The Light Inside--May 1, 2024

The Light Inside--May 1, 2024

"Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us." [1 John 4:11-12]

A little bit of basic junior high school level science: generally speaking, when you look out your window, you don't see light, but you see objects that light is hitting and bouncing off of. The trees and houses, the sky itself, and people you see when you walk out the door, they are all being lit by something that is invisible as it flies through the air. The little particles, or waves, (or both, say scientists, who still seem befuddled with what light is actually all about) that we call light are invisibly hurtling through empty space, and we don't see them until they hit some other object and the light bounces off and into our eyes. Aside from staring at the sun or into a light bulb (neither of which is advisable for very long because it is too intense for us to take in), pretty much we only ever see things that are lit up by light that comes from somewhere else.

This is the way John talks about God, us, and love. You can't see God--but you can see people who have been lit up by the love of the living God, and that kind of love starts bouncing around and touching other people, too. So others, who have never seen God, either, still get a sense of what God is like because they have come to know divine love through reflections of that love in God's people.  Because God lives within us, John says, the world can see that borrowed light of God from within us.

The Bible has a curious recurring theme in it that says you can't look at God, and if any one had such an opportunity, you would die from being in the awesomely brilliant holiness of God as a poor, finite creature. It's Moses up on the mountain, asking God to see the divine glory, and only getting to see God's backside and afterglow as the LORD passes by. Or there's Isaiah seeing a vision of God in the temple, and when he realizes he is in the presence of the living God, starts bemoaning that he is unworthy as a "man of unclean lips" who belongs to a "people of unclean lips." I am beginning to wonder whether we are hearing those stories rightly. For much of my life, I heard those stories much the same way I saw the Wizard character from The Wizard of Oz--putting on an awesome display to keep us off at arm's length. But maybe it's not about God needing to keep his distance--maybe it is about the sheer brilliance of who God is, and like staring at the sun, we are not supposed to do it very long for our sakes, and not for the sun's sake. It doesn't bother the sun one bit for us to look at it--it is that our eyes can only take in so much light before they are overwhelmed. And instead, we are meant to look at the world full of things that the sun illuminates. Moses doesn't get to see God's face, but not because God's ego is fragile and God can't stand to look the man in the eye. Isaiah rightfully turns his face from the divine majesty, but not because God insists on some privacy. It is because looking on God fully would overwhelm our eyes, our wills, our minds, and our hearts. So when John says that no one has ever seen God, he means it the same way someone taught you not to stare at the sun for very long--it is because we can only take so much of God's brilliance in before we are overwhelmed.

Instead, what we can see is the lives of people in whom God's love is radiating, through whom God's light is reflected onto us, and in whom God's own life pulses. This seems to be precisely how God prefers to run things--shining on us, the just and the unjust alike, like the sun, and then letting that light, that love, bounce around creation and enter our hearts and our lives. That means when our hearts are touched by the love of friends who comfort us when our spirits are broken open, we are experiencing the reflected and refracted love of the God who creates such people and who places them in our lives. It means when someone in the Christian community offers the word you needed or a hug when words fail, you are indirectly being illuminated by the light of God, just at a brightness that your eyes and heart can handle. And it also means that when the watching world wants to know what God is like, John says, it falls to us to reflect God's love onto it, so that all will see and know what the light of God's love is all about.

Today, we step out into another day knowing the world is full of light that is bouncing all around--off of the people and places who will be in our path today, and even bouncing off of us into their eyes. We also face this day knowing the very same about God's love. It is bouncing off of others who will show us divine love in their own actions and words today, and it is bouncing off of you today for the sake of someone else. Be in the light today.

O Lord God, our Light and our Salvation, let us live in the light of your love today, so that it will shine on someone else through us and because of us. And give us the eyes to recognize your love bouncing off of others into our lives, too. We pray it in the name of Jesus, who showed us your face in a way we could grasp.

Styrofoam Cups By the Beach--April 30, 2024

Styrofoam Cups By the Beach--April 30, 2024

God's love has been revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. [1 John 4:9-10]

If you want to know what love is really like, look at the crucified and risen Jesus before you bother looking in the Hallmark card store or the florist.

If at first that doesn't sound like a fair comparison (obviously the cross of Jesus is a more serious business than my stopping for flowers and candy on Valentine's Day), it's because it's not a fair comparison, and it's not meant to be. That's part of John's point. The gestures, words, feelings, and actions that we often equate with love (and really, they are barely even romance, much less real love) all pale in comparison to what God has done for us and the depth of God's love for the world. They are leaky styrofoam cups of water next to the wide sun-lit ocean.

So if we really want to know what love is like, and even what Real Life is like, John says we had better go straight to the source and consider how God has loved us, before we go comparing our tiny gestures of love for God against each other. And truthfully, that's the only way to rightly make sense of what happens week by week in worship. At first blush, we might think that worship is primarily about us trying to show Jesus how much we love him. We give our offerings, we sing praises, we commit our time to be there for that hour or so on Sunday mornings--and it can be very easy to think that this is all about what we are doing for God. John says that's all upside down and backwards. What we are really doing week in and week out is gathering around God's signs of love for us and God's gifts of life to us, then we can't help but overflow with that kind of love and life ourselves--for the sake of others. But first and foremost, we are there because of God's love for us; we are alive because Jesus has given his life to us. We are centered around the Word where we hear again the story of what God has done for us, where we hear the promises of God is committed to doing for us, and where we hear the very presence of God coming to be with us in the hearing. We are centered around the Table where we taste and touch the presence of Jesus again, where we rehearse the story of the cross and resurrection, and where we receive what God has to give. What happens in worship is primarily about God's love for us, because the followers of Jesus have known for two thousand years that it doesn't make any sense to stare at water in a styrofoam cup while you're standing on the shore and then still miss the vast flowing beauty of the ocean. This is love, John says... not that we loved God, but that God loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins.  This is life, John says:  not our attempts to prolong our days or make ourselves richer, but God's self-giving choice in Jesus "that we might live through him."

If you want to look at what love is really like, we Christians says you look at a Jewish rabbi with nail-scars on his hands, having given himself away for the world.   And if you want to see what life is really about, in the fullest sense, you don't have to go to a resort, a Caribbean cruise, or a weekend of excess in Vegas--you look at the way Jesus makes us fully alive, even right here and right now where we are. Everything else we do in the name of love--the bold, romantic gestures, the flowers and candy, the poetry and kisses--it all pales in comparison to what God has shown us there in Jesus. And that's really what we are all about as the disciple-community. We come each week, not to impress God or impress each other with how much we love God, but simply to bask in the light and swim in the ocean of the depths of God's love for us... to be filled with the fullness of Jesus' life in us. Maybe that gives us a different answer to why we keep showing up each week for worship, beyond the tired answers of "Because you’re supposed to," or "Because we're doing our part for God." We gather because we are beloved, and we need to know it and hear it again and again and again.

Lord Jesus amid all the other lesser loves, let us never settle or fall for them at the cost of knowing your love.

The Contagious Life of Jesus--April 29, 2024

The Contagious Life of Jesus--April 29, 2024

"Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, 'Go over to this chariot and join it'.” [Acts 8:26-29]

The circle is widening. That seems to be a major motion of the book of Acts in particular, and of the whole New Testament in general—the rippling out of the Good News and the widening circle of the people claimed by this News.  In a sense, the story of the whole book of Acts is watching how Jesus' risen life spreads like a contagion, reaching out further in every direction, bringing people previously regarded as "outsiders" to belong as "insiders."  And it's the story of Jesus' followers get caught up in that motion, even when it pushes them beyond their comfort zones.

Geographically, the news and community of Jesus is spreading out from ground-zero in Jerusalem to Judea and Samaria, and out "to the ends of the earth." At the same time, that means the church was becoming more diverse ethnically, too—from a handful of Palestinian Jews to the gathered Jewish crowds from all over the world at Pentecost to the growing community of Samaritans who come to faith in Jesus, and now to an Ethiopian eunuch. Maybe it doesn't sink in at first just how radical it is that God is taking the initiative to widen the circle to include this person, but let's take a time out to consider it here.

First of all, let's be clear that God is the instigator here. It is alwyas a bigger step, a bigger risk, to be the one to act rather than the one to give silent, implicit approval of someone else's action. And now it is God--or, in truth, maybe it has been God all along--who clearly takes the "risk" of reaching out to this outsider. And just to be clear, also, the Torah was unequivocal that eunuchs are not allowed into the assembly of God's people. For a moment, let's just bracket out the fact that he is visibly of a different racial group (Ethiopia, even if not quite the same territory of the country we know by that name today, is clearly a place of Black African population, rather than the more Mediterranean population of northern African places like Egypt). That would be a hard enough pill for us to swallow today, we who still live in a society that, as Martin Luther King, Jr. said, has Sunday mornings as the most segregated hour of the week. 

But just the fact that this man is a eunuch "should" disqualify him from eligibility in the people of God, if the prohibitions of the Torah were to stand. The ruling in the book of Deuteronomy was that no one with variations, alterations, or injuries to their sexual organs, whether from birth or done surgically later in life, was to be permitted to belong in the assembly of God's people (see, for example, Deuteronomy 23:1). Being a eunuch, mind you, is something you are, not something you can "repent of," or "try not to be," any more than you can will your body to grow a third kidney.  That meant that the Ethiopian court official didn't fit neatly into tidy boxes of gender expectations. And to some that would have made the matter crystal clear: "This unnamed eunuch should not be allowed access to the news and community of God," they would have said. 

And then the Scriptures do a funny thing—they open up what seemed permanently closed—the prophetic voice in Isaiah 56 announces after the exile that eunuchs who keep God's commandments and covenant will in fact belong in the assembly of God after all.  God, it would seem, reserves the right to bend--or even break--the rules first attributed to God, for the sake of bringing other people more fully to life. 

And now here in Acts, God puts his money where Isaiah 56's mouth had been, and God up and tells Philip to initiate conversation with this outsider. The lines that had seemed clearly black-and-white, in-and-out, us-and-them, have now been blurred. And God is the One who has blurred those lines. God is the One who has widened the circle. God is the One who makes Jesus' Easter community spread like a virus of life. That means we can't blame Philip for being a soft-hearted "liberal" for going out on his own, as though he doesn't care what the Torah had said--God is the one who has instructed Philip to join this eunuch! God resists being labeled in our categories as "liberal" or "conservative," and God instead surprises us left and right with welcome for the stranger alongside a relentless call for justice and mercy and holiness. But let's make no mistake about it—God has taken the initiative to widen the circle in this story.

This one might take a while to sit and simmer for us. What does it mean that God's earlier commands set clear boundaries, and then God does something new that rearrange those boundaries? How can we believe in a constant God who seems to change the rules on us? That's hard stuff to contemplate. But note, too, that God has a way of doing this throughout the Bible. We keep seeing a God who reserves the right to surprise us, to include the "other," and to bless those deemed by some as unblessable because they do not fit into someone else's tidy little boxes. Perhaps it is enough for us today to invite God to lead us to let go of our assumptions and to let God surprise us again today, or in other words, to let God be...God.  Maybe that's how the contagious life of Jesus will break out among us today.

Good Lord, help us to see how you are widening the circle beyond our expectations, and yet how we can be truly your people following your ways, and not just our inventions and theories. Let us hear your voice, however it may surprise us.

For Those Done With "Playing Church"--April 26, 2024

For Those Done With "Playing Church"--April 26, 2024

"Little children, let us love, not in word or speech, but in truth and action." [1 John 3:18]

I guess the question really is this: are we for real, or is this just playing dress-up?

All this business of being disciples of Jesus, is this really what our lives are about, or are we just pretending?  The news, and the celebration, and all the messaging about being "Easter people" who shout the news that Christ is risen (indeed!)--is all of that just a game we play each year in the springtime, or is it who we really are?

I ask, not because it is easy to answer (or at least to live up to our intentions), but because these words we heard this past Sunday from First John won't let us avoid the question.  Are we people who just talk about Jesus, keeping things nice and abstract, easy and hypothetical, or are we people who live the Jesus life? 

I also ask because all too often, Respectable Religious Folks have talked a good game about how important Jesus is, only to shrug off the actual call of Jesus to live his kind of life, to share his kind of welcome, and to embody his kind of love.  And love, after all, isn't meant to be merely a subject we discuss or a topic we can preach on, but an action we practice.  Love is a verb for living, not a topic for speaking about.

Honestly, I've lost count of how many times I've heard young folks in the church walk away disillusioned, not because we didn't play "their kind" of music or put enough posts on the latest platform for social media, but because the loudest voices they heard who called themselves "Christian" didn't seem particularly interested in acting like Jesus.  The disillusioned and de-churched people I know have most often felt like so many of the big name celebrity pastors selling books and televangelists hitching their stars to political candidates sold out on actually living the Jesus way of life.  And the ones who have walked out of church rarely do so because they stopped finding Jesus compelling--they've left because they've heard so many Religious Talking Heads invoke Jesus' name while ignoring the needs of refugees, closing the door to outsiders and outcasts, trading enemy-love for war-mongering, and selling out Jesus' love for political or financial advantages.  They have been turned off, not because Jesus is irrelevant to them but because they have met so many church people who treat Jesus as irrelevant.

And over against all of that, these words from First John call us back to practice Jesus' kind of love as a part of the Jesus way of life--in "truth and action," not just as lip service.  As we've heard from him over these last several days' devotions, Christ-followers aren't off the hook to merely mouth Jesus' name and then ignore the needs of others around us.  We are called to something genuine.  We are called to practices patterns of life that echo Jesus' own priorities and show a family resemblance to Jesus' own gathering of outcasts, misfits, and mess-ups.  

And all of that, honestly, is good news!  This isn't meant to be drudgery or an impossible to-do list--it's the freedom of actually getting to experience the kind of life and community Jesus intends for us! It's relief from having to keep up appearances!  It's an end to the stifling emptiness of religious hypocrisy!  That's all good news--that's what all of us who have been let down and disillusioned before are really waiting for.

The next time a demagogue tries hawking Jesus as a product to prop up their cause, we have an answer:  "Sorry--I'm not interested.  I'm not here for a bunch of 'talk' about God or religion--I'm here to love like Jesus in truth and action."  The next time we run across loud religious voices that don't actually seem interested in the things Jesus is interested in, like feeding the hungry, visiting the imprisoned, freeing the oppressed, and welcoming the stranger, we know how to respond: "Thanks but no thanks--I'm done with playing church; I'm here to follow Jesus."  And the next time you run across someone who says they are done with church and organized religion because it's just full of a bunch of pretenders, maybe you and I can be the ones who say, "I'm not interested in being a pretender, either--I'm striving to let Jesus' kind of life unfold in me, too.  Will you help keep me real and join me?"

Who knows what might come out of that kind of honesty?  Maybe that's just what we've all been waiting for.

Lord Jesus, move us from empty talk and game-playing to lives that love like you.

Like the Wind Fills A Sail--April 25, 2024

Like the Wind Fills A Sail--April 25, 2024

"We know love by this, that [Jesus Christ] laid down his life for us—and we ought to lay down our lives for one another. How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?" [1 John 3:16-17]

When I fill up my car's gas tank, the gasoline doesn't get any say in where I go once I've got it.  It is merely an object under my control.  I can do something wonderful in my car, like delivering a bouquet of flowers to the volunteers at the puppy hospital... or I can be a selfish jerk and drive myself alone to a casino where I could blow all my family's grocery money and college savings on slot machines.  The fuel can't stop me, because it can only give the car motion--but not direction.

By contrast, if I am navigating a sailboat, the wind that carries my ship has both.  It pushes in a certain direction as well as with a certain force. I can adapt my sails' position or adjust the rudder, but the wind definitely blows in a particular direction. The wind's force is what science-minded people call a "vector" rather than a "scalar" reality--it has both magnitude and direction.  We don't just say that the wind is blowing 10 miles an hour, but 10 miles an hour to the east, or to the west.  The gas in my car doesn't have a direction, but the wind that fills my sails does.  

And that difference is important when we think about the Christian life.  In fact, it's the key to understanding our life of discipleship and keeping us from imagining that Jesus is just along for the ride while we take the wheel.

Here's what I mean: I believe it is accurate to say that Christians are filled with Christ's own life.  And I believe that when we say it, it is more than merely a metaphor or a figure of speech.  But, just to be clear, when we say that we are filled with the life of Jesus, it isn't the same as saying you have filled your car up with gas for your next road trip.  Jesus isn't just a source of energy for us, to be burned up and consumed traveling in any direction we please.  Jesus gives us direction, too--his own life within us also comes with his kind of living.

The words from 1 John that many of us heard this past Sunday point to the same reality, as well.  Because we abide in God's love, that love will direct us to act in ways that are consistent with God's care for others in need.  Because we abide in Jesus' living presence, we will act increasingly in ways that offer glimpses of Jesus to the world.  Because we are filled with Jesus' own life like the wind fills a sail, we have both Jesus' power AND Jesus' direction--leading us toward neighbors, rather than away from them, and prompting us to give ourselves away for others rather than hoarding.

There is something profoundly contradictory, then, when people who call themselves Christians pride themselves on knowing that Jesus "laid down his life" for them but then who refuse to do the same for someone else in need.  It's a misunderstanding of Jesus' presence--it's like thinking Jesus just gives us gas for our spiritual engines, which we can then use to drive ourselves away from the needs of others, when Jesus is really like the wind that carries us on a certain course.  We can't NOT care for neighbors and have Jesus' life within us, because Jesus' kind of life is always concerned for the needs and well-being of those around us!  It's simply not an option to say, "I'm filled with Jesus!" and then say, "...but your troubles are NOT my problem!" to anybody--that's not the direction in which Jesus' life moves.  If you want the perks of divine life but not the particulars of divine love for all people, you're going to need to find a different savior, because Jesus insists on making us into people who lay down our lives for others precisely because we are filled with his kind of life.

Sometimes Christianity gets caricatured as just a ticket-to-heaven, or like Jesus is simply fuel for our spiritual gas tank in a car that we can then drive in any old selfish direction we want.  But Jesus himself doesn't think that way, and certainly neither does our old pal John here.  It's rather like the old line attributed to Saint Augustine: love God, and then do whatever you please.  Sometimes people hear that sentence and assume the old Bishop of Hippo meant that if you claim to love God, then you've got a free pass to do anything, no matter how terrible, rotten, mean, or selfish. (And given how many hateful Christians I've known over the years, I know we give the world plenty of evidence to think that's the case!)  But Augustine meant something more--he meant that when you love God, God's own love changes us, fills us, and re-directs us so that, more and more, the things we want to do become shaped by that love. When we love God--at least the God we have met in Jesus, who cares for the vulnerable and feeds the hungry--we will become people who do the same.  When we are formed by love, we become loving--and our love takes the same direction, the same trajectory, as the self-giving, life-laying-down kind of love of Jesus himself.  He gives us not only the power of his presence... but the direction.

So today, it is good and right for us to talk about being filled with the life of the risen Jesus--but let's also be crystal-clear about what that kind of life will do to us from within.  Jesus' risen life, which abides in us as we also abide in him, will make us into people who love like Jesus--neighbors, strangers, and enemies.  We will be people who can no longer just drive away from the faces of those in need, or ignore the heartaches of those who suffer.  Apathy is not an option for the followers of Jesus--his own life moves us like wind in our sails.

Lord Jesus, fill us with your own life and love, and then lead us where you will.

Un-Weaponizing the Name--April 24, 2024

Un-Weaponizing the Name--April 24, 2024

[Peter said to the authorities who had arrested him:] "This Jesus is 'the stone that was rejected by you, the builders; it has become the cornerstone'. There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." [Acts 4:11-12]

I have seen kids at the grocery store pausing with impish smiles at the display of walking sticks and canes near the pharmacy aisle and muttering, "This would make a great sword!"

I have seen it, because I have that kid... and because I used to be that kid.

It's harmless enough, I suppose, the creative impulse we often have in childhood to see every possible way to turn ordinary household objects--even ones intended for healing and helping people to walk again--into makeshift weapons. It is, perhaps, an unavoidable element of childhood imagination to see a world full of swords (walking sticks), spears (brooms), and ray guns (spray hose nozzles) everywhere.

But outside of the realm of play, it is a sad and bitterly ironic thing when we grown-ups--especially we religious grown-ups--take things that were meant to bring healing and life and use them as weapons to beat people up with. It is especially tragic--not to mention wrongheaded and quite nearly blasphemous--to do it with the power that belongs to the name of Jesus.

This is one of those stories where such power is evident, practically bursting from the page, and yet we are so very easily led to imagine the walking stick is a sword--to (mis)use something intended to bring life, and to use it to smack other people down.

The power is brought out in the open in that familiar last verse of this scene. Peter says of Jesus' name, "There is no other name under heaven given among mortals by which we must be saved." Those are, to be sure, good words to lean on. And indeed Jesus has power--power for life, power for healing, power for overcoming the rottenness in our hearts with self-giving, cross-shaped love. So, without a doubt, there is confident trust in Jesus' powerful name spoken in this verse. What is funny-but-really-sad to me is the way this verse is so often taken out of its context and then used to beat people like a religious stick, when that's not how it enters the conversation in Acts at all. Here's a whirlwind tour through what's going on:

First, we need to remember that this sentence about salvation only in Jesus comes at the end (or rather the middle) of a conversation. For those of us who learned Bible verses apart from the stories in which they come, we might think that this was how Peter started his small talk, or that the disciples went running down the streets of town shouting, "You're all going to burn in hell!" These followers of Jesus aren't afraid to talk about hell, but it's not used as a threat to scare people into faith, and it's certainly never the only thing they have to say. Hell is the locus of the powers that have been defeated in Jesus, not some ominous threat swung at our heads. We religious folk sometimes hear this line, "There is no other name..." and assume that it gives us license to dangle heaven in front of people like a big divine carrot and to threaten with hell behind people like a big stick of self-righteousness. But this sentence of Peter's comes within a larger conversation. And this particular conversation had started with the question, "By what name did you do this?"—as in, on whose authority, and with whose power, are you able to heal people?

So to be clear, let's remember that it's the religious authorities who open the can of worms with the "name" issue. Peter doesn't use the speech about "no other name" as a crude recruiting tool—he speaks the truth that the only name which speaks for the living God and carries the authority of the living God is that of Jesus, the one who shows that authority by dying! This isn't a matter of promoting a brand, like someone saying, "There's no refreshment like the refreshment you'll get from a glass of Pepsi--don't try that Coke stuff!" This is about saying, "Here is water that brings the parched and dying back to life!"

At the start of this whole episode in Acts (which starts a whole chapter earlier), the crowds marvel that Peter and John were able to heal this man. And they immediately point away from themselves and ask the gathered people, "Why are you worked up about this event, as though we did this by our own power?" The point for Peter is clear--it's not by his own authority or power or ability that anybody was healed. In fact, any time you find folks pointing to their own greatness or putting their own name up in giant gold letters or chiseling their titles in impressive granite blocks, it's generally a sign they are out of step with the character of the living God who actually does have the power to restore life.

Peter has been pointing away from himself to Jesus the whole time, from the moment of healing right up through this scene with the police and the religious authorities who have imprisoned him for continuing to talk about Jesus. He's not trying to put himself above the religious authorities by insisting his religion is better than theirs, he's making it clear to them that it was never in his own power to heal in the first place—it is the power of Jesus, not Peter, and not John, and not anyone else.

Second, we have a language issue: the same word in Greek, sōzō, means both "save" and "heal." These are related ideas in the Greek mind (think of the word "salve," for example, and you can see it is related to our word "salvation") even though in our day, we tend to isolate healing, which we usually think of as strictly physical (as in, "I had a cut on my arm, but it healed"), and keep it miles away from salvation, which we usually think of as strictly spiritual (as in, "When did you get saved and learn that you'll go to heaven when you die?"). But for Peter, to talk about healing IS to talk about saving, and the other way around—being "saved" is not about being yanked out of this world to float around in heaven as a disembodied ghost playing a harp. Being "saved" is about being made whole again, being rescued, being brought through danger, and being pulled into a new reality.

Put this back into the story, and all of a sudden, Peter's final sentence sounds a lot less like a weapon to beat people with and a lot more like a lens for making sense of the events they had all just lived through. The question put to Peter is, "By what name did you heal/save this person?" And Peter answers the only way he knows how: "Certainly not by my own ability, but in the name of Jesus, which is the only name that has any power to heal/save." Now, Luke, who is telling us this whole story, knows that more is going on than just a single man's physical healing from paralysis—he knows that "salvation" is a bigger reality than just physical healing. And surely our message to the world about Jesus as "savior" is not that Jesus will fix all your bruises and diseases and wounds with a wish and a magic invocation of his name.

But it is important for us to recover the background of the story here, otherwise, it seems as though we are invited to use the name of Jesus as a weapon to attack others, rather than the name that has the authority to bless and heal and welcome people. And that's just it: a walking stick is a tool intended to help someone walk again--to restore health and renew life, and it is a childish game to take what was intended to give life and use it as a weapon to beat someone else up with. Jesus' name is the same--Peter is not peddling a brand. He is pointing to the power beyond himself... a power that doesn't need to put its name on things in giant letters to attract attention or take credit.

In a religious atmosphere where so many are quick to use Jesus' name as a stick to bludgeon people with, and in a wider culture where success is sometimes defined as putting your own name up on a building in giant gold letters, we have an alternative message to speak. We point to a power and a name beyond our own, a power for life, rather than a weapon to smack people down with. But Jesus is neither a brand nor a bat. So like Peter, we will not peddle Jesus with sales pitches, and we will not swing a big religious stick in Jesus' name to threaten others, but we will do acts in his name, and when we are asked about it, we will say, "Certainly we have not done these things by our own ability, but in the name and authority of Jesus."

The word we have to offer is not merely the shallow message that people can buy their ticket to heaven if only they will speak the name, "Jesus," but that lives can be made whole again, even now, and we can be a part of the healing and saving of others as the community gathered in the strong name of Jesus. That is an invitation worth making.

Lord Jesus, we will name you boldly today as our Savior and Lord, and we will name you alone as your Savior and Lord. But teach us what it means to name you by these titles, and teach us how to live in your name, too, so that we will no longer slander your name by our pettiness, our egotism, and our self-righteousness, nor misrepresent your name by treating you as a deal or a scheme or a weapon. Train our lips to speak your name rightly, and our hands to live your name for the world faithfully.

Uncontainable--April 23, 2024

Uncontainable--April 23, 2024

"When they had made the prisoners stand in their midst, they inquired, 'By what power or by what name did you do this?' Then Peter, filled with the Holy Spirit, said to them, 'Rulers of the people and elders, if we are questioned today because of a good deed done to someone who was sick and are asked how this man has been healed, let it be known to all of you, and to all the people of Israel, that this man is standing before you in good health by the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead'." [Acts 4:7-10]

If I declare my house and yard to be a separate sovereign nation (and therefore that I do not have to obey speed limits or pay my taxes), and I declare my independence in the name of George Washington, guess what happens?  Nothing.  No offense to our first Commander-in-Chief, but he is dead, and therefore powerless to make my statement have any effect.

If I shout to the skies that I refuse to be bound to the laws of gravity and I renounce its hold on me in the names of Sir Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein, do you know what will happen when I jump up into the air, hoping to "slip the surly bonds of earth," as the old poem goes?  The same as always--I'll be pulled right back down to the ground as usual, because gravity does not recognize the authority of Newton, Einstein, or any other human being.  Gravity's gonna do what gravity's gonna do.

And yet, when Peter invokes the name of Jesus of Nazareth to heal a man whose limbs were paralyzed, the man can "jump up" (Acts 3:8) and he walks away praising God.  The difference, according to Peter himself in this passage that many of us hear this past Sunday, is not that Peter is such a powerful guy, but that Jesus is risen from the dead.  His name has power because he is alive, and the power of his resurrection brings other people more fully to life.  In other words, the risen life of Jesus is uncontainable--it overflows and spills beyond Jesus' own person and brings others more fully alive.  Jesus' life won't stay put even just within his own body: it courses through the community of his followers, who are gifted to heal, mend, and restore the lives of others in his name.

The takeaway of all this for us is huge. The post-Easter community of Jesus' followers didn't merely tell stories about what Jesus had done in the past--they continued to do the kinds of things they had seen and heard Jesus doing, in all their time following him.  The early church didn't see itself as a historical society, merely re-enacting or preserving artifacts from a past moment. They saw themselves as the community in which Jesus' risen life continued, not only somewhere else "up in heaven" but among them, in them, and through them.  So it makes perfect sense now that the same Peter who had been a total coward back in the garden on the night of Jesus' betrayal is now confident and bold as he heals the stranger and then gets into "good trouble" by getting arrested for the healing.  The difference is that the risen Jesus--and the stirrings of the Spirit--now directs Peter to do the kinds of things Jesus did all along.  

It's what makes sense of the whole story of Acts: you get disciples of Jesus doing the kinds of things they learned from Jesus. They go out and welcome outcasts. They send evil spirits running.  They speak truth to power and risk getting arrested, attacked, or killed for it.  They heal the sick.  They bring hope to the brokenhearted.  They share their abundance so that the hungry get fed and the poor have their needs taken care of.  They bring the life of Jesus to other people, in ever wider and wider circles.  And their attempts succeed because the One on whom they call--Jesus of Nazareth--is not growing moldy in a grave somewhere, but is risen from the dead as evidence of his authority over life and his defeat of death itself.  Peter can heal the man, not because he has mastered some new technique or learned some effective incantation like a magic spell, but because the One whom Peter invokes is actually living and able to work this wonder.

I am convinced that this is the critical lesson we have so often forgotten as church: our job is not to master the latest "technique" and thereby fix the world... or save souls... or bring the kingdom.  Our calling is to remain connected to the life of Jesus, and to trust that Jesus' kind of life will, like gravity, do what it's gonna do, through us, among us, and in us.  Our job isn't to perfect the right technique for connecting with people on social media, looking hip and trendy in our promotional literature, being seen supporting all the right causes, or getting dragged into some culture-war nonsense because the talking heads on our favorite news channel got us riled up for it.  Our work, which is the most joyful kind of "work" there is, is to let Jesus' life fill our own, so that his kind of life-giving presence flows through us to the people around us who need it.  Sometimes that will prompt others to awe-filled wonder and praise of God.  Sometimes it will get us in trouble, or even jail like Peter.  But either way, it's about letting Jesus' life inform our own, so that Jesus' actions start moving through our hands and feet, much the same way you might catch your mother or father's words coming out of your mouth as an adult without your realizing it.

That's the calling, friends.  That's the adventure.  Let's see where it takes us today.

Lord Jesus, be alive through us and in us, as well as beyond us.

Dinner With My Enemies--April 22, 2024

Dinner With My Enemies--April 22, 2024

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
your rod and your staff--
they comfort me.
You prepare a table before me
in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
my cup overflows." [Psalm 23:4-5]

Do you see it? Do you see who is there at the table?

It is important to note that the "enemies" don't disappear from the picture; rather, the presence of God makes us no longer ruled by fear of their presence.

If I may be honest with you for a moment here, as a pastor--as a (somewhat) trained, (moderately) seasoned, reader and teacher of the Scriptures and someone who is often invited into moments of deep crisis in people's lives--sometimes it seems to me we don't really read the words of Bible verses we memorized once upon a time, and we don't think about what they actually have to say any longer. We have a way of letting familiarity breed ignorance, at least when it comes to beloved passages and favorite verses from the Bible, so that we can only hear them saying what we want them to say.

The well-loved (and rightfully so!) words of the Twenty-Third Psalm are a case in point. The imagery and poetry of this old song are so familiar that even wider pop culture knows phrases like "the valley of the shadow of death" or a "cup that overflows" and peppers them into movies, TV shows, and novels. And for anybody who has spent any time at all in the church, lines like, "The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want" probably roll off the tongue straight from the mental filing cabinets nearly as easily as "Our Father, who art in heaven..."

And yet, every time I read these ancient lyrics, I am taken aback at the idea that our shepherding God sets a table... "in the presence of my enemies." And over the years as I have talked with and listened to folks about what this psalm is actually saying, it's funny how often these words about enemies at the table are forgotten or ignored. It's almost like we are so focused on the quaint pastoral imagery of shepherds and sheep grazing in a bright green meadow that we choose to pretend this talk of sharing a table with enemies is even there. If the psalmist has been picturing himself like a sheep so far in the psalm, that's rather like saying, "God has invited wolves to the picnic, and expects me not to freak out over it!"

We love the images of God as a shepherd supplying our needs, or leading us to nice quiet spots for rest alongside the quiet stream. But we don't know what to make of the possibility that we could be brought to the table with those we most strongly don't like... and for that somehow to be OK. And notice here, the Psalm is unnervingly silent about how the enemies got there, or why, or having weapons at the ready to stop them. The psalmist decidedly does NOT say, "I'm not scared of my enemies lurking around, because I've got my .45 here at my side." The psalmist explicitly does not put trust in his own strength, speed, or access to weapons. The only mention of anything like that is the Shepherd's "rod and staff" that the sheep don't get to use and couldn't grip in their hooves if they wanted to.

So instead of some picture of imagining we can make ourselves free from fear of "the enemy" by rounding up sticks or clubs or sharp teeth or horns or guns or bombs or bullets, the poet we all grew up memorizing gives us a scene in which we are totally vulnerable ourselves and entrust ourselves and our peace entirely to a God who lets enemies come near the table where we eat... and yet somehow, it is OK.

The Bible actually makes a pretty consistent point about this--again and again, the Scriptures warn the people of God NOT to trust in their own resources, defenses, or wealth. The Bible's many voices call for us to let God be in charge of establishing peace and justice rather than imagining (wrongly) that I will feel better at night if there's a weapon in the night stand. And the Bible has a way, in its most familiar and comforting passages, of describing God as the one who actually destroys swords and shields and spears. The famous poem we call Psalm 46, which inspired the great hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and which ends with the timeless line, "Be still, and know that I am God..."--that same psalm depicts God as the One who makes wars end and destroys all the weapons... because we will not need them anymore.

The Bible never--NEVER--gives the impression that we can get out from under the reign of fear with MORE weapons, or bigger walls, or larger armies. Whatever purpose those things may have, they cannot actually break the power of fear. The way to no longer be afraid of the enemy is not to put a wall between "us" and "them" or to try and build a bigger bomb than they have, but to find yourself at a table sitting across from the ones labeled "enemies" and to find that the God who shepherds makes us no longer ruled by fear of them. There at the table, where I find that there is enough for me, and that the "enemy's" presence doesn't actually threaten my ability to have a cup filled to the brim, there I discover peace has been waiting for my heart all along.

If we dare to actually take seriously the words of this psalm that you likely know by heart, we will find ourselves challenged as well as comforted. We will be, quite literally perhaps, disarmed as well as embraced. We will see that when God seeks to set us free from being ruled by fear, God's way is not to fool us into thinking we can keep everybody away that we don't like... or that we can find solace in having our own weaponry at hand... or that we can build a wall to keep "them" all out. God's way of freeing us from the power of fear always ends up bringing us to the table, and finding that God has invited our enemies there, too, and yet that because God has a watchful eye over the whole dinner, we do not need to be paralyzed by fear. Sheep may well be afraid of wolves watching while they graze, and for good reason--but ours is the God who envisions a future where wolves and lambs graze together (see Isaiah 11 among other places), rather than a future where lambs are walled in or put in cages or the wolves are all hunted down. God's plans are always bigger and more audacious than we could have imagined that way.

Today, let us listen again to the words that we have perhaps heard all our lives but never considered in depth. Let us hear again and dare to live the image of being sheep led by a good Shepherd who makes it possible for us to sit at a table where "enemies" are close by but without being afraid of them, and without thinking we'll feel safer with a sword in hand or a wall between us. God knows we won't--so God instead frees us from fear while we are all at the same table.

If you want to be free from the power of fearing the people you imagine as your "enemies," don't run from them. Rather, if we dare to trust a three-thousand-year old poet on the subject, let God invite you all to dinner.

Lord God, lead us to the tables you see fit, but give us confidence in your presence there.

An Alternative to the Swindlers--April 19, 2024

An Alternative to the Swindlers--April 19, 2024

[Jesus said:] "The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly." [John 10:10]

I don't often find deep spirituality from 80s-era synth-pop, but when I hear these words of Jesus, I hear the Eurythmics' earworm, "Sweet Dreams."  And though she's not professionally a theologian, there's something profound about her line, "Everybody's looking for something--some of them want to use you... some of them want to abuse you..."  It's not a particularly cheery or optimistic take on the world, but it's honest about just how many schemers, swindlers, and scoundrels are out there, telling us they have our best interests at heart, but who are secretly salivating over us and trying to devour us.  And it's worth remembering how many alluring and pleasant-sounding voices out there really siren songs baiting us to a watery death along the rocks.  And beyond that, it's worth remembering that Jesus is different.

There is an old aphorism that says, "If you like a flower, you pluck it; if you love a flower, you let it grow." The difference is critical: if you want to possess the beauty of something for yourself, to control and keep it as your own, you will seize it for your own gratification and your own self-interest.  But that's not love. If you truly love something, you seek ITS welfare, and you let it become more fully what it is meant to be.  It's not about possession, control, or treating it as a commodity for your consumption, but rather about allowing the beloved to flourish.  That's the difference between the schemers and scoundrels out there (or the "thief," in Jesus' analogy) and Jesus himself, the good shepherd, who strives for the sheep to thrive and live fully.  

There are plenty of folks out there who see something good, worthy, or beautiful out in the world and say, "I want it for myself, and I'll do whatever I have to do in order to make it mine!" (sometimes with a "Moowaahahaha" of maniacal laughter as well, like villains in the cartoons).  What makes Jesus different is that instead, he looks at us, even when we have been dismissed by the world as unworthy and unlovable, and says, "I want you to live in abundance, and I will do whatever it takes in order for you to have fullness of life!"  He isn't licking his lips looking to devour us like a wolf or plotting to steal us like a thief. He isn't looking to use or abuse us, even though Annie Lennox is right that there are plenty of those self-serving schemers out there. No, Jesus is looking for how we can be more fully alive--to share his own risen life.

Of course, in the real world, it's often harder to recognize who is playing the role of "thief" (or wolf). Demagogues do it when they try to get us riled up about whatever culture-war issue of the day they are pitching, so that they can sell themselves as "the only ones who can fix it."  Scheming salesmen do it when they peddle products we don't need because they want our money, all too often draping their wares in flag-colored appeals to patriotism or cross-stamped appeals to our piety, or picket-fence-and-apple-pie appeals to "the good life."  The managers of algorithms on social media do it when they deliberately pitch us ads and messages that will provoke a response from us, get more clicks on their posts or eyeballs to view their content, or reinforce our preferred biases in the world.  We're surrounded, like Annie Lennox sings, because "everybody's looking for something." Everyone's got an angle; everyone is after something--and it's naive to pretend otherwise.

But over against all of those schemers and swindlers is Jesus, who really does simply want us to have life in its fullness.  He isn't using us as a means toward some other end. Jesus doesn't need our money for his personal expenses or our votes to get his agenda accomplished.  He isn't a demagogue selling himself as the solution to our problems--he is a shepherd who simply gives himself away and places himself between the danger and us.  Jesus really does want us to have life to the fullest--all of us, and not at the expense of anybody else.  That's what makes him different--that's what makes him worth entrusting our lives with.

I don't know about you, but I'm tired of all the other would-be saviors out there who are really just crooks trying to take advantage of us (and to get us to say "thank you" to them for doing it!). And I'm tired of the sales pitches that say, "It's a terrible world out there, and getting worse, and only I can fix it--so give me your money... or your vote... or your allegiance... or your heart..." They all smell of sulfur along with the snake-oil.  What Jesus offers us comes as a gift, and it is the gift we really most need.  Jesus gives us life, to the fullest, in abundance.

Listen for his voice, above all the pretenders, on this day.

Lord Jesus, train our ears to hear your voices above all the schemers, swindlers, and scoundrels today.

A Shared Life--April 18, 2024

A Shared Life--April 18, 2024

"Jesus said to [Martha], 'Your brother will rise again.' Martha said to him, 'I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.' Jesus said to her, 'I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, in though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?' She said to him, 'Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one coming into the world'." [John 11:23-27]

I'll be the first to admit it: I don't know a lot about investments, day-trading, or the stock market.  And honestly, I am rather grateful for the bliss of that ignorance--I don't think my life has the bandwidth right now to add a mess of worries about where the Dow Jones closed yesterday or what the next Fed meeting might mean for the S&P 500.

But I do know this much: when you own stock, say in General Motors, Meta, or Boeing, what you really have is a small piece of the company itself.  A share of stock is a share in the company or corporation.  So the value of a share of stock is, basically, a fraction of the company's value.  When the company does well, your stock will be worth more, because in some sense owning stock is participating in the success of the company.  That is what makes it different from, say, a savings bond or a certificate of deposit, which just borrows your money for a certain length of time and then promises you a certain fixed amount when it comes to maturity.  Stock is more like an ongoing connection to the day-to-day business and vitality of the company in which you hold shares: when the company thrives, your shares do better, and when the company struggles, your stock value also shares that struggle.  In a sense, you could say that holding shares of stock is less like a transaction (you-give-me-this-and-I-give-you-that) and more like participation in the existence of the company you have invested in.

Well, I mention this because I think the difference is key for understanding our relationship with the living Jesus.  What Jesus gives us is a share in his life--his own crucified-and-risen life.  When we talk about "believing in Jesus," it's not so much a matter of agreeing to the correct theological facts about Jesus (or God, or heaven, or the sacraments, or some culture-war wedge issue) in exchange for a ticket to heaven when you die. It's more like we are connected to Jesus and we participate in his resurrection life.  We have what is his (and he takes what is ours--which, as Luther would remind us, means that Jesus takes our brokenness, sin, and mortality, and gives us his holiness and life), because we are participants in his life.  It's not like buying a savings bond and just getting a fixed amount of money at the end, but more like investing in shares of stock, which actually participate in the work and functioning of the company itself.

All too often, I think church folks have been sold some version of Christianity that makes it sound like a product to be bought, rather than a life we share in.  Sermons became sales-pitches for how to get a trip to the pearly gates and what you needed to do, believe, or say in order to get that post-mortem travel package, rather than descriptions of Jesus' kind of life and dares to participate in that life more deeply and fully.  We ended up focusing on what actions or rituals new customers had to take in order to complete the transaction (baptism... or the sinner's prayer... or an altar call... or taking communion... or having a 'born-again' experience), rather than how we share in Jesus' life every day.  And so it's no wonder how many people have walked away unsatisfied with that kind of commodified Christianity--it doesn't have any substance to carry us through the challenges and difficulties of real life, because that version of the gospel has lost the connection to the living Jesus.

But Jesus was never trying to sell anything.  Instead, he has been drawing people to share in his kind of life.  That's why he says to Martha, "I am the resurrection and the life."  Jesus isn't selling tickets to heaven in exchange for our belief in correct facts about him--he is allowing us to anchor ourselves in him, so that his resurrection becomes the source of our resurrection, and his kind of life becomes our life even now.  It's not that "eternal life" is some kind of commodity Jesus sends us like an Amazon package once we have clicked the "believe" button.  Those kinds of transactional relationships end the moment I've received my merchandise and my payment has cleared.  What Jesus brings is an ongoing, unending participation in his life.  His resurrection from the dead is the reason we have hope for our resurrection from the dead.  And his way of life--his courageous truth-telling, his extravagant love, his joyful welcome of outsiders, and his overflowing abundance--these become our way of life, too.  It's a shared life, not a product to be bought and sold.

In our life as church, then, the right questions to ask are not, "How many people came to worship last Sunday?" (like they are customers or concert-goers) or "Did you get anyone to convert and accept Jesus last Sunday?" (like we are trying to close a deal), but rather, "How is Jesus forming our lives to be like his, slowly, over time, and more completely?"  It's more like we are shareholders in Jesus' life--such that his work is our work, his triumph over death and evil is our victory, and his self-giving love is our way of life.  The work of the church is simply that--the life of Jesus, unfolding from each of our individual lives, which have all been "invested," so to speak, in him.

Where will you see signs of Jesus' life in your own today?  Where will his risen strength lift you up? Where will his kind of love for others fill your own heart? Where will we see evidence of our shared life unfolding in this day?

Lord Jesus, enable us to share in your risen life more fully today.

God's Endgame--April 17, 2024

God's Endgame--April 17, 2024

[Peter said:] "And now, friends, I know that you acted in ignorance, as did also your rulers. In this way God fulfilled what he had foretold through all the prophets, that his Messiah would suffer. Repent therefore, and turn to God so that your sins may be wiped out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send his Messiah appointed for you, that is, Jesus, who must remain in heaven until the time of universal restoration that God announced long ago through his holy prophets." [Acts 3:17-21]

So... what does God want to see happen with the world?  What is God working toward in the course of history, both human history and cosmically speaking?  Or in other words, what is God's "endgame" with the universe?

I ask for a couple of reasons.  For starters, there's always some bit of news here or there that gets people thinking about the end of the world.  Last week it was a handful of folks misreading their Bibles on eclipse day who were convinced the eclipse was a sign of the "rapture" (which--side note--is not even really what the Bible teaches). Today I read a news story saying that scientists think that measurements of decreasing "dark energy" in the cosmos might mean that the universe will end in a "big crunch" where the cosmos collapses into a single point (cheery thought).  And of course, in the back of my mind is that concluding line of T.S. Eliot's "The Hollow Men," which says, "This is the way the world ends/ not with a bang but a whimper."

And along with that running chatter of sound bytes about the end of the world, an awful lot of people sitting in pews have been taught somewhere along the way that God is primarily interested in zapping people, judging sinners, and pouring out wrath on the reprobate mass of humanity.  That was the official party line from the faculty of the fervently "Christian" college I went to, and it's on the airwaves of religious programming every day of the week still, not to mention crawling all over social media and the internet.  A very large number of Respectable Religious folks who name the name of Jesus are convinced that God's big plan for the universe is mostly to damn the majority of people to hell and eternal suffering, to leave the earth to decadence and destruction, and then to offer a tiny sliver of humanity a spot in a celestial afterlife.  That's pop culture Christianity for you--some variation or another on "Be good and believe correctly or else you'll be on the wide road to hell."

The trouble, however, with that telling of the story is that it doesn't actually listen to the voices of the Scriptures themselves.  Because, to hear Simon Peter himself tell it--continuing on in a passage many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, God's capital-G Goal with all of creation is "universal restoration."  The end of the universe's story, as Apostle Pete says, is neither a whimper nor a bang, but something more like the final chord of a symphony that resolves the tension of the earlier dissonance.  It's more like the incandescent beauty of a sunset than the despair of endless fire.  It's about the gathering up and mending of "all things," not the zapping and destruction of all but a tiny minority who earned get-out-of-hell passes for their good behavior.

In other words, God's intention for the whole universe is bringing everything to life--to share in the risen life of Jesus--not to give everything over to the power of death.  God's design all along, as Peter tell it in Acts 3, has been advertised and announced through the prophets for God to make all things new.  And the coming of God's Messiah, Peter says, was intended all along to be God's means of refreshing, renewing, and restoring all creation--so that all the universe could share in the resurrection life of Jesus.  Anything less than that is a vision too small.

Maybe that's our real problem, for us church folk: all too often, our vision is too small.  We think of our faith in narrow terms about our own individual afterlife--we think only in terms of "How do I make sure I get to heaven when I die?" rather than in terms of God's bigger endgame of making all things new.  We treat the non-human world, from plants and animals to waterways and our atmosphere, as mere scenery and raw material for us to use and exploit, rather than things God cares about.  We act as though God is basically preparing to incinerate the vast majority of the cosmos, save for a tiny fraction of humans who believed the right theology, did the right deeds, or racked up enough heaven-points, and as though God thinks that's an acceptable outcome of the universe's story.  No wonder it is so easy for some Respectable Religious Folks to treat anyone who is different as less-than: if you already believe that God is hell-bent on wiping them out in a thunder of wrath, it will be very easy to treat others as unworthy of your time or empathy.  We can end up shrugging off the deaths of countless faces as just not worth our time because we've been told they aren't important to God's big plan for the world.  And that kind of theology ends up making us callous, cold, and indifferent--entirely unlike Jesus.

So there's good reason for us to pay attention to what Peter has to say.  Listening to his message here in Acts 3, it becomes clear that we've been settling for a shriveled caricature of the real God, who actually intends to bring "all things" into the "universal restoration" toward which all of history has been moving.  God's intention in Jesus has been to make all things new and to share his risen life with the world.  The question, I suppose, then, is whether we'll turn around (that is, "repent") from our old, myopic vision and turn toward God's real endgame--the gathering up and restoring of all things.

That's a vision I could get behind.  That's a picture so big it would take my whole life to try and take in.  I think that's worth giving my time to in this day.

How about you?

Lord Jesus, captivate our vision with your expansive will to restore all things in your risen life.

Outlasting Our Worst--April 16, 2024

 
Outlasting Our Worst--April 16, 2024

"[Peter said,] 'The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses." [Acts 3:12-15]

You could say that God's greatest power is the ability to outlast and to exhaust the worst of humanity (and the best—look how much evil is done with good intentions!). God's surprisingly determined faithfulness is what sends Jesus, risks Jesus' rejection and death, overcomes it in the resurrection, brings healing to those who are still broken and hurting, and then withstands the skeptical looks from this crowd. It is the goodness of God that keeps coming back, even though, at every turn, that goodness has been met with rejection.

That faithfulness is given shape in enemy-love; we hear that much in this passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday. In this scene from early in Acts, Peter tells a story of a God who does not merely wait for us to come back to him like a faithful dog waiting at the back door of the house, but who actively goes out and seeks those who have participated in rejecting him. Peter tells this crowd that they are complicit in Jesus' death—they are accomplices, and they cannot merely pass the blame or pass the buck to the empire for getting rid of Jesus. They are—and we are—enemies of God, who stand in a long line of people who have rejected God's goodness and grace. And if God just did the "common sense" thing to do, God would have left us behind a long time ago. But to hear Peter tell it, this same God whose vision for a new world keeps being rejected, and this same God whose Chosen One, Jesus, was put to death, this God has not given up on blessing the world and mending the very lives that had conspired against him.

The resurrection, it would seem, is the sign of God's determination not to take our violent "No" to be the last word in the conversation, insisting instead on a loud and clear "Yes" after our outbursts. Or, as Stanley Hauerwas put it, in the Crucified and Risen Jesus, "God refuses our refusal of friendship."

Knowing that gives us the courage to face the worst in ourselves, much as Peter's speech here pulls no punches with revealing the ways we keep rejecting God. We can't look away--and we don't have to anymore--from all the times and all the ways we have slammed the door in God's face and said, "No, I think I'd prefer to do things my way, thank you very much." Peter's speech here doesn't let us forget that we are complicit in Jesus' death, and we cannot push the blame off onto any other lone group—we can't blame "the Jews" as had been done (wrongly, in case it needs to be said again) for so long in the church's history, and we can't blame "the Romans" as though we would have had the courage to liberate Jesus if we'd have been there, and we cannot blame the random cruelties of fate.

No, we are a part of this mess, and we have dirty hands. The resurrection of Jesus shows us God's refusal to let that be the end of the story, and so we are given the courage to name it when we would much prefer to brush all of our histories of rejection under the rug. Because ultimately these words of Peter are about the persistence of God—this God who keeps seeking us out even after our repeated rejections. The God whom Peter calls on as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," is shown throughout the Scriptures to be "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." Perhaps we cannot help but see our failures, but we are also invited to see the God whose love simply outlasts and outlives and exhausts our failures and rejection and animosity, and who keeps coming back to find us. We are met with this love that will not let us go—ever. That is part of what the resurrection means, too.

Today, it may be that the task in front of us is two-fold: first, I am called to dare being honest about all the ways I reject God's goodness and all the blessed opportunities to live in God's new way of things that I pass by. And then second, seeing that God refuses to let that be the last word, I am dared to jump into God's love in a way that makes it possible for me to love others without waiting on them to love me first or deserve it. God's faithful love is a love for enemies as well as strangers and friends—and that is the love into which I am pulled today. We get to be a part of Jesus' movement to keep reaching out to a world that keeps rejecting God, knowing that in the end, God's death-defying love persists, nevertheless.

Good Lord, today let us see ourselves truthfully and hopefully. Break down again the walls we have built to keep you out—keep besieging us, Lord, with the love that will not let us go.

The Compelling Fillet--April 15, 2024

The Compelling Fillet--April 15, 2024

"While they were talking about this, Jesus himself stood among them and said to them, 'Peace be with you.' They were startled and terrified, and thought that they were seeing a ghost. He said to them, 'Why are you frightened, and why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look at my hands and my feet; see that it is I myself. Touch me and see; for a ghost does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.' And when he had said this, he showed them his hands and his feet. While in their joy they were disbelieving and still wondering, he said to them, 'Have you anything here to eat?' They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence." [Luke 24:36-43]

Jesus is fully human from beginning to end to new beginning. He doesn't shed his skin at the cross to become a disembodied spirit or a beam of light or a warm and fuzzy feeling--he remains one of us through the grave, into resurrection, and forever.

That's a big deal.

In fact, it is so big a deal that the risen Jesus goes to great lengths to convince his doubtful disciples that he is not only alive, but as fully human as he ever was. There on the evening of the first Easter Sunday, as Luke recounts it, Jesus shows up, having had a very busy day of appearances. After the morning resurrection appearances at the tomb, he walks along the Emmaus road with Cleopas and his companion, breaks bread with them and opens the Scriptures up to them along the way, and now here comes back to the locked room where the rest of the disciples were hunkered down, and shows himself. And he not only invites them to see and touch his hands and feet, but he also offers them the most persuasive evidence he can at the moment: he eats a piece of fish in their presence. The idea, of course, is that ghost don't eat (in addition to not existing in the first place), and that if it had all been a mass group hallucination, there would have been a piece of fish left on the floor where they all thought they had seen Jesus.

But the way the story goes, it seems that the fillet of fish that Jesus ate was compelling enough give these disciples hope--not only hope that Jesus was somehow alive beyond death, but that he remained as fully human, as fully embodied, as he ever had been. Jesus doesn't leave embodied life behind even after the empty tomb. That's a really important thing, because being embodied is simply part of what it means to be human. And the Gospels believe that the whole Christian faith stands or falls on whether Jesus really is one of us, and not simply a talking hallucination, a spirit-being, an angel, a religious invention, or a figment of our imaginations.

There have been, of course, those other voices, sects, and religious off-shoots that didn't like the idea of a God who fully entered human life, from messy birth in a borrowed barn to a criminal's death. There have been voices that said, "Tut, tut, this Savior Christ must have only appeared human, or maybe the divine part of him beamed back up to heaven right before the cross so that he didn't have to go through the suffering. Or maybe it was a trick and Jesus didn't actually die but switched places with a look-alike just before the first nail was pounded into a wrist." All because the idea of a God with permanent scars on permanent skin seemed scandalous. And it should sound scandalous--it is. But that is precisely the claim that the Gospels all want to make. And that is exactly what the piece of fish is about: it is a lingering piece of evidence that whoever it was that appeared in the locked upper room on Easter evening was really, fully human, and not merely a disembodied spirit or a trick of the light.

Part of what that means, too, is that Jesus now and forever still bears the scars of having gone through the cross, still owns a body, even if it is somehow glorified and transformed, and still shares our humanity now and forever. God has committed, once and for all, to share human existence with no givesies-backsies, as the kids say on the playground. Jesus wears our skin, and shares our woundedness, forever. The eaten fish stick is the persuasive evidence that the one who rose from the dead still shares our humanity. It may not seem as poetic or dramatic as the stone rolled away in the dim light of dawn, and there may not be any Easter hymns that sing, "You ask me how I know he lives? He ate a piece of cod!" But it is a detail that the first Christians held onto as a sign that the Risen One has always been One of Us, fully sharing our human life, even into resurrection.

That means, too, that our hope as Christians is not for a way out of being human, but for a transformation of how we live within our humanity--no longer bent, broken, and distorted by our selfishness, hatred, greed, fear, and sin, but as God meant for us to be. All those children's stories, stock-image cartoons, and tired jokes about people dying and becoming angels when they get to heaven have missed the point--we don't lose our humanity in eternal life, but actually gain it in a fuller way than we have ever known it. In the resurrection of the human Jesus, we are freed from the ways we give into fear, hate, and the Me-and-My-Group-First mentality that robs us of some pieces of our humanity.

All of that is there, waiting to be recognized as Jesus takes a piece of fish to eat on the first Easter evening. It is a sign for us, too, that Christ has forever entered into our humanity, and chooses to be inextricably tied up in our life. Whatever kinds of messes we find ourselves in--whatever kinds of messes we put ourselves in!--God has taken them on in Jesus, and forever wears the scars in a human body from bearing them.

Turns out, that was a pretty persuasive piece of fish.

Lord Jesus, thank you for sharing our human life all the way, and thank you for the lengths you have gone to in order to help us believe and know that you are with us.