Everyday Radicals--November 7, 2025

Everyday Radicals--November 7, 2025

[Jesus said:] “But I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies; do good to those who hate you; bless those who curse you; pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone strikes you on the cheek offer the other also; and from anyone who takes away your coat do not without even your shirt. Give to everyone who begs from you; and if anyone takes away your goods, do not ask for them again. Do to others as you would have them do to you." [Luke 6:27-31]

Jesus is at his most radical when he is at his most everyday, I think. He is at his most provocative when he speaks about our small actions in daily life, because he makes it clear that his revolutionary way of living in the world is not reserved for some select class of spiritual superheroes, but for all of us in our ordinary interactions with others.  Jesus brings all of us right up to the edge of the eternal to share the perspective of God's Reign, not just some select group of "saints."  In fact, that's part of why I think we hear these words on All Saints' Sunday, as many of us did this past Sunday in worship: to remind us that this is Jesus' call to all of us who would dare to belong to him.   All of us are called to practice his revolution of love in the midst of the ordinary.  All of us are called to be everyday radicals like him.

That leaves us nowhere to run when we hear Jesus' words--we don't get to use some excuse like, "But this is for saints or monks or nuns or pastors--not for the rest of us ordinary Christians living out our lives day to day!" There are no draft-deferments or exemptions if you have a doctor's note. Nor are we permitted to say, "We have to live in the real world, where people are mean and cruel and sometimes people want to take your stuff! Jesus can't be referring to MY real life here! This must just be for a set of special people or special circumstances!" All of that is just our attempt to run away from the radical vision of Jesus' kind of love. (It's funny, by the way, how often you'll hear folks stake out their positions on some issues by insisting, "The Bible is clear about...!" and yet look for every possible excuse to dodge taking Jesus seriously about loving enemies and giving without seeking reciprocity, when Jesus sure seems to be "clear" about his teaching on those points.)

So if we have no excuse nor escape route, we'll have to listen to Jesus' words here and let him do his radical transformation of us in the midst of our ordinary lives--where we interact with people who are sometimes rude or rotten, and where we run across people who ask for our help in the course of just carrying out our weekly routines. And at the core of all of these teachings of Jesus, there is a beating heart of unconditional love. Jesus is heaven-bent on making us into people who live, speak, and act on the basis of unconditional love--both God's for us, and ours for others. Jesus really is convinced that God's love is lavished on us regardless of our goodness or badness, and that God does good to us apart from considering whether we "deserve" it or not. Jesus is further convinced, it appears, that the people of God will live as though the universe is an economy ordered by grace, rather than by transactions, deal-making, and revenge.

All of the specific, ordinary situations Jesus describes in these verses are ways of resisting the conventional wisdom that says the world is run on the basis of tit-for-tat (or to use the old Latin, "quid pro quo") exchanges, in favor of doing good without regard for what will be gained in return. From Jesus' vantage point, this policy of doing good, even in return for rottenness, is as plain as the nose on your face, because he sees this as God's policy toward the whole world already. God loves the world despite our unloveliness. God is good not only to the well-behaved religious people, but to stinkers and sinners, atheists and agnostics, outcasts and undesirables all the same. This is what the world looks like from the edge of the eternal, which is how Jesus is teaching us to see things. And from Jesus' vantage point, that is not a design flaw on God's part--that is in fact the defining feature of the Kingdom of God--or, if you like, the Yahweh Administration.

Therefore, Jesus says, we who dare to live in light of this God's values will practice the same kind of audaciously unconditional love in our day-to-day dealings with others. We will give without expecting to get favors done for us in return--because we know that God doesn't demand a proverbial "pound of flesh" in exchange for daily sustaining our lives. We will not answer violence with violence, and we will not sink to the level of doing evil to the people who do evil to us. And in our refusing to sink to their level, we are making our protest against their rottenness. Answering evil with goodness is not giving permission to evildoers to keep being rotten--it is a refusal to spread evil by adopting the tactics of those who see us as their enemies. It's not about being wimpy doormats--it's about having the moral courage not to cheat those who cheated you or insult those who insulted you or hate those who hate you.

And that insight helps make more sense even of Jesus' teaching about turning the other cheek. As other commentators have noted before (see, among others, Walter Wink on this one), in Matthew's recounting of this teaching, Jesus talks about someone striking you on the "right cheek" and then offering your "left" in response. In a culture where everyone uses their right hands for everything but the bathroom (sanitary reasons forced a practical right-handedness on everyone, including those naturally left-handed), striking someone on the "right cheek" with your right hand requires you to be giving someone a back-handed slap in the face--in other words, that's the way you hit someone when you intend to insult them or regard them as a social inferior. When Jesus says to respond by turning your left cheek, it is therefore a refusal on the part of the person who was struck to accept being treated as a social inferior, but to insist on being struck as an equal. It is as if to say, "You are trying to insult me by slapping me on the face, but if you are going to strike me, I insist you treat me as an equal." The idea is to shame the person who has struck/slapped you into seeing what a total buffoon they have been, and to get them to back off by the power of that social shaming. In other words, when someone tries to belittle you or treat you as inferior, you don't sink to their level, but you don't accept their assessment, either--you insist that you are of equal worth while refusing to play by their rules. So, despite all the ways this passage has been misused by preachers before (usually male preachers on this count) to tell people in abusive relationships that they must stay in abusive relationships, Jesus doesn't really seem to be talking about staying in abusive marriages. Rather, he insists that when others try to insult us, we will not answer those insults with rottenness of our own, but rather we can stand up for our own belovedness and worth without attacking the other person.

And in all of that, Jesus is downright radical. His way of loving seeps down into little moments and small actions of every day life, which means that our revolution against the old order of tit-for-tat will happen in quiet ways, right under the nose of the world's deal-makers and talking heads. Jesus really is incendiary. He truly does advocate a revolution against the old way of seeing the universe as an economy of transactions, revenge, and self-interested deals. It's just that his revolution is not waged with an army or an insurgency, but rather through small acts of unconditional love by ordinary people in everyday life. And to every loud shouting voice that says, "Self-interested deal-making is just how the world works, and you have to answer rottenness from others with rottenness from you," Jesus says, "No, it isn't. No, you don't. You never have to accept those terms or play those games."

The small revolution happens in little actions that defy the old tit-for-tat mindset. And today Jesus dares us to join it.  He intends to make of us everyday radicals who see the world from the perspective of God's Reign, rather than what the world calls conventional wisdom.

Lord Jesus, let us show your radical love in ordinary situations today.

Beyond the Echo Chamber--November 6, 2025

Beyond the Echo Chamber--November 6, 2025

[Jesus said:] “Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets." (Luke 6:26)

For what it's worth, this is the only Bible verse I have posted up on the bulletin board in my church office, right above my head where I can't miss it.  

It looks like this:

These words, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday from the Sermon on the Plain, are a sobering but necessary reminder that the calling of Jesus' followers is not to merely say things that people want to hear, but to speak what fits with the character of Jesus.  And even more challenging, Jesus suggests that if nobody is ever made uncomfortable by our voices, we may have stopped speaking from his vantage point and substituted it with our own.  Apparently, Jesus is of the opinion (and I think we should believe him) that the perspective of God's Reign will always be out of step and out of sync with "conventional wisdom" in some way.  God's priorities will always rearrange ours. God's methods will always run counter to our culture's mindset and its mantras like, "You gotta look out for Number One," or "Me and My Group First," or "Hit them first before they hit you!" If all we ever do is parrot back those slogans because we know they will be popular among many, Jesus says we have lost his message.

One of things that is particularly tempting and troubling about the moment in history in which we live is that inventions like the internet, and tools like social media, have the capacity to fragment us into little echo chambers who never have to hear things they disagree with or face facts that do not suit their preferred narrative.  For all the ways that the internet is great, and all the positives that come with our ability to communicate instantly across continents, for endearing things like family photos to silly things like cat memes to profound things like compelling quotes, one of the curses that comes with those potential blessings is how easily our technology puts us into silos of like-mindedness.  And once we have gotten sucked into them, it becomes harder and harder to say something that runs against the accepted view of the rest of the group.  It becomes harder and harder to find other voices who don't sound like everything else the algorithm has pre-selected for you.  It becomes harder and harder to even see information or hear a perspective that might have a valid point, and which might just change your mind... or color your current perspective in a new way... or at least compel you to consider someone else's point of view or where they are coming from.  Once we get pulled into those echo chambers, like we have been dragged across the event horizon of a black hole and can no longer escape, it becomes very tempting only to say things that you know will be met with cheers from "your group."

In fact, sometimes we can even forget that there is anybody else out there who doesn't share our view.  In those situations, we may want to pat ourselves on the back for how "Everybody I talk to agrees with what I say!" because we assume there's no one else who thinks differently or might offer critique.  When we think that "all speak well of us," it may well be a sign that we have closed ourselves off in a little bubble, which we cannot see outside of--and therefore fall into the delusion that there is no beyond the circle of "my group" nodding in agreement with me.  And once again, Jesus warns us here--something has gone wrong if I am convinced that everybody is in full agreement with me.  It's either a sign I'm stuck in an echo chamber, or I have lost the message and perspective of Jesus (which always challenges us and pinches us at some point), or maybe both.  To be faithful to the message of Jesus will always mean running into a certain amount of pushback from the world--either because grace sounds too good to be true, or God's welcome of outcasts and sinners seems too scandalous, or because the cost of discipleship sounds too steep to ears that want to be merely casual fans.  If we are speaking from the perspective of our faith and it's not ruffling feathers somewhere, somehow, we have likely lost the living Word from God and have replaced it with safe, generic platitudes from the inspirational self-help bookshelf.

All of this begs a question, then: how do I know when I'm supposed to be provoking people, and how will I know when people's agreement or support is a good thing?  Should we be suspicious of every "like" on a social media or every compliment we get from someone else?  Should we deliberately run away from everybody who agrees with us?  Maybe all of those unlikely suggestions mean that we need to be asking, "What does the character of Jesus lead me to do and say?" rather than worrying about whether we are liked or not, popular or not, or even "trending" or not.  In other words, the way to discern how we speak, think, and act isn't by asking whether everybody around me agrees with it; rather, we look to the way and character of Jesus.  Jesus had both throngs of cheering crowds and deep controversies with other people, and he wasn't swayed by either.  Jesus neither avoided confrontation nor tried to be merely a pot-stirrer for the sake of sowing discord.  He didn't set out to please people or acquire popularity, but neither did he avoid speaking words that gave people hope.  Jesus' message and perspective were not defined by the question, "What will other people think?" but rather, "What does the perspective of eternity say about this?"

In our own lives, then, the challenge involves several things for us.  For one, it's worth it to deliberately resist the algorithms and social media silos and to listen to people you don't agree with, as well as to practice having respectful but honest conversations in which you say things you know the other person will disagree with.  It's worth it to get good practice at speaking in ways that can be open about where our perspectives differ--and how our faith leads us to the conclusions that it does--while being civil.  And every time we do that, we offer an alternative to the world's ear-covering, silo-dwelling echo-chambers.  Every time we show to someone the respect of listening to what they have to say as well as speaking honestly about what we believe, we remind them that it is possible to consider new information or different perspectives.  Every time we engage people with both authenticity and decency, we model for anybody else who sees or overhears a different way of being in the world.  And every time someone insults us and we do not respond by speaking insult back, or when they assume the worst about our position and we give them the benefit of the doubt in return, we are responding to that hostility in a way that points to Jesus.  That's the goal no matter what: to point to Jesus, not just when people agree with what we have to say, but in the way we respond when people don't.

So please hear me clearly: I don't at all believe that it is our goal to be perceived as jerks or jackasses in the wider world.  But at the same time, we should be prepared that if we are speaking and acting from the vantage point of the Reign of God, there will absolutely be times when others criticize, belittle, or reject what we have to say, and our awareness that it will happen should not stop us from speaking where Jesus directs us to speak.  We may well be headed for good trouble if we are speaking the way Jesus did about God's surprising habit of blessing the poor, lifting up the lowly, welcoming the outcast, and giving away the farm for free.  If that upsets others, so be it. As Jesus also reminds us, it was the false prophets of ancient Israel's memory who only said what people wanted to hear.

How will you and I speak words that flow from the character of Jesus today?  And will we be brave enough to speak them no matter how they are received?  That sounds like something to pray about.

Lord Jesus give us both your words and your courage to speak them with your kind of love, regardless of how they are received.

Good News Woes--November 5, 2025

Good News Woes--November 5, 2025

[Jesus said:] “But woe to you who are rich,  

     for you have received your consolation.
Woe to you who are full now,
     for you will be hungry.
Woe to you who are laughing now,
 for you will mourn and weep." (Luke 6:24-25)

I suppose our reaction to these words of Jesus tell us something about ourselves, before anything else. And if we find ourselves surprised that anybody could possibly have a different reaction than our own, it will show us something, too, when hear these words of Jesus, as many of us did this past Sunday in worship.

If, for example, my immediate reaction is to squirm uncomfortably, to bristle indignantly, or to dismiss these words as Marxist or socialist propaganda, well, it might be because I find myself in the crosshairs of Jesus' words here.  If I get defensive when Jesus declares "woe" for the well-heeled and well-fed, it may well be a sign that I know I'm likely to be viewed as in the categories of "rich" and "full" and don't want to see any possible negative side to those.  (You might know, too, the anecdote of conservative Southern Baptist academic and preacher Russell Moore, who has remarked on a number of occasions that people have come up to him after sermons criticizing him for saying things like "Blessed are the poor" and wondering what crazy leftist ideologues he had allowed to influence him, only for him to response that he was literally just quoting Jesus here in the Sermon on the Plain.) That is to say, if we get upset over these words of Jesus, it may be saying more about us and our own insecurities with how much abundance we have and how willing we are to hear Jesus' call to share it. If I hear Jesus' "Woe to you who are rich" as bad news, it's likely a sign I am more interested in keeping my money and parting company with Jesus than in following him even if it means letting go of some of my possessions.

On the other hand--and this is the thing that flat-out shocks some Respectable Religious Folks--there are those who hear Jesus' words here as a message of relief and comfort.  It's not schadenfreude--it's not that they hear "Woe to you who are rich" and are salivating at the prospect of seeing someone else suffer.  But it's the notion that God won't let the current arrangement of things, in which some have opulence and excess while others can't feed their children, stay as the status quo forever.  It's the word from Jesus here that those who are so insulated with luxury and comfort that they can no longer feel any empathy for their hungry neighbors will at some point be shaken up and made to feel something for others. It's the idea that a world in which some can pile up endless wealth--more than they could possibly spend in ten lifetimes--while others must choose whether to buy food for the household or keep the lights on, is not God's arrangement of things, but in fact that God will at the last make sure that every hungry mouth gets fed and every broken heart is comforted.  

It is possible to hear good news from the woes, in other words. Even if it seems strange to our ears (which might be because we have never had to worry about where our next meal comes from), there are many who hear Jesus' words, including the words of woe, and feel like at least they have been seen.  There are many who hear Jesus' words as a promise that "The way it is now is not the way it will always be." Ultimately, God's ordering of things will not settle for leaving some overstuffed with supersized feasts while others are scrounging for scraps. Jesus is simply training our eyes to see from the perspective of God's Reign, rather than what the Dow Jones numbers indicate.

So, what do we do if we find ourselves squirmy and uncomfortable over Jesus' words here?  Well, for starters, let's agree that we don't get to cut them out of our Bibles or pretend they aren't there, just because they make us antsy.  Second, maybe the question to ask is, "If Jesus did ask me to share more of my abundance for the sake of those who don't have enough, would I be willing?"  If I notice that makes me want to dig in my heels and demand, "It's all mine--nobody else can have it, and nobody else can tell me to share with someone else!" then it may well be a sign that I am more attached to my stuff and my bank balance than I am to Jesus.  If I hear his words and wonder where the line is between how much I can live on and how much I can share with others, that may be a sign that at least I'm taking Jesus seriously and want to live in line with his priorities.  But at the very least, hearing Jesus' words of woe will likely shake me up and compel me to see the people around me who are absolutely desperate these days to provide for their families, including those who are working as much as they can and still can't make ends meet but wonder if there will be enough to feed their children. 

But basically, there's no way to hear Jesus' words and be left unchanged.  Jesus will reshape how we see the world.  He will give hope to those who are on the verge of despair that things will ever change for the better. And he will spur those of us who are stuck in numbness and apathy into compassion again, or even for the first time.  Today, our calling is to let Jesus do with us what he will, and to allow him to change our vision of the world with the perspective of the eternal.

Lord Jesus, change our vision as you see fit, so that we will long for your Reign in which all get to eat, and no one is left numb in apathy.

On Representing Jesus--November 4, 2025

On Representing Jesus--November 4, 2025

[Jesus said:] “Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets." (Luke 6:22-23)

Right, so let's be clear here: the goal is NOT to get ourselves so hated that we earn a spot in heaven. The idea here is NOT that if we Christians can only make ourselves so mean, rude, and bigoted as to be ridiculed by others, so that then we somehow prove to God we are persecuted so we can win eternal life. And the point is NOT that God wants us to become so obnoxious that people stop inviting us to their parties.

Being rejected isn't a primary goal of the Christian faith, and neither is it our strategy to behave in such a brash, disrespectful way toward others that people think of Christians as rude first and religious second. The goal is to be faithful to the way of Jesus--and if that also lands us in good trouble with the people around us, well, then so be it. But in that case, whatever tensions, insults, or criticism we get will be symptoms of something deeper; they will be evidence that we are, at least in some ways, acting and speaking like Christ, as well as the faithful prophets of centuries before.

This is really important for us to remember, not just because many of us heard these words from Jesus' Sermon on the Plain back on Sunday, but also because sometimes in our day, Respectable Religious folk seem to go out of their way to cast themselves as being "persecuted" when in fact we are just being held accountable or being treated like every other person around us. We're not being persecuted in situations where we are being held to the same standard or practice as other religious groups in the wider culture. We are not being persecuted in situations when Christians are not given special treatment or prioritized consideration. We are not being persecuted for our faith if people do not want to hang out with us because we have been rude, arrogant, selfish, or bigoted toward them. And we're not being persecuted if someone points out how our actions, words, or choices seem to run counter to the character of Jesus--that's just someone else calling us out for our hypocrisy. In a culture and time like ours, when there are lots of groups who all might want a voice at the table of public discourse, it's not an act of persecution when church folks have to make room for others. That's just how our civic life works. It might be difficult for church folks to accept or adapt to, especially if they remember a time when other voices weren't allowed a place at the table or a voice in the conversation. But our faith in Jesus doesn't entitle us to a monopoly on every discussion.

It would probably be wise for us, too, to hold onto that wise observation of James Finley, which goes, "It may be true that every prophet is a pain in the neck, but it is not true that every pain in the neck is a prophet. There is no more firmly entrenched expression of the false self than the self-proclaimed prophet." In other words, we who name the name of Jesus need to be prepared to be rejected or ridiculed for following Jesus, but we don't get to claim "persecution" every time someone else decides they don't want to hang out with us, or if the reason they don't has to do with us acting in un-Christlike ways. If we are Christians who are also acting like jerks, the rejection of others might well be because we are acting like jerks--we don't get to pin that one on Jesus. The goal for us as disciples is to follow Jesus, and Jesus often finds himself mocked, criticized, or attacked without him being selfish, rude, belligerent, or arrogant. Jesus, however, refuses to answer in kind--he does not punch down, insult, or cause hardship for others even when those things are done to him. When we are made fun of for loving like Jesus, or when we are left out because we are committed to being generous, or when people criticize us for not supporting the Empire of the day or kneeling to the Caesar of the hour, then we are being persecuted as Christ-followers. But being inconvenienced, or being asked to share the public square with others, or being called out on hypocrisy, those are not persecution. They are a part of life.

All that said, it is also true that following Jesus may well lead us into situations where we are harassed, left out, or hated, and Jesus doesn't pretend otherwise. They will call us "losers" because we aren't obsessed with defeating everybody else. They will call us "suckers" because we are willing to share our abundance with others without getting something in return. They will call us "weak" because we are committed to doing good to those we might call "enemies" rather than hitting them harder or making them suffer. If those things happen, and if we do end up suffering for it, Jesus says, "Good for you--it's a sign they see the light of God reflected in you!"

Today, then, it is worth asking how we want to represent Jesus in the world. If we wear the name of Jesus casually but are known for being crass, cruel, self-absorbed, and hypocritical, we may find ourselves criticized--but it won't be for our Christ-likeness. If we dare to face the world with Jesus' kind of love, generosity, empathy, and truthful courage, we may also be criticized for it--but at least we will be like Jesus. And that is worth spending our effort and energy on, no matter what else happens or what anybody else says.

And one day, from the vantage point of eternity, I think I know which I will want to have given my life to. I bet you do, too.

Lord Jesus, make us to be like you, whatever the costs.

From God's Vantage Point--November 3, 2025

From God's Vantage Point--November 3, 2025

"Then Jesus looked up at his disciples and said:

'Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.

 Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.

 Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh...'" [Luke 6:20-21]

In the Reign of God, the one condition for being fed... is being hungry.

That's what this all boils down to. That's what Jesus shows us about God's surprising way of ordering the world--what we sometimes call "the kingdom of heaven" or "the Reign of God." In the Yahweh Administration, it is God's policy to feed empty bellies and comfort broken hearts, rather than to amass bigger piles of money, larger stockpiles of stuff, or grander spaces to store it all in. To hear Jesus tell it, God provides for us, not on the basis of what we have earned or how much we have impressed God, but simply on the basis of our need.

These words come from what we sometimes call the Sermon on the Plain in Luke's gospel, which many of us heard just this past Sunday in worship for All Saints. And here we get a glimpse of the eternal vantage point of God--what things really matter to God, and what things turn out to be far less important than we thought? What priorities does God care about, and how do those priorities sometimes look quite different that the values of the moment or the powers of the day?  That's what Jesus is showing us here: this is a sketch of what the world looks like from God's vantage point--from the edge of the eternal, so to speak.  And if we can take Jesus seriously (and I think we can!), then Jesus shows us a God who cares supremely about meeting our needs 

Hungry people need to eat. Food is not a prize for being "good enough" or "holy enough"; it is a gift given by grace simply because we need it. This is how God runs the universe, according to Jesus: by providing to us all what we need, rather than doling out a limited number of prizes only to the "winners." If anything, Jesus says that God has a particular concern for the ones the world labels "losers."

Taking Jesus seriously here may take a long time, maybe even a lifetime of discipleship. That's because so many of us have the opposite deeply ingrained in our minds. We are used to thinking that God's job is primarily to hand out rewards for the worthy or heavenly paychecks for those who have worked hard enough. We are used to picturing life as a competition for the top spots and told to climb over and step on whomever we have to in order to make ourselves King of the Hill. We are used to hearing Christianity peddled as a deal where I do something for God (believing the correct theological propositions, or doing enough good deeds, or inviting Jesus into my heart, or praying fervently enough, or voting for the party that claims to be "God's choice," or whatever), and then in return, God has to give me the good things in life (going to heaven, success in my work, provision for my family, etc.). That's sort of the plot of Respectable Religion, in all its variations. But it is decidedly not how Jesus teaches us to see things. Jesus shows us a God who doesn't make deals, but who gives out meals.

That contrast--between what conventional wisdom thinks and what Jesus shows us of God--is clear to me every day I listen to the news. So often in these days of a government shutdown, feuding parties, dwindling food pantries, and funding for food assistance programs being dangled like a hostage, the loudest conversations are about who has the leverage and influence.  Which politicians are "working the situation" best to their advantage, or who is getting pushed into a corner while others flex their proverbial muscle.  That's so often how the standard perspective looks at the day's events: who wielded the most power, and who appealed most to their voting or fundraising base with the day's news, that sort of thing.

But what I find desperately lacking so often--especially from would-be followers of Jesus!--are the kinds of questions Jesus seems concerned with: how are we embodying God's priorities that everybody gets to eat? How do our values and platforms reflect God's concern in particular for those who are "poor," those who are "hungry," and those who "weep"? Do the people who lead us reflect the character of a God who feeds the hungry, simply because they are hungry, or do they give us role models and examples to justify our selfishness? Do we accept the voices who tell us that everything is a deal or a transaction where we only do something for someone else if they will repay us with something to our benefit, or do we listen to the voice of Jesus who says that God does not operate that way? Every day we are presented with the choice of which voices we will allow to shape us. The open question is whose we will give our attention to.

Today, then, is an opportunity to let Jesus reset our vision--and Jesus would rather that we view the world from the perspective of the eternal than the short-term advantage of what will make you a buck. Today is a chance, like each new day is as well, to see ourselves (and the whole world) rightly--as people with empty hands seeking daily bread from a faithful Giver, rather than as competitors in an unending struggle to get to be on top. Today is a day to consider what our older brother in the faith Martin Luther meant with his last written words, "We are beggars; this is true." I think his insight, even in his last hours, was that this whole life has never been about needing to cast ourselves as "winners" who therefore deserve to eat, but as people who are reliant to our last breath on God to give by grace what we cannot buy or earn. To take Jesus' blessing on the hungry seriously helps us to see what we are acknowledging about ourselves when we pray, as Jesus also taught us to ask, "Give us this day our daily bread," namely, that we are dependent on God to be a generous provider, rather than seeing daily bread as a prize for being a success. We are beggars for sure in that sense. We are children at the table, who have been given a place there not because of our politeness or good grades but simply because we are hungry. And we are learning to see the world from that perspective, too--the view from our seat at God's table.

Lord Jesus, for all who hunger, feed us.

Set Free and Welcomed Home--October 31, 2025

 

Set Free and Welcomed Home--October 31, 2025

Jesus answered them, “Very truly, I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin. The slave does not have a permanent place in the household; the son has a place there forever. So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.” (John 8:34-36)

This is what Jesus is always doing: finding people who are regarded as less-than and outsiders, and bringing them to belong forever.  He seeks out the folks on the margins and gathers them in. He meets up with the lowly and stepped-on and raises them to places of dignity and honor as members of the family.  Or like the line attributed to Martin Luther puts it, "God is always taking beggars and making them kings."

On this, our final day reflection on the theme, "With Jesus on the Margins" in our year of "Life on the Edge," before a new theme for November closes out the church year, I want to ask us to return to these words from the Gospel that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Without getting lost in the weeds in the backstory of this whole passage, let's just zoom in on the imagery of these concluding verses. Jesus imagines a typical ancient household within the Greco-Roman culture of the first century, with which everyone listening to him would have been familiar.  There were family members who all shared biology and therefore official legitimate status in the household: the father and mother, their children, and maybe a generation of grandparents who also lived in the same villa as part of an extended family.  And then there were (at least in many households in the Roman Empire) slaves.  The fact that Jesus acknowledges the institution of slavery in the ancient world is not an endorsement or a statement of his approval of the practice, but rather a description of a reality that everyone in his audience would have seen and known, some perhaps from personal experience.  And if you were enslaved, you were typically treated as less-than.  You didn't control your situation, you didn't control your future, and you or your family could be sold off somewhere else at a moment's notice on the whim of someone else. You were constantly around the other members of the household, but without the sense of permanency, without belonging, and treated without the same dignity or worth as the family members who all shared the same DNA and status before the law.  

Everybody in Jesus' day had seen that; it was a basic reality of daily life for many in the Empire.   One of the particular cruelties of the practice of slavery in any era was just how precarious it made the lives of the enslaved--that you could be shipped off to another place, another family, another job, or another "owner" without any input, or your family, your literal spouse or children, could be sold away as well. And everybody knew the truth of the statement that "the slave does not have a permanent place in the household." That's when Jesus proposes something radical: what if someone who does have a permanent place in the family and who does have authority over the affairs of the household just sets you free? What if, to follow Jesus' metaphor here, someone were to redeem you--to buy you out of enslavement to an old master--and instead of making you a slave to just some new master, what if you were welcomed into the household as a real, full member of the family?  

Could you imagine it?  Well, for one, you would no longer be anybody's property to be ordered about and treated like an object.  You wouldn't be treated as less-than or demeaned. You would know that you, your spouse, and your kids wouldn't be sold away to some other owner without notice. You would know that there was a place at the table where you belonged.  You would know that you, who had previously only been kept at arm's length on the margins to serve the "real" family members were finally at home and were welcomed in with open arms.  If someone who really has permanent standing in a household buys you out of slavery, frees you, and welcomes you into their home and family, it changes everything.  Former outsiders become insiders. The ones who used to be exploited are now treated with honor and dignity.  Those who were constantly afraid about a precarious future now have assurance.  That kind of change surely would have been radical in the first century.

And here Jesus just up and says that's what he has come to do.  For all of us who have been enslaved and captive to the power of sin, Jesus speaks as someone with authority to redeem us--to buy us out of slavery, set us free, and presumably, to welcome us into his new family, where we can share a permanent place in the household of God.  That's what the Good News is really all about, according to Jesus here. He has come to find us while we're stuck in dead-end captivity to our worst impulses and all the ways we have been dismissed as less-than. And he liberates from all that, gives us a permanent place within his own household, and welcomes us to the family table at which there will always be a place set for us.

That's good news we all deeply need.  For whatever ways you have been treated before as an object or a non-person, Jesus says you are an honored member of the family alongside him.  For whatever ways you have felt trapped and captive in old patterns of selfishness, meanness, fear, and greed, Jesus says he has set you free from those old masters and made you a free member of his household. And it's all been a gift.

Hold onto that word, both for the days you need it, and for the times you cross paths with someone else who is desperate for belonging and freedom and the same time.  Go tell everybody--even the face in the mirror--you are free indeed, and you share with Jesus a place in the family.

Lord Jesus, remind us again that you have set us free, and let us be a part of your work to tell others that they are free as well in you.

An End to In-Groups--October 30, 2025

An End to In-Groups--October 30, 2025

"But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus..." (Romans 3:21-24)

When we actually read or hear the Good News of Jesus on its own terms, it sure does reframe the ways we see things--and the way we see ourselves.

Take these words from Paul's letter to the Romans, for example, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday as we (Lutherans) celebrated Reformation Sunday. The apostle does a bang-up job changing our perspective on what the Gospel is really all about.  

In Paul's own day, a great many folks reading (or hearing) his letter for the first time brought a big, worrisome question on their minds: what makes me acceptable (or not) to God?  And of course, there were plenty of competing answers out there to be found.  Some in Paul's audience were certain it had to do with belonging to the right "in-group." If you came from the right heritage, spoke the right language, knew the right culture and customs, and kept all of those well enough, then you could reasonably claim to be acceptable to God.  Some were confident that their ancestry in the family line of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was the key; others believed that following the food restrictions or ceremonial rituals like circumcision was what made you belong.  In other words, some folks listening to Paul's letter were convinced that being acceptable to God was an us-versus-them kind of thing: if you're on the inside, you've got God's favor, but if you are an outsider on the margins, tough luck.  But Paul doesn't talk that way, does he?

Others in the house churches where this epistle was first read were convinced that God's acceptance depended on performance--how well did you do with keeping the commandments, how frequently did you break them, and how significant were the infractions?  This, of course, led to a lot of folks playing that oh-so-tempting game of "Your-Sins-Are-Worse-Than-Mine," where some would put the worst possible spin on what "THOSE people" were doing, while putting their own transgressions in a more respectable light.  The goal of this alluring exercise is--yep, you guessed it--once again, to create a category of "acceptable" people like me, whose sins are minor, piddling, and trifling, and another abominable category of "unacceptable" people, whose sings are dastardly, malevolent, and unforgivable.  See how it works?  If I can tell myself that MY sins aren't disqualifying--they're really not so bad, right?--and then persuade myself at the same time that those OTHERS are guilty of far worse things by comparison, I fool myself into thinking that I'm acceptable to God by sheer comparison.  At least I'm not like THEM, right?  And we're right back to imagining that our acceptability to God is an us-versus-them thing once again.  And that just ain't right--not according to Paul (who knew something about being an outsider who was welcomed in, since he had been Chief Enemy of Christianity for a good while before Jesus got a hold of him).

Paul insists that God's acceptance of us--what we sometimes call "justification"--doesn't depend on being in the right group, carrying the right credentials, or having a better morality score than somebody else.  It never has depended on that, Paul says!  Even Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob--the very founding pillars of the ethnic group of Israel--weren't made right with God because of their DNA, their culture, their language, or their heritage.  And even Moses the great Lawgiver wasn't accepted because of his comparative grades on rule-following.  They were all accepted by grace, as a gift, and that gift can only be received by sheer trust in the Giver.  And for that matter, they were all lacking perfection points in the holiness department, just like all the rest of us.  According to Paul, God has never been in the business of grading us on our performance or checking our pedigree as the basis for accepting us or not.  His way of saying it here is, "there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus."  See?  No dividing up the world into acceptable, lovable "insiders" and disgusting, detestable "outsiders." Only the same free gift of grace, no matter where you came from, no matter your cultural heritage, and no matter your past performance. All of us have fallen short and missed the mark, and all of us are presented with this gift of acceptance from God through Christ.

All of this is to say that if our understanding of the Gospel comes out as "Christianity versus... " somebody else, we've lost the plot. If we think that the Good News is "Join US so that God will love you because you won't be one of THEM!" we have misunderstood what makes it good and news. No, genuine "redemption in Christ Jesus" breaks down the us-versus-them nonsense once and for all. Paul says this was never an us-versus-them kind of thing. In fact, it's not even been an us-versus-God or a them-versus-God thing, either. God has chosen to take the side of all humanity, so to speak, in Christ, and is there's a side God is against, it is God's commitment to stand against our sin and blot it out through Christ, not counting it against us anymore.

In fact, the Scriptures insist all of us would have been outsiders on our own, but God has just up and declared that we are not only "acceptable" in a hypothetical sense but that we are indeed accepted and welcomed in, all as a gift of grace through Christ. All we can do is trust that the gift has been given, but not as though it's the quality of our trusting or the fervency of our believing that makes us acceptable.  We can only trust that what God has already given to us by grace really is ours.  We don't have to try and elbow somebody else out so that we can take a spot from a limited number of empty seats in God's good graces.  We can admit that we've all blown it, without comparing my sins to yours, and then we can also believe the promise that we've been accepted by God apart from our achievements, group-member bona fides, or religious performance.  It's all been through Christ, and it's all been a gift.

Could we dare to believe it's true?

And would we let that truth reframe the way we see other people, so that we quit making everything into a competition or a battle of Me-and-My-Group against You-and-Yours?

That might just change everything in this new day.  Let's find out.

Lord Jesus, enable us to trust the promise of your grace with no more need to pit ourselves against someone else.

After the Last Checkmate--October 29, 2025

After the Last Checkmate--October 29, 2025

"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. 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 re-packagings 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 kick the defeated ones out onto the margins on the sidelines or banish them forever into the penalty box. 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. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it once, at the cross, "God lets himself be pushed out of the world and onto the cross." 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 endorse, but to return good to them even when we have received evil.

The Refuge in Our Ribcages--October 28, 2025

The Refuge in Our Ribcages--October 28, 2025

"There is a river whose streams make glad the city of God, the holy habitation of the Most High.
     God is in the midst of the city; it shall not be moved;
     God will help it when the morning dawns.
The nations are in an uproar, the kingdoms totter;
     he utters his voice, the earth melts.
The Lord of hosts is with us;
    the God of Jacob is our refuge." [Psalm 46:4-7]

Lately, the words of this ancient psalm, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, have been mingling in my mind with two unlikely collaborators: Billy Joel and a relatively obscure medieval Icelandic hymn-writer named Kolbeinn Tumason. Yeah--the running playlist in my head is a real grab-bag.

But there's a common thread. There's a tune of Billy Joel's I have loved for decades, called "And So It Goes." It's less piano-pounding or storytelling than a lot of Joel's classics, and more like a hymn. He starts with this simple metaphor:

"In every heart there is a room,

A sanctuary safe and strong,

To heal the wounds from lovers past,

Until a new one comes along."

I suppose you can either read that lyric hopefully--as though the next new love in the singer's life will finally be "The One"--or more cynically, as if to say that there's no such thing as "The One," but that we humans just keep living through relationships until they blow up and then wait for someone else to fill that empty space in our lives and do the same thing all over again. Honestly, I'm not sure on which side Billy Joel would come down for that question--maybe it would depend on the day... or the album.

But the image that has been sticking in my head is his image of the heart as a sanctuary, or a stronghold. It reminds me of a 13th century hymn text called (in the Icelandic) "Heyr Himna Smidur," and which is often translated "Hear, Smith of the Heavens." It's a prayer to God who is both the "smith of constellations" and yet who cares about the cry of the suffering soul. And in the second stanza of the hymn (again, in translation), the author calls on God to "drive out every human sorrow from the city of the heart," or "from the heart's keep." It's again that image of the heart as a fortified place--like an ancient city or a stronghold.

Sometimes I forget that ancient cities were primarily defined, not by their sports franchises or skyscrapers, but for the defense they offered inside fortifications, bulwarks, walls, and ramparts. People today like to complain about cities for being crowded and congested, or even crime-infested, or for being overflowing with ornery people pushing and shoving their way through traffic, but in the ancient (or even medieval) mind, the city was an image of refuge. Cities were safe places because when an invading army came, you could safely live inside its defenses and outlast the besieging enemy. Cities were places you went, not just for the cosmopolitan commerce, but because you could be relatively safe from outside attack once you were inside.

On top of that, there were a number of cities set aside in the Torah as "cities of refuge" or sanctuary, where people could go if they had accidentally committed a serious crime like manslaughter and start a new life. There were apparently no other requirements or conditions for finding refuge in one of those cities, other than that you were in need of a place to start over. It is interesting to me that, for as much as we may associate the Old Testament with a bloody "eye for an eye, tooth for a tooth" kind of retaliatory justice, how much the Torah itself actually makes surprisingly merciful provisions for bad situations like this--that you could simply present yourself at one of these "cities of refuge" and they would take you in, no questions asked, so you would not have to fear someone seeking vengeance coming after you. It is one more image of the city as a place of safety rather than of fear, and of sanctuary rather than anxiety--all of it right from the Bible.

And so it strikes me that the ancient psalmist describes God dwelling among the people in a city, and seeing that as an image of refuge, of safety, and of relief. God is in the city--with the people--and therefore, they don't have to be afraid, even when there are scary things going on outside the fortifications. The nations may rage outside, but within the gates of the city, there is sanctuary for those who are afraid. The angry enemy seeking revenge may be off in the distance, but you can find a home and a new beginning in the city of refuge. No wonder the ancient people of Israel and Judah thought of the city as an image of comfort and safety. God was there, welcoming the weary and defending the fearful.  In a sense, the poet here is describing God as the place of refuge, like we heard yesterday in our devotion from the opening verses of this psalm, where God is call "our refuge" or "our stronghold." The ancient psalmist invites us all, whatever we have been running from and whatever troubles have been hounding us, to come to God, who is our sanctuary city, and who doesn't blush at all over that invitation.

Well all of that brings me back to Billy Joel and the old Icelandic hymn, too. We don't live in walled fortresses anymore, because we don't live in an era of medieval threats like horse-mounted armies or battering rams anymore. Those kinds of defenses are not practically useful anymore, but the idea of finding refuge in God, of taking comfort in God's presence, still has staying power. And I rather think that the psalmist would be OK with us making that move--of saying that God isn't limited to literal cities or physical fortresses, but that as God dwells in our hearts, there is a refuge within us there, too. God still creates cities of refuge and sanctuary within each heart--yours and mine--and gives us strength from the inside out when it feels like everything around us is swirling around in chaos and anger.

So Billy Joel is on to something when he sings that "in every heart there is a room, a sanctuary safe and strong." But the most he seems to be able to hope for is that some new lover will "come along" to fill the empty space of that sanctuary. But maybe that's not enough to hope for--with all due respect to the Piano Man. Maybe the right prayer is more like the voice of "Heyr Himna Smidur," that calls out to God to cast out sorrow from the "city of the heart," and to be our refuge by being right there in the midst of the darkness with us.

The psalmist seems to point us in that direction, too. God isn't just the one we rely on "on the rebound" in between lovers, like Billy Joel suggests, but God is the one who hallows the sanctuary space within us and strengthens our hearts like a fortified city, so that we can face whatever else is going on outside.

That's ultimately the promise that keeps me going--that for whatever things are going around outside, that the living God is with us, making even our own hearts into cities of refuge and sanctuary. God doesn't fill in the empty space in your heart or mine--no, that room needs to be held sacred and sturdy for the times we'll need to find refuge there when it feels like the rest of the world is falling apart or beating down the door. But there inside that space, the living God speaks the words, "Be still, and know that I am God," and makes us able to endure.

Thanks be to the God who is here among us now, creating a refuge in our ribcages, and setting up a home within the city of the human heart.

Lord God, be our refuge today--for whatever we have been running from. Lord God, be our stronghold today--for whatever we have been afraid of.  Be our sanctuary city.

Good News for Refugees--October 27, 2025

Good News for Refugees--October 27, 2025

"God is our refuge and strength,
    a very present help in time of trouble.
 Therefore we will not fear,
    though the earth should change,
    though the mountains shake in the heart of the sea;
though its waters roar and foam,
    though the mountains tremble with its tumult." [Psalm 46:1-3]

Let's get the promise straight: God is our refuge through trouble, not our hall-pass or get-out-of-jail-free-card to avoid trouble altogether.

The difference is important. God's love for us endures and sees us through the times when everything else in our lives feels like it's been shaken to its core. But that is not the same thing as saying, "If you believe in God, nothing in your life will ever get shaken like that in the first place." It does. Sometimes everything else comes crumbling down, and sometimes the waters really do rage and roar. Sometimes the things we thought were solid and unchanging buckle under pressure, and that reality does not mean God's love has faltered, faded, or given out on us. It means that God's love is not bound to the durability of anything else in our lives. There is no fine print, no expiration date, no set of cleverly-worded loopholes, and no escape clauses for God to squirm out of enduring it all with us. God's love doesn't keep us out of the turmoil and tumult--it holds us safe through all of that, like a castle, a fortress, or... a refuge.

These verses from Psalm 46, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday for Reformation Sunday (or maybe even sang in paraphrase form, if you sang "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"), offer a beautiful and comforting image that way.  God is depicted as a "refuge," or like a "stronghold," or even an ancient walled city inside of which people can be safe from whatever dangers are whirling around beyond it.  The idea, of course, is that we are held within the protection of those castle walls, but of course, the fortress takes the pummeling from whatever is outside.  Earthquakes or landslides?  The fortress will keep us from being swallowed up by tumbling mountains.  Swirling seas or raging storms?  The fortress will absorb the fury of the wind and the waves.  Enemies with flaming arrows or catapulted projectiles?  They will hit the castle in which we have taken refuge, so that we are held safe because we have fled there for protection.  It's a beautiful image of God's willingness to take the hit for us, but it also means acknowledging that there will be times when all other defenses have failed and no other shelter is reliable.  And we will find ourselves as refugees seeking a safe place within the embrace of a God who welcomes people from out on the margins, outlands, and unsafe places on the edges to be gathered inside.

I suppose that's the implication of calling God our "refuge"--it means we're going to find ourselves in the position of refugees at some point and in some way in our lives. There will be times that the other things we had counted on for security (we don't have to list them all, but our money and investments, our property and possessions, our health and if we're lucky our health-care, and our relative insulation from the hardships of the world) fail on us. And when that happens, the Scriptures point us to God's love as a safe place to find shelter, like townspeople hiding inside the castle walls of a fortress while the war rages outside the gates.  That's the picture: God is the castle who bears the incoming arrows and projectiles of the attacking enemy outside the walls, the one whose love endures all the bombardment and bears the damage for our sake. God is the shelter when the storm comes... but that is different than saying it will never rain. It's like that achingly beautiful lyric of Leonard Cohen, "Every heart, every heart, to love will come--but like a refugee."

It's important for our faith to get this clear, both to make sure we're not imagining Christianity as some kind of silver bullet or magic charm that keeps bad things from happening to us, but also because it reminds us that God is willing to bear the fury of whatever trouble or turmoil is swirling around us. The image of a refuge is exactly that of a place that gets beaten by the wind and hail so the people under its shelter are not hurt, or the walls of the fortress that keep the people inside safe from fiery arrows by absorbing their impact into its own stone. To say that God's love endures means that God is willing to bear all that damage and destruction for our sake. And that also means that, if you find yourself going through a time of stress and storm, it's not a sign that God has failed you or abandoned you. It means God is willing to go through it with you and bear the trouble along with you while you go through it.

Someone you cross paths with this week needs to hear that. Someone you will talk with could use the reminder that God will be with them through their storm at the moment. Someone you can check in with might just need your voice assuring them that if they feel like a refugee, fleeing from trouble to find some place to shelter them, that God has already signed up to be our refuge.

Whatever comes today, that's the promise of God. Whatever comes, God is our refuge and strength.  That's good news for refugees--if only we can dare to admit that's what we are.

Lord God, help us today with the troubles roaring around us and in the world, and be a refuge for all who are in need of shelter from harm today.

Blessed and Broken--October 24, 2025

Blessed and Broken--October 24, 2025

The same night [Jacob] got up and took his two wives, his two maids, and his eleven children and crossed the ford of the Jabbok. He took them and sent them across the stream, and likewise everything that he had. Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him until daybreak. When the man saw that he did not prevail against Jacob, he struck him on the hip socket, and Jacob’s hip was put out of joint as he wrestled with him. Then he said, “Let me go, for the day is breaking.” But Jacob said, “I will not let you go, unless you bless me.” So he said to him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Jacob.” Then the man said, “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have striven with God and with humans and have prevailed.” Then Jacob asked him, “Please tell me your name.” But he said, “Why is it that you ask my name?” And there he blessed him. So Jacob called the place Peniel, saying, “For I have seen God face to face, yet my life is preserved.” The sun rose upon him as he passed Penuel, limping because of his hip. (Genesis 32:22-31)

Reading strange and ancient stories like this one feels like paging through the old family albums of the people of God.  

Just like every family has its own curious stories from generations past--how they left the "old country" and decided to settle here, who met a famous person from history in a chance encounter, or what it was like to survive an earthquake or a blizzard, and the like--the Scriptures are full of these wild and weird stories we don't quite know what to do with.  They aren't really fables with a moral lesson, and they are often mysterious with ambiguous endings.  But earlier generations held on to them and passed them along to us, and sometimes all we can do is just tell it to the next generation with a look of bewilderment as if to say, "I don't quite know what this all means, but I have more than a hunch that you might encounter God here," and trust that they'll retell the story to the ones who come after them.

This story from Genesis, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, is one of those stories, with all the dials for strangeness and mystery turned up to eleven.  Here we meet the figure of Jacob, who will eventually become known as a great patriarch and founding figure of the people of Israel, who will trace their lineage through his many sons back to him, his father Isaac, and his grandfather Abraham as the covenant people of God.  At this point, though, Jacob is on the run and out of options.  As a young man he had ruined his relationship with his parents and brother Esau by conning the family birthright out of Esau and tricking his father to give him the family blessing.  So he ran away, as fast as his little legs could carry him, and found some long-lost relatives in a far country, where he worked for a number of years for his uncle Laban.  There, Jacob and Laban went back and forth scheming and tricking each other over a number of years, with the upshot being that they eventually decided they had better part company before one of them did something truly rotten to the other. So, with another bridge burned and nowhere else to go, Jacob decided to go back to the land where he had last seen his brother and parents. Now, the older man Jacob has two wives and two concubines, a mess of kids, a decent list of assets, and an existential dread about what will happen when he finally does have to face his brother Esau (who did want to kill him, the last time they were in the same place). So, on the night before he will have to face his family again, and all the danger it is likely to bring, Jacob sends his family across the Jabbok River ahead of him (in what amounts to a sort of human-shield situation--Jake isn't very brave at this point).

And there, Jacob is left--alone.  He is as out on the margins as one can be: cut off from every relative he had tricked, conned, or swindled, and now even separated from all of his possessions and kids, as he sits in the dark stewing.  Jacob has never been much of a moral example, and a more respectable deity wouldn't want to be caught dead around a guy like him.  Blessedly for Jacob, there is a God who doesn't particularly care about looking respectable, and who is willing to meet him on the margins so that Jacob can wrestle with who he really is--or who he could become.

Of course, that's the really weird part of this story: out of nowhere, a figure comes to wrestle with Jacob, literally. Like honest-to-goodness rolling around on the ground, pinning and holding and struggling, real wrestling.  And all night long, nobody seems to come out on top--until, just before dawn, the mysterious Stranger punches Jacob in the hip socket, putting it out of joint.  In the exchange that follows, Jacob wants to know the identity of his opponent and tries to scheme a blessing out of him in the mean-time (Jacob is really all about taking as much as he can from the world at this point). And there, the anonymous assailant both blesses Jacob and gives him a new name: Israel, which means something like "strives with God," with the explanation that he has "striven with God and with humans and prevailed." Jacob takes it to mean that he has been in the very presence of God this whole time somehow in the one wrestling with him, and he names the spot "Peniel," which means "Face of God," since he believes he has seen the very face of God there. And now, as the sun comes up, he heads in the direction of his waiting family on the other side of the river, and the encounter with his estranged brother that is waiting beyond.  The outcome of that encounter is still very much uncertain, and there is still plenty of reason to be fearful of what will happen next.  But he is a new man--Israel, the wrestler-with-God--and no longer has to be defined by his old identity (the name "Jacob," by the way, means something like "usurper" or "guy who takes other people's stuff").  

And there is one other change in this patriarch of the children of Israel: he is walking with a limp now, and for the rest of his life in fact.  While that might seem like a punishment or a curse, I'm not so sure.  For one, it means he cannot run away anymore.  He just isn't fast enough for that. Jacob/Israel will walk with a limp as both a sign that he has been touched by God in the very act of being blessed, and a way of preventing him from running away from his problems anymore.  He won't catch the last train out of town every time he strains a relationship with someone else anymore, and he won't be able to burn bridges with people as a coping strategy.  Jacob will now be in a position to face the consequences of his actions, to make different decisions with the people in his life, and maybe to be mature enough now not to ruin things with other people anymore.  The change has come because he is, simultaneously, broken and blessed at the same time.  And God has met Jacob right where he was, out on the margins, in that liminal space by the side of the Jabbok between all of his past failures and a new chapter of his future.

Like I say, it's a strange story, but not one without hope.  It doesn't offer a formulaic promise to us for how to get a new lease on life, nor a moral lesson threatening a comeuppance for schemers and swindlers.  But it does give us a glimpse of the living God as One who is willing to show up in spite of our worst choices and bad habits, in our deepest desperation, and through both blessedness and brokenness.  And maybe in that we discover that we could meet God in our own experiences of brokenness, and that God might just transform those broken places into marks of blessing.  Maybe we discover that, like the bread every Sunday, we can ourselves only be blessed at the very same time that we are broken, as the loaf is fractured and shared to be given to empty hands.  And maybe whatever frightening, anxious Jabbok moment you are facing is not godforsaken, but could be the very place where God comes to meet you in a way you did not expect, and bring something new out of you that you did not know was there, waiting to be called into existence.  Maybe in the place of brokenness, God will show up mysteriously, anonymously, and call you by a new name. Like I say, a more respectable deity might not show up in those marginal places in the midst of our messes--but lucky for us, our is a God who doesn't particularly care about looking respectable. 

So may you find blessedness in your brokenness.  May you see God meeting you in those times of utter aloneness and the times of struggle.  And may you hear your new name called when the voice tells you that you are a new creation, even if it means walking with a limp, too.

Lord God, meet us in our desperation and loneliness, and bless us in the place of our brokenness, to be new creations.