Spirit-Given Diversity--May 31, 2024

Spirit-Given Diversity--May 31, 2024

"There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. But each of us was given grace according to the measure of Christ's gift.... The gifts he gave were that some would be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until all of us come to the unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ." [Ephesians 4:4-7, 11-13]

The church ain't McDonald's. At least it isn't supposed to be.

That's the good news on a day like today. The Spirit of God gives us a unity that includes all the ways we are different from one another, rather than making us all part of a monolithic, homogenous bloc. For the people gathered in by the Spirit--the people we usually call "church"--we are held together by a unity that is inclusive of our differences, rather than by uniformity.

And that's the way we're different from McDonald's. Or Burger King. Or take your pick with any fast food chain. The goal of any of those drive-through franchises is uniformity--you will get the same thing every time. A Big Mac on Monday should be identical to a Big Mac on Thursday, and a double cheeseburger in Maine should be the same as one in Idaho. The logo is identical across all those restaurants, so that the Golden Arches will be recognizable in any place. Same red and gold theme colors. Same menu. Even the uniforms are... uniform. The idea is to sell us a uniform product that will be identical across time and space. They have even taught us a liturgy to sing the praises of the consistency: "Two all-beef patties, pickles, onions, lettuce, cheese, special sauce, on a sesame seed bun." Remember that jingle? That famous ad for the Big Mac wasn't just meant to tell us the ingredients (or else they would have told us what was in the "special sauce"); they were selling us on the idea of uniform products and uniformity across their restaurants. They wanted us to like, to want, to need it to be the same everywhere. And that, dear ones, is uniformity, not unity.

After all, there are lots of basically identical McDonald's restaurants, but they often see one another as competition, where they are always trying to get an edge on the franchise on the other side of town, or to do better than the competing chain across the street. They are all just trying to sell us the same basic variations on the same fried meat and potatoes, after all.

But the church ain't McDonald's. Our unity, as Ephesians notes, is different. It comes not from a uniformity of our appearance, or all having identical gifts, or each of us all thinking identically either. (Did you notice there that this passage assumes we aren't all there at the "unity of faith" and we haven't all arrived at "maturity" yet? That takes for granted that we don't all think the same way presently.) Our unity as Spirit-gathered people is the God who is "above all and through all and in all." Our unity is not that we all think or act or look or dress the same, but the Christ who gives us each intentionally different gifts.

And notice there--the difference in our various gifts and roles and abilities is not a design flaw that God has to accommodate, but rather a choice on God's part so that each of us will be able to bless and enrich each other. We sometimes imagine that God's grace is something like, "God really only likes red circles, but I guess if you're a blue square or a pink triangle or a yellow trapezoid, we'll let you sit in the back, so long as it's still mostly red circles around here." But that's not how Ephesians says it: our differences are intentional gifts of God, and the difference, as it is used for building up all, is good. The differences as they are used in and for love are ways of manifesting our unity, even though we are not uniform. In other words, the Spirit's kind of unity is inclusive of our ways of being different from one another; the Spirit doesn't need to sweep them under the rug or just never ask about them.

That reminds me of an observation I read not long ago. The author was thinking back to the days of desegregation in schools and of busing kids from one neighborhood to another so the schools would have a more racially diverse mix. And the author pointed out that our usual way of talking about that era was that White neighborhoods had to accept busing so that Black kids could get the benefit of being around the nicer facilities, smaller class sizes, and better education of the schools that had been majority White. In other words, the author said our usual conventional wisdom is that the outlier, the "other," (in this case black students) were grudgingly to be regarded as acceptable, but they didn't have anything to offer white students--only to receive from them. But the author suggested maybe we've had it all wrong. But the point of desegregation wasn't just a one-directional (and still racist) rationale like, "Let's help out the poor helpless Black students" but rather in each direction, "Maybe these majority-White populations have something to learn from the experience of their Black neighbors that they would miss out on, too, if they had only ever gone to school with other White kids." In other words, the differences aren't meant to be ignored or treated as tokens who are acceptable only as long as they are kept in small numbers at the back of the room, bur rather the differences used in the service of love become gifts for all. Red circles have something to learn from the yellow trapezoids--especially if they have never known a trapezoid before. When those differences are put in the service of love, we no longer need to rely on external uniformity--we have the gift of unity trough difference.

McDonald's enforces uniformity on everything it can get its hands on, insisting it all be color-coded with the red-and-yellow brand and stamped with the trademarked logo. But the followers of Jesus are meant to be a whole spectrum full of color--the whole rainbow, and every shape in geometry. When we get that our differences are a gift that can be used in service to one another, something truly powerful begins to happen. We can see the gift of unity, not being a matter of enforcement and regulation, but another way of talking about love.  And that is exactly the Spirit's business.

Today then, here's good news for each of us, red circles and blue squares and everybody else: we are not burdened with imposing uniformity on each other. We are gifted with difference that can be an expression of love and unity. You just as you are bring gifts. You just as you are can be blessed by the gifts of others. You just as you are will learn from others, and you just as you are will teach others, too. But it was never about making us all into Big Macs. The Spirit delights in our different callings, gifts, and perspectives, because they are gifts of God. Thank God.

O Holy Spirit, let us own and love the different gifts you have given to each of us, so that we can use them for the sake of one another.

Karaoke Night with the Spirit--May 30, 2024

Karaoke Night with the Spirit--May 30, 2024

"Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words. And God, who searches the heart, knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God." [Romans 8:26-27]

Whatever it means to pray, it's not a matter of getting "the right words" in order to make your prayer life "successful."  

In fact, the apostle Paul pins a great deal of hope on the assurance that God already takes into account that we'll get the words wrong, miss the point, or stumble all over ourselves--and that God will respond to our prayers anyway.  That is possible, Paul says, because prayer is not a matter of technique, like getting a recipe for souffle correct (or properly chanting a magical incantation if you're a wizard).  Nor is it a matter of wanting what you are praying for hard enough or fiercely enough.  And neither is it a matter of being rewarded for good behavior.  Prayer, at least from the perspective of the New Testament, is not a transaction of any sort; it's not about persuading God with our effective words, or impressing God with our religious fervor, or earning a return favor from God by our morality or righteous deeds.  It's less like casting a spell to manipulate mysterious forces into doing your bidding, and more like having a friend who sings the lyrics along with you at karaoke night when you have forgotten the right words to "Come On, Eileen."

Maybe that doesn't sound very dignified--for us or for the Holy Spirit!--but I think that's actually what makes this image from Romans rather beautiful.  The Spirit intercedes when our words fail; the Spirit keeps the melody going with groanings and sighing that transcend human language, and yet which truly express our deepest needs and most heartfelt longings.  And of course, the real beauty of that image is that the Spirit--who is God--is the One enabling us to bring our prayers to God.  God is on both ends of the conversation, you might say: God is the One to whom we are praying, bringing our needs, concerns, and struggles to "the throne of grace," as the old line goes; and yet, God is also, by the Spirit, enabling us to pray, interceding on our behalf, and carrying the tune when we have forgotten how the song goes.  

Let's just hold there for a moment: as Paul tells it, God is not limited to being "up there" on the receiving end of our prayers, sitting up in heaven like a cosmic drive-thru attendant or divine Amazon warehouse taking our orders (and obligated to give us what we ask for), but is actively involved in shaping how we pray, too.  That is, God the Spirit is beside us and within us as we pray "to God," and it is the presence of the Spirit that gives us hope when our own spoken prayers are foolish, misguided, or just plain wrong-headed.  

So, for example, if I am angry at my neighbor who has a nicer house or newer car and I start praying enviously that God would punish him, God is under no obligation to fulfill my prayers like a genie granting wishes.  God reserves the right to say "NO" to my misbegotten praying.  AND at the very same time, God the Spirit also reserves the right to communicate on my behalf, "Look, he doesn't recognize it, but he's really so envious because he is insecure about his own worth and belovedness--let's do something about that, so that maybe he won't pray such bitter and selfish prayers!"  God the Spirit can intercede when my prayers are all-out wrongheaded, as well as in the times when I just don't even know what to say or what to ask for anymore.

This is the beauty of the New Testament's claim that the Christian community is indwelt by the Spirit of God.  It means that we no longer have to treat prayer like placing an online order that God is somehow obligated to fulfill, just because we said it and slapped an "Amen" at the end like clicking "Place Order Now" on a screen.  We can see the Spirit within us, and God's willingness not only to work with us when we are on the right track, but even to work in spite of us when we are on the wrong track.  There is a humbling assurance in that.  There is the comfort of knowing we are in good hands, even when we fail on our own.  We are not standing alone up on stage, forgetting the right words--the Spirit keeps singing beside us when our voices fall off, and the Spirit gives us new courage to sing again when we realize we've gotten off beat.

The Spirit assures us that we are not alone--even in the act of praying.

Gracious God, let your Spirit take our misshapen words and rough-edged prayers and bring to you our truest needs.  And let us trust that we are not along, even in the asking.

The Cadences of Home--May 29, 2024

The Cadences of Home--May 29, 2024

"When we cry, 'Abba! Father!' it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ--if, in fact, we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him." [Romans 8:15b-17]

I keep learning theology from folk-rock singers.  And I think it's doing my soul good.

When I hear these words from Paul's letter to the Romans, words many of us heard just this past Sunday, I hear a song of Brandi Carlile's playing in the background of my mind, her voice taking on the apostle's sentiment while someone plucks an acoustic guitar behind it.  On her song, "Most of All," she opens with this line:

"I haven't seen my father in some time/ but his face is always staring back at me..."

And then her second verse continues the thought: "I haven't heard my mother's voice in a while/ but her words are always falling out my mouth..."

I love the way she talks about the connections with her parents, even now that her adult self doesn't see them every day.  For as long as it's been since they've been in the same room, she sees her father's reflection in the mirror.  For as long as it's been since they've talked on the phone, she catches her mother's way of speaking, maybe even the sound of her voice, in her own words.  Those personal quirks, mannerisms, and little details are what tells her she belongs to that family--she can see the family resemblance, and she can hear her mother's voice in her own.  And when she catches those traits in herself, she knows she belongs.

Those features that run in the family--the cadences of home, the lines in faces you can trace across generations--those have a way of telling us both who and whose we are.  It's like when I sing the bass line to a hymn on a Sunday morning and think to myself, "I learned that from my dad," or when I catch myself saying to my children exactly what I heard my mother say to me one, and I am reminded both of where I come from and who I am now.  Or on the occasions when I hear my children, whose adoptions have only been in the last ten years, say things I know they have learned from me, I get a glimpse of what Paul means when he talks about our adoption into God's family.  We belong as a gift of God's grace, and the Spirit's presence in our lives can't help but be revealed in us and confirm that belonging.

The apostle's way of saying it is that when we catch ourselves crying out, "Abba! Father!" in our prayer lives (note that Paul's audience would have been Greek speakers, but here they would all be using the Aramaic "Abba" that they had learned in tradition from Jesus himself), it is evidence that the Spirit is speaking through us.  It's very much like Brandi Carlile's lyric about her mother's words "always falling out my mouth."  When we catch ourselves daring to call on the Creator of the universe and Ruler of all creation in such intimate terms as "Papa" or "Dad" it's a sign we've learned it from belonging in the family of God.  We catch the Spirit's words falling out of our mouths, and we see the reflection of Christ in our own faces in the mirror--and we remember both who and Whose we are.

On this day, then, while there's a lot we cannot predict about what will come our way before the sun sets, we know two things for certain.  We know that we belong in the very household of God, and it's not our good behavior, religious respectability, or rule-following that assures us--it is the very Spirit of God who draws forth our words, crying out to God like children who know they are loved by a good and gracious parent. And second, we know that the same Spirit who dwells in us is making us to reflect Jesus more and more fully day by day.  We won't know what challenges will arise before this day is done, and we won't always have right answers for how to face them--but we do know that we face them as children of God.  And when we catch the word of audacious love coming out of our mouths, or when we see the same servant-leadership we have known in Jesus in our own choices, we'll come to recognize the family resemblance.  We'll know the familiar feel and sound of the cadences of home.

Abba, remind us today of our belonging, and enable us to step into this day reflecting the image of Christ, whose place in the household we share.

An Alternative to Fear--May 28, 2024

An Alternative to Fear--May 28, 2024

"For if you live according to the flesh, you will die; but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God. For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption...." [Romans 8:13-15]

In a sense, you and I get to decide how much we want to be ruled by fear. As odd as it sounds, perhaps, fear is not the inevitable driving force of our lives any longer--you and I have to make the conscious choice to keep running back to fear's cold arms if we really want to be trapped in its grasp.

And sadly, that is precisely what we still do sometimes.

We choose fear. Or at least it is fair to say we choose to let fear have dominion over us--closing the doors and windows, crushing us smaller and smaller and enclosed on all sides by its grasp. We give ourselves over to the weight of all the "what ifs" and we let them bury us. As the line famously attributed to Martin Luther says it, "You cannot stop the birds from flying overhead--but you can stop them from building nests in your hair." And once again, our older brother in the faith is right on the money. We cannot stop every momentary fleeting anxiety or worry or fear from flitting through the synapses in our brains... but we do get to choose how much we want to be ruled by those fears, how much room we clear away for them to starting brooding, and how much of our lives we will rearrange in order to let the fears roost in our hearts. We do get to choose that--and in truth, not deciding is deciding. Not choosing to shoo the power of fear away is a choice to let it stay, and like a mother cuckoo hiding her own eggs in another bird's nest, or like a virus multiplying from within our healthy cells, we let fear incubate in our own hearts and then when it hatches, we treat it like it is our own, rather than a parasite.

It's the way fear whispers in your ear after you have an icy drive and says, "It's too dangerous to drive at all! Stay in and never go out of your house between November and April!" And sometimes, we listen.

It's the way fear whispers to the man walking down the street on a city block some night, and says, "That person coming your direction in that hooded sweatshirt up ahead... that person must be out to get you--you have to stop them now!" And then a fearful stranger pulls a trigger and ends the life of a teenage kid who was just walking home from the convenience store.

It's the way fear whispered to the official gatekeepers in the US and in Cuba 85 years ago yesterday (May 27, 1939!) when a transatlantic ocean liner the St. Louis carrying 900 Jewish passengers fleeing the Third Reich and seeking refuge in America and said to those who met them at the docks, "No--don't let them come ashore! They could be dangerous! They are troublemakers!" And the officials on land listened to the fear... and sent back more than 900 Jewish people seeking refuge back to Europe, left to their own devices against the Nazis, hundreds of whom are believed to have been killed in the death camps.

It's the way fear of being rejected keeps us from admitting our struggles to the people around us who really do love us, and it's the way our fear of strangers leads us to see "the other" as a threat to be avoided, rather than a neighbor to be loved.  It makes our lives unnecessarily miserable, and yet we keep signing up to let fear animate us--letting it possess us like a demon.

Fear has a way of crippling us, making us bitter and paranoid, and then convincing us that we are only being "reasonable," only being "realistic," only "playing it safe." We slide into fear so easily, and we let it happen every day, every time we do not consciously choose to live in the freedom and courage that the Spirit of God offers.

Paul has been saying that to us for the better part of two millennia now, too: "You did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear!" he says. We who have been captivated by the news of the empty tomb and filled with the Spirit of Pentecost do not have to live in the old fear any longer! We do not have to be controlled by it, hamstrung by it, contained by it... except that we let it, every day. And when we let fear rule us, soon enough we lose the ability to notice just how much of a stranglehold it has over us. We end up choked to death without flinching, because we have slowly been desensitized to how we allow fear to squeeze and constrict.

But it doesn't have to be this way! It is not meant to be this way! We have been given the Spirit of Christ, the same Spirit who raised Jesus from the dead! The Spirit keeps speaking an alternative message to us, meant to get our attention over against the insidious whisper of fear. The Spirit keeps saying to us, "You are beloved children of God! You are not meant to live ruled by fear anymore!" The Spirit keeps saying to us, "Don't let the fear shut you in and lock the door! Don't let the fear hold you prisoner! God has the power to raise the dead, after all--what can anybody else do to you, honestly?" And for every message the fear speaks, the Spirit of God speaks a counter-message.

The question, then, is whether we will listen to the voice of the Spirit or the voice of the fear. That's the long and short of it all. Will we take what the fear tells us as the gospel truth, or will we accept the Spirit's message about the world and our place in it? This should be a no-brainer, and Paul thinks so too. He says, "All who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God--just let the news sink in that you are children of God, and you will begin to feel the freedom of not having to do what the fear tells you to do!"

But in all seriousness, it really does boil down to this: which voice will we take to be more authoritative in our lives? Will it be the voice of fear, or the voice of the Spirit? If you had to pick one, who gets your allegiance? And if they each call to you, to whom will you answer?

That's the question for you--whose voice gets to claim you--the living God, or the power of fear?

Holy Spirit, let us listen for your voice, and as you speak, pull us out of our old captivity to fear.

Spirit Born--May 27, 2024

Spirit Born--May 27, 2024

[Jesus said to Nicodemus:] "Do not be astonished that I said to you, 'You must be born from above.' The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit." [John 3:7-8]

Quick reminder: you didn't earn your own birth. It was given to you.

So when Jesus uses the language of being "born from above" or "born of the Spirit" to describe how we come to participate in God's "kingdom" or "reign," guess what? That's a gift, too. Sharing life with God isn't something you apply for, achieve, or earn your way into. It's not a reward, a graduation, or an accomplishment. It's a gift from beginning to end, just like our lives are. You can't earn your own birth--you are given it, primarily from a mother who does the labor, maybe with partial supporting credit for the doctors, nurses, or midwives on the scene, and the intangible support of everybody else who isn't pushing but is pacing, waiting, or squeezing hands in the delivery room. But you know as well as I do that the one being born doesn't "work" to accomplish the birth--only to receive it. And to hear Jesus tell it in these words many of us heard yesterday in worship, even our coming to faith is a gift of the God who births us into that kind of trust.

That's a big deal to take seriously, because it completely reframes the way we are used to thinking about the start of our lives of faith. So much of American religious-speak makes it sound like our accomplishment: "Have you been born again?" becomes a question loaded with ominous accusation, probing into whether we've done enough, or prayed the right prayer, said the right words, or believed the correct list of theological propositions to earn a certain status. So much of Respectable Religion in our culture takes the phrase "born again" and completely misses the point of how being born actually works: it's a gift made possible by someone else's labor, and initiated by someone else's choice to love you into being. In other words, it's not something you can brag about--only something you can be grateful for.

Whether it was Nicodemus in the first century or the official faces of Respectable Religion in the twenty-first, we still keep trying to make our relationships with God into something we can brag about or puff ourselves up over. If I've been "born again" and it's my accomplishment, then I can look down on all the people who haven't checked the same boxes I have, and I can use that checklist as a gate to keep out others who don't measure up. If being "born of the Spirit" is something I made happen, then I have grounds to justify my arrogance and treat everybody else like they're unworthy, unlovable, and unacceptable to God. But if--as the metaphor of birth itself certainly implies--this whole notion of being "born from above" is a gift of a gracious God, then all of a sudden the playing field is leveled, and I don't get to look down on anybody. I'm just a recipient of new life by grace, the same as the rest of us. And there's no earning on my part--it's all been God's labor and the Spirit's movement.

How will it affect the way we see other people with that in mind? How might it help us to love people without looking down on them or puffing ourselves up? And how might we be moved simply to gratitude to the Spirit for having birthed us, rather than comparing ourselves or our spiritual status to someone else? It seems to me that all of that comparison and judgment ends up being just an obstacle that gets in the way of genuine love--think of how much more freely we can move without those hindrances today.

O Spirit of God, we give you thanks for having born us into faith--enable us to see that as your gift rather than our accomplishment, so that we can love like you.

Against the Numbness--May 24, 2024

Against the Numbness--May 24, 2024

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." [Romans 8:22-23]

I used to think that it was a sure sign of "Spirit-filled" people that they were happy all the time.

I used to think that the telltale characteristic of people with vibrant faith was that they always had a optimistic take on things and a sunny disposition.

I used to think that if someone was in one of those "dark night of the soul" times, that praying would automatically lift the heaviness, and the gloom would part, to make way for smiles and a renewed capacity to "accentuate the positive," as the old song goes.

I do not think that anymore.

In fact, one of the reasons I don't believe it any longer is from actually reading the Scriptures, including passages like this one that many of us heard this past Sunday.  And what I hear, particularly in these words from Paul's letters to the Roman Christians, is that the Spirit's presence in our lives might actually enable us to share the world's sorrows and pain more fully than if we had stayed Spirit-less and numb to the needs of the world around.

As many times as I have read these words, or heard them read in worship or Bible studies before, that's the thing I'm struck by on this reading.  Paul starts with saying that all of creation is groaning, like in labor pains, waiting for renewal.  And then he makes the interesting move to say that we who "have the first fruits of the Spirit" are joined in that groaning ourselves, because we, too, are aching for things to be made new, to be made whole, to be set right.

The world is aching, Paul says, and the wounds beneath that ache are all around us. Every morning's news reminds us of ongoing war grinding on, in places like Gaza and Ukraine, while stories of people still held hostage remind us how many families in Israel are living in relentless pain as they long for their loved ones to be released.  The frightening statistics about how many people are in a losing battle with addiction to opioids tell us that we are all touched by the devastating effects of drug addiction.  Kids in our neighborhoods and across the world go hungry.  And meanwhile, floating islands of human-generated trash congregate like artificial archipelagos in the ocean, droughts and famines in unexpected places are becoming more and more frequent (and more and more "the new normal" as their summers get hotter and rainfall diminishes), and scientists keep finding microplastics in our food, water, and bloodstreams.  And all of that is happening against the persistent background noise of racism, hatred, bigotry, and xenophobia that never quite goes away, even if we are so used to its low growl that we don't even realize it's there sometimes.

There is pain everywhere in our midst, and if we don't realize it, it's a sign we aren't paying attention--whether by accidental or willful ignorance.  And Paul's point is that the groaning of the world reminds us that it doesn't have to be like this.  There is something in us that sees the brokenness across creation and cries out against the sheer wrong-ness of all of it.  And that, Paul says, is a sign of the Spirit-given hope that points us toward God's promised renewal of all things.  The universe, in other words, knows that something is rotten in Denmark, and groans in the tension of waiting for new creation.  The only creatures who seem able to ignore it are we human beings, the ones whose actions are so often responsible for the groaning of the world.  And the presence of the Spirit in our lives does not desensitize us to that pain, but rather leads us to greater empathy and awareness of the world's ache.  

That is to say, the Spirit enables us to pay attention to the hurt around us rather than cover our eyes or look away. The Spirit prompts us to cry out--in both lament and anger--against injustice and oppression in the world, rather than to numb us into apathy with warm fuzzy religious feelings.  The Spirit leads us to share in the world's pain rather than shield us from it, because we are being oriented toward the hope of God's renewal of all things.

My faith should never make me more apathetic to the wounds of the world. If it does, it's a sure sign I've traded the Spirit-indwelt life for a sloppy counterfeit.  Rather, the Spirit's presence in our lives is exactly what will prod us to groaning along with the world over the injustice, cruelty, and suffering to which we would otherwise be numb.

Today, then, maybe it's worth remembering that the people who are blissfully ignorant of the pains of the world are not necessarily the models of faith that we might have thought.  It's worth remembering that the folks who always seem to be upset about some trouble in the world are not lacking in faith, but might actually be better examples of faith that is truly informed by the Spirit.  And maybe it's worth letting the Spirit disturb our comfort where we have gotten used to tuning out the pain of others.  When we feel that groan of lament and anger inside us, it's not a sign that our faith is weak; it might just be the assurance that we are truly attuned to the stirrings of the Spirit.

O Spirit of God, move us from apathy and lead us to share the pains of all creation, as you groan and sigh along with us.

The Breath of God--May 23, 2024

The Breath of God--May 23, 2024

"O Lord, how manifold are your works!

 In wisdom you have made them all;

    the earth is full of your creatures....

These all look to you 

   to give them their food in due season;

when you give to them, they gather it up;

    when you open your hand, they are filled with good things.

When you hide your face, they are dismayed;

    when you take away their breath,

    they die and return to their dust.

When you send forth your spirit, they are created;

    and you renew the face of the ground." [Psalm 104:24, 27-30]

Do me a favor, would you? Think for a moment about how your lungs work.  Picture how the air moves.

Before you draw a breath at all, your body is already surrounded by an ocean of air that blankets the entire planet.  It's in the breeze the tickles the branches on the trees in the distance.  It's in the warm humidity that hangs around everywhere on a summer day before a thunderstorm. It's the reason the sky looks blue on a sunny day.  And as you inhale, some of that wind--those molecules of nitrogen and oxygen and carbon dioxide and whatnot--enters your lungs and is absorbed into your bloodstream.  With me so far?  From there, that oxygen--which just a moment before had been bouncing around the atmosphere--is incorporated into your cells, stored in sugars in your body for fuel, and coursing through every blood cell of your body.  In other words, the air that used to be very clearly outside of you comes to be inside you--and in a sense, becomes a part of you.  And all of this is going on all the time, every time you breathe in... or <sigh>... breathe out.

The thing that boggles my mind about that exchange is that chemically, the oxygen is all the same, whether it's out in the breeze of the open air and blue sky, filling my lungs like a balloon, or being transported through my blood vessels within red blood cells.  And yet, once the air is inside my body, I think of it no longer as just "air" but "breath." And once it is in my blood cells, I don't think of it as "breath" any more so much as I just think of it as "me."  And yet, the oxygen from outside myself is necessary to make my body (also "me") come to life and stay alive... and I don't think of the oxygen in my lungs or blood cells as a hostile invader or external force that is possessing me.  It enables me to be me, distinct from the world around and the atmosphere's ocean of air around me, and yet it is also inseparable from my life and even my own body.  In a very real sense, you could say that I (and all life forms that breathe) were made to be both surrounded and filled by this thing we call "breath" or "air" or "wind," depending on where we picture it.

Well, the reason I've asked us to take this brief detour into the respiratory system is that the biblical writers so often use the same language for the Spirit and the Spirit's indwelling.  The biblical words for "spirit" (and also "Spirit" as in "The Spirit of God" or "the Holy Spirit") are also words for wind, breath, and air.  And just as the same air can be called "atmosphere" when it is blowing in the wind and also "breath" when it is inside my lungs, the Spirit of God is also described in the Scripture as both the breath from God and the breath that brings us to life.  We are brought to life because God dwells within us--and yet that doesn't make us stop being ourselves, not any more than I stop being myself when I take a breath.  Just the opposite, in fact: I become more fully myself--and alive, rather than a corpse!--when I am filled with this outside stuff called "air" that becomes "breath."

All of this is to say that human beings--and maybe all of creation itself, in a broader sense--is made for being indwelt by God's Spirit--and yet, that indwelling doesn't exhaust or contain God (as though God were limited to only being a life-force inside human beings), nor does it stop us from being individual beings ourselves, rather than puppets or hosts for a parasite.  We are indwelt by God, and that neither limits God to existing only with us, nor does it reduce us to programmed automatons.  We are made for relationship with God, and even to be dwelling places for God by the Spirit, and yet God remains beyond us as expansively as the atmosphere is bigger than the capacity of my lungs.

Grappling with this reality both exalts and humbles us.   It means that we human beings are indwelt, not merely by a complex system of chemical reactions we call "life" but with nothing less than the very presence of God who enlivens us like breath.  And at the same time, the psalmist here reminds us that all creatures are brought to life by this "breath of God" who is also the "Spirit of God." And we find our place in the universe, not by pretending we are "better" or "more important" than the other creatures in God's world, but by seeing that we share a common dependency on God's Spirit to fill us like breath in our lungs and oxygen in our blood cells.  In that sense, it is humbling to recognize that God is not ashamed to dwell within me, but neither is God ashamed to dwell within a skunk, a sea cow, or a slime mold.  God's presence permeates all of it, and all of us are able to exist and live because we are filled with God's own indwelling Spirit like our breath.

That means I never have permission to dismiss other creatures as of secondary importance to God or of lesser beauty or goodness.  I never have the right to view the world merely as raw materials to be harvested and hoarded or resources to be commodified, but rather as parts of the same web of life in which I am woven, enlivened by the same breath of God as I am. Taking the Spirit of God seriously means seeing my connection to all of life and all of creation, and to own it rather than to hide it.

Think about that the next time you breathe in.  Think about that the next time you see a bee pollinating a flower.  Think about it the next time you cross paths with the neighbor who always irritates you and gets under your skin.  We are all enlivened with the same Spirit of God, who not only made us but sustains us all, moment by moment, as an ongoing gift of grace.

O God, open our eyes to see the connections we share with all creatures and with all people, and draw us more closely to you in that recognition.

Without Office Hours--May 22, 2024

Without Office Hours--May 22, 2024

[Jesus told his disciples:] "Nevertheless I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you." [John 16:7]

At some point, all of our language about God falls apart. 

Our words are blunt tools, and our brains have the two-fold weakness of having a limited grasp while thinking they are big enough to grasp everything.  That's especially true when it comes to talking about God's life as "Trinity"--as three Persons in one Being (which is what Christianity has classically taught, in those explicit terms since at least the fourth century).  We fumble over what we mean, and we stumble through describing God without our language crumbling into nonsense.  And yet, Jesus gives us some places for a firm toe-hold, even if they are still beyond our complete grasp.

For one, Jesus reminds us that the Spirit he sends is somehow still very much in connection with Jesus himself.  Jesus doesn't see the Spirit as a consolation prize, parting gift, or second-tier B-list deity.  So even though we might think to ourselves, "It would have been so much BETTER to have lived during Jesus' time, so we could have perfect clarity and right answers to all our questions, but we're stuck living here twenty centuries too late," Jesus thinks that we're actually in a better spot than that.  "It is to your advantage that I go away," he tells his disciples, "for if I do not go away, the Advocate will not come to you." The Spirit Jesus gives is no less divine, no less good, no less sufficient, than what we have been given in Jesus himself.  And without saying that the Spirit is merely Jesus in Disembodied Voice mode, Jesus does make it clear that the Spirit gives us a live connection to Jesus, who remains resurrected and alive forever.  I don't know how to explain that, dissect that, or even diagram that--it feels like words themselves fail here.  And yet, I'm willing to trust Jesus' promise that somehow the gift of the Spirit keeps us in touch with the Crucified and Risen Jesus, and somehow the Spirit's presence is even better than what the first twelve disciples experienced in their time walking the dusty roads of Galilee with Jesus of Nazareth.

I want to suggest at least one possible way that having the Spirit, rather than the physical presence of Jesus of Nazareth, is "to our advantage."  It is the gift of the Spirit's presence everywhere.  That is something that the physical body of human-and-divine Jesus cannot offer us.  During the years of his earthly life and ministry, Jesus of Nazareth could be one place at one time.  If he was at Zacchaeus' house, it meant he wasn't at Peter's house.  If he was healing a woman in a busy crowded street, it meant that he couldn't be at Jairus' house attending to a sick daughter near death.  If he was dying on a cross, he couldn't be wrapping his arms around his grieving mother.  Even after his resurrection (which seems to have allowed Jesus' some unusual abilities to appear within locked doors!), Jesus can't be everywhere at once--if he is on the road to Emmaus with Cleopas and his companion, he can't also be back in Jerusalem at the very same time with the rest of the disciples.  He has to leave one place to go to the  next.  But the Spirit, however, can be with you where you are, with me where I am, and with a whole world full of us all over God's green earth.  The Spirit not only enfolds us like the air around us in the atmosphere, but the Spirit can be within us like the air that fills our lungs and is incorporated into the cells of our bodies.  That's not a trick Jesus' physical body can pull off--and it means that none of us is ever really alone.  None of us is left to our own devices, and none of us has to wait for our turn in a line of billions for some one-on-one time with God.  The Spirit makes it possible for us to be in the presence of God anywhere, anytime, without waiting for scheduled office hours.  And yet, Jesus doesn't make it seem at all like he's passing us off to the Spirit like some kind of grad student assistant instead of getting to see the professor face to face.  Jesus insists that the Spirit given to us is no counterfeit, no substitute, and no second-class knock-off.  By the Spirit, we are in touch with Jesus, and he with us, wherever the Spirit leads us.

How will it change your day, or at least your outlook on the world and the way you face it, to know that you are not alone--and that the One who goes with us brings the fullness of God right in our midst?

Lord Jesus, stir up your Spirit among us now, and bring us into your presence.

The Meaning of the Light--May 21, 2024

The Meaning of the Light--May 21, 2024

"When the Advocate comes, whom I will send to you from the Father, the Spirit of truth who comes from the Father, he will testify on my behalf. You also are to testify because you have been with me from the beginning." [John 15:26-27]

Do you know how a cell tower works?  Not the detailed schematics, but the basics of the theory?  In broad brush strokes, it goes like this: you want to make a call from your cell phone, and the phone sends a signal (by radio frequency) to the nearest cell tower, whose job it is both to receive the signals from people's phones and also pass them along to the wider network to bring the call to your phone.  A single cell site can typically handle a lot of calls all at once, which is pretty amazing if you think about it.  And the antenna on a cell tower has to be able to receive, process, and then retransmit the initial call, all at the speed of light (again, pretty amazing).  

It happens so fast and we are so used to it that we probably don't even realize how much is happening from the time we press "send" to the time we hear a "hello" on the other end of the call.  If you're a fan of The Lord of the Rings, it's kind of like those bonfire beacons they have set up across the chain of mountain peaks to communicate across vast distances.  If you're one of the soldiers stationed at a beacon and you see the fire off in the distance, you are to light your beacon then so that someone miles away will know that "Gondor calls for aid!"  In the movie version, there's a whole sequence showing a long series of these giant bonfires where those who are stationed have to have their eyes open to receive a signal and then to pass it along to the next set of distant eyes.  Well, whether you picture the instantaneous transmission of a cell signal or the drawn-out bonfire communications of a fantasy tale, the central idea in both is how one point can be both recipient and transmitter of a message.  And when that happens, the message remains constant, even if it is transmitted along the way through multiple points or even people.  

And if you can envision that happening, you've got a good feel for the way Jesus talks about the work of the Spirit in our lives--and then our work in the world.  The Spirit, Jesus says, communicates Jesus' ongoing word to the community of Jesus' followers ("he will testify on my behalf"), and then we become witnesses who "testify" what we have seen and known of Jesus.  The Spirit takes what comes from the living Jesus and passes it along to us--and then we also receive what the Spirit speaks so that we become messengers and witnesses to the world.  Like watching the bonfires on the mountaintops of Middle Earth, or like a cell signal going from the palm of your hand to a tower and then out beyond into the wide world carrying your voice, the message remains the same while at the same time it is transformed and processed through each of the different points along the way.  The fire at one beacon doesn't move to the next mountain peak, but the light does.  And as it moves, so does the meaning of the light--the message is received at the next beacon, so the people there can light their fires and the message can be seen even further in the distance by the next.

In a similar way, perhaps, our calling as Jesus followers is simply to be witnesses as the Spirit directs us.  We receive the ongoing Word from the living Jesus through the Spirit, and we embody the Good News of Jesus, each in our own way, so that the next person and the next will receive the news, too.  The Light that has first come to us gets passed along, and the meaning of the Light flows through us to others who will receive it and respond.  You are the beacon, in other words, through whom someone else might hear Jesus' persistent invitation, "You are beloved, and you belong: follow me."  You are the one through whom some stranger will see a glimpse of the way God's love reaches out to all people--and you'll become the conduit for the Spirit's signal.  You are one of many countless faces, in whom someone else will catch a glimpse of Christ's face.  And once again, that means that the Spirit is always consistent with the character of Jesus--the Spirit "testifies" on behalf of Jesus, so our message to the world will also always sound like Jesus... look like Jesus... love like Jesus.

That also means our calling is to stay in constant eyesight with the beacons around us, too.  We followers of Jesus keep gathering together because the Spirit might be speaking through someone around us to get the word to us--and then through us to the world around.  We keep close to Jesus himself--constantly seeking to re-align our words, our actions, our priorities, and our love to be in step with his.  We are called to testify, not to sell something--that means our witness to the world will always simply be to give away the free Good News of God's equally free and audacious love to the world.  We don't have to spice it up with gimmicks or catch-phrases; we don't have to chase the latest trend. We don't have to peddle some version of "Jesus-and-also-you'll-get-rich" religion that thinks Jesus isn't enough.  We just pass along the light we've been given, knowing that it has first come from none other than the Spirit of God.  And for those around us who are watching (and believe me, there are lots of folks watching and listening to us when we don't think anyone is paying attention), they'll see the meaning of the light passed along through us into the next mountain peak and the next beyond it.  God's message will flow through us and from us like a cell tower antenna, so that the living Jesus can communicate his love and welcome through us wherever we go.

That's the mission, friends.  Keep your eyes open for light on the horizon.  Have your torches ready.

Lord Jesus, let your Spirit speak among us so that we can be your witnesses in the world, too.

Pushing in the Same Direction—May 20, 2024

Pushing in the Same Direction—May 20, 2024

[Jesus said:] “I have said these things to you while I am still with you. But the Advocate, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you everything, and remind you of all that I have said to you.” [John 14:25-26]

You can’t separate the Spirit from Jesus—there’s not an inch of daylight between them.

Jesus himself says as much to his followers before the cross—that the Spirit who will be given to them will remind them of Jesus’ word and teaching, rather than inventing some new unrelated message. There is no bait and switch among members of the Trinity, in other words.

But that doesn’t mean that the Holy Spirit who is among us now is reducible to Jesus re-runs or only speaks in Bible verses. As a matter of fact, in the book of Acts, often when the Holy Spirit is explicitly mentioned as acting in a situation, it is usually at the moments when the early Christian church was being pushed beyond the familiarity of established patterns and across the boundaries that had previously seemed uncrossable. It’s the Spirit who moves the apostles to preach and speak in other languages at Pentecost when they had just been minding their own business behind closed doors. It’s the Spirit who sets Philip down on the roadside to hitchhike with a Black African government official (and a eunuch who didn't fit inside rigid gender categories either, at that!), not only to tell him about Jesus but also to baptize him in a highway drainage ditch on the journey, even though there was a long list of reasons why the answer could have been “No.” It’s the Spirit who prompts Simon Peter to bring the news of Jesus to an officer in the enemy army—Cornelius, a centurion of the occupying Roman Empire—and leads him to welcome in a Gentile foreigner to belong in the family of Christ. At each of those turning points, the Christian community was led beyond “the way we’ve always done it”, not by their own choosing, and not because of their own agendas, but because the Holy Spirit pushed them to move.

Now, at first, that might seem like a contradiction. If, as Jesus says here, the Spirit’s job was to remind us of what Jesus said and taught, how could the boundaries be moving? How could Jesus have come, taught, lived, died, and risen… and then after he’s ascended into heaven, we still need Someone Else to widen the embrace of the new community?

We tend to be ok with the idea that Jesus was allowed to change things—as he clearly did in his interactions with the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day—but we often think that this was the last chance for things to change. We accept the idea that Jesus could bring a new teaching from God, as long as there’s a cap on it with his ascension into heaven. Then… it’s fixed. The concrete is set. The paint is dried. The new commandments are written in stone, and unchangeable. And after that, we often thing, the Spirit’s job is only to recite the red letter verses of Jesus’ sayings and teachings… which means (we imagine) that we can never be surprised again. The Spirit is here just to repeat the words of Jesus. Right?

Except… maybe the Spirit’s way of reminding us of Jesus isn’t to police boundaries, but rather to keep pushing them the way Jesus did. Maybe the Spirit doesn’t simply remind us of fixed points in space and time, but of the motion that Jesus started. The Spirit doesn’t merely repeat the initial moment a droplet hits the surface of the water, but to continue its motion rippling outward endlessly. After Jesus crosses the boundaries of religion, race, and gender to sit at the well with a Samaritan woman, his movement didn’t stop there—he didn’t stop and say, “Okay, so now we’re letting this one Samaritan in… and we’re letting this one woman preach to her neighbors… but THAT’S IT. No further!” The Christian church didn’t have to re-litigate that question every time women were moved to preach, or Samaritans came to faith. They could see the trajectory Jesus started, and they could see that Jesus would keep moving further. Or when Jesus invited himself over to Zacchaeus’ house for dinner, he didn’t tell his followers, “Just this one tax collector—but don’t you guys go making friends with this sort of person.” No, Jesus dared his followers to continue reaching out to everybody who had been written off as unacceptable and unworthy. The trajectory Jesus started was simply carried forward.

That’s just it. That’s how the Spirit reminds us of Jesus without merely reduplicating scenes from the first century: the Spirit teaches us the trajectory of where Jesus’ chain reaction of love begins, and then continues the motion through us. The milestones change—the curve of the arc remains constant. For the historical Jesus in the first century, it was a radical thing to gather up a bunch of semi-literate fishermen as rabbinical disciples, add in an assortment of women as fellow learners and financial backers, and then declare God’s Reign included not only them but the tax collectors, prostitutes, migrant Samaritans, and contagious lepers, too. But even that surprising assembly was limited to a piece of ground less than a hundred miles in any direction. The early church knew that continuing in Jesus’ mission was not simply to keep the boundaries there—but rather the Spirit kept moving them beyond those limits, in the same direction Jesus had set things moving: everywhere.

We should be fully aware, with eyes open, then, that when we call on the Holy Spirit to lead us these days, that almost certainly will not mean just staying where we are. After all, Jesus himself didn’t just keep things where they were. He was constantly reaching out, pushing further, crossing lines of class and gender, race and religion, shame and sin, taboo and tradition. Why would we expect the Spirit to do anything less with us—especially if Jesus promised that the Spirit would keep teaching us in the ways of Jesus?

Today, let’s allow the Spirit to do exactly what Jesus promised: to keep us on the same trajectory that Jesus himself set us on—knowing that will also push us beyond what seemed comfortable, familiar, and respectable yesterday. The mile markers change—the trajectory keeps on moving along the same arc we have see in Christ himself.

O Living Christ, let your Spirit loose among us to keep us on the course you have begun, wherever you will lead us.

The Easter Conspiracy--May 17, 2024

The Easter Conspiracy--May 17, 2024

"Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we have been buried with him by baptism into death, so that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body of sin might be destroyed, and we might no longer be enslaved to sin. For whoever has died is freed from sin. But if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ, being raised from the dead, will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. The death he died, he died to sin, once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus." [Romans 6:3-11]

Let's talk about organized crime for a moment. (You know, like you do when you are thinking godly thoughts on an ordinary Friday...)

In organized crime syndicates like the Mafia, drug cartels, racketeering rings, and other criminal enterprises, you usually have someone at the top of the crime family calling the shots, some enforcers underneath them, and then lower down on the criminal flow chart, the rank-and-file perps actually committing crimes. The mob boss orders a murder, for example, but someone else pulls the trigger. The kingpin issues an order for the drug money to be laundered, but it's some crooked accountant who actually cooks the books. The chief scumbag in the penthouse wants an illegal cover-up of a crime, so he hints to some "fixer" who works for him that he wants someone to "take care of it" and orchestrate the scheme while he signs off on it. That sort of thing.

Now, for a long time that meant that there was a loophole in the law allowing those Godfather-type figures at the top to escape prosecution by law enforcement. The legal argument was went like this: "I didn't actually pull the trigger, so I can't be guilty of murder. I didn't extort money myself, so I can't be charged." And as you can imagine, this was an unacceptable situation for police and the FBI. So in 1970, Congress passed the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, which said that anyone involved in a criminal enterprise could be charged for their participation, whether or not they were actually the ones carrying out the crimes. The upshot of RICO was that the fate of the boss was at long last connected with the fate of the rest of the underlings in the crime family.

I know that may have seemed like a strange rabbit trail to go down, but that idea is worth holding onto. If you were trying to bring down El Chapo, the notorious drug kingpin, it would be vital to know that you could use the connection between the boss and the street-level henchmen and dealers to bring down the head of the whole enterprise, like cutting the head off of the snake. But what if the same idea worked in the other direction, too? What if the head of the organization brought all of his fellow conspirators along with him? What if the fate of the boss also took the underlings along?

I pose that question because it's not that far off the mark from how the apostle Paul sees things between us and Christ. Jesus is the head of a vast divine conspiracy of life (we just usually call it "the Reign of God"), and he has drawn us into that conspiracy as his people. And in baptism, we are tethered to him so that wherever he goes, we go. He is the kingpin, so to speak, so that in his death, we all die... and in his resurrection, we all have "newness of life."

Paul sees that as the assurance of our resurrection--we have been implicated with Jesus. We share in his divine conspiracy in baptism. And so just as sure as you can feel the water dripping from your forehead, you and I have been connected with Jesus' death and with his rising, too. His death means our death, and his new life means resurrection for us as well. And it means we don't have to live in the old patterns anymore. We don't have to stay stuck ruled by fear, trapped in envy and avarice, haunted by old hatreds any longer. We have been killed and raised because Jesus has gone through both, and now, almost like a Reverse RICO case, so that Jesus' resurrection really is good news for us, too, and not just for Jesus.

That not only gives us the grounds for hope in life beyond the grip of death for us, but it also reframes how we deal with living out this day right now, too. We don't have to stay wallowing in the same old patterns and habits where we have been stuck before--what we usually call "sin." We don't have to stay in the old ruts of fear and hatred, of the tired "Me and My Group First" thinking that is slowly killing us. We don't have to stay there at all--in fact, Paul says, we are already free from it except that we don't dare believe it is true. We are joined to Christ, and we have been marked as conspirators in his operation. We're his, after all, so whatever happens to him happens to us as well.

Today, how might it change your day to see yourself, not as a customer or consumer of religion, but as a conspirator with Jesus, filled with his risen life and joined in his enterprise to overturn the old powers and rulers of the day? How might it change things for us to know that what Jesus has gone through, we are promised as well--taken from death to life and into new creation?

Lord Jesus, you have marked us as part of your movement in the waters of our baptism. Let us live like we really are swept up into your Kingdom conspiracy for the sake of the world.

 

Grace at the End--May 16, 2024

Grace at the End--May 16, 2024

"Then [the One who was seated on the throne] said to me, 'It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life'." [Revelation 21:6]

Even at the very end of everything (which, apparently, turns out to be a new beginning at the same time), God is still giving away life... for free.  Even in the final throne room scene of the Bible, at the great jubilee and resurrection feast of God's ultimate triumph over death, hatred, and evil, God is the One also pouring out drinks of the water of life to everyone who is thirsty--just because they are thirsty, without a mention of their paying for it, earning it, or winning it as a prize.  This is what makes God worthy, not only of our worship, but of our imitation: even at the great victory celebration (think the last scene in Star Wars when Princess Leia is handing out medals to Luke Skywalker and Han Solo while a John Williams trumpet fanfare plays), God is serving graciously.  And God isn't giving out medals or trophies as rewards (which, let's be honest, are basically useless except as a status symbol) but rather giving out "water as a gift" from the Fount of Life itself.  All the way to the very end-and-new-beginning of creation, God is giving us life as a gift, rather than putting the ol' divine feet up.  It's God's party, but God is still the one pouring drinks and filling cups for all the welcome guests rather than needing to be the center of attention.  That's a surprising sort of God I'll tell you--but it is exactly what makes God... good.

This is really important for us to be clear about, because I often hear Respectable Religious Leaders suggesting that there is some kind of last-minute Divine Bait-and-Switch on God's part.  After accepting (perhaps grudgingly) that Jesus embodies reckless grace and audaciously unconditional love throughout his life, serving humbly and welcoming sinners and failures all throughout the gospel stories, you'll hear some folks say, "But when he comes again, it's for judgment and wrath!"  Sometimes the line goes, "He came the first time as a Lamb, but when he comes back, it will be as the Lion!"--totally forgetting, of course, that in the book of Revelation the one time there is a mention of The Lion of The Tribe of Judah arriving, everybody turns their heads and sees... nothing but a Lamb.  In other words, popular religion often tells a story where Jesus came nicely in his earthly ministry, but when he comes again in glory, he'll be a conqueror not a servant.  And he'll be doling out rewards and punishments, not gifts of grace--at least, so the thinking goes.

But that's exactly NOT what is going on here, and today's verse is literally from the End of the Story--the last scene in the last book of the Bible!  And the God who speaks here identifies as both "the Beginning" (Alpha) and "the End" (Omega), and then in the very same breath offers "the water of life" as a gift to any who are thirsty.  In other words, there's no changing of tactics and no split personality with God.  Jesus doesn't get replaced by a violent deity, and Jesus' economy of grace is not overtaken by a system of carrots and sticks.  All the way to the end, Jesus is giving us life. All the way to the end, God is giving to the ones in need, simply on the basis of their need.  Our hope from beginning to end is a God who gives us life, not as a reward, but as a gift.

And if that's the shape of our hope, then we definitely don't have to be afraid as we look forward to endings--not of our lifetimes, and not of the world.  Because even at the end of everything, God remains the same generous Life-Giver who pours us glasses of cool water to quench our deepest thirst... and what seemed to be the end turns out to be the start of a whole new creation.  With that goal in mind, we can face today.  We know that God is committed always to being the Giver of Life, simply because we need it.

Gracious God, be our life and our hope, today and always.

Lessons from Jafar (Or, A Jesus-Shaped Life)--May 15, 2024

Lessons from Jafar (Or, A Jesus-Shaped Life)--May 15, 2024

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Philippians 3:10-11]

I'm not usually one to build much theology from the plot points of classic animated Disney movies, but I'll make an exception this time.  As someone who will admit he loved Robin Williams' take on the Genie in the 1992 Disney version of Alladin, I will also confess that I loved the delicious twist near the end.  It's that moment where the nefarious villain Jafar is conned into using his third wish to become an all-powerful genie himself--only to realize (too late) that becoming a genie also binds him to the rules of serving the wishes of other masters and being trapped in a magic lamp himself, just like the genie he'd been wishing to.  "Great cosmic power... itty bitty living space," Robin Williams' blue Genie laments.  In other words, even in a Disneyfied version of a fairy tale, there is no unchecked power.  There is no magic without the cuffs of servitude; there is no supernatural spectacle without the confines of an ordinary looking lamp.  There is no seeking the "power of a genie" without also having to live accept that "ten thousand years in a lamp will give you such a crick in the neck!" 

As the story suggests, the ones who go for limitless power without service are the villains.  The ones who want triumph without surrender are fools.  The ones who want glory but cannot conceive of it as intertwined with humility are missing the point.  That truth, even without Robin Williams' hilarious celebrity impressions as the voice of a blue cartoon, make the movie worth the watch.

In the life of the Christian community, there are no cartoon genies or magic lamps, but the same truth is there: there is no shortcut to the power of resurrection that doesn't come through the reality of facing death.  And there is no share in the Reign of God without also walking the way that leads to a cross.  There is no triumph and glory that doesn't arise from self-giving love and humble surrender.  There is no skipping ahead to Sunday without staring down Friday. The life we are aiming for as Christians is always and only a Jesus-shaped life.

That's the way the apostle Paul talks about his own hopes, as he writes to the church in Philippi.  Writing from house arrest in Rome, Paul knows there is a significant likelihood that he will be executed by the Empire (Rome did not take kindly to claims of a different sort of kingdom coming and any "Lord" other than Caesar), and he has pinned all his hopes on the God who raises the dead.  He trusts that the same One who raised Jesus is capable of raising him to new life as well, and he longs for that kind of life-giving power to be evident in his own life.  But Paul also knows that sharing the resurrection life of Jesus also means sharing the cruciform path of Jesus, too.  Paul will not make Jafar's mistake of clutching at power for himself without walking in Jesus' own footsteps of serving.

I think sometimes we Christians in the twenty-first century forget that ourselves.  We're always looking for cross-free versions of the gospel--worship as entertainment that never stretches us beyond our comfort zones and preferences, a country-club feel without being challenged to give of our abundance, messages that suggest (or outright claim) that God's will for each of us is wealth, status, financial success, along with 2.5 kids and a white picket fence, and theology that says Christians should be given preferential status in society and wield political power to keep themselves in charge.  You know, all the things that Dietrich Bonhoeffer called "cheap grace" in the 1930s as the Nazis overran the German (yes, Lutheran) church of his day. 

All too often we want to repackage the Christian faith as our shortcut to a resurrection like Christ's, while keeping the cross and tomb just for Jesus alone.  We want Christianity as a matter of baptized wish-granting, and we'd like Jesus alone to be the lamp-bound, cuff-constrained genie, while we get all the benefits of his magical powers.  If that isn't the underlying premise of a lot of radio and TV Christianity, I'll eat my hat.  The trouble is--that kind of approach has left Jesus behind altogether.

As Paul understands it, the Christian life is not a system of beliefs or rituals that grant us access to awesome powers or the afterlife; Christianity is simply bringing us into the way of Jesus--no more and no less.  And because Jesus is risen, we are given the hope of his risen life for ourselves.  But also, because Jesus' kind of life meant the constant choice to lay his life down for others in humble service and self-giving love, we are also called to lives of surrender and radical love.  To be a Christian--literally a Christ-follower--is indeed to be given a compelling power for life; but it is always inescapably a Jesus-shaped life.  That's what makes it compelling in the first place.

What illusions might we need to give away and leave behind if we are going to take that truth seriously?  What counterfeit notions of "power" and "triumph" might we need to set aside in order to more fully step into Jesus' authentic resurrection power--that comes through the way of the cross?  What could it look like today?

Lord Jesus, shape our lives with your own Friday-and-Sunday likeness.