Free To Move--March 1, 2024

Free To Move--March 1, 2024

"Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom the glory forever and ever." [Galatians 1:4]

It's hard enough to hear that we were in need of rescue (gulp... nobody likes to admit that they need saving).  But it's harder still to face the realization that we aren't just innocent bystanders or victims--we're part of the problem ourselves! 

We're held captive by sin, and at the same time, we are actively co-conspiring in the rottenness we call "sin." We are, to use Thomas Merton's classic phrase for it, "guilty bystanders," willingly participating in the world's greed, hatred, selfishness, idolatry, and jealousy... you know, "sin." (I'm not usually one to mine Taylor Swift lyrics for theology, but there's something insightful and honest in the recurring line from her song, "Anti-Hero," which goes, "It's me! Hi! I'm the problem--it's me.")  In other words, we are simultaneously like captives held hostage by sin, and also we are collaborating with our captors and are entangled in their scheming ourselves.  It's rather like what psychologists sometimes call "Stockholm Syndrome," where people who have been kidnapped come to identify with their captors and work with them in their plot.  To hear the New Testament tell it, that's the human plight--we are both victims of sin, held in its power, and we are actively engaged in it ourselves.  We are the problem, and at the same time we are victims harmed by the problem we call "sin." Both are true at the same time.

Now, that by itself is a reality-check we each need to spend some time allowing to sink in.  It is a reminder that we Christians aren't merely perfect peaches constantly in danger of being bruised by a wicked world, but we are already moldy in some places, and that means we are also responsible for contaminating others around us, too. We aren't only the victims of OTHER people's sin (although we are that, too), but we are also the ones HARMING others with our own sin.  Both need to be dealt with, and both need to be healed.  

That's part of why there are so many points of comparison between the Christian life and addiction recovery: to be in recovery from addiction, at least in the classic framework of Twelve Step programs, is to start with the recognition that we are in over our heads and also aggravating the problem in which we are ensnared.  Someone who struggles with alcoholism or drug addiction is both chemically dependent and predisposed to the addiction, and they have consciously participated in perpetuating the grip the addiction has on them.  When you find yourself at that "rock bottom" place recognizing your life, has become, to use AA parlance, "unmanageable," you begin to realize that you are both captive in the grip of the addiction and also that you are actively contributing to tightening that grip with your choices. 

And looking at us--the whole community of Jesus' followers called "Church"--the apostle Paul says, "That's us.  We're both victims of The Problem and part of the Problem itself.  We need to be set free from the rottenness of The Way Things Are, and we also need to recognize that we are a part of why The Way Things Are is rotten in the first place.  And Jesus gave himself for us to address both." But part of what that means is that Jesus gave himself to free people from the grip of sin (us) who are still actively wallowing in it (unfortunately, also us).  It's not just that we're helplessly drowning in the sea in need of a life-preserver, but that every time we get pulled to shore and safety we run back out into the surf and start to sink all over again.  We aren't just helpless victims who need deliverance from "this present evil age" to preserve our purity--we are mess-ups, sinners, and crooked hearts who are part of the reason there is "evil" in the present age in the first place. And yet--Jesus, knowing full well that we are complicit in the world's suffering as much as we are victims of it--has still chosen to give himself away for us anyway. In other words, Jesus hasn't come to save "good" people from a "wicked" world; he has given himself away for the sake of sinners whose hands are bloody with that very same wickedness, so that the whole world would be put right and renewed in the goodness of his love.

This is part of why our weekly worship typically begins with the corporate practice of naming and confessing our sin--it is not to bring our sins to God's attention, but to help us in telling the truth about ourselves.  We need the reminder that we aren't righteous people plagued by having to live alongside a world of sinners, but we are also sinners ourselves.  We don't merely need Jesus to fish us out from where the "bad people" are, as though we weren't in that camp ourselves, but we need someone who can heal the crookedness in our hearts and free us from the Stockholm syndrome that has made us collaborate with the sin that holds us captive.  And to hear Paul tell it, the cross does that.  Jesus gave himself--in his life and in his death--in order that we might be freed from all that we've been entangled in, even though we've been doing our damnedest (literally) to keep getting ourselves more entangled.

So, what are we supposed to do with this realization... and with the day in front of us?  Well, for one, there is a certain assurance that gives us the courage to head into the day knowing that Jesus has seen us at our worst and loves us anyway.  Jesus doesn't offer his life for sinless saints (there aren't any) but for the real us, who are both captive and complicit in sin.  That means there's no use in pretending or covering over our failures, struggles, mess-ups, and the ongoing crookedness in our hearts.  But it also means that Jesus makes it possible for us to move in a new direction--to be free from the captivity to sin we've been held by for so long.  We don't have to keep going back to the old ways of spite and selfishness, as familiar as they are.  Like the hymn puts it, "We know the yoke of sin and death, our necks have worn it smooth--go tell the world of work and woe that we are free to move!"  That's just it: we've been sucked into the undertow of sin for so long (and have been actively swimming further into its troubled waters) that maybe we can't dare to believe we don't have to keep going in that direction. But we don't.  We are freed by Jesus to move in a new path, a new way, and because we know that Jesus' love came for us even at our worst, we don't have to be afraid of messing up when we dare to take a step in that new direction.

With all of that in mind, what will you and I do with this day?  How will we move into it, now that we've been set free to move?

Lord Jesus, since you have set us free, lead us by the hand out of the confines of sin to the expansive spaciousness of your love.

The Way Jesus Wins--February 29, 2024

The Way Jesus Wins--February 29, 2024

"And when you were dead in trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our trespasses, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and authorities and made a public example of them, triumphing over them in it." [Colossians 2:13-15]

The question--maybe the definitive question of faith for our time and place--is, "What do you think you see when you look at the cross?"

Rome looked at the cross of Jesus and smiled approvingly, convinced it was a sign of the "greatness" of the empire.

Ask Caesar, ask Pilate, ask all but one of the centurions there on the scene at the crucifixion of Jesus (one seems to be reconsidering his allegiances there at Golgotha, at any rate), ask any of the crowd who were persuaded by Rome's show of might and military muscle what they saw when this homeless, friendless rabbi got nailed to one of their many death stakes, and they will all say to you, "This is proof of our victory. We saw a threat. We didn't like him. We didn't like the idea he proclaimed that our Empire was not the last word on things. And so, whether or not he had actually committed any kind of crimes worthy of execution or not, we got rid of him. We killed him. It shows our power, our strength, and our way of winning. So we won, and this Jesus fellow loses. End of story."

Now... ask the New Testament community the same question.

The followers of Jesus look at the cross and kneel in awe-filled worship, convinced it is a sign of the true greatness of Jesus. It is the very victory of God.

Ask the voice of Colossians, or any of the first followers of Jesus, and they will tell you that the cross is not Jesus' near-defeat, but is in fact the very point of God's great victory. Ask the thief on the cross next to Jesus', the women huddled at the foot of the cross, or that one very perplexed-looking centurion, and they will say to you, "This is evidence of Jesus' victory. Rome thought that greatness was in killing your enemy, and here this weaponless rabbi with nothing in his hands but nails exposed that all as a lie. The Empire did its worst to Jesus, and yet still he does not give in to Rome's power, its demagoguery, its cruelty, or its indifference to justice. He still lays down his life for us, for people who have not met him yet, and even for his enemies. Rome did its worst to Jesus, and even that was not enough to break his spirit and defeat his love. Jesus wins, precisely at the point it looks like he loses. Death is not the end of this story."

Two very different takes on the same precise moment in history. And so the question reminds: what do we see when we look at this cross?

The New Testament does not allow us to pick both Rome and Jesus as the victors there. In fact, in a rather startlingly bold passage here from Colossians, the New Testament sees the cross--not just skipping ahead to the resurrection, but the cross itself!--as the point at which the powers of the day, the "authorities and rulers" of the way of Empire, were themselves unmasked as puffed-up bullies, and exposed as impotent blowhards. The point that looks most like defeat is actually the point of victory, because Jesus' death is exactly what his way of triumphing looks like, and nothing Rome can do will stop his kind of love from laying its life down for all.

This is a really important insight from Colossians, because we often treat the cross like it is the "low" point of the story of Jesus--almost like it is the point at which it seems like God comes closest to defeat, but then, in the nick of time, Jesus gets back up off the mat on Easter morning like a boxer narrowly avoiding a knock-out decision against him. But that's not how Colossians sees it. The cross is not the cliffhanger moment; the cross is not the place evil almost wins out over the power of God. No, just the opposite--the cross of Jesus is itself the place where all human authorities, all coercive power, all empires, and all of history's Caesars, are disarmed and revealed to be empty suits. As the late Lesslie Newbigin put it, "The resurrection is not the reversal of a defeat but the proclamation of a victory. The King reigns from the tree. The reign of God has indeed come upon us, and its sign is not a golden throne but a wooden cross." 

Colossians would have us believe that it is in the way Jesus lays his life down, praying forgiveness on his executioners and refusing to return Rome's hatred or intimidations back at them, that the powers of the world are just not strong enough to defeat his love. The "rulers and authorities" are not triumphant between Good Friday and Easter Sunday until the stone rolls away--their undoing has already been accomplished in the way Jesus gives himself away. The powers of the day just don't understand that they've already been had. This is the truly radical, upside-down way of thinking and seeing the world that the New Testament dares us to make our own.

And if we do, if we really do take up that new way of seeing the victory of Jesus at the cross, it will change everything else about how we live and how we understand "victory" in our own lives, as well.

It will mean rejecting once and for all the notion that all that matters is "winning" against others, even at the cost of losing our integrity, our honor, or our humanity.

It will mean that we come to see strength as the willingness to keep on loving even when it is difficult--not in giving up on love because it looks "weak" to the watching world.

It will mean we are no longer bound by some obnoxious need to look "tough" to get the last word in every internet feud or take up every situation and make a fight out of it.

It will mean we are less impressed by who has more money or how high the markets close, and more moved by the willingness to do good to others without getting anything in return. In fact, we will deliberately choose actions that we know will help others more than our own little group.

It will mean that we will not assume God is on the side of whoever is bigger, stronger, richer, or louder, but will recognize God present in what the world calls weakness, in suffering love, and in compassion.

In fact, we will no longer assume that God wants us to be "tough" but rather that God would have us be good... as Jesus shows us what goodness looks like.

So, today, friends, the Bible itself is challenging us. The voices of Scripture are pushing us to see the world differently--differently from the way the "rulers and authorities" see it, and differently maybe even from how we used to see it ourselves. The voice of Colossians wants us to see the cross not as God's nail-biter of a near-loss, but the very point of Christ's victory that unmasks "the rulers and authorities" as frauds once and for all.

Will we dare to see the world this way, and to see Christ's victory in this upside-down way?

What do you think you see when you look at the cross?

Lord Jesus, we praise you for your victory... and we are in awe to discover that you have won at precisely the point the world thought was your defeat.

The Lopsided Deal Maker--February 28, 2024

The Lopsided Deal Maker--February 28, 2024

"[Abraham] did not weaken in faith when he considered his own body, which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), or when he considered the barrenness of Sarah’s womb. No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith 'was reckoned to him as righteousness.' Now the words, 'it was reckoned to him,' were written not for his sake alone, but for ours also. It will be reckoned to us who believe in him who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead, who was handed over to death for our trespasses and was raised for our justification."  [Romans 4:19-25]

Most deals in this life require both sides to bring something of value to the table.  

If I want a fancy coffee drink from my local coffee shop, I will need to bring the cash to the counter to pay for it, and a large mocha latte will cost a pretty penny more than watered-down industrial-pot coffee in a Styrofoam cup from a hotel's complimentary breakfast nook.  If I want to hire someone for a job, they'll need to bring a strong resume and set of skills, and I'll have to have adequate money to compensate them for their time and expertise.  Even kids in the elementary school cafeteria trading the contents of their lunches know you have to bring something good to the lunch table to trade: nobody will trade you their candy bar if all you've got to offer are stale candy message hearts leftover from Valentine's Day.  It's just conventional wisdom that any deal worth making requires you to pony up something of comparable value to what the other party is offering. That's just good business sense.

But of course, the God we meet in Jesus has never been bound to our notions of conventional wisdom.  That's why God's kind of deals--or "covenants," to use the traditional biblical language--so often strike us as strangely disproportional. God never makes a deal where God demands as much from us as God gives, because, well, to be honest, there's nothing we can ever give that matches God's extravagant goodness.  And in fairness, there's nothing God needs that we can offer, so God is never going to be able to get anything close to symmetry or parity in a covenant with us.  If God is going to relate to us (and God seems committed to that), God is going to have to be willing to live with getting far less out of us than God gives.

Or maybe, God just isn't interested at all with "getting." Maybe God is willing to give everything for our sake and simply calls us to trust that God's provision is enough.  In fact, how about we strike that "maybe" out of that last sentence altogether? Because to hear the apostle Paul tell it in this passage from Romans that many of us heard this past Sunday, this is exactly the sort of covenant God made with dear old Father Abraham, and it is the way God makes covenants with us, too.  God promised childless centenarian Abraham not only children, but a homeland, and blessing for all families of the earth.  And what did Abraham have to do for his part?  What did God "get" out of this deal? Precisely nothing.  The most Abraham could do was simply to trust that God was giving everything and that the promises were true.  Even his trust wasn't pointed inward at himself, but at God. That is to say, Abraham doesn't have "faith in himself," or "believe that he could do it" in order to achieve what God was giving. Abraham doesn't "have confidence in confidence alone," like Fraulein Maria sings in The Sound of Music, either.  In fact, when ol' Abe looks at himself, he knows he's just barely on this side of the grave.  Paul's rather brusque way of saying it is that Abraham's own ninety-something year-old body was "as good as dead," and yet he didn't waver in trusting or "weaken in faith"--that is to say, trusting God.  

That's it.  That's the most that Father Abraham himself brings to the table with God: trusting God to do everything.  And God, for God's part, says back to Abraham, "Ok. You've got a deal. We're square."  Or to put it in the biblical language, "God reckoned Abraham's faith to him as righteousness."  And in God's unusual kind of deal-making, there are no other strings, conditions, or terms.  There is nothing more Abraham has to "pay" in exchange for all this favor from God.  It's a lopsided (honestly, one-sided) covenant where God does all the giving and Abraham simply trusts it's true.

Well, from there, Paul says that this is how God still operates, and that this is the same way God has dealt with us in Jesus.  Paul uses Abraham's case as an example to say that God has never been in the business of quid-pro-quo deal-making, but always gives extravagantly costly and precious gifts to folks like us who only bring our empty-handed deadness.  Jesus, Paul says, was offered up as God's most costly gift--laying down his own life for our sake--and what we bring to the bargaining table is... well, simply the trust that God has done it all.  This is the kind of covenant God makes: where the infinite cost of God's own life is offered, and the most we can possibly do in return is to say, "I will trust your promise that this is for me, for all of us."

Our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, made a similar point in his famous Heidelberg Disputation.  In the theses for that debate, Luther wrote, "The law says, 'Do this,' and it is never done. Grace says, 'Believe in this one,' and everything is already done." This is how God makes covenants--putting it all on the line at the cross without a thought for what God "gets" in return.  That sort of lopsided deal-making will get nixed every time among the moguls on Shark Tank, but our hope hangs on it.  And apparently it's the only kind of covenant God makes.

In a world full of loud voices who tell us only to do something for someone else if they are going to do or give something back to us of equal or greater value, it is a countercultural thing to cling to a God who gives, at great price, all we have ever needed, and leaves it to us only to trust.  But that's what it is to be claimed by the gospel: we are people who dare to believe that God makes such covenants, bringing everything of value to the table and putting it all in our hands with only the dare, "Trust me--I've got you covered."  Here are God's terms: we bring our empty-handed deadness to the bargaining table, and Jesus lays down his own life to give us back ours.  It might be horrible business sense, but it is news so good it makes you weep.

Believe it.  That's all there is to do.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust that you've given everything for our sake, and let us live in that trust all our days.

Never the Mascot--February 27, 2024

Never the Mascot--February 27, 2024

"Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?' And they answered him, 'John the Baptizer; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.' He asked them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.' And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things'." [Mark 8:27-33]

You can put your big foam fingers away, because Jesus forever refuses to be anybody's mascot.

There may be a sense in which we see Jesus as a coach (who guides, instructs, and directs us) or even Jesus as a cheerleader (encouraging and supporting us through thick and thin), but he'll never let himself be reduced to the role of a speechless mascot who has to endorse the schemes and strategies we've laid out for him.  Jesus will not give us his permission to treat him just as a brand-name, corporate logo, or lucky charm to be tapped for our own interests.  Instead, the real and living Jesus always comes with his own agenda--and it always points to the way of the cross.

I think that's really the wake-up call in this climactic scene from Mark's Gospel (a part of which, many of us heard this past Sunday in worship).  Simon Peter is all excited about finally saying out loud that Jesus is "the Messiah"--the long-awaited chosen one, to bring about God's Reign--because he has a ready-made mold for Jesus to fit into, and he has a set of expectations of what he wants his Messiah Jesus to be and do.... but Jesus won't accept any of them.  Jesus insists that his way of being the Messiah is precisely through a cross, not through crucifying his enemies. It is the way of suffering love rather than conquest that inflicts suffering on others.  It is the way of lowliness and self-giving, rather than the way of glory and "greatness."  And this doesn't sit well with Pete.

In fairness to Jesus' disciples, of course, they aren't the only ones who expected firepower and fury from the Christ (reminder: the title "Christ" is just the Greek version of the Hebrew "Messiah," which means "anointed," like ancient Israel's kings had been anointed for their roles).  Just about everyone in first-century Judaism who held onto an expectation of a coming Messiah pictured a conquering king, or a military commander who would repel the foreign empire (the Romans), slay his enemies, and usher in the "kingdom of God."  And, to be sure, when Jesus first began his movement, his central message was in fact that "God's reign has come near."  Lots of folks were putting two and two together and began to wonder if Jesus was in fact claiming to be the Messiah--so Peter wasn't the only one who would have been befuddled when Jesus announced that he was headed to a confrontation that would mean his death.  That couldn't be!  The Messiah doesn't die--he destroys his enemies!  The Messiah doesn't get defeated--he is victorious and triumphant!  He wouldn't need to do something unheard-of like resurrection from the dead--he would just not die in the first place!  To Peter's ears, Jesus' talk about being killed (not to mention a shameful death on a Roman cross!) sounded completely wrong.  Of course Peter starts to rebuke Jesus--it's like Jesus has taken all that Peter knew to be true and turned it upside-down.

Now, it's no sin to be incorrect; the solution to a lack of correct information is to be educated, and then you can improve.  Had Peter simply said back to Jesus, "Wow--a Messiah who goes to a cross? I did not have that on my bingo card--I guess I have a lot to learn about how God really operates in the world.  Please teach me, Jesus!" well, that would have been one thing.  But you can tell in this moment that when Jesus presents his own agenda (the way of the cross) and it doesn't fit with Peter's expectations, Peter really wants to keep his old expectations and to force Jesus to conform to them.  But he just won't do that. Peter wants Jesus to be his Messianic Mascot--the one who fulfills all of Peter's hopes and wishes for a war against their enemies and glorious victory--and instead, Jesus simply refuses to get in the costume Pete's got all picked out.  Jesus will not be anybody else's talisman, figurehead, or lucky charm.  He insists on being his own completely free self, who chooses the way of suffering love and laying his life down.  There will be no conquering, no "taking back their country" in the name of God or God's kingdom, and there will be no armies slaying the Romans.  That is all part of Peter's agenda, not Jesus'.

It's easy for us to look down on Peter, of course, but the temptations are just as real and just as strong in our own time and place.  We are so easily led to want to use Jesus as a genie to grant our wishes, a vending machine to dispense the favors we pray for, or merely our mascot to endorse our "side," our group, our country, our party, or our particular denomination of church.  We want to have Jesus' celebrity status to back our plans and programs, but would rather he stay silent so we can tell him what to do and where to do.  And once we stop listening to Jesus' own way of doing things (which always centers on the self-giving love of the cross), it is horrifyingly easy to think we can baptize our own self-centered agendas tell ourselves we have Jesus' blessing for them.  We can build these little circular loops of faulty logic that say since we're Christians, whatever we already want to accomplish must be in line with God's will, even if the programs and priorities we want to pursue aren't very Christ-like at all.  (And like Blaise Pascal so hauntingly said it, people "never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."  Once we tell ourselves that our self-centered quests for "greatness," power, status, wealth, control, or whatever else, are being done "for Christ," we become incapable of actually hearing Jesus, who refuses to endorse that kind of agenda, no matter how much we want to put his name on it.  Jesus always insists on the way of the cross, no matter how we or Saint Peter himself don't like it.

All of that means that just because I say I'm doing something or advocating for something "for Christ," it doesn't mean that it really aligns with Christ's actual will or work in the world.  Countless armies marched on crusades in the Middle Ages, convinced that they were killing their enemies for God's glory and with Jesus' approval; so did shiploads of colonizing conquistadors sailing across oceans to enslave the people they found in this hemisphere in the name of benefiting "Christian nations."  They all may have zealously and fervently believed that they were doing God's work--but that's only because they had, quite frankly, stopped actually listening to Jesus and instead tried to use the cross as their logo or brand.  And even now, it's worth stopping to ask, to reflect, and to be prepared to repent, over whether we have been trying to use Jesus as our mascot rather than to listen to him as our master.  It can be scary, but it was scary for Peter, too, when Jesus force him to stop and listen, rather than to make Jesus fit our pre-arranged mold for him.

Today, maybe the action we need to take doesn't look like "action" at all, but to slow down enough to pause, to listen to Jesus himself, and to ask where our pet projects, partisan platforms, and personal agendas have strayed from his course that leads to the cross.  Maybe we should let Jesus speak to us on his own terms rather than insisting he just hold up a megaphone to shout ours louder.  Maybe today is the day we give up on trying to make Jesus into our lucky charm and listen to him as our crucified Lord.

Lord Jesus, help us to surrender our old agendas and to quit pretending we can make you trade the way of the cross for the mold of the conqueror.  Let us be shaped in the likeness of your cruciform love.

Looking for Losers--February 26, 2024

Looking for Losers--February 26, 2024

"[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? " [Mark 8:34-37]

Okay, a quick refresher, in case you're ever invited to my house for game night: the point of the game Uno is to get rid of your cards first.

Every so often when we get the family around the dinner table for game night, we have to remind everybody (myself included sometimes) about how the game of the night works. Some games are about acquisition--you try to get as much as you can for yourself--a higher score of points for bigger words in Scrabble, a larger portfolio of investments and money in Monopoly, or even the whole deck of cards if you are playing war. A lot of games are like that--they are about getting... taking... accumulating. It can be easy, if you are used to playing those kinds of games, to just let that become your default mindset for every game, and then, without thinking, you end up stuck with a pile of cards in a game like Uno, and then it dawns on you--this is a different sort of game entirely.

It does take a certain amount of un-learning to play Uno, and other games like it, because we can get stuck in the mindset that winning always looks like "getting."

And maybe we have the same problem when we actually take the time to listen to Jesus. Because Jesus is convinced that being his follower means un-learning what the world has taught us about the "point" of life. Over against all the other voices loudly telling us that the point of life is to get as much as possible for yourself, and to look as tough and strong and threatening as possible in order to keep what you have taken, Jesus says that our kind of winning looks like losing. Our kind of winning is Uno-winning--the victory that comes in giving yourself away. Our kind of triumph looks like a cross--not in crucifying or destroying our enemies, but in Jesus being crucified at the hands of his enemies and praying for their forgiveness as he bleeds out. To the world around, that looks like nonsense--but to followers of Jesus, it is the key to life.

And of course, the stakes are so much higher than a game. If I forget how to play Uno on family game night, the only danger is that one of my kids gets to say "Uno" before I do, and maybe they get bragging rights during bedtime snack. But in life--oh, dear ones, the stakes are so much higher. It really is a question of what we orient our lives toward. It really is a question of whether we think the goal, the meaning, and the purpose of life is looking like a "winner," on the world's terms, or whether we see God's upside-down power and beauty in self-giving love.

This feels to me like it should be already a settled subject. This talk about "taking up your cross" to follow is so essential to Jesus' teaching that it seems to me like every churchgoer, every Christian, everyone who has ever sat in a pew before or read from one of the Gospels before, should "get" that much. It is so very, very fundamental that I really find myself getting frustrated and disappointed when other self-described disciples of Jesus speak and act in ways that run counter to this. And what saddens me--what truly disheartens me on an almost daily basis lately--is how frequently people I know, people with who I have prayed, people who name the name of Jesus and confess him as Lord alongside me, in their very next breath will say and do things that are mired in the "Me-First," "I-Need-To-Look-Like-A-Winner" mentality. I find myself grieved, more often than I would like to admit, over how easy it is for church folk to fall into using the language of "We've got to be tougher--we've got to show others how strong and powerful we are." I lament how often I see church folk smiling approvingly at (or liking and sharing on social media) the kind of angry bluster that peddles fear of "those people" who they think are a threat to our comfortable position... or who feel the need to make threats like, "There's a storm coming... and one day, we are going to rise up and take back what's ours!" while thinking they can baptize that thinking and call it holy.

That isn't the way of Jesus. It is the opposite. It is quite literally anti-Christ.

And to be honest, if I didn't already know Jesus better (from actually reading the gospels), if that kind of angry, boastful, saber-rattling attitude was my first introduction to people who called themselves followers of Jesus, I wouldn't want anything to do with Jesus, with his story, or with is followers. To be perfectly frank, it is religious people who talk about coercively "taking their country back" (whatever that means) that make it harder for me to be a Christian in this time and place. It's not some imaginary threat of atheists coming to take away my ability to pray. It's not, as I also sometimes hear, some ominous "Them" who are ominously coming to hurt the Bible, mishandle the cross, or put God in a corner.  No, if I can lay all my cards on the table here (so, "Uno!", I guess), what makes it hardest for me to be a Christian in this moment of history in this particular culture are religious people who shout about wanting to look like winners, rather than actually listening to Jesus himself saying, "Losing is the key to winning. Take up your cross. Let the rest of it go."

Today, then, I need to ask--both for you to hold me accountable, and for each of us to commit to listening to Jesus again with open ears--that we allow Jesus to help us un-learn the garbage we've been taught about how life is supposed to work, and instead to learn his path. Help keep me honest, and when I slide back into the attitude that is centered on Me-and-My-Group-First, or on fear of losing a comfortable position, and on looking like a "winner," I ask you to smack me upside the head in love and call me back to take up a cross rather than to take up arms.

It will be hard sometimes for us to live this way, over against the other voices. It will feel like swimming upstream. It will look like we are giving all of our cards away when everyone else is playing to keep theirs. The question to ask, though, is simply this: who knows best how this game called Life works? Maybe we should trust that Jesus knows what he's talking about. Maybe the point of life all along has always been about giving ourselves away in love.  And if the world calls that "being a loser," good: Jesus has been looking for losers to join his movement and to carry our crosses.

I dare say it's worth a try. Help keep me honest about it.

Lord Jesus, turn us around when we are aimed in the wrong direction, and help us to unlearn the old ways of living our lives, to be pointed in your orientation toward self-giving love.

God Wants Everybody--February 23, 2024

God Wants Everybody--February 23, 2024

"...This is right and acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all--this was attested at the right time."  [1 Timothy 2:3-6]

Well, this little passage just right goes ahead and says the quiet part out loud, doesn't it?  Here's the open secret of the New Testament: God's desire is for everyone to be saved, and there is no price God won't pay (or, rather, hasn't already paid) to rescue a whole world full of us. For whatever else that claim means, it says pretty clearly that God isn't rooting for anybody to be lost forever, and that God isn't sitting up in heaven just itching to smite you (or anybody else) with a lightning bolt of damnation.  God desires (or more literally in the Greek, "God wills...") for all to be saved.  

I suppose the only question that remains, in that case, is whether we think, at the last, God really will get what God wants after all, or whether there is anything--any power, force, bad deed, or heinous sin--that will ultimately prevent God from getting what God wants when all is said and done. I'll just leave that question there for you to mull over and do its work on you.  I'm still chewing on it, myself, after years of ruminating.

In the mean-time, though, consider just how wide an embrace this passage suggests.  In the immediate context, the writer of what we call First Timothy has just told his readers that they should keep praying "for everyone"--specifically including "kings and all who are in high positions"--which would absolutely have included people outside the Christian faith.  (Remember that the emperor at this time is the force behind Jesus' own crucifixion at the hands of the Roman Empire, as well as Paul's own imprisonment toward the end of his life--so this would include praying for people who were clearly hostile to the faith, wicked, violent, and oppressive!)  And from that request for prayer for everyone, the passage continues with the verses above.  In other words, the whole train of thought says that we should pray for everyone, yes, even including ungodly kings and cruel emperors, because after all, God wants everyone to be saved, and because Jesus gave himself as "a ransom for all."  The writer to Timothy is under no illusions: he knows that this would include some pretty terrible people who have done (or ordered) some pretty terrible things.  And God surely knows that as well.  And yet... here we have the clear statement that God intends to save, redeem, and rescue even the worst of the worst of us.  (Again, the question hangs in the air--will God eventually get what God wants in the end?  And what could there be that would stop or prevent God from getting God's will done at the last?) At least as far as God's intent is concerned, the writer of First Timothy understands that God wants everybody, and the outstretched arms of Jesus on the cross are evidence of just how wide God's embrace is willing to stretch.

Now of course, none of that means to excuse people who do terrible and rotten things (like, say, any bloodthirsty Roman emperors who might have been holding Paul prisoner) from the responsibility they bear for their actions.  None of this dismisses any of us from having to deal with the consequences of our choices, the harm we have caused to others, or our collective calling to speak up against the Doers of Terrible and Rotten Things.  But it does mean that whatever "ransom" Jesus offers with his life at the cross is not limited only to people who are already currently in-group members of the church, or to people with a perfect record on their Righteousness Report Card.  There is no limit to how many of us are included in that ransom or how rotten our behavior has been.  Jesus isn't just the savior of people with little sins--the casual gluttony of a drive-thru culture, the fashionable idolatries of celebrity and technology, or the respectable bigotries encouraged by talking heads on TV.   Jesus is the savior of us at our worst--and to hear the New Testament tell it, the ransom of a whole world full of us, too.

One of things I'm going to have to learn to live with, then, if I take the New Testament seriously, is that God has it in mind to save people I don't currently like.  More than that, God has redeemed people I don't consider worthy.  And God apparently intends to rescue even folks who are dead-set turned away from God and God's sort of justice, mercy, and goodness.  (Ask Paul himself to tell you his story about that, right?) Taking the cross seriously means taking seriously a vision of God's love that reaches to everyone, with or without my approval, and certainly never needing my permission.

So... if you can't cope with a God whose desire is just that all-encompassing, well, it's a dangerous thing to read the New Testament.  If you aren't prepared for a savior who gives himself away as a "ransom for all," well, maybe what you're interested in is a different sort of religion.  And if you can't stand the idea that in glory you'll be rubbing elbows with people who do not pass your personal tests of holiness or make the cut on your list of respectable people, well, then you may want to have a Come-to-Jesus moment yourself, because the Scriptures double-down on this claim of a recklessly gracious God and a cross that stretches out to includes us all.  

God wants everybody. Who are we to stand in the way?

Lord Jesus, widen our vision with the infinite reach of your cross-borne love.

A Done Deal--February 22, 2024

A Done Deal--February 22, 2024

"For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them. From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in this way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ, and has given us the ministry of reconciliati0n; that is, in Christ God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and entrusting the message of reconciliation to us." [2 Corinthians 5:14-19]

Did you ever go out to a restaurant and discover, when the meal was over, that someone else had paid your bill?  Sometimes it's one of the members of your party who whispers a word to the server before you even arrived at the table.  Maybe it's a good-natured stranger who sees your kids and it makes them think of their grandchildren, and so they ask their waiter if they can pay for yours as well, or an acquaintance you didn't realize was there at the same time as you, who stealthily picks up your tab.  Maybe it's the person in front of you in the drive-through line who is doing a random act of kindness for whomever comes next up behind them.  Maybe the manager of the restaurant knows you and wants to be kind and just tells the server that your meal is on the house.  Whatever the particulars of the situation (and I do hope you've had the chance at least once to be in a situation like this), there is something wonderfully surprising about discovering that your meal was paid for, and you didn't even realize you had been given a gift.

It's the unconditionality of the gift, I think.  When you ask the server for your check and the response comes back, simply, "Oh, it's already been taken care of," it's an already accomplished fact.   It's a done deal.  You are not being given an offer, "If you will just fill out this contest entry, there's a chance that you'll win a free meal." And you're not being paid back for customer loyalty, like, "Because you've eaten here ten times before now, your meal today is free!"  You are being informed about an already-real situation that is being given as a gift.  You haven't done a thing to earn it, and yet it's already in your hands.  You can't un-receive a free meal like that--it's already been paid for by whomever the mysterious benefactor at the restaurant might have been.  The one thing that is happening is that your awareness of an already-changed relationship is awakened.  You are being informed about a gift already given, a grace that has already been bestowed.

Sometimes I think we miss that the real scandal of the gospel is that this is the way God acts toward us to save, reconcile, and redeem.  To hear Paul tell it in what we call Second Corinthians, God has already done the reconciling.  The free gift has already been given, the bill paid, and the estrangement overcome in the cross of Jesus.  Jesus' death has settled things already, overcome our hostility toward God, and revealed that God has already put things right between us and God, from God's side of the equation.  In Christ, God says, "Put away your wallet.  We're already square."  In the cross, God announces with a loving look to us, "Your money's no good here.  I've already taken care of everything." And in fact, God has said this to the whole world.

Yeah, you really get the sense from these verses that Paul isn't talking about something conditional, hypothetical, or contractually limited to dues-paying club-members only.  Paul stresses that in Christ "God was reconciling the world"--that's not just church members.  That's "the world."  It's all of humanity that God has already reconciled with.  It's like God picking up the tab for everybody in the restaurant ahead of time.  And that means it's not merely an offer you have to register for a chance to win, or a prize for customer loyalty.  It's an already-given gift, a grace bestowed on the whole world.  And like our imaginary scene in the restaurant, it's a done deal.  The only question is how we are changed when we realize what has already been given to us that cannot be unreceived.  But you'll notice that nowhere here does Paul say, "Act now, before this offer goes away!" or "Supplies limited--only the first hundred applicants for God's free-salvation-lunch will be considered!"  Rather, he says that God has already reconciled the whole world through Christ's death, and now he and the rest of the Christian community are the ambassadors, the messengers and table servers telling the world, "Your bill has already been paid.  Everything's already been settled."

It really does change things to realize that the church is not a heavenly-commissioned marketing team trying to get the world to buy a product or sign-up for an exclusive deal. It is the name for the community of people learning to let it sink in that the gift has already been given and there are no old scores or debts to be settled, because God has put things right in Christ already before we were aware of it.  And it is the name for the way of life that unfolds when you realize that because you've been given a free gift (along with the whole world), your job is to help everybody else on earth know the news that the check has already been ripped up, the tab has been paid, and all accounts are settled through Christ. In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "No abyss of evil can hide from him through whom the world is reconciled with God. But the abyss of God’s love encompasses even the most abysmal godlessness of the world." Or as Robert Farrar Capon said, it, "You are free. Your services are no longer required. The salt mine has been closed."  

How will you face the world differently in light of that realization?  What will it do to you and me in this day as it dawns on us that God has already reconciled all accounts, from God's side of the equation?  Who might you and I be sent to tell?  Who is waiting to hear the news, and is right now still sweating bullets worried if they'll have enough in their wallets to pay their tab?  How might we all be freed by hearing again that we've been given the exact grace we needed... for free?

Lord Jesus, thank you for reconciling us to yourself.  Thank you for the gift that was given before we were even aware of it.  Thank you for the way your love embraces the whole world.

Divine Un-Bragging Rights--February 21, 2024

Divine Un-Bragging Rights--February 21, 2024

"May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world." [Gal. 6:14]

For people who worship an executed criminal, condemned, among other things, on charges of blasphemy, the religious credentials game is a pointless one.  And for the apostle Paul, it's not even worth playing. As he writes here to the Galatians, you can waste your time trying to impress yourself or your friends or your enemies or your God with your little pious checklists, or you can give up on the whole game altogether and give up on the need to impress.

That's the logic in Paul's sentence here about boasting in nothing but the cross of Jesus. Remember that when Paul writes, "the cross" is one of the most shameful, tragic, cruel images around--you could boast about someone dying on a cross about as much as you could boast about someone "getting the chair" or "waiting for lethal injection" or "going before the firing squad." This gives us a clue to Paul's thrust--he's not still playing the religious accomplishment game with Jesus as a trump card. We might hear it that way at first, though--"Those other people might have their religious ceremonies to boast about, but well, I've got Jesus in my back pocket, so I beat you!" But Paul doesn't pick a very glamorous or glorious description of Jesus if he's still playing the old religious accomplishment game--he doesn't say, "May I boast of nothing but our glorious, miracle-working Jesus" or "May I boast only in the fact that I believe really hard in Jesus" or "May I boast only the fact that I made my decision to choose Jesus as my savior." Those kinds of sentences would be still stuck in the old religious accomplishment game, just trying to one-up the competition with Jesus as the ace up his sleeve. 

But instead, Paul shows his cards and reveals that he doesn't even have a meager pair of deuces--and yet he's convinced that the game is up because we belong to a Lord who went to a cross for us, ending once and for all the silly gamesmanship we get sucked into. Paul overturns the whole notion of impressing people with religiosity by holding up the shameful, cruel, seeming failure of Jesus' death. It's really sort of an anti-boast or un-boast. Boasting in the cross undercuts the whole logic of boasting in the first place--instead of pointing to my own accomplishments, it gives up on the game playing and says we're free from wasting our time trying to make God love us. In fact, the cross stands as God's anti-boast, a divine declaration that even God isn't interesting in playing the religious accomplishment game. Instead, Paul sees that in Jesus, God has ushered in a new age, a new community, a new world--one that is free from the old game playing, and one in which there is no need to puff ourselves up to make ourselves look better. Paul invites us, too, through his anti-boast to continually let go of the old game playing and see that we've been brought into the new reality of being God's people simply by the free grace of God.  I guess you could call them divine un-bragging rights... and they're ours for the taking.

We are often not aware of it, but today listen to your own voice for that old, needy boasting that looks to puff ourselves up. Who are we still trying to impress today? What would it look like today to be freed of the need to keep up those appearances? Now hear the announcement of the good news--you are already freed from it.  That's what the cross of Jesus does.

O God our Table-Turning, Liberating Lord, free us from adolescent games and let us find our value, our identity, our direction, and our wholeness in you. And in your ever table-turning ways, make us instruments to bring that same freeing word to all we meet today.

Jesus Versus Respectable Religion--February 20, 2024

Jesus Versus Respectable Religion--February 20, 2024

"And Jesus said to the man who had the withered hand, 'Come forward.' Then he said to them, 'Is it lawful to do good or to do harm on the sabbath, to save life or to kill?' But they were silent. He looked around at them with anger; he was grieved at their hardness of heart and said to the man, 'Stretch out your hand.' He stretched it out, and his hand was restored.  The Pharisees went out and immediately conspired with the Herodians against him, how to destroy him." [Mark 3:4-6]

The problem with us humans isn't just when we are at our worst, most actively villainous behavior. It's our moments of damnable (literally) apathy, too, and it's even when we are at our best and most religious that we reveal our clay feet.  You don't have to go to the maximum-security cell block of your nearest state prison to see the brokenness and bentness of human beings--you can find it on full display at your local religious gathering.  It's even there--or maybe especially there--that we see the impulse in human beings to do terrible things in the name of their piety, and to leave beautiful things undone for the sake of that same piety.  And it's there, too, that we see the impulse to put Jesus on a cross.

This story is one of those powerful moments in the gospels that shows us humans at our worst and simultaneously makes me fall in love with Jesus all over again, honestly.  And it's worth noting that the thing Jesus does in this story, which provokes the Respectable Religious Leaders to conspire with the Politically Powerful People "to destroy him" is to heal a man on the sabbath day.  On the one hand, Jesus' action seems so innocuous, so obviously good and righteous, that you'd think the Pharisees and the Herodians must be mustache-twirling, black-hat-wearing cartoon-caricatures of wickedness.  But the fact that Jesus stirs up this controversy by healing this man, publicly and provocatively in the middle of the weekly gathering for worship and prayer at the synagogue (on the sabbath day of rest!) hits the religious leaders like a slap in the face.  His actions seem to break the commandment (from God!) about the sabbath day's requirement not to work, and therefore the religious leaders can only interpret that action in one of two ways: either Jesus knows he is breaking the sabbath commandment and scandalously breaking it in front of them, or he is claiming that their understanding of this basic commandment is fundamentally wrong, and that they really don't understand God at all.  Jesus' actions are a threat to their religious systems, either way, and Jesus' choice to make this into a public showdown means they will lose face in the wake of this scene.  The scariest thing of all sometimes is to say the sentence "I might be wrong about this."  It is even more frightening if the thing we might be wrong about is the foundation of our whole way of life--like our beliefs about what God is like and what God wants.  

The question, in the end, is what we will do when Jesus comes into our lives and compels us to rethink what we thought we knew for sure about God: will we let him stretch open our understanding and surprise us with mercy beyond the boundaries we thought were immovable, or will we seek to get rid of Jesus so that we can keep our old assumptions?  That's really what provokes the Religious and Political So-and-Sos at the end of this scene: they realize that in the face of the new reality Jesus brings, they will either have to get rid of him and his subversive presence or they'll have to rethink everything they thought they knew for certain about how God and the world worked.  And meanwhile, the silent majority in the room that just stood speechless would rather have had Jesus go away and not call out their apathy and indifference to another person's suffering.  They all want to be rid of Jesus because his mere presence exposes that they were either indifferent to the man's suffering or that they didn't think it was more important than their religious rules, and they didn't want to have to be brought face to face with that reality.  This is what we do, of course, we humans, when someone forces us to see ugly truths about ourselves or confront our complacency.  This is what happens when someone compels us to reconsider what we thought we knew for certain.  And Jesus does precisely that.  

Here in this story Jesus launches an attack on any kind of theology or religion that made human suffering less important than religious rules, and he does it, not with an act of vandalism against the worship space or violence against the religious leaders, but with an act of unauthorized healing.  He combats the cold callousness of the people inside who were all just staring at their feet in the face of a neighbor who was hurting by showing them an alternative to their "hardness of heart" right before their eyes.  And he knows, too, surely that this confrontation will eventually come to a head--and that when the time comes, Jesus will be willing to lay down his life as a protest against that whole approach to faith.  As Barbara Brown Taylor put it once so powerfully, "Jesus was not killed by atheism and anarchy. He was brought down by law and order allied with religion – which is always a deadly mix. Beware those who claim to know the mind of God and are prepared to use force, if necessary, to make others conform. Beware those who cannot tell God’s will – from their own." 

For whatever else is going on at the cross--and indeed there are many facets and dimensions to the cross--it is also what happens when the Guardians of Religion and Power do not want to consider that they do not have all the answers.  The continued presence of Jesus--including his rule-breaking compassion--would force them to rethink everything they believed about the way the world worked, and they would rather silence that voice than have Jesus turn their worldview upside down. So they did their damnedest. And Jesus' response to that kind of hostility was not to kill them before they killed him, nor to surround himself with bodyguards or angel armies to keep himself safe, but rather to offer the same vulnerable love to them that he had offered to the man with the withered hand here in the synagogue scene.  The conflict of ideas and understanding between Jesus and the Big Deals in this scene might push them to think they had to crucify Jesus, but he will not respond to them by threatening to kill them first.  That's one more way Jesus makes us rethink everything.

I wonder--in our day and time, what will we do when Jesus' presence in our lives shakes up our old certainties and compels us to rethink what we thought we knew?  What will we do when Jesus shows us a God whose mercy is wider and deeper than thought possible? Will we let Jesus remake and reshape our understandings, or will we seek again to get rid of Jesus so we can preserve our old assumptions?  Get ready, because Jesus is alive and present in this day, and he will meet us--and surprise us--when we least expect him.

Lord Jesus, keep the clay of our hearts and minds soft enough to be reshaped in the likeness of your own image.

Cruciform Love--February 19, 2024

Cruciform Love--February 19, 2024

"Keep your conscience clear, so that, when you are maligned, those who abuse you for your good conduct in Christ may be put to shame. For it is better to suffer for doing good, if suffering should be God’s will, than to suffer for doing evil. For Christ also suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous, in order to bring you to God." [1 Peter 3:16b-18]

The followers of Jesus practice a unique form of resistance to the rottenness of the world: we reflect what we have learned from Jesus himself by refusing to return evil for evil.  We break the cycle by not reacting to other people's hostility or hatred with more hostility or hatred of our own.  And in so doing, we become breathing sermons of the way God in Christ has responded to human sin and rottenness at the cross.

Many of us heard second part of this passage in worship this past Sunday, but without the opening sentence, we can miss the connection that First Peter is making here between our actions and Christ's.  And for First Peter, the cross of Jesus is both a picture of God's action to bring us close and also a model for our action toward others--even when others have treated us as enemies.  Both are true at the same time:  at the cross, "Christ suffered for sins once for all, the righteous for the unrighteous," and simultaneously, the cross gives us a template for how we respond to the crookedness and cruelty of the world in which we find ourselves--we respond to evil with good; we respond to abusive language with blessing; and we respond to hate without becoming hateful ourselves.  

It's funny--once you understand that connection in a passage like this one, you start to recognize it over and over again in the New Testament. It's there in Paul's letter to the Romans, where he emphasizes that Jesus died for us "while we were still enemies" of God, only to conclude that our response in the world is "repay no one evil for evil" but rather to "bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse" so that we can "overcome evil with good" (see Romans 5 and 12).  It's at the heart of Jesus' understanding of God in the Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5) where Jesus insists that God's policy is to be good to humanity even in spite of our sin and unrighteousness, and that therefore, we are called to do good to those who hate us without returning evil for evil.  And from there, you can see the same theme at work throughout the choices of the early church in the book of Acts and in Paul's letters.  The phrasing may be different, but the recurring train of thought is that because Jesus was willing to endure suffering--but not inflict it--in the cross, in order to bring us to God, we are also called to bear suffering but not to inflict it on others in some misguided attempt to "get even."  Time and time again, the writers of the New Testament insist, "That's just not how we do things anymore."

The cross of Jesus, then, is always both a fait accompli, a completed act, and also the ongoing pattern of Jesus' followers in the world.  It is true that at the cross, God in Christ drew us to God's own self, in spite of our sin, crookedness, and animosity toward God.  And at the same time, in the face of the world's ongoing sin, crookedness and animosity, we are called to embody the same kind of cruciform love.  As theologian Barbara Brown Taylor put it so well, "That is what love is… not a warm feeling between friends, but plain old imitation of Christ, who took all the meanness of the world and ran it through his body, repaying evil with good, blame with pardon, death with life. It worked once, and it can work again, whenever God can find someone willing to give it a try."  

In a world that so often fails to see how it becomes monstrous in the act of attempting to fight its monsters, we are meant to be an alternative.  We refuse to get sucked into the endless cycle of "I hit you back because you hit me first," or its even more insidious sibling that says, "I will hit you first in order to prevent you from hitting me first."  Instead, we follow Jesus' lead of breaking that cycle by bearing suffering without inflicting it back on someone else.  This is our act of resistance.  As Walter Wink says, "Evil can be opposed without being mirrored. Oppressors can be resisted without being emulated. Enemies can be neutralized without being destroyed." Believing that is not foolish or naive; it is simply a matter of taking Jesus' cross seriously.

A big part of how the watching world will decide whether or not to take what we have to say seriously as Christians is whether we live out what we say: whether we practice what we preach.  First Peter is simply reminding us that what we believe about the cross is no different: if, at the cross, Jesus responded to human hatred with love, then we are called to live in ways that echo that response, too.  The world will get a glimpse, then, of what the gospel really means, because they will have seen and known that kind of cross-shaped (cruciform) love in us.

That's our defiance of the world's meanness.  That's our revolution.  And in Jesus, it is already underway.

Lord Jesus, shape our love of others in light of your cross.

 

Strong Enough to Look Weak--February 16, 2024

Strong Enough to Look Weak--February 16, 2024

"When the ten heard this they began to be angry with James and John. So Jesus called them and said to them, 'You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wish to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many." [Mark 10:41-45]

"We do NOT negotiate with terrorists."

I have heard that line so many times, in so many different action and suspense thrillers, in film and books and TV shows, that it seems cliché now. We have all heard that storyline before. We have all watched that movie. The villains take hostages, and then make demands (money, helicopter, etc.) for their release, and the side of Law and Order balks at those demands, or only uses talk about meeting them to stall while they come up with a "real" plan. Instead, the good guys invariably assemble a strike team to mount a secret rescue operation to get the hostages out and take out the bad guys, because, as one of the head good-guys seems required by law to say, "It is the policy of the U.S. Government NOT to negotiate with terrorists."

And because it is all happening in the fantasy world of the screen or the printed page, usually the strike team accomplishes its mission, frees the captives with minimal casualties, and gets the bad guys with extreme prejudice. A clear-cut victory for the powers of good, and a clear and humiliating loss for the bad guys. And all perfectly timed as you finish your last bites of artificial-butter-coated popcorn.

Now, whether or not it really is someone's official policy not to negotiate with terrorists and not to pay ransoms to kidnappers, you at least can understand why that would be someone's policy. The argument--in the movies and in real life--goes something like this: you can't give into the kidnapper's demands, or else you'll embolden future hostage-takers and create more victims. You can't legitimize criminals by agreeing to their terms, and you certainly can't expect them to keep their word. And beneath all of this good, solid, well-reasoned strategic thinking is this underlying assumption: you don't give in to ransom demands because it makes you look weak.

And sure, it stands to reason. If the villains think they can get away with their wicked deeds, they'll do it again and walk all over you. Looking strong makes your enemies fear you, and if you give in to the demands of hostage-takers and kidnappers, they won't fear you. They may give you back your loved ones (it is in their best interests to do so, if they get paid, at least), you will have lost your reputation as the "tough" one. So in the movies and books and everywhere else, it has become a sort of unquestionable principle that good guys--at least real, tough, strong, non-wimpy good guys--do not negotiate with terrorists, for fear of losing face, losing their absolute right-ness, and legitimizing evil, and losing their reputation so that more hostages could be taken next time.

I get it. I get that whole line of thinking. I grew up on those plot-lines, whether was Harrison Ford stalking the hijackers on Air Force One, a Tom Clancy novel turned movie (often also involving Harrison Ford, honestly), or Bruce Willis in one of many Die Hard movies (boy, that guy had some bad luck, didn't he?). There is a certain logic to declaring--and maintaining--the policy of not negotiating with terrorists so as not to suffer a loss of face or damage to your reputation, even if it is a cold logic.

And yet--and this blows my mind to actually think about it--Jesus seems to see himself in exactly those terms: as God's ransom that secures our release. Unpack that just a little bit with me for a moment. It is the Gospel's claim that in Jesus we have none other than God-in-the-flesh with us. And at the cross this same Jesus is offered up--or even offers himself up--as the ransom which secures the release of "the many." God surrenders. God doesn't even bother to negotiate or bargain down for something lesser than the immediate demands. God surrenders to the demands of the hostage-takers and bad guys... and in Jesus, God's own life gets offered up as a ransom. Jesus doesn't even blush to say it. In fact, he says it is why he has come.

Doesn't God know? Hasn't God seen the same action movies we have? Didn't anybody give God the lecture that you look "weak" if you give into the demands of hostage-takers? Didn't anyone take God aside and say that God will lose face and seem like a "loser" if the ransom is paid? And doesn't God know that the really respectable heroes are the ones who scoff at the kidnappers' demands and go it with guns blazing to take out the bad guys and save the victims?

In a word, yes. God knows it all. And nobody had to say it on a TV screen for God to understand all of that well. It's just... you were more important to God than God's reputation. Period. End of sentence.

The logic of the movies is that if you give in to the demands of the bad guys and pay the ransom, you're committing the cardinal sin of looking like a loser, and the fear is that they'll walk all over you all over again and take something even more valuable next time. But the logic of the cross is that there is no commodity, no treasure, and no reputation more important than you. God surrendered God's own reputation as the divine Almighty, All-Powerful Lord of the Universe in order to rescue you. And to hear the rest of the Scriptures tell it, God has never regretted that choice. You were worth it. You still are.

This is the heart of the Christian gospel, really--that there is no cost God would not (and did not) bear for the sake of this beloved world. God was willing, not only to lose it all, but to lose everything publicly in what that same watching world would call "surrender." God was willing to be mocked by the very world God was in the act of saving, and God was willing to have that damage done to the divine reputation. Because from God's perspective, a ransom is worth paying if you value the thing (or the ones) held hostage more than you value the money you pay or the cost to your respectability after you pay it.

The loud voices of our culture have a very hard time with this kind of thing. The loud voices around us--the blowhards who bellow at podiums, the talking heads who give commentary on TV, and the action-movie screenwriters as well--they talk about how the only thing that matters is winning, and looking like a winner. They talk about how important it is to be seen as victorious (even if you are not) and how you must deny anything that makes you look weak (even if it is true). The conventional wisdom around us is so afraid of looking like a "loser" that it could never do the courageous thing that God does at the cross--to surrender in order to gain a world held captive in the grip of death. To be very honest here, we would never have approved the Gospel as a screenplay--there are no heroics where the strike team goes in to shoot the captors and march out as the triumphant heroes. Yes, there is resurrection that comes on the other side of the cross, but it happens while the world is still asleep and the powers of the day are taking their victory lap, smugly bragging about how they killed the troublemaking rabbi. And at least as Jesus describes his mission here in Mark's Gospel, there is only this scandalous scene of surrender, where the ransom is paid and God takes a very public loss on the nose.

But that is also the evidence of how deeply you are beloved by this same God. The only reason you pay a ransom, after all, is if you value what is held captive more than you value the ransom money. That's why the bad guys don't steal your junk mail or kidnap your enemy, but someone you love dearly--it's the only way they can get a payday. And if Jesus is convinced that he is the ransom, he--the one in whom God dwells in a human life--then there seems to be no other conclusion but that God loves you more than God's own life, God's own reputation, and God's own status as a "winner."

God loves you more than winning. God loves you more than looking "strong" or "tough" or "great." God loves you more than living. That is why, despite the logic of all those action-movies, God in Christ chooses to surrender and lay down his own life as a ransom... for you.

Be careful--if you let that idea sink in at all, it will turn upside down all your old notions of whether it matters to look like you are "winning," to look like you are "tough," or to be called "great." But Jesus sure is convinced you--and this whole blessed, broken world--were worth it.

Lord Jesus, turn our minds upside down with your way of winning through loss and saving through surrender. And let that change everything else in our lives, too.