable, not by giving up on his faith in God, but exactly because he dared to trust that it was God who had spoken to him with a new word, in spite of what everybody else was sure “the Bible said.” That can’t have been easy; it never is.

Sometimes I think it’s helpful in our own day to re-discover these kinds of passages in the Bible, and to realize that they were all over the place. The prophets were constantly taking what conventional wisdom said about God, even when it was backed up by Bible verses, slogans of the day, or the official decrees of the powerful, and they were always saying some variation on, “But now God is doing a new thing.” That had to be difficult, not just because of the fear of what others might do to them, but because it often meant breaking with what they had always been told was “God’s decree.” The prophets were never looking to start their own religion, reject God, or make themselves leaders of some new cult. They were striving to listen for the voice of God—and maybe that’s exactly what set them apart. Rather than just assuming they already knew what God was going to say and reciting those assumptions (like the way the auto-text function on your phone or computer will sometimes make wildly incorrect assumptions about what you are trying to write!), the prophets listened… and they trusted. They were willing to let God surprise them, and that openness to God doing a new thing is exactly what faith really looks like. Once God can’t surprise you any more, it’s a sure sign you’ve replaced the real God with a lifeless idol, whether made out of gold, carbon-steel, or ideology. Isaiah allowed his faith in God to let him listen when God was speaking a new thing, and that new thing meant a loving welcome to foreigners who used to be deemed not-good-enough and unworthy.

If we are going to be people of faith on this day, it’s going to mean following the lead of Isaiah 56—that is, we’re going to have to dare to listen and let God speak on God’s terms, rather than assuming we already know what God is allowed to say. It’s going to mean asking God for the courage, not just to be surprised, but to speak what God tells us, even if it points in a wider direction than we expected, and even if other folks swear up and down they’ve got a stack of Bible verses why God isn’t “allowed” to do what God says God is going to do. And for us who are followers of Jesus, it’s going to mean we keep going back to Jesus to let him redefine our understanding of God and our pre-conceptions about God’s ways, rather than forcing Jesus to fit into what we have already decided.

That’s a big ask of any of us, but prophets like Isaiah tell us it’s worth it. When we actually trust God enough to let God surprise us, we often find that the new thing God is doing is an even more expansive love than we dared to imagine. And for those of us, like myself, who would have been counted among the “foreigners” and “outcasts” in Isaiah’s day (since, at the very least, I’m not of Jewish ancestry), I realize that my own belonging is only possible because at some point a brave prophet started listening when God said, “I’m up to something new—the excluded ones are now welcomed in.”

How might God surprise us today… if we listen?

Lord God, give us the faith to let you surprise us, and then the courage to speak what you tell us when you do.

All The Unexpected Places--August 18, 2023

All The Unexpected Places--August 18, 2023

"He said, 'Go out and stand on the mountain before the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.' Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind; and after the wind and earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake; and after the earthquake a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave.  Then there came a voice to him that said, 'What are you doing here, Elijah?'" [1 Kings 19:11-13]

God is everywhere, that much is surely true.  And yet it takes a certain kind of vision--what we usually call "faith"--to recognize God in the places that don't seem majestic... or marvelous... or mighty.  Anybody can look at a mountain and say, "That is so big and grand--it makes me think that God is big and grand, too."  Anybody can look at a glorious sunrise as the glowing orb of the dawning sun scatters pinks and oranges and purples across the blues of the fading night, and conclude, "A beautiful God has created such beauty."  Those are all true and lovely observations, but they are also pretty slow and easy pitches right across the plate.

It is harder, however, to recognize God's presence in the ICU waiting room, as nervous relatives pace and sit in awkward silence over bad vending machine coffee, waiting for news and fearing to hear it when it actually comes.

It is more difficult to sense God in a jail cell, or in the rubble where your bombed out village was when the invading army attacked, or in the uncomfortable quiet before an intervention for a family member who is drinking themselves to death.

And in a culture obsessed with "winning" and "greatness" it is hard to spot God among the losers (or--gasp!--as a loser with nail marks on his hands), the left-out, and the least.

We tend to want our deities to show up in obvious ways: with power and glory, and a side of shock and awe.  A God who makes an entrance with a whirlwind, or an earthquake, or a fire would command respect and impress the neighbors. But Elijah has been given the peculiar kind of vision that comes with faith, and he knows to recognize God in all the least-likely, most unexpected places where respectable deities don't even bother making an appearance. Elijah's God--and ours--has never needed to impress, and so has never been afraid of leaving behind the special effect and CGI and just comes to be with us in silence.

I'm convinced that's because God is less interested in "wowing" us than in loving us, and because God isn't trying to kindle fear in us but to call forth faith in us.  And when you are acting out of love, you don't really care whether anybody else thinks you are foolish, silly, weak, or a "loser." You just care about meeting the ones you care about right where they are, just as they are. That's why God shows up where Elijah needs him--in the sound of sheer silence, and then with a voice that asks question rather than shouting slogans or barking orders.  

So God meets Elijah where the poor prophet's weary heart needs God to be--in silence, smallness, and weakness.  And for Elijah's part, Elijah dares to believe that God is meeting him there, rather than in all the overtly obvious places that speak of power and majesty, like a wind, an earthquake, or a fire.  God is reaching out to Elijah without the pomp and circumstance everyone expects for the divine, and without leading some heavenly military parade to intimidate the fearful prophet into getting back to work.  But rather God meets Elijah after all the hullaballoo has come and gone--in the stillness. That's a mark of love, I think. Anger needs to throw plates at the wall or kick the furniture (or if you're God, lob a lightning bolt).  Grief needs to scream sometimes.  But compassion is able to enter a situation in quiet, because the quiet allows for listening--and sometimes the other person in the room (or cave, in this story) needs to speak.  God creates a point in time and space where it is quiet enough for Elijah to say what he needs to say, because God cares for Elijah.  Love doesn't always need to go banging around on the pots and pans to get our attention; love can show up without fanfare in the silence.

And Elijah has trust enough to see that silence as a gift of grace.  He has trained his peculiar vision of faith so that he knows how to interpret the silence after the noisy things have passed.  When it gets quiet, Elijah believes that it doesn't mean God has left and Elijah's missed his chance to say what he needs to say; rather, he believes the silence is God's gift and that God is inviting him into the conversation.  And when even the silence itself isn't enough to prompt Elijah to vent what he has to vent, the voice comes with the invitation, "What are you doing here, Elijah?"  like a nudge to him that it's now time for him to unburden himself.  God creates the gift of a safe space for Elijah to pour out all that he's been keeping in.  And Elijah recognizes by faith what God is doing.

A great deal of the Christian faith is that kind of learning how to recognize God's presence in all the unexpected places: in silence rather than noise, in weakness rather than in shows of brute force and raw power, in listening rather than in barking threats or issuing decrees, in the nail-wounds of someone on a cross rather than in the proud mockery of the ones with the hammer.  But once we realize that God approaches us in utter love, we begin to see that God really is everywhere--even in places a respectable deity wouldn't be caught dead, like a borrowed grave outside Jerusalem for a couple of days one weekend.  Today, then, our task is to learn (or keep learning) to see faith as more than just reciting the approved set of theological propositions, but rather as the practice of learning to see God at work, even where we least expect.

Where might God meet you today?

Lord God, give us the eyes and the vision to see you where you are reaching out to meet us.

Fear, Love, and Raisins--August 17, 2023

Fear, Love, and Raisins--August 17, 2023

"Then the word of the LORD came to Elijah, saying, 'What are you doing here Elijah?' he answered, 'I have been very zealous for the LORD, the God of hosts; for the Israelites have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword. I alone am left, and they are seeking my life, to take it away." [1 Kings 19:9b-10]

You probably know that powerful line of Langston Hughes' poem that begins, "What happens to a dream deferred?  Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?"

That's such a poignant image to me--how the experience of being held down can make our souls shrivel up and dry out, to make us less than ourselves.  When that happens in life--whether from the systemic racism that prompted Hughes to write his poem, or from having to flee from war when enemy bombs and drones blow up your town, or from feeling utterly alone, or whatever else might cause it--it damages us, down to our deepest selves, like dry rot eating away at a piece of wood until it is just a brittle husk of its old self.  Those kinds of experiences have a way of stealing our joy, making us brittle with anxiety, provoking us to being defensive and prickly to others, and exhausting our energy until we feel like we can't go on.  Hughes captures in just a few words (the whole poem is only eleven lines) what it feels like, and how being starved of love can deform our spirits.

I think that's also going on in this story about the prophet Elijah, too, in this passage many of us heard last Sunday.  This is a moment in Elijah's life when he feels threatened and attacked by those in power, and even feels utterly let down by God.  He has been doing his best to be faithful and courageous, to speak up against the corruption and idolatry of the king and queen, and to deliver the messages God had sent him to bring.  And at this point in his life, Elijah feels like everyone is out to get him.  He doesn't stop believing that God exists (any more than he could give up believing in gravity because of being injured from a fall), but he does really struggle with whether God is with him... and whether God really does love him.  And you can tell, even in this short little scene, that Elijah is starting to shrivel up like a raisin.  He is getting bitter and resentful, and fear is making him prickly toward everyone--even God.

Now, there's good news eventually for Elijah--he's just a few verses away from hearing from God and being given the assurance that he's not alone after all, and never has been.  But for right now, I want to ask us to stay with this moment for a while, and to consider Langston Hughes' question again, from the perspective of Elijah's story.  It seems to me that Elijah is having one of those raisin-in-the-sun moments; all that has been done to him, and all that he's afraid will still happen to him is sapping him of his resilience and wearing him down.  And the one thing that had kept him going all this time was his confidence that he he was loved and cared for by God.  When everyone else was against him he found courage in his faith that God was with him.  And that courage allowed him to keep speaking up for those who needed someone to advocate for them, to keep taking a stand against the powers of the day, and to keep speaking God's word to the people God sent him to.  But after so much exhaustive, draining suffering, Elijah was really faltering.  He feels like he is wearing out, and that seems to have a lot to do with his ability to keep trusting that God has got his back.  Without that trust, he is ready to give up.  Without that deep confidence in God's love for him, he has a whole lot less reason to keep putting himself out there and serving the people he's been sent to.  Without the grounding and security that come from sensing you are held in God's care, Elijah is quicker to lash out, slower to keep getting back up, and less willing to risk himself for the sake of the people God loves.

I want to suggest that there's an important lesson for us there, just even in this part of the story.  It is harder for all of us, not just Elijah, to put the energy into loving others when we aren't confident of God's love for us.  When we doubt that God loves us, or when we think that God's love is conditional on our performance or successes, we shrivel up, too, like Langston Hughes' poetic raisin in the sun.  When we fear that we are not acceptable, and when we are anxious that we are left to face the world alone, it has a way of distorting our spirits and shrinking our souls.  It makes us less willing to keep trying, less able to love others, and quicker to attack and criticize others.  When fear takes a hold of us, we become less able to love--because we are less solidly rooted in the assurance that we ourselves are beloved.

And I want to suggest here that this is the real crisis of faith that Elijah is having here.  He's not doubting whether Yahweh is the true God and the other idols of the royal court are counterfeits.  He's not debating the existence of God, or questioning particular doctrines he was taught to memorize in childhood.  He's doubting whether God's love is for him in that moment, whether God really is on his side, and whether God's care will support him.  In other words, the point at which his faith is wobbly right now isn't a matter of incorrect theology, but about whether he can trust that the God he has always believed in is really still there for him.  

I think for many of us, and certainly for a lot of folks in the watching world who struggle with faith and with organized religion in general, that's the real question.  It's the question of whether God really is there for them--whether the God being preached about and sung to in hymns really loves them, accepts them, and cares for them.  Without that core assurance, "You are beloved," it is very hard to keep giving out energy from yourself to love others.   And without the deep confidence that God's love for you is unshakeable and unconditional, our spirits start to shrivel under the stifling power of fear. 

So by the end of this episode in Elijah's life, it will be clear that what he really needs is not a theology textbook to explain philosophical answers of why there is suffering in the world or how God's plan works.  Nor does Elijah just need more firepower and weapons to fight off the people he sees as his enemies.  What he needs to keep going is the assurance from God that he is not alone, and that he remains beloved.  That will give him the strength to keep on keeping on.  (Good news:  eventually that's what Elijah will get from God, just when he needs it, too!)

As we've been looking this month at how faith and love are related, I think this is something we need to hold onto for ourselves, too.  Ultimately what gives us the courage to love others is the confidence that we ourselves are already beloved, without conditions or fine print.  When we can trust reliably that God's love will not let us go, our own strength is renewed, so that we can keep caring for the people God sends across our path. And without that assurance, our hearts become hardened, and we become bitter, hostile, stingy, and apathetic.  We dry out and deflate like, well, raisins.

All too often, we church folk talk about the importance of faith as the thing that "gets us into heaven."  We can make it sound like faith is just a matter of memorizing answers so that we'll get accepted into the afterlife, like we're applying to get into an elite college in the sky.  We can treat faith like it's only an investment in our location for after we die, but as if it doesn't mean anything for how we live right now.  But I'm convinced from Elijah's experience in his dark night of the soul here that being able to trust God (which is really what faith is) is what either opens us up to joy, peace, and love... or what closes us off from them, and leaves us susceptible to dry rot of the soul.  When I can't bring myself to trust God's love for me, I am a lot less likely to keep giving love to the world around me.  But when I am grounded in the fact of God's deep care for me, I will find my own care for others keeps getting replenished like water coming up out of a spring that keeps filling the well.

Today, if you find yourself in one of those dry and shriveled times when you are running on empty, it's worth it to follow Elijah's example and be honest about it.  We start with honesty, and it gives us the ability to get help when we need it, to see how we've been running on fumes, and to get re-grounded in God's love.  That's why the heart of our Sunday worship services in the tradition from which I come are centered so consistently on the ways God's love and grace are communicated to us.  We are centered on God's gifts of love to us at the table, and God's promise of love for us in the water and in the Word, because those are the places where God's own love is made new and made tangible for us, so that we will find courage again to keep loving and to keep serving.

What happens when fear cuts us off from the assurance of God's love?  We do start to shrivel up like raisins in the sun.

Ah, but what happens when that love seeps in through the cracks and dry places in our parched souls to deepen our faith in the One who love us again?  We come back to life, like the deserts bursting into bloom.

Lord God, assure us of your love so that we can continue to love others with renewed energy and resilience.

What God Is Like--August 16, 2023

What God Is Like--August 16, 2023

"When [Peter and Jesus] got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him saying, 'Truly you are the Son of God.'" [Matthew 14:32-33]

Sure, Jesus does amazing things--downright miraculous wonders that boggle our minds and transcend our understanding of the rules of the universe.  And yes, it seems that at the end of this story about Jesus walking on water, his disciples conclude that this amazing feat of supernatural ability must mean Jesus is the Son of God.  So, indeed, witnessing this wonder led them to conclude something about Jesus' identity; their reasoning seems to be: "Jesus has authority over the wind and waves--therefore he must be divine."  But the flip-side is also true: they are learning something about what God is like.  

Jesus doesn't only show power in this story--he shows love. When he stoops to rescue a doubting Peter who has begun to sink beneath the waves, he shows compassion and mercy. So this isn't just a story that "proves" Jesus is God because Jesus shows supernatural power over the sea; it's a story that reveals God's care for those who are in trouble (even if they've gotten themselves into that trouble).  The "moral of the story" isn't just "Jesus is God because he can do powerful things," but "God is compassionate because Jesus does merciful things."  Both can be true at the same time, of course, but we are so quick to equate God with being powerful when Jesus goes to great lengths to show us God's deep kindness.  And that may be just what we need to be reminded of.  For many of us, our default assumption is that God has power beyond our own; the thing we really struggle to believe sometimes is that God has compassion beyond our own as well.

When the disciples "worship" Jesus, they are certainly showing honor and ascribing divinity to Jesus (after all, the Number One Rule of first-century Judaism is "We don't worship anything or anyone other than God!" so if you worship Jesus, you are making claims about Jesus and God), but they are also making a claim about who God is: God is like Jesus.  Jesus shows us God's care for little-faithed doubters like Peter, God's compassion for the harassed and helpless, and God's mercy toward the desperate.  Bowing down to Jesus points in both directions--it says Jesus is worthy of the kind of adoration and homage that is reserved only for God, and it says that God is the sort of Person who won't leave Peter to fend for himself when he's gotten in deep water and deeper trouble.

Sometimes, church folk assume that faith in God is mostly about believing that God can do impossible things, when Jesus keeps revealing to us a God who is not merely powerful but merciful. It's true that the ancient creeds of the Christian faith start by professing God's infinite creative power in making the universe, but the real reason the early church spent the time hashing out those documents like the Apostles' Creed and the Nicene Creed was to make it clear that what Jesus is like, God is like.  They weren't just saying, "Jesus turns out to have all the powers of God," but also, "God has all the compassion of Jesus, all the way down to the core of God's heart."

So when it comes to a story like this one from Matthew, the takeaway for our faith isn't just "Jesus must be God because he can do things we can't," but also, "God must be like Jesus, including when he pulls little-faithed Peter out of the waves." This scene dares us to believe that God must be Someone who loves and rescues the doubter in the water, rather than Someone who condemns people for inadequate faith.  It tells us as much about the heart of God as it does about the power of Jesus.

It's worth remembering that as we head out into the world today.  We Christians don't simply believe that God is an all-powerful force who goes around coercing people to do the divine will and zapping people who refuse or fail.  We believe that we have seen the fullness of God in Jesus, who saves Peter rather than leaving him in the water as punishment for not believing in him well enough.  And believing that, we let ourselves become people who are more interested in mercy than in brute force.

In other words, if we say we believe in the God revealed in Jesus, our faith should make us more more compassionate, particularly for the people who have gotten themselves into deeper trouble by their own doing and don't "measure up," rather than more critical and callous.  If our faith in God doesn't make us more loving, then our faith isn't really in Jesus, but in an idol of our own making.

What difference might it make for you in this week to let Jesus be both our best understanding of God and our template for love?

Lord Jesus, help us to see the very heart of God in you.

In the Grip of Grace--August 15, 2023

In the Grip of Grace--August 15, 2023

"But when Peter noticed the strong wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, 'Lord, save me!' Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him, 'You of little faith, why did you doubt?'" [Matthew 14:30-31]

If you should ever have to jump out of a plane, you are welcome to hold onto the parachute straps with your hands... but that's not what will get you safely onto solid ground.  Ultimately, it's not your grip on the parachute that matters, but the parachute straps' grip on you.

As you hurtle through the sky toward the earth, you might be petrified with fear and unable hold tightly to that backpack's shoulder straps.  Or maybe you will be so awestruck at the beauty and wonder of seeing the world from up in the sky like that that you don't even think about where to put your hands.  Or maybe you would be such a worrier (I think this would be me) that you would keep second-guessing where you were supposed to put your hands and end up moving your grip every few seconds, and end up not holding anything very tightly for very long.  Any of these might be possible, and yet the parachute can and does still function, because its ability to gently slow your fall to the ground does not depend on your grip--not on holding the right spot, and not on how tightly you hold.  The parachute holds you, and you are saved.

So if you ask me, just before we leap out of the open cabin door on the airplane, "Do you have faith that you'll survive this jump?" the most honest answer I can give is, "I trust the parachute to hold me, even if I don't have great faith in my own ability to hold onto the parachute straps."  And that is enough, because it's not a matter of how hard I believe in the parachute that makes it work.  Once it's strapped onto me, it will hold, even if I doubt it, and even if I am fidgeting the whole way down.

But--to the extent that I can trust the parachute to hold me, I can relax and let myself be held in the harness and actually enjoy the ride, take in the view, and pay attention to the wonder I am living through while I glide, rather than missing it all because I'm in a panic.  I can trust the parachute to do what it is supposed to do, and let it free me--or I can let fear make me miss out, only to discover that none of my frantic fussing made me any safer.

Well, you can see exactly where I'm headed with this little thought experiment, I'm sure.  This is precisely where Peter finds himself in the rest of this episode from the story many of us heard this past Sunday.  And this is precisely what it really means to be people of faith.  We need to get that straightened out in our minds, because sometimes Respectable Religious Folks make faith sound like an achievement--like it's a skill pertaining to how tightly we hold onto God, or how correctly we grasp theological truths.  We turn it into our accomplishment, and we end up saying that we're "saved by our faith," by which we mean that it's our grip on God that gets us to a safe landing.  Sometimes you'll hear church folks take that even farther and say that when you pray for healing of a sickness and it doesn't come, that it must be a sign that you don't have enough faith.  And sometimes, despite the insistence of Reformers like Martin Luther that there's nothing we can do to earn God's love or achieve God's grace, we turn "faith" into a matter of having the correct answers to a religion exam after death, and if we memorize the right words, we'll get into heaven because of our "faith." But all of that misses the point, truthfully, and confuses the question of who is holding whom in this parachute ride of life.

In the end, faith is about trusting that God's grip on us will not fail or falter, not about how confident we are in our ability to hold onto God.  That's what Peter learns here, too.  When he steps out onto the waves from the relative security of the boat, it's because he trusts Jesus, not because he believes in his own innate ability to defy the rules of physics and walk on water.  And when he starts to sink, it's because he's started letting fear make him panic rather than keeping focused on Jesus, who is worthy of his trust.  And when, at the last, Jesus asks Peter, "Why did you doubt?" he's not suggesting that there is a certain quantity of faith that makes you levitate, as if it were happy thoughts and pixie dust that enables the children to fly with Peter Pan.  It's a question of "Why couldn't you trust that I would keep you safe?  What kept you from believing that I would still hold onto you?"  And yet, even that question comes, not as a scolding or a punishment, but as Jesus has already taken Peter by the hand and pulled him back onto terra firma.

We Respectable Religious people can spend so much time policing whether other people are gripping the straps in the same way we are that we end up forgetting that it was never the grip of our fingers that kept the parachute in place.  Faith is really about trusting that God holds us, regardless of how tightly or even accurately we hold onto God.  Peter learns that in the water and Jesus grabs a hold of him.  Maybe we can start this day with that truth already holding us, too.

The thing is, once we realize that it's not about how hard we hold onto the straps, our hands are finally free to do something useful--something that conveys love for the people around us.  When I'm done worrying about whether my postmortem theology score will be high enough to get me into Honors Level Heaven, I can use my days and my energy to help a friend, be kind to a stranger, and comfort the heartbroken.  Love is possible when I'm finally secure in the truth that I'm held in the harness of God's grace, and at last I can quit fidgeting or comparing myself to the next person and their parachute pack.

Today, then, let's let ourselves be held in the grip of grace, so that our hands will be free to love the people around us.  And maybe our worried minds can relax enough to look around and appreciate the wonder of the view around us on the trip, confident that there will be solid ground to hold us at the time of our safe arrival.

Lord Jesus, hold us and give us the confidence of trusting that you will not let us go, so that we can use our time, energy, and passion for the sake of others around us.

Our Daily Leap--August 14, 2023

Our Daily Leap--August 14, 2023

"Immediately Jesus spoke to them and said, 'Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid." Peter answered him, 'Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.' He said, 'Come.' So Peter got out of the boat, started walking on the water, and came toward Jesus." [Matthew 14:27-29]

The more I think about this story, the more it hits me as one of the most practical, relevant, and immediately useful passages in the Bible.

I'll admit: I didn't always think that way.

This well-known story from Matthew's gospel, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, always used to hit me as completely untethered from my real-life existence and daily routines.  I've just never imagined myself in a position where I would ask Jesus to put me in a more dangerous situation like Peter does here.  I mean, asking Jesus to order you to walk out onto the water, defying all the laws of physics and everything your whole life (and job as a fisherman!) had taught you about the danger of the open water?  Who does that?  

And not to pile onto Peter, but this is a completely unnecessary miracle that's being asked for here, isn't it?  I mean, when a father pleads with Jesus for help to heal his dying daughter, we all see the merits of the request.  When Jesus interrupts a funeral procession to raise a mother's only son back to life and restore a grieving family, we can say, "Yes, this was a good use of Jesus' time and energy."  Even when Jesus (goaded into helping by his mother) turns water into wine at a wedding after the wine had run out, you can see the rationale of sparing a newly married couple shame and embarrassment on their wedding day.  All of those feel like valid, compassionate, and worthy occasions for a miracle. And then there's Pete here, basically provoking Jesus like a kid on the playground, "Do you DARE me to go out on the water? Jesus, do you DARE me? Huh? Huh?"  Somehow it just seems frivolous, even childish. 

At least that's how my thinking has often gone with this story.  And so every time I've read and reflected on this scene, I've found myself thinking this little episode has nothing to do with our actual lives. None of us are going to be out on the Sea of Galilee with Jesus, after all, right? At no point in your Monday will you be cruising through your to-do list and stop your errands to pray, "Hey, God, just to prove you're real, would you dare me to jump off a cliff and then give the ability to fly so I don't plummet to my death?"  No, all of that sounds more like the temptation the devil puts to Jesus in the wilderness: "Why don't you fling yourself from the pinnacle of the Temple, because you know that God will send angels to keep you from even stubbing your toe?"  None of that feels AT ALL like the real situations and real problems we face in our daily lives, right?

Except... that maybe we really are put in Peter's situation every day. At its core, Peter's call to Jesus on the water, "If it's really you, Jesus, call me out onto the water with you," is about whether Peter will dare to trust what Jesus says.  It's about whether or not Peter will take Jesus' view of the universe more seriously than all the other reasonable voices telling him it's insane.  And, from Peter's perspective, it's a matter of saying, "Jesus, if you say I can walk on water, I believe I can, even if everyone else thinks it's lunacy."  In other words, the question is whether Peter will take Jesus' word more definitive on his life than what anybody else says about him or "how the world works."

And in that sense, that's exactly what each of us has to ask and answer every morning when we put our feet on the floor to face the day.  Will I dare to believe what Jesus says about me, even if the world around tells me differently?  Will I dare to do what Jesus directs me to do, even if it runs against the grain of conventional wisdom?  Sure, that's less likely to be Jesus literally commanding you to go and step out of a boat and onto some choppy seas.  But Jesus does as a matter of fact call us to believe and live in some pretty countercultural ways that sound like nonsense to the rest of the world.  "Blessed are the poor?" Yeah, right.  "Happy are those who are excluded and left out because they care about justice?" Sounds preposterous.  "Love your enemies, and do good to those who would do violence to you?" Sounds as sensible as trying to step out of the boat and walk on water.

And that's just it: maybe we don't realize it because it's happening in our ordinary everyday lives, but we are constantly being dared to take Jesus' claims about us more seriously than what the world thinks is "the way things are." To a world bent on revenge and domination, we are called to answer evil with good and serve all people.  To a culture obsessed with getting profits and cutting deals to maximize your own advantage, Jesus calls us to do good precisely to the ones who can never pay us back.  To a society that wants to define our worth in terms of our cash value or tax bracket, followers of Christ are dared to believe we are beloved as we are, apart from our money, power, or status.  Each of those really is as bold a leap of faith as it was for Peter to step out onto the waves--it's just that we are called to make those steps daily in the course of our ordinary lives.

So maybe we really are in Peter's situation more often that we would like to admit.  We're always facing the question of whose voice we will take more seriously--the conventional wisdom that tells us one way of seeing the world, and the voice of Jesus whose vision seems altogether upside-down. It's a leap of faith, but it's a daily leap for us.  Maybe Peter's call out to Jesus, "If it's really you..." isn't frivolous after all--maybe it's the vital question we need to ask on this day, too.

Lord Jesus, call to us and remind us who we are as your beloved, so that we will find the courage to live out of step with the world around us.