Without Our Clapping--October 17, 2025

Without Our Clapping--October 17, 2025

"Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. The saying is sure:
 If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
 if we endure, we will also reign with him;
 if we deny him, he will also deny us;
 if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
 he cannot deny himself." (2 Timothy 2:10-13)

When they tell you they need your support in the cause of "saving God," let it be clear to you that they don't know what they're talking about.  When they say that "It's up to us (whoever they allow into the group they label as "us") to save Christianity," you can be certain it's false.  And when the loud voices claiming to speak for Respectable Religion claim that God needs their movement, their influence, their power, or their culture war leverage for things to come out all right in the world, your Gospel-configured "Baloney Detector" should be going off with sirens and alarm bells.  None of it is so, no matter what they say... no matter who the "they" happens to be at the moment.

I've been thinking about this since this past Sunday, when many of us heard this passage from 2 Timothy read in worship, and how the New Testament-era church was clear that it's never Jesus who needs our help to accomplish his purposes, but rather, we are the fickle (and often faithless) ones who rely on Christ.  Whether or not we flake out on Jesus may well be an open question; Jesus, however, is not at risk of running out of energy or giving out on us.  At no point is there a concern that Jesus will bail out, give up, or depend on us to save him; there is, on the other hand, constantly the possibility that we will do any of those things toward him.  And yet--amazingly--the writer of Second Timothy insists that even "if we are faithless, he remains faithful." Even when we blow it, even when we don't live up to our calling, even when we bring wobbly faith, scandalous sins, or a track record of selling out, Jesus remains faithful.  He never needs our help to step up and save the day for him; we always need his.

Or, as I sometimes tell our confirmation students, the position of the Holy Scriptures is that God is not Tinker Bell. 

Yeah, that Tinker Bell.  You know, the winged fairy character from the Peter Pan stories.  The one whose cartoon version graced the opening titles of many of Disney movie over the decades.  God ain't like her... at least in one very important way.  In the classic stage retelling of Peter Pan, there comes a point at which Tinker Bell drinks the poison that was intended for Peter Pan, in order to save the life of the Boy Who Could Fly.  When Peter finds her and discovers what she has done, he realizes she is dying, and then breaks the fourth wall to address the audience for help.  "You have to help save her!" Pan insists.  "You have to bring her back! If you all in the audience will clap your hands, believe really hard, and say out loud that you believe in fairies, Tinker Bell can be revived and come back to life!"  In other words, the magical supernatural pixie creature needs our help to save the day, and to save her life.  Fortunately for the fictional fairy, it always turns out that the exact amount of applause the audience gives is precisely the quantity that will resuscitate Tinker Bell, and the play can move on toward its inevitable happy ending. Captain Hook is defeated, and all is well with Never Land, all because when Tinker Bell needed saving, we in the audience did our part.

And, as I say, as much as it works for a theatrical version of a children's story, that ain't how the Scriptures teach us to picture God.  It might be tempting to think that God needs our help, or Jesus is enlisting us to fight a culture war for him, or that it's up to us to rescue Christianity from whatever nefarious forces they say are out there. But the Scriptures insist that Jesus doesn't need saving, God's Reign doesn't depend on our political machinations, and the Spirit does not need our help to make the Good News "great" or the church "successful." God isn't Tinker Bell, and Christ does not need our assistance to come through in a pinch.  It is always the other way around: we are the ones who need God to be reliable, and we are always the ones dependent on Jesus to be faithful even when we are not.  Blessedly, that is precisely what the Gospel gives us.

So the next time you hear the talking heads at a podium, lectern, or TV studio hawking their plan for how we can help save God, or bring back Christianity, or rescue the church, let these verses from Second Timoty come back to your mind.  God has never needed our measures of "success," "greatness," "power," or "influence." Rather, God's way of saving us--and indeed the world--comes through precisely the things that look like loss and lowliness, weakness and insignificance. When we get it backwards, we lose what makes the Gospel actually good news, and we sell it out for more of the world's typical power-grabbing dressed up in religiosity. 

And you know what?  Even when that happens--even when we turn out to be faithless in God's way and sell out for some counterfeit--Jesus still doesn't sell out, bail out, or give out.  He remains faithful, even when we are faithless, and even without our clapping from the seats.

Lord Jesus, be your faithful self and keep us from selling out for cheap counterfeits of your good news.

On Being Called Criminals--October 16, 2025

On Being Called Criminals--October 16, 2025

"Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained." (2 Timothy 2:8-9)

The earliest Christian community didn't shy away from being called troublemakers. They didn't deny that they were accused of being criminals by the powers of the day. The first followers of Jesus readily admitted that everybody from the empire's armed enforcers to the respectable religious leaders saw them as bad citizens, dangerous subversives, and impious pot-stirrers. They didn't even mind the way that reputation got them pushed out to the margins of society rather than occupying centers of power and prestige.  In fact, they were convinced that out by being on the edges like that, it was made even clearer that God's powerful word was free, uninhibited, and on the loose.

That's what strikes me, as I consider again these words from what we call Second Timothy, an early Christian letter from the New Testament that many of us heard in worship back on Sunday.  Here we have the voice of the apostle Paul, and as the text tells it, he sure seems to be looking at the end of his life, awaiting a death sentence meted out at the hands of the Empire, and he is not afraid of admitting that they've got him chained up on criminal charges.  In fact, the word used in the original Greek is even stronger--he says he is being treated as "an evildoer," and that's why he is enduring chains and imprisonment.  There are plenty of things that might be technically against the law but which we might not be too harsh with someone if they were accused of it.  Unpaid parking tickets are a violation of the law, and so it failing to pay your taxes on time or jaywalking, but most of us would cut a little slack for infractions like that.  But calling someone an "evildoer" is a pretty big swing.  Now, it's worth noting that the apostle here in Second Timothy isn't saying that he has actually done something objectively evil--but he is admitting that the government authorities have treated him that way, even if he insists his actions have been right and good.

But that's just it: the early church didn't actively commit crimes, rob banks, or burn farmhouses--but they were willing to be regarded as criminals by the powers of the day. They were willing to endure suffering, but not to inflict suffering on others. They were willing to be pushed to the margins and labeled "troublemakers," but they didn't strike out against others with that kind of hate or unfounded name-calling. Caesar and his underlings might have called us "evildoers" or "treasonous" or even "atheists" (and they did call Christians all those things in the first several centuries), but the community of Jesus didn't resort to the same empty accusations or scapegoating, not of anybody. That was part of our witness.  Like Jesus, we were willing to bear slander, libel, and hostility without returning it.  Like the Crucified Christ, we would accept the hate of others without lobbing it back in return.  Like the examples, not only of Jesus but of the Apostle Paul and just about all of the first disciples of Jesus, we would be willing to endure being excluded as outcasts, but we wouldn't do the same to others who came seeking the grace of God.  And in that willingness to absorb the meanness of others without throwing it back, it was revealed how powerful and free God's message really was.  After all, when someone is truly powerful and authoritative, you don't have to get all bent out of shape or defensive trying to make them look tough.  

I often find myself thinking of that line of Margaret Thatcher, who famously said that being powerful is like being an elegant lady: if you have to tell people you are, you aren't.  I think something like that was true for the early church, and it freed them.  They knew that they weren't really evildoers. They knew that they weren't really criminals or violent extremists, even though the loud voices of the empire tried to paint them as such.  But because the first Christians really trusted that their identity came from Christ--the descendant of old king David who had been crucified by the state and still rose from the dead victorious--they weren't constantly needing to defend their reputations to the rest of the world. We didn't have to keep making ourselves look "tough" or "strong" or like "winners" or even to refute the charges that we were lobbed at us; we just let our lives and our love be the witness of what the Christian faith was really about. After all, the folks who do spend the better part of their energy and breath talking about how great and noble and virtuous they are, they tend to be the insecure ones who are trying to convince themselves.  The early church trusted that its worth and belovedness came through Christ, so they didn't need to impress anybody, prove anything to anyone, or project an image for the world to see.  And that also meant that those Christians weren't afraid to acknowledge when they had been rounded up and jailed, or vilified by the Empire as dangerous criminals, or dismissed as "unschooled fishermen" (another lovely accusation you hear in the book of Acts). 

And part of what made that kind of freedom possible for the New Testament-era and later church was that they knew that the voices of the Empire would say or do whatever they felt they had to in order to maintain their grip on power, but that the Empire's pronouncements and declarations weren't necessarily the truth.  They could call us "criminals" and "evildoers" but that didn't make it so.  They could label people "enemies of the state" but that didn't mean we were trying to burn down society. Voices like the one here in Second Timothy just knew that they didn't have to play the Empire's game or accept its definition of terms.  And while the Empire's spokespeople were trying so hard to turn popular opinion against some made-up caricature of Christianity as violently seditious, the actual Christian community was free to share the news of Jesus, welcome new faces into its embrace, and embody a love that the Empire could not understand.  So yes, the empire's muscle came for us, just like they did to Paul the apostle and Jesus before him. Yes, they put our ancestors in the faith in jail cells, prison blocks, and detention centers without rightful cause. And yes, they tried to label us as "evildoers" who were opposed to everything good in the world. But that didn't stop the disciple community from following the way of Christ, answering malice with goodness, and being a countercultural presence like salt and light.  They learned that from Jesus, too.

Today, it is worth remembering that not everything Caesar or his lieutenants says about the world is true.  The Romans were labeling their violent conquest as "peace" and their emperor as "lord and savior" since the days of Augustus, and every version of every empire since has been using the same playbook.  They condemned Jesus as a criminal, labeled Paul an evildoer, and branded the whole Christian movement a dangerous threat to law and order.  They were lying. We can either get sucked into their game and keep trying to shout louder, or we can just freely go on our way without succumbing to Caesar's old nonsense. I know it is hard not to throw mean names back like they are thrown at us, or to push back with hatred.  And I know sometimes it is the strategy of the Empire to try and provoke violence from people so that they will feel justified in cracking down on them with more violence.  We just don't have to play that game.  The witness of the New Testament reminds us we don't.  We are free from it, even if, like the apostle in 2 Timothy, we are at the same time in chains or branded as troublemakers. Even then, as he says, "the word of God is not chained." Like the living Christ himself, it is free and loose in the world.

Lord Jesus, let us be faithful witnesses in the world even amidst the hostilities and hatred that the world is used to throwing.

Our Ordinary Rivers--October 15, 2025

Our Ordinary Rivers--October 15, 2025

"Naaman, commander of the army of the king of Aram, was a great man and in high favor with his master, because by him the Lord had given victory to Aram. The man, though a mighty warrior, suffered from leprosy. Now the Arameans on one of their raids had taken a young girl captive from the land of Israel, and she served Naaman’s wife. She said to her mistress, ‘If only my lord were with the prophet who is in Samaria! He would cure him of his leprosy.’ So Naaman went in and told his lord just what the girl from the land of Israel had said. And the king of Aram said, ‘Go then, and I will send along a letter to the king of Israel.’ He went, taking with him ten talents of silver, six thousand shekels of gold, and ten sets of garments. He brought the letter to the king of Israel, which read, ‘When this letter reaches you, know that I have sent to you my servant Naaman, that you may cure him of his leprosy.’ When the king of Israel read the letter, he tore his clothes and said, ‘Am I God, to give death or life, that this man sends word to me to cure a man of his leprosy? Just look and see how he is trying to pick a quarrel with me.’ But when Elisha the man of God heard that the king of Israel had torn his clothes, he sent a message to the king, ‘Why have you torn your clothes? Let him come to me, that he may learn that there is a prophet in Israel.’ So Naaman came with his horses and chariots, and halted at the entrance of Elisha’s house. Elisha sent a messenger to him, saying, ‘Go, wash in the Jordan seven times, and your flesh shall be restored and you shall be clean.’ But Naaman became angry and went away, saying, ‘I thought that for me he would surely come out, and stand and call on the name of the Lord his God, and would wave his hand over the spot, and cure the leprosy! Are not Abana and Pharpar, the rivers of Damascus, better than all the waters of Israel? Could I not wash in them, and be clean?’ He turned and went away in a rage. But his servants approached and said to him, ‘Father, if the prophet had commanded you to do something difficult, would you not have done it? How much more, when all he said to you was, “Wash, and be clean”?’ So he went down and immersed himself seven times in the Jordan, according to the word of the man of God; his flesh was restored like the flesh of a young boy, and he was clean. " [2 Kings 5:1-14]

We're always looking for God in the extraordinary, you know? Always up on the moutaintop, or in a booming voice from the sky. We seem to think God is more likely to connect with us on a particularly important day, too--maybe a holy day in the church's calendar, or on the anniversary of someone's death, or at that moment you watch the sun rising over the horizon.

But the ordinary? We rarely give it a second thought. That's surely not where to find God. That's surely not where you'll see divine fingerprints. It almost seems like we think God is like the "good dishes" you save only for special occasions, or the fire hose in the public buildings that is kept behind glass except "for use in emergencies only." We have a harder time thinking that Christ dwells with us exactly in the mundane, the routine, and the unnoticed... because we expect something of the flutter of angel wings or heavenly light and the echo of angel choruses where Christ shows up.

And yet, over and over again, the Bible has to call our attention to seeing the fullness of the divine in the perfectly ordinary, and even outside of the center limelight, in the wings off to the side and the marginal, unimportant places of our lives. Not just on Sunday mornings, but on routine Wednesdays while you are slogging through your regular work load. Not just in the glorious golden glow of the rising sun on a new day, but when it is forgettably grey as well. And not just at the big impressive "rivers of Damascus," but even at the plain, old unremarkable backwaters of the Jordan river.

As a case in point, consider this story that many of us heard this past Sunday The point of the story, in which the foreign (enemy) army officer Naaman seeks a cure for his sickness, is not that the Jordan River in Israel was special, or holy, or even particularly clean water. Just the opposite. The power isn't in the water, but in the God who works in the midst of the ordinary. If you wanted a more impressive river, you could go up to the ones Naaman thought of--the Abana and the Pharpar. But this isn't really about the river, is it? It's about the God who chooses to work healing in the midst of the ordinary, and who shows up unannounced in the backyard creek as well as on the shores of the Mighty Mississippi.

So often, we aren't any different, really, from Naaman. We expect God's presence to be in the extraordinary, but we almost can't dare to imagine that the mundane is worthy of God. We pray with fervor in times of crisis--like when we are in the emergency room with someone we care about... but our attentiveness has a way of falling off when our loved ones are home and getting around just fine again, as if we are saying to God, "We've got it covered from here, God--we don't need you anymore." We might be beaming with praise to God when you get the promotion, or when your kid graduates with honors, or when you make your last payment on the mortgage... but, hmmm, it's funny how we have a way of missing the presence of God on the days when your kid gets a C-minus, or when your car insurance premiums go up, or when you just keep on keeping on at the job you've been in for years. And yet, Naaman's story would seem to tell us that God reserves the right to show up--and to work for good--precisely in those situations we think are too "ordinary" to matter.

Sometimes we limit how much we will let God use us, too, for that matter. I bet we would each be willing to do God's work if it were clearly a criticial situation--to save a life, rescue someone drowning in the ocean, or to sit at the bedside with someone before they have a critical surgery. But somehow, we just start to shrug off the possibility that God might call you or me to something less dramatic or show, but just as vital from God's vantage point. And what a damned shame it would be if we decided that since it's not a "crisis," then we must not be "on-call" for God to use us for the people around us--you know, and we can get back to doing our own thing without worrying about God interrupting our plans for the sake of someone who needs us.

Maybe you'll be called today to check in on the friend who is down in the dumps--and you'll never know it, but your voice might be what pulls them back from the brink, just because you reached out, and not because you actually talked them down from a bridge. Maybe the other person never gets to the ledge or the bridge because you were there and just said, "Hey," when they needed you to. It's not flashy, and you'll never know the difference you made... but it's one of those moments that has divine fingerprints on it, even though it feels completely ordinary from your side.

Maybe you'll be prompted to make some small monetary donation to the homeless ministry, or to the refugee-resettlement organization affiliated with your church (if you don't know one, let me know and I'll help you out!). And you know full well that your ten dollars won't go very far on its own... but as ordinary as that Alexander Hamilton in your wallet might be, who knows how it gets put together with other small donations to give someone a new start and a safe place to sleep?

Maybe you're the one who offers the insight that makes someone think a little bit differently, or your example is what makes someone else give just a little bit more effort because you challenge and inspire them. Maybe you're the one who just shows up on an ordinary Wednesday, and in that ordinary space, God's motion is evident--in you.

It's never about how impressive our actions appear at the moment--after all, it was never about the greatness of the river or the holiness of the water that makes Naaman well. It's always about a God who shows up in the ordinary. In the flat places as well as on the sacred mountains, on weekday afternoons as well as at sunrise on Easter Sunday. In the moments that seem completely forgettable, as well as the days we have circled on our calendars as "special."

I guess that's the thing about this God of ours--the real and living God isn't hemmed in to making only cameo guest appearances for emergencies and liturgical processions with incense and robes. The real and living God shows up in the muddy creek in the back yard, the non-emergency phone call, and the routine weekday.  

Today might feel like an ordinary river, rather than a sacred pool of holy water or a cascade of thundering waterfalls. The question, really, is--will we have our eyes open to allow ourselves to see God's presence without fanfare in all of our ordinary rivers? That is to say, will be ready to see God's presence in whatever meets us in this day--will we recognize the God who is already there...here... right now?

Lord God, show up in this day and let us see you here.

Where Jesus' Mouth Is--October 14, 2025

Where Jesus' Mouth Is--October 14, 2025

Then one of [the people with the skin disease], when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice. He prostrated himself at Jesus’s feet and thanked him. And he was a Samaritan. Then Jesus asked, “Were not ten made clean? So where are the other nine? Did none of them return to give glory to God except this foreigner?” Then he said to him, “Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well.” (Luke 17:15-19)

One thing you can say about Jesus for certain is that he actually puts his money where his mouth is.

This moment in Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, is the pudding that contains the proof.  As we saw in yesterday's devotion, in the first half of this scene, Jesus has set himself up to invite an encounter with outsiders by traveling in this marginal place--the borderlands between Galilee and Samaria--in the places where one might meet a community of those exiled from their towns and lives because of their contagious skin disease.  But if we reach back even further to the beginnings of Jesus' ministry, there are some important moments to hold in the background of the second half of this scene.

For starters, you might recall what Luke gave us as Jesus' first public words--his sermon in his hometown, back in Luke 4.  In that story, Jesus not only read from the prophet Isaiah and declared "Today, this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing," but he also went on to tell his former friends and neighbors in Nazareth that God had a habit of healing not just "their group" or "their kind" but outsiders and foreigners as well.  In fact, he quoted to them a story from the Old Testament (one that many of us also heard back on Sunday) in which God healed a foreigner of the skin disease they called leprosy, even though he was not just an outsider, but actually a commander in an enemy nation's army!  Jesus gave that precedent in his first sermon, as Luke tells it, and it riles up his audience to the point that they want to kill him--they try to throw him off a cliff, as a matter of fact!  So Jesus began his ministry insisting that his mission would lead him to show God's love and use God's power to heal and restore not just his own group or his own nationality, but people deemed "other"... people on the margins.  Yes, even those deemed "enemies."

Then just a little later in Luke's Gospel, we get the central block of Jesus' teaching we sometimes call the "Sermon on the Plain," (which parallels Matthew's "Sermon on the Mount"), in which Jesus teaches his followers to show love and give help not only to people who are kind or can pay them back, but to their enemies and those who hate them. And then Jesus says an even stranger, more provocative, thing: he tells his listeners that this is the way God's own love works, since God "is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked" (Luke 6:36).  In other words, from early on in the story of his ministry, Jesus has gone on record saying that God's kind of love deliberately seeks out those deemed "foreigners" and "enemies" as well as those labeled "ungrateful" and "wicked" and does good to them. And he has called his own followers to practice the same kind of love: "Be merciful, therefore, as your Father is merciful..."

Now the question becomes, will Jesus live up to those words?  Will Jesus do good to those who are deemed foreigners, enemies, and ungrateful people?  That is to say, will Jesus put his money where his mouth is?  

By the time you get to this scene in the seventeenth chapter of Luke, we've already been given some hints.  There had been an episode in which a village of Samaritans wouldn't accept Jesus, since he was headed toward Jerusalem, and his disciples had suggested calling down fire to destroy these people who had made themselves Jesus' enemies--and Jesus flatly refused.  There was a famous story Jesus told in the tenth chapter, too, in which Jesus made a Samaritan the hero figure who truly understands what loving a neighbor looks like.  But now, in this scene, Jesus is met by ten people and heals the whole group, one of whom is a Samaritan "foreigner" from that same ethnic group that had been Jesus' "enemy," and the other nine of whom do not even stop to come back and say "thank you."  In other words, Jesus literally has come across a group made up of "the ungrateful" and those who could be charitably called "foreigners" (and uncharitably could be lumped in as "more of the enemy"). And he chooses--as you know from reading--to give out a blanket healing all around for all of them, refusing to rescind the miracle for the 90% who don't act adequately "thankful."  There it is: Jesus really does put his money where his mouth is, and he really does practice the same kind of love for "the ungrateful" along with "foreigners" and even "enemies."

This is what grace really looks like.  Goodness or mercy that stops at the boundary marking out "Me and My Group" isn't really love--not in Jesus' view.  Empathy or compassion that can be revoked if the recipient doesn't say "thank you" deferentially enough isn't really kindness. They are counterfeits dressed up in the garb of virtue. Jesus insists that God's kind of love--and therefore ours--reaches out to those who have been labeled "foreigner," "enemy," or "insufficiently grateful." 

The question in front of us, then, is whether we dare to take up Jesus' kind of love and to put our money where our mouths are, too.  We who say we are followers of Jesus, will we dare to show kindness to people without demanding some sort of performance of gratitude to make us feel important?  Will we dare to seek the good of those with whom we most strongly disagree--precisely while we still disagree with them?  Will we let Jesus' kind of love move from being an abstract ideal we can read about in Bible stories or hear about in sermons to being something we practice--in action--with the real people we would see as "foreigner"," enemy", "ungrateful", or even "wicked"? For all of our talk on Sundays... and on our social media... and in our churchy circles of acquaintances, will we dare to actually practice the kind of love that Jesus has shown first, by healing unconditionally not only the outsider, but also the nine ungrateful members of his own group?

What could it look like for you and me today?

Lord Jesus, stretch and strengthen our love to reflect your own mercy's expansive reach.

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.