Jesus Sees Us--July 1, 2024

 

Jesus Sees Us--July 1, 2024

"When Jesus had crossed again in the boat to the other side, a great crowd gathered around him; and he was by the sea. Then one of the leaders of the synagogue named Jairus came, and when he saw him, fell at his feet and begged him repeatedly, 'My little daughter is at the point of death. Come lay your hands on her, so that she may be made well, and live'. So he went with him. And a large crowd followed and pressed in on him." [Mark 5:21-24]

There are two wonders here in this opening scene from the story many of us heard this past Sunday morning: the first is how many people always seem to be drawn to Jesus like a field of sunflowers turning toward the morning light.  The second is how Jesus can still care about a single person, an individual life, within that massive, pressing crowd.  Jesus cares about people, not simply as statistics, but as faces.  Over against a time like ours that obsesses (and inflates) numbers tallying "likes" on social media, or the number of eyeballs that have watched the latest viral video, or how your preferred candidate is doing in the polls, it is a life-giving difference to see that Jesus still sees us as actual people, and that our personhood is not lost like a drop in the vast ocean of humanity.

That's what makes Jesus worthy of entrusting our lives into his care.  He isn't just interested in using us as pawns to make himself seem more important or more popular.  He doesn't just see us as warm bodies to fill out a crowd for the photo op in the paper or the evening news on TV.  In a time and culture like ours, all too often the insecure and needy demagogues need to puff up the numbers of size of their crowds at rallies or the number of fawning supporters they have, but don't really care about the actual lives of the people they brag about.  And Jesus doesn't do that. You don't see a single story where Jesus brags to the Pharisees or threatens the Roman governor with the numbers of people he can mobilize.  You never hear Jesus boast, "I must be the Messiah, because so many people flock to my sermons!   Did you see how many people we had with the loaves and fishes?  It's very special, what I'm doing--and you can tell, because so many people come out to my events..." He doesn't use people as props that way. People are drawn to Jesus, to be sure, but Jesus doesn't need them for the sake of his ego.  He sees us--each of us.

On the flip side, Jesus doesn't lose the ability to care about each of us in that gathering crowd around him.  He doesn't just love the "idea" of humanity in the abstract, but still has compassion for specific people with real stories, real needs, and real quirks.  I'm reminded of a passage from Dostoyevsky's The Brothers Karamozov, where one character confesses what is likely true for all of us from time to time:  

“The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity.”

That is to say, it's relatively easy to have a generic fondness for the collective idea called "humanity." At a distance you don't have to see runny noses or angry scowls. You don't have to hear whiny voices or petty grumbling.  You don't have to get to know the quirks and failings, the flaws and the cracks, that are a part of each one of us if you only ever have to deal with people in the abstract or as an anonymous crowd.  Loving specific people, with real and messy stories and complicated personalities, that's difficult. Up close and personal, we show our peccadillos and our problems; our jagged edges and rough spots are visible when you see us face to face.  And yet, of course, that's the real wonder of Jesus here: he still sees us as our individual, real selves, and he still is here to help.

That's one of the things I love about the way Mark tells the story of Jesus going to help Jairus' daughter.  It's clear that Jesus is his usual magnetic self, drawing in a large gathering of people around him like usual.  But in the midst of that crowd, Jesus listens and can hear the particular voice of one desperate dad over the roar and commotion.  And he responds.  He cares, not just about "humanity" in general as an abstract concept, but each of the people in that crowd, and each of us in our particularity.

Remember that anytime we talk about (or sing about, or pray about) how God loves "the world."  It can be easy to think only in generalities or abstractions when we use a term like "the world," as if God can only see Earth from the remote vantage point of a heavenly throne room.  Like the old 80s ballad crooned, "God is watching us... from a distance," right?  We might imagine that God, being the Creator of the whole universe, can't be bothered to care about one little person's needs, or even to see individual lives and faces.  How does Humphrey Bogart put it at the end of Casablanca?  "It doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world." And of course, that's so often the way the world works--individual people get lost in a sea of statistics and the power of percentages and polls.  But a moment like this from the Gospels reminds us something important about the character of the God we know in Jesus.  Jesus sees faces.  Jesus hears individual voices.  Jesus has compassion on actual humans, not merely some abstract notion called "humanity."  Jesus sees you.  He sees me.  And he sees the people on the margins that both of us have failed to recognize or listen for, as well.  That's our hope.

Maybe one of the things that happens when we reflect on a story like this one is that it will help us to learn to notice people and to actually stop to listen to people the way Jesus does.  Maybe we will pay attention to the face in the crowd with the sunken eyes or the desperate catch in their throat as they fight back tears.  Maybe we will learn to love people as individual and unique persons from Jesus, because we will see the way he loves and knows each of us, too.

Lord Jesus, help us to see that you see us; help us to know that you hear each of our cries.  And help us recognize the faces of others rather than lose them in an anonymous crowd.

Welcome Home--June 28, 2024

Welcome Home--June 28, 2024

"The Spirit and the bride say, 'Come.' And let everyone who hears say, 'Come.' And let everyone who is thirsty come. Let anyone who wishes take the water of life as a gift." [Revelation 22:17]

At the end of the story, the Spirit welcomes us home.

And yet maybe that welcome is also a welcome to God to meet us in that place, a place that is somehow "home" and yet which is new and unfamiliar yet, somewhere we have never yet been.  Maybe the scene here in the last moments of the last book of the Bible is a mutual welcome--of us calling to Jesus, and of Jesus, by the Spirit, inviting us, too.

I don't think I had noticed that before, in all the times I've read these words at the end of the last chapter of Revelation over the years.  The invitation points in two directions: both to Jesus, as risen Lord of all the universe, and to us, who are invited to receive "the water of life" for free as a gift, simply because we are "thirsty."  That is to say, simply because of our need.  Both invitations are here, to Jesus, and to us--to all.  

The book of Revelation, like the New Testament as a whole, speaks of a hope that there will be a day when Jesus comes in glory--like a slain but risen Lamb--and when all the powers of evil, death, and sinful empires are broken and thwarted for good.  And so you'll often find voices in the book of Revelation calling on Jesus and calling on God to hasten that day. "Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!" they say. And Jesus, for his part, promises, "Surely I am coming soon" (see Rev. 22:20).  So when the text says, "the Spirit and the bride say, 'Come,'" at one level that seems directed to Jesus, calling on him to come and complete the Reign of God and the new creation.  And indeed, then the next line summons all of us, "everyone who hears," to join in calling on Jesus to come in glory.  (Note, too, while we're on the subject, that the imagery in the book of Revelation is of God in Christ coming to us/earth, not of us going "up" to some distant other place called "heaven.") So, yes, this verse from Revelation is about all of creation, and even the Holy Spirit who dwells within us, all calling on Jesus.

But at the very same time, all of us are being invited to "come" and receive the living water for which we are thirsting.  And it's a pretty wide invitation: "everyone who is thirsty," and "everyone who wishes" is welcome.  So, is this about us inviting Jesus to come to be with us, or about Jesus speaking God's welcome to us to be where he is?

The answer, I'm convinced now, is both.  We are praying for Jesus' coming in glory to renew this world, and Jesus is inviting us to join him in the new creation--which is not another world, but this one, made new. That's possible because, as a scene just a chapter earlier in Revelation says, "The home of God is among mortals. He will dwell with them; and they will be his peoples..." In a sense, we are both welcoming each other home.  We are both the inviter and the invited, into a new home that is still somehow strangely familiar to both us and to God.  The Spirit prompts us to call out to Jesus, "Come soon, Lord!" and the same Spirit calls to all of us, "Let anyone who is thirsty come."

I am remembering now, as I write, what it was like a little less than a year ago, when my wife, my son, my daughter, and I all pulled into the driveway of the house that we had just closed on as we prepared to move to Ohio from Pennsylvania.  In a sense, it was the job of the "grown-ups" to welcome the children into their new house, and in a sense we were being welcomed into our new home as well.  When we walked in through the front door and said, "Welcome home,"  it was to each other and from each other.  We would, together, make this place our home--and it would be both new and familiar at the same time.  The faces would make it home, and of course, soon enough, our belongings would show up and make the new-to-us walls feel like what we knew from before.  The paintings and photos would go up on the walls.  The familiar utensils would go in a new kitchen.  The miscellaneous odds and ends from the old junk drawer would seed a new junk drawer (everyone has one, right?).  And so, as we stepped across the threshold, we were both being welcomed in, and we were inviting the rest of the family we loved to share this space.

That's the scene at the end of the Bible.  That's the moment we close out on at the tail end of Revelation--and the Spirit is all over that moment.  The Spirit is the One who draws out our voices to call to Jesus, just as we've seen over this past month's devotions how the Spirit enables us to call on God as "Abba!" as Jesus did.  And at the same time, the Spirit is the One who calls to each of us to receive the water of life "as a gift," simply because of our own need and thirst, not our earning or achieving.  

At the end of the Bible's story is a new beginning, a welcoming home for humanity, for all of life, and for God--a whole new creation, in fact.  And it is worth remembering that, while in the meantime we do our best to make good choices, love our neighbors, water the flowers, and do justice in the place where we live now.  We take care of one another now, at least in part because we'll all be sharing living space with one another and with the living God in the new creation.  We care for the world around us the same way you take care of the wall hangings, tables, and chairs of your current house before a move to a new one--they'll be there at the new house, too!  We believe, in the end, not that Jesus is going to whisk us away to a cloud somewhere as if this world didn't matter, but rather that Jesus is coming to make God's home among us in a renewed creation, where this life and this world are not obliterated, but remade, whole and good.  

On that day, we'll open our eyes wide with tears of joy and find ourselves saying to one another, "Welcome home." Until then, we hold onto that hope while we work through the nitty-gritty and often messy work of living in the world as it is now, even when we feel alone... even when it feels like the bullies and blowhards are winning the day... even for all the suffering around us.  We keep going, caring for one another with a sweat and tiredness here, because we know we'll be welcomed to the faucet at God's New House to share a drink of water to refresh us, and we'll find ourselves along with Jesus himself at home in a renewed creation. There will come a rest and a time to set down our labors. We keep doing good in this life, we keep showing love to people around us even when they're stinkers, and we keep seeking for justice and righteousness to be done, because above all the noise and meanness around us, we still hear the Spirit's voice calling to us all--and through us, calling to Jesus, and saying, "Come. Make yourself at home."

Lord Jesus, come and make all things new.  And keep calling to us by your Spirit to answer your invitation to receive your gift of life forever like flowing water.

Finding Good Words--June 27, 2024

Finding Good Words--June 27, 2024

"Let no evil talk come out of your mouths, but only what is useful for building up, as there is need, so that your words may give grace to all who hear. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption. Put away from you all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgive you." [Ephesians 4:29-32]

The Holy Spirit has a way of pushing us to re-examine the things in our lives we have stopped paying attention to, in order to make us more into the likeness of Christ.

And one place the Spirit is likely to start is with our mouths, and what comes out of them.

Americans pride themselves on their First Amendment right to “freedom of speech,” which we usually think of in terms of a negative freedom, as in “You can’t tell me what to say,” or “Nobody can censor or silence or fact-check what I want to express, no matter how hateful or unhelpful or wildly inaccurate it might be.” We have built two hundred-plus years of legal precedent on finding newer and wider ways to let people say whatever they want to say, and we have a tradition of protecting nearly anything that can be counted as “expression,” whether it be of noble and profound content, crass advertising, secretly-funded political lobbying, intentionally provocative gestures and profane comments, or even vile and derogatory remarks, because of the fear that once you start putting limits on “acceptable” speech, you will stifle the good ideas while to trying weed out the drivel. And that makes a certain sense--there was wisdom in the Framers' decision to assure their citizens that they wouldn't be rounded up by the government for expressing opinions that are critical of government or unpopular with a majority.

But as is true with just about everything else in life, there is a minus that goes along with the plus here. And one of the costs of thinking of our right of free speech only in negative terms of "Nobody should be able to tell me what to say," is that we are not always terribly wise or good at discerning what would be good to say in this moment. So we have bent over backwards as a society to make sure people can say whatever they want… but we haven’t spent much time thinking through what is worth saying, or how anybody would know what is worth saying.

There’s another hallmark of the age we live in: as people who live in the era of social media, we are practically goaded into saying, publishing, posting, and messaging people without any thought of why someone else needs to know what I had for breakfast, or what the consequences might be if I say something that I cannot take back before it goes viral. We live in a time when we can spread messages that claim to be factual without knowing whether they are true or not, and we are increasingly told not to even care whether our words, facts, quotes, and messages are true or not--only whether they feel like they reinforce what we already want to think. We have learned that we have the “right” to say whatever we please, but we have not learned how to discern what is right to say.

But love, by its nature, doesn’t start by demanding its rights. And the Spirit is invested in making us into people of Christ-like love rather than constant loudmouths. Love looks for the good of the other, rather than itself—or rather, love recognizes that I can only find what is to my benefit when I am looking to the benefit of those around me. That’s not merely an emotion—that includes a whole way of thinking. It means the conscious, deliberate, intentional practice of doing good to others, and looking for ways to show them kindness. That takes thought. That takes creativity. That takes paying attention. It takes patience and self-restraint.

And above all, it takes the Spirit's presence.

Now, as Ephesians reminds us, the followers of Jesus have been marked with the Spirit, and the Spirit already dwells within us. So nobody is saying, "Use nice words or else the Spirit will vote you out of the Heaven Club." Rather, Ephesians says that our words have the capacity, not only to hurt others... but actually to grieve the Holy Spirit.

Whoa. That's a big deal.

Ephesians is saying that our words have the power, not simply to tear other people down, but in fact to break the very heart of God, to "grieve the Holy Spirit," when we use them to tear other people down (usually in the attempt to puff ourselves up). The Bible is much less worried about whether we say "potty" words that would get bleeped on prime-time television, and much more concerned about whether we are recklessly wrathful in our words and hurt one another. And because the Spirit dwells within us always, then we are always responsible for our words--there is no time when we are "off the clock," "not on duty," or "just venting frustrations" on one of the many screens and keyboards at our disposal. We are always called to practice love... in actions, and in words. These verses from Ephesians dare us to take that kind of thinking and put it into practice with your words, too.

So, Ephesians would tell us, we may need to unlearn some things, as the Spirit cultivates love in us.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the impulse of the Facebook age to say something without thinking about the people to whom I am saying it, what purpose I am saying it for, and what benefit comes of saying it.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without thinking critically and having your own personal content editor.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking anything that could harm someone else, even if it plays to your gain or makes you feel important by saying it.

The Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of saying whatever you want because you can insist, “I have the right to say whatever I want, and you can’t stop me," regardless of whether what you want to say is true, helpful, out-of-context, or edifying.

And the Spirit will help us unlearn the bad habit of speaking without a thought for the consequences of what you say. Consequences matter, because they affect people. And people matter, the people I like and agree with... and the people I do not like, and everybody else.

So instead of thinking that the world owes me a hearing (because even the Bill of Rights only guarantees me a right to speak without the government silencing me, not a right to have the whole world give me a platform to listen to me and hang on my every word), what if we started this day, and every day, with the question, “How could my words today give grace to someone else?”

That kind of speech is just what the world needs. That is what will stand out in a world (and a world-wide-web) full of people talking just to hear themselves talk.

That’s what love sounds like—words that are carefully chosen because they will bless and heal.

Spirit of Truth and of Love, help me unlearn the self-centered ways of speaking with bitterness, wrath, and untruths, and train my mouth and my heart to speak in ways that build up and reflect Christ.

 

The Potato or the Egg?--June 26, 2024

The Potato or the Egg?--June 26, 2024

"And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, and hope does not disappoint us, because God's love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us." [Romans 5:3-5]

The old line says, "The same sun that melts the ices hardens the clay."  Or, another proverb with a culinary twist puts it this way: "Thes same boiling water that softens the potato hardens the egg." I suppose you could say, too, that the same rain that soaks into soil to make plants grow can also carve rocks and erode canyons. 

The question, then, is: how do you know which will happen to you?  What makes the difference--how can you tell whether the same stress, the same catalyst, will melt you to liquid or harden you permanently?  How do you know if you're going to end up the potato or the hard-boiled egg when you find yourself in hot water?  What makes the difference when we are going through adversity that either brings us to ruin or enables us to endure?

I ask because I want us to avoid making a dangerous mistake when it comes to our experience of suffering--one that church folk have made sometimes, at least in part because of the way they read passages like this one from Romans.  We hear Paul start on his little daisy-chain progression of how suffering moves to endurance, and endurance to character, and we can end up thinking that suffering by itself makes everybody tough.  We end up endorsing the sentiment, "Anything that doesn't kill me makes me stronger," (which, by the way, isn't the Bible at all, but Nietzsche, of "God is dead, and we have killed him," fame).  And we end up making the category error of saying suffering itself has the power to made us tough, as though we should seek out pain in order to harden us, because trauma will somehow inevitably be good for us.  That conclusion imagines that everybody is a hard-boiled egg made solid by the boiling water, and nobody is a potato; it imagines that everybody is clay hardened by the sun, rather than ice that is melted by its heat.  And that ends up making us into callous jerks who glorify suffering as inherently "good for you."

Well, let's clear things up for a minute: that's not Paul's point.  The New Testament does not teach that suffering is inherently good for us, and that going through enough pain will harden us or give us "character."  The Gospel's good news is NOT that if you're soft like a raw egg, God has given us the blessing of adversity to toughen you up, and that by going through enough rotten situations you'll come out "stronger" for it.  And the promise is NOT that "true believers" will be able to "keep calm and carry on" without breaking, no matter what tragedies befall us.  No, like Hemingway said, "The world breaks everyone.  And afterwards, many are strong at the broken places." 

And yet... Paul does go through this whole progression from suffering to hope, convinced that the ashes of pain can become diamonds through pressure--but not just because of the suffering itself.  So what makes the difference?  As Paul tells it, it's the Spirit.  The difference is that the Spirit has "poured the love of God into our hearts," and it is because of the Spirit that we can have hope in the midst of suffering.  

Understanding that difference is crucial.  Without it, we end up thinking that God's plan is just to toughen us up through inflicting pain, and that we should just grin and bear it when we're hurting because it is somehow "God's will."  But when we actually follow the whole train of thought, we see that suffering isn't the driving force that leads inexorably to strength, but rather that the Spirit communicates God's love to us, so that we have hope even in out of the worst of circumstances.  This kind of hope "does not disappoint," not because all hopes are all always fulfilled (they ain't!), but because a hope that is grounded in God's love will not let us down.  Paul's point is to say that even in our darkest days and stormiest seas, God's love is strong enough to carry us through, so that we can endure and reflect a hopeful light.  The power isn't in suffering to "toughen us up," it is in the Spirit-poured strength of God's love to carry us through.

In the end, the Christian hope is not that God will harden our hearts so that we never break, but that God's love has been poured into our fragile hearts and will hold us even when they are already broken.  That hope will not let us down.

For whatever you are going through today--whether it's a walk in the park or a dark night of the soul, or a gray Wednesday in between--that's the hope that holds us.  And that's the gift the Spirit gives in our lives.

Lord God, ground us in the solid hope of your love and the presence of your Spirt, to face whatever else comes in this day.

Between "Them" and "Us"--June 25, 2024

Between "Them" and "Us"--June 25, 2024

"But some believers who belonged to the sect of the Pharisees stood up and said, 'It is necessary for [Gentile believers] to be circumcised and ordered to keep the law of Moses.' The apostles and the elders met together to consider this matter. After there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, 'My brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that I should be the one through whom the Gentiles would hear the message of the good news and become believers. And God, who knows the human heart, testified to them by giving them the Holy Spirit, just as he did to us; and in cleansing their hearts by faith he has made no distinction between them and us. Now therefore why are you putting God to the test by placing on the neck of the disciples a yoke that neither our ancestors nor we have been able to bear? On the contrary, we believe that we will be saved by the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will'." [Acts 15:5-11]

In the end, the first disciples made decisions, not based on whose side had a bigger stack of Bible verses to use as weapons, but on where the Spirit was leading them--even if that meant a surprising new direction.

Now, I say that as someone who is antsy about change and who takes a good long while to get used to something new.  So this isn't about me and my "comfort zone." It's about finally paying attention to the story the Scriptures have been telling all along.  And when you actually read the story of the early church in the book of Acts, you find that at their best, they listened to the directing of the Spirit, even when it took some getting used, and even if it seemed like it meant overhauling their old understandings of "what the Bible says." As someone who has been committed to studying, learning, and wrestling with the Scriptures for decades, I find that they keep surprising me that way--pointing beyond themselves, and beyond the bad habit of weaponizing Bible verses to beat people up, and instead pointing me toward the living voice of the Spirit of God and the grace of Jesus.

Here's a case in point.  In case the backstory isn't immediately clear, the early church had its first Big Family Dinner Table Meeting (sometimes called the Council of Jerusalem) over the question of whether Gentiles (non-Jewish people) could become disciples of Jesus as they were, or if they had to become Jewish first.  In other words, the question was, did God accept Gentiles as Gentiles, or did they have to stop being Gentile and become converts to Judaism, which included circumcision for males, kosher laws for food, and the whole rest of the Mosaic Law (all 613 commandments, not just the most well-known Top Ten).  More broadly, the issue was whether welcome into the Christian community is a welcome "as you are" or whether you had to fit another set of cookie-cutter expectations that came with cultural, religious, and dietary baggage.

And for a while, in that early congregational meeting, there was quite a bit of debate.  You had people arguing, "But we've ALWAYS done it the old way--we've always insisted on every believer keeping the Mosaic law in order to follow Jesus!" which wasn't quite true on its face, since there had been a growing number of Gentile converts for some time who didn't have to keep kosher or be circumcised, and because as Peter said, even the Jewish members of the church had never perfectly kept the Law themself anyway! You also had people ready to trot out Bible verses insisting that all the people of God had to obey all the rules of the covenant--all insisting that "unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses you cannot be saved" (Acts 15:1).

And then eventually Peter gets up to speak.  Yep, good ol' Simon Peter, who had been with Jesus from the beginning.  Peter, who grew up Jewish and who had moments of great courage and also great recklessness, the same Simon Peter who was given the nickname that means "Rock" by the Lord himself, gets up and says, "The right question to ask is, Where is the Spirit pointing?"  He says that the Gentile believers in their budding church community had received the Holy Spirit without them having to keep the Laws, observe the kosher rules for food, or be circumcised.  In other words, Peter says, the Holy Spirit had been given to them as they were, without preconditions, without ceasing to be who they were before, and without watching to see how well they followed "the rules" first.  And then Peter puts the icing on the cake: he says that all of them, Judeans and Gentiles alike in the Christian community, "will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus."  And as far as God's verdict on the subject, Pete says that God "has made no distinction between them and us."  Peter's conclusion, then, is that if God no longer recognizes a difference between the ones we've been labeling "THEM" and the ones we label as "US," then maybe we should stop drawing lines between those groups, too.

Now, in a sense, this should not be controversial at all, since the question of accepting Gentiles as Gentiles has now been a settled matter for two thousand years.  We Christians might still fuss over everything from how much water you need to be baptized to the color of the carpet in the new church parlor, but the question of Gentile inclusion is a resolved issue. And for any of us who have come to faith from outside of a Jewish heritage or who have ever eaten a bacon cheeseburger, that decision is what assures us that WE belong, too.  But what is still scandalous and more than a little frightening to a lot of church folks is the implication of this story: that in the end, the right question to ask is, "Where is the Spirit of God leading us?" rather than, "Who has a bigger stack of Bible verses on their side for a fight?"  And it's worth recognizing how much courage it took for the first generation of Christians to be willing to erase the old lines that had been drawn between "Them" and "Us" because they recognized that the Spirit of God had already said it did not matter.

And that makes a huge difference about how we navigate the world as disciples of Jesus today.  All too often our default assumption is to keep old divisions, old bigotries, and old hates in place, using whatever "biblical" justification anybody ever used to prop them up.  And all too often, then, we close ourselves off from the possibility that the Spirit has been trying to tell us to erase the old dividing lines, to pull down the old walls, and to see that ALL of us are "US."  

When church bodies and denominations began asking in the last five or six decades about women's leadership in churches after centuries of inheriting the old assumption that women were not allowed to serve as pastors or leaders of any sort, there were plenty of wars lobbing Bible verses at "the other side" to win the argument for their side.  But in addition to re-examining the Scriptures and finding that, indeed, there was strong evidence of women's leadership in the first century church attested to in the Bible itself, there was Peter's question: Where is the Spirit pointing us?  If we could see that women had been raised up who had the Spirit-given gifts, skills, passions, and calling to serve as pastors, then who was to stand in the way of people who had been called by the Spirit?  In a similar way, a century earlier, many Christians in primarily White denominations of the church had to ask about why they had accepted the traditions that prohibited Black pastors and leaders, or which segregated churches along color lines, rather than asking, "Where is the Spirit leading us?"  Still today, we wrestle with questions of Who belongs?  and Does God accept people as they are, or do they have to fit some other mold or meet some litmus test first? And every time we let it devolve into a mere war of "Who can weaponize the Bible better?" we have already missed the lesson the early church learned here in Acts.  It's an abuse of the Bible to use it merely to prop up old divisions of acceptable and unacceptable. Instead, the question Peter himself dares us to ask is, "Where is the Spirit pointing?" And to hear Peter tell it, the Spirit is always moving us beyond the old fault line that we had allowed to come between "them" and "us."

So... where is the Spirit pointing us today?

Lord Jesus, direct us by your Spirit, and save us by your grace... all of us.

Tending the Fire Well--June 24, 2024

Tending the Fire Well--June 24, 2024

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil." [1 Thessalonians 5:9-12]

Not every fire is a good one. The opening line of Ray Bradbury's classic, Fahrenheit 451, which is all about a society which burns every book it finds, along with the houses where they are found, is a haunting enough reminder of that: "It was a pleasure to burn. It was a special pleasure to see things eaten, to see things blackened and changed." And you never want to be on the side of the book-burners. Quite likely, we don't need fiction to tell us that fire is often an awful, awful thing--having known people who have been burned or lived through fires in houses or workplaces. Too many local stories include a chapter that begins, "Then the barn burned..." or "That was before the house-fire changed everything..." for us not to know that fire is often a wickedly destructive thing.

That said, however, there is such a thing as a good fire. And where such a fire can be found, you don't want to put it out--you want to let it blaze and shine and radiate a good heat, the kind that pulses out in waves. This is the way Paul talks about the Spirit of God--like a good fire. Maybe he's got the stories of that Pentecost day on his mind, and how the Spirit descended on the first followers of Jesus like little flames of fire on their heads, transforming them from cowardly fishermen into courageous witnesses who passed the news of Jesus along like one candle wick lighting another. Maybe Paul has just the seen the Holy Spirit work in ways that could only be described as catching fire--the way the light from one person just catches another person, until they are both shining witnesses, and then both keep burning bright for others, so that they can be brought in, too. Maybe Paul is thinking about the way a flame resists being tamed or boxed in, the way a fire moves with a restless energy that can never stay in one place, or the way it radiates an energy that has to be respected. Maybe the answer is "D: All of the above." But in any case, Paul pictures the Holy Spirit like a moving, blazing, stirring fire--and a good fire, at that.

...Which is why Paul's direct command here is not to quench the Spirit. Don't stifle, don't choke out, don't box in the living movement of God, even though it seems risky and dangerous and means giving up control. Don't insist on being the boss of the fire--let the flames go where they will and move as they will (the same way the wind "blows where it wills," as Jesus says about the Spirit in the Gospel according to John...). Don't let the desire to control the burn or the fear of fire lead you to put it out all together, in other words. You can't master the flames, of course, but you can squelch them, and then your world would be a darker place.

In other words, Paul's most basic direction here is not to trample on the places you see the Spirit shining brightly and moving with restless energy. Where you see the Spirit at work--in someone else's life, in the ministries of God's people, in a moment of conversation with someone hungry for good news, in an opportunity to serve with reckless love in Jesus' name--don't be so obsessed about controlling the moment or keeping it contained that you put out the flames. Or, to cut to the chase, let God be God--which means admitting that God will move in ways you cannot predict or box in... maybe, even that God will move in ways you wouldn't have picked.

The rest of these verses, then, flow out of this command to let a good fire keep burning--when the Spirit inspires (or kindles, if you prefer) other faithful saints to speak with the same fierce brilliance as on that Pentecost morning, let the Spirit do his work there. In the early church, of course, the idea of "prophets" was not limited to the books and scrolls of Isaiah and Jeremiah and their fellow centuries-old-and-dead colleagues--the word "prophet" was a wider term that included those who were still being raised up to speak and preach and teach in the name of Jesus. (For example, in the book of Acts, you've got several different figures who were not from the original twelve apostles who are called prophets, who speak forth a Word from God.) So now that Paul has said categorically not to quench the Spirit, he adds now specifically, "...And don't mess up what the Spirit is doing in speaking through someone else! The Spirit doesn't have to ask your permission, after all!" Paul would have us give a holy respect to the people through whom the Spirit speaks and moves and acts--even though, again, it means admitting that God's work and motion and designs will not always (or even often) be under our control.

We have known people like that before, haven't we? People who just burn with a light and an energy that is not their own--that is a sure sign of the Holy Spirit's moving. We find our lives challenged and encouraged by theirs at the same time, the way a good fire keeps you on your toes but can also brighten and warm you when you need it. It is a gift--if not always an easy gift--to have such blazing people in our lives. Jon Foreman, the lead singer and songwriter for the band Switchfoot, had a song about someone he knew whose life burning like a fire that was kindled by the Spirit. In "Amy's Song," he sings, "Salvation is a fire in the midnight of the soul... it lights up like a can of gasoline.... yeah, she's a freedom fighter, she's a stand-up kind of girl. She's out to start a fire in a bar-code plastic world." Marilynne Robinson has the narrator of her novel Gilead say, "It was the most natural thing in the world that my grandfather's grave would look like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire."

That is what Paul has in mind when he pictures the Spirit at work in us--as a good fire, one that catches in the lives of the blessed saints around us--and spreads. Of course, not every fire is a good one, and not everybody who is excited about something is burning with the Spirit. That's why Paul says to test everything, and everyone, who is all hot and bothered about something, to discern which are the good fires--the bonfire beacons, the roaring hearths, and the campfire rings on a dark, starry night--and which are the ones not worth adding any fuel to. (Because, yeah, there are fusses that religious folks sometimes make that produce only hot air but shed no light....)

And once we've done the testing, Paul says, we keep the good stuff--we let the Spirit shine and blaze and burn where and how he will--and then we let the bad stuff go out. There is the triple challenge of this day: letting go and surrendering enough to let the Spirit move and act beyond our boxes and attempts to control what God does on the one hand, and on the other, letting the frivolous or the destructive flames go out--and learning to tell which is which. That may not be easy, but that is part of what we do as followers of Jesus--and part of why we don't do it alone.

O Spirit of Life, burn brightly around us, among us, and within us--and shine in us as you will it.

Where the Law Fails--June 21, 2024

Where the Law Fails--June 21, 2024

"Is the law then opposed to the promises of God? Certainly not! For if a law had been given that could make alive, then righteousness would indeed come through the law. but the scripture has imprisoned all things under the power of sin, so that what was promised through faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe... But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children. And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God." [Galatians 3:21-22, 4:6-7]

When you're in the hospital, you know what they never do?  They never say, "Instead of performing that heart surgery you need, we're just going to put up a big sign at the foot of your hospital bed that says, in big letters, DON'T HAVE A HEART ATTACK. That should do the trick!"

Of course, the reason that they don't merely put up a poster warning you not to have a heart attack is that a written instruction isn't powerful enough to actually save your life in that moment.  Sure, it's good advice--don't have a heart attack.  But if you are already in the cardiac care unit of your local hospital, it's likely because your body has already decided to disobey that order and you've already had one.  Your mind might agree that "Don't have another heart attack" is a good policy, but your actual heart and the blood vessels feeding it may not be able to carry it out.  So the problem is not that "Don't have a heart attack" is bad advice or even a bad rule; the problem is that just posting a rule in front of your eyes cannot make you follow it.  If you are hospitalized for a heart attack, the thing you need is neither advice nor printed rules which your body is incapable of obeying; what you need is someone to heal your heart and save your life in ways that you cannot do for yourself by sheer willpower.

And this, dear ones, is the point Paul was making as he wrote to the church in Galatia: it's not that "the law" (summarized so often by the Ten Commandments) is bad--it's just weak.  The most that any law, even laws spoken by the voice of God on Mount Sinai, can do is to bark orders, "Do this!" or "Don't do that!" at us.  But if there is something inside us that keeps us from doing whatever wise thing the law says, then putting it in bigger letters or shouting it louder won't help.  It's like trying to help a heart attack patient with a sign that says, "DON'T HAVE A HEART ATTACK."  The sign is simply unable to do, or even to enable us to do, what it says.

And for the apostle Paul, this is exactly why the story we call the gospel is genuinely good news:  the Spirit of God is doing something within us that the printed rules and carved commandments of "the Law" could never do: the Spirit enables us to own our new God-given identity as children of God, sharing the same status as Jesus the Son.  And that same Jesus came among us, living a life under the same Law that could never prod us into good behavior, and redeeming us to belong in the family of God.  Jesus' death and resurrection free us from the power sin held over us.  The Spirit's presence in our deepest selves transforms us from the inside out.  All of those are things that the Law just could not and still cannot do, no matter how big the print is or how loudly you shout it.

This is the crucial difference between Gospel good news and dime-a-dozen self-help schemes, including the ones dressed up in religious garb.  If all we have to say to the world is, "Here is a list of rules we printed up and put right in your face," there's no good news, because we're all heart patients dying on the inside.  But rather, the Gospel's good news is instead, "Jesus is raising us to new life, healing these broken and crooked hearts of ours, and claiming us in the family of God through the Spirit!" The good news is not ultimately about our ability to follow commandments or read the rules--those just aren't powerful enough to help us.  But the Good News has everything to do with what God can do that the Law cannot.  God succeeds where the Law fails.

Like Robert Farrar Capon put it once so well, "Jesus came to raise the dead. He did not come to teach the teachable; He did not come to improve the improvable; He did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works."  His point, like Paul's is not that commandments and rules are always inherently bad, but that they are ultimately ineffective: the most they can do is scold us and show us where we've failed.  But the Law cannot give life or heal these hearts of ours while we're laying in the hospital bed.

Plastering the rules on every wall will not make us any better at keeping them (even good ones), any more than you can cure a patient of cardiac arrest by telling them, "The rule is, no heart attacks." From a Christian perspective, posting commandments or shouting rules at people is at best a colossal waste of time (and at worst just an attempt at a culture-war power grab), not because the rules are bad, but because it is Spirit-born Love that transforms us, in ways that the Law never could.  The Law isn't wicked, just impotent. Expending all our energy putting the rules on every surface we can find won't change that.

So, bad news: no amount of having rules yelled at us will mend the sin-sickness in our hearts.

But also good news: no shouting or posting of rules is necessary, because God has done through Christ and through the Spirit what the Law by itself could never do.  We have been made children of God.

Lord Jesus, let your Spirit make us into what you say we already are: children in the very family of God.

A Glorious Reflection--June 20, 2024

A Glorious Reflection--June 20, 2024

"And all of us, with unveiled faces, seeing the glory of the Lord as though reflected in a mirror, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord, the Spirit." [2 Corinthians 3:18]

Call it the "Reverse Dorian-Gray Maneuver."  That's what the Spirit is up to in us, as we become more and more like the One who first loved us into being.

Maybe it's been a hot minute since you were last sitting in a high school English class reading from Oscar Wilde, so in case you've forgotten (or never read) the story The Picture of Dorian Gray, here's the premise. The title character, Dorian Gray, has a portrait of himself painted, and he makes a wish that his picture would age and grow feeble over time rather than his own body.  Because it's that kind of story, the wish comes true, and over time, the figure in the painting becomes old and decrepit, while Dorian continues to be youthful and energetic.  But it comes at a cost, too, since this seemingly eternal youth leads to a spiritual corruption in Dorian and he becomes more and more rotten on the inside as a result of his indulgent lifestyle.  You get the idea--it's a sort of thought experiment about the difference between our outward appearance and the well-being of our souls, our deepest selves.

Well, again, if you can hold that notion of a magical painting whose image changes over time to become older and more wizened while the actual person remains young (but more degenerate), then I'm guessing you can imagine the opposite, too.  Imagine, if you will, an image that allows us to become transformed more and more fully into its likeness, with greater and greater clarity, the more we are in its presence.  Imagine, if you will, that the figure in the painting remains constant, and that we are the ones who are changed over time, to become more and more fully like the image.  And while we're at it, let's imagine that's a good thing--not that we become more and more grizzled and ancient-looking, but that we become more and more glorious, the more we look upon the image in the painting.  That sounds like a pitch worthy of its own story, if you ask me--and, in truth, Paul says that's the Christian story.

Paul had been talking to the Corinthians about how something of God's glory had always been hidden or "veiled" before the coming of Christ Jesus, like we hadn't really seen the fullness of who God is until we saw it in him.  And that led him to think about the old story of when Moses had asked to see God face to face (this is back in Exodus, when Moses had been up on Mount Sinai), and after being in the presence of God's glory--even when shielded behind a rock, as the story goes--Moses' face glowed so brightly that he had to wear a veil over his face for the sake of the rest of the people.  So that leads Paul to say that now since the coming of Jesus, it's like we can finally see God's glorious presence clearly, even though we see that glory through the human flesh of Jesus.  

But that's not the end of this train of thought: Paul takes it a step further now to say that we who are followers of this Jesus, who are filled with God's own Spirit, can now see God's glory more clearly than before.  Maybe it's not like staring right at the sun (which will still blind you), but maybe it's like seeing God "reflected in a mirror"--which is still a heck of a lot clearer than from behind a veil.  And here's the kicker: the more and more we are exposed to the glorious presence of God by the Spirit of the Lord, the more we ourselves are being transformed "into the same image from one degree of glory to another."  It's the ol' Reverse Dorian Gray Maneuver: the Spirit takes us, already made "in the image of God" simply by our existence, and makes us more fully into reflections of God's glory--which turns out to look like the love and way of Jesus. We become the face of Christ for one another and for the watching world, and the Spirit does that by bringing us into the presence of Christ--you know, by being among one another, and by transforming us from the inside out.

Of course, the ways that you and I will be "like Jesus" or will "reflect the glory of God" will all be different.  A tree reflects the glory of God, after all, by being a tree--growing tall, putting out leaves, and turning sunlight into energy.  A rose reflects the glory of God by blossoming and offering its fragrance to pollinators and the nose of anyone who happens by.  A human reflects the glory of God in any number of ways, from our capacity for artistic creativity, to the ability to discover scientific truths, to acts of courage and truth-telling, to love that enfolds the neighbor, stranger, and enemy.  Each of us will be "like Jesus" differently, but each will be a glorious reflection of God's own goodness as we've come to know it in Christ.

That's what to look for in this day ahead: how is the Spirit of God making me into a new creation that reflects the glory of God and displays the image of Christ?  And how might God be using me to bring forth the same in the people around me?  Keep your eyes open--both on the opportunities around you, and the face in the mirror.

Lord Jesus, transform us into glorious glimpses of your own goodness for the sake of the world you love.

Spirit-Born Freedom--June 19, 2024

Spirit-Born Freedom--June 19, 2024

"Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom." [2 Corinthians 3:17]

Today's a good day to remember that where the Spirit of God shows up, people are set free. 

It's particularly good, given that today's holiday, Juneteenth, is also known as Freedom Day, and marks the anniversary of news arriving in Galveston, Texas (on June 19, 1865) that the Civil War was over, that the slave-holding Confederacy was defeated, and that all enslaved persons were to be set free.  The story of the day reminds me, as Fannie Lou Hamer put it so well, that "Nobody's free until everybody's free," and that an official declaration of freedom (like, say, the Emancipation Proclamation, already issued in January of 1863) means little if the news hasn't reached the ears who need to hear it, and if the power holding people captive is still keeping them in chains. The story of Juneteenth reminds me of how powerful a message can be--if it is backed up with the authority to make it meaningful, and how a messenger can bring freedom that flows from a victory that is already won.  All of that storytelling, bound up in this holiday, is in the back of my mind as I think about these words of Paul to the Corinthians.

When Paul thinks about the work of the Spirit in people's lives, he sees people being set free.  And, in a way that feels much like the flow of Juneteenth, Paul knew what it was like to come to a new place and tell them the news of a victory that had already been won (in the cross and resurrection of Jesus) which now made people free as the Spirit led them to receive it.  That's the same flow as the whole Christian life, if you think about it: at some point the news becomes real for us, and the victory Jesus has already accomplished becomes something real for us, even though it's two thousand years back in history.  And when we realize that there's nothing we have to do in order to earn God's favor or win God's love, we are free from wasting our lives with all the old attempts to impress people (or God), and we are freed from having to keep giving in to the old impulses of greed, fear, hatred, and apathy.  And once you realize you have been set free like that, you want other people to be free, too.  Nobody's free til everyone's free, after all.

So often we settle for such a small and shriveled understanding of "freedom" in our culture.  We are used to hearing about freedom as a "Nobody can tell me what to do" kind of attitude, and we revel in stories from the days of the American Revolution about refusing to pay taxes to the British, as though freedom were just about being rid of minor inconveniences or annoyances. But in a deeper sense, the freedom that the Spirit brings is something so much fuller and wider.  It can't never be just "my" freedom, but it always reaches outward to want others to be free, as well--and it's always about being untethered from the fears, anxieties, and powers that prevent us from loving like Jesus.  The Spirit's kind of freedom, in other words, is never reducible to, "I don't have to listen to other people or care about their needs, because I'm free, gosh darn it!" But rather the Spirit's kind of freedom removes the burdens and hindrances that keep us from loving others and living joyfully.  The Spirit's kind of freedom removes the worries of whether we measure up to the expectations of Respectable Religious people or the demands of the Politically Powerful people, so that we are simply able to respond to the world like Jesus.  Jesus himself does say in John's Gospel that "if the Son makes you free, you are free indeed." That freedom is his gift to share his way of life--a life that is generous, gracious, passionate, beautiful, blessed, and loving.  That sounds like freedom to me.

So on this day, it's worth remembering both the long road to freedom that continues to be a part of our nation's history and hope for the future, as well as the freedom the Spirit gives us as Christ-followers--a freedom that is always grounded in the person and love of Jesus.  And in both cases, we are pointed outward to look to the needs of our neighbors, so that they can be free, blessed, and beloved as well.  

Because none of us are really free until everybody is.

Lord Jesus, free us by your Spirit to love that looks like yours

Shaped by the Spirit--June 18, 2024

 Shaped by the Spirit--June 18, 2024

"For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy inspired by the Holy Spirit..." [1 Thessalonians 1:4-6]

Being filled with the Holy Spirit won't improve your jump shot or your slam dunk--the Spirit will not make you more like LeBron James, Steph Curry, Michael Jordan, or Caitlin Clark.

Being filled with the Spirit will not make you faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, or able to leap tall buildings in a single bound--the Spirit is not trying to make us into Superman.

But being filled with the Spirit will make us love more boldly, face hostility with greater courage and integrity, and spread joy contagiously--because the Spirit is indeed making us to be more like Jesus.

The New Testament has been telling us as much since the earliest writings of the first generations of disciples, like these few verses from one of Paul's first preserved letters (and quite possibly one of the first writings of what we now call the New Testament!). Here as Paul writes to his friends at the house-church community in Thessalonica, it's obvious just how closely he connects the presence of the Spirit and their growth in Christ-like-ness.  He praises his friends there for how they didn't just receive the good news of Jesus as empty talk, but the Spirit showed up in powerful ways among them--and, as he says a bit further on, that same Spirit inspired joy in them as well as making them "imitators" of Jesus and those who modeled Christ for them in their actions.

This is a really important connection for us to make, for a couple of reasons.  First off, for whatever else we think it means to be "holy" or "devout" or "pious," the apostle says it looks like the Jesus way of life.  And while there are plenty of puffed-up, self-righteously sanctimonious practitioners of Respectable Religion out there, it's clear Jesus isn't one of them.  Becoming more like Jesus won't lead us to be more judgmental or arrogant, and it won't lead us away from the needs or pain of other people. Becoming more like Jesus won't lead us to seek more power, prestige, or "greatness," but will lead us to serve and sit beside the left-out and the left-behind. Becoming more like Jesus won't lead us to retreat behind stained-glass windows to keep our distance from the ones labeled "sinners," but will lead us to share tables and walk beside them in love. Expect the Holy Spirit to lead us in those kinds of things, not some kind of allergy to "the world" dressed up in the language of devotion.

Second of all, it's clear from Paul's words that he sees this growing imitation of Jesus (and the other people in our lives who reflect Jesus for us) as the Spirit's work in us, not our moral achievement.  In other words, God doesn't say to us, "Okay, you've got six weeks to work on your Jesus-impression, and whoever does well enough will get into heaven and receive the Holy Spirit as a bonus; the rest of you get sent out to the outer darkness..."  But rather, as we let the gospel do its work on us, the Spirit goes to work with God's own creative power to make us love, and speak, and act more and more like Jesus.  Being imitators of Christ isn't a matter of me learning to do an impression like a performer on Saturday Night Live; it's about the Spirit shaping me and bringing out the likeness of Jesus in me in new and deeper ways.  It is the Spirit's work and the Spirit's power, not something I have to constantly worry about being "good enough" on my own.

And finally, notice how all of this process of becoming more like Jesus happens in community.  As Paul saw it, the Spirit was working through him and the other apostles and leaders who first told them about Jesus, in order to make all of them more like Christ.  We shape each other--or rather the Spirit uses each of us to shape all of us, until the reflection of Jesus is clear in us.  The way someone singing next to you in church inspires you, or the person sitting down the table from you at Bible study offered you some fantastic insight, or the way the volunteers who work alongside you helping to feed others or comfort them in sickness--all of those are ways that the Spirit brings forth the image of Christ in us, almost like a woodworker whittling and chiseling a figure of Jesus for a nativity set. The Spirit is doing this through us, among us, and with us all the time.  Our usual word for it is just "discipleship."

Today, then, along with the other disciples that the Spirit is working on around you, we are given the opportunity to be shaped so that others will see Jesus in us.  We have the chance to be encouraged, taught, stretched, and blessed by other people through whom the same Holy Spirit is working, while at the same time the Spirit uses you to shape them as well.

And all of this is just a part of what the Holy Spirit is up to on an ordinary Tuesday.  Let's step into it today.

Lord Jesus, let your Spirit and your people make us to be more like you in this day.

What We Have Always Needed--June 17, 2024

What We Have Always Needed--June 17, 2024

"I pray that, according to the riches of God's glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you being rooted and grounded in love." [Ephesians 3:16-17]

Maybe the thing we need most in the end... isn't a "thing" at all. Maybe it's not a "what," but a "who." So maybe what we are longing for most in life is nothing--literally, no-thing, but rather the living presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit. It just takes a while sometimes for our deepest selves to realize that.

There comes a point where you stop only asking for just stuff in your prayer life. There comes a point where you see the one thing really needful is for Christ himself to be with you--for the Spirit of God to dwell in us. And maybe that is the point at which we are getting closer to what we call "wisdom" or "maturity" in the life of faith.

That’s not to say that it’s wrong or sinful to pray for specific things—for the money to help make ends meet when someone has lost a job, for a cure for the malignancy the doctors have pronounced incurable, or for the prodigal son or daughter to come home safe and in one piece tonight. No, it’s fine to be as specific as you need to be when you pray. Honesty, always honesty.

But you know what it is like to grow out of wanting toys at Christmas—maybe in our prayer lives and in our spiritual growth it’s not so different. When kids are little, they are unchangeably concrete in their thinking—as they need to be. They see their needs in concrete terms—more apples or peanut butter sandwiches, please; tie my shoelaces; etc. Christmas presents are the same: what do you want? Toys. A bat. A ball. A pink tutu with sparkles in the fabric. Their hopes are for specific, concrete, tangible things.

Watch. Listen. In time the wishes for specific objects transforms. There comes a time when they would rather have gift cards and cash (not much nobler than just wanting a specific toy, but it is a sign they are thinking at a different level). And then, there comes a point where people really don’t want any specific thing—you want to be around the people who matter most to you. That will do it. And when that happens, you don’t feel like you are settling, just because there isn’t any brightly colored plastic in a box for you anymore at Christmas. You really find yourself feeling more and more satisfied than you ever have, even though you aren’t so concerned with getting this or that thing anymore.

There's a book by the cartoonist who used to draw the comic "Mutts," whose title is literally, "The Gift of Nothing," that makes the same point. The one dog wants to get his friend, a cat, the perfect gift, after realizing that the right thing for someone who has everything is... nothing. And of course, in the end, the gift of "nothing" doesn't mean the dog doesn't care about his friend--just the opposite, in fact. That's because the gift of nothing turns out to be the gift of enough empty time and space that they can share a moment together, simply as friends, appreciating that they are with one another. Sometimes the greatest gift indeed, is nothing--which allows the presence of someone.

I suspect you have lived through enough Christmases and birthdays to see that progression happen—seeing new little faces who are absorbed in the objects from their wish lists, and older ones who are moving beyond specific items to want to have their assets “liquid” in gift-card form, and then a wiser generation who just sits back and smiles to see people whom they love, and to know they cared enough to be there.

Something similar happens in our walk with God, too, in this life. There are those early phases in our faith when we are not only concrete in our prayers, but downright selfish. We pray a snow day from school, for our team to win the game, for a green light for my car, for a raise at work for myself, and so on. And at some point, we move beyond that (hopefully), as we become wiser in the faith, and our prayers become more open to God’s direction as to how they are answered. Instead of, “God, let me ace this test so I can get into the school I want to,” maybe the prayer becomes, “God, how about you show me where you would lead me next in life?” Instead of, “God, give me an extra $10,000.00 in income so I can have the life I’ve always wanted,” it becomes perhaps, “God, provide for my needs and my kids’ needs, and show me what is worth having and what I can let go of in this life.” Those prayers are not less insistent or less sincere because they have stopped sounding like ransom demands; no, just the opposite. They are somehow more invested, more passionate, and more heartfelt, even when they look like they are less specific.

Well, there is yet further to go. There comes a point, it seems—Paul appears to be praying from this place in today’s verses—where you see that you most really need…Christ--the living, risen, Christ himself, alive and in that empty place within us by the abiding Spirit. Not for his power to do miracles for us when we wish them. Not for favors. Not for the promise of mansions in the sky along a gold-paved boulevard. But just him. It’s that often-quoted line of Saint Augustine, "God, you have made us for yourself, and our hearts are restless until they find their rest in you." You can have all the wins for your team you want, all the snow days or raises you can count, and still not be fulfilled. You can have a bustling social life, a million Facebook “friends” (talk about hijacking a word!), and your dream job, and still have an emptiness. Even if you’ve got the cookie-cutter family with the white picket fence and the dog, even if you got the miracle cure you had been wishing for, even if you are able to send your kids off to college and breathe a sigh of relief that you have gotten them that far… that’s not what we are most deeply in need of.

What we need… is Christ. With us. In us. Not just the historical record of what Jesus did a long time ago; not just the stories or teachings of this 1st century rabbi to inspire and challenge us; not just the idea of future bliss floating on a cloud with heavenly treasures in our accounts, but the living Christ himself. The Spirit's presence taking root in us, like a seedling sprouting from good soil. What we need is not brightly colored plastic—not in toy form, and not in gift-card form—but the One who loves us purely and deeply and fiercely all the way to a cross, and then out the other side to be with us. What we need is not “stuff”, and not even just “people” in the general abstract sense, but the one particular specific Person—Jesus himself—who makes it possible for us to bear whatever else comes our way, raise or not, win or loss, miracle cure or not.

If everybody prays to win the lottery, and if a lesser-but-well-meaning “god” gave everyone the winning numbers, everyone would have to settle for two-dollar winnings, and no one would really be satisfied. You can only divide a jackpot into so many pieces.

Ah, but Christ—he is immediately available to all of us, all at the same time, completely and fully. The Spirit is the One our hearts have been most deeply yearning for all along. So perhaps in our prayer lives, there will come that point for us, maybe even sooner rather than later now, where we ask for Christ to remove the obstacles we have set up in our lives, on our calendars, in our smart-phones, in our budgets, in our social circles, or at our jobs, that keep us from him. Perhaps now we can see that what we have needed all along is this One who promises to love us fiercely and faithfully.

I want to be like those wise people at Christmas or birthdays who are no longer tethered to the wants for “stuff” and who have found that the One who is Love is what they most deeply needed… and that he is the one who most freely gives himself away to us.

Lord Jesus, come to us more fully. Remove all the "things" we accumulate in our lives which turn out to be the roadblocks we put up to keep you from nearness. Let us see you as you come into our midst.

Good Fruit from Good Trees--June 14, 2024

 

Good Fruit from Good Trees--June 14, 2024

"By contrast, the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires. If we live by the Spirit, let us also be guided by the Spirit. Let us not become conceited, competing against one another, envying one another." [Gal. 5:22-26]

If you've got an apple tree, let's say, and it starts producing apples, you can really only say that this is what you expect it to do--it is an apple tree, after all. And it is an apple tree--that is its identity, its definition, even--even before the first honeycrisp hangs from a bough. You might say it produces apples because it is an apple tree, not that by producing enough apples first, it might gain the elite status of being an apple tree.

That's the picture Paul offers of our lives as people given new identity by the Spirit--we are Spirit-people, the people in the community of Jesus in which the Spirit of God dwells, and what comes forth from us--what comes to hang from our boughs, so to speak--is the fruit of this Spirit. But notice that the imagery presumes that we are such a people first, and then that the practice of love, joy, peace, etc. comes to fruition in us consequentially. Sometimes we are tempted to reverse that logic and turn this laundry list of virtues into conditions for belonging--as in, "We'll know if you're really worthy enough to be a believer when we see you do something from each category on this list--something loving, joyful, peaceable, etc." But for Paul, it's the other way around--God has made us to be Spirit-people (like an apple-tree, but for the Spirit), and because God has called us to be such people, that is what we are. And flowing from that is the work of the Spirit in us that brings forth all of this fruit--all of this new way of ordering and aligning our lives. And as this new life comes to realign us, to remake us from the inside out, the old life is shed like a snakeskin--at least that is the possibility handed to us. Sometimes it seems we are determined to keep covering ourselves with that dead old snakeskin of the old life, the life of self-interested materialism and manipulation of others, the life of "the flesh". But Paul says that regardless of what coverings we put on ourselves and how foolish we look when we do it, we have been identified by God as beloved children, as people in whom the Spirit lives, as people who share in the life of Jesus. And so we are. The invitation to us once again today is to become what we are--apples that land close to the tree.

This picture of a life of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control can become a throwaway, too, if we treat these as just abstract words or greeting-card sentiments. But today we are given then chance to embody these things--to practice faithfulness by showing up for someone who needs us, to enflesh peace by bringing reconciliation between people estranged today, to embody love by taking the time for compassionate listening today when you would prefer to be on your way. These are all opportunities standing in front of us today--take one.

O God the Gardener of our Very Lives, give us all that we need today to bear fruit today, to bring to fruition the life you have handed to us and create in us by your Spirit.