No Exceptions--October 1, 2024

 

No Exceptions--October 1, 2024

"You shall not hate in your heart anyone of your kin; you shall reprove your neighbor, or you will incur guilt yourself. You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.... 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." [Leviticus 19:17-18, 33-34]

God knows we are in the habit of looking for loopholes, and God has a way of closing them off. We are sneaky schemers, God knows, so often looking for ways to limit our responsibility to love or cut people off the list.  But God insists that our call to love has no exceptions.

We need to start there, even if it makes us squirm and sweat a little bit, because honestly, this is where the Bible starts with our calling to love.  As we embark on a new focus this month in our year of "Meeting Jesus," we'll now spend this October focusing on The Love of Jesus.  And to be clear, that kind of love is both Jesus' love for us, and it's also the love we are called into because of Jesus for everyone else.  There's no splitting them up, and there's definitely no separating our love for God with our call to love our neighbors.

But even before we get to Jesus' conversations with people in the Gospels about how and who we love, it's worth starting here, in the early memories of ancient Israel in the Torah.  Here God commands the recently liberated Hebrews to practice love, both for people like them (their "kin" and "neighbors") as well as for aliens, immigrants, and foreigners who come to live in their land.  In other words--there are no exceptions, and there is no geographic, cultural, or ethnic limit placed on whom we are called to love. 

And just to be clear, all of these commandments about our love for others are rooted in the memory that God has loved first.  (We'll eventually have that conversation with the letter we call First John in the New Testament, who insists that we can only love because God first loved us.)  But the same underlying logic is here even in Leviticus, because the commandments to love are backed up with God's declaration, "I am the LORD," and the reminder that this is the same God who had loved the people first when they were enslaved and set them free from the clutches of Pharaoh.  It is because the people knew what it was like to have been mistreated (and unfairly feared) foreigners who were shown love by God that they were also to love both neighbor and foreigner alike when they were the ones in their own land.  As love always does, it starts with God, and then moves outward in all directions.

It's worth noting, too, that God seems to foresee future seekers of loopholes after the initial commandment to "love your neighbor as yourself," who might say, "Oh, well, see, the term 'neighbor' only includes people LIKE ME.  Sure, I'll love 'My Kind of People' but you can't expect me to give a care about outsiders!"  God sees that excuse coming a mile away and prevents it from ever getting off the ground with the follow-up commandment, "You shall love the alien as yourself," and the added insistence, "for you were aliens in the land of Egypt."  In other words, God tells the formerly enslaved migrant Israelites, "You should know better than to mistreat, discriminate, or show hostility to foreigners in your midst, because you know what it is like to be on the receiving end of that kind of treatment."  God sees the potential protest that only wants to put "Me and My Group First" coming, and God stops that train of thought in its tracks.  Nope, God says, that's not how you do things around here.  

From the very beginning, God calls the people to love not only "insiders" who share their background, citizenship, and heritage, but the "outsiders," aliens, and foreigners who don't. No exceptions. The Torah doesn't make a distinction between "immigrants" who have been living in your town for decades, "foreigners" who moved in last year, or "aliens" who just showed up at the bus stop in the first light of morning today.  And, even more significantly, the Torah does not make a distinction between any of those kinds of "outsiders" and the "insiders" of ancient Israel.  According to the God who frees the enslaved, you are supposed to love neighbors and aliens (of whatever stripe) alike, the same way you love yourself.  The same rights you count on for yourself--are to be extended to everybody else.  The same grace and help you rely on to be there for you--is to be given to everyone else.  The same respect and common decency you reasonably presume will be shown to you in the course of your day--well, you guessed it, you're called to show to everybody else around.  There are no loopholes, and there are no exceptions.

When Jesus comes on the scene, he expects no less of his community of disciples; if anything, this is the default assumption for Jesus and for the Judaism in which he grew up.  This is the expectation: we are to show the same love for "Me and My Group" as we do for the folks who get labeled "Those People," because God has loved us all first, and because God has loved us when we were the outsiders in need of a welcome, too. For whatever else we have to say in this coming month about the love of Jesus, we can't escape this starting point: God's love for the world is universal in scope, and that is the basis for our love of others.  If you don't like the idea of showing the same quality and consistency of care for neighbors and foreigners that you do to yourself, the Bible advises you to find a different god, because the LORD who set the Hebrews free from slavery and the One who is revealed to us in Jesus leave no room for loopholes, fine print, or exceptions.   

And on the other hand, if this vision of expansive love captivates you and gives you hope, well, good news, because we are just getting started.  It turns out that the love of Jesus is deeper, richer, wider, and more blessedly weird than we dared to imagine.  

And we are only at the beginning.

Lord God, set us free again from all that holds us back from loving all people as we love ourselves.

A New Way to Walk--September 30, 2024

A New Way to Walk--September 30, 2024

"Let us live honorably as in the day, not in reveling and drunkenness, not in debauchery and licentiousness, not in quarreling and jealousy. Instead, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no provision for the flesh, to gratify its desires." [Romans 13:13-14]

I had this so wrong for so long. It's not about nervously worrying that Jesus' reputation will suffer if the world finds out we're sinners. It's about being freed from being a self-centered jerk. And, despite the fact that I keep finding new ways to be a jerk, I really, really do want to be decent to people, kind to strangers, patient with others, and a person of grace and integrity. I want to be like Jesus--you know, to walk the way of Jesus.

But it's not that Jesus will be ashamed to be caught with me when I am acting like a self-serving, self-indulgent idiot. Jesus has a great tolerance for idiots, it turns out--some days that is my only hope. But Jesus doesn't leave me there, either, wallowing in my idiotic self-absorption.

This is the thing I have learned. For a long time, I heard this talk of Paul's about "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" like I was supposed to pretend to look more religious, more devout, more holier-than-thou, so that the world would think better of me, or so that Jesus wouldn't be ashamed of being associated with... you know, "those sinners." But maybe this idea of "putting on Christ" isn't like dressing up in the starchy dress shirt you hate to wear but have to put on for special occasions. And maybe it's more like wearing a brace on your ankle that helps retrain your foot from being bent painfully inward. In other words, maybe it's not about keeping up appearances at all, but about being healed and redirected.

Honestly, it's not that we have to "be good" and "look respectable" or else Jesus will get a bad reputation. No, as the Gospels tell it, Jesus of Nazareth seemed always pretty ready to be known for scandalously hanging out with the disreputable, the disinherited, and the despised. It's more that instead of being bent in on our selves (which was Martin Luther's working definition of what "sin" is really all about), we put on Christ, who pulls our souls out of their self-centered crookedness by covering us and reshaping us, something like how a brace retrains your body to move in a different way--the way we were meant to all along.

To be truthful, on my own, sometimes it feels like my heart is congenitally crooked--like there is this impulse to be focused only about me, only about what is good for Me-and-My-Group-First--and I can't fix that on my own. I can feel that "bent-in-on-yourself" posture that Luther talked about, and it's almost like having a foot that is bent inward that you can't straighten out. It's the sort of condition that is not only painful by itself but also makes it harder to move gracefully, and which keeps getting worse over time when untreated. I catch it in those moments when I am particularly a self-serving jerk, but it's there all the time. And I can't just contort or untwist my heart by my own sheer willpower, any more than you can just wish away a pronated foot or claw-toe.

But I can trade old actions, old patterns, old ways of moving... in for new ones that are directed by Christ. When Paul makes his list of things to leave behind, that's what he's thinking. His list, which includes "reveling and drunkenness, debauchery and licentiousness, quarreling and jealousy," is really just a recitation of ways we get bent in on ourselves and our own gratification. It's not that God blushes at the thought of someone drinking wine or beer or whiskey (Jesus, after all, not only famously performed a miracle producing a truckload of Cabernet for a wedding once, and had a reputation by association of being a "glutton and a drunkard,"). But honestly, it's that getting out-of-control drunk is a profoundly selfish thing to do--you aren't able to be available for someone else who might need you, if you're passed out on the floor or can't walk in a straight line. It's not that it's wrong to get angry, but being consumed by the need to argue and quarrel is really just another way of being self-absorbed with "being right" all the time. Even Paul's warning about "debauchery" and "licentiousness" (two words which are unhelpfully vague and abstract in English) really boil down to using people as objects--and again, that's the problem. Jesus doesn't blush at sex. He does, however, seem to have a sharp condemnation for treating people as disposable consumer goods when you no longer think they are attractive or use someone casually for a fling to make you feel good. In other words, it's not that Jesus is a wet blanket--it's that Jesus knows we are notorious for being self-absorbed, self-involved, and self-centered, rather than oriented outward at the people around us in love.

And that's what "putting on the Lord Jesus Christ" is all about. It's not covering up a list of naughty actions so that the neighbors will think well of us. It's about letting Christ correct the bent-ness of our hearts, and reshaping the crookedness of our spirits like a brace retrains your crooked footfall. And he does it, to continue with Paul's imagery, by making us to be more like himself.

It's not about covering up the fact that I'm a self-centered jerk with a veneer of religion and a cross necklace. It's about owning that I'm a self-centered jerk and letting Jesus turn this crooked heart of mine outward from being bent in on itself... so that I maybe, just maybe, will feel the freedom and relief of living and walking in love the way I was always meant to.

Now before you try a comeback that Paul's list of sins is "just so much fun," or try quoting Billy Joel's logic, "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints--the sinners are much more fun, you know that only the good die young," at me, let me ask you a final honest question. Before insisting that Paul is just being a spoilsport who hates having a good time, think with me for a moment. Think of the people you know whose lives are described in his list. Think of the person you know who keeps letting down her family, her kid, her friends, and her job because she is consistently wasted from drinking. Think of the relative or acquaintance (you will often know them by their Facebook posts) who just seems absolutely consumed in bitter anger and is always spoiling for a fight. Think of the person you know who uses romantic partners up and then throws them away like empty cans when they no longer want them around. Think of the people you know who are unable to be content but are always jealous of what someone else has. And you tell me that any of those patterns of living are really how you want to spend your life... because, I sure as heaven don't.

I don't want to be the person who is so obsessed with myself, my wants, my wish list, my reputation for "greatness", that I can't recognize the needs of the person who has been sent across my path. I don't want to be the person known for being just a pompous, argumentative blowhard or for objectifying women because I think I can get away with it. I don't want to be the person so absorbed in my own good time that I cannot weep with the brokenhearted friend around me. I don't want to be the self-absorbed jerk anymore. I want to be like Jesus.

And that, dear ones, is just what we are offered. Not a fake religious veneer or starched-shirt of false piety stamped with a cross... but the gift of Christ himself, who trains these crooked hearts of ours no longer to be bent inward, but to walk in the freedom of love.  You know... the way of Jesus.

That's what I keep needing every day.

Lord Jesus, retrain this crooked heart of mine to love like you.

Magnets and Paddles--September 27, 2024

Magnets and Paddles--September 27, 2024

"Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you." [James 4:7-8a]

Look, here's the thing: there's a lot in this life we don't have control over... but we do have some choice, some agency, in this life. And where we do, it matters what we choose. It matters, where we move--more in tune with the way of Jesus or less... how we move in rhythm the cadences of Christ, or out of step with his peculiar goodness in a world full of mean. And so, yes, while we are all held in the sway of bigger influences than our own power, it's worth using whatever pull we have, even as meager as it may seem, to step more fully into alignment with the heart of God.

Acknowledging both sides of that is important. Yes, there are things we don't have control over in our lives, and they exert a certain influence on us, no matter what. Some of those are just the accidents of history and the quirks of our own particular life stories. We live in the twenty-first century, in the days of late-stage capitalism, citizens of the current superpower/empire of the day, and that affects our lives in ways we cannot avoid. We are influenced by the internet and international relations. We are affected by cultural behemoths like Amazon, McDonald's, Walmart, and Apple. We are touched by cancer diagnoses in our families and patterns of addiction in our social circles. We know the well-worn pessimism of living in the Rust Belt, and we have learned from experience that everyone's selling something and every seemingly great deal has got a catch. We know and move through the world through the lens of our racial, cultural, gender, and socio-economic categories--these are things that exert a pull on our lives like the moon's gravity pulling on the oceans to make the tides. All of those things, and surely a great many more, are constantly tugging on us, moving us in one direction or another, or several at once, and we didn't ask for them or sign up for them. They're just there.

Beyond that, too, we can say that evil has its own gravitational pull--whether we think of it in terms of the devil, or the nudging of sin inside us, or the power of wicked systems and structures, the "powers and principalities" that the New Testament talks about, or all of the above. We're susceptible to the power of each and all of them, seeking to move us away from the ways of God.

And on the flipside, Christians are convinced that God also draws us, with grace like gravity, pulling us into movements that echo God's own motion in the world. In fact, we dare to believe that God's pull on us is not only the first but the most important power at work on us--it is God's powerful, prevenient goodness before we've done a thing that claims us in grace, that loved us into being, that laid down God's own life for us at the cross. So it's not all bad news that there are powers bigger than our own that move and influence us. Our only hope, honestly, in the end, is that the pull of God's grace is more powerful than even our own ornery, stubborn hardness of heart, and that at the last God's love will get through to us even in our most hell-bent opposition to God.

But, to come back around full circle, just because those forces--both social and spiritual--are at work beyond our power or control, it doesn't mean we can just give up and ride aimlessly wherever the current takes us. We have the ability to influence our orbit, so to speak, so that we move away from the things that are bent on our destruction, and closer to the Love who is calling us home.

Or maybe it's helpful to think of ourselves like a magnet with two poles--we have the ability, depending on how we are turned, to repel some things and to draw other things. We can use the force of the magnetic field to cling to something, or we can use it to push something away. And of course, also like a magnetic field, the strength of the pull or push increases the closer you get to another magnet. In terms of our relationship with God, the closer we get, the stronger the pull to be drawn even closer into God's embrace. To be sure, God's pull is already drawing us in, simply by God's own grace, but in addition, the closer we let ourselves move, the more fully we'll be swept up into connection with God, too.

We can't wish away the powers out there that are bigger than ourselves that exert influence over us and shape the direction of our lives like the course of a river. But we can make choices about how we navigate the rapids. And where we feel the pull of the world's meanness, or our own internal self-centeredness, or the voices we can only call "demonic," attempting to lead us into the rocks or over a cliff, we can use the paddles in our hands to steer away from those currents. The people in our lives who reflect the way of Jesus are worth watching, listening to, and learning from. The voices in the wider culture that do the opposite are ones to stop giving our attention to. We might not be able to change everything about the circumstances we are in, but we can use whatever power we have to steer in a good direction, toward the channel that is leading us home.

The question that is worth asking on a day like today is simply this: what is worth using our strength on, however much or little it really is? Where will we paddle the canoe we are in? What will we move closer toward, and what will we seek to repel, while knowing we are always still held in the grip of grace, and that God's goodness holds us all the while?  Whose way will we follow in this day?

Lord God, hold us close. Hold us close. Hold us close.

The Choice Is Ours--September 26, 2024

 The Choice Is Ours—September 26, 2024

“Those conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come from your cravings that are at war within you? You want something and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.” [James 4:1-3]

I was listening to a news report on the radio yesterday morning, and they were covering the worsening conflict between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, while Gaza continues to burn and hostages remain held captive by Hamas. And at some point, the reporter quoted some expert who has been talking to the bigwigs and decision-makers among those groups of people, who said, “The feeling is that we just have no choice but to go to war.”

It was that phrase that stuck in my memory: “no choice but war.” It reverberated through my ears and throughout my body as I continued dressing in the dark of the pre-dawn morning while the news blared. No choice, they think, but to escalate the tensions. No choice, they believe, but to launch more volleys of missiles back and forth. No choice, they feel compelled to conclude, but to set off more explosions that will kill mothers and babies (who will be termed “collateral damage”) along with enemy soldiers (who will be declared “permissible killings”). No choice, everyone on every side will tell themselves, but to give themselves completely into violence… again.

To be perfectly honest, what has stayed with me since hearing that sentence on the news is NOT that I find it so bizarre or unusual, but exactly because it is thinking that is all-too-familiar and all-too-easy for us to find ourselves nodding along in agreement. We have a way, we as the human species, of telling ourselves that the conflicts, the violence, the division, and the cruelty of our kind is inevitable. We tell ourselves that sometimes in life we just have to launch another war, because somebody else has The Thing We Want and we have told ourselves that we have The Right To Take It At Any Cost. In other words, we tell ourselves that we have “no choice” but to attack, to kill, to bomb, to take others hostage, to “escalate tensions,” and to plunge each other into bloodshed. And once we have persuaded ourselves of that, hey, it's nothing personal, but we just had “no choice,” we believe the lie we’ve told ourselves and we turn “no choice but war” into a self-fulfilling prophecy. We kill because we tell ourselves we “had to.” We see our children killed in response because “collateral damage was unavoidable.” We do it all, because at some level, we refuse to question the underlying assumption that we should be able to take what we want in this life, and if somebody else stands in our way, we can do whatever is “necessary” to get it in our clutches.

And whether it’s hostages taken from Israel or settlements built on Palestinian land, or an invading army from Russia into Ukraine, or our ginned up fears about refugees or migrants who must be on their way to take our lives and our livelihoods, we human beings find ourselves playing the same damnable game over and over again, making the same terrible mistakes in a vicious circle, because we keep accepting the underlying (but unquestioned) assumption that we “have no choice” because we have to get what we want, and we have to be afraid of “those people” we have cast as our enemies who must also be seeking to take what we have.

But James calls our bluff. He stops us and forces us to ask what we were unwilling to question. He brings us up short and says, “But wait—you really DO have a choice!” James says that the conflicts and disputes that arise between people aren’t inevitable like the force of gravity or the sun rising in the east. They are not a law of nature or a rule carved in the stone tablets of the universe. And it just isn’t true that “we have no choice.” We do. The problem, James says, is that all too often throughout human history, we choose the way of taking… the way of violence… the way of conquering and plundering… the way of assuming that “those people” we see on the “other side” are inexorably out to get us and we cannot let them win. And after we’ve made the choice to give in to that utterly self-centered way of thinking (and acting), then we tell ourselves we had no other options. We just “had no choice.”

James calls that whole way of thinking basically a load of manure. We do have the choice—we just keep choosing wrongly. We do have the option—our species just keeps telling itself that there’s no other way, and that there’s only so much good to go around in the world, so we’ve got to get the other guy before he gets us. We do have the ability to choose differently, and for James, that has everything to do with choosing the way of Jesus rather than the way of selfishness that leads to war with each other.

As we have been exploring this week, James has been contrasting the rotten so-called “wisdom” of the world that is rooted in selfish ambition over against the genuine wisdom “from above” that is rooted in gentleness, peace, mercy, and the willingness to seek the good of our neighbor rather than only our own. And what we have seen over and over again from James in this whole section is his open invitation that we are not doomed to keep falling for the counterfeit wisdom of “Me and My Group First.” We might have told ourselves that we have “no choice” but to accept that kind of logic, but we are wrong, according to James. We can make the decision, at any point, to choose differently, and when we do, we can see other possibilities that we never even had considered before. The way of Jesus is always open to us; we do not have to accept the lie (as popular as it is, and as often as it is just taken as “common sense”) that we have no choice but to break into conflicts, disputes, fights, and wars. James reminds us that we have always had the permission to walk the way of Jesus and say NO to the violent ways of the world. We may choose right now to let go of Selfishness and Greed as our directing principles. We are free to walk right now in the goodness and righteousness of Jesus. We may. We have the choice.

The real question, then, is: What will we choose with this day? Whose path will we walk? Which way will become our way of life?

Maybe that’s the good news and the bad news all at once: There’s no running from it, and there’s no letting ourselves off the hook or passing the blame on to something else. We have to make the choice, with every day and every action, whether we will fool ourselves into adopting the selfish ways of greed and bloodshed, or whether we will believe Jesus knows what he is talking about when he says there is another way.

Will we trust him? Will we dare to choose the way of Jesus?

Lord Jesus, enable us to walk in your ways, and to accept the potent freedom you have given us to choose your way of life in a world full of death and greed.

Which Sort Of Wisdom?--September 25, 2024

Which Sort Of Wisdom?--September 25, 2024

"But the wisdom from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy. And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace for those who make peace." [James 3:17]

They will tell you that putting yourself first is just common sense--everybody does it, so you'd better do the same.

They will tell you that you've got to be ready to shoot the other guy before he gets the chance to shoot you--because everybody else is a threat and you can't look "weak."

They will tell you that being gentle, merciful, and honest is for suckers, and only "losers" act like that when it really comes down to it.

And then, over against all that worldly wisdom, the way of Jesus dares us to choose different values.  James, for one, calls us to a different sort of wisdom that is centered on peace, gentleness, flexibility, and compassion, rather than some self-centered nonsense.

The real question is which sort of wisdom we will take to heart. Whose way of life will we follow as our own?

You might likely have already heard these words from James in worship this past Sunday, but it's easy to miss the stark (and frankly countercultural) choice James presents to us.  Between the verses we looked at yesterday and today's, James has been contrasting the world's kind of "conventional wisdom" with God's kind of wisdom, even though the latter sounds like foolishness to the rest of the world. (You know, sometimes I think that Paul and James really would have gotten along if they could have heard each other out, despite the hullaballoo theologians have made about them over the centuries.) 

One kind of wisdom is based on sheer self-interest, and it's willing to do anything (or ignore the interests of anybody else) in order to get it.  The world tends to admire this perspective and calls it, among other things, "business savvy," "a nose for profits," or "the law of the jungle," as though this is the way the world really operates, and people who play along are the smart and successful ones.  On the other hand, James has been telling us that the way of Jesus is different--it operates by an entirely different sort of wisdom, which is more interested in seeking the well-being of all and doesn't end with the question, "What's in it for me?"

But, be prepared: an awful lot of the Loudest Voices around are hell-bent on getting us to believe that we can build our lives on mean-spirited greed and baseless fear and baptize it as somehow righteous and "in the national interest," while sometimes the unconventional wisdom of Jesus gets laughed out of town.  James is here to tell us not to fall for the obnoxious and angry voices of self-interest and petty strife, because Jesus' kind of wisdom--the kind "from above"--is actually the kind of life we were meant for. We were made for peace, authenticity, gentleness, justice, goodness, and joy. The way of Jesus' kind of wisdom leads us into it, and the convention wisdom of "Me and My Group First" leads us away from it--no matter how much it tries to promise us the good life.

So today... whose way will we walk?  Which kind of wisdom will we allow to guide our lives?

Lord Jesus, let your wisdom become our way of life.

The Curve of Our Souls--September 24, 2024

The Curve of Our Souls--September 24, 2024   

"Who is wise and understanding among you? Show by your good life that your works are done with gentleness born of wisdom. But if you have bitter envy and selfish ambition in your hearts, do not be boastful and false to the truth. Such wisdom does not come down from above, but is earthly, unspiritual, devilish. For where there is envy and selfish ambition, there will also be disorder and wickedness of every kind." [James 3:13-16]

Once upon a time (probably in some middle-school era science class), I remember learning the difference between "concave" and "convex" curves.  Concave objects are "curved inward", like a crater on the moon, or an "innie" belly button (or, like I once learned as a memory device, "like a cave," because it's con-CAVE!).  And convex objects are bowed or curved "outward," like the shape of a contact lens, the bulge in the middle of a magnifying glass, or an "outie" belly button.  Ring a bell for you now, from your own days in science class?

Well, anyway, I mention this difference, of being curved inward or outward, because in a sense, the biblical writers talk about similar kinds of orientations in our hearts and minds.  We can be curved "inward" (oriented toward myself, my interests, and my wants) or "outward," to speak (oriented toward God and neighbor), and the curve of our souls turns out to make a pretty big impact on the ways we interact with the world and other people in it.  James, as you can tell from these verses that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, is awfully concerned about what happens when we let our hearts become bent inward in "selfish ambition." He says that when our souls become concave (bent inward) like that, "there will be disorder and wickedness of every kind."  

Our older brother in the faith, Martin Luther, also had a similar concern; he used to say that what sin really means is when our hearts become "curved in on themselves" (the fancy Latin term he used was incurvatus in se, if you want to impress your neighbors).  In other words, when we talk about "sin," it's less about individual, isolated bad actions (the extra cookie taken from the jar, the mean comment on someone's social media post, etc.) and more about a whole orientation in our deepest selves. That is to say, it's about a whole way of life--one that is either turned outward in love to God and others (the way of Jesus), or one that is turned inward by a "Me-and-My-Group-First!" mentality.

When we are bent in on our own ambitions, we end up stifling the fullness of life we are meant for in relationship with God and with others.  And on the flipside, when we are curved outward, in love for God and neighbor, we become more fully alive--like it's what we were really made for in the first place (which, of course, we are). These words from James are a call to us to pay attention to which way our lives are bending--and to see how easily we can end up in a dead-end because our hearts have bent inwards, almost like getting an in-grown toenail of the soul. 

Of course, part of the difficulty is that there are so many voices (and so many are VERY LOUD) all selling us on "Me-and-My-Group-First!" thinking, that they can easily make it sound like an attractive (or at least popular) way of life.  It comes in a million different forms: sometimes it's the voice that says, "We have to take care of our own first--we can't give a thought to other people!" Or it can be the voice that says, "What matters most is getting the most money for yourself; anybody else's needs or situation is a lesser priority." Other times, it's the impulse of jealousy over what your neighbor or coworker has, and it often comes with a feeling of bitterness that other people's success must be taking away from yours, like life is a zero-sum game.  And sometimes, it's the voice that wallows in rudeness, pettiness, and mean-spiritedness and tells you, "Only losers care about being gentle."  When those are the voices you listen to over and over again, it becomes really easy to believe that self-centered ambition is "just the way the world really works," and that since everybody else is doing it that way, you had better do the same, if you really want to compete in this world.

James, however, calls that bluff.  He points us to a different way of life and basically says, "Actually, you don't have to compete in the world on the world's terms.  You are freed as followers of Jesus to live a different way.  You are free to be curved outward in love instead of being bent inward on your own selfishness."  In other words, having "convex" hearts that are curved outward toward God and neighbor isn't a tedious, burdensome way of life--it's actually freeing, since we don't have to play the stupid games that the stupid loudmouths want us to play.  The Loud Voices of our culture want us to believe that "Me and My Interests First!" is the only way to live our lives, but it's a lie.  James reminds us that the way of Jesus bends outward, and it is a more joyful, more fully alive way of being in the world.  It just requires us to remember that we don't have to listen to ones peddling the "Me First!" mentality.

Today is a good day to take a closer look at our own hearts.  Where are we already oriented outward, beyond ourselves, toward love of God and others?  Where are we still stuck and curved-in on ourselves and in need of a new direction that is not a dead end?  And where do we not even know whether we are convex or concave in our hearts--and need Jesus to speak to us his own kind of wisdom that helps bend our hearts back into shape?  Maybe that's where the next step takes us....

Lord Jesus, speak your kind of wisdom to our hearts, and bend them outward in love to you and to the people you put in our lives.

What the Dolphins Said--September 23, 2024

What the Dolphins Said--September 23, 2024

"Then [Jesus and his disciples] came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you arguing about on the way?' But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another about who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, 'Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.' Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, 'Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me'." [Mark 9:33-37]

Sometimes the very things you think make you look "great" are actually the things that make you the most pitiful and pathetic.

And sometimes the things you might think will get you labeled "weak" or "nobody" or a "loser" are actually the things that make for greatness in what really matters.

If you don't believe me yet on this one, listen to the testimony of the dolphins.

There is a wonderfully funny (and rather on-point) insight from Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy where he imagines that all this time on Earth, humans were really the third-most intelligent species, behind dolphins and mice (we'll save the mice conversation for another day's book-group). As Adams puts it, the evidence is clear:

"On the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much—the wheel, New York, wars and so on—whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man—for precisely the same reasons.”

Obviously, Adams has his tongue planted firmly in his cheek. But there is something very true, very honest, about what he says there, even if it is silly to imagine dolphins in some kind of civilization contest with humanity. The underlying insight there is profound (Adams has just found a way to dress it up in clown make-up so we won't see how powerful it is until it has already taken residence in our brains). It is possible that we could look at ourselves and see something as a sign of our greatness--even our superiority over others--and that they might see the very same realities as signs of our totally missing the point. Like dolphins looking at the human invention of war and saying, "Well, I think this makes our case for us!", Jesus has been daring us to take on a whole new way of seeing, in which greatness and lowliness, failure and success, are often turned on their heads.

And to hear the Gospel writers tell it, the followers of Jesus have needed help in trying out that new way of seeing from the very beginning. There they are, on the way with Jesus, after another road trip and walking tour, and Jesus has overheard their childish bragging and one-upsmanship.

"I'm the most important to Jesus--I'm very smart, you know. Practically a genius. I'm the greatest."

"No, Pete--I'm the most important among us! I'm the best at finances. Before signing on with you all and taking this job with Jesus, I'll have you know that I was a very successful and rich tax collector. Money talks, gentlemen, and I am flush with it. Clearly, I'm the greatest."

"Matthew, no--it's not you! It's me! I'm the greatest--I've got connections with the powerful and the well-respected religious leaders. When Jesus finally decides he wants to play ball with them and get himself on the national stage in Jerusalem, I'll be the one he turns to for favors. I'm the greatest."

Who knows what precise claims they were lobbing back and forth at each other? The specifics may not precisely matter, but it seems obvious that they were each taking turns thumping their own chests and tooting their own horns with whatever traits or qualities they thought made them stand out and seem "great." And over the course of human history, there are some basic boasts that keep rearing their giant heads: who is smarter than whom, richer than whom, more influential than whom, stronger than whom, and so on. We humans are terribly insecure, but we are not all that original.

For whatever the particular points of braggadocio were, Jesus has had enough of it. Like a disappointed dad who has overheard the bickering children in the back seat on the car ride home, Jesus sits them down once they are in the house and has a family meeting with them. "This isn't how we do things," he says. "I am teaching you a new way--a new way of seeing the world, a new way of seeing yourselves, a new way of living in the world, and new way of judging greatness. If you want to be first, put yourself last. If you want to be great, serve the rest."

And then, as if he weren't clear without an object lesson, Jesus sets a little child among them--a nobody, a non-entity in the eyes of Greco-Roman culture, in many ways--and says essentially, "Here is somebody the world regards as nothing, because children don't earn salary, don't have influence, and haven't been taught yet. And yet, the real key to greatness is in welcoming somebody like this in my name." Jesus isn't being sentimental or sappy by putting a toddler in his lap. He is being downright subversive. He is taking all of the things the disciples had learned to look for as signs of "greatness" and throwing them out the window, and replacing them with a preschooler.

All of this is to say that the world looks at things like vast sums of wealth, political influence, mass popularity, brute strength, and stockpiles of weaponry and says, "Here--see, these are the things that determine greatness. If you have enough of these, that's how you'll know you are on top in this world."

And then Jesus comes along and says, "Nope. Even toddlers who come bearing the name of Christ are greater than all that... The very things you dense disciples think make you look like "winners" are the very things I care next-to-nothing about, and they are exactly the reason you have so very much to learn yet." Jesus is teaching them--teaching us!--to see like Douglas Adams' imaginary dolphins: to see the things others look at as marks of greatness and to see them instead as inconsequential... and beyond that, to see the way people brag about those traditional signs of "greatness" as the very evidence of how pitiable they really are.

It takes a good deal of courage--as well as a willingness to let people call your vision foolish--to adopt Jesus' upside-down, Adams'-dolphin-like way of seeing the world. Plenty of other folk won't get it. They will still be hung up on the chest-thumping, horn-tooting, saber-rattling nonsense, and they'll still be wowed by who has the private jet, the bigger fortune, the political leverage, and the biggest guns, and they'll assume that God operates with the same set of values (like the old saying goes, "After God made human beings in God's own image, we've been returning the favor ever since."). And maybe most frightening and tragic of all is the way disciples still--still!--miss the point and just take the old marks of "greatness" and slap a cross on them, as though the way of Jesus were at all compatible with that old way of thinking and seeing.

So Jesus keeps telling us. He keeps putting toddlers in our midst to remind us that greatness in God's eyes has nothing to do with power or money or influence, and he keeps showing us true greatness by putting on the towel and washing feet. While Rome looks at the cross and says, "Look--we killed him! This proves we are greater than this rabbi from Nazareth! We are the winners!," Jesus teaches us a different way to see, which says, "Look--he laid down his life for the ones who are crucifying him! That's his kind of victory. That is what makes Jesus truly great."

Where are the places in your and my life that we are still stuck in the old way of seeing greatness... and where do we need to adopt Jesus' way of measuring greatness? What will it look like... today?

Dear Jesus, teach us your kind of greatness, and keep pulling us back to it.

Jesus the Lens—September 20, 2024

Jesus the Lens—September 20, 2024

“Then [Jesus] began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things’.” [Mark 8:31-33]

Maybe it’s not that there are only certain topics that count as “spiritual” things or “divine things.” Maybe it’s a question of perspective—of whether we see things from a crassly temporal perspective, or from the vantage point of the Reign of God. Maybe in the end, everything in heaven and earth matters to God, but it’s a question of the way we make sense of everything in heaven and earth. Maybe it’s a question of whether we will dare to let Jesus become the lens through which we see everything else, so that Jesus’ way of engaging the world will become our way, too.

I think that’s the way that we have to hear this snippet of conversation between Jesus and his disciples, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. Simon Peter (God love him) has just blurted out his “eureka” moment realization about Jesus: “You are the Messiah!” and Jesus has immediately told the whole room full of disciples not to breathe a word of that to anybody. Jesus’ reason is not that Peter is wrong, exactly, but that everybody is going to mishear the title “Messiah” as some kind of conquering king, commanding general, or a militia leader looking to violently take up weapons against Rome and “take their country back for God” or some other such nonsense. And of course, Jesus has come to be precisely none of those. So he tells his disciples as much: he intends, not to go kill his enemies, but to love them; not to crucify his opponents, but to be crucified by them; not to launch a project of restoring national “greatness” (whatever that might mean) but to embody God’s Reign of justice, mercy, and peace.

That’s the part that doesn’t go over well. Jesus’ disciples are looking for someone to fight the empire on the empire’s terms, and someone who will promise them power, status, wealth, and glory. And instead, Jesus says that his way of being God’s anointed is to be the one who bears a cross rather than the one holding the hammer and nails.

It’s not that Jesus doesn’t care about this world or the people in it. And it’s not that Jesus is merely “neutral” on the subject of the Empire. So it’s not so much that Jesus doesn’t have opinions that would have counted as “political” in the first-century, but rather that Jesus’ perspective—his way of engaging those things—doesn’t translate into either “siding with the Empire” or “raising up and army to fight the Empire.” Jesus hasn’t come to replace Caesar’s brutal regime with a new brutal regime of his own, or to switching out conquering centurions from Rome with an army of his own making. He has come to resist that whole way of thinking, regardless of whose title is on the letterhead. Jesus’ perspective is divine, but he very much cares about the troubles, sufferings, and needs of human life. He’s just not willing to sell out or get suckered into using the world’s usual tolls for dealing with those troubles.

I think we need to be clear about that--Jesus does care about the whole mess of human life, including the ordinary and mundane routines, the issues of the marketplace and the public square, the concerns of politics and economics, and the everyday slings and arrows we deal with. Jesus doesn’t only care about getting souls “up to heaven,” or else he wouldn’t have spent any time or effort healing sickness, forgiving sinners, welcoming outcasts, or feeding the multitudes. Jesus cares about the way the widows of Judea were being exploited and pushed out of their homes, or the way xenophobia and prejudice had turned his own people into bigots against Samaritans (or, gasp, Gentiles!), or the way the Empire oppressed the peoples it conquered and compelled them to carry their gear or pay ridiculous tribute in “taxes.” Jesus knows about all of those ills in his world, and he clearly cares about the people who suffer in the face of any and all of them. But the critical difference is that he knows that starting a war against Rome would be a meaningless tool to solve those problems. He knows that conquering his adversaries (as people expected the Messiah to do) wasn’t a radical enough solution. 

It’s not that Jesus only cared about lofty spiritual ideals about disembodied souls floating in the sky by and by.  It's that he cares about everything—and he sees it from a divine perspective, rather than the limited human vantage point that reduces everything to a Game-of-Thrones style power play. Everything matters to Jesus—it’s just that his way of seeing and addressing the needs of the world come through self-giving love rather than some misguided need to look “tough,” “strong,” or like a “winner.” That's the difference between setting your mind on "human things" and setting it on "divine things." It's not that Jesus only cares about "churchy" topics; it's that Jesus sees everything through the lens of God's self-giving love.

To be a Christian, then, following on the way of Jesus, doesn't mean that we stop having opinions or thoughts about "secular" topics in favor of spending all our time and though on "religious" subjects.  It means that we come to see all of life through the perspective of Jesus. 

That's the invitation for us today: to see the world more and more completely from the vantage point Jesus gives us. What could that look like today?  What could that do to our vision?

Lord Jesus, set our minds on your perspective, and let us see the world through your eyes.

Looking for Losers--September 19, 2024

Looking for Losers--September 19, 2024

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

One day I will have been forgotten.

All my accomplishments (whatever they will have been), all my accolades, all the beautifully lettered diplomas, all the money I have ever made, all the work I have ever done, and all the objects I have had in my possession--they will one day all be tossed unceremoniously into the dustbin of history.

The synapses in my brain, these amazing neurological connections in my cerebral cortex that store my memories, experiences, and thoughts, they will one day have degraded like an old VHS tape that was kept too close to the refrigerator magnets. Even the molecules that make up my body will one day have stopped being "me" and become soil... maybe to be reorganized into grass, or, if I am lucky, a dandelion.

One day, all the things I thought were triumphs--my best ideas, my greatest labors, my biggest wins--will have all been forgotten... lost to the great forgettery of death.

Sorry to burst your bubble, but one day, the same will be true of you and all the things on your résumé, too.

One day, your promotions will have been forgotten, and no one will remember any longer who it was that held your position once upon a time. One day, no one will be around on God's green earth who remembers the moments we think now are etched in stone forever.  The great tombs of the pharaohs all got looted, and the grand monuments chiseled in marble from empires past get plundered or crumble to gravel in time. None of it lasts, and all of it gets lost... eventually.

One day, America will have been forgotten, the same way the Hapsburg dynasty, the Ottoman Empire, and the Holy Roman Empire have all become answers to trivia questions rather than the immortal, eternal things they once pretended they were.

One day, the bank that houses your money will be gone... and the money you have worked so hard for in your years will be worthless, all just tattered rectangles of paper.

One day, we will all have been forgotten.

Now, if all of this seems rather bleak, bear with me. This might seem like a downer of a message, but I think more, rather, it is a clarifying bit of honesty. It is the bulldozer grading and leveling the ground so that something new and right can be built. It is the starting point if we are going to have any hope of understanding the way Jesus achieves victory.

That turns out to be a surprising answer, because Jesus' way of attaining victory doesn't look like what the world calls "winning." God's kind of victory, in fact, looks like loss. A particularly shameful loss at that, too--an execution as an enemy of the state, green-lit by the respectable religious folks. All of that is to say that God's kind of victory... is a cross.

Now, Jesus takes that upside-down victory, and he sees it not just as a fluke or some kind of cosmic exception to the rule, as if God's usual way of ruling is to get bigger armies, larger piles of money, or grander displays of pomp and power, and the cross is just a random outlier. No, not at all. Jesus sees that the surrender and loss we see in the cross are in fact God's calling card, and they are meant to be our way of life, if we are going to dare to follow God's Messiah, Jesus. In order to share in God's upside-down victory, we will be called to let go of the nonsense that the world around us thinks makes us look like "winners." Jesus is only looking for losers, it turns out.

Jesus calls us to see today the difficult truth that all our stuff, our accomplishments, and all our marks left on the world will be lost one day, no matter what. You can either let go of caring about them now... or you can clutch onto your stuff, your achievements, and your (appearance of) control to your last breath, and still have all of those things lost to the trash heap and the burn pile of history. You can either fight and claw to try and preserve your own importance, your own nest-egg, your own control over your world, and your own achievements, only to find that the world forgets us faster than we can keep chirping in to toot our own horns... or you can let go of that whole foolish enterprise and lose yourself now.

As an old line of Jon Foreman's goes, "There's just two ways to lose yourself in this life... and neither way is safe." He means that you can either clutch onto your self-importance and the illusion of security in this life... only to have the rug yanked out from under you at some point and to feel the loss of it then, or you can lose yourself now to Jesus and his way of self-giving love, and be a part of the adventure of all time.

But there is no way of keeping a permanent grip on the things the world and its many bully-pulpit-puppets think make you a success or a "winner." Those puppet voices say that success in business is all that matters, that building yourself a nice comfortable (insulated and isolated) life is the measure of success, and that if you want to be remembered forever, eternally etched into history's record, you only have to win... and keep winning.

Jesus says differently. Jesus says, "Not to put too fine a point on it, but anybody who says you can have a lasting legacy built on your own record of achievement and wins is either a complete fool or a corrupt liar. All of those things will be forgotten one day." Or, as Mark's Gospel puts it, "What profit do you get if you gain the whole world but have lost the whole point of life?"

So Jesus invites us today to do one thing: to lose. To lose big. To lose daily. Jesus calls us to lose our old idols of power and success. Jesus calls us to lose our old agendas that put "me-and-my-group first!" Jesus calls us to lose the illusion of needing to be "great." Jesus calls us to lose our old, well-worn familiar hates. Jesus calls us to lose our out-of-whack priorities. Jesus calls us to lose, in a word, ourselves... and in letting go of ourselves, to find the only life that really is life. 

Look what happens when I quit worrying about my immediate comfort and appearance, and go where Jesus leads! Look how I could be a part of the one thing that really will last forever--the Reign of God! And you can, too! Everything else in this universe will be forgotten in enough of the mists of history... but the Gospel holds out the good news of a God who remembers us... and calls us by name.

There is only more qualifier: we only have to lose.  Jesus, after all, is looking for losers.

Lord Jesus, help us to be ready to lose it all for you... and to find that we have been given it all in the very same moment.

 

Like Our Namesake--September 18, 2024

Like Our Namesake--September 18, 2024

"The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher,

that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.

Morning by morning he wakens--

wakens my ear to listen as though who are taught.

The Lord GOD has opened my ear,

and I was not rebellious,

I did not turn backward.

I gave my back to those who struck me,

and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;

I did not hide my face

from insult and spitting." [Isaiah 50:4-9]

So, truth in advertising, as a native of the Cleveland area, I grew up both rooting for--and often being perplexed by--the Cleveland Browns. (If the Lion, Bengals, or Steelers loyalists among those who read this cannot in good conscience allow their eyes to view anything that suggests learning something positive from the Browns, consider this your warning.) My complicated relationship with my hometown football team was, of course, sometimes from the fact that they so often managed to rip defeat from the jaws of victory in new and heartbreaking ways, but also it came from my hang-up about their name.

As a kid, I just assumed the name of the team came from the color brown, which was in the color scheme of their uniforms and went with the orange color of the team helmet and logo. And basically, I figured the color uniforms came first (like the Chicago White Sox or Boston Red Sox), maybe by random chance, and then that the name stuck after that.

Turns out, of course, I was wrong. As you may already well know, and as an older me learned, the name wasn't chosen at random just because of the coincidental color of the jerseys, but because of the team's founding coach, Paul Brown. During Brown's tenure with the Cleveland team, they won four championships in the All-American Football Conference (in the days before there were Super Bowls), and his legacy was important enough that the team kept the name, the color, and all the rest (including occasional mascot "Brownie the Elf"--because, of course). All of that is to say that the name for the team turns out not to be just a fluke or an accident of history, but was directly connected to the man who first created and coached the team. What might have at first seemed just incidental about their identity turns out to have been deeply rooted in their founder and leader, and who he was.  The team was his namesake, and therefore took its identity of the legacy of his leadership.

I know this seems a strange place to start a reflection on words from the Bible (although I still maintain that rooting for a perpetual underdog like the Cleveland Browns is good for the soul), but I'm going to ask you to follow me for a moment and see the method to my madness. In a passage like this one from the book of Isaiah, which many of us heard read this past Sunday in worship, we get a picture that the church has consistently understood in light of Jesus. That is to say, even if the prophet himself wasn't picturing Jesus yet when he spoke these words, in hindsight we can look back and better understand Jesus through these words. And here the prophet speaks of someone who does not answer evil with evil, but rather bears the insults and mockery of others without retaliation... but rather with love. He doesn't stop to defend his honor, his reputation, his perceived "greatness" in the world, but rather bears the worst his enemies can do to him, and endures--without "turning backward" or giving way to hatred in return. This figure, this "servant" figure whom Isaiah's later chapters spends some time talking about, does not return abuse for abuse or cruelty with cruelty, but bears it with suffering love.  That is the servant's way--and, as Isaiah 50 tells it, it is God's way as well.

And the more I think about it, the more it becomes clear to me that this was the key to the identity of Jesus' followers, not just an incidental or accidental quirk of history. The first followers of Jesus were deeply committed to not answering evil with evil, not retaliating when they were harassed, not giving into the trolls of their world, and not being baited into hatred--and they did this, not as a random fluke, but because they understood it was at the core of Jesus' own identity. Like the team I grew up rooting for, the early Christians formed their identity around the person of their founder and leader--Jesus himself. And because their namesake, Jesus the Christ, had not only taught them not to return evil for evil, but had shown it to them as well in his own trial and torture by the empire, the early church made this into their own identity as well. The Browns took their name, not from a color chosen at random, but from the name of their founding coach who led them to early victories.  And the early church took its cues about refusing to answer evil with evil, not by accident, but directly from the way of Jesus himself, the one who had first called them and who won THE victory over the powers of death and evil through his suffering love.  That was Jesus' way... and so it became the way of life for the followers of Jesus.

The question, perhaps for us, all these centuries later, is whether we dare to let the way of Jesus still be central to our own identity even now. It is terribly easy to get baited into hating people... or feeling like you have to get the "last word" in some petty internet argument... or to be suckered into somebody else's bitterness because they were spoiling for a fight and just like to stir the pot. Lots of folks do all those things... lots of folks who claim in front of the world that they are followers of Jesus, too (by their cross-marked ball caps, religiously themed bumper stickers, and social media profile photos)... but our actions and attitudes reveal something different. We so easily want to keep the name "Christian" without actually living out the legacy of the "Christ" for whom we are named. We so easily want to lash back out at the people we have been taught to think have aggrieved us, when maybe the problem is our own insecurity, rather than actual persecution. (Not to push the metaphor too far, but there was a time in Browns history when the team literally sold out and moved to another city, and the franchise changed its name and let go of the old connection to the man Paul Brown--and sometimes we Christians have done the same, too.)

This is a moment, then, to reclaim the legacy that's been given to us. At the core of Jesus' being was his commitment to answer hatred with love, evil with good, violence with endurance, and rottenness with truthfulness and justice. That wasn't just a random trait of his, but central to Jesus' understanding that God's love doesn't ultimately answer evil with more evil, and that God's love includes even those who have made themselves enemies of God. For us, then, who want to be on Jesus' team, we are called to walk in that legacy--not simply to wear Jesus' name casually, but to let his identity shape our own.

There was a time when anybody who saw the Cleveland football team, heard them on the radio, or even caught a mention of them in the paper would be led to think about their founder and namesake, Paul Brown himself. Well, maybe today is a day for people to see a connection between Christ Jesus and us, we who bear the name "Christian," in the ways we love. We don't have to be the ones known for picking fights on social media. We don't have to be known for bigotry against anybody who is different. We don't have to be known for have such insecurity issues that we feel we have to fight back every time we feel slighted. No, all those can be left behind or pitched into the dumpster. We are called to be people whose very lives point to Jesus--so that people will see us, and catch a glimpse of our source, our guide, and our namesake, Jesus the Christ.

Lord Jesus, let your way of loving even your enemies become our way--let it become our hallmark in the world.

Made for Blessing--September 17, 2024

Made for Blessing--September 17, 2024

"From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh." [James 3:10-12]

We weren't made for hate. 

We weren't created to rip each other apart with cruelty and cursing.

We were not intended to spew meanness and crudeness at other people.

God formed us for love, all around--with God, and with our neighbors--and fashioned us with the power of communication so that we could live in healthy and holy relationships with them all.  We were made for blessing--to bless one another with our words, and to bless and praise the God who made us.

There is something truly beautiful about that vision, and these verses from James (which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship) help us to see just how much we have lost by giving into the impulse to speak hatefully and spitefully to one another.  He reminds us that God's intention for humanity has always been that we would use this God-given gift of language for good.  We are the ones who have found ways to weaponize words, to mislead each other, to deceive each other, to hurt each other, and to belittle each other in some childish attempt to make ourselves feel bigger by contrast.  But none of that is what God wanted for us--God had a different way of life in mind for us.  And so it's all the more tragic that we use these mouths of ours both to bless and to curse, to heal and to hurt, to speak the truth and to peddle lies.  We weren't meant for this: we were made for blessing.

One of the gifts of James' letter in the New Testament is that he so very clearly captures a glimpse of what that blessed way of life could look like for us.  He shows us what the way of Jesus would mean in our lives, in our speech, in our choices, in our attitudes and actions, if we dared to take Jesus seriously.  And in a sense, he invites us to dream--to use our faithful imaginations to envision lives in which we didn't feel the need to lob petty insults at people when we disagree, in which we didn't need to stir up anger with false or misleading claims that looks for easy scapegoats, and in which we didn't get sucked into comment wars in social media. James' point here is that we don't have to get lured into any of those things.  We are made, to borrow his imagery, to be springs of good and fresh water! There is no reason for bitter salty brine to come from inside us.  

That's just it. There is nothing and no one forcing us to be rotten to each other with our words... other than that we give in to the rotten lie that tells us we have to fight fire with fire. "You have to have a comeback, or you'll look weak!" the thinking goes.   Or something like, "You can't rely on the truth to be enough; you have to create a story that will make people upset and get them on your side!"  Or in our most insecure moments, we get suckered into the "You have to be as crude to them as they were to you or else you'll be a loser!" mindset.  We don't have to give in to any of those impulses, and we do not have to give them power over us.  Jesus certainly didn't, and he gives us a glimpse of what wholeness in humanity could look like in us.  The way Jesus didn't take the bait when the Respectable Religious People or the Politically Powerful People would set traps for him or lob gotcha questions at him--that can be our way, too, of dealing with others.  The way Jesus used words to heal, to encourage, and to forgive--those can be ours as well.  The only question is whether we will dare to take the path that Jesus has laid out for us... which is the very same way of life we were made for in the first place.

Today is a day to take a step, even if it feels only like a single step, further on that way, by paying attention to what we say and how we say it, and by using this wondrous gift of language we human beings have been given in order to speak truth, beauty, encouragement, compassion, and justice into the world.  Like the Switchfoot lyric puts it, "Love is our native tongue."  This is who we were created to be. This is what it looks like to walk the way of Jesus. We were made for blessing.

Lord Jesus, draw from our lips words that reflect your goodness and invoke your blessings on the world you love.

The Power of Our Words--September 16, 2024

The Power of Our Words--September 16, 2024

"For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue—a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God." [James 3:2-9]

For people who care about following the way of Jesus, the way we speak matters.

I would hope that much is obvious, but sometimes it is worth just letting the words of Scripture sink in on the subject.  You can tell here in these words from James, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, just how seriously this ancient church leader took matters of speech in the Christian community.  You get the sense that James has seen firsthand the kind of damage that hateful and careless words can do in a community, and he is coming from a place of heartache that is still healing as he writes here.

James is feeling pretty raw here, you can tell. He almost sounds like he's ready to give up hope on us human beings ever using words in a good or healthy way.  The description he gives here is pretty bleak: "the tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body... and is itself set on fire by hell."  Wow--that's pretty severe!  (I would not recommend James look for work writing greeting cards, to be honest.)  And part of what is so difficult--and so disappointing from James' perspective--is that he's writing to Christians, who (one would hope) should know better than to give into hateful speech, gossip, or rotten language.  James isn't writing to a hypothetical audience of "general citizens" of the Empire, or to people who have never heard of Jesus.  He is writing to followers of Jesus as a leader of a Christian community, and you can hear it in the way he speaks that he has just been gutted before by seeing the damage caused by mean-spirited, deceitful, and hateful language.  Don't try and tell James that words don't matter, or that Christ-followers are free to spew whatever garbage or vitriol they want to out of their mouths--we aren't.  We are bound by the way of Jesus, who uses the power of his words for truth, for healing, and for love. We simply do not have the option of peddling convenient lies that fit our preferred narratives or degrading other people because we don't like them. If we care about walking the way of Jesus, we have to care about the way we use words.

This is one of the things James is painfully clear about, actually: the reason for us not to use hateful or vile speech toward anybody else is that everybody is made in God's image, and is worthy of being treated with decency and dignity because of the value God has placed in them.  That's a really important notion, and it's pretty fundamental to how the Scriptures teach us to think about our speech and about other people.  For the writers of the Bible, the right question is never "Can I get away with saying this?" or, "Don't I have the right to say whatever I want, whether it's true and kind or not?" but rather, "Is this something I ought to be saying to someone who bear's God's image?"  And if we take that question seriously, it really changes what we say, and how we say it.

Of course, as you can tell from James here, this isn't just about matters of etiquette or good manners. James isn't merely worried about Christians being accepted in polite society--he knows that reckless and hateful speech can wound, or even kill.  In our day and our culture, the stakes are terribly obvious--as false rumors about Haitian migrants (who have legal permission to be here) have been amplified (often by people who claim to be followers of Jesus) and in turn have led to threats of bombings, shootings, and other violence in schools, colleges, and offices just a few hours from where I live.  What starts as rumor gets amped up by demagogues into a culture-war talking point, and now we end up with people's lives being threatened--all because people were careless with their words.  We are living in a time when casual and thoughtless speech about one's political opponents gets fanned into real-life violence.  And we're living in a time when the incendiary comments of public figures can easily incident stochastic violence (that is, you can't predict precisely when or where someone will do something terrible, but the provocations from public voices keeps increasing the likelihood that something terrible will happen at some point).  You get the sense that James would take a look at the fear and danger unleashed these days and weep with the sorrow that comes from knowing it didn't have to be this way.

James' point in all of this passage is precisely that--it doesn't have to be this way.  We don't have to use our words as weapons, and we don't have to give into the temptation to dabble in gossip, deceit, or slander (or even just irresponsibly sharing rumors without having facts or the full story) to serve our own agendas.  We don't have to give into the conventional wisdom that the end justifies the means, and that we can invent false stories to suit our purposes at the cost of the well-being of other people who are made in the image of God.  The world's voices will tell us we "have to" play its game and play by its rules, but James reminds us that we don't. Indeed, if we are followers of Jesus, we cannot.

It's worth a second thought today before we click "like" or repost or share or amplify words that reinforce hatred, that slander other people, or that deny the image of God in other people. The watching world--as well as the next generation of disciples--is watching us, and more importantly, listening to us.  James simply reminds us that if we are going to call ourselves followers of Jesus, we cannot ignore the ways our words reflect the way of Jesus, too.

Lord Jesus, direct our words and our thoughts, so that people can heard the cadences of your own voice in us.