The End of the Engagement--November 29, 2024

The End of the Engagement--November 29, 2024

"Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth; for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away, and the sea was no more. And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband. And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying,

‘See, the home of God is among mortals.

He will dwell with them;

they will be his peoples,

and God himself will be with them;

he will wipe every tear from their eyes.

Death will be no more;

mourning and crying and pain will be no more,

for the first things have passed away.’

And the one who was seated on the throne said, ‘See, I am making all things new.’ Also he said, ‘Write this, for these words are trustworthy and true.’ Then he said to me, ‘It is done! I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. To the thirsty I will give water as a gift from the spring of the water of life." [Revelation 21:1-6]

This is what God's victory looks like, after all.

For all the ways folks get worked up about fears of "the end of the world," when the Bible actually gets around to describing God's endgame with history, it describes something utterly beautiful, hopeful, and good.  And beyond that, it is an "ending" only in the sense that a wedding ceremony is the ending of an engagement and the beginning of a marriage.  So it is true to say that this is a glimpse of what it looks like when God "wins" at last--but perhaps what God "wins" is not ultimately a battle on a field somewhere strewn with dead opponents, but us.  God wins our hearts, like it is the culmination of a long-pursued romance, outlasting every other would-be suitor who had been vying for our attentions.  That's how God wins, in the end--with a relentless love that makes all things new.

It's that line from the Julie Miller song, isn't it?  "The only thing that doesn't change makes everything else rearrange--is the speed of light... is the speed of light... Your love for me must be the speed of light."  I've always loved that description of genuine love--the way she sings about it as both unchanging and yet making everything else different.  At first it sounds like a contradiction, doesn't it?  We expect that something that "doesn't change" should only feel worn, familiar, and maybe even old.  But love isn't like that--it makes a whole new creation.  It "makes everything else rearrange."  I don't know how else you can put it other than the way John of Patmos does here in Revelation: the God who loves creation relentlessly makes a whole new heaven and a whole new earth, in which at last Lover and Beloved are united for good.  And so it only makes sense that John the Seer describes the city of God's people "coming down out of heaven... like a bride adorned for her husband." It's an ending, alright, like the end of a betrothal that becomes the beginning of married life.  Like so many of the things we call endings in this life, it turns out to be the start of something new.  This is how our story goes.  In fact, to take the Bible seriously means that this is how the whole universe's story goes.

I wonder if we've been putting our focus in the wrong place, we Respectable Religious Folks.  All too often, we're the voices telling people to be afraid of Jesus coming again, or warning that God's ultimate goal is zapping a certain quota of people in the name of divine "justice" and "victory."  I have lost count of how many sermons and religious presentations I have heard in my lifetime that boiled down to scaring people about a god (I can't use the capital G for this, I confess!) who was eager to lob people into hell and selling Jesus merely as a sort of end-of-the-world after-life-insurance to avoid the fire and brimstone.  But when we actually let these images from the end of the book of Revelation speak to us on their own terms, we find that this is--and always has been--a love story.  In fact, it's been THE Love Story to end all love stories, and it's always been about a love that makes us into new creatures even as God has loved us precisely as we are all along.

If that's really where the world's story is heading, then my goodness it makes a difference in my life right now, doesn't it?  Instead of being constantly goaded by fear  of being deemed unworthy (and with it, the self-appointed need to judge everybody else as somehow not as good as me), John summons us to see ourselves as the Beloved of God. Instead of being perpetually provoked to make our own lists of those we don't think are acceptable and those who we think God should let into the heavenly country club, John reframes our vision to see God coming "down" to dwell with us and with all "peoples" (as in, many people groups, nationalities, cultures, and languages).  Instead of seeing the world's history as an endless battle between "us" and "them" (whom we also want to label "good" and "evil," respectively), the writer of Revelation tells us our story as a divine romantic comedy, where at the last we have been won over, and God's goodness has gotten through to our guarded, scarred, and stony hearts.

That's the victory we've been celebrating.  That's the future we are promised.  That's the Good News worth telling to someone else.

Lord Jesus, remind us of our place in your great love story, and let that be the news we share with people around us today.

Gratitude for Victory--November 28, 2024

Gratitude for Victory--November 28, 2024

"The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:56-57]

The work of winning is God's. The role of receiving the gift with gratitude is ours.

Call it the division of labor in the divine economy.

On this day when our culture pauses--barely, since there are midnight sales to be attended to!--to hold off on business-as-usual in the name of giving thanks, it is worth remembering that from the standpoint of the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures, gratitude is our full-time calling, while God is the one who wins the victory for which we give thanks.

We have a way of turning this day into a celebration of our own gratitude--a day to focus on how good we are (or how guilty we should feel if we are not so good) at saying thank you, at expressing gratitude, and at living appreciatively. But focusing on our actions or words of giving thanks misses the point. To give thanks, rightly at least, is always to point our attention beyond ourselves and to the Giver of good (like recklessly good) gifts. And that isn't for just a couple of hours while the turkey is on the table, or for a whole day from the start of the parade until the last play of the fourth quarter of the football games. Gratitude is not one square in the patchwork of our yearly calendar--but it is the very fabric of our whole lives. And that is simply because gratitude is a practiced awareness that we are the recipients of gifts we did not earn, of a victory we did not win ourselves, and of a life that was handed to us for free, not by our own effort, but by the labor of our mothers who birthed us into the world.

Everything is a gift. All is grace. It is only fitting (or, as we sometimes say in church-speak, "indeed right and salutary") that our whole lives be an echo of gratitude. Gratitude is the recognition that this life I am living is not my accomplishment (for which I would pat myself on the back), but a gift. It is a realization that the people who risk loving me are not things I have earned, but channels of God's own daring love for me. It is a realization that the bread I will break today is no less a miracle of grace than the manna given in the wilderness day by day to the freed Hebrew slaves. God does the work of saving, of providing, and of winning the victory. My calling is simply to receive with thanks--no more and no less.

Receiving God's good gifts, and God's victory, with thanks, however, of course means recognizing that the good things in front of me are not mine to hoard, because they are not my achievements--anymore than happening to sit in front of the bowl of mashed potatoes at dinner makes all of them mine. They have been set in front of me to be enjoyed, yes, but to be enjoyed by all. Passing the potatoes is part of what it means to receive a place at the table as a gift. Gratitude means understanding the intention of the Giver is to share it with everybody else, while they also share the stuffing, the turkey, and the cooked carrots. Gratitude means freedom from the fear of scarcity, which allow my anxiously clenched fists to let go and share. We did not earn or achieve the feast--ours is to receive, and to share so that everyone else can receive, too.

It is true when it is potatoes and turkey, and it is true when we are talking about the promise of resurrection in Christ and God's victory of life over death. Jesus has done the hard work of dying, the difficult task of laying down his life as a gift, the long labor of giving us birth. Ours is to receive the gift, so that our whole life becomes the passing of the potatoes, the handing off of the turkey, and the sharing in the celebration to which we have been invited.

For us, it is not a single day. For us it is every breath of every day. For us, every moment can be a thanks--not just for a meal, but for life beyond the grip of death and a love that will not let us go.

Thanks be to God, says Paul, who gives us the victory. Yes. Thanks be to God always.

Thanks be to you, O God, for life, for grace, and for your victory shared with us.

A New Game Altogether--November 27, 2024

A New Game Altogether--November 27, 2024

"Come, behold the works of the Lord;
     see what desolations he has brought on the earth.
 He makes wars cease to the end of the earth;
     he breaks the bow, and shatters the spear;
he burns the shields with fire.
    ‘Be still, and know that I am God!
I am exalted among the nations,
    I am exalted in the earth.’
The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our refuge." [Psalm 46:8-11]

There's an image burned into my brain from decades-old memories of watching Star Trek reruns in the basement of my childhood home. Maybe you can picture it, too, if you are willing to own your inner Trekkie for a few minutes on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. It's that game they would sometimes play on the original series and occasionally on the spin-offs: the "three-dimensional" version of chess.

To refresh your memory (or to offer a sketch of it if you never indulged in the show), three-dimensional chess has multiple flat game boards of different sizes, each at different heights off the table. And in fact, you can buy 3-D chess games in all sorts of variations and names: Parmen, Raumschach, Tri-D Chess, and so on. And as much as these games all try and present themselves as some radical new innovation in game-playing, they are really still all just variations on the same old goal: checkmate. Whether it's the standard flat chessboard or an officially licensed Star Trek commemorative edition three-dimensional set, the game is still based around one side defeating the other by taking your opponent's king, and quite often taking out most of the opponent's pieces in the process.  They're all really just various repackagings of the same old game.

And while that is a classic game, and there is plenty of mental stimulation to be gleaned from a good game of chess, that's really not a very "new" kind of game. Winning by slowly killing off your enemy or cornering their leader is old hat. It is the same game the human race has been playing since Cain decided the only way to deal with the envy he had for his brother was to murder Abel rather than to work on himself. It is the same old game by which humanity has been amusing itself to death since the beginning. It always boils down to Team A against Team B, whether the teams are tribes or nations or kingdoms or campaigns, and "victory" is always defined by ridding the game board of your opponent, or capturing their king. You can add as many game boards as you like, or make the game pieces sleek and futuristic or old and hand-carved, but you are still basically playing the same tired old game that is the only way human beings seem to know how to play, when we are left to our own worst devices.

But... the story of God is different. God doesn't go for our tedious game-playing. God has come up with an entirely different kind of victory. You can hear it in the words from the Psalm about God breaking the weapons of war and bringing war to an end everywhere. It is there, in fact, throughout the Scriptures, but we often do not have the eyes to see it, or we don't realize what radical things are being said about our God. Perhaps we do not expect so revolutionary a deity, or we are consciously trying to tame the divine so that we won't be challenged ourselves. But this is the radical way God wins: God's victory comes by breaking open our old us-versus-them thinking and transforms "the enemy" while embracing them. God's kind of victory isn't just "I have more swords and spears and shields than you, and so my team is going to win," but rather God snaps all of our spears on the divine knee like twigs, and God destroys all of our weapons of war for killing each other... because God has it in mind to reach everybody.

Everybody.

See, if you can only see the other person as an enemy, you will see the only possible resolution to your conflict as a win-or-loss zero-sum-game, and it will never cross your mind that you could end the conflict not by killing the enemy or beating them in a campaign or a plundering their treasures, but by transforming them into friends. But God sees the game board differently. Just adding more layers to the chessboard isn't enough for God--God changes the game entirely, by making our wars to end. God clears the table of the old knights and castles and pawns and sets up a new game altogether.

God offers us a new way of thinking, a new way of winning, and a new kind of victory. It will always be a tough go to seek that kind of victory, especially if you are still engaged with folks who don't understand, or won't understand, and can still only think in terms of Cain 'winning' against Abel and one player kill the other player's king in chess. For the people of God, it will always feel like a struggle in which we have fewer "weapons" than those who see themselves as enemies, because being a part of the Reign of God means we don't use their weapons or fight on their terms. It means we are not looking to 'get rid' of anybody, but to be transformed together in the likeness of Christ. I cannot share the news of the extravagant love of God with you if I can only see you as an enemy, and I certainly would not be willing to let you help me see my own blind spots if I can only see you as an opponent. But the people of God dare to believe that God doesn't just win wars by picking Side A over Side B--the Scriptures talk about God ending wars all together--bringing an end to the rotten old zero-sum-game kind of thinking. The Scriptures want us to see the world in a very different way from what we were used to--and the world around us can only think in terms of beating the opponent, rather than being transformed by the victory of grace.

The followers of Jesus are taught to look for a different kind of winning altogether. We don't plunder from the "losers." We don't gloat over the defeated. We don't use violence or threats to get our way. We don't even look at ordinary 'wins' and 'losses' as the world sees them as God's way of picking sides--God, after all, has a way of siding with the losers, rather than the so-called "winners" in the story of the Bible. We aren't looking to solve our problems by cornering the opponent's king on the chessboard--for us, the last checkmate has already taken place, when our King sacrificed himself to break open the whole old order of us-against-them that had been writing the rulebook since Cain and Abel. And the resurrection is the evidence that God's way of winning worked--instead of destroying enemies, God has destroyed the old order of things so that enemies can become beloved. And thus Jesus' great prayer of victory is, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do," rather than a gloating cry that God must be on the winning side. Jesus wasn't, to any outside observer, on the winning side at the cross--but that is exactly the point. God's kind of victory doesn't kill the enemy; it absorbs death and hate and breaks their power and the cycles of revenge they keep feeding. For us, the last checkmate has already happened. God has begun a new game altogether.

Today, how will we treat people differently if we are caught up in God's new kind of victory? It's your move.

Lord Jesus, let us be transformed by your wonderfully upside down way of winning the victory, and let us love those whom we have seen as our enemies, not to appease or cave, but to return good to them even when we have received evil.

Armed Only With the Truth--November 26, 2024

Armed Only With the Truth--November 26, 2024

"Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come, and from the seven spirits who are before his throne, and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth." [Revelation 1:4b-5a]

This past Sunday the church did a wonderfully provocative thing: we confess and celebrate Christ Jesus as King, exactly because he looks nothing like the powerful, privileged, and politically potent people. It is actually one of the reasons I find practices like the church's liturgical year (so often treated as just "too confusing" or "outmoded and irrelevant to what people want these days") to be exactly what we need. (I love this day in the church's year even more when I reflect on the fact that it was added to the liturgical calendar just under one hundred years ago as a response to the rise of fascism and nationalism sweeping across Europe--as a way of resisting and protesting against fascism and "Our Country First!" thinking.) We desperately need the reminder, constantly, that the real and true ruler of the kings of earth doesn't coerce, doesn't threaten, and doesn't carry a weapon, much less rattle a saber. Jesus shows up on the world's battlefield armed only with the truth, and he just keeps telling it.

That is such a beautiful and strange notion, isn't it? That Jesus is worthy of our allegiance and praise, not because he is louder than others, or because he dominates and crushes others, but because he is "the faithful witness"--the One who just keeps telling the truth about things, and who lets that truthfulness be enough to win the day. It is amazing to me that the early church, threatened as it was by the brute military force and relentless propaganda machine of Rome, recognize that Jesus triumphed over the Empire by refusing to play by its rules. He simply kept on speaking, and doing, and embodying, the truth, even when it got him into trouble with the authorities. And that relentless truth-telling, that insistent honesty about ourselves and about God that was Jesus' way of showing his true authority.

Jesus is the one, after all, who doesn't go toe-to-toe with the Romans by riding into the Capital City on a white horse like the occupying Roman governor would have done--he borrows an ornery donkey and mocks the puffed-up pageantry of the Empire as he does it. Jesus is the one who doesn't bargain or threaten or yell when he is on trial before Pontius Pilate. There are no whipped-up tears from Jesus on trial before Pilate, nor does Jesus go railing on a tirade trying to force his way on others in the name of national unity. Jesus' sole weapon is to tell the truth, and his willingness to bear in his body the costs of telling that truth. That is decidedly un-king-like--and that is exactly why we confess this "faithful witness" as "ruler of the kings of earth."

We live in a time when truth-telling seems awfully rare, or naive to believe in. In a time like ours when you can choose whose version of the facts you want to listen to, and thereby remove yourself from ever having to hear anything unpleasant or that runs counter to the narrative you want to tell yourself, it seems awfully weak to insist that the truth matters. In a time when we easily confuse "complaining from a place of privilege" with "telling it like it is," it sometimes feels like we don't really care about who is being honest--just who sounds the most incensed and angry. In a time when we often feel like courts and courtroom antics are more about putting on a convincing show than about getting at justice, it can feel hopelessly naive to believe in the power of a "faithful witness" rather than the power of the violent to cast themselves as victims. And in a time when folks get headlines for insisting they should be able to impose their particular religion on everybody (while claiming to name the name of Jesus), it seems incredibly counter-cultural actually to follow the way of Jesus, which doesn't coerce or threaten or cajole. He just tells the truth...

It's worth sitting a while with this idea, I think. What makes Jesus different from the echo chambers and spin-doctors of our time, as well as the Roman military-and-propaganda complex of the 1st century is that he is utterly committed to the truth, at whatever cost it brings. One of the ways we get better at learning the way of Jesus, then, is actually to practice truth-telling, and with it, truthful listening, to others. It will mean we make the attempt intentionally to get outside the echo chambers of our consumer-chosen news and media bubbles, to listen to voices that we know will challenge us. It will mean we find the courage to admit where we were wrong, or where something we thought at first turned out not to hold water after all. It will mean we are willing to learn from people we didn't think could teach us anything... and also to be able to see places in ourselves where our thinking is less than solid.

Of all the titles we church folk ascribe to Jesus--King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Mighty God, Savior, Healer, Great Physician, and the like--maybe today is the day to recover and to think about the way the ancient community that gave us the book of Revelation saw Jesus: as "faithful witness" who was, by virtue of that relentless truth-telling, worthy of being ruler of the kings of the earth. What would it look like today for us to be people committed to embodying the truth like Jesus?

Let us dare it today.

Lord Jesus, let us embody your way of telling, and of doing, the truth, in love.

When God Erases Borders--November 25, 2024

When God Erases Borders--November 25, 2024

"I saw one like a human being, coming with the clouds of heaven. And he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. To him was given dominion and glory and kingship, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that shall not pass away, and his kingship is one that shall never be destroyed." [Daniel 7:13-14]

It's for everybody. That great and promised Reign of God where all things are put right--it is, in the end, for everybody: for people from every nation, every tribe, every ethnicity, every language, and every people-group. In the end, all those lines we have been drawing between one another to keep each other out or keep ourselves divided will be erased, and all will be drawn into the encompassing claim of God's Reign over the whole creation. For whatever else that means, it sure as heaven tells me that our present-moment experience of being sorted into different squabbling nations, states, and parties with their own allegiances and loyalties will not be the end of the story. There will come an end to our divided humanity. There will come an end to our various flags.

The biblical writers, like the visionary speaking here in the book of Daniel that many of us heard in worship just yesterday, aren't upset or outraged by that claim--they are hopeful about it. They see it as a sign of God's ultimately victory, and of the promise that God will gather all peoples together in the coming of Messiah--the promised "anointed one" who would reign, not merely as king of Israel or Judah, but would gather in all nations, in all their variety and diversity, into a new dominion that would last forever. Christians have for two thousand years now pinned our hopes on the conviction that Jesus is that Messiah, and that his way of bringing about this universal Reign of God doesn't have anything to do with imperial armies conquering their foes but with a cross and empty borrowed tomb. Our deepest hope, one sustained for countless generations before us, is of a coming day when our old divisions are set aside, even if we remain different in appearance, language, and culture, and where we no longer need to rally around competing banners, teams, parties, sides, or nationalities.

To be sure, there's a certain kind of limited unity you can have when you've got a flag in common--but it's always dependent on having somebody else to see as an outsider. "To be on the Blue Team means you're not on the Red Team!" To belong to one nation means you have to see others as enemies, opponents, and competition--their success means your failure, and your victory means their defeat. We've been dividing ourselves under different banners and along different lines forever, we humans. Sometimes the threat to outsiders (those with different flags) is subtle and implicit--sometimes it's outright nasty. In the days of the American Civil War, for example, you not only had Union armies marching under the Union flag (what we would call the American flag today) and the Confederate flag marching under their colors, but you had a number of instances of Confederate-sympathizing families who would fly a "black flag" from their poles as a sign to strangers that they were not only not welcome, but would be given "no quarter" and would be killed on sight if you came to their door. It wasn't merely a symbol of one team or side rather than another--it was a outright declaration that if you weren't of "their kind" they would take no prisoners but only ruthlessly kill those who came near. It is a sobering thing to see the return of such black flags in yards alongside the occasional Confederate flags I'll still see on vehicle license plates or on flagpoles from time to time, I confess. Heaven help us.

All of this is to say that our hope as Christians has to be that at some point, somehow, God will be able to overcome the divisions that have set us drawing lines between each other and seeing our siblings as enemies to be defeated since Cain first rose up against Abel. Our hope is not that one day there will be an American section of heaven, kept separate from Kenyan heaven or Indonesian heaven or Colombian heaven. Neither is our hope that only people from one nation will be there (we Americans tend to assume it will only be Americans, of course). Our hope has to be big enough to dare to imagine that at the last, God will erase those borderlines as God's Reign gathers in all those disparate groups and makes us one in serving God's good purposes sharing in the common humanity we have as people made in the image of God in the beginning.

In Dr. King's words, "God is interested in the freedom of the whole human race and in the creation of a society where all [people] can live together as [siblings], where every [one] will respect the dignity and the worth of human personality." For King, of course, that vision of a future Beloved Community shaped actions now--the goal of combatting racism and segregation, for example, was not only to free Black Americans held down by Jim Crow, but also to free White Americans who were trapped in the soul-distorting role of looking down on their neighbors. The goal of the Beloved Community isn't to have one group prospering in wholeness at the expense of the other, but for each to be freed from the various ways we are disfigured by enmity and hostility. In other words, we are called to work for the good of all, even those who have cast themselves as your enemy, because we dare to believe that at the last those lines between us will not hold, and our various banners will be set aside.

If our lives as Christians are aimed toward a future with that kind of hope--where Christ is Lord of all and draws all peoples, nations, and languages together in a renewed creation--then it will change our priorities and cut away our pettiness between one another. It will mean we begin to picture a life without having to see "the other" as "the enemy." It will mean we dare to believe that even the folks we have the hardest time getting along with are still beloved of God and will be included in the reach of God's Reign. Ultimately, to hope for Jesus' kingdom will mean we will lower whatever black flags we have been flying from our hearts and burn them to ash, and instead to see the people God sends across our paths today, not as "enemy" or "threat," but as people whom Christ, the "one like a human being," is gathering alongside us in the infinitely wide Reign of God.

There will come an end to flags in the end, and a day when the last human-made artificial borderline will be erased--thank God.

Lord Jesus, gather us together in your love for all peoples, and help us to live now in ways that anticipate your Reign that includes all nations and languages.

One True Tune--November 22, 2024

One True Tune--November 22, 2024

Jesus answered [Pontius Pilate], “My kingdom is not from this world. If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” Pilate asked him, “So you are a king?” Jesus answered, “You say that I am a king. For this I was born, and for this I came into the world, to testify to the truth. Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice." [John 18:36-37]

It is, for my money, one of the best scenes ever committed to celluloid, and it doesn't even need the benefit of color film.  And, at least in my personal theology, it is one of the most important depictions of the Reign of God amid the competing powers of the day.

It's the moment, about three-quarters of the way through 1942's Casablanca, when Resistance leader Victor Laszlo commandeers the house band at Rick's Cafe and gets them to play La Marseillaise, the French national anthem, to drown out the sound of the occupying German officers of the Reich who are belting out a triumphalist war song about the "Fatherland."  You don't have to know the words of La Marseillaise or speak a lick of French to see what is happening.  The German conquerors start out cocky and overconfident, using their song as a way of rubbing their power in the faces of all the people they have dominated. But as the French anthem continues, more and more of the people in the bar stand up and sing with Laszlo and the band, pointing to a different allegiance from the Fuhrer and a different regime from the Reich.  They continue to sing, entirely unarmed and without making a threat, tears streaming down their faces, and the longing for a free France coursing through their veins.  And by the end of a single verse--just two minutes of time on screen--the Germans are silenced and put in their place.  They have been exposed as usurpers, as frauds, and as mere bullies, rather than the rightful rulers--and in that span of one-hundred-twenty seconds, the people in Rick's Cafe reveal that they are no longer afraid of their would-be overlords. The false rule of the Reich has been exposed as a sham, simply with the power of one true tune, even while they think they have won the day.

Something like that is what happens in this exchange between Jesus and the Roman-appointed governor, Pilate, in the eighteenth chapter of John's gospel.  In fact, something like that is what all of Christian life is like, in a sense.  But what strikes me in this scene between the arrested rabbi and the imperial spokesperson is that Jesus points to a different reign--in fact, a different kind of reign altogether from Rome's imperial iron fist--and exposes Rome as grasping at an illusion, all without Jesus having to pick up a sword or raise a fist.  He points to an alternative regime and simply testifies to the reality of God's Reign, right under the nose of Caesar and his minion.  It's rather like the Resistance Leader with the band showing the German officers that they have not intimidated everyone the way they think they have, just with the gesture of a song sung in protest of the powers of the day.

Jesus' way of describing his purpose in the world is simply "to testify to the truth." Pilate, who can only see the world in terms of conquerors and the conquered, wants to fit Jesus into his mold of being a king like Caesar is.  And Jesus simply hasn't come to be that, because that's not how God rules the world.  God isn't a bully or a tyrant.  God is not so insecure as to need to intimidate, mock, or terrify people in order to feel "big." And God does not need to resort to cruelty, torture, or a war machine in order to reign.  Jesus simply trusts that the way God reigns is better than the Empire's way, and so all he needs to do is to witness to the truth: God is really the One who gets the last word, not Caesar, and God doesn't need follow the Empire's playbook in order to accomplish God's purposes. While Pilate and his cohort belt out war-songs of "eternal Rome," Jesus simply sings a true tune whose very existence unmasks that Rome isn't the be-all, end-all.

And as I say, I want to suggest that something like this is how the entire Christian community is meant to live in the world. We aren't here to replace Rome's intimidation tactics with a new set of our own.  We aren't here to set up an empire in the name of Jesus (or, in the modern phrasing, "take back our country for God" or "save America") the way Pilate would have. We are here, as in Jesus' example, "to testify to the truth."  We sing a different song with our lives.  We point to a different way of doing things--God's way--and a different kind of community; namely, the Beloved Community.   And no matter how loud the powers of the day try and shout, we witness to their inadequacy by the mere fact of our not going along with their noise.  

Singing a different song--a true tune rather than a false one--is by itself evidence of God's authentic reign and of the falsity and ultimate hollowness of every tyrant, empire, bully, and dictator.  We don't have to sell our souls out to a political party in order to win influence to make God's reign happen. We don't have to get enough money or church members or followers on social media to make the Kingdom come.  We simply sing a different song with our lives--the anthem of our true homeland, so to speak--and by our singing it, we witness to God's Reign and "testify to the truth." 

Every time we choose Christ-like mercy rather than Caesar's bullying, we testify to the truth.  

Every time we lift up the lowly rather than stepping on them to climb up highter, we testify to the truth.

Every time we refuse to accept the Empire's way of valuing people by their wealth or power or status or belonging to our group, and instead treat all people as of infinite worth because they are made in God's image, we testify to the truth.

And every time we say "No" to Caesar's "Me and My Group First" way of thinking by saying "Yes" to Jesus' love for all person, we are testifying to the truth of how the living God runs the universe.

Each morning the world asks us which song we'll sing along with.  Today--and then every day afterward--let us sing the song of our true commonwealth, to which our ultimate citizenship and our authentic allegiance belongs.  Let us sing a true tune of the Reign of God--like Jesus does.

Lord Jesus, teach us to sing your song and to testify to your truth with our lives.

An Unlikely Victory--November 21, 2024

An Unlikely Victory--November 21, 2024

"For whatever is born of God conquers the world. And this is the victory that conquers the world, our faith. Who is it that conquers the world but the one who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?" [1 John 5:4-5]

Come on, John. Really? Can we be serious and realistic for a moment here? The thing that conquers the world is our faith--really? The one who conquers the world is the one who believes in Jesus? That just seems either patently false or hopelessly, quixotically out of touch. Saying that faith conquers the world seems like the sort of thing you can do only with your eyes closed and the windows shut--especially for John, living in the first century AD. All he has to do is open his eyes and look out the front door to see the presence of the Romans everywhere--they sure look the part of world conquerors. The Romans ruled the known world in John's day--at least the world that John lived in. The Romans had established their conquest and built it on military victories over decades. And to the ordinary man-on-the-street in the 1st century territory of the empire, it was obvious that "the one who conquers the world" was none other than Caesar, the man at the top of the whole Roman war machine. In the first century AD, Rome saw itself as the picture of "greatness," and Caesar saw himself as the "greatest of the great" at the top of the heap. So if you would have asked John's rhetorical question, "Who is it that conquers the world?" to an actual person at random in the first century, their first response would likely have been, "The Emperor, of course!"

Now, I am going to go out on a limb for a moment and make an assumption--that our author here, John, was not a stupid man. Even bracketing out for a moment the inspiration of the Holy Spirit speaking as John wrote, John himself seems like a bright enough guy to know that the Empire was all around them. And he doesn't seem to be so thick-headed as to miss the presence of centurions marching through the streets carrying their banners with the Empire's mottos and images of Caesar to remind everybody just who it was that called the shots.

So for John to say, so matter-of-factly, that obviously it is "our faith" that conquers the world, it's not that he's temporarily forgotten about the Empire. If you whispered politely to John, "Pssst--what about Caesar? Isn't he the one who has conquered the world?" he wouldn't blush and say, "Oh, dear, well, I'd forgotten about him--obviously he's really the one who has conquered the world." No, John makes his statement in full view of the Emperor and all of his soldiers, with his eyes open and the curtains on the windows pulled back wide. And John says, anyway, with a certain holy defiance, as a detachment of soldiers walks by out past his front porch, "Nope--it's not them or their swords and spears that conquer the world. Nope--it's not the Empire with its banners and imperial propaganda in big gold letters and memorable slogans. Nope--it's not the man with the crown whose face in on all the coins who calls the shots. It's Jesus, and because it's Jesus who conquers the world, so do all those who trust him."

John says this plainly, like it's the most obvious thing in the world to him, knowing that to any bystander he must sound like he's crazy. "Nope, it's not the armies outside the door who run the show. It's Jesus, and it's by the strange power of faith that we share his victory, too," he says. The Christian community does that, too. While so many others are sure that the United States is the last great superpower, or worries about the growing specter of Chinese power and influence across the Pacific, or of authoritarian war-mongering out of Russia, or whatever else the day's news on the international stage is, we Christians believe (or at least, we should, if we believe half of what we say every Sunday morning) that Jesus really is victorious over them all and has conquered the world already in his death and resurrection. 

We do not believe that the one with the biggest stockpile of weapons wins the day, or that the one with the most gold makes the rules. We do not need to worry, at least in the big picture, about whether our country is losing its influence around the world or whether there will have to be room in the public square for more voices than there were before. We do not belong, in the end, to this country or this society. Our "home team" that we cheer for is not the U.S.A., but rather the Reign of God and its scar-wearing King. And we have been given the assurance that Jesus has already overcome the other forces in the world that rage against him--and he has done it, not by marching armies in anywhere, but through the self-giving suffering love of a cross and the surprising power of the resurrection.

That's the message we announce to the world, knowing full well ahead of time that it will sound absurd to many around who can only see the centurions and images of Caesar around us. We are people who live as though the whole world has been reclaimed by its Creator, and that the Creator has done in through the execution (albeit, an ultimately unsuccessful one) of an unarmed rabbi at the hands of the ones who pretended that they really ruled the world. He is the one we cling to, and the grip by which we hold on to him and share in his victory is called faith. That's what it means for us to be victorious, despite all the other forces out there, over the world by faith in Jesus, the Son of God. It is an unlikely kind of victory, but it is ours already, because of Jesus, who is himself an unlikely sort of victor.

For all of the Emperor's self-important bluster, he is naked, even if nobody else has the guts to say it out loud. Jesus has already overcome the world clothed in reckless self-giving love.

Lord Jesus, let us trust that you do really reign, even when it doesn't look like it in the eyes of the surrounding world. And let us be willing to stake our lives on that reign, and so share in the victory that is already yours.

Gates That Never Shut--November 20, 2024

Gates That Never Shut--November 20, 2024

"And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God is its light, and its lamp is the Lamb. The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it. Its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there. People will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations." [Revelation 21:23-26]

Open gates are a sign of strength.

Open gates are a sign of confidence, of peace, of power, and of not being afraid.

You close the gates when you are afraid of something "out there"--whether or not there really is anything out there to be afraid of.

Closed gates smack of feeling insecure, of distress, and of weakness.

That's why the story of God's victory in the Slain-but-Living Lamb (Christ!) ends with this scene with permanently opened doors in God's new city--with gates that never shut.

The whole book we call the Apocalypse, or the Revelation to John, is chock full of symbolism. John the Seer doesn't waste a single opportunity to give us layers upon layers of meaning, from Christ as the Lamb to white robed singers to lampstands and seals and bowls. Even down to the dimensions of the city of God, the New Jerusalem (which is a cube, curiously enough--a three-dimensional symbol of completeness, perfection, and wholeness), and the number of gates in the city (twelve, which calls back to the tribes of Israel and the new community of disciples that Jesus gathered), every image in the book of Revelation is intentional.

That's why it's worth paying attention to this scene from the tail end of the book at the tail end of the Bible and the way it describes the full and complete victory of God. There, at the last, John says, God's reign is perfect and complete, so that there is no reason to be afraid. And when there is nothing and no one to be afraid of, the gates are left open and the doors are left unlocked. The last enemy--death itself!--has been dealt with, and so there is no threat to God's beloved community. John gives us this picture of gates permanently left open as a way of saying, "The living God is so strong and so secure that we don't need hide away from anybody anymore. We don't need to close the gates, because we are no longer ruled by fear--we are ruled by God whose love casts out fear like a demon."

In other words, when John wants to come up with an image of complete confidence and peace, he doesn't say, "And we'll all hide behind the big strong walls and the big sturdy iron gates, so that nothing bad can come and get us anymore." But rather, John says, "At the last, we will finally be done with living in fear and we can leave the doors all propped open and welcome everybody from every nation (a nice touch John is sure to add here), because God isn't afraid of them coming in. The very fact that all the nations and their rulers want to come into God's city is a sign of God's glory--it is the highest compliment of all that they all come streaming in to be in the fullness of God's presence and God's reign.

One of my favorite places on Earth is a sleepy little town on Lake Erie where my family has vacationed every summer since I was a baby, and one of the things that I like best about it is that it is a place where people still all leave their doors unlocked. There is no fear that somebody will break in or take things, and there is no fear that our loved ones are not safe. And so you find friendly faces coming and going, running in and out of their doors to go get their kites or swimsuits, all because they are so confident that they are safe, and therefore don't have to look suspiciously or fearfully at their neighbors. People come from all across the country to vacation there, and I have never met anyone there who was overcome with anxiety about intruders. There is a peace to that place, because no one is afraid. And I think something like that is the image that John wants to give us about how God's victory is finally going to be felt and seen. It's a community where the doors can be left unlocked.

In the end, God's strength, God's kind of "winning," and God's kind of "toughness" are not found in the locking of doors or in turning away the nations who want to come in. In the end, God's kind of victory is shown most clearly in gates that are never closed, in a confident welcome to all nations, and in a beloved community who lives at peace because they are no longer ruled by fear.

Now, I know--this isn't how daily life in our world feels right now. I know that burglars break into homes and thieves come in and steal--even when you DO lock the doors and shut the gates. I know that this is a world in which countries still invade each other (like Russia's ongoing onslaught against Ukraine) and attack each other (like the war in Gaza, still wearing on day by day), where death sure seems to still get the last word, and where we have all just gotten used to living with a certain amount of fear of the bad stuff that could happen. And I'm not suggesting you should leave your car doors unlocked when you park it at the grocery store, or that you can leave your garage door open and assume everything will still be in it at the end of the week.

But I am saying that it is worth remembering the future toward which all creation is headed, according to Revelation, and that our hope in God's victory pulls us toward that future now. We are called to be people no longer ruled by fear. We are called to be people who recognize that the open gates of God's city are not a sign of weakness on God's part, but the supreme sign of confidence that God is not afraid of anything or anyone coming in.

We will be people, then, who welcome strangers--to our tables, to our churches, to our communities.

We will be people who see that strength is expressed in open doors, not in hiding behind locked ones (like the fearful disciples on Easter Sunday).

We will be people who hear John's description that people from all nations will be drawn together into God's new creation, and we will practice for that day now by widening our circles now enough to get to know people from other nations in the mean time.

If the ultimate victory of Jesus looks like a city whose gates are never closed, into which all nations come streaming into it in welcome, then our lives will start to take that shape even today. 

That, after all, seems to be what Jesus has been after all along.

Lord Jesus, pull us into your future victory now with open arms, open communities, and open hearts.

Notwithstanding--November 19, 2024

Notwithstanding--November 19, 2024

"God put this power to work in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. And he has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all." [Ephesians 1:20-23]

I'll tell you this much, in all honesty: it doesn't look like it.

I'm sorry, but it just doesn't. I am a deeply committed, heavily invested, lifelong follower of Jesus and will happily and readily confess he is Lord... but I have to admit that it doesn't look like the risen Jesus is seated on the throne, reigning over "all rule and authority and power and dominion," with "all things under his feet." I do not deny that Jesus is Lord, not at all--but I will confess soberly that when I look around at all in the world in which we live, even with my eyes half-shut from squeamishness, it doesn't look like it.

And I'll tell you what else--the New Testament doesn't give us the option of just kicking the can down the road, either. We can't simply say, "Well, Jesus isn't currently 'Lord of all' right now... but he will be. And then, on that great future day, when he reigns from 'far above' all the powers of the day, then he will look like a proper King." We don't get to make that move, as far as the letter to the Ephesians is concerned, because as you can see for yourself in these verses from its opening chapter, the risen Christ is declared as supreme over every authority and dominion "not only in this age, but also in the age to come." Shoot. We can't just punt and say, "Well, one day Jesus will be Lord, but he just isn't yet." Ephesians says that he is already reigning over all things, and it's a follow-up claim that Jesus will also reign in the future, too. Whatever it means to say that the risen Christ reigns over all creation, Ephesians tells us that we have to be able to say it is happening right now, this very moment, this very day, in some sense.

And to read a news headline, watch the television, or pay attention at all to the aches in our friends and neighbors' lives, not to mention our own, it just doesn't look like Jesus reigns over it all.

The evidence countering that claim just seems to be everywhere:

There are the kids whose parents pass out nightly with needles in their arms but who are simultaneously afraid of what will happen to them when Children and Family Services comes and takes them away from whatever home and life they have known. And if we can bear to hear their story, we look up at the heavens and ask, "Really, Jesus? You are Lord over this situation... and you have let this happen?"

There is the ongoing war in Gaza, where kids still find their homes being blown up while their communities are starved to death and hostages are still being held and kept from their families. Meanwhile, war rages on in Ukraine, as Russian invaders continue to pummel towns, villages, and homes with missiles and drones. And in the moments we are brave enough not to forget that these wars are still raging, we cry out, "Jesus! How is this possible in a world where you reign over the other lesser powers and authorities?"

There is the twenty-something who has been run out of her childhood home by parents who see her as a lost prodigal, who has been rejected and ostracized by all her old high school friends and church in her small town home, who moves to the city to feel welcomed and accepted by someone, and is let down by the way you can feel alone in a crowd as much as you can on an empty porch on the farm. And as she contemplates taking her own life because she is just so sure no one will love her as she is, she cries out, "Christ! How can you let me feel so alone... so abandoned... so unacceptable? Didn't you make me? Aren't you Lord?"

Add whatever stories or evidence you wish, but I suspect the point is made already. Christians are in the sticky spot of confessing, sure and strong, that Jesus has been raised from the dead into Lordship over all other authorities and powers... and yet, too look at the world at all, even squinting, everything looks like it is in disarray and upheaval. Pick an institution or authority, and we savage bipeds have found a way to mess it up--drug epidemics and absentee parents, horrific violence and war, churches and schools and families that ostracize rather than nurture--and all of it seems to be in open rebellion against compassion, truth, goodness, generosity, and justice. It is hard to pay attention to the world and confess that Jesus is Lord, while saying it with a straight face.

In moments of clarity and honesty like this, what do the people of God do? What do the people who name the name of Jesus do with our difficult claim that Jesus is Lord over all of it, while also recognizing how much the world is so terribly cruel and unjust in so many ways?

Perhaps first, we lament. We lament it all, honestly and truly. We take the heartache and the rage, the sorrow and the sickness in our stomachs over all the world's ills, and we lift it up to this One whom we confess as Lord. We say it, and we lift it up in prayer in those words that Jesus himself taught us: "Let your Kingdom come here on earth the way you reign already in heaven... because it sure doesn't look like you are reigning here right now." We pull no punches. We hold back no words. The living God, after all, should be able to take whatever bitter words we have to throw if such a deity is not an idol or a sham. We lament--because in a sense, even lament itself is a confession of Christ's Lordship. When you are upset about the fly in your soup at a restaurant, you complain to the manager or the owner, not to a random stranger outside on the street, after all. To bring our laments to Christ is to recognize that he is the one to whom our complaints should be addressed, rather than looking for someone else easier to pick on or scapegoat. We do NOT have permission to simply blame problems on some group of "those people" when the face of wickedness is also staring back at us in the mirror. We start with lament.

Second, we pause and remember that the letter to the Ephesians was not written in some ivory tower, but likely from prison, and definitely at a time when the followers of Jesus were subject to beatings, stonings, torture, and persecution, and where the government of the day (Rome) was arrogant, cruel, violent, and seemed hopelessly permanent. War, famine, violence, injustice, and cruelty were a fact of life in the first century Roman Empire, and nobody among the writers of the New Testament pretended otherwise. Nor did they think that Christians needed to wield more political power to "fix" things, for that matter. The writer of Ephesians is well aware that it looks to the naked eye like Rome rules the day, like human institutions are fatally flawed, and that humanity is divided into tribes and factions bent on doing each other in.

But there is this: Christ is alive.

And if he is alive, then it means that when the other powers of the day did the worst they could do, they were still outdone by a crucified criminal named Jesus of Nazareth. It means that, even if Rome and the religious institutions of the day and all of the cruelty, excess, decadence, and debauchery of pagan culture looked like they were running the show, they could not stop Jesus from coming back to life. And in that, Jesus remains forever outside of their grasp, above and beyond their reach, and yes, in a real sense, above their pay grade.

That means, then, third, that Jesus' Lordship is rather like Aslan's in C.S. Lewis' The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe. In his fantasy novel set in the magical realm of Narnia, Aslan is the rightful ruler and lord over all Narnia, even though the White Witch has proclaimed herself "Queen" and has brought winter to all the land. Despite her claim and usurpation, wherever Aslan shows up, spring breaks out, and life bursts forth, almost as a resistance movement to her wicked rule. There is no question in Lewis' mind that Aslan is indeed the true "Lord" over Narnia, but is a lordship that is actively engaged with undermining all the forces and powers that defy his good, compassionate, and just reign. The difference, however, between how Aslan exerts his authority and how the White Witch dominates Narnia, is that Aslan will not resort to the cruel, fearful, and intimidating tactics of the Witch. He is an untamable lion, but he is good, whereas "Queen" Jadis is only interested in preserving her own power, no matter what cruelty or devastation it demands. Aslan reigns... but he reigns in a particular way, without having to resort to cruelty or evil to get his way. That, in the end, makes all the difference.

Something like that is the way the risen Jesus reigns over all creation as well. To confess the risen Jesus as Lord is not to say that everything that happens is what Jesus "wants" or "decrees" or even "authorizes." It is to say that the risen Jesus has already launched a guerrilla campaign against the powers of Empire and Religion and even Death itself, and despite their worst attempts to stamp him out, they were all unsuccessful. And it is to say, further, that the risen Jesus continues to undermine the usurping powers and rulers and authorities of the world to assert his rightful, good, and just rule... but also that Jesus uses his own particular means of resisting those powers. Jesus will not resort to cruelty to combat cruelty. Jesus does not use brute force to get his way, even in resurrection. Jesus does not dabble in evil in order to "get the job done" because that's "just the way business works." For Jesus the end does not justify the means--but in fact, the way Jesus defeats evil is by refusing to resort to evil in a trade-off to secure his own power. And ultimately, that makes all the difference.

Theologian Douglas John Hall says it this way: "All the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, God reigns." We need to be able to say both halves of that sentence--both that there is an awful lot of evidence in the world that makes it look like the risen Christ is not Lord... and yet at the same time that this same Christ Jesus does in fact reign, in his own peculiar, subversive way.  

So, all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, all hail King Jesus, the crucified and risen Lord.

All the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, all hail King Jesus, whose heart still breaks over the brokenness of the world.

Lord Jesus, look kindly on this world over which you reign and for which you died and rose. And where the powers of the day still resist your goodness, work out your reign until all tears are wiped away, and all can live safely and in peace in you.

Jesus' Kind of Victory--November 18, 2024

Jesus' Kind of Victory--November 18, 2024

"Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good." [Romans 12:21]

You cannot dig your way out of a hole by going down deeper.

You cannot spend your way out of debt.

You cannot smash pottery shards back together to repair the broken vase.

And you cannot overcome evil by playing at its own game.

Or, as the good Dr. King famously put it, "Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that."

So when we followers of Jesus refuse to sell out or do rotten things as a means to a supposedly noble end, it is not because we are cowards afraid of danger or fools naïve to the reality of evil in the world. It is simply that we have learned, following Paul here in Romans, that you cannot overcome evil with evil. You can only be truly victorious--with Jesus' kind of victory--through goodness.

That's important to say out loud, even if it seems obvious, because the temptations to sell out always sound like they are reasonable.

"We have to be in a position of power if we want to get to make good policies... so we have do to anything necessary to get to power." That has a certain appeal to it, doesn't it?  But plenty of folks--even ones who prattle on about their piety--have made deals with the devil to get themselves into seats of power, only to have things turn out disastrously.  I know an awful lot of folks who have walked away from the church, not because they rejected Jesus, but because the leaders and loud voices in church they knew of had shown that Christ-like character didn't really matter to them after all, when there was someone willing to give them power, prestige, or influence.

"We want to be able to do noble things with our fortune in the future, so in the mean time, we don't ask questions about where our investments come from or whether the business we do is good for people now in the mean time." That sounds like a fair deal, right?  But in the mean time, our witness is destroyed when we are willing to make a profit off of unethical companies or shady business deals.  And it's a lie to say you care about the exploited poor if you've got investments in corporations that use sweat-shop labor or whose workers are unable to provide for their families.

"We are afraid of a future in which we aren't as important or powerful or great as we once were, and so we will give our support to any voice that promises us (whether they can deliver on such a promise or not) a way to keep things the way we imagine they once were, regardless of what it costs other people." That can sound awfully alluring if we are honest.  But of course, it reveals deep down a doubt that God will take care of what we need, and a terrible choice to see other people as threats to be stopped rather than neighbors to be loved.

"We are so concerned that someone else might do something bad to us that we decide to preemptively do something bad to them in advance to thwart them." That just sounds like basic, old-fashioned conventional wisdom to our ears.  But it sure doesn't sound like the way of Jesus.

If we are going to be truthful with ourselves, those are all ways of lying to ourselves and trying to justify rottenness if we think it will lead to something good for ourselves in the future. And that just isn't how Jesus wins the victory. Whether it's the temptation to torture bad guys in the name of protecting innocents, or pitting your comfort against the ability of neighbors to have what they need to survive, or selling out your convictions to get more votes--or maybe closer to home, doing something unethical at work because your boss tells you to, even if it will hurt other people, none of those are Jesus' way of winning God's victory.

Today, Jesus dares us to respond to the darkness of the world, not with more darkness, but with God's own light. It turns out that's really the only way you can.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be like you in the world.

Without the Angel Armies--November 15, 2024

 

Without the Angel Armies--November 15, 2024

"Then they came and laid hands on Jesus and arrested him. Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said to him, 'Put your sword back in its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then would scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?'" [Matthew 26:50b-54]

Here's a rule of thumb I have found helpful in any attempt to say anything truthful about the Mystery we call "God": any sentence that begins with the words, "God cannot..." is automatically wrong.

No matter how it ends.

Any sentence that starts out saying God "can't..." or "isn't allowed to..." or "isn't powerful enough to..." or what have you, is wrong on its face. Unlike the ancient Greek or Roman gods of empires past, which each had spheres of influence in which they operated and areas they couldn't rule over (e.g., Poseidon ruled the sea, but wasn't lord of the air; Hades ruled the underworld, but didn't have the power over the living like Zeus, and so on), the God we meet in the Old and New Testaments does not have "turf" and therefore has no boundaries. Everything is in this God's jurisdiction. And everything is within this God's power. All the rest are pretenders.

Now, once we have gotten that out of the way--that there is nothing that the living God "cannot" do--it makes for a really important conversation about what God could do, theoretically, but chooses not to do. Because that is a rather significant list.

And similarly, because we Christians are convinced that where Jesus is, God is, it's rather telling to take a look at what things Jesus will not do--since presumably, it's not a matter that he could not or cannot.

Maybe it even seems like a strange thing to suggest that someone--human or divine--would intentionally choose not to do something that they could do, at least odd to the ears of our culture. We live in a culture and in a time, after all, where we have more and more potential of doing more and more, and that same culture seems to take it for granted that there is no good reason not to do what we have the power or technology to do. It's like the old line from Jurassic Park: "You were so obsessed with finding out if you could do it, that you never stopped to ask if you should." But we're not just talking science fiction about cloning dinosaurs--we live in an age where technology allows me to order goods from around the world (goods increasingly manufactured by robots) and have them shipped right to my door (maybe even by a robot drone in the near future!), an age where many of us live with enough material abundance and supply of fast food chains that you could eat every meal of your week at a different fast food chain and start all over again next week, an age where we can kill people from oceans away with remotely controlled weaponry without having to think about or see their faces, an age where we can edit and manipulate the genes of things from crops to critters, and an age in which you can have an "artificial intelligence" write your term paper, craft a poem, or even write a love letter for you--all without you having to use an ounce of your own humanity to do it. And for whatever ostensibly "good" things are in all that technological potential, there are also about a million open questions about when and where and whether there are bigger costs that come with each of them. But in a technological age, it is easy to forget (or ignore) asking the "should we do this?" question and instead just doing whatever we have the power to do.

So, like I say, it is telling, I think, that Jesus the incarnate Son of God has the power to do certain things or make certain things happen... and yet chooses not to. It says something about who he is and how God reigns that Jesus doesn't, for example, shoot lightning bolts at those who doubt him... or desert him... or even those who declared him guilty and worthy of death. It says something about what kind of victory needed to be won that Jesus knows he "could" summon forth angel armies to fight back when the lynch mob came for him... and yet he didn't.

Think about that for a moment. Let it sink in. Jesus knows full well that he has the whole divine arsenal at his disposal. It is his "right" to bear angelic arms, if he chooses. It is his prerogative as the Son of God to protect himself, to use angels as his shield and his sword and to wipe out anybody who threatened his safety. He CAN stop the mob from coming for him, and he COULD launch an all-out assault on the religious establishment, on the puppet-king Herod, and on the Romans themselves for that matter, if he chose. It is not a lack of firepower or ability or authority.

And yet Jesus chooses not to call on the angel armies to defend himself. He chooses not to even let one of his followers pull out a weapon in self-defense, either. "Those who live by the sword die by the sword," Jesus says unapologetically. "Nope--we just don't do that in my movement," he seems to say.

In fact you, won't find a "Don't Tread On Me" flag anywhere near Jesus here--not just in the Garden, but in Jesus' whole way of living and dying... and rising. There is no defiant attitude of "I have the power to stop you, so look out, I'm coming for you." Jesus can, and Jesus could, but Jesus doesn't.

That is radical.

That is the essence of Jesus' kind of victory. If Jesus calls in the angel armies, he is trading self-preservation for self-giving. If he gets the heavenly host to go on the offense to smite his would-be attackers, there is no way of the cross, only the way of convenience. If Jesus lets his followers start pulling out weapons in the name of "protecting me and mine from someone threatening us," the old order of returning evil for evil stays in place. And Jesus has come, not simply to replace one sword-wielding empire for another, but to undo the whole system, the whole structure. Jesus says "no" to calling on the angels to fight back in order that he can say "yes" to... you. And to me. Jesus' No to self-defense and self-preservation and the whole don't-tread-on-me mindset is what makes possible Jesus' Yes to pouring out his life for the redemption of the world.

What Jesus chooses not to do (even though he "could") speaks volumes. In fact, the whole of the Gospel hangs on the amazing news of a God who could call in the angel armies but does not, a God who instead stretches out divine arms in love to be nailed between thieves.

This is our victory.

Lord Jesus, thank you for saying "No" to the angel armies and fighting for yourself, so that you could choose to say "Yes" to us as your people, and "Yes" to the cross, by which you redeemed us. Thank you for your victory over self-preservation, in order to love us.

The Divine Rebellion--November 14, 2024

The Divine Rebellion--November 14, 2024

"For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ. But each in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then at his coming those who belong to Christ. Then comes the end, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father, after he has destroyed every ruler and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." [1 Corinthians 15:21-26]

You know, it's not really a surprise that the first Christians kept getting rounded up by the Empire and then thrown in jail or fed to lions. At least if any of the rest of them sounded like Paul here. Paul is downright subversive--the Romans were right to see his voice as a threat to their unquestioned rule... even if he was never looking to launch a violent coup or lead an army. We just don't often consider the real weight to the apostle's words here.

Paul clearly says that Jesus' victory is not riding the coattails of Rome, or through an endorsement of Caesar. Paul says that at the last, every ruler, every supposed "authority," and everyone who wields "power" will finally give way to the Risen Jesus. And to first century ears, that was a direct assault on the claims of Rome, which insisted that it would last forever in an eternal dominion (personified for the Empire by its worship of the goddess "Roma Aeterna," who was a sort of embodiment of the  supposed "greatness" of the nation-state of Rome).

Let me say that again so that we do not miss the point: in Paul's day, the official policy of the Empire was that the nation-state of Rome was to be worshipped as divine, and official messaging from the Empire was that Rome's rule would last forever. So when Paul comes along and says that Christ will ultimately be victorious over every ruler and authority and power, it cannot have been heard as anything less than a protest against the supremacy of the dominant nation-state of his day, and against the ruler at the top who boasted so much about its greatness.

This is a really decisive move for Paul, because he doesn't just say that God reigns "through" Rome, like a behind-the-scenes puppet-master pulling the strings. Paul doesn't say here that everything Rome does gets God's endorsement, nor does he say that criticism of Rome is criticism of God's appointed ruler. (We can spend time on another day with Paul's comments in Romans 13 about the governing authorities being used by God to restrain evil and limit the dangerous of chaos, but at least here in 1 Corinthians, Paul is not afraid to say clearly that no authority or ruler carries equal ultimacy with Christ.) Instead, Paul says that no matter how the letterhead changes from one empire to another, as the power of one nation-state after another goes into the dustbin of history, no matter who came on the scene yesterday or who comes on the scene tomorrow, none of these powers deserve our ultimate allegiance, and none of them will outlast the crucified-and-risen Christ.

And then, in what I am coming to see is Paul's greatest slap in the face to "Eternal Rome" and its Caesar, he undercuts all of Rome's propaganda by saying that the real kingpin to be dealt with at the last is death itself. Paul realizes that Jesus' victory is not simply to replace one empire (Rome) with another (even though Christians tried to do that with what they called "Christendom" or in things like "the Holy Roman Empire" or in the modern-day heresy of Christian nationalism). Jesus' victory goes deeper than just picking off Caesar. The empires of history, and the emperors who have ruled them, are really just the henchmen of the real heavy-hitting Power to be dealt with--death itself. Rome, Babylon, Assyria, Pharaoh's Egypt, and all the rest...they have just been the hired muscle that Death has used throughout history. But make no mistake about it--death has been the real Power underneath all of them. Death gave those empires--and every other empire since--their ability to threaten and coerce. After all, what Rome, Babylon, and the rest did was to intimidate their subjects into obedience on pain of death--do what the centurions say, or else they can string you up on a cross! And every empire and dominant system ever since has basically made the same threat. But death has been the real enemy all along. Without the underlying power of threatening death, no one would listen to Caesar or Pharaoh. But with that power, empires spread, and people get stepped on.

So Paul cuts through to the real contest--not between Christ and Caesar, but between Christ and Death Itself. That's got to be humbling if you are Caesar getting wind of this letter--it's almost like Paul is saying, "Christ isn't even going to waste his time taking out Caesar; he has bigger fish to fry, and Caesar is just too small a guppy to worry about." Paul knows that Caesar and his reign will come to an end, and that Rome and its boasts as a nation-state and empire will fade away in time, too. But the real power to be reckoned with is the power of death--and that, Paul says, is precisely what Jesus has come to deal with.

Jesus' resurrection is the beginning of the end of every other claim of ultimate power, because Jesus' resurrection shows that every empire and every emperor who makes the threat, "Do what I say, or else..." cannot stop or silence Jesus. The resurrection is a defiant "No!" to Rome's insistence that Jesus stay in the grave, and it is also a shot across the bow to death itself, warning that the power of death is coming unraveled, too. As Jurgen Moltmann wrote, "Christ's resurrection is the beginning of God's rebellion. That rebellion is still going on in the Spirit of hope, and will be complete when, together with death, 'every ruler and every authority and power' is at last abolished....Easter is at one and the same time God's protest against death, and the feast of freedom from death."

All these centuries later after Rome, it is tempting to think we are smarter, wiser, more pious, or otherwise different from the Empire of Paul's day. But the temptation to worship our own national power is just as real, just as alluring, and just as strong. The letterheads, change, but it is the same old impulse to bow down to "Roma Aeterna" in a different outfit and to worship the nation-state. Paul reminds us here that history's empires and nations come and go, and none of them is ever really as permanent as it imagines itself to be. But that is because death is a fickle and cruel mob boss who always turns on its henchmen. And then Paul tells us that the real power to be worried about--death itself--has its days numbered, too. And that the victory in which we hope is not merely Jesus over Rome, but rather Jesus over death itself.

That notion is potent stuff. If we took it seriously, we Christians might just become anew the world-changing, love-embodying, truth-telling movement that the Romans thought we were at the beginning. We are a part of God's rebellion against the tyranny of death and all of its minions. We are a part of God's protest against death.

Go. Now. Tell the world that death does not get the final say.

Lord Jesus, let us take confidence and courage from your resurrection, and give us strength in our voices to remind the powers of death they do not get the last word... ever.