Love and Astronomy—August 1, 2024

 

Love and Astronomy—August 1, 2024

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be willed with all the fullness of God.” [Ephesians 3:18-19]

There was a time when the brightest minds in scholarship thought the Earth was the center of the cosmos, and that the whole cosmos didn’t go beyond the night sky, where they assumed the sun, moon, and stars were placed like holes in an upside-down colander.

Then there came an age when Copernicus shifted our view to see the sun at the center of a much larger arrangement, with the Earth and other planets going around the sun in what we call now “the solar system.”

At some point later, we discovered that our seemingly gigantic solar system was just a tiny pinprick of light in a vast celestial pinwheel of stars that we call our home galaxy, the Milky Way (and that the light colored strip across the night sky was actually a spiral structure that we were ourselves a part of.

Now, with space-based telescopes sending us images from the furthest reaches of space, we are learning that there are countless galaxies, each one teeming with billions of stars themselves, and each of those stars potentially a host to planets orbiting them in solar systems of their own. Those same telescopes are showing us, too, that there are objects in the universe that cannot even be seen with the kinds of eyes we have, but are only visible in infrared, or gamma, or x-ray radiation. And while we are on the subject, they are also teaching us that the space in between those galaxies—the actual empty space itself!—is expanding, almost like air bubbles expanding in a growing loaf of bread as it proofs and then bakes in the oven.

The universe, in other words, is getting bigger all the time; and it is getting bigger in dimensions and measures we did not even have words for at an earlier time in our history. So to a large extent, being a scientist in one of the fields that studies the universe (say, astronomy, or cosmology, or the physics of interstellar space and forces like gravity) requires a willingness to let your mind be increasingly stretched by an ever-widening awareness of just how big the universe actually is. It’s not so much a matter of learning you thought one way and then were proven wrong (like you thought the cosmos was 7 units big when it was really 8), but more like realizing that the scale of the universe is constantly growing, and along with that growth, your mind itself has to adapt to bigger and bigger frame of reference.

For the really good scientists out there, that constant expansion of their awareness is a good thing, not something to get frustrated about or angry over. It is a source of wonder for them, and it doesn’t lead those scientific minds to give up on the search for deeper understanding, but rather spurs them on to learn more while humbly preventing them from thinking they have the Final Answers.

And in a very real sense, that’s the way the writer of Ephesians talks about the goal of the Christian life—for all of us. In these words which many of us heard this past Sunday, we hear the apostle pray that his readers, along with “all the saints” (that is, all of us who belong to the people of Jesus) would come to comprehend the sheer vastness of the love of Christ in every dimension: “the breadth and length and height and depth” until we ourselves are filled with the fullness of God. It’s like the way astrophysicists keep revising their understanding of how big the universe is, and the way they humbly come to realize that the cosmos didn’t need their permission to get bigger. Rather, they discover that the universe has been expanding in every direction all along, and they have come, like guests late to the party, to realize its infinite scope. To be a part of the people of Jesus is to constantly have our sense of the scope and scale of God’s love in Christ stretched wider, always bigger than our frame of reference, and always beyond our capacity to contain or control. This is what the New Testament writers pray we would all have.

In other words, this isn’t just a discovery for the so-called experts. It’s not just for theologians or pastors to ruminate in ivory-tower conversations while they debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s an awareness for all the people of Jesus, because only with an expansive understanding of God’s love in Christ can we rightly understand our place in the universe. Only when we realize, both how small each of us is within the endless expanse of God’s love, and how deeply beloved each and every one of us is within that love, can we rightly follow Jesus or make sense of our lives. And I suspect a good number of the ways we human being screw things up in life arise from our insufficient awareness of the unlimited vastness of God’s love in Christ. Maybe that’s why the writer to the Ephesians makes this his prayer, rather than for power, wealth, status, or a leg-up in the next battle of a culture war.

So often, our fear and animosity toward other people boils down to some gut assumption that “THOSE PEOPLE” are outside of the scope of God’s love—and therefore are “dangerous” or “suspicious” or “negligible” and unworthy of our care or compassion. All too frequently, our focus on who has the most money or influence is a matter of our thinking that only the well-heeled and widely-known matter to God’s purposes. And every time we draw a line around “Me and My Kind of People” to separate us from “outsiders” in whatever ways they differ, we keep trying to fence in God’s love to stay within the boundaries and borders we have drawn. In other words, so many of the troubles we human beings get ourselves into (the usual churchy word is “sin”) are consequences of our failure to comprehend, as Ephesians puts it, breadth, length, height, and depth of the universal scope of God’s love in Christ. Genocides and holocausts, territorial wars and religious crusades, all metastasize from a cancer that starts as a myopic view of God’s love.

All this past month we have been exploring what it means to be the people of Jesus. And I hope over the course of these reflections, it’s been clear, on the one hand, that belonging to the people of Jesus is an utter and complete gift, with no tests, points, or prerequisite accomplishments on a theology exam. And at the same time, on the other hand, I hope it has been clear, too, that as we discover we are indeed a part of the people of Jesus, we will find ourselves like astronomers peering out at an expanding field of vision to see the growing universe, and we will have our understanding of God’s love grow in breadth… and length… and height… and depth. And like star-watchers who realize that we ourselves are a part of the universe we observe, we will realize, too, that we are located already within the sweep of God’s infinite love in Christ.

Probing those vast reaches just might take us a lifetime, maybe even an eternity. But it’s worth exploring today. Open your eyes.

Lord Jesus, open the eyes of these hearts from squinting out a small circle to see the stretch of your love in every direction and all dimensions.

Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

[Jesus said:] "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.... Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." [Luke 6:22-23, 26]

Let me tell you about one of my favorite depictions of Christ in art.  (And no, it's not the one everyone seems to be fixated on since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other day, although we can certainly have a conversation someday about the merits and limits of Da Vinci's famous mural, "The Last Supper.)

No, the piece of artwork I have in mind is much less-well-known, but it's also much more ancient.  In fact, it might be the earliest depiction of Christ EVER to have survived to the present-day.  And it wasn't made by a Christian at all--it was apparently made to mock both Christ and Christians, and yet at the very same time actually points to the compelling beauty of this faith of ours.  Here's what it looks like:

What you're seeing is a line-drawing version of a piece of graffiti originally scratched into the stone wall of a Roman building, probably etched in the 2nd century AD, give or take.  It's intended to be a mockery of Jesus and someone worshiping him, and it says in crude Greek, "Alexamenos worships [his] god."  The figure on the left is presumably a man named Alexamenos, and the figure he is worshiping looks to be a crucified figure with a donkey for a head--an image intended to mock Jesus.  (Some think that goes back to a pernicious myth that floated around the ancient world that the God of Judaism was a donkey; others think it might echo the lowly donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem.  And another possibility is just that it is intended to humiliate Jesus by depicting him with a lowly donkey's head--much like it is still today not a compliment to call someone a jackass.)  No matter what, it certainly seems like the gist is to mock this poor Christian, Alexamenos, because his "god" (Jesus) isn't the sort of pomp-and-circumstance cosmic showman or bully that Zeus, Jupiter, or Caesar were thought to be.  Jesus was the opposite--lowly, non-threatening, and crucified.  For whatever other ways the ancient pagan world mocked or misinterpreted Christianity, it does seem that they understood that the One at the center of our faith was a crucified homeless rabbi, which was utterly scandalous to their worldview.

Now, here's why I want you to know about this crude anti-Christian cartoon by a 2nd century would be Banksy, and here's why I call this one of my favorite images of Christ in the history of art.  The artist didn't realize it at the time, but his attempt to mock Christ actually reveals the beauty of the Gospel.  That is to say, at the heart of our faith is the scandalous claim that God in Christ was willing to bear all the scorn, all the shame, and all the ridicule that humanity could fling at Jesus--and he absorbed all that evil without returning it and lobbing back mockery at his tormentors.  At the cross, Jesus endured not just the physical pain of crucifixion, but all the worst mockery, insult, and psychological torture the Romans could inflict on him--and this is precisely the way God has chosen to save the world!  Jesus doesn't threaten the centurion back or say, "I will have my revenge!" but rather prays for his executioners, "Father, forgive them, for they do not understand what they are doing."  This isn't a sign of Jesus' weakness--it is the glorious expression of his utterly limitless strength.  

Jesus does not give into the impulse to spew hatred back in the face of hatred or vitriol in response to vitriol from the mob shouting "Crucify!"  The poor schlub who thought he was making fun of Jesus for being crucified (and a Christian, Alexamenos, for worshipping such a Christ) didn't realize that he had actually stumbled on the thing that makes the Gospel sublimely unique compared to all the boasting and bitter braggadocio of the Greek and Roman pantheon of deities.  Zeus, of course, wouldn't submit to humble serving like Jesus.  Jupiter would never lay down his life for mere mortals.  Caesar, who regularly adopted divine titles for himself, could never imagine that true power came not from crucifying your enemies but loving them even while being crucified at their hands.

This was the message that the early Christians brought to the world, and this is what made the Gospel they brought actually sound like "Good News," even as strange as it sounded to its first hearers.  The God of the universe, it turns out, doesn't need defending, certainly not by us. (Like the old saying goes, you defend God like you defend a lion: you just get out of its way.)  The God we meet in Jesus is not so fragile, not so insecure, as to crumble in the face of insult or mockery; rather, the very power of Jesus' saving love is his capacity to endure the worst we humans can say about him and still to stretch out his arms for us at a cross anyway.  The most we can do is simply to point at the Crucified One and say, "Yes--this is my Lord.   Yes, this is how God saves the world."  It will sound like nonsense to the watching world, but for Saint Paul, that was the power of the gospel: it sounds like "foolishness" and "weakness" but turns out to be the wisdom and power of God.

And that brings us to Alexamenos himself.  Everything else about this ancient disciple is lost to history, but we know he was a worshiper of Jesus, and someone thought it would rile him up to point out that the Jesus we confess as Lord endured utter humiliation.  I'm sure it wasn't fun to be the butt of this graffiti artist's joke, but I do think that Alexamenos, whoever he was, knew that this was a sort of solidarity with Jesus himself.  After all, Jesus had told his disciples that they were blessed when people made fun of them for his sake.  Jesus doesn't goad his disciples to get mad when someone mocks their faith or ridicules them for being associated with him; he says, rather, "Remember--that's what happened to the prophets before you."  And instead, the way we respond to those insults with love becomes a way of pointing to the love of Christ.  The way we answer others' mockery, whether it is clever or crude, by refusing to answer their meanness with more meanness, is a way we point to the goodness of God.  It becomes our way of glorifying God--and no fussy indignation or flustered clutching of pearls is necessary.  That's the way we offer a witness.

In fact, that's the one other thing we know about Alexamenos, the otherwise anonymous Christian from those first centuries.  In the room next to the one where this piece of ancient graffiti was found, there is another inscription, made in Latin, presumably sometime later.  And all it says is simply, "Alexamenos is faithful."  

How beautiful, you know?  How absolutely lovely that Alexamenos could be recognized as faithful, even in the face of mockery of both him and Jesus.  And yet nobody needed to lash out, make threats, or cause a big stink that Jesus was being depicted this way--it was, in a flourish of divine irony, actually revealing the glory of God who goes to a cross and endures our mockery for the sake of the world.  

That's what our response is meant to be in the face of hostility or mockery from the wider world.  And again, like I say, we can have a separate conversation about what was or was not going on in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and whether anybody was supposed to take offense at it or not.  Even imagining the worst-case scenario that it was a deliberate shot at Christians (and again, there is sound reason to believe that's NOT the right way to interpret what happened there), the question now falls to us, who do confess Jesus as our Lord: will we be bitter, melodramatic, and vengeful, or will we embody the kind of love we have found in Jesus precisely at the cross? Will we, like Alexamenos did all those centuries ago, simply say, "Yes, this is our Lord. This is how he saves and reigns: in humble love, all the way to a cross"?

Ultimately, the cross is what makes our faith in Christ immune to ridicule. In the cross of Jesus, God bears the worst mockery humans could lob; so when people try to insult Jesus, the gospel replies, “Yes—this is precisely what God has endured for the world.” The cross steals the thunder of anybody who wants to try to mock Jesus--you can't insult Jesus any worse than what they already did to him, and he endured it to the end. And when others mock Christians, for our hypocrisy, we should really be grateful they are pointing out truths we didn’t want to see. Only when we Christians forget the meaning of the cross will we get defensive about people ridiculing Christ—and if we forget the meaning of the cross, we deserve the criticism.  The way we respond to mockery and insult as the people of Jesus can become a reflection of the love of Jesus--if we are willing to respond as Jesus does.

So, what will we do in this day, or whenever the day comes, when someone makes fun of our faith in Jesus?  Once we've set aside the criticism of hypocrisy that we might need to hear... once we've dealt with accusations that are not true or don't accurately reflect our faith, what will we do if someone pulls an Alexamenos-type insult on us?  Jesus himself would tell us that's a moment simply to sit with the blessedness of loving people like Jesus does in response, and letting that be enough.  

It is enough, after all, just to be faithful.

Lord Jesus, let us be faithful as we point to your crucified love, no matter how scandalous it seems to the world.

Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

"I pray that, according to the riches of his 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 are being rooted and grounded in love." [Ephesians 3:16-17]

It's more than just willpower, you know?

And it's more than just a self-help book.

Sometimes (maybe most of the time) Christians are not great at remembering that. We have some sort of belief, probably, that following Jesus will change us... but if we are pressed to explain it, we often just slide into talking about willpower. We end up sounding like we are saying, "Well, Jesus guarantees we get into heaven... but now it's up to you on your own to become a moral person." We end up falling into fads like wearing bracelets with WWJD on them, as though all it takes to be Christ-like is a momentary pause to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" In other words, we end up picturing Jesus way "out there" in front of us--so far in front of us that he's either waiting already in heaven twiddling his thumbs until we get there on our own, or he's ten steps ahead of us while we do our best to copy his moves from a distance. Either way, it ends up sounding like Jesus is merely a means to an end--just a ticket to heaven or a template we have to figure out how to copy.

But the writers of the New Testament don't picture the scene that way. They don't think of Jesus being just way out in front like the lead pacer in a horse race, while we are left in the dust. The writers of the New Testament keep talking about Christ living and dwelling within us. He's not just "out there" or "up ahead." And our job is not simply to follow the footprints to go where Jesus already went long before. The life we call Christianity is not simply our willpower trying to force ourselves to retrace Jesus' steps. No--the audacious claim of the New Testament is that Christ himself comes to be the animating presence within the people of Jesus, who trains our spiritual muscles to walk and move and reach and stretch in new directions... from the inside. Like the old campfire scary story puts it, the call is coming from inside the house.

That is to say, for the followers of Jesus, growing in love is not simply an option I can either choose to do or not to do. It's not just that Christians take a look at Jesus' example and then decide if they will or won't try to copy it. It's that--even in spite of my continuing resistance--Christ himself is within me, changing me from the inside out. My sheer willpower doesn't have much force to it--ask the half-empty bag of Fritos in the pantry if you want confirmation of that. And on my own, I am going to keep sliding back into selfishness, fear, suspicion of those who are different, hate of others, hypocrisy, and lying. We are all wired with that fight-or-flight, angry rage or fearful retreat, kind of outlook on the world on our own--but Christ makes something new possible. And Christ does it, not by just giving us an example for us to try to copy, but by residing within us in a real, meaningful way.  The people of Jesus, in other words, are not merely a fan club of admirers of Jesus, nor a troop of impersonators workshopping their best impression of Jesus, but people in whom Jesus himself lives and dwells, putting roots down through us into the good soil of God's love.

Ask a kid who is just learning how to hold a pencil to copy da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man," and even if you have a poster-print of it right in front of the child, you will end up with stick figures rather than anything close to a reasonable facsimile. Same with us and Jesus--if all we have is Jesus' example to look at and then to try and copy with our own messy lives, we will never come close to looking like Christ that way. It's not possible, anyway, to simply extrapolate Jesus' first-century life and world into twenty-first century situations--at least it's not like you can do it with mathematical precision. But that's not what the Christian faith is about--we are not meant to copy by rote the picture in front of us and get it right by our sheer willpower and determination. We have Christ within us, teaching us to move, training our hands and feet, so that our pictures of Christ look more and more like Jesus' own self-portraits, traced not on paper or canvas but on our own lives.

In all honesty, the good news we call "the gospel" is not (despite so many billboards saying otherwise) that Jesus is merely a means to an end like a ticket to get you into heaven, while you continue to be a relentlessly self-centered jerk forever. And nor is the good news, "If you can copy Jesus well enough, you'll be deemed acceptable to get in." Both of those imagine that Jesus is unconnected and unrelated to me and my actions now. But the New Testament instead says that Christ fills me even now, so I am brought into daily communion with the Creator of the universe right now, already, every day of my life, as Christ grounds me in his grace. And as Catherine of Siena says (one of my favorite medieval Spanish mystic women theologians, if you are keeping score), "All the way to heaven is heaven... because Jesus said 'I am the Way.'" If the reality we usually call "eternal life" is really about being in the very presence of the One who IS unending life, then Catherine is exactly right--Jesus isn't just a ticket to "getting" some other thing called "eternal life" or "heaven." Jesus IS this reality of life in the full--he IS what eternal life looks like. He IS what makes heaven...heaven. Not gold streets or pearly gates. But Jesus. And if Jesus is not simply "out there up ahead" but dwelling within me, and you, and us, then the Christian life is not really about "getting TO heaven" so much as it is about increasingly discovering the One who IS eternal life already permeates our being like oxygen in our cells.

How would it change your outlook in this day--and even your outlook on your whole faith--to consider that it's never been about chasing Jesus from behind to find a way to get to some other place called heaven... but rather that the One who is Life already dwells in you and is shaping the way you live and move and speak, so that you begin to participate in his own fullness of life right here and now?

See? This is good news that is so much better than "Use your willpower to copy Jesus. And use a bracelet if necessary to remind you to do it." All the way to heaven is heaven already.

Lord Jesus, direct me so that I live already like your abundant life is coursing through me already, beyond the bounds of my weak willpower and innate anxieties.

Like Seashells from the Sea--July 29, 2024

Like Seashells from the Sea--July 29, 2024

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name." [Ephesians 3:14-15]

Put a seashell up to your ear, and what do you hear?  Well, of course, your junior high school science teacher would tell you that it's actually the sound of air moving through the chambers in the shell.  But poetically, we say, "You can hear the sound of the ocean and the roar of the waves."  There is something lovely, I confess, about the idea that you can hear the sound of the sea when you listen to a seashell.  At least in some sense, it seems right, somehow fitting, that the individual shells that have washed up on the shore should show some connection to the place from which they came.  It seems appropriate that they should reveal their origin, and that you should be able to tell by listening that the shells come from the sea.  

But even though it is not strictly true that the sound from inside a shell IS the ocean, it is true that the ocean does contain all those creatures, and that they have in fact come from the waters.  And when we speak of the ocean, surely we mean more than just the saltwater--we have in mind the fish and crustaceans, the kelp forests and octopus gardens, the thermal vents teeming with otherworldly life and the currents that flow where our eyes cannot see them.  We mean all of it--even down to the creatures with shells that eventually wash up on the shore.  They come from the sea, and so all seashells at least in some way take their name from that source.

I want to ask you think about that connection for a moment: that seashells are called what they are, even though they don't literally make the sound of the ocean, because their source is the sea.  They are creatures who come from the sea, no matter how well or how poorly you can hear a vaguely sea-like sound when you hold one up to your ear.  Their source still gives them their name.  And interestingly, these lines from Ephesians (which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship) make a similar connection between God and all families among all peoples on earth.  God, whom the writer describes like a "father," is the source from whom all of our families, our parents, our children, and all relationships of love come.  And of course, in some sense, that is true regardless of how functional or dysfunctional our families happen to be.  Our sense of family connects us to our Source--God--regardless of how "good" or "bad" our actual families are at loving each other well.  There's a sense, in other words, even when you look at an estranged or traumatized family, that there is a deeper, truer Love underneath it.  And that means that for whatever ways we have been let down by relatives or have come from dysfunctional family systems, as well as whatever ways we ourselves have let down our children, parents, spouses, and loved ones, we bear some mark of God's love that has given us life like our own parents.  The living God, who as Jesus says has birthed us into being like a mother and who cares for us like a father, is the Source from which all our familial love arises.  Our families, in all their diversity, take their name and bear some level of connection to the Source from which we have come, like seashells from the sea.

So what? Well, again, for whatever else the letter to the Ephesians is doing, at least here it is reminding us of the truly universal scope of God's love and care for the whole human family.  It is a reminder that God is concerned with all of us--people of every nation and land, of every language and culture, of every time and place, in all of our differences and diversity.  All of us, for all the ways our families differ from one another and all the ways we miss the mark of God's perfect parental love, are held within God's love like shells that retain their connection to the sea from which they came.  And that means, too, that there is never a point at which we can write anybody off as unimportant to God.  We never get to say, "Well, THOSE people don't matter--they have nothing to do with God!"  And we never get to dismiss people as entirely disconnected from God just because they aren't Christian or don't share our particular faith--the writer of Ephesians says that every family, every parent, every child (which includes every last one of us), bears the mark of God whose parental love is the source of our understandings of love and family, too.  I never get to say of anybody, no matter how different they are from my experience, "THOSE families aren't important because they aren't Christian!" because they are still connected to the universal human family whose source and progenitor is God.  Our connection to God is not dependent on our sameness, but comes from our common Source--the One whom Jesus calls "Abba--Father."

It is easy for us to think that God only cares about "my kind of people," or to assume that "my way of doing family" is the only kind that works.  And it is terribly tempting to think that people who differ from me are automatically wrong or unimportant because they don't fit my mold or my expectations.  The book of Ephesians doesn't let us make that move, but rather insists that all of us, from your closest cousins and next-door neighbors to strangers separated from us by an ocean or removed in time by millennia, are connected to the same God from whom our understandings of love first arise.  We are all seashells; we all share a connection to the sea.

In a time like ours when it is easy to retreat into our own little tribes and like-minded enclaves, the letter to the Ephesians insists we remember the universal sweep of God's love for the whole human family and all its branches.  Realizing that connection is there will make a difference in how we treat everyone we encounter today, even if it also means we are led into new directions we did not expect.

Lord Jesus, open our vision to see the breadth of your family in every branch of humanity.

Itinerant Altars--July 26, 2024

Itinerant Altars--July 26, 2024

"In him the whole structure is joined together and grows into a holy temple in the Lord, in whom you are also built together spiritually into a dwelling place for God." [Ephesians 2:21-22]

There are buildings where Christians gather, meet, and worship, but they are not temples.  We are the temple, ourselves.  We in these bodies of ours--this flesh and bone, our creaking joints and aching backs, our laughter lines and watery eyes, in all our colors of hair and shades of skin--we are the temple in which God dwells, rather than being confined to a building or a shrine or a statue.  Wherever we go, and whatever we are doing, we are the "thin place" where God's presence is meant to be somehow clearer and more knowable.  The people of Jesus, in other words, are itinerant altars in the world, and our hands, feet, hearts, and voices are the channels where others should be able to see the face of Christ.

Now, that idea isn't necessarily unique to these verses from Ephesians, at least if you have spent much time at all in the New Testament letters.  The imagery of us as people being the "dwelling place" for God or the "temple" of the Holy Spirit runs throughout the New Testament, not just in these words that many of us heard this past Sunday.  But it really is a radical notion to say that the people of Jesus do not need a building to meet with God, because in fact we are the meeting place between Christ and humanity.  

In the ancient world, every god had a temple--actually, they each had many shrines, sanctuaries, places of worship, and statues of every kind.  You went to the building as your act of devotion and offered your prayers or your offering or your sacrifice there, and the act of being in the right temple, the right place, was part of how you knew you were offering to the proper god or goddess for the proper need.  Poseidon was god of the sea, for example, so you knew you went to him to request a safe voyage across the Mediterranean, but not for help with your wheat harvest.  Athena was for wisdom, but you didn't ask Athena to help your fishing business get a catch big enough to make ends meet on your next outing.  And therefore, you made sure to offer the proper sacrifices and prayers at the proper place to make sure your acts of piety were heard by the right divine ears.

But the claim of Christians was that there was no single "right" place you had to go to meet Jesus, or to connect with God, because Christ showed up wherever his community gathered.  "Where two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in their midst," Jesus had said in the Gospels.  The early Christian community didn't insist you had to go to the Temple in Jerusalem, or to any other single spot on earth, in order to connect with Jesus.  Instead, we ourselves were the meeting point, and we ourselves became the temple--walking stones and bricks that assembled themselves into a "house" of sorts when we gathered in worship, and then scattered out into the world as we lived out lives during the rest of the week.  So when the actual Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the occupying Romans in the year 70AD, the Christian community was ready to head in a new direction.  They didn't say, "We need to rebuild that temple so we can meet with God," but rather, "God was never trapped inside that ol' box anyway--Jesus comes to meet us in the breaking of the bread and the pouring of the cup, and in our assembled community, wherever we are!"  To the rest of the Greek and Roman world, this was utterly preposterous.  But to the Christians, who were basically chased out of every respectable place for worship anyway, it was Gospel Good News.

Now, if it really is true that we, the people of Jesus, are the living "temple" and "dwelling place" for God, it means at least two other things.  First, it means that I have to accept that God is dwelling in other people that might well be different from me, or who come from a different background from mine, or who disagree with me on things.  It's not just ME that is the temple of God, but ALL of US.  And that means, as we've been seeing throughout this week's devotions, that God has chosen to include both "insiders" and "outsiders," the Judeans and the Gentiles alike.  For the earliest disciples of Jesus who were Jewish, that meant recognizing that God was doing a new thing and including "those Gentiles." And for the newcomer Gentiles it meant recognizing that the "old guard" who did things the "old way" were not being kicked out, but that they had a place in the family, too.  It also meant realizing that God didn't merely "let the other group in," but deliberately chose to work through the "others" and to build this living temple out of both groups of people. The living Temple of God called "church" was made of insiders and outsiders, Jews and Gentiles, and they were not forced to fit someone else's cookie cutter expectations, but rather were used and valued as they were.  That took some getting used to for the early church.  It still does today, honestly.

The other thing that we have to take seriously, if we accept that we are the living temple of God, is that all of our lives are meant to be a meeting point where others can encounter the living God.  It's not just that "we have to be well-behaved and pious on Sundays in church," but rather, that all of our lives are meant to be reflections of the face of Christ and the love of God.  There's never a time when we get to say, "Well, that's just not how the REAL world works! We have to be cutthroat and mean-spirited in the real world, but on Sunday mornings we'll do the lovey-dovey stuff."  We are always "on" as the people of Jesus.  We are always the meeting point where others might encounter Christ.  A temple is a dedicated space for the deity that is worshiped and glorified within it--you don't have a building that is a temple in the mornings, a bowling alley in the afternoon, a weapons factory in the evening, and a strip club at night.  There is a sense that a temple is meant to be wholly dedicated to connecting you to the divine, whenever you go there.  In a similar way, when we say that we are the temple of the living God, it is to say that our whole lives are meant to be indwelt by the person of Jesus and reflections of the character of Christ.  There is no time when we get to turn off the Christ-likeness setting and just resort to being selfish, arrogant, bigots or greedy, obnoxious gluttons because it's "Me Time." And we don't get to disconnect from the way of Jesus when we find it inconvenient--not during "business hours," not "because it's the playoffs," and especially not because "it's election season." We are meant to be a place of sanctuary in a world full of meanness, and we are meant to be a point for others to encounter Christ in a time of indecency and dishonor, because we are the temple of the living God.

Look, I know there are times when others may say, "We have to do whatever it takes to win!" and will justify all sorts of rottenness and selling out for the sake of whatever success they insist on pursuing.  But for the people of Jesus, we don't get that option. Being a dwelling place of God isn't a job we can set aside when we're off the clock. It is a way of being in the world--a way of loving, a way of speaking, a way of acting, and a way of listening, that reflects the presence of Jesus for others.

What will it look like for you and me today to be temples of the living God--places where people encounter Christ?  Where will you set up an itinerant altar, a walking sanctuary, in which others will meet God?

Lord Jesus, let your own love and goodness be seen in us, and let us be a point at which others are brought into relationship with you.

Aliens Like Me--July 25, 2024

Aliens Like Me--July 25, 2024   

"So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father. So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God, build on upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, with Christ Jesus himself as the cornerstone." [Ephesians 2:17-20]

If you are a Christian who does not also happen to come from Jewish ancestry (which, to be honest, is the overwhelming majority of Christians now), the dominant way the New Testament describes us is like this: we are aliens and foreigners who have been given both a blanket amnesty from God and full citizenship among God's people as a free gift, no questions asked.

Now, if you are the sort of person who prides themselves on being a "native" of whatever place you live, or if you tend to be suspicious of immigrants and refugees (whether they are working as migrant workers on a farm, or working in a factory, or just getting settled in your area through the help of a group like Global Refuge), this will be a hard pill to swallow.  It is an unavoidable pill if you actually care about what the Bible says, but it is a difficult thing for folks to hear sometimes, if they have built their whole identity on thinking they are somehow different from the aliens or foreigners they hear about on the cable news in sometimes fear-inducing news stories. 

But if we dare to hear it from a place of humility, on the other hand, this passage that many of us heard this past Sunday is a word of sheer grace.  It is the declaration that even though we Gentile (non-Jewish) outsiders didn't have a "right" to claim belonging in God's household by our own efforts, God has just up and given that belonging to us for free, through Christ.  Long-time citizens and brand-new-arrivals still dripping wet from the font are made equal: equal in status, equal in citizenship, equal in valid claim to belong to the household of God.  And, like I say, you can either grumble about that kind of amnesty on God's part because you feel threatened by it, or you can rejoice with reckless abandon over it because it means you belong in the people of Jesus just as you are.

While we're on the subject, we should be honest that it's not just this one passage in the New Testament that talks like this.  Sure, this passage from Ephesians puts it pretty clearly: "So then you are no longer strangers and aliens, but you are citizens with the saints and also members of the household of God." But you find the same language in First Peter ("Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people..."), in Hebrews, ("They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland..."), as well as in the repeated instructions in the Old and New Testament for God's people to welcome foreigners and immigrants by the logic that "You yourselves were once aliens and you know what it was like to be mistreated."  And Jesus himself regularly tells stories where latecomers are looked down on when they are shown mercy and welcome, but God takes the side of the newcomer, whether it's the landowner who pays all the workers the same in the vineyard or the prodigal father who welcomes not only the lost second son but also the grudge-holding older brother who is standing with his arms crossed pouting outside the welcome party.  That is to say, we can't get away from this notion that we Gentile Christians (and again, that's the overwhelming majority of us American Christians who sit in pews on Sundays or read devotions like this) are like foreigners who have been given full citizenship, without any catches or fine print, because Christ has spoken "peace" to us as well as to the "native born" descendants of ancient Israel.

Now, I know that conversations about our immigration and asylum system in the United States in the 21st century are different from the metaphorical language that Ephesians and other New Testament voices are using in all those passages.  I know that there is a significant difference between the community of Jesus' followers, which will always transcend national borders and cultural barriers, and the integrity of a modern-day nation-state that makes promises to keep its citizens safe and secure.  I get that, and I will not pretend that I have some easy solution to how we can both maintain safety while not ignoring the needs of people who want to come here as a means of escaping poverty, war, or disasters, without any wrinkles or challenges.  There is a reason that policy experts are the policy experts.  But I will say this much that seems unavoidable: when I realize that I am, in God's sight, like an alien who has been given full citizenship simply on the basis of my need rather than my inherent "goodness" or "usefulness," then it changes the way I see other people who are seeking a welcome and a place to belong.

In other words, I can never see other refuge-seekers as "animals" or think of them as "less-than human" (despite how popular a way of talking that may be), because the whole point of the New Testament here is that I am no different.  I am someone who has been given not just refuge, not just temporary asylum, but full belonging as a citizen in the people of God, because Christ Jesus has given that to me by sheer grace.  I can never ignore the needs of "outsiders" or say that they all just "need to go back where they came from," because from the New Testament's perspective, I am an outsider who wasn't turned away at the gate, but have been welcomed in as a fellow "citizen with the saints."  Jesus says so.  That prevents me from looking down on anybody else who knows what it is to be in need of refuge, and it compels me to see my own face in theirs.

It's worth noting, too, that the early church continued to see itself in those terms--as aliens and strangers in the world, whose citizenship and belonging were ultimately to God's Reign, rather than any other land or territory.  The second-century Epistle to Diognetus described Christians this way:  "They live in their own countries as though they were only passing through. They play their full role as citizens, but labor under all the disabilities of aliens. Any country can be their homeland, but for them their homeland, wherever it may be, is a foreign country." It's easy to forget that if you've lived in one town, state, or country all your life, but the New Testament wants us to remember: we are recipients of God's amnesty and gift of citizenship.  And we can never be the same after that gift of grace.

When we collect supplies for migrant workers laboring in nearby farms, or when we speak up against anybody calling refuge-seekers "animals," we are simply taking the Scriptures seriously on this point.  When we help volunteer with ESL (English as a Second Language) classes, or fight the impulse to be suspicious of someone speaking a different language, we are living out of the story the New Testament has given us.  And when we can make room for newcomers among us, whether in the pew beside us, the meal time across from us, or in our communities around us, we are reflecting what these verses from Ephesians dare to say: we are citizens with the saints, given belonging in God's house as a gift.  

That's how the world will know we are the people of Jesus.

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for making us to belong even though we had been outsiders before. Grant us to live into our identity as citizens in the household of God, more and more fully.

Jesus, Destroyer of Walls--July 24, 2024

Jesus, Destroyer of Walls--July 24, 2024

"For he is our peace; in his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall, that is, the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it."  [Ephesians 2:14-16]

Jesus' purpose is nothing less than forging a new way to be human.  Anything short of that, any explanation of Jesus that is smaller in scope or lesser in significance than that, falls woefully short.  Jesus has come, the writer of Ephesians says, to gather all kinds of people together--Jews and Gentiles, "insiders" and "outsiders" alike--into a new kind of humanity, one that isn't based on sameness or uniformity, but on Jesus making peace.

To accomplish that mission, Jesus is relentless.  He will stop at nothing to end the hostility that tears us apart, including pulling down the barriers we build to separate ourselves into camps of "us" and "them." The Bible casts Jesus as the destroyer of walls--and even the "abolisher" of laws, rules, and commandments!--that have put us at odds with one another throughout human history.  In fact, according to these words from Ephesians that many of us heard this past Sunday, Jesus is like an executioner: "putting to death" not another human being, but our hostility toward one another!

That's strong language--and it's radical stuff, if you think about it.  It says that God in Christ is ruthless in pulling down all the ways we humans keep inventing to make SOME people "acceptable" and OTHER people "unacceptable," all the ways we divide ourselves up into gold-star-winning-worthy-club-members and shame-deserving-unworthy-outcasts.  Jesus has pulled the wall down--the wall that we set up in the first place, which we had first erected thinking it was God's will to build it.  Well, it wasn't.

Consider that for a moment.  When the writer to the Ephesians talks about Jesus having "broken down the dividing wall," he's talking about the line between Jewish "insiders" and Gentile "outsiders" who were now ALL welcome in the Christian community--and welcome as they were, not by having to pretend to be like the insiders and then failing at assimilating well enough.  And that division between Jew and Gentile was a religious, as well as cultural and ethnic, boundary.  For a very long time beforehand, the assumption was that the line between "in-group" and "outsider" was a divinely ordained boundary.   It was God--they assumed--who wanted to keep the good ones "in" and keep the bad ones "out."  It was God's commandments, they all believed, that kept the acceptable separate from the unacceptable.  And here, the writer of Ephesians just runs a bulldozer through that whole notion, and all the bad theology that had been used to prop it up and buttress it.  Or rather, it's Jesus himself who demolished that way of thinking as well as the division and hostility between Judeans and Gentiles, bringing both of these groups into a new kind of belonging in him.

This is what it means to belong to the people of Jesus: the frequently messy, sometimes frustrating, always more than a little outside of our comfort zone, commitment to welcome all the people Jesus has drawn to himself, even when you were used to thinking of some of them as "THOSE people" rather than "part of MY family in Christ."  If we have a problem with that, the writer of Ephesians says we need to take it up, not with the new faces we think of as different, but with Jesus himself, who is the one aiming the wrecking ball of grace at the border wall that had separated "us" from "them."

And this is what it also means: recognizing that in somebody else's eyes, you and I are the outsiders who they needed to make room for.  Chances are, if you are reading this, you come from a non-Jewish (Gentile) heritage, and if you and I claim belonging in the household of God, it is because somebody else made room for us and was willing to take Jesus' word on it that we have been brought into the household of God and the new humanity Jesus has made in himself.  Our only hope is for a God who knocks down the walls that had kept US apart before, and it comes with the inseparable recognition that this very same wall-demolishing God has now also welcomed others we deemed unworthy or unacceptable, too.  And again, if I have a problem with that, Ephesians tells me to take it up with the living God, not with the folks I didn't want to let into my little religion club.

On this day, then, there is good news of belonging: you belong in the people of God, not because of where you came from, what language you speak, or because you follow the rules (even religious rules!) well enough.  You belong because Jesus has removed the fencing and pulled down the steel barricades, in order that the Reign of God will not be a gated community but a house with many dwelling places.  And with that comes the additional good news that God has ended the old hostility that came from the lines we drew to separate "insiders" and "outsiders."  So somewhere out there, there is someone who has been told for a very long time, maybe by a very many people, that who they are or where they are from has made them forever unacceptable to God, and they are aching to hear that there is a place they belong.  You might just be the person Jesus has raised up to let them know that the walls have already come down as far as God is concerned.  You might just be the one to tell them, "We both have a place in the new humanity Jesus has created for us all."

Where might that lead you today?

Lord Jesus, pull down the barriers we keep trying to set up between one another--even the ones we have been trying to put up wrongly in your name--and gather us into the new humanity you have made in yourself.

Where We Came From--July 23, 2024

Where We Came From--July 23, 2024

"So then, remember that at one time you Gentiles by birth, called 'the uncircumcision' by those who are called 'the circumcision'--a physical circumcision made in the flesh by human hands--remember that you were at that time without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ." [Ephesians 2:11-13]

The Scriptures keep calling us to remember that we know what it is like to be outsiders looking in, and that we know what it is like to have been welcomed to belong in the family, too.  Over and over again, the biblical writers do not want us to forget where we came from.  And they do that, not to keep us "down" in some second-class status, as in, "You're nobodies who come from nothing, and that's all you'll ever be!" but rather just the opposite--"You know what it is like to have been strangers and foreigners, and you know how much it means to be told there is a place for you at the table!"  That's at the core of what it means to be the people of Jesus--we are all, in some sense, misfits and mess-ups who have been told we are beloved and chosen by grace.  When we remember that, we will hold the door open for others who have been told they don't belong; when we forget it, we end up deputizing ourselves as bouncers and gatekeepers to prevent others from coming in.

In fact, that theme--of outsiders being welcomed in--is not only a central idea of the New Testament, like here in this passage from Ephesians that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, but it's actually one of the most ancient parts of Old Testament Israel's identity and storytelling.  Way back in the earliest portions of Israel's Scriptures, the Torah, the people of Israel were taught to recount that their story was one of outsiders being welcomed in, and how that made a difference in their daily lives.  Deuteronomy 26:5 instructed them to offer gifts of the harvest in thanks to God with this story: "A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous..." before retelling how God had brought them out from slavery into freedom.  And then throughout the Mosaic law, the people are reminded to treat foreigners, aliens, and strangers with care, because they were supposed to remember how they had been mistreated in Egypt by Pharaoh and were not supposed to do the same thing again.  "You shall not wrong or oppress a resident alien, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt," Exodus 22:21 says.  And then Leviticus 19:33-34 adds, "When an alien resides with you in your land, you shall not oppress the alien. The alien who resides with you shall be to you as the citizen among you; you shall love the alien as yourself, for you were aliens in the land of Egypt; I am the LORD your God."  You can't get very far in the story of ancient Israel without some reminder that the people knew what it was like to be outsiders and aliens, and that once God had given them a new identity, they were supposed to living out of that memory so they never mistreated anybody else who was out on the margins.

Flash forward to the life of the early church, and the same story emerged with new details.  The first Christians were convinced that God had done something new in Jesus and made a whole new kind of community (as we'll see a bit later in this passage, actually, a whole new humanity!) in Christ, and once again, God was gathering in "outsiders" to belong as "insiders."  Whereas the first disciples of Jesus all came from a Jewish background, God was now welcoming Gentiles (non-Jews) into this new community, exactly as Gentiles!  In other words, you didn't have to stop being Gentile (as if you could--it was, in a very real sense, something you were born into) and become Jewish in order to be Christian.  You were welcome as you were.  But as more and more Gentiles were welcomed into the church, there was a fear that they would forget that they had once been outsiders.  The concern was, much like for ancient Israel, that the new generation would forget what it was like to have been mistreated as outsiders and foreigners, and that they would end up doing the same thing all over again to somebody else.  So the writer of Ephesians here speaks directly to that group of Gentile Christians, who had formerly been labeled "outsiders," "aliens," and "strangers," and says, in effect, "Don't forget where you came from!  You know what it was like to be on the outside looking in, and you remember what it feels like to be told that you now belong.  So don't you dare do the same thing to somebody else who is longing for welcome!"

Of course, the same dynamic still plays out today in a host of different ways.  Sometimes it's the "old-guard-versus-the-new-guard" dynamic in a church, where the newer members start elbowing out the long-time members because they have forgotten what it feels like to be on the margins.  Sometimes the reverse is true, when long-time members feel threatened by new faces and don't want to share decision making.  Sometimes it has been along racial or cultural lines, where whatever the latest immigrant group in town is gets the cold shoulder from everyone else, even though they themselves had been immigrants from somewhere, too.  Sometimes in leadership it's been the "old boys' club" mentality that didn't want to let women into roles of leadership.  We invent all kinds of ways of forgetting that we know what it was like to be outsiders who have been welcomed in.  We keep needing voices like this one from Ephesians that will remind us where we came from, so that we will hold the door open for those who are waiting to be welcomed.  Christians are supposed to be people who never say, "Go back to where you came from!" but rather, "Regardless of where you've been or what you've been through, Jesus calls you to himself, and you belong."

It is, of course, humbling to realize that I'm not "in" because of my goodness, my holiness, my morality, my piety, or my nationality.  It's humbling to admit that my belonging comes as a gift even though I've been an outsider and an "alien" before in the spiritual house of God.  And it is even harder to let go of the illusion that I get to have control over who else is allowed in, or to put conditions on how they are allowed in, since the writer of Ephesians insists that God in Christ has welcomed Gentile outsiders as outsiders, without having to make people fit into some other cookie cutter mold.  But that's how belonging to the people of Jesus works--we belong, not because of our sameness, nor because other people measure up to MY expectations, but because God keeps choosing to welcome us in.  Like it or not, God takes in strays and prodigals--and of course, all too often, it's the uptight Older Brothers who think they get to keep out the riff-raff and up missing out on the party with their arms crossed in the darkness outside the banquet.

Today, how is God calling us as well to hold the door open for others, as we have had the door opened up to us already?

Lord Jesus, don't let us ever forget where we came from, or how your love welcomed us as we are to belong among your people.

You In Your You-ness--July 22, 2024

You In Your You-ness--July 22, 2024

"As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. And if you belong to Christ, then you are Abraham’s offspring, heirs according to the promise." [Gal. 3:27-29]

Okay, let me say this as plainly as I know how to: God delights in "other-ness."

God loves variety. God intends difference. God's creative genius is best seen in the way God's universe makes room for infinite variation, difference, and diversity.

It's why there's not just one kind of fruit in the world, but apples and pears and berries and cherries and grapes and plums and on and on, each kind with their own multiplicity of variations.

It's why there are not simply generic types of animals, just one Mammal, just one kind of Bird, one Reptile, etc. There could have been. Scientists will tell you they can hypothesize other worlds that only have generic one-celled protozoa in them, floating in the water in homogenous blandness. The world could have been a uniformly "blah" shade of taupe, for that matter--there is no reason there has to be the variety there is in the created order around us... except that the Maker of the universe delights in other-ness.

In fact, you could say, what makes the whole of creation hang together is its ability to hold together despite its mind-boggling diversity. The planet doesn't "work" right if there are only flowers and no bees to pollinate them. The whole doesn't hang together if there aren't penguins and fish, peaches and cranberries, foxes and rabbits, wolves and lambs. Even in tiny variations--say, different varieties of wheat or corn--there is value when one kind is resistant to a blight that another kind is susceptible to.

So, in other words, God's joy--and cleverness--are on full display in the created world's "otherness." And notice there--pears are not "acceptable" as fruit because the apples pity them and think, "Well, they're trying hard to assimilate into being apple-ish like us... let's throw them a bone and let them in the fruit club." God doesn't love rabbits because they are trying hard to be like hamsters but just haven't gotten the ears short enough yet. Each is beloved, each is good, each is a precious thing of beauty being fully what it is.

And that is true as well in the community of Jesus' followers. God's intention is not to puree us all up into a homogenous slurry of generic "people" who have lost their individual flavors. The church ain't mashed potatoes. Rather, God's intention is to hold together the whole cross-section of all the ways there are to be human: every shade of skin color, every hue on the rainbow, every kind of variation. And God's design is not to blend us all into a uniform shade of taupe or a single flavor of vanilla. Our belonging is not dependent on losing our distinctives, or all adopting same-ness, in appearance, in attitudes, in likes, in loves, even in outlook. And there is no insistence on assimilation for the community of Jesus--my goodness, the whole story of the "birthday of the church" (what we call Pentecost) was a sermon given and heard in every language they could think of, rather than Peter telling everybody gathered in Jerusalem, "Hey, I've got a great message for you--once you learn Aramaic, you're gonna want to listen..." The picture we get from the New Testament itself is of a community where each is valued for what each of us is, not for how well we do at assimilating into something else, or being blended into a vanilla shake. The audacious claim of the Gospel is that God holds all kinds of people together in a unity that accepts us exactly as we are, with all of our other-ness. In fact God appear to have an easier time accepting (and loving and delighting in) otherness than most Christians do.

Just to be clear--we don't lose our gender or skin color or language or national background when we become a part of the community of Christ, the church. Christians don't lose their individual particularities because they are Christians--I'm still a white male of English and German background married to a white female of German and Norwegian ancestry. But God's intention was never to make everybody like us. In fact, in the history and breadth of Christianity, we are surely the minority, even though we American churchgoers often unwittingly assume that the default for "Christian" is "people like me." God forbid! God's way isn't--and never has been--to take new faces and just put them in the blender with the rest of the church puree so it all tastes and looks the same unappetizing shade of tan.

My welcome in the disciple community doesn't come because I have sufficiently made myself like others, or because I fit the categories that others bring, any more than someone else has to make themselves fit my demographic categories. That's why Paul says here in Galatians, "There is no longer Greek or Jew, free or slave, male and female." Those old lines and distinctions no longer divide us or carry any force for us within the Christian community. These are all the categories Paul can think of--gender, race, class--and he insists that among us they carry no weight. Our baptism into Christ defines us, he says, and makes a stronger claim on us than any other label that gets put on us or that we put on ourselves. Before I am anything else--before I am white or male or English or middle class or married or whatever other categorization we might describe ourselves with--I am made a child of God through Christ. I don't stop being any of those other things, but Paul would tell us that none of those other things are the basis of my belonging or my identity any longer. The old labels used to define me just don’t stick.

The problem we face with all of these words, though, is that we have let it go as just a utopian vision and we perpetually fall short of it. Martin Luther King, Jr. used to point out that the most segregated hour in America was the Sunday morning worship hour--a sad reality that flies in the face of all that Paul says about what it means to live in the Christian community. For that matter, for generations, Christians have either ignored or spiritualized this passage from Galatians so that women could not have positions of leadership in the church--often with the claim that they were abiding by other scriptures that speak against women's leadership, but clearly then ignoring this passage. We'll have to have the fuller Biblical conversation about women's leadership in church on another day, but the point here for today is that Paul gives us this radically open, profoundly beautiful picture of community in this passage, and we invent all sorts of new ways to settle for less than this genuine kind of community. 

For that matter, Paul doesn't describe this picture as a future possibility or a commandment of what we should be or could be if only we would strive harder at it. This is not a utopian hypothetical community--Paul says that this is how things are for us. In other words, God regards us already as a community where the old lines between Jew and Greek, free and slave, male and female no longer divide us. God no longer sees those distinctions when he looks at us--he sees Christ. He sees children of God. And yet we somehow still settle for the divisions and distinctions and labels. Paul seems to think that there's nothing more we need to do to create this kind of community, except to believe that it is already the case.

That's not the same as saying, "I just don't see color." That's not how God intends it, any more than you look in the produce aisle and say, "I only see fruit." No, part of the beauty of a pear is its pear-ness, and part of the beauty of a kiwi is what makes it different from pears, apples, and bananas. The idea is not to lie and say, "We don't see differences," but to say that our belonging comes through God's embrace of our otherness, and not because God secretly wishes all the rabbits would try a little harder to be like the hamsters. Our belonging is not predicated on assimilation as a past accomplishment or a promissory note--it is grounded in the joy that God takes in other-ness of every kind.

We are constantly reminded how deep the wounds and sensitivities about differences like race, culture, and language are in this country. And making it worse perhaps are our clumsy attempts to speak about those topics. It feels sometimes like we don't really know how to relate to one another, and that even our best intentions ("I don't even see color!") are misguided because they still imagine that the right strategy is matter of pretending difference isn't there. It can feel like a lost cause to try and genuinely love people who don't already look like, think like, or talk like me.

And yet... here is Paul announcing that the Christian community exists as an alternative kind of community where the old boundary lines really can be taken down--because they have been taken down, once and for all by Christ Jesus. Maybe the challenge for us, seeing how racially fractured our world is--not to mention all the other categories that divide us--is whether we can dare to actually trust the claim of the gospel--that the old lines need not hem us in any longer, that the old labels will not stick, and that our identity is a gift of Christ, a common gift meant to be shared with all.

If you are a pear, be a pear and know you are beloved by God as a pear. If you are a maple tree, don't worry about trying to be like a pine--you are loved as a maple. If you are a rabbit, don't you spend one minute trying to shorten your ears to make yourself more like a hamster--you bring joy to God exactly as God made you.

You, in all of your you-ness, bring joy to the Maker of the universe.

God of new vision, teach us to see as you see. Train our eyes to look on your beloved and to see your beloved. Teach us to own our particularities but not to judge by our particularities. Teach us to rejoice that you have created a community in which the outsiders are brought in and the lowly are raised high, and we are all given the likeness of Jesus--simply as a gift. Teach us these things, and we will praise you for them.

Where (and How) We Point--July 19, 2024

Where (and How) We Point--July 19, 2024

"In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance, having been destined according to the purpose of him who accomplishes all things according to his counsel and will, so that we, who were the first to set our hope on Christ, might live for the praise of his glory." [Ephesians 1:11-12]

Just to go on record here, I'm never going to get a tattoo of a sports team logo.  I'm never going to fly a flag for a political candidate on my front porch flagpole, either.  And I think I'm over my junior-high-school era impulse of buying clothes just for the trademark of the brand.  I'm done with being a walking billboard for lesser things.

If I'm going to let my life point to something, I would rather it be Christ. No team mascot, no corporation with celebrity endorsements, and no political candidate will ever be worthy of orienting my life around or becoming an advertisement for.  But Jesus is.

I'll be the first to confess that I am not always (maybe not even often? hopefully at least on occasion?) very good at pointing to Jesus.  But to the extent that I can control the direction my life points, that's where I want to point: to the God who has loved us and been shown to us in Jesus of Nazareth.  And I would rather spend my energy, my time, my words, and whatever platform I have in this life, trying to be a reflection of Jesus rather than shilling for a demagogue or a company logo.  And the more I think about it, especially the more I reflect on these words from Ephesians that we heard this past Sunday, the more I think that's the goal for all the people of Jesus.  We are meant to orient our lives to Christ, rather than any of the other voices around us who want us to become blank canvases for promoting what they are selling.

That's definitely the gist here in Ephesians, as the writer says that God's purpose in claiming us to belong to the people of Jesus is precisely "so that we... might live for the praise of his glory."  God has claimed us in Christ... so that we will belong to Christ... with the intention that we will be witnesses for Christ by embodying the love of Christ.  Whatever else we thought we were doing with our lives, our voices, and our influence just isn't worth our giving ourselves to.  Sports teams will let us down every time our home team trades away your favorite player or blows a chance at the playoffs.  Companies will disappoint you because their primary goal is ultimately to make their own profits.  Candidates and political parties will never live up to their own hype and are always going to sell out or disappoint.  Jesus is the one who remains consistently worthy of giving our lives to, and he's not going to turn out to be a fraud or a fake.  The writer of Ephesians here would seem to say that all of us might need to take stock and reconsider what brands, ideologies, causes, and names we have let ourselves become unpaid sales associates for.  Maybe it's time to reconsider what yard signs, bumper stickers, shirt logos, flags, and memes we are displaying for the world to see, literally or figuratively, and maybe it's time to re-think to what or to whom our lives are calling attention.

Of course, the follow-up question to ask, if we have decided that we want our lives to point to Jesus and "the praise of his glory," rather than our favorite brand of sneakers or a campaign slogan that is just waiting to become a broken promise, is how we point to Jesus with our lives.  Because that's another key difference between Jesus and corporate logos or team mascots: Jesus is looking for us to glorify him with the way we live our lives.  He doesn't actually need billboards or posters.  He doesn't need us to "look" religious or to play the part of piety with bumper stickers on our cars or cross jewelry--especially not if our lives aren't going to be a reflection of Jesus even more clearly than our accessories. As the second-century church father Ignatius of Antioch once put it, "It is better to keep quiet about our beliefs and live them out, than to talk eloquently about what we live, but fail to live by it." Or, in James Baldwin's phrasing, "I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do."  If we are committed to letting our lives point to Jesus, it's worth asking what picture of him the world gets from what they see in us.  It's a poor reflection of Christ if we post on social media how important Jesus is to us and then act like selfish jerks to everyone around us or are known for our arrogance and spite.  The way to live "for the praise of his glory" is to love the way Jesus' loves.

Today, then, maybe it's worth doing an audit in our lives of where we draw attention.  What are places we have allowed ourselves become free billboard space for lesser things and causes, and where might we one day regret those unpaid endorsements?  What are the ways we can authentically give glory to Jesus, since he doesn't need a show and he is not looking for mere fans, but followers?

Maybe it's time to do some looking around, both inside ourselves, and to ask what our lives look like they are pointing toward by those who see us from the outside.

Lord Jesus, let our lives and actions embody your love, so that our whole existence points toward you.

Breathing Space--July 18, 2024

Breathing Space--July 18, 2024

"With all wisdom and insight he has made known to us the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth in Christ, as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth." [Ephesians 1:8b-10]

God's stated goal for the universe is to gather up "all things" into the risen life of Jesus. God's purpose in history, as these words we heard on Sunday from Ephesians put it, is to bring everything and everyone in all creation into the embrace of Christ.  It's right there in black-and-white, right in the opening paragraph of this letter from the New Testament. 

And, wow--that is just so much bigger than we usually give God credit for. Honestly, it changes the kind of questions we ask in our theology.  Instead of asking, "What are the requirements I have to do in order to get on the list with God?" as though Jesus is a bouncer who only lets the elite and the cool into the club, we ask, "Will God eventually get what God wants, and gather every last one of us into the arms of grace when all is said and done?"  It means that the people of Jesus are always going to be a group wider and bigger than my local church, my preferred denomination, my political party, my country, and all of my expectations.  You and I may or may not like it or approve of the breadth of God's expansive reach, but it's not up to us. It's God's good pleasure and God's divine plan "to gather up all things" in Christ.

What does that mean our role as Christians is really all about?  Well, first, we can be clear what our role is NOT.  And for starters, as we saw yesterday, too, we are not here auditioning for a spot on a team like we are competing contestants on a reality singing competition.  My belonging in the people of Jesus is not a threat to your belonging also--there is not a limited number of spots on the team, and this is not a zero-sum game.  God isn't voting off losers each week until a lone "winner" of discipleship gets added to the communion of saints, but rather God chooses us as we are, without a need to impress or edge somebody else out who just didn't make the cut.

At the same time, this also means our role is NOT to be the judges on the reality tv competition, either.  I don't get to stand in judgment of somebody else and say, "There's no way God wants THEM for the team!"  And that's simply because, as Ephesians puts it here, God wants us ALL for the team.  And God's intention, God's "plan," as the apostle puts it, is to gather us all--along with everything in heaven and earth--into communion with Christ.  Nobody is off the list of people God wants to gather.  Nobody is negligible.  God's desire and will is "all things in heaven and in earth."

I've heard too many preachers and practitioners of Respectable Religion make it sound like God is just itching for reasons to zap people or kick us out, and that we'd better live in fear of stepping a toe out of line. They make it sound like God is going to settle eventually for a very empty heaven inside big pearly gates to keep the unworthy out. But that just doesn't fit with the expansive way the writer to the Ephesians talks--here we see God's intention to gather us all into the life of Christ.

Maybe it will take some getting used to, this notion that God's vision is bigger than our own.  But rather than being afraid of the idea that God is going to "gather up all things" in Christ, maybe it is actually a relief--like getting fresh air and breathing space after being cooped up in a claustrophobic cubicle of fear for too long.

Maybe today is a day we are finally free... to move.

God of grace, let us be a part of your cosmic design to bind up all this broken universe in the arms of your love.