On the Border with Jesus--October 13, 2025

On the Border with Jesus--October 13, 2025

"On the way to Jerusalem Jesus was going through the region between Samaria and Galilee. As he entered a village, ten men with a skin disease approached him. Keeping their distance, they called out, saying, 'Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!' When he saw them, he said to them, 'Go and show yourselves to the priests.' And as they went, they were made clean." [Luke 17:11-14]

Yes, this is a miracle--but the real wonder to me in this scene is something completely un-supernatural. What happens in this story is amazing, but so is the sheer fact of where it happens.

Many of us heard this story in worship this Sunday, and at first you might think a story like this has nothing to do with our actual everyday lives, because it's a miracle. Miracles are by their nature not an everyday occurrence--our standard description of a miracle is "something that defies explanation" or "something that violates the rules of physics or biology." And that's surely what you've got here in this scene: an honest-to-God, beyond-explanation miracle of healing, where Jesus calls out to this group of men who are all living with a chronic and terminal case of a contagious skin disease sometimes referred to as leprosy, and he heals them without even touching them. The gospel writer gives no other explanation or rationalization beyond saying, "This is Jesus. This is how he operates. It was a miracle." Fair enough. And sure, it is easy to spot the presence of God in a miracle. Since none of us can pull one off through sheer concentration or willpower, the healing has to be evidence of God.

But let's pause for a moment and back up to before any of the special effects. While the miraculous healing of ten people with an incurable condition all at once is supernatural, the location of the healing doesn't require any suspension of the laws of nature at all. This healing doesn't take place on the moon, or in Wonderland, or on the way to the Emerald City. And Jesus isn't magically whisked away from, say, a breakfast in his hometown Nazareth to suddenly find himself at this unknown border village. (I mention that possibility because, as you may well know, there are in fact occasional stories in the Bible where someone is minding their own business when the Spirit "snatches them up" to set them down somewhere else, like Philip's encounter with the Ethiopian eunuch, or where God sends a flaming chariot to lift someone up to heaven. This not one of those times.) Jesus ends up where he does--walking along the border in "the region between Samaria and Galilee"--by his own two feet. It is entirely natural. In that sense, the set-up for this scene is completely ordinary.

And that is what makes it remarkable. Jesus chooses to be in this place. Jesus chooses to go into this place on the margins. Jesus deliberately creates the possibility that a miracle can happen because he chooses to walk through this border territory. Jesus enters the space between "us" and "them" intentionally, knowing it will be provocative, knowing it is risky, and yet also knowing that it is precisely where he needs to go. He carries no official papers, he has no legal right to cross through this border territory so freely, and he has no legitimately recognizable reason that guarantees him safe passage as he goes between his own familiar territory of Galilee and the land of the "other," Samaria.  

He goes anyway.  That's Jesus for you.

Now, it's probably old hat to say that there were deep animosities between Jews and Samaritans in the first century. It was a centuries-old division between sides, and by the time of Jesus it carried ethnic, religious, political, and cultural overtones. The lines and borders between Galilee and Samaria had shifted plenty over time, but it was still clearly a boundary--much like Texas used to be part of Mexico, then was an independent nation for a while, and then was part of the United States, then left to side with the Confederacy, and then once again was a part of the Union, but nevertheless there is still a definite feeling of "otherness" between sides at the present border. The tension in a place like that would have been palpable, just as Jesus walked through it.

And because this was an in-between place, and because of the hatred and suspicion between these groups (however well-founded or imaginary), you can imagine that border territory being the kind of place that respectable people don't want to raise their kids. In the empty land between villages, well, you could end up with outcasts creating their own little enclaves, because this was not prime real-estate for new housing developments at the time. You don't find leper colonies in the heart of a downtown district of a major city--you find them in the margins, at the edges of society, and in the frontier and border regions where Jesus has chosen to go. (And as a side note, there were plenty of Respectable Religious folks who wanted to go from Galilee to Judea and who would just travel far out of their way around the region of Samaria to avoid interaction with those dirty, rotten, sickness-infested, dangerous Samaritans.)

All of this is to say that Jesus, who is nobody's fool, deliberately sets his course right into this place of tension, knowing he could get in trouble for crossing this border without having a significant reason or a legal right to be in this place in the first place. And he goes knowing that this is the sort of place where there could well be leper communities--because again, when you are sick and driven from your old village to seek refuge somewhere else, you will take whatever in-between place you can find, including with other sick people. Lepers don't judge lepers--they all know they're sick; it is the un-infected who can be so cruelly vigilant to cast out the sick ones.

And up to this point, I think we can all agree, Jesus hasn't done anything that is not also in your or my power to do, too. He has walked from one region to another, but there is nothing magical or miraculous about that. He has simply chosen his course and gone. That much is completely ordinary.

But it is this choice that sets up the miraculous healing that includes, as you may well know, both fellow Jews like Jesus and at least one Samaritan, this "other" who receives the healing just as much as all of Jesus' fellow kin-folk. The miracle can happen--or at least, this particular miracle for these particular people, can happen--because Jesus has made the perfectly ordinary, non-supernatural choice to walk through a place that everyone else is afraid to go through. Others would be afraid of getting to close to roving leper groups and getting sick... or that there could be violent robbers in this empty borderland between territories... or that his own people would be upset at him for crossing into Samaria and--gasp!--helping Samaritans... or that the Samaritans themselves might be suspicious of Jesus and assume he was hostile to them. There are a long list of sound reasons why Jesus shouldn't go through this border region... but he does it anyway. That choice is remarkable to me.

As we live through this day, we cannot predict or control the miraculous. We can't heal someone's illness by sheer willpower, walk on water, or raise the dead like Jesus does. But we can choose where we walk today, which will affect where God might use us. Like the old line attributed to Wayne Gretzky puts it, you miss one hundred percent of the shots you don't take, and Jesus cannot heal lepers he never encounters. His choice to go into this borderland, knowing it is the sort of place where people might need him and where no one else wants to go, makes him available to be a help to the people there in that place.

You and I can keep to our routines today, certainly. We can keep our heads down, stay inside our homes and cars and keep our office doors shut, and never risk going beyond, if we so choose. But as long as we are keeping ourselves in those safe routine places, we will never be available for the folks to whom God might have sent us if we dared go into the margins. You'll never meet someone who is struggling to make ends meet if you only ever stay inside your gated suburban development. You'll never meet anybody who has been followed through a store because of their skin color if you only ever talk to people whose ancestors came from Germany or England. You'll never be in the position to tell someone who has been told God's love is not for them that they are indeed beloved and precious in God's sight if you only make friends with Respectable Religious people. And you'll never be able to be used to bring healing to someone's life if you never go where the hurting people might be.

Jesus knows the risks and the provocations he might incur for setting his feet on the pathway through the border... but he does it anyway, because that is what the Reign of God looks like. Before any miracles happen, the Reign of God is clear and present just in Jesus' ordinary walking into the space between "us" and "them."

God give us the courage to go where you would lead us today, and to love the people you send across our path today.

God Stacks the Deck--October 10, 2025

God Stacks the Deck--October 10, 2025

"Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God, who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, and this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel." (2 Timothy 1:8-10)

To hear the Bible itself tell it, before the beginning of everything, there were aces already dealt from up God's sleeve right into our hands.  Even before the words "Let there be light" brought the universe banging into existence, God had stacked the deck in our favor. Before we were born, before we did a thing good or bad, and even before we even came to faith in Jesus, walked into a church, or read the Bible, God lavished grace on us.  And, as these verses that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship remind us, "this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began."

What an astonishing claim. Before we brought anything to the equation--and apart from the number of points racked up, gold stars earned, or A-pluses noted on our permanent record--God claimed us, saved us, and called us. It sounds unfair to some ears, or at least it sounds scandalously different from our usual way of talking about Respectable Religion.  Much more popular in American Christianity is a version of the gospel that says, "If you accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior first, then you will have you name added to the list for heaven." or "If you have shown yourself to be a sufficiently moral, adequately attending churchgoer, you will get eternal life when you die."  You've got to do your part first.  You've got to measure up as a prerequisite for being deemed acceptable.  You've got to earn your spot, basically. But these verses from what we call Second Timothy (along with much of the New Testament, mind you) turn the tables--they don't start with "what WE do," but rather with "what GOD has done."  

More to the point, these verses say that my hope is not so much that I made a good decision to choose Jesus to be my Savior, so much as God in Christ chose, saved, and called me.  Salvation isn't a reward for me making the smart choice of accepting Jesus; it's the gift that comes because God made the gracious choice to accept me through Jesus.  I might not have realized what God has done already for me until some other point in my life (however early or late that might be), but from God's perspective, the deck has been stacked from before the cards were dealt in the first place. Grace sought us out. Any seeking and finding of God that I do is made possible because God already sought and found me first.  And it's God's finding of me that matters, ultimately, not my proficiency at impressing God.

And of course, that gracious seeking and finding on God's part isn't just for me in the singular.  As these words first written to Timothy remind us, they are spoken in the plural: to "us" not just "to me." In other words, I don't get to say, "I must be God's favorite because God chose me before I did anything good or bad." But rather, that's the only way any of us find that we belong.  For all of us, it's nothing but grace, baby. There is nobody who earns their way in, and there is nobody who pulls themselves up by their own bootstraps from God's perspective.  Neither the worst thing we've ever done, nor our best and brightest accomplishment tipped the scales to determine whether God loves us. There has only ever been God's choice, simply because of who God is and how God loves, to call us precisely that: "beloved."

That realization is really quite odd in a culture obsessed with achieving, accomplishing, and comparing ourselves to everybody else.  We are used to hearing that there's a limited number of spots on the team, and therefore you have to distinguish yourself by being better than all the rest--you earn your place by outperforming or outcompeting everyone else.   We are used to thinking that there has to be a catch or a task or a way of proving our value in order to access God's goodness and favor, because honestly just about every other voice around us talks like that--that there are only transactions of earning or acquiring scarce resources and a limited supply of perks.  How else, they ask, would we be able to tell who is worthy of the good things or preferred status?  

And then along comes the gospel which sounds like a crazy idea from out in left field out on the margins: it's not about me finding Jesus, but about Jesus having found us.  It's not about me choosing God but about God having chosen us.  It's not about me accepting Christ into my heart, but about Christ having accepted me into his--and all of it without depending on my pedigree, my resume, my behavior, or my shows of piety.  It has only ever been by grace.  That sort of deck-stacking is wonderfully scandalous. And that's what we've been entrusted to share with the world.

That's right: we aren't sent to be Jesus' salvation salesforce, peddling some religious to-do list that will make us worthy of grace.  We are sent to announce that it's already a free gift, and there are no strings, conditions, or hoops to jump through first.  We are sent to tell the world that God has already declared us home-free before the universe began, and that if it sounds unfair, it's not cheating because this isn't a game and we aren't competing with everyone else for a limited number of spots in some celestial winner's circle.  Instead, it's like we have all been declared members of God's family before we start the day and head out into the world, and there is nothing that can take that belonging away.  You don't say it's "cheating" or "unfair" when you tell everyone in the family "I love you" as they head out to school or work at the start of the day, because you know already: family is not a competition, and love is not a game.  So the same is true, Second Timothy tells us, with God and all of us.  In Christ, God has already abolished death, and it cannot get the last word over us anymore.  In Christ, God has already chosen us, called us, and saved us, before we did a thing, and before the universe began. Or, if you like, in Christ, God has already declared us "home safe" like an umpire before we've even gotten up to bat. Because our being "safe" or "saved" was never up to our ability or dependent on our swinging.  It has always and only been a gift of grace.

Now, go and tell that news to someone--and just see if they don't at first stare at you like you are a space alien with three heads or a nutcase from out in left field... and then watch as it dawns on them that the news is true after all, and their skeptical looks melt into delicious smiles of joy as they realize they are beloved already, too.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to share the news of your surprising and scandalous love with everyone we meet.

The Same Fire--October 9, 2025

The Same Fire--October 9, 2025

"I am grateful to God—whom I worship with a clear conscience, as my ancestors did—when I remember you constantly in my prayers night and day. Recalling your tears, I long to see you so that I may be filled with joy. I am reminded of your sincere faith, a faith that lived first in your grandmother Lois and your mother Eunice and now, I am sure, lives in you. For this reason I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you through the laying on of my hands, for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline." (2 Timothy 1:3-7)

Let me pose a thought experiment for us to mull over together. If I strike a match and then take the newly formed flame to a candle to light it, does that burning candle now have the same flame as the match held?  Is it the same fire?

The same question would hold on Christmas Eve, as we pass the flame from one small white candle to another while "Silent Night" strikes up as the closing carol and the lights of the sanctuary are dimmed.  Is it all the same fire, since the flame has been passed from one central candle to all the rest?

Or on a larger (like global!) scale, when the Olympic flame is carried around the world in advance of the next round of Olympic games, and it moves from country to country by runners, dignitaries, and athletes, is it the same fire when that individual torch is used to ignite a large fire during the opening ceremonies at the stadium where the games will be held?

I'm not trying to mess with your heads as if this is merely a brain teaser like the old philosophical paradox they call "the Ship of Theseus" thought experiment (although, boy, there's an interesting rabbit hole to go down sometime!). But my reason for asking is that the early Christian community saw itself very much like a series of runners in something like a relay race, or like the Olympic torch bearers, carrying something that was constant (faith rooted in Christ Jesus) but which was also brought individually to each person, in whose care the flame burned in its own particular way.  In a very real and important sense, we are only stewards of something that was first given to us, not inventors of something new.  No matter how many new church programs, denominational slogans, spiritual trends, or inspirational TED Talks come and go, there is something constant about the Christian faith, something which doesn't have to be re-approved, voted on, repackaged, or marketed. 

And yet at the same time, the torch by which we carry the flame today might look a little different from the torches they used a hundred years ago, or a thousand years ago--or even two thousand.  The torches they used for the Olympic flames long ago were merely sticks with a fuel-soaked rag on one end, and today's are elegantly crafted in modern curvilinear forms, and are fueled with hidden cartridges of butane and propane, but it's all supposed to be the same fire, right?  Well, as these verses from 2 Timothy, which many of us heard this past Sunday, describe it, that's much how the Christian faith is passed, too.  It's in some sense the same fire, passed from one wick to another, one candle to another, one torch to another, but with each individual instrument carrying the flame differently.  In the case of this letter written to a young still-green-behind-the-ears pastor named Timothy, that same faith had been burning bright in his grandmother Eunice, and then was passed along to his mother Lois, and had eventually come to Timothy, too.  And as the writer of this letter addresses him, he does so again with the imagery of carrying a flame: "I remind you to rekindle the gift of God that is within you."  Maybe the whole Christian life is a matter of tending a fire--keeping the one that is already burning within us ("like a fire in the bones" as Jeremiah once put it), but also passing it along to others who are waiting for the light.  

That perspective has a way of humbling us, especially us preachers, who sometimes like to imagine that it falls on us to come up with a way to make the Gospel "trendy" or invent a marketing campaign to make the church look "cool," or to craft, at long last, some "new" expression of theology that will finally answer everyone's questions and remove all the paradoxes, tensions, and confusion.  None of that is our task.  We are torchbearers, all of us, who first find ourselves as recipients of a flame we did not ignite by our own ingenuity but received as a gift, and who then pass it along from one wick to another that is waiting for the light, without needing to worry that the sharing of the fire with others diminishes the brightness of our own one bit.  Or, as the late Robert Farrar Capon put it, echoing that imagery of runners in a long relay, "We are, when all is said and done, only preachers of a word we have received. When we stand up on Easter morning and say, ‘Christ is risen!’ we are not arguing for the abstract possibility of resurrection; we are simply announcing what was announced to us. We arrive in our several pulpits not as the bearers of proof but as the latest runners in a long relay race; not as savants with arguments to take away the doubts of the faithful but as breathless messengers who have only recently spoken to Peter himself: The Lord is risen indeed (gasp, gasp) and has appeared (pant, pant, pant) to Simon!”

You and I were first handed the flame by somebody else--maybe a parent or grandparent like Timothy had experienced from his mother and grandmother, or maybe a Sunday School teacher, a mentor, a pastor, an author, or some long-dead saint whose story or words sparked something in you.  And after receiving the light from those who first shared the love and way of Jesus with us, now we pass it out further--we share our faith with other people who are waiting to receive the same fire we were first given.  Some will be young children who are hearing it all for the first time. Some will be people who grew up in church and left their faith to wither on the vine or dwindle like old spent charcoal. Others will be people who have been burned before by people who weaponized their faith and used their torches to kick people out who didn't fit in or match expectations.  And still others will be the ones with burning questions about the Big Things that have been waiting for someone to meet them in their curiosity without getting defensive or scolding them for their doubts.  

In other words, you and I will always be sent outward to pass the light to people who have their wicks ready to receive it, again like the shared flame of candlelight on Christmas Eve radiating out from the center of the room and the flame of the Christ Candle.  Being a follower of Jesus will always push us toward the margins, toward the edges, in that place between the familiar brightness of those who shared the light with us first and the new unseen places we cannot yet see or grasp.  Being a follower of Jesus will always direct us toward the margins, in other words, to offer the same fire we have found compelling with others who seek the same warmth and radiance. And once again, we are back at that insight of Madeleine L'Engle: "We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it." 

That's today's work: to offer the light first given to you to the people around you.  Not as arrogant know-it-alls who think the light is our invention; not as angry culture warriors who weaponize the flame to threaten or intimidate others with it; and not as inward-looking comfort seekers who only stay where the flames are already burning just fine.  But rather, we take the same fire that was first kindled in us, the one whose story traces always the way back to the dancing tongues of flame as the Spirit blew through the room on Pentecost twenty centuries ago, and we pass it out, lavishly and extravagantly, to whatever wicks are around us, waiting for the light.

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for the witness and words of those who shared your good news with us first, and we ask for the courage and love to share it with those you send across our path today.

When the World Feels Broken--October 8, 2025

When the World Feels Broken--October 8, 2025

The oracle that the prophet Habakkuk saw.
    O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
  and you will not listen?
 Or cry to you “Violence!”
  and you will not save?
 Why do you make me see wrongdoing
  and look at trouble?
 Destruction and violence are before me;
  strife and contention arise.
 So the law becomes slack,
  and justice never prevails.
 The wicked surround the righteous;
  therefore judgment comes forth perverted. (Habakkuk 1:1-4)

There are days when I wake up and already the whole world feels rotten. It's like before your feet even hit the floor as the alarm goes off, the cruelty, violence, crookedness, apathy, and avarice of the world have already been up long before you and making a mess of things. I don't know about you, but it often feels to me like those rotten days come more frequently and more ferociously than they used to, even if I can't quite put my finger on why or when it all started.  

On those days, between the moment I silence my alarm and grope in the dark to put my slippers on, I often remind myself that God is also present in the world, and has been up and at work while I have been sleeping.  And that gives a certain kind of hope and comfort, I'll concede; it is a good reminder that the world's restoration does not rest on my shoulders, nor any of our shoulders alone. 

But then a second thought comes to me, there in the dark before the dawn: if God has already been at work in the world before I woke up, then why is there so much of all the rotten stuff still doing its damnedest to ruin the world? Why, if God cares about justice, does it so often seem like the villains and crooks get away with their villainy and crookedness? Why, if God cares about compassion, is the world so full of meanness? Why, if God is truly good and powerful, does deception and bitterness and selfishness seem so strong? Have you ever been there, standing in the dark at the start of a new day, wondering what to do when the world feels broken?

Well, for whatever it's worth, at least we have some company: the prophet Habakkuk knows what that feels like.  Many of us heard these words in worship this past Sunday, and even if you didn't know the particulars of Habakkuk's situation or place in history, you might find yourself nodding along in sad disagreement.  We look out the windows, listen to the news, or scroll the comment section--and then we also find ourselves wondering why God can seem silent when we cry out about the violence and wrongdoing around us, or when we lament how "strife and contention" seem to win out and "justice" seems to lose.

On those days, I feel in my bones the words of that poem of Langston Hughes, "Tired," from 1931, which goes:

"I am so tired of waiting,
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two -
And see what worms are eating
At the rind."

That's where Habakkuk is. He sees crookedness, ugliness, and meanness all around him, in his own society (which is "supposed" to know better, and to have God's own instructions for practicing justice, mercy, and humility in the Torah's covenant), and his biggest concern is aimed at God: "Why aren't you doing anything about all this?" The prophet knows what it feels like to wake up and discover that the ones in power who were supposed to promote justice, peace, and the common good have been tirelessly doing the opposite, and he has been asking God, "Why haven't you stopped them yet?" If you've been in Habakkuk's sandals before, maybe that question has been on your lips, too.

When you are in a place like that, and you find yourself questioning why God is allowing awful things to happen to people in the world (especially when the awful things are being perpetuated by the authorities who were entrusted with promoting justice and the common good), it can even make you wonder whether God is even there. Sometimes it seems easier to believe that there just is no God than to come up with an explanation for why a God who is supposed to be good permits the powers who are tasked with maintaining justice to thwart and undermine it.  

That was actually where the famous British Christian writer of the early 20th century, C.S. Lewis, found himself before his own coming to faith.  He felt for a time like the injustice in the world--its cruelty and violence--was evidence that God could not be real (or good) given the brokenness of the world itself. He wrote, "My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?" And that actually began a journey of faith for him, ultimately leading him not only to become a Christian, but eventually to become a prolific writer of Christian theology and apologetics (trying to make the case for the plausibility or truth of the faith for outsiders).  But it is worth noting that Lewis, like the prophet Habakkuk, could only get to a place of deep faith in God by being honest about how far away and distant he felt from the idea of God in the face of the world's brokenness.

All of this is to say that when you and I are feeling overwhelmed at the cruelty in the headlines or the crookedness in the news, we are invited by prophets like Habakkuk and voices like C.S. Lewis to be honest in bringing those questions and frustration to God.  Neither of them pulled punches or stifled themselves by saying, "I'm not allowed to ask questions or have doubts," and neither of them settled for simplistic non-answers like, "It must all be part of God's plan," or "Everything happens for a reason." Instead, when the world feels broken, people of authentic faith know they are invited by God to bring those accusations directly to God.  We are invited, even when we feel far from God like we are out on the margins away from the other "religious" people who don't seem upset about the world like we are, still to bring our questions, our doubts, and our cries for the world to be put right.  God can not only take whatever verbal punches we have to throw, but often in the Bible God is the one prompting people to recognize and name the injustice around them, and to seek God's action to do something about it!

So, okay, our first thing to note is that when we feel deflated or discouraged by the rottenness around us, we are not only allowed, but encouraged, to bring those feelings to God, including the accusations, angry prayers, and bitter doubts that come with them.  All of that is fair game.  And then, where we go from there could take several different forms. For Habakkuk in today's verses, the next step is God's answer to be patient for the moment because he doesn't have all the facts and doesn't see the next thing coming that will radically reframe the situation. And yes, sometimes that is the word to us, too--that our calling for the moment is to wait with our eyes open, because, like the old Sam Cooke anthem put it, "A Change Is Gonna Come."  But that's not the only possibility.  Sometimes, God's response comes like it does through Mordecai to Queen Esther (in the book of Esther), with the challenge for us to do our part to answer evil with good and to take the risks of speaking up and stepping out in our own times.  So sometimes God's answer isn't so much, "Just keep waiting, and eventually it will get better," but rather, "Use YOUR platform to speak up and protect those who are most endangered and at risk in your time!"  Sometimes God's answer to our prayer includes us as the means by which things are put right, or the hurting are given comfort, or the powerful who are abusing their positions are called to account.  We should be prepared for that possibility, just as much as the possibility that we may have to be patient.

To be sure, there are plenty of other ways that conversation with God might go, too.  Each of us living our own version of that conversation right now day by day, and each of us may be led both to be patient in some situations and to press forward in others.  But what I find so helpful and encouraging from these words of Habakkuk is that even his deepest doubts point him, like C.S. Lewis, to a point of confidence that God really does care about putting the world right.  We only ask God, "Why aren't you doing something about this injustice and cruelty?" if we really believe that God does care about justice and compassion.  And that's why it is so beautiful to me that these heartfelt, desperate words from Habakkuk were preserved in our Bible--their presence, which the church confesses to be inspired by God, no less--is evidence that sometimes God is the One provoking us, like the prophet, to see where things are rotten rather than to ignore them, and to be upset about them.  God, in other words, is the One prompting Habakkuk to cry out to God and ask, "Why aren't you doing something about this?" God is the One who is first outraged at the cruelty and violence of the world, and at least sometimes, God is the One provoking us to see it all, too, when we had been comfortably indifferent. Maybe part of God's way of mending what is broken begins by stirring us up to care about it, too, rather than turning away.

I know it is tempting in such times to bury our heads in the sand or turn off the news to live in the bliss of ignorance.  Habakkuk would counsel us not to do that, but instead to bring all of our heartache over the meanness and selfishness in the world and the seeming triumph of the bullies and blowhards to God directly, and then to see how God leads us to respond. At least part of faith is trusting that God will lead us to respond to it all, even if we can't see how yet.

Lord God, we lift up to you all the ways our hearts are in turmoil over the brokenness of the world.  Mend what is broken, thwart what is evil, change in us what is turned away from you, and give us the patience and open ears to be ready for when you call us to be a part of your work to set things right.

Freed... to Serve--October 7, 2025

Freed... to Serve--October 7, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Who among you would say to your slave who has just come in from plowing or tending sheep in the field, 'Come here at once and take your place at the table?' Would you not rather say to him, 'Prepare supper for me; put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink; later you may eat and drink?' Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded? So you also, when you have done all that you were ordered to do, say, 'We are worthless slaves; we have only done what we ought to have done!'" (Luke 17:7-10)

These words of Jesus are just plain hard to wrap our brains around.  Let's not ignore that elephant in the room; let's muster up the courage to ask it to dance. 

It is hard to know what to make of a scene like Jesus describes here, even if these words themselves ring with familiarity from hearing them read in worship, as many of us experienced this past Sunday. And it is hard for us to imagine a positive image--much less one coming from the mouth of Jesus--that takes the presence of slavery as a given rather than insisting on its immediate abolition. (This is, after all, the same Jesus whose inaugural sermon in Luke's gospel begins with Jesus claiming the prophet's calling to "proclaim release to the captives" and "to set free those who are oppressed." One is tempted to ask Jesus, "What gives?") Part of the difficulty is just the vast difference between our time and culture and that of Jesus' time and culture--we don't know how to picture life with the institution of slavery still woven into a larger number of households, and our memory of slavery as Americans is different from the ancient world's.    

Let's name that part first: we live in a society whose history involves both a deep dependence on slavery and a literal war that tore the country apart over the question of slavery.  For centuries, the economic engine of the colonies and the eventual nation that become the United States was fueled by slave labor, which itself became a machine of permanent subjugation of people because of their ancestry and skin color.  That story has been called "America's original sin," and it is an apt description. Its aftermath still taints and troubles relations between ethnic and racial groups in America today, and its ripple effects still show up in the disparities in income, generational wealth, family trauma, and the day-to-day experience of ordinary life. And now, a hundred and sixty years since the end of the American Civil War (and sixty years since the Civil Rights Movement sought to address lingering effects of race-based chattel slavery), we live in a culture in which it is unthinkable (hopefully) to claim to own another human being, or to order someone around while simultaneously thinking of them as somehow part of your household.  That just doesn't compute for our minds--and I am grateful for that.

But all of that history--our particular history as Americans--makes it much harder for us to put ourselves back mentally in the first century Greco-Roman world, in which slavery was not only common, but also in many ways quite a different institution from what was done to the enslaved in our country's history.  For one, people ended up in various forms of servitude or slavery for a number of different reasons--you could end up as a debt-servant or indentured servant as a way of paying off debts you had accumulated (once they foreclose on your house and land, the only asset you have to pay off debts is your labor, after all). Your town, region, or nation might have been conquered by the Empire, and you could have ended up enslaved as a consequence of their conquest. Or you might end up in slavery as a punishment for some kind of crime (maybe you can picture that famous scene from the movie Ben-Hur when the enslaved crew have to row the warship to the beat of a drumming soldier).  In other words, there was not an assumption that any particular racial group or skin color was purposefully kept in chains, and there was at least the possibility (in cases of debt-servitude) that you might be released from your situation when the debt was paid off.  So, again, the form of slavery in the Greek and Roman world during the ministry of Jesus wasn't identical with the experience of African Americans in our own country's history.

The other thing to keep in mind, I think, in a passage like this one, is that the alternative for many people who were on the bottom rungs of the socioeconomic ladder in this culture was to be a day-laborer, which was precarious in its own way.  Just like with day-laborers today, who might wait outside a hardware store or construction site in the hopes that the foreman might need them for work that day, in the ancient world many people lived hand-to-mouth as day laborers hoping that they would be hired, in order to be able to feet their families tomorrow.  That's a scary arrangement, since it can mean the chance (or even likelihood) that if you don't get hired today, your family goes hungry tomorrow.  If you are a day-laborer, every day is going to feel like a competition with everybody else around you: there are only so many spots, and you need to make yourself stand out so that you are the one who gets hired, and your kids are the ones who get to eat.  That has got to make for a constantly anxious, perpetually fearful way of life.  In that context, to be a servant or slave in a household, by contrast, might actually look like it offers more of a safety net, so to speak--at least in the sense that you knew you and your needs would be attended to and you wouldn't be out on the streets if you didn't get hired anew every morning.  In fact, that difference might be the key to Jesus' story.

So let's come back to the passage many of us heard on Sunday.  If I am a servant in an ancient household, for however unpleasant that might be in a host of ways (beyond the unquestionable injustice of slavery--please don't forget that!), the one thing that I could at least count on was that there was a place for me to sleep and a head of the household who was guaranteeing that I would be fed and clothed enough for me to do the work they intended for me to do.  That is to say, unlike day-laborers who have to constantly make themselves look better than their competition, in order to get hired, so that then they can do the work, in order to be paid at day's end, so that they can feed their families, the servants in a household know that they have a place there in the household, relatively speaking.  You belong.   That much you could count on. Day laborers didn't have that kind of assurance--it is the flipside of having "freedom," I suppose.

So imagine, then, if you find yourself serving in a household like that. You know you have a place there, and you know that you belong. You also know that you don't have to compete for the attention or goodwill of an employer in order to get food, clothing, or shelter. In fact, you don't need to worry at all, in that sense, about whether your needs will be met.  They will be. That's the one commitment the "lord" of the house can be counted on to follow through on: your needs will be taken care of. So you are, in a sense, finally free just to do the work you have been called to do.  There's no need for elbowing your coworkers and fellow servants out of the limelight or trying to get more attention on yourself.  There's no need to try and get special recognition that puts you above everybody else. And there's no worry that you'll get to the end of the day and not have your needs taken care of.  You can simply be the one who serves, trusting that all that is needful will be provided for you in time.

Now, again, I know the imagery of servants dutifully saying, "We have only done what we ought to have done!" seems odd at best and cringeworthy at worst. But it is also worth remembering that the One who tells this little thought experiment is the same One who insists that he came "not to be served but to serve." That is, Jesus doesn't talk down to those in the role of servants as one who has never had to wash feet or take the lowliest place.  He says is as the One whose whole way of being the Messiah was to be a servant.  As the apostle Paul will say in his letter to the Philippians (likely quoting an even earlier hymn that the congregation knew): "Christ Jesus... did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness..." (Philippians 2:5-7).  In other words, Jesus himself knows what it is to take on the servant's role; he is not speaking as a would-be master looking down on "the help." Jesus is "the help" too. Jesus is the servant who gives us the freedom of serving alongside of him.

Maybe that's really what this is about.  For us as the community of Jesus' disciples, we no longer have to worry about making ourselves stand out sufficiently so that we get "picked" to be on Jesus' team. We are not the equivalent of day-laborers who have go out every morning and try to prove our worthiness and earn a spot among the staff so that we can get a paycheck. We are servants who already belong in the household and already know that the Lord of the house will provide for our needs.  We are at last free simply to do what God has called us to do, because we are done with needing to impress a prospective boss enough to hire us for the day or elbowing someone else out of competition.  Because we know we belong, we are free to serve.

I wonder what we have been hung up on because of our need to be "good enough" or at least be "better than" the next person, when Jesus has been saying all along, "You already belong. You are now simply free to do what I've called you to do--to serve alongside of me, since I have come to serve, too."  When we see that our place as servants in the household of God puts us shoulder to shoulder and side by side with Jesus, the Servant, perhaps we'll see that is the best possible place for us to be.

If you knew you didn't have to waste a moment trying to prove yourself or get attention and accolades, what would you finally be free to do? What ways of serving God--perhaps easily unnoticed or behind the scenes--could we finally take up because we aren't fussing over getting credit or "points" for our actions? How might we be freed to serve... today?

Lord Jesus, help us to find the freedom to serve beside you today.

The Object of Our Faith--October 6, 2025

The Object of Our Faith--October 6, 2025

The apostles said to the Lord, "Increase our faith!" The Lord replied, "If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and planted in the sea,' and it would obey you."(Luke 17:5-6)

Here's some rough back-of-the-envelope math for you. When a single atom of uranium splits in nuclear fission (yes, a single atom), it releases about 200 million electrical volts of energy.  That's 200,000,000 volts, thanks to Einstein's famous equation that a tiny amount of mass can yield mind-blowing amounts of energy through relativity's exchange rate of E=mc squared.

All that from a single tiny atom, something so small you can't even see it, made up of even tinier particles you can hardly even comprehend.  And all of us are made up of unthinkably large numbers of atoms (the rough number is 7 x 10 to the 27th power of atoms in a single human being, or seven billion billion billion atoms).  So there is a LOT of energy in VERY LITTLE things out there--it's really just a question of having the right particular atoms and the right way to harness their energy.  After all, that uranium atom can either be used as part of a nuclear power plant or a nuclear bomb--both unleash huge amounts of energy, but in very different ways.  And the right kinds of atoms are needed, too: the carbon that makes up you and me is a great deal more stable and less likely to start a chain reaction than uranium is.

It's right about here that my recollections of high school chemistry and physics comes to an end, but the takeaway for me is this: sometimes we don't need "more" in order to tap immense potential. Sometimes we simply need to learn how to unleash the power of the very small things already in our hands. In fact some things that are both quite powerful and very real don't really work in terms of quantifiable terms of "more" and "less." You can't commodify things like "love," "wonder," "trust," or "hope" into serving sizes or standard units--nobody says, "I love you three units more than yesterday," and no one would break out a calculator and determine they have "58% more awe at the beauty of nature than last year." Some things can't be reduced to quanta like that. 

I have a hunch that Jesus would put faith in that category--at least when we are talking about faith rooted in the living God. 

In this scene from Luke's gospel which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, some of Jesus' disciples ask him, "Increase our faith." They are immediately thinking of faith like it is a commodity that can be measured, quantified, and boxed up in appropriate serving sizes.  "Don't give us a small, Jesus!  We want the extra value meal version--supersize our faith!"  And to our ears, I imagine there is a certain logic to their request.  After all, why settle for the regular size candy bar when there's a "king size" available?  Why get the six-pack of toilet paper when I could buy the twenty-four pack of extra-large double-size rolls?  Why settle for a small drink when there's a Big Gulp as an option?  The disciples of Jesus are thinking in the same terms--if a little faith is good, well, then, it must be better to have more.  Therefore, they assume, the smart and pious thing to ask of Jesus is for more faith.

Jesus' response suggests that maybe the issue with faith isn't really whether you have a lot or a little.  After all, Jesus says, "if you had faith as tiny as a grain of mustard, it could turn the world upside down." And we're back to the immense amounts of power held in tiny subatomic odds and ends.  It's not a matter of needing more, but perhaps of how to use the immense energy already at hand.

But... wait a second. If you and I only need such a tiny amount of faith to uproot mulberry trees (or move mountains, as another Gospel passage puts it), then why aren't we seeing shrubberies flying through the air and landing in the lake on a regular basis? Why aren't we mowing down forests with our minds or bulldozing the Rockies with a wiggle of our ears and a nod of our heads? Don't we have faith?

Maybe, once again, we are thinking of things the wrong way. Maybe we are imagining that faith is simply a raw power source that can be used like fuel--to go in any direction we choose--when in reality, faith's power doesn't come from faith itself, but from the One in whom we place our trust.  That is to say, from the vantage point of the Scriptures, it's not so much that faith is a magic power, but that the God in whom we believe is powerful.  We aren't called to have faith in the sheer power of faith, but faith in the living God.  It's not that if I believe "harder" my faith will become more powerful, but rather it is always about whether the One in whom my faith is rooted is able to do great things.  

But that's different from me wielding power like the Force in Star Wars, to use as I choose in any way I see fit.  In stories like that, mastering "the Force" is about learning the proper techniques, developing a certain concentration, and acquiring a set of skills to do what you want to be able to do: lightning from your fingers, making your spaceship levitate, healing a wound, seeing an object even when your eyes are covered, or whatever.  Jesus doesn't talk like that. Jesus doesn't offer Jedi training in how to use your faith to levitate shrubberies on a whim, because that's not how faith works.  Faith's power depends entirely on the object of our faith--that is, the One in whom we place our trust.  I can't uproot a mulberry tree by believing in myself hard enough, even if I call it "having faith in myself," because I don't have that kind of innate power.  I can't make myself levitate by wishing hard enough on a star in the evening sky, because stars do not have that ability to grant, and wishing is meaningless. But I can trust in God (who is never my personal genie), who does indeed part the sea and raises the dead.  That God can do infinitely more than I can ask or imagine, but not like a short-order cook or a cosmic vending machine.

Like we said on the subatomic level, the atoms in my body aren't going power a generator because my atoms (and yours) aren't made of the right stuff. For fission you need uranium or plutonium, of course--and the means to harness their power in the right ways.  Maybe something similar is true about our faith.  It's not faith in my own faith that can move mountains or transplant trees.  It's a trust in the living God who made the world in the first place that has potential, because that God is the One who formed the world in the first place.  The One in whom we place our trust makes all the difference--and yes, even a tiny amount of trust in the living God opens up awesome possibilities.  

Maybe today, our job is to unlearn the way our culture has taught us to see everything--including faith itself--as a commodity that can be quantified, and therefore supersized.  Maybe we can see that some of the most essential things in life--like faith, love, beauty, and courage--do not work like that. And instead, we can spend our effort rooting our trust in the living God, who can not only uproot mulberry trees, but can raise the dead and create a universe from scratch.  After all, that God is the One who gives us faith in the first place.

Lord God, enable us to place our trust more fully and honestly in you--and then do what you will among us and in us.

Where the Paper Clips Don't Go--October 3, 2025

Where the Paper Clips Don't Go--October 3, 2025

"As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but rather on God who richly provides everything for our enjoyment. They are to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life." [1 Timothy 6:17-19]

I'd like you to imagine something absurd with me for a moment. 

Imagine I get my acoustic guitar out, and I notice it's hollow on the inside, and I think to myself, "I know--that would be a great place to store stuff!" And so I start cramming that guitar full of whatever small possessions I can find: pencils and pens, sticky notes, tissues yanked from the box, thumbtacks and paper clips. And laughing in triumph, I think to myself, "Look at all this stuff I have amassed for myself--and nobody can take it from me, because I've squirreled it all away here in the soundbox of my guitar! Ha ha--just try to come and take them away from me now, suckers!"

And you would think, watching this scene unfold, "What an absolute moron that Steve is!"

You would be right. 

Stuffing one's guitar full of paper-clips is an act of monumental buffoonery, because it makes both the paper-clips and the guitar unusable. Now, none of it is going to work rightly, because I have tried to hoard what is not meant to be hoarded, and I have filled what was meant to be kept empty.

Take a look at that sentence again:  none of my possessions would be useful in this scene, because I would have hoarded what is not meant to be hoarded, and filled what was meant to be empty.  

I'm not sure we are trained to think in those terms, honestly.  I'm not sure we are taught that it is not always a good idea to amass more and more for myself. We have even less instruction in the possibility that some things in life are meant to be held empty.  Instead, we are told over and over that the way to "win" in life is to acquire and accumulate, endlessly hungry and never satisfied. And we are told that it is nonsense to build your life around giving toward others rather than holding on to as much for yourself as possible. We have been raised in a system that told us you were the winner at life if you stuff your guitar full of office supplies, and then of course we are then set up to teach our children to do the same with theirs.  Trouble is, we end up with a deathly silence instead of music, because we have all ruined our instruments packing them full of things we have hoarded.  And then we wonder why we are joyless and full of strife in our communities, convinced that we should be happy because we've got lots of "stuff" and confused because we're not.

I want to suggest that the New Testament has been telling us all along why we are so out of sorts.  The letter we call First Timothy says it plain as day:  the life that "really is" life is not a matter of acquisition, but of self-giving.  And when we get it backwards (like so many voices around us are actively training us to do), we end up ruining the good things entrusted to us by hoarding what is meant to be shared, and filling what is meant to remain empty.  We end up with guitars that won't play, and paper-clips we can't actually use because were too obsessed with keeping them all.  We end up less than fully alive.

So when the pastoral voice in these verses, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, says that those who are rich in the present world are to be generous and share their possessions, it is for the good of both the giver and the receiver.  Those who receive get enough to eat and to feed their kids--they are brought to life.  And those who give have their guitars emptied out a little, which is exactly what their instruments need in order to be able to make music the way they were meant to.  The goal is for everyone to be resurrected from our different kinds of deathliness.  And maybe one of the epiphanies we are each waiting to have is the realization that each of our well-being is connected to the other's: those who are drowning in possessions, dying of affluenza, need to be brought to life by giving away what was never meant to be hoarded forever.  And those who are dying of hunger, drowning in the world's indifference, need to be brought to life by receiving the gifts God intended us all to share anyway.  When I share what I have with you, I honor you and regard you as worthy, as accepted, as companion.  And when I receive from you what you would share, I honor you and regard you as well--because sometimes what the would-be giver needs is the opportunity to give.  In that endless circle of sharing, we are all made more fully alive--we each find ourselves pulled a little out of the grave.  And maybe, just maybe, we get a glimpse of what God's own life is like in the Triune loop-de-loops of self-giving between the Persons we have come to call Father, Son, and Spirit.  Endless giving, endless receiving, endless honoring of one another in the flow.  That sounds, quite honestly, divine.

Perhaps we would do well on a day like today to hush those voices inside us that want to immediately react to a passage like this by saying, "No one can make me give what's mine to somebody else who doesn't deserve it!  It's mine!  They didn't earn it!  That's not the American way!" and instead to listen to what the apostle has to say here.  After all, whether it is or isn't "the American way" to hoard or to share isn't really the issue at hand.  We're not promised that "the American way" will love us into new creation.  We're not told that anybody's flag will give us the life that really is life.  Instead, we are told here by the apostle that the same God who gives generously to all of us has made us to share in that generosity with one another, because that is the point of life itself.

We are told, in other words, that it is high time for us to empty out our guitars of the paper-clips we have been hoarding in there, both so that the office supplies can be used as they were meant to, but also so that we can strum along with the music of God at last.

Today, may your paper-clips be accessible and ready to be used, and may your guitar be empty enough to play a tune for everybody around.

Lord God, empty us where we need to be empty, and allow both us to share what you have entrusted to us and to receive what you have sent others across our path to give.

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

"In the presence of God, who gives life to all things, and of Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession, I charge you to keep the commandment without spot or blame until the manifestation of our Lord Jesus Christ, which he will bring about at the right time—he who is the blessed and only Sovereign, the King of kings and Lord of lords." (1 Timothy 6:13-15)

Not only did Jesus have a hasty criminal trial in front of the Roman authorities, but the first Christians didn't try to hide that fact.  Rather than sweeping the details of the official imperial interrogation under the rug because they could hurt the reputation of the early Christian movement, they remembered it and held onto those details as an integral part of the story of Jesus.  

That really is remarkable.

Just think for a moment if you were starting a new mission-start congregation--or for that matter, even just a social club among your friends and neighbors.  Would you be keen to bring up the criminal conviction of your organization's founder, or the missionary pastor who was starting up the church?  Would you be likely to mention in your elevator speech or promotional flyers, "Our leader was convicted by the legal authorities as worthy of death for his subversive political claims" (which is basically the charge that Pilate cared about)? Even if you maintained that your leader was innocent, or if you thought the charges or the trial were unfair, my guess is that a lot of us would want to keep those unpleasant details from even seeing the light of day.  A great deal of our society's civic life is built on the premise of keeping the skeletons from "our side" locked safely in the closet, while we ruthlessly try to publicize the skeletons from "their side."  So it really is something that the first generations of Christians held onto the details about Jesus' own trial before Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor.

Of course, the Gospel-writers didn't shy away from giving us all the tragic details of Jesus' arrest, questioning before the religious leaders, and subsequent trial in front of Pilate. But even more curious to me is that a passage like this one, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as part of our epistle reading, makes a point of remembering Jesus being on trial before Pontius Pilate.  I mean, the Gospel-writers are giving us something like a biography or a history of events in Jesus' life--I suppose they would have inevitably had to mention Jesus dying a criminal's death after receiving a death sentence from the legal system.  But the first letter to Timothy is sort of a pep talk given to a new young pastor--you might think the writer would want to focus only on the positives and leave out anything that might make young Pastor Tim rethink his career choices.  But instead, here we have another reminder that "Christ Jesus, who in his testimony before Pontius Pilate made the good confession,"  deliberately addressing that potential elephant in the room by bringing it up.  There's no getting away from it: the One whom we confess to be Son of God, and indeed as we say in the Creeds, "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God," is also the one we declare in those same Creeds who "suffered under Pontius Pilate."  What a scandalous thing to say, not merely about a human leader, but to claim about God!

And maybe that's the key to all of this.  If we were talking about just a human leader of an organization, it might be embarrassing to mention a criminal trial, or convictions.  I would certainly have a harder time trusting someone with authority if a duly appointed authority found them guilty of a significant crime.  But the Christian claim--like here in 1 Timothy--is that in this Jesus we meet the very face of the living God, and therefore, the trial, conviction, suffering, and death of Christ on a Roman cross are all signs of the depths our God is willing to go for the sake of redeeming the whole world.  And that means the scurrilous story of Jesus' criminal conviction isn't something to hide, but rather a truth a stand in awe of: the living God was willing to be so fully rejected and pushed to the margins that the power centers of the day (the Empire and its appointed Roman governor) convicted and executed Jesus, in whom the fullness of God dwelt.  As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it once, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross."  In a culture bent on impressing, dominating, and presenting only "wins" and "strength" in order to look tough, that is downright scandalous.  But it is also our only hope.

The One we name as "King of kings" and "Lord of lords," the "Blessed and only Sovereign," is also a convicted criminal who received a death-sentence and was willing to bear all the scorn, rejection, shame, and reproach that pushed him outside the bounds of polite society, beyond the city walls, and out to a godforsaken hill called Golgotha.  It seems there are no lengths to which this God will not go for us.

That's another important dimension of our theme this season, of being "with Jesus on the margins." It's not just that Jesus goes slumming "out there" to occasionally meet with outcasts like it's a field trip or a novelty.  The heart of God's mission to mend the world means God's own choice to be pushed out to the margins, stripped of respectability, and to surrender all glory and pomp as a convicted criminal on a cross. 

For a lot of folks whose only impressions of Christianity are that we are a social club of people preening and posturing to look good through performances of piety, that's news that needs to be told.  That's news that needs to be lived and shared.  We are people who insist on telling the story that our Lord and Savior was put on trial before the Roman governor Pontius Pilate, as one more evidence that there is no length to which God will not go for us, and no loss God will not endure to get through to us.

The next time you find yourself absent-mindedly reciting the Apostles' Creed on some Sunday morning, remember that.

Lord Jesus, we give you praise for your willingness to go to the depths of a trial, crucifixion, and death for our sakes.  Give us the courage to be willing to lose our respectability and standing for the sake of sharing your love with the people around us, too.

Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

"Of course, there is great gain in godliness combined with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, so that we can take nothing out of it, but if we have food and clothing, we will be content with these. But those who want to be rich fall into temptation and are trapped by many senseless and harmful desires that plunge people into ruin and destruction. For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil, and in their eagerness to be rich some have wandered away from the faith and pierced themselves with many pains." (1 Timothy 6:6-10)

Nobody knew what to do with Charlie Bucket, the kid who only opened two Wonka bars.

Do you know that scene from the famous movie adaptation, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? After all the fevered frenzy of a worldwide search for the five hidden "Golden Tickets" hidden in chocolate bars around the world had seemingly subsided, and it seemed that all the winners had been found, poor ol' Charlie Bucket is back in school with his classmates as the teacher tries to give a mathematics lesson on percentages. The teacher asks several students how many Wonka bars each opened and ate, and every time the numbers are astonishingly large.  One student opened a hundred candy bars; another ate a hundred and fifty, and so on.  Then the teacher asks Charlie, who softly mumbles, "Two." The teacher assumes he means "two HUNDRED," until Charlie corrects him to say, "No, just two." The whole classroom is scandalized at the lack of excess, at the absence of gluttony and avarice from Charlie's response.  Everybody else had gone all-out to hoard, open, and eat as many candy bars as possible in pursuit of one of the impossibly rare Golden Tickets, and here Charlie Bucket looked absolutely outlandish precisely because he was content with only two chocolate bars.  The boy stood out scandalously, not because he had so much more than everyone else, but because he was apparently at peace with so much less than everyone else.  In the movie, everybody knew how to understand the all-consuming quest for MORE; they didn't know what to make of someone who could be satisfied with what he had.

I want to suggest that the New Testament envisions something just as scandalous for us: the scandal of satisfaction.  Today's verses come from a passage in what we call First Timothy that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and they envision a life in which Christ-followers stand out precisely because they are contented--they are satisfied--with the essentials of life like food, shelter, and clothing and therefore are free to spend their energy, resources, and love caring for other people and enjoying life as a gift precisely because we aren't constantly driven for "more."  We'll be a minority report in a world drowning in its own acquisitiveness--a movement of Charlie Buckets in a culture of endlessly consumed confections.  We Christians will look like weirdos... outliers... and folks on the countercultural fringe, because we are no longer driven to spend our lives seeking more-for-the-sake-of-more, but find joy in appreciating what we have as enough.  We will find ourselves on the margins because so few other people will know what to do with folks who aren't constantly obsessing over the next big thing we have to buy in order to get the next dopamine spike so that we can tell ourselves we are happy.  We don't have to play that game anymore, and we don't have to spend our energy chasing after whatever the voices on TV and the targeted ads on our phones and feeds tell us we have to have in order to finally have "arrived," because we have found that God supplies what we really need.  Like the old adage goes, "There are two ways to be rich in this life: either get more, or want less."  First Timothy would tell us that the first option is really a mirage, but the second one works once we discover that our lives are freer when we aren't burdened and weighed down by "stuff."

All too often, the loud voices in our culture tell us we can't really be happy if we don't have "X," if we don't wear "Y," or if we don't have a net worth of "Z." And instead the apostle tells us that the pursuit of all those things that were supposed to make us happy turn out to be the very things that lead us in to misery. When my life is oriented wholly around getting more, I will never be able to appreciate what I have--it will never be enough.  When my life is instead oriented on savoring what I do have, even small amounts keep their flavor.  I can only assume that after the first fifty chocolate bars from Willy Wonka, you start to get sick to your stomach, or at least tired of the taste.  But when you can slow down enough to appreciate what is right in front of you, you start to notice wonders, graces, and blessings you had overlooked before. You start to see beauty in unexpected and undervalued places.  You start to rediscover (or discover for the first time) the joys of a conversation with a friend, the comfort of a few pieces of well-made and well-made clothing rather than racks full of things you'll only wear once, and the deliciousness of simple but good ingredients (whose names you can pronounce).  It is a different kind of life from what conventional wisdom in a culture of consumption would try to sell us, but it is a good life.

I wonder what might happen in our lives if we made a concerted effort to refuse the voices that prod us always to want more and to listen instead to the voices of people around us who are simply our neighbors so that we can learn again to love people and use things, rather than the other way around.  I wonder what efforts in our life we could let go of, and what more worthwhile pursuits we could spend our time on instead.  I wonder what things we have been ignoring or overlooking might be found again and enjoyed.  And I wonder how that kind of quiet but powerful witness might catch someone else's attention and lead them to re-examine what is keeping them from contentment in their own lives, too.  They might just want to find out about the God who gives us daily bread and graces us with the gift of enough-ness, all because they have seen from us, out on the margins of a consumption-driven society, what it looks like to be scandalously satisfied.

Lord Jesus, give us once again the contentment that comes from receiving what we truly need without the constant drive to get more for the sake of more.