Full Circle--December 1, 2023

Full Circle--December 1, 2023

"For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known. And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love." [1 Corinthians 13:12-13]

So now we've come full circle.  And it will not surprise you, I suspect, that the place we come back to, the place from which this year's devotional journey began, is love.  This year's exploration of what it means to "love in all directions" grew out of a month-by-month focus on each of the descriptions Paul gives of Christ-like love here in First Corinthians, going all the way back to "love is patient..." way back at last Advent, and working our way through the whole poem we call Chapter Thirteen of First Corinthians.  We've started with love, and we end with love, because--well, because that's how our whole life of faith as God's people works.  

We had to begin with love because, as we've seen over this year, our very existence comes to us as a gift we did not earn.  Creation is here, and us with it, because God loved us into being, to borrow the phrasing of Mr. Rogers.  We are here, not by our own achievement, and not by our own brute strength or cleverness, but because God decided the party wouldn't be complete without us, and the nature of love is to flow from the Lover to the Beloved--even if God has to invent the ones who will be loved in order for that to happen. So of course, we start with love as the gift of God.

And just as obviously, we come back to love as the goal of our existence.  For one thing, that's because we are made for relationship with God, and at the last, that's exactly where God will bring us--back into perfect relationship, despite all our ways of messing it up.  But love is the destination of this journey also because, as Paul says it, love is one of the very few things that really lasts.  "Faith, hope, and love abide, these three," the apostle says, and with that dismisses all the claims of empires and governments to last forever, all our attempts to make our legacies endure with marble monuments and enormous endowment funds, and all the possessions we spend our time and sweat trying to accumulate in our years, only to have them rust, crumble, break down, wear out, or go out of style.  The clothes you were certain would make you cool back in high school are no longer in your closet.  The technology they told you would permanently maximize your efficiency stopped working three updates ago. Scientists tell us that even the sun won't last forever!  But even after both our stuff and the solar system finally wears out, Paul tells us that love will still abide.  When our belongings bite the dust, God remains, and God insists on holding onto us forever, so that the love between Creator and creatures will continue as well.

Now, when Paul says the greatest of those Big Three (faith, hope and love) is love, he's not trying to insult or denigrate faith or hope.  But by definition, faith and hope both point toward a future you can't yet see, or a reality that you have to take on trust.  But at the last, when all that we have hoped for has come true, and when the One we have believed in is finally seen, faith and hope will change.  They will be realized, like a journey is over when you reach the destination you have been walking toward.  But love doesn't stop being love, no matter how far into the future or how long we are in relationship with God.  Like the last verse of Amazing Grace says it, "When we've been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we've no less days to sing God's praise than when we'd first begun."  Love keeps going, even when everything else reaches its conclusion.

So where do we go from here?  Well, if this year together (however much of it you have been on with me here in 2023) has had anything to offer, I hope it's been clear that love isn't something you can master and exhaust like learning your times tables or memorizing Shakespeare.  Love is our way of life now, in addition to being both our beginning and our destination.  What we do today, and tomorrow, and the third day, too, is keep finding ways to grow more deeply in loving other people and God.  We will continue to love by being patient and kind; we will continue to leave resentments and arrogance behind.  We will keep striving not to demand our own way and rejoicing in the truth.  We will keep bearing, hoping, and enduring.  In all of it, we will find ourselves more fully alive the more Christ's kind of love shapes us. And in the end, we will not feel we have missed out on "the good life" by daring to live in such love; we'll discover we have lived most authentically and deeply because of it.

Come Monday, we'll be starting a whole new year's worth of devotions, heading in a new direction with a new focus.  But that doesn't mean we're done with love--only that we'll each keep discovering and daring a million different ways to embody it, and we'll keep meeting Jesus along the way as we do.

Like the line of T. S. Eliot puts it, "the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time."  We end where we began. We will be brought back home to the Love that first brought us into being as a gift of sheer grace.  And every step of the way, Love himself walks on wounded feet beside us.

Amen and amen.

Lord Jesus, keep walking with us in the way of love, and lead us home to love at the last.

Jesus Saplings--November 30, 2023

Jesus Saplings--November 30, 2023

"Now that you have purified your souls by your obedience to the truth so that you have genuine mutual love, love one another deeply from the heart. You have been born anew, not of perishable but of imperishable seed, through the living and enduring word of God. For 'All flesh is like grass and all its glory like the flower of grass. The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Lord endures forever.' That word is the good news that was announced to you." [1 Peter 1:22-25]

"What are you going to do, now that you don't HAVE to do anything?" That was the question of the late theologian Gerhard Forde, and I think he was on to something.

So much of what passes for popular Christianity turns the question the other way around: what do I have to do in order to... get into heaven, or get saved, or secure my salvation, or be acceptable to God... or whatever other phrasing you might use.  So much of Respectable Religion starts with the notion that I've got to do something, and then, IF my performance is satisfactory (I've prayed the right prayer, or I've done the right good deeds, or I've meant it sincerely enough when I invited Jesus into my heart, or whatever), then I can count myself as "saved."  But that always leaves me wondering whether I've done my part well enough. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, after all, and if my effort or faith or devotion aren't sufficiently solid, then it sure sounds like my salvation would be in question, too.

But blessedly, this is not actually the way the biblical writers think or talk.  The New Testament writers, just like this passage from what we call First Peter, start with what God has done, and see everything that we do as RESPONSE, rather than PRE-REQUISITE.  That makes all the difference in the world.  Listen to the way First Peter says it, "You have been born anew..." as in, it's an already accomplished fact.  And being born isn't something you achieve or accomplish--it's something that's given to you.  Mothers do the work to bear their children, with a possible partial assist from a doctor, nurse, or midwife.  But the one being born doesn't do any "labor"--you just find yourself given the gift of your own life.  And once you find yourself alive in this world, well, everything that follows (that is, your lifetime) is your response to a gift you were given before you were aware of it.

That's how First Peter talks about our life as disciples, too.  We've been born all over again, sprouting like seeds breaking through the soil, and because we've been given that new life, we are now freed to love.  But notice: it starts with the gift, and the response follows.  There is no precondition that says, "You have to put forth so many units of love before your application to the Heaven Club can be considered," but rather, "You've been given this new life in God's love, so now you're free to love people well and graciously."  It's almost like saying, "God planted you as a maple seed in the ground--now that you've sprouted up through the soil, you can put maple leaves out.  After all, that's what you are--a maple tree."  Love is our identity now; belonging to Jesus is the "kind of tree" we are, so to speak.  We can't help but put forth that kind of love, that kind of Christ-like character, back out into the world, because it is who we are. We are Jesus saplings, to so speak.

And notice this one other move that First Peter makes here: because the "seed" that has been planted in us is God's "enduring" word, we don't have to worry that our sapling faith won't make it through the snow or cold of winter.  Sure, other kinds of seeds and plants fail, wither, and falls to the ground--but God's word endures forever.  The endless endurance of God's word in us means that God's love won't let go of us, but will bring us to fruition, whatever that might look like in your life and mine.  In other words, it's because God's love never ends that we can be sure that God's love IN US will persist, grow, and blossom.

And when First Peter gets around to describing what that looks like in our lives, he comes back to love.  "Love one another deeply from the heart," he says.  Of all the things we could spend our time and energy on, good ol' Pete gives us only this direction: love each other.  There's not a mention of performing more religious rituals, or working to get more political power, or winning any culture wars.  The thing Peter points us toward, since we know we have been given new life in Christ, is how we love in response. 

So, what are we going to do with this day in front of us?  If we know we are already claimed by God's love that will not perish and will not end, we are freed from trying to impress God, and freed simply to love other people.  That opens up the day to all sorts of possibilities.  Let's see where we go from here.

Lord Jesus, free us to love.  Free us to grow as the creations you have planted.  Free us to respond to your love with this day.

Alas for Alexander--November 29, 2023

Alas for Alexander--November 29, 2023

"For in [Christ] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross." [Colossians 1:19-20]

If you like to get your history from action/Christmas movies like Die Hard (and I definitely do), then you likely know the line spoken by villain Hans Gruber (the late Alan Rickman), declaring that when he saw the extent of his empire, Alexander the Great "wept, for there were no more worlds to conquer."  

Now, whether the Greek commander actually cried because he had run out of peoples to dominate or not, it's at least plausible to imagine. Plenty of would-be emperors have viewed the world as theirs for the taking, like a game of Risk or Monopoly. And if you ever did get all the spaces on the board, well, then what? 

I suppose it says something about our culture that we construct games like that--where the goal is to conquer or acquire everything for yourself in order to win.  It says something about what we assume the goal of life is--just endless accumulation, domination, or conquest of your opponents.  Maybe the fact that those seem so obvious as worthy goals in a game says something, too, about how completely and unquestioningly we have bought that line of thinking. Conquest and domination as far as the eye can see, right? Maybe we have all just accepted Alexander as a worthy role model without so much as a second thought--that of course, we, too, should aspire to have it all, take it all, and rule it all.  Hans Gruber seemed to think so, at least.

Of course, it's easy, too, once we're pointed in that direction, to assume that this is God's overarching goal, too.  We have a way, the late theologian Karl Barth used to say, of projecting our own ambitions onto God and just making them bigger.  We assume God is as bent on being a cosmic tyrant over it all, from Baltic Avenue to Boardwalk, as we aspire to be, and that God's way of relating to the cosmos is as emperor.  We have a way of picturing God as just an oversized Alexander the Great with a halo: even mightier than the ancient Greek, with angel armies in place of chariots or war-horses.

But when we actually listen to the writers of the New Testament describe God's real purpose, we're in for a surprise.  To hear the writer of Colossians put it, the living God isn't looking to be a conqueror, but a reconciler.  God's scope is universal and all-encompassing, sure, but not to dominate like Alexander... or Napoleon... or Attila (or any of a number of comic book supervillains, for that matter).  In Christ, God "was pleased to reconcile all things."  God doesn't destroy, vanquish, or subjugate creation under the divine boot, but "makes peace" with it all.   And, as if to completely turn the way of empire upside-down, God's kind of peace doesn't come at the point of a sword, but bearing the points of nails in God's own life through Christ.  In other words, God's reign is infinite and endless, but not built on conquering; it consists wholly of love.

On this point, the writer of Colossians could not be any clearer.  He fully locates God in the person of Jesus and says that as Jesus took on death from his enemies rather than killing them, so has God chosen to bear death rather than inflict it.  The crucifying empire looked to eradicate troublemakers like Jesus to make an example of them and keep the rest of their conquered subjects in line, but the crucified God absorbs all that evil into the cross, refusing to answer it back with more evil, in order to reconcile with all things "whether on earth or in heaven."  That sounds like a pretty universally inclusive list.

All of this is to say that when we talk about how God's love "never ends," as we've been doing this month, it's not just to say that God's love stretches out in time, but also in all directions, to include all things.  It's not just to say, "God loves me (and only me) forever," but also to say "God's love and reconciliation go out beyond the horizon."  God's love never ends, not only in chronological terms (like with an expiration date on your milk) but also like the expanding universe itself, which scientists say is pushing out bigger and wider at an accelerating rate.  And whatever costs there are to that kind of reconciling love, the writer of Colossians says that God has paid it in God's own life in the cross of Jesus.   God doesn't just "hope" to make up with all of an estranged creation; God doesn't just "wish" it would all work out.  Colossians says that in Jesus God has already accomplished that reconciliation with every proton, every quark, and every nanometer of real estate in the cosmos. Even with all of us in our "hostility" toward God (Colossians 2:21-22). That's also what it means to say that God's love "never ends."

If our understanding of the good news falls short of that infinite scope, it is just as deficient as imagining that God's love has a sell-by date before it spoils. The only difference is in the dimension in which we've limited God's love (time rather than reach).  Today, then, just let it sink in that the love of God really is over all creation, and that is not merely an aspirational goal for God (as in God would like to be able to reconcile with everybody, if only they would get their act together) but an accomplished state of affairs from God's perspective. 

So, no, (alas for Alexander), there are no more worlds left to conquer; but that was never God's purpose anyway.  God was always interested in reconciling with all things, and in Christ, that is just what God has done.

The only question on this day, and every day, is whether we will dare to believe what God says is already true.

Lord God, stretch our understanding in all the infinite dimensions of your love.

The Wrecking Ball of Grace--November 28, 2023

The Wrecking Ball of Grace--November 28, 2023

"But now in Christ Jesus you who were once far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it." [Ephesians 2:13-16]

If it's right to say, "Don't put a period where God put a comma," then maybe it's also true to say, "Don't go rebuilding walls that God has pulled down."  

And to hear the New Testament tell it, in particular passages like this one from Ephesians, God has torn down a whole lot of walls--both the ones between us and God, as well as the ones between us and each other.  In fact, from the perspective of Ephesians, God's act to "bring us near" in Christ has also brought us closer to one another in the very same motion.  The wrecking ball of grace that demolished whatever barriers kept us apart from God has also smashed apart the partitions we humans set up between one another to keep "insiders" apart from "outsiders."  Knocking down one pulls the other down for good.

It's rather like that children's game, "Don't Break the Ice."  Do you remember it? I was just playing it recently with my daughter, and all the old memories came back.  You set these little white plastic cubes (meant to be ice cubes) into a tightly fitting tray suspended a few inches above your table top or floor, and in the center is perched the figure of a sitting person.  Then you each take turns tapping on these cubes, knowing that you'll start knocking some of them onto the ground as you do.  The goal, as the name suggests, is not to be the one to send the plastic person crashing onto the ground--you want to make it so your opponent is the one to make all that ice come crashing down, rather than yourself.  But the trick is that once you start knocking out ice cubes, they come faster and more frequently than you might have planned.  Knocking one block out of place loosens others, and sometimes your strategic tapping over in one corner sends more blocks falling at the same time and brings the whole thing down.  Get the idea?

If you can picture that, then in a way, you've got the letter of Ephesians down, too: the Gospel's claim is that Jesus hasn't just knocked out one little block over here with little to no effect on the rest, but rather that the cross punched a hole in the barrier that removed both the estrangement we had with God and the estrangement we had with each other.  Gentiles and Jews no longer had to see themselves as opponents or enemies.  Nobody has to hate anybody else anymore.  Nobody has to see their welfare as coming at the expense of somebody else's livelihood.  And of course, nobody gets to say, "Me and Jesus are cool, but I can still treat everybody else like they're garbage, because my relationship with God is hermetically sealed off from my relationships with everybody else."  Not according to Ephesians, it isn't--God used the cross and resurrection of Jesus to pull both of those walls down like a hammer knocking out ice cubes in the kids' game.  God "put to death" the hostility between us!  What an image!  It's not that God executes the wicked, sinful outsider bad-people, but that God executes the hostility that held us apart from each other in the first place!  God ends the conflict, both the divine-human one and the ones fracturing us into a million little factions against each other! So if the boundary between me and God is forever taken down and overcome by God's love, then the boundary between me and the groups I've treated as "less than" or "unworthy" or "unacceptable" is also just as permanently dismantled.  If God's love for me (and each of us) is never-ending, then the love that pulls us together with one another, even across old enmities and dividing lines, is also never-ending.  It's the same love--and it's all from God.

Taking that seriously is going to mean a big shift in our lives, to be honest.  We are more comfortable with religion that siloes our communion with God away from our conflicts with each other.  My goodness, for how many centuries in the supposedly "Christian" churches of America did White-led congregations sing about being "washed in the blood of Jesus" while keeping out Black folks from their pews, not to mention their businesses, schools, neighborhoods, and communities?  How often do we still imagine that Sunday mornings get me right with God while leaving me free to exclude and overlook people I've told myself are "less than me" because they are different from me? We still need to hear this word from Ephesians that if God's love for me is never-ending and not open to debate, then the same love which pulls me toward all others is equally unending and indisputable.  If the wall that separated me from God has been pulled down, then so has the wall I put up between me the ones I deem as "other," too.  They've both been razed to the ground permanently by the great divine bulldozer operator, Jesus.

And it means, too, that we who like to talk about being assured of God's love (which is a good and right thing to talk about) are also going to have to look at what ways we still might be trying to leave up the walls between us and other people--or to build them all over again after God has gone to the trouble of knocking them down.  It's worth asking: for all the ways we might say God's love is for everybody, how might our actions be silently adding, "But not for you!"  For all the ways we talk about God's unconditional, unfailing love for us, how are we still trying to stack bricks into barriers to keep back love between us and other people?  Because if the letter to the Ephesians is right, then both are meant to be unending--the love that pulls us to God is the love that brings us into relationship with the ones we treated as "other" before.  And Jesus has come to knock all those partitions down for good.

What if we lived like it were true?

Lord Jesus, we do believe that your love for us is unending and unlimited; help us to come to grips with the way that same love crosses boundaries and removes barriers between us.

No Divine Policy Changes--November 27, 2023

No Divine Policy Changes--November 27, 2023

"God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but in the age to come." [Ephesians 1:20-21]

I keep changing my mind on how I feel about term limits.

I don't mean to get us off on a tangent about the mechanisms of representative government, but indulge me for a moment.  Whether it's the office of the President of the United States or the local town council or congregational leadership, there's always the question of whether we should limit how long a person can serve in office.  And, as you surely know, there are different rules for different offices. As it stands now, presidents are limited to two terms, but members of Congress have no such limits.  Governors may have term-limits, but your state representatives might not.  Our system (which is really a hodgepodge of systems across every state, town, and county) sometimes puts limits on how long one person can be in office, and sometimes there are virtually none at all. And I know the arguments in favor of and against the idea of term-limits.  On the one hand, it keeps any one person from becoming a dictator for life, and it compels new voices with fresh ideas to keep arising so that new generations can take the reins from those who came before.  On the other hand, I'm sure there are times when it means that newly elected people lack wisdom and experience that the old hands could still have offered, and there are probably times when you wish you could have the continuity of someone who already knows what they are doing rather than having to wait for new people to figure things out.

In particular, it can be frustrating when you don't know what to expect from whoever is coming next in line.  Whether it's a change of individual leaders or a change of parties, it can be really difficult to know how a new administration will do things.  What policies from the old guard will remain?  Which ones will be undone or erased?   What should we expect from a new person in office?  Other countries may find it particularly challenging--will the alliance that other nations counted on still be in effect if a new person comes into office?  Will the humanitarian aid they were counting on after a disaster or a war still be on its way to help, or will that depend on the outcome of some future election?  Our own history has been shaped by the policy choices of new and incumbent leaders--that is, after all, what sparked the Civil War, as numerous states rejected the policies they saw coming from the election of Abraham Lincoln and what it would mean for slavery.  A great deal can ride on the question of whether the person who holds the reins of power now will be replaced by someone different later on, both for good and for ill.  And while you watch it all unfold, it can feel rather like being a yo-yo getting yanked back and forth.

Well, if that makes sense and you can understand how much rides on the questions of continuity in leadership, then I'll bet you can understand the importance of these verses from Ephesians.  Not to add a worry to your plate (I promise, it will all be resolved soon), but what kind of expectations should we have about God's reign over all of creation?  And... should we be prepared for wild changes in policy from the divine?  Should we fear that Jesus' lordship could expire, or run up against term limits?  

At first, of course, that sounds preposterous.  Of course we don't believe that Jesus won't leave "office."  Of course we don't have to be afraid that someone else will be voted in as God of creation--it's not a democracy, after all.  God's goodness and commitment to justice and mercy cannot be undone even if everybody votes for meanness and crooked selfishness, because God doesn't have to run policy choices past us (which, I have to think on balance is a good thing, knowing what narrowly self-interested and short-sighted stinkers we can be).  So far, so good.

But I will say this: sometimes we Respectable Religious Folk do end up sounding like there will be some grand divine bait-and-switch, between now and Christ's coming again.  Sometimes you'll hear folks say things like, "Well, he came as a Lamb the first time, but when he comes again, he'll be the fierce Lion!" Sometimes church folks sound like they're saying that grace is the order of the day now, but at some point, God will decide to get "tough" and crack down on sin and that the cross and resurrection won't be enough after all.  And we might not realize we're doing it, but in practice that ends up sounding like saying, "Jesus' Lordship has term limits."  And it can sound, too, like we can't count on God's love to be the defining characteristic of God's Reign.  It can sound like at some point God will give up on loving the world and will resort to a policy of zapping.

And this, dear ones, is why the claim made here in Ephesians is so important.  The writer of Ephesians is basically heading off that fear and saying that the same Christ who is risen and ascended to the divine throne now is the same One who will reign in "the age to come."  Times may change and epochs may come and go, but the way Jesus rules creation is not up for debate and is not subject to term limits. Even emperors in the first century would come and go when they died, and their successors could bring dramatic new shifts in the oversight of the Roman Empire.  But to hear Ephesians tell it, the same Christ who is Lord now is Lord forever, and we do not have to worry about him leaving office, being voted out, or changing policies.  The same One who saves the world by laying down his life for it in self-giving love reigns by the very same self-giving love over all of creation.  The book of Ephesians insists that God's way of running the universe is to bring resurrection out of death--even when we have done our worst by putting Jesus to a miserable and godforsaken death on a cross--rather than to say that resurrections are for "wimps."  At no point does God say, "I prefer messiahs who didn't get killed in the first place" and then replace Jesus with someone more bloodthirsty and vengeful to be in charge.   The Lord of the future who fills all in all is the same Lord with nail marks from the cross, and there will be no change of divine policy from "dying for your enemies" to "crucifying your enemies."  Even the book of Revelation itself gives us only a slain but risen Lamb, even after announcing the arrival of a Lion.  The Jesus whose love went to the cross is the same Jesus who reigns now and forever.   We do not have to worry about a change of administrations.

And that really is good news in the end.  It really is good news right now.

In case you've ever heard that talk that suggests we need to be afraid about Jesus' coming rather than glad, or that suggests God might change policies to look "tough" rather than "weak", take it from the writer of Ephesians: the same Jesus who is Lord now is the One who will reign even in the age to come.

Lord Jesus, help us to trust the constancy of your love to get through this day now.

A Promise to Thorns--November 22, 2023

A Promise to Thorns--November 22, 2023

“…just as God chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love.” [Ephesians 1:4]

I planted a rosebush once—oh, this has been more than a decade ago or more now—before I had seen what its blossoms would look like.

I had the space to put a rosebush, and I had the desire to have one there, and so one day off I went to the store, picked one out that had already blossomed for the summer, and put it in the ground. I chose it.

That is saying something, because I really did choose it. I selected that specific rose, among lots of other roses that were there at our local Lowe’s. Some of them were later-blooming varieties, too, and so I could have seen what they would produce. I could have had one knowing it would yield big deep red blossoms or fragile white ones. I could have known exactly what I was getting when I bought it, and seen exactly how it would look in full bloom from the very day I planted it.

I did not do it that way. Instead, before I had laid eyes on a single blossom on that plant, I chose it. And from that moment on, I made a sort of promise to it—it is my rose, and my job is to cultivate it so that it will blossom as beautifully and fully as possible. I made that commitment—to the extent one can make a commitment to a flowering plant—apart from anything the plant had done for me, and really without any guarantees of what it would do for me. As much as you can love a plant, I loved it. I loved the rosebush even though, at the time I planted it, all it had done to that point was jab me with thorns and scratch my forearms—that’s not much to go on, and hardly anything positive.

Instead of poring over all the blossoming choices in the greenhouse, I saw that one, checked what kind of shade and sun it could handle, and was ready to go. It took all of a few minutes, because I went in knowing I was going to get a rose. That may seem foolish. But that is how I buy things—I am also the guy who takes seven minutes or less to buy shoes generally because my goal is just to get something that looks as close to identical as possible to the shoes I have just worn out.

So… why, would you say, did I buy the rose? What was my reason for planting it? I think you have to say something like this: first off, I just claimed it as my own as it was, before it had done a thing to impress me. You could say that I bought and planted that rose in the hopes of what it would become one day when it did blossom, but not that I got it because of what it had done already. I loved it before it had become anything other than a clump of sharp sticks and some roots. There had not been any blossoms yet to wow me or grab my attention. There were only thorns and a few leaves... and my self-made promise that this would be my rosebush. But that was it.

The truth now—you are the rose bush.

You are the rose bush, and so am I. And God is the One who has bought us, claimed us in love, and chosen us from among a greenhouse full of shelves. In Christ, God the Father saw us when all we had to our credit was the scratching and wounding of Jesus. All there was on our record were thorns—and that is hardly positive. But God chose us anyhow. Before we had done a good deed. Before we had prayed any prayers, sung any hymns, or made any decisions for Jesus, Jesus had made a decision for us. He chose us—as we were, as we are, and yet also with a vision of what we might become because of our chosen-ness. And so, from before the foundation of the world—before we had even been planted in the soil of God’s good earth—God determined to claim us, to love us forever, and to cultivate beauty and life in us. You could call it a promise God made with himself—after all, we weren’t on the scene yet even to hear it! It was a promise made over us even when all we had to offer were our thorns, and yet the promise itself planted us securely in the household of God so that we would put forth blossoms in time.  

This is what God's kind of unending love makes possible.

This is what the gospel of Jesus is all about—how God’s love chose us in Christ before we had done a thing, and how that love makes it possible for us to become something more than brittle branches and thorns. “My song is love unknown, my Savior’s love for me—love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be,” goes the old hymn. Sounds like the way God buys rose bushes.

Now, a second bit of truth is in order—it is a humbling thing to recognize that you have been chosen apart from anything you did or didn’t do. And it can be a difficult thing for us proud, independently-minded people to allow ourselves to be loved that way, and to know that it depends not on our behavior or our being perfect peaches, but on God’s self-sworn promise to himself to love our thorns into roses.

This is how you and I have been loved—from before time began.

This is how you are loved still—right at this very moment, as I write these words and at whatever time you read them.

This is how you will be loved always—what will you let that love do for you, in you, and through you today?

Lord God, we can scarcely take in the beauty and breadth of your love for us. But as we find ourselves found by your sovereign and gracious love, let us be changed by the power of your love. Make us to blossom, as you have known all along that we could.

Owning Our Sheepiness--November 21, 2023

Owning Our Sheepiness--November 21, 2023

[Jesus said]: "My sheep hear my voice. I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish. No one will snatch them out of my hand. What my Father has given me is great than all else, and no one can snatch it out of the Father's hand. The Father and I are one." [John 10:27-30]

When you know you are held safely in the grip of the shepherd's hand, you don't have to try to stop being a sheep.  You can be who and what you are without any need to look "tough" or "intimidating," and you don't have to pretend to have spikes or stingers or sharp teeth or venom.  You can be OK with being a lamb--in fact, you can know you are beloved as you are--when you know you are in the care of a good shepherd.

I want us to just sit with that thought for a moment, because it runs pretty well against the grain of what our wider culture says to us.  So many of the voices around us seem bent on telling us that we are currently inadequate in our present existence, and that we must do something, be something, wear something, or most often buy something (which they, conveniently, are selling!) in order to make ourselves acceptable.  And quite often even religious voices (or maybe, especially the voices of Respectable Religion, honestly!) do the same while claiming the heft of God's authority:  that you are not acceptable or acceptable to God unless you... and then there's some list of actions, prayers, words, or spiritual experience you have to have had to make yourself somehow worthy.  We are constantly being told in some way or another that we cannot rest in our being acceptable and accepted already.  But then along comes Jesus, who speaks about us as his sheep without needing us to become some more impressive-looking, awe-inspiring creatures.  Jesus doesn't need us to be anything more, less, or other than his own sheep, so we can stop pretending. And we can stop listening to the external (and maybe internal) voices telling us we have to be something other than we are.

In particular, being sheep means a certain unavoidable vulnerability.  Domesticated sheep typically wouldn't have had the big horns of wild rams (it's not good for the health of the flock to have your own sheep butting heads with one another), and pretty much that leaves them unarmed.  Or rather, they discover that all the protection they need comes from the shepherd.  When you are a lamb guarded by a good shepherd, the shepherd's presence is enough to keep you safe.  The shepherd's promise to put his own life between the danger and you is sufficient to calm your fears.  And that means you can own your own sheepiness.  You don't have to try to be as ferocious as a lion, as voracious as a bear, as sly as a fox, or as shrewd as a serpent.  You can be comfortable in your own wool, without shame and without embarrassment, because you know your needs are taken care of and that you are safely in the hands of the shepherd who is pledged not to let anything snatch you from his grasp.

Moving beyond this barnyard/pastoral metaphor, what does it mean for us to "own our sheepiness"?  Well, for one, I think it means that Jesus' people don't have to pretend, apologize, or downplay our calling to be people of peace in a warmongering world, or to be people of compassion in a culture obsessed with looking "tough."  We can be decent in indecent times, and we can be vulnerable rather than defensive and mean.

I read a news story not long ago--maybe you did too--where a prominent leader in a particular American denomination was lamenting how many pastors he knew who had been criticized by church members for reciting Jesus' own words, like in the Beatitudes, about God's blessing on the merciful, the peacemakers, the meek, and the ones who were hungry for justice.  When the pastors would say, "But these are literally the words of Jesus!" the congregation members would say, "But that stuff doesn't work for our times anymore--we can't look like we are weak! We can't be called losers!  We can't forgive or not try to get even!" These are the times we live in, such that even in congregations of folks who would all swear they are "Bible-believing Christians" it's easy to fall for the lie that we have to make ourselves look "tough" or like "winners" rather than being sheep in the care of a Good Shepherd.  The insecure need (and that's really what it is: insecurity) to need to project "strength" or "power" or to intimidate or dominate is so strong these days that folks who say they have accepted Jesus as their Lord and Savior don't want to actually listen to him when he tells us to practice the vulnerable virtues of mercy, peacemaking, and meekness.  Even in church culture it sounds preposterous to own our sheepiness; we'd all rather pretend to be wolves and lions than trust the Shepherd to be enough for us.

Taking Jesus seriously, though, means trusting that the grip of his love on us will be more than enough to preserve our lives.  Trusting Jesus' promise that nothing can pull us from his hand means daring to believe that we can be sheep, rather than trying to be something scarier or angrier.  And letting Jesus' love hold onto us will mean we find the courage to be our vulnerable selves rather than putting up defense mechanisms to keep people out. 

People who can own their sheepiness are brave enough to be peacemakers.  People who are secure enough in their identity belonging to the shepherd can be merciful rather than vengeful.  People who know that nothing can snatch them from God's hand are people who don't have to project a fake image of being "winners" (whatever that nonsense means), but can rest secure in knowing that God loves us even if everybody else calls us "losers."

That's what we're freed for when we take Jesus' promise seriously.  That's what happens when we let ourselves be the sheep who are already in the Shepherd's hands.

Lord Jesus, hold onto us and don't let go... so that we can be the peaceable people you have gathered us to be.

With the Lord Forever--November 20, 2023

With The Lord Forever--November 20, 2023

"Then we who are alive, who are left, will be caught up in the clouds together with them to meet the Lord in the air; and so we will be with the Lord forever." [1 Thessalonians 4:17]

On some days during the week, if I get home first before my wife, when I hear her car pulling into the driveway, I will come outside to the back door, meet her at her car to see if she's got anything to bring in--groceries or shopping bags or school work or the like--and will walk with her back into our house together. Even though it might look at first like I am walking out of the house to leave, the whole ritual is really about welcoming her back in. When she pulls into the driveway, I don't walk out the back door to get in the car with her and then leave our house behind, usually, but rather I go out to meet her to walk alongside her as she comes home for the day. She may not have been at the house for the whole day, but of course, it was her house already--she has just been at work. When she comes home and I meet her in the driveway, it is to come back--with a certain sense of victory at having made it through another day--to the place that we share together.

You'll have your own particulars, of course, but I'm betting that kind of scene is pretty familiar to you. Whether you are more frequently on the welcoming side or the being-welcomed side, I'm willing to bet that at least the meaning of that moment makes sense to you, and that it is clear when I walk out the back door, it is not for my wife to whisk me off to some other location (unless we are, say, going out to eat straight from work), but for her to come home to the place that was already hers. 

Well, keep that picture in mind to consider one other scene before we jump into the verse for today. In the ancient world, especially in the practice of the Roman empire, when the emperor was coming to visit a Roman city or colony, a very similar ceremony of welcome unfolded. Citizens from the city--who understood the emperor to be their ruler--would go out through the city gates and walls and stand waiting to greet the emperor, who would then be escorted with this entourage back into the city. The city was understood to already belong to the emperor, and he was the rightful ruler. He was simply being welcomed back into what was his own, perhaps as he returned from some far off military campaign, or as he toured his territory. But what always happened was that the loyal citizens of that city would gather outside the city so that they could meet the emperor and accompany him back into the city--the city, mind you, from which they had just left, in order immediately to come back in as part of a triumphal procession. There was never a scene where the emperor would come near to one of his own cities, and then have the citizens standing outside like they were waiting for a bus to be picked up and taken somewhere else. The emperor didn't take his own citizens out of their various cities (which were all under Roman rule) to bring them all to Rome. No, the scene was always the other way around--the emperor is met by loyal crowds who welcome him into their city, which they all agree is under his authority already. So this scene, which was played out again and again across the empire, was both a moment of celebration, but it was also a statement of allegiance. Those who welcomed the emperor into their city were, in effect, saying that he was the rightful ruler of their city and that he was coming back to a place that was his own already.

Well, both of these scenes help make sense of what's going on in this passage from 1 Thessalonians (as well as some of what is going on in the triumphal entry in all four Gospels when Jesus comes into Jerusalem riding on a donkey on the day we call Palm Sunday--a day when the people of the city "took branches of palm trees and went out to meet him" (John 12:13) before escorting him back into Jerusalem. On both Palm Sunday and here in 1 Thessalonians, the idea is that Jesus is being escorted into a place, and that people have come to welcome him--and by doing that, they are pledging their allegiance to his authority and lordship. It turned out to be rather fickle allegiance on Palm Sunday, but the idea is the same. Just as the emperor or other imperial dignitaries would have triumphal entries to Jerusalem as shows of their power, Jesus has a parallel entry, and it was a statement of a different reign than Caesar's.

This is the way Paul talks about what will happen at Jesus' return. The whole scene here is of a triumphal entry, or a homecoming celebration--not a rescue mission to retrieve people and whisk them away somewhere else. The same word Paul uses for "meeting" Jesus in the air is the same technical word used in Greek for that political procession of welcome when the emperor came to a Roman city. The idea is that Jesus, when he comes, will be met by his people, who will then accompany him back into the world that is rightfully his--the place that he shares with us, and where we will dwell together. This idea of meeting Jesus in the air is all about a triumphal return to the world, not a secret rescue or rapture out of the world.  Yep, you read that right: there is no "secret rapture" in the Bible where people are whisked away or beamed out of the world to go somewhere else while the wicked world goes to hell in a handbasket.  Instead, there is the image of Jesus' people welcoming him back into the world that was always his, as God's Reign comes fully "on earth as it is in heaven."  It's about God's loving reign among us, with us, forever--not an escape to go somewhere else.

That's because ultimately, God is not going to give up on his claim over this world. Sure, now it looks like the world is not interested in God's rule, but that will not stop God. To borrow one more image, when the Allies liberated France in the D-Day campaign to win World War II, the goal of the mission was not just to cut their losses, gather as many displaced French citizens and settle for rescuing them out of occupied France to give them new lives in England permanently. The mission was to liberate and to restore the rightful rule of the country, because the Allies never gave up on the conviction that France did not really belong to the Nazis, but to the French. The Allied invasion was, in many ways, about the rightful rulers returning to their own places. This is the way Paul talks about Jesus' coming--except, for him, the victory is already won. In Jesus' death and resurrection, the battle is fought, won, and over, and now what remains is for Jesus to be welcomed back home in triumphal procession back to what is his already.

What does any of this mean today for us? For one, it means that God does not think this world is disposable or something he will give up on. Jesus still claims this world of ours as his own rightful property. And God's love for all creation doesn't just give up on it because we keep turning away or rebelling.  God's love reserves the right not to let our rejection of God be the last word on the subject. 

Second, it means that our hope is not to be beamed out of trouble so that we do not have to face trials or suffering in this life--our hope is to welcome Jesus back to this world that has been his all along. We are not only missing the point of this Bible passage if we insist that it is about a "secret rapture" where true Christians will disappear while the world goes to hell in a handbasket, but we are also settling for less than God is apparently willing to settle for. The Allies would not give up on France and leave it to Nazi occupation--and God will not give up on the world and leave it to the rebellious, idolatrous emperors and Caesars of human arrogance. God will not settle for plucking a few good people out of the world and then letting it fall apart--God is committed to restoring, reclaiming, and redeeming the whole thing. That is what we wait for. That is why we live our lives now with an eye out the window and on the driveway. We are waiting to pledge our allegiance to our Lord in celebration of his coming. We are waiting to welcome home our Beloved to the place where we will dwell together.

Come, Lord Jesus. Reclaim, restore, and redeem, and keep our eyes watching to greet you and welcome you home in the mean time.

More and More--November 17, 2023

More and More--November 17, 2023

"Now concerning love of the brothers and sisters, you do not need to have anyone write to you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love one another; and indeed you do love all the brothers and sisters throughout Macedonia. But we urge you, beloved, to do so more and more..." [1 Thessalonians 4:9-10]

One of the things that comes with wisdom is the ability to ask the right questions. And sadly, all too often, we make a mess of the Good News of the Scriptures because we are come to the Word asking the wrong questions--or at least questions that make assumptions the Scriptures do not share. I don't know about you, but I am finding the more and more I read the Scriptures together with other disciples, the more I find them teaching me which kinds of questions they intend to answer. That's the Bible for you--not merely giving answers to questions (but only sometimes, to be truthful--God doesn't tell us everything we might want to know), but more often teaching us how to ask the right kinds of questions, and so to become wise.

This passage is a good illustration. Quite often, Christians (and maybe especially Protestant Christians like Lutherans and others) have come to the Bible asking questions about bare minimums. "What is the bare minimum required for a person to be saved?" "What is the least often we can celebrate Holy Communion and still be in good standing?" "What are the essential, non-negotiable requirements for a baptism to be valid?" We often ask things in terms of leasts, in terms of requirements, and in terms of what does the most stripped down, basic version look like? And I think it's because we misunderstand what it means to be people who are saved by grace. Follow me for a moment: we Christians, and especially Lutherans among them, will live and die on the hill of "justificiation by grace through faith apart from works of the law." We insist that we cannot be right with God by our achievements or by earning or by rule-keeping--instead, we are saved by grace through faith, we say. But that leads us to ask strange follow-up questions, like: "What counts as faith?" or "How much do I have to believe, and how hard must I believe it, in order for my faith to be saving faith?" Or then we ask things like, "Since I do not get into God's good graces by works of love toward others, is there any kind of bare minimum requirement of love to stay in the club, or what?" There was a time when Lutherans celebrated Holy Communion very infrequently because they had gotten some number in their heads about what the bare minimum should have been, and they took it to be the single right answer for sharing the Meal. We tried to strip down as much as we could from our worship life that we thought smacked of religious ritual and--dared we say it, Catholicism--because we didn't want people thinking that you had to do those things to be right with God. We got into a whole line of thinking that saw everything in terms of lowest-common-denominators and bare-minimums, and we thought it all flowed out of being saved by grace through faith. And to be truthful, the answers that Lutherans came up with--having infrequent Communion, paring down song and celebration and such out of worship, and insisting that we didn't have to do good works--all made sense because the questions we were asking were always put in terms of "What is the bare minimum I have to do for God to love me?" Because if you ask the question that way, you had better come up with an answer something like: you don't have to do anything to get God to love you!

But maybe that way of phrasing the question is wrongheaded. Maybe we are distorting the truth to begin with by asking loaded, or convoluted questions that make assumptions just in the way they are phrased. Maybe, in fact, we should get outside the "bare minimum" question and start asking questions about fullness. Instead of saying, "How often do I have to have Communion to still be in right standing with God?" maybe the question really is, "If I am a beloved part of the Body of Christ, why would I miss any opportunity to share the Meal Jesus gave us?" Instead of saying, "We don't have to have these extra elements to our worship, because they are not required for salvation," it may be worth asking, "What would make our exposure to the Word and to the Sacraments as full as possible?" Instead of saying, "You can't tell me I have to do good works toward my neighbor because I'm justified by faith apart from works," it might be worth asking, "What happens to a person when the love of God grabs a hold of them--and how does that love find fullest expression." See how the question we ask makes a big difference in the kind of answers we get?

So why the extended sidebar here into church denominations and worship practices? Because the questions of bare-minimums versus the questions of fullness make a big difference in how we make sense of today's verses. If we come to the text today asking only questions of "How much am I required to do in order to get in (or stay in) God's good graces?" then Paul's words will make no sense. Paul is telling his Christian friends that they already know to love one another--and yet he teaches them to love more and more all the time. If we are thinking only in terms of bare-minimums that get us "saved," we will have painted ourselves into a corner, and we will have to say things like, "You can't make me show love to anybody, because I'm saved by grace and I can be as big a stinker and a jerk as I like--I have God's love, darn it!" You are forced to say odd things like "Love people or not, it doesn't matter--all that God cares about is that you believe the right things about God." Well, there you've just turned faith into your accomplishment (believing the right things about God) and you've clearly missed the point if Jesus himself things that loving others is non-negotiable. So how can Paul tell these Christians in good standing that they are supposed to love more and more? Haven't they already met the bare minimum? Aren't they already "in" by faith in Christ? Doesn't being saved by grace mean that you don't have to worry about doing anything any longer?

See how we've gotten ourselves painted into that corner? But what happens if we ask a different set of questions? What happens if, rather than asking, "How much love do you have to show in order to meet the quota?" we asked instead, "If you knew you were already beloved of God as a free gift, how would you let it overflow from you?" Now it's no longer a question of what the bare-minimum is that is allowable to "get in," it is instead a question of how to live as fully as possible within God's love, knowing we are there already? See, the moment you set the bar with some kind of requirement, however low the bar is, there is still something that you have to do to earn your place. But the moment you turn the question around and ask about fullness, then grace can really be grace. We can say, "You are already accepted, justified, and saved as a gift of God--that's a done deal, not up for debate or discussion. So what will you do to live in that gift as fully as possible now?" That makes Paul's question understandable. This is not the spokesperson for being saved-by-grace now changing his story and demanding that the Thessalonians love each other more and more in a never-ending quest to win God's favor. It is the champion of grace saying that grace is never the ending--it is also always the beginning of something. It is, in other words, the beginning of a growing love that radiates out to friend, neighbor, stranger, and enemy. That is what the fullness question is all about.

Asking the right question makes a big difference with the Scriptures. Thank God for the Spirit of wisdom who enables us even to hear and read and ask rightly.

Lord God, give us your Spirit and give us wisdom to engage your Word faithfully. And lead us to be done with bare minimums, so that we can strive for the fullness you offer.

God's Useless Gates--November 16, 2023

God's Useless Gates--November 16, 2023

"And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations." [Revelation 21:23-26]

Open gates are a sign of strength.

Open gates are a sign of confidence, of peace, of power, and of not being afraid.

You close the gates when you are afraid of something "out there"--whether or not there really is anything out there to be afraid of.

Closed gates smack of feeling insecure, of distress, and of weakness.

That's why the story of God's victory in the Slain-but-Living Lamb (Christ!) ends with this scene with permanently open gates in God's new city.

The whole book we call the Apocalypse, or the Revelation to John, is chock full of symbolism. John the Seer doesn't waste a single opportunity to give us layers upon layers of meaning, from Christ as the Lamb to white robed singers to lampstands and seals and bowls. Even down to the dimensions of the city of God, the New Jerusalem (which is a cube, curiously enough--a three-dimensional symbol of completeness, perfection, and wholeness), and the number of gates in the city (twelve, which calls back to the tribes of Israel and the new community of disciples that Jesus gathered), every image in the book of Revelation is intentional.

That's why it's worth paying attention to this scene from the tail end of the book at the tail end of the Bible and the way it describes the way God's love wins at the end of all things. There, at the last, John says, God's reign is perfect and complete, so that there is no reason to be afraid. And when there is nothing and no one to be afraid of, the gates are left open and the doors are left unlocked. The last enemy--death itself!--has been dealt with, and so there is no threat to God's beloved community. John gives us this picture of gates permanently left open as a way of saying, "The living God is so strong and so secure that we don't need hide away from anybody anymore. We don't need to close the gates, because we are no longer ruled by fear--we are ruled by God whose love casts out fear like a demon."

All of that is to say that the divine Architect has deliberately created a vision of new creation that has intentionally useless gates: gates that are there, but are never used to keep people out. Almost as if to say when you walk through them, "It's not because God didn't think of gates, or that there wasn't enough money in the budget to add gates... it is God's intentional choice always to keep the doors open.

That's it: it is God's intentional choice always to keep the doors open.

In other words, when John wants to come up with an image of complete confidence and peace, he doesn't say, "And we'll all hide behind the big strong walls and the big sturdy iron gates, so that nothing bad can come and get us anymore." But rather, John says, "At the last, we will finally be done with living in fear and we can leave the doors all propped open and welcome everybody from every nation (a nice touch John is sure to add here), because God isn't afraid of them coming in. The very fact that all the nations and their rulers want to come into God's city is a sign of God's glory--it is the highest compliment of all that they all come streaming in to be in the fullness of God's presence and God's reign.  And it's a sign of the infinite reach of God's unending love that they are all welcomed in.

In the end, God's strength, God's kind of "winning," and God's kind of "toughness" are not found in the locking of doors or in turning away the nations who want to come in. In the end, God's kind of victory is shown most clearly in gates that are never closed, in a confident welcome to all nations, and in a beloved community who lives at peace because they are no longer ruled by fear.  And like the book we call First John says it, "perfect love casts out fear."  It is God's endless love that makes it possible for the New Creation to be open to all those people.  It is the never-ending love of God that makes the gates to the New Jerusalem useless--purely decorative, but never closed.

Now, I know--this isn't how daily life in our world feels right now. I know that burglars break into homes and thieves come in and steal--even when you DO lock the doors and shut the gates. I know that this is a world in which countries still invade and attack each other (like Russia's ongoing war with Ukraine or the latest war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza), and where we have all just gotten used to living with a certain amount of fear of the bad stuff that could happen. And I'm not suggesting you should leave your car doors unlocked when you park it at the grocery store, or that you can leave your garage door open and assume everything will still be in it at the end of the week.

But I am saying that it is worth remembering the future toward which all creation is headed, according to Revelation, and that our hope in the triumph of God's love pulls us toward that future now. We are called to be people no longer ruled by fear. We are called to be people who recognize that the open gates of God's city are not a sign of weakness on God's part, but the supreme sign of confidence that God is not afraid of anything or anyone coming in.

We will be people, then, who welcome strangers--to our tables, to our churches, to our communities.

We will be people who see that strength is expressed in open doors, not in hiding behind locked ones (like the fearful disciples on Easter Sunday).

We will be people who hear John's description that people from all nations will be drawn together into God's new creation, and we will practice for that day now by widening our circles now enough to get to know people from other nations in the mean time.

If the ultimate sign of Jesus' never-ending love looks like a city whose gates are never closed, into which all nations come streaming into it in welcome, then our lives will start to take that shape even today. That, after all, seems to be what Jesus has been after all along.

Lord Jesus, pull us into the victory of your love now with open arms, open communities, and open hearts.

Irrevocable--November 15, 2023

Irrevocable--November 15, 2023

"For the gifts and calling of God are irrevocable." [Romans 11:29]

One of the most exhausting things about parenting for me is how frequently and yet unpredictably children change their minds.  I think it's a human thing, and children are unapologetically, undeniably human, but it can be particularly difficult to be a grown-up and deciding how much flip-flopping the family can abide with.  

It's the ever-changing wish lists for Christmas or birthday presents, and the things they said they wanted last week may not be the things that capture their interest this week, much less by the time Christmas rolls around.

It's the fussiness about foods, where the dinner they loved last time you made it all of a sudden they don't like this time (or say they don't like).

It's the cliquishness of friendships as they get older--the person who was their seemingly close friend last month might now no longer be talking with them because the winds changed about who is "cool" or what off-hand comment got said in the hallway at school.

It's the flightiness of following trends, where the brand or style of clothes that "everyone" was wearing last season is no longer popular, as a new look becomes all the rage.

My guess is you've lived through some or all of those, and maybe some more of your own, whether from when you were the kid or you were the grown-up.  The bottom line is that we human beings are notorious for un-choosing what we have previously chosen, even when we say things like, "I won't change my mind about THIS--I swear it!" Every discarded toy, unworn clothes left in a drawer, uneaten meal left on the plate, and broken friendship is a testament to how fickle our kind can be.  We may grow out of the worst of it as we become adults, but that impulse is always inside us.

God, however, does not unchoose what or who is chosen.  God may well reveal in time that a lot more or wider circle of people end up being included in the "chosen," but God doesn't flip-flop and un-call those who are called or de-gift a gift already given.  There are no "givesies-backsies" with God.  Or, to borrow the apostle's more polished way of saying it, "The gifts and calling of God are irrevocable."

In Paul's mind as he is writing this particular line to the church in Rome, he's talking about the ancient covenant people of Israel, the descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--a group of whom Paul himself was a member, as he points out elsewhere, "a Hebrew born of Hebrews." (Now, this would be a good moment to note that for Paul the Apostle and the whole of the New Testament, "Israel" isn't the modern nation-state, which of course, wasn't created until 1948 in the wake of the Holocaust and World War II, but of all the collective community of the covenant people who traced their story through the tribes of Israel and the Torah-way-of-life.  When Paul talks about God being faithful to "Israel" that is NOT a blanket assertion that everything the modern nation-state of Israel, or any other nation-state, does is endorsed with a divine stamp of approval.  Even in the Old Testament periods when there was a king and a kingdom, God always reserved the right to critique, judge, and challenge the decisions of the government or the nation as a whole.   Just so we are clear.)  In Paul's mind, he's trying to assert that God hasn't given up on the collective people of Israel even though the crowds and Religious Leaders in Judea rejected Jesus and handed him over to the Romans to be crucified.  Paul is saying, "Even though we have rejected God (or God's Messiah), God does not reject us."  It's a declaration of assurance that God's promise and claim can be counted on, despite the frequent flakiness and flip-floppery of our choices as humans.  Paul is decidedly NOT saying that God approves of everything the "chosen" ones do, but almost the opposite: that God can still choose and call people even when God is NOT happy with their choices.  God can still correct, redirect, and challenge those whom God chooses, even while they remain "chosen."

Now, in our day and time, the context in our minds may be different, but the claim is the same.  We can count on God's love not to end or run out on us, because God's calling and gifts are irrevocable.  God's mind doesn't change to un-love us, un-choose us, or un-claim us, unlike the childishly flighty hate-it-love-it-hate-it ways we often do things.  God never shouts, "I don't love you!" in a fit of momentary anger just to be spiteful.  And God never abandons us because we've fallen out of style or lost popularity.  So when we dare to tell someone else, "You are beloved of God," it is not, like the day's weather forecast, gasoline prices, or a stock quote, just a snapshot in time that's only true for the moment.  It is a promise you can stake a life on.  It is a statement about God's unchanging choice for us, not our unreliable flakiness.

Of course, God's unwavering choice for us doesn't mean God is obligated to endorse our most rotten impulses and selfish choices.  Just as we said that God's persistent calling of the ancient people of Israel that Paul talked about doesn't mean that God must support any given action by the government of the modern nation-state of Israel (or any other country or administration, just so we're clear), God can still claim us and correct us.  God can still say "I love you" while also not signing off on our pet bigotries, habits of greed, structures and systems of injustice, and our impulse for violence and revenge.  God's love for us doesn't end just because we are hot messes who keep adding to the messiness, nor does God's love prevent God from saying "No!" to our crooked and cruel ways.  Both can be true.

Today, then, it's worth holding onto two truths--you can carry one in each pocket.  On the one hand, when we say you are beloved of God, know that you can take that to the bank like an ironclad promise.  God will not back out, rethink, or undo the choice to love you, claim you, and give grace to you.  On the other hand, it's important to remember that just because God loves me doesn't mean every idea, impulse, or action I do get a divine thumbs up.  You and I are forever beloved, but always correctable.  We are unchangingly claimed by God, but that claim will keep changing us as we grow, mature, and deepen our own Christ-like love. Hold those two together as we face the world today.

Lord Jesus, assure us of your unshakable love, and continue to point us in your direction.

Simple, Not Easy--November 14, 2023

Simple, Not Easy--November 14, 2023

"Let mutual love continue." [Hebrews 13:1]

My goodness--could it really be so simple? "Keep on loving one another." Just like that. So perfectly, succinctly elegant. Continue loving each other like siblings in a family--that's all. For a book that often waxes theological about the tiniest details of obscure stories from the ancient Scriptures, the writer of Hebrews sure seems to have kept it short here. Is it really that simple?

Well, simple, yes--in the classic sense of simplicity meaning, "Without lots of moving parts." Simple, yes--but easy? No.

Keep on loving is a brilliantly clear direction for us. The trouble is in moving from the words on the page to the lives in which that love is supposed to be brought to life. I've got a hooded sweatshirt in my closet that says, "Love your neighbor," and a button that reads, "Love your enemies" on my lapel, too, but that doesn't mean I can always (or regularly!) do a half-decent job of it. It turns out just wearing the words doesn't stop me from being a jerk sometimes, or being self-centered deep down, or refusing to give someone who really upsets me the benefit of the doubt before I ridicule them in my mind. The instruction to love isn't complicated in terms of steps to follow, or calculations to be done--but it is hard to live it with much consistency.  Simple, but not easy.

Maybe we should event back up for a moment and consider what it means that the Scriptures see "love" as something that we can be commanded or instructed to do. I suspect our first hang-up is right there, because we are so used to hearing the word "love" merely as some kind of emotional response to chemicals firing in our brain. We hear the word "love" and instantly go to the mirage we call "romance," or we think "love" means "liking someone" or "being similar enough to someone else in viewpoint to agree with them sufficiently," or "feeling good when you around someone."

We 21st century folks have a way of turning the notion of love into just a gut reaction, and if that case, the idea of a commandment to love seems like nonsense. How can you command someone to feel a certain way? How can you require their brains to pump out the proper endorphins on your say-so to trigger an emotional connection with someone? How can you ever instruct someone to show "love" to anybody, if you don't know how they FEEL about that person or people already?

Well, this is the point for us to rip the band-aid off, as cleanly as possible: love ain't about our feelings, at least not primarily or initially. The writer of Hebrews isn't commanding us to "feel" a certain way about other people, but rather to choose actions, words, and habits that seek the good of others. Love is a verb, not an emotional state, in other words. Love is about the constant, consistent choice to seek the well-being of others, even when we don't feel like it, and even when we don't particularly like the people we are loving. As Valarie Kaur says, "We do not need to feel anything for our opponents at all in order to practice love. Love is labor that returns us to wonder--it is seeing another person's humanity, even if they deny their own. We just have to choose to wonder about them."

In that light, there's a new clarity to these words from Hebrews 13--the writer isn't telling us we all have to feel a certain warm, fuzzy feeling toward one another. But rather, even in spite of the times and the ways we irritate, disappoint, or wound each other, we are called to continue to seek the good of everybody else around the circle--even when they have not extended that same kindness to us, and even if they never do. That's actually part of the beauty of how love really works--if it is the real thing, it always has a certain reckless unconditionality about it, that says, "I seek your good even when you don't seek mine."

All of this is especially true in families--which, by the way, is the kind of love hinted at in this verse, since the word translated "mutual love" here is the Greek "philadelphia," which is a word for love between siblings in a family. And a family, unlike a social club, a business with employees, or even a friendship, has a certain inescapable gravity to it. You are stuck with the siblings you have in this life, and that is a beautiful (if also sometimes frustrating) thing. Your belonging in the family doesn't depend on whether your sisters and brothers like you at the moment, and their belonging doesn't depend on your vote either. It is the love of your parents that creates a family and says that each of you belong, and that therefore you belong to each other, no matter what. We learn, in a manner of speaking, how to love even when you don't feel like it from the earliest experiences we have in our families. They show us what it is to be loved even when we have been nothing but ornery stinkers to the people under our roof. And they teach us the skill and practice of doing good to them even when they have been ornery stinkers.

That's the thing: we have been taught already, all our lives, to love the people in our families even when we don't particularly feel like it. The move that the writer of Hebrews makes is simply to take that same spiritual muscle memory and widen it to apply to everybody. We're called to show the same commitment to doing good that we have been raised to do for our biological family with everyone that belongs in the family of God. That kind of love isn't dependent on how you feel about the other people around you, and it doesn't depend on them being enough "like" you or "like-minded" to be worthy of it. You don't have to agree with someone's perspective, their politics, or their preferences still to seek to do good to them. You don't have to decide someone else is "worthy" to receive kindness from you in order to extend the kindness. You don't have to let the stinginess or mean-spiritedness of someone else's heart infect your heart to be stingy or mean back. That's not an endorsement of their meanness or stinginess, but actually just the opposite: it's a refusal to let them set the terms of engagement. And refusing to answer someone else's selfishness, crude-ness, bitterness, or bigotry with more of the same is exactly how we defeat those things. It is what it looks like to love continually--not just when it is convenient.

Today, the direction we are given is pretty straightforward, but not easy by a long shot. Love today. Love the way God loves you--with reckless abandon and unconditional grace. Love the way you have known the love of Jesus--which sought us all out even when we were dead-set turned away from him. Love everybody the way you were raised to love the siblings in your family--simply on the basis of their belonging, and not whether you felt like it in the moment.

This is how God transforms the world. You and I can be a part of it today... right now.

Lord God, give us the strength to love as you do, today and always.