Worth the Cost--January 31, 2025

Worth the Cost--January 31, 2025

"If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it. Now you are all the body of Christ and individually members of it." (1 Corinthians 12:26-27)

The cost of loving people is that it will mean hurting when they are hurting.  The joy of loving people is that it will mean sharing in their joy when they are joyful, too.  That's the price of the ticket, and there's no way of getting out of the cost side of the ledger if you are a part of a community bound in love--which the community of Jesus absolutely is.

In other words, if your approach to life is just keeping yourself withdrawn and disconnected from everybody else in the hopes that you won't ever be hurt or suffer, be warned right now that Christianity is not the faith for you.  You can feel free to try to invent your own religion where you cut off from everybody else so that you don't have to care about the pains of others, but that in no way looks like the way of Jesus, which always leads us beyond comfortable insulation to the risk of empathy in community.

Ask anybody who has lived in such genuine community and they'll tell you it is absolutely worth the price of admission. But they will also tell you for certain that being a part of genuine Christian community is not for the faint of heart, because it will mean sharing the sufferings of others alongside learning to be happy for someone else's happiness, even if it doesn't directly affect you.  And none of that is easy.

All of this is to say that belonging in the community called "church" will always take us beyond our comfort zones, because it will always mean venturing into the experience of others--and in particular, practicing the empathy of trying to understand someone else's sorrow even when it is not personally your own.  That's the real challenge of the body metaphor Paul has been using here in First Corinthians, in this passage we heard last Sunday: if one part of the body is in pain, the whole suffers, even if it's only the stubbed toe or bumped elbow that endured the injury.  The nerves in my eye don't start to hurt because I scraped my knee--but my eyes do indeed well up with tears, over a pain they do not directly experience.  My nose does indeed start to sniffle, and my voice does indeed start to break when I'm in pain.  And in the Christian community, at least part of what Paul's "body of Christ" metaphor means is that I will be moved to cry out when someone else in the community is suffering.  I cannot pretend that their pain leaves me untouched, at least not without denying that we are both part of a body larger than ourselves.  But that will also mean that I may have to learn how to understand someone else's heartache or woundedness even if it is not first nature to me.

So, for example, if I learn that other people in my community are really distraught and I can't understand why, I have some homework to do--to ask, to listen, and to hear from their perspective what is making their hearts heavy, and to share that pain with them.  And if someone else is feeling overwhelmed by depression, our calling is not to try to argue them out of it (as in, "But here are all these reasons to be happy! Doesn't that cheer you up?") but to acknowledge the weight of what they are feeling, to honor it by listening to them, and only from there to talk together about how you will accompany them through it. And on the other hand, if someone is joyful about something that you don't feel particularly excited about, it can be very easy to just become bitter or resentful about the good thing that happened to them, rather than to practice (and it is indeed a practice) being happy for their sake about the new job, the new relationship, the book they loved, or the bright spot in their lives.  But all of these are part of our life as the body of Christ--going beyond the bounds of just my own immediate experience to share in the joys and sorrows of those around me.

Today's calling, then, is to step outside of the relatively comfortable zone of our own personal experience and to enter someone else's in order to divide their sorrows or multiply their joys.  That will mean a lot of listening, and quite frankly, it will mean being willing to feel awkward or humbled when other people share their stories and emotions that are outside of our personal experience.  It might also mean that the preconceived notions, prejudices, and cookie cutter molds we have tried to put other people in just prove themselves to be unhelpful, and we will have to get to know people as they really are, in all their complexity and sometimes their messiness, rather than as the cardboard cutouts and stereotypes we have too often settled for.  And once we do get to know someone else's perspective and their pain, the additional challenge is not to run away from those, but to shoulder them alongside the whole community of Jesus.  Like the Decemberists' lyric goes, "A neighbor's blessed burden within reason becomes a burden borne of all and one." 

Like I say, anyone who has participated in genuine community knows it means taking others' sorrows into our own hearts, as well as celebrating their joys with them.  But anyone who has done that at all will also surely tell you it is worth the cost of loving.  

It is worth it, after all, to Christ, who has shared all of our suffering as his own.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to share in others' sorrows, and make us brave enough to learn empathy.

Rolling Up Our Sleeves--January 30, 2025

Rolling Up Our Sleeves--January 30, 2025

"On the contrary, the members of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, and those members of the body that we think less honorable we clothe with greater honor, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect; whereas our more respectable members do not need this. But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the inferior member, that there may be no dissension in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another." (1 Corinthians 12:22-25)

In a wonderful way, you can kind of see why the authorities, magistrates, and other assorted officials were always wanting to put Paul in a jail cell or run him out of town wherever he went.  To take Paul seriously here would mean overturning all of our old ideas about who is really a "big deal" and who is just dressing the part to cover up their insecurity.  This is one more reason why Christians were seen as a subversive threat to the established order--and why when Paul and his message came to town, local pundits sometimes called them "these people who have been turning the world upside down" (see Acts 17:6).  Here, in these words from the letter to the Corinthians that many of us heard just this past Sunday, Paul has turned the tables on our old understanding of who is "important" and who is ignorable, who gets pomp and circumstance, and who doesn't need it.

The analogy to the body that Paul uses to make his point is simple enough: the parts of our bodies that we are most self-conscious about or feel awkward about are the parts that we make sure to clothe.  In short, we wear underwear (or the ancient equivalent).  But our arms, legs, and heads, we don't make a big fuss about needed to make sure they are clothed.  They don't need it.  They are busy doing important work, while our swimsuit zones (again, not to be crude) are basically just covered up because we tend to think of those parts of our bodies as less fit for public settings.  This is why bathroom stalls have walls or partitions, but we don't mind windows in our office spaces--we don't mind being seen with rolled-up shirt sleeves baring our arms, but we don't feel comfortable letting others see us use the bathroom.  Okay, so far, so good, right?  The bottom line of Paul's little thought experiment is that you can tell which parts of the body are really the strongest because they don't need to be wrapped up in padding or special garments all the time, and that in fact the parts that do need to be specially dressed are the less honorable ones, not the more honorable ones.  And the flipside is true, too--there may be parts of the body we think are weak and unimportant, but they might just turn out to be the most vital of all.  We could quibble about exceptions, but you get the idea of his argument.

Now consider the kind of world in which Paul lived--one that was ensconced in the trappings of the Empire's pomp and circumstance.  In the Greco-Roman world, you knew who was most important int he empire's eyes, because they made a big deal about themselves.  The emperors, governors, commanders, oligarchs, and plutocrats were the ones draped in expensive fabrics, the ones with gold crowns and sparkling diadems. And they used all that ornamentation to set themselves apart from everyone else--the peasants, foreigners, and slaves who didn't have two drachmas to rub together.  In other words, in the culture of Paul's day, if you thought you were a big deal, you would advertise by putting on shows of your importance, from the way you dressed, to the statues you had carved in your likeness, to the titles you heaped up on yourself, to the places of honor you took at dinners, sporting events, or public ceremonies.  The enslaved population, along with the farmers, artisans, and the rest of the peasant class, well, they all would have worn the same basic meager tunics for work, home, market, and travel, and it would have been a lot less fancy and a lot more functional.  In Paul's day, the people who wanted to project their own self-importance (and didn't have to worry about breaking a sweat at work) made sure to clothe themselves in opulence to send the message that they were the center of attention. And in response, Paul basically said, "Nope.  That's all just underwear. Those guys are actually needy and insecure."

And of course, within the life of the Christian community, Paul applies the same thinking.  Instead of the people who see themselves as "strong" or "important" or "great" puffing themselves up and bragging about it all the time or putting themselves in the center of attention, the truly "strong" ones don't need to always be in the limelight. In fact, they'll go out of their way to help lift up and honor the lowly, the overlooked, and the undervalued.  The ones who really are great don't have to advertise it or tell you that they are great--you'll know it, Paul says, from the humble way their love lifts others up rather than only themselves.  Like the old line says it, we rise by lifting others.  In the Christian community, we are called to this very different--even upside-down--way of life, in which the most important or the greatest are the ones with their sleeves rolled up and doing something helpful for others rather than needing to parade around in royal robes or expensive accessories.  And on the flipside, we make a practice of showing special honor, care, and love to the people who have been treated as nobodies, remembering that in our physical bodies, sometimes the parts that seem least important turn out to be the things keeping us alive.  

It's a complete reversal of the expected way of doing things, and it certainly would have made the early Christian community stand out in unexpected ways.  It's just one more way that our faith in Jesus will lead us beyond our comfort zones and rearrange the way we see the world.  But it all flows from the kind of life that is centered on Jesus' kind of love rather than our wider culture's need for attention and adulation.  Maybe it's time to reclaim a bit of that subversive way of doing things.  Maybe it's time we spent less attention on the self-described "great" ones telling us how important they are and instead made a point of looking for ways to honor and lift up the folks who have slipped through the cracks or been left out before.  

Maybe it's time we rolled up our sleeves and got to that kind of gospel work.

Lord Jesus, keep us so grounded in your love that we don't need to get attention or honor from others, but can use our energy to show honor and care for the people we easily forget or ignore.

A Feature, Not A Bug--January 29, 2025

A Feature, Not A Bug--January 29, 2025

"Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot would say, 'Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear would say, 'Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,' that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be?" (1 Corinthians 12:14-19)

Just to be clear, the inclusion of diverse people with diverse gifts in the church is not a failure or a flaw to be fixed--it's a feature designed by God's intention.  So, if we have a problem with that, Paul advises us to take it up with Christ himself.

The New Testament says so: it's right here in this well-known passage from Paul's correspondence to the Corinthians that many of us heard aloud in worship this past Sunday.  The community of Jesus' followers is intentionally diverse, with members as different from one another as eyes are from feet or gall bladders are from nose hairs. Each of those parts of our own body belong, not because of their uniformity, but precisely because in their difference, they are each able to contribute something different and necessary for the life of the whole.

Now, when Paul makes his rhetorical point using the analogy of a human body, it all makes perfect sense, and it all seems pretty simple.  After all, in real life, feet don't talk, and therefore they don't go bullying the hands or trying to kick them out (pun intended!) because they look a little different.  And in real life, the ears are not overwhelmed with self-doubt that they think about dropping off the sides of your face because they don't feel important enough to belong.  The eyes don't tease the lips that they're unimportant. And the crossed arms don't get to hold a special vote in conjunction with the furrowed brows to get rid of the organs don't understand much about because they're on the inside, like the intestines or the kidneys or the spleen.  When it's all inside the body, typically the parts all get along pretty well for the most part. After all, they are designed to cooperate, and they are not intended to function in isolation.

The hard part for so many of us is when we make the leap from a single human body to a collection of us in the community we call "church."  That's where we start to get uncomfortable with the idea of difference.  That's where folks sometimes fall into the mindset that SOME people don't really belong because they are different.  It's really easy to start dividing ourselves into little cliques or factions, all of them fracturing along fault-lines of difference.  The people who live in one neighborhood all hang out, but the folks from across the tracks?  No, they aren't really "our kind of people..." right?  The ones who all watch the same TV channels and get their news from the same talking heads, they all decide that they are the "True Church," but the ones who watch, read, and think differently, well, they aren't really members of the community.  The people who went to school with you and go way back in the same town, well, they are ok--but these new faces? We're not so sure.  Early service versus late service... contemporary versus traditional music... red states versus blue states... high church versus low church... loud and outspoken versus quiet and reserved.  We could go on and on with the different dividing lines, from the serious to the ridiculous.  But you get the drift--and my guess is that you've lived through conversations where one group of like-minded folks decides that some other group that doesn't fit their cookie cutter doesn't really belong.  

In those times, the differences across the whole community are talked about like they are problems to be solved or flaws to be fixed. We tell ourselves that the way to make everything harmonious in the church is just to make everybody the same--the same in their thinking, the same in their perspective, the same in their approach to living out their faith. And once we are in that mindset, we start to see anybody who stands out, whose gifts don't fit our preconceived places to use them, or whose life experience is different from our own, as people who need to be pushed out of the circle or compelled to conform.  But again, for the apostle writing to the first-century church, the differences across the community called "church" are not mistakes, but blessings.  They are not weaknesses, but strengths.  They are not bugs in the software, but features God has intentionally set in place.

As Paul saw it in the very first generation of the church, God certainly could have required uniformity within the church, but instead had deliberately chose people from diverse backgrounds, different cultures and languages, and a variety of points on the spectrums of class, status, gender, and ethnicity. And in addition to that, God gave each member of the community different gifts, abilities, and strengths, all of which are needed--but all of which also bring slightly different perspectives, understandings, and ways of making sense of the world.  Rather than force us all to see things all the same way or all approach questions from the same vantage point, God has deliberately given us a community in which some are immediately practical, some deeply relational and emotional, some philosophical, and some (often the poets) are out in left field making you wonder why they are even invited to the table, until they say something that completely reframes the situation and makes everyone see new approaches.  We need all of those voices, and our communities of faith would be impoverished if we were missing any one of them.  How much worse it would be if we insisted everyone see things all from the same vantage point all the time?  

The only catch to receiving the gift of all these diverse voices, gifts, and perspectives... is that we really do have to make the space for each of them and to honor them rather than shut them down.  That means each of us will be asked to go beyond our comfort zone and to see the world from someone else's vantage point--or at least to listen to them when they tell us how they see things and why.  It will mean considering the possibility that MY way of seeing things is not the only way, and that in fact it may well be GOD who has put the others with diverse perspectives in my life, so that they can catch the blind spots I don't even realize I have.  I won't lie to you--doing that consistently is hard work, and it is often easier to slip back into the old model of forcing everyone to toe the party line.  But it leaves us shriveled and dying as a community--the same as a body would die if it were all feet or all ears, but no heart, lungs, or stomach.

So today, perhaps the most important way for us to live on the edge of our comfort zones is to look around at the diversity of the people of God--in your congregation, in your community, and around the world--and before the impulse to make everyone homogenous kicks in, to see each of those different, diverse, varied sets of gifts and perspectives as a blessing worthy of being included.  What if we dared to see our differences as God-given features, not failures or flaws?

Lord Jesus, open our eyes to appreciate the value of each other person in the body with us--not only the people whose perspectives are similar to our own, but the ones most markedly different.  And teach us what we have to learn from all of them.

When God Interrupts Your Plans--January 28, 2025

When God Interrupts Your Plans--January 28, 2025

"Jesus rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, 'Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing'." (Luke 4:20-21)

I have this hunch. Sort of a working theory that's being formulated in the back of my mind all the time.  I don't usually like to talk about it out loud.  But sometimes, like when I read these words from Luke's gospel that many of us heard on Sunday, I can't help it.  I have to say it out loud.

So here goes: I have a hunch that a lot of us church folks don't actually want ancient Scriptures to be fulfilled in our lives.  We aren't really all that eager to have God move in a definitive and clear way in the world, especially close to home in our daily routines, precisely because we are used to the routine and we don't want them up-ended or our priorities rearranged.  As long as God is silent, we don't have to respond to whatever God might say. As long as God is slumbering up in the sky and not moving, like a cat curled up at the end of the couch, we don't have to change.  And as long as God isn't stepping into history in some noticeable, non-ignorable way, I can just keep on doing whatever I am doing in my life without any nagging guilt or questions.  And I have a sneaking suspicion that a lot of us are just committed to keeping our lives on their current trajectories--making money, getting the kids (2.5 of them) off to good schools, having a nice place to vacation, piling up our investments, and then retiring somewhere sunny, where we'll live the good life sipping fancy drinks with tiny umbrellas, or whatever your version of it is.  We all have our personal goals and ambitions, and all too often, we want to use God to rubber-stamp them and bless our wish-lists to make them happen.  But we are rarely comfortable with the other way around, letting God step in and rearrange what we were aiming for and where we have directed our lives.

But if God steps into the story and some ancient Scripture is fulfilled in the course of your or my ordinary Tuesday, well, then all of a sudden it becomes clear we aren't in control of things.  Maybe even more uncomfortable, we realize that we never were.  Many of us, including faithfully attending church folks who sit in pews (or preach in pulpits) every Sunday, turn out to be what they call "practical atheists"--that is, people who might believe in our heads that God is real, but who conduct our lives by the assumption that God doesn't make a difference at all in how we live or what we do.  And it is easy--damnably easy--to decide that the close of the Dow Jones, the value of my 401(k), or the success of my favorite sports team are all more significant markers for how I face the day than the words of Jesus. And I can keep my life oriented on my money, my team, or my routines, so long as Jesus doesn't show up and disrupt everything with his different set of priorities.

That's my hunch: that if we had been there in the service with Jesus' neighbors in the Nazareth synagogue, a lot of us would have squirmed uncomfortably at the notion that God was fulfilling ancient words of the prophets right here and now.  That might just force us to consider that God is more significant than our bank accounts, or that Jesus might claim he makes a bigger difference in our lives than the GDP.  And a lot of us would just rather keep on aiming at our current target--more money, bigger house, and the rest of the life from the cover of the magazine.

So I warn you--and myself--that if we take this passage from Luke seriously, it will mean recognizing that the living God really does reserve the right to step into our lives and rearrange all of our neatly ordered values and choices.  God reserves the right to change our course or show us that the things we'd been living for before just weren't the things that really mattered.  God might just come among us, like Jesus in the synagogue, and say to us, "Here's what really counts, and here's what I think is worth spending a life on--good news for the poor, healing of the hurting, release of the oppressed, and jubilee forgiveness all around."  What would we do if that message interrupted your plans for this day?

That's exactly what happens in this scene. Jesus has basically told everyone in the room, "This is what I'm spending my life on," as he points to the list of items in his reading from Isaiah 61.  From there, we have to decide what we are going to do with this Jesus.  If we shrug Jesus off and dismiss him as just a random neighbor or an oddball rabbi who has no claim on us, then we are free to go back to chasing the dollar sign and perfecting our white-picket-fence lives.  But if we dare to believe that in this Jesus, we are encountering the living God, then we might just have to let him point us in a new direction, beyond our comfort zones, and into the path he is walking. And who knows where that might lead?

Well, that's the gamble.  Ignore God's moving in the world and keep on where we were already headed, or let God's interruption through Jesus point us on a new course.  I've got to tell you, as risky as it can feel, and as much as I know it will take me beyond what is easy and comfortable, I'm convinced it's worth it to go with Jesus.

Let's go together.

Lord Jesus, direct us as you will, even if it interrupts our familiar routines.

Jesus' Inaugural Address--January 27, 2025

Jesus' Inaugural Address--January 27, 2025

"When [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

because he has anointed me

to bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives

and recovery of sight to the blind,

to let the oppressed go free,

to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor.'" [Luke 4:16-19]

Everybody's got an agenda in life. Everybody. Jesus, too.

Everybody's got a list, whether spoken or unspoken, written or unwritten, conscious or subconscious, of things they are pursuing in life, things that matter in life, things that are worth working toward. Your agenda is not only your list of goals, but also your perspective--it is just as much the lens through which you see the whole world as much as it is your set of things you want to do in the world. And, as I say, whether we know it or not, we've all got one.

This is Jesus' agenda.

I mean that very seriously. We religious folks are great at projecting our pet passions, persuasions, and politics onto Jesus. We imagine that Jesus wants our local baseball team to win (and we forget that the folks rooting for the other team are praying to Jesus for help, too), that Jesus has strong feelings about lowering the capital gains tax (newsflash: he doesn't), or that Jesus wants my political party to win more elections (this is just the same as the baseball heresy, but with suits and ties and yard signs instead of big foam fingers). The truth is, those are our agendas, not Jesus'. And before we go baptizing our own particular list of personal pet peeves and ascribing them to the Messiah of God, we should probably just be honest and recognize what we are doing: trying to pass off our own agendas as Jesus'.

But to be clear, Jesus brings his own. And he is entirely forthright and up front about it. On the day Luke talks about here, when Jesus went to his hometown, to his childhood synagogue, he came with his agenda spelled out and ready. (This is important to note, because sometimes we make a parallel mistake along with confusing our agendas with Jesus' agenda, namely, we incorrectly believe that Jesus had no agendas at all, no particular "take" on things, and no particular angle or perspective out of which he spoke, acted, and loved people. The danger there with that mistake, of course, is that if we wrongly conclude that Jesus had no agenda, we are back at square one baptizing our own personal agendas rather than holding them against Jesus' to see how they compare.)

This passage, which many of us heard in worship just yesterday, is the first time the adult Jesus speaks in Luke's telling of the Gospel.  These are his first public remarks, and that gives them the feel and the heft of an "inaugural address."  That is, this is Jesus' first opportunity to lay out his priorities, his mission, and in a manner of speaking, his "platform." There in the synagogue in Nazareth, Jesus reads from the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and essentially claims the passage he reads as his own mission-statement. 

That is to say, Jesus doesn't just invent his own agenda out of whole cloth. He doesn't come up with his own "neat idea" at random and say, "Wouldn't it be nice to work for these kinds of things?" And he most certainly does not built a platform for his Kingdom movement based on putting himself first, or his nation or ethnic group or culture first. There is no place--absolutely none at all--in Jesus' vision for the self-absorbed "Me and My Group First" thinking that has been popular through much of human history, right up to the present day. Instead, Jesus' agenda, drawn from the prophets inspired by God centuries before him, is a vision of mercy, of forgiveness (of sins and debts alike), of liberation, and of gracious care--for all. This is the radical thing about Jesus: he has an agenda (and is quite open about it, as a matter of fact), but it is an agenda that's not all about himself! It's not about getting what is good only for him. It's not about how to keep just himself, or his community of followers, safe and secure. It's not about getting themselves status or wealth. It's not about pushing out anyone not like him. And it's not about puffing himself up, either, to make himself look "great" or "important" or "successful" or like a "winner."

If anything, you could say that Jesus' chosen agenda is all about the people who have been labeled "losers" in life. Jesus' agenda is about good news for the poor, release to those who are imprisoned, healing for those who are diseased, an end to oppression, and the announcement of God's "jubilee"/"the year of the Lord's favor" (the ancient practice prescribed in the Torah of taking every fiftieth year for a social re-boot in which debts were cancelled, land went back to its ancestral family owners, slaves were set free, and the land was to rest as well). Jesus reads these words, and then claims that they find their fulfillment in him--right then and there! And what's more, because this is Jesus, none other than the full divine presence in a human life, Jesus is also claiming that these words from Isaiah 61 are God's agenda in the world, too.

Think about that for a second, and there is remarkable clarity to be found. If you want to know what things Jesus thinks are worth doing, look here. If you want to get a foothold into thinking like Jesus, and also acting and speaking like Jesus, here are the crib notes. If you want to know what things matter to God, and what are the essential planks of the platform for the Reign of God, here you go. This is the angle from which Jesus operates--this is the perspective through which Jesus sees the world. Sometimes we (wrongly) imagine, because we picture God being "up above" somewhere very high in the sky, that God doesn't have a vantage point or a particular perspective, but only sees everything with the distance of the 50,000 foot view (a la Bette Midler's song that suggests, "God is watching us...from a distance). But Jesus here shows us--God does have a perspective, an angle, and agenda. God is about the work of bringing good news to uplift the people on the bottom, to release those who are imprisoned to heal those who are bound by their ailments, and to announce jubilee freedom. Jesus says that this is what the Spirit of the Lord has anointed (the same word we get "messiah" or "Christ" from) him to be about.

Don't miss the underlying point: this is what the Spirit of God does in the world. This is the kind of stuff the Holy Spirit will do with us, and in us, and through us, as we dare to let the same Spirit direct and propel us in the course of our Monday. "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me," Jesus says, "because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor." Well, if you and I are followers of this same Jesus... and if you and I are indwelt by the same Spirit, then in a very real sense, Jesus' agenda is to become our agenda, too.

This is what we'll be about in our lives, more and more, as we let the same Spirit make us over into the likeness of Jesus. This is what will matter to us more and more. This is what we will find ourselves excited about, passionate about, sometimes really angry-and-hopeful-at-the-same-time about, too. And less and less will we be fussy about the old things we had been keeping on our personal agendas that we used to think were "oh-so-important." We'll be less concerned about making ourselves look like "winners" and looking tough. We'll be less concerned about protecting our pride and our reputations. We'll be less worried about ourselves, all around, actually, and more interested in practicing compassion. And we will find ourselves reading these same words of Jesus' again and praying, "Lord, let this scripture be fulfilled today in my living them, too!"

You know the old saying: "Opinions are like belly buttons--everybody's got one." Today, what if we owned and took a closer look at our sets of opinions, our way of life in the world, our agendas, and held them up to Jesus' to let him realign ours with his? What if we dared to let these ancient words from Isaiah, echoed by Jesus in his inaugural address, become our agenda, for this day, and for the next day, and for the third day, too?

Lord God, realign our hearts, our wants, and our lives with yours.

 

God Chooses Mercy--January 24, 2025

God Chooses Mercy--January 24, 2025

"And the foreigners who join themselves to the LORD,
    to minister to him, to love the name of the LORD,
    and to be his servants,
all who keep the sabbath, and do not profane it,
    and hold fast my covenant--
these I will bring to my holy mountain,
    and make them joyful in my house of prayer;
their burnt offerings and their sacrifices
    will be accepted on my altar;
for my house shall be called a house of prayer 

    for all peoples.
Thus says the Lord GOD,
    who gathers the outcasts of Israel,
I will gather others to them
    besides those already gathered." (Isaiah 56:6-8)

Just when you think you've got God figured out and pinned down, God squirms out from underneath your grip and makes a move you didn't see coming.

Just when you are confident you have a final version of the list of who's allowed "in" and who is "out"--written in permanent marker, or even chiseled in stone--God stretches the welcome wider and sends out more engraved invitations.

Just when you are certain God will insist that the "outcasts" stay cast out ("They might be dangerous, and they're not OUR KIND of people, you know..."), God chooses mercy and gathers those outsiders all in.

That's God for you--consistently pushing us beyond our comfort zones because God has a thing for strays, rejects, and refugees.  Including you and me.

These words from the book of the prophet Isaiah are just one passage of many in the Bible that remind us of God's bewildering (and beautiful) habit of choosing to include people who had reason to believe they would be left out.  And as we consider them on this day, it's worth remembering that these words would have been a challenge for many in Isaiah's audience to hear, because accepting them meant moving beyond what they were familiar with, and it meant accepting that God could widen the circle with or without their permission.

This section of the book of Isaiah addresses folks who are picking up the pieces after exile.  They were coming back home to their ancestral lands after a generation before them had been forcibly taken into exile.  They and their parents had learned in Babylon what it was like to be the foreigners who were looked down on and treated with suspicion.  They had felt the glares from the citizens of the superpower of the day, and they knew what it was like to be mistreated there in a strange country. 

But once those exiled people finally came home to their ancestral lands in Judah, they had to deal with the new fact that there were others--foreigners--in the picture now, too.  Some were people who had married into the family, and others had been transplanted to live in Judah when it was occupied territory under the Babylonians.  And for the Judeans home from exile, they were pretty sure the old rules said that no foreigners were allowed to belong in the assembly of God's people, no matter how they had gotten there or how long they had lived there in Judah.  Rules are rules, right?

Well, except that God--as you may have heard before--reserves the right to surprise us by gathering the outcasts in.  In fact, that's exactly what God says in this passage of Isaiah 56. This whole section is the prophet speaking for God and saying specifically to the foreigners who find themselves living in the land of Judah that they are now able to be included among the servants of God and the covenant people.  God is well aware that the conventional wisdom was that no foreigners--that is, no non-Israelites or people of Judah--could belong among the people of God.  And God is surely also aware that some of those Israelites wanted to get the foreigners out altogether (you can read that perspective in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah).  That group saw all foreigners as a danger and even wanted people who had married people of foreign ancestry to leave their spouses--or rather make their spouses leave!  Again, you can read that whole episode in places like Ezra 10, where the people with foreign wives and children were told to send their whole families away.  But... over against that perspective, the prophet here in Isaiah 56 says, "No! They don't have to leave! They can belong!" People from whatever background or nationality or ethnicity could belong among God's people, provided that they were willing to live the covenant way of life--to do justice, to practice mercy, to keep God's ways, including the rhythm of sabbath rest which was unique to the heritage of Israel and Judah.  In other words, the voice here in Isaiah 56 says that all those people who would have been sent away, even separated from their families, can be welcomed into the covenant and belong as God's people.  God chooses mercy, rather than sending them away.  God chooses to gather the outcast foreigners in, alongside the Israelites who had been outcasts in exile and come back home.

Now, this announcement from the prophet would have been obviously good news if you were one of those foreigners living in Judah and were wondering if there was a place for you among God's people.  This would have meant that you were no longer an outcast and no longer cut off from God.  It would have meant that you were welcomed into the Temple, too, which was now to be understood as "a house of prayer for all peoples" rather than the exclusive possession of one group.  But if you were one of those returned exiles, this was all very, very challenging.  This was about as far out of your comfort zones as you could imagine, not only because it meant accepting that God was doing a new thing, but also because it meant that you were going to have to make room to accept and welcome these foreigners as your own neighbors (which they were already, after all) because God had decided to include them.  And for the returned exiles, it also meant the uncomfortable recognition that they had been outcast foreigners before, too--back in Babylon, of course, and farther back when their ancestors had been the oppressed foreigners held as slaves in Egypt.  And it was difficult for many of them to accept that since God had gathered them in, God was also free to choose to gather in other people who were foreigners and welcome them into the covenant people.

For every voice in Isaiah's day who said, "But we're different!  Those people shouldn't belong with us!" the prophet said, in effect, "Sorry--you're both people who were outsiders and outcasts... but good news! I have chosen to show mercy to both groups!" We often have a hard time, don't we, with the realization that when God chooses to be gracious to us, God reserves the right to be gracious to other people we were not prepared to welcome?  But that's how things work in the sweep of Scripture.  God gathered the people who were foreigners in Babylon back home when they were outcast, and so God could gather in the foreigners living among the Israelites once they got back home, too.  Nobody had to be sent away.  Nobody had to be a permanent outsider.  Nobody had to be separated from their families, the prophet said. And all of this welcome was possible because God chose mercy.

It is possible, even now, even on this day, for us to choose mercy, too.  It is possible for us to see that we were once outcasts, strangers, and foreigners from the ways of God and that we have been welcomed in, and that therefore others could be welcomed in as well.  It is possible for us to choose surprising welcome.  After all, God does it all the time.

Lord God, you who have first mercifully gathered us to belong to your people, grant us the courage to show mercy to those waiting for welcome today, too.

The Grace of a New Name--January 23, 2025

The Grace of a New Name--January 23, 2025

"For Zion's sake I will not keep silent, 

     and for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, 

 until her vindication shines out like the dawn, 

    and her salvation like a burning torch. 

The nations shall see your vindication, 

    and all the kings your glory; 

and you shall be called by a new name 

   that the mouth of the LORD shall give." (Isaiah 62:1-2)

Some of the bravest people I know are the ones who have reinvented themselves completely, even to the point of going by a new name and new identity.  They continually teach me what the prophet means when he speaks of God calling us by a new name that somehow also reveals our truest selves.

I say this as someone who typically only makes incremental changes in my own life--and even then, pretty slowly and often with great internal turmoil.  I tend to get the same haircut every time I go to the barber, buy new shoes or jeans that replace my worn-out ones as closely as possible to the previous pair, and stick to the same set of familiar scents for shampoo and soap.  I like my morning routine--same glass of grapefruit juice while unloading the dishwasher, and same travel cup of coffee to take to work--and I like the beats of consistency throughout my day and week. In other words, I am not typically one to launch into personal reinventions... at all.

But I know folks who have.  I know people who went away to college and came through it, not only with their horizons broadened but with a whole new sense of self.  I know folks who came to decision they didn't want to be known by an old name anymore but found a new one that fit them better.  I know people who answered the call to ministry after putting in full careers in some other field and completely rearranged their lives and their old identities to go where they were certain God was leading them.  And I can only imagine the courage it takes to make those kinds of changes and step into a new reality.  And all of it begins with the brave realization that we do not have to be defined by where we have come from, what we have done, or what someone else has said about us.  It begins with the leap of faith that is willing to let what God says about us be more definitive of our identity than anything that has come before.  Even if it is a whole new name, and with it, a whole new sense of self.

And to be honest, it happens in the Bible more often than we realize.  Not just the dramatic turn of events from being a "notorious sinner" to a "striving saint," and not even just the sea-change of vocation like fishermen and tax collectors who are called to become apostles for Jesus, but deep-down-to-the-bone changes of identity.  There's Abram and Sarai who are given new starts and new promises, signified by new names, Abraham and Sarah.  There's Jacob, who had been stuck with the old identity chained to his name, which means "usurper," who is given the new name Israel ("strives with God") and a new identity to go with it.  Simon gets the nickname Peter and the new calling to be the "rock" (the name "Peter" means "rock" in the Greek), and of course Saul of Tarsus starts going by Paul when he is turned around from persecuting the early church to spreading the news of Jesus to the Gentile world.  You can't go too far in the Bible before you bump into another story of someone being given a new identity and even a new name because God was daring them to become a new creation.  And maybe when God calls you by a new name, the new identity leaps into being like God calling to the light when there had only been darkness before in the beginning.  Maybe the whole history of the universe is the story of God calling each of us, each being, and each creation, by a succession of new names.

And that's the same kind of bold, beautiful moment happening here in the words of Isaiah 62, words that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Speaking to people who are still defeated and despairing in the wake of exile, God gives a word of hope.  The old identity of the people (symbolized by their city, Zion, another name for Jerusalem) is given the promise of a new beginning, the prophet says, because God will give them a new identity.  "You shall be called by a new name that the mouth of the LORD shall give," the prophet says.  It is an utter gift of grace that when we find ourselves in a dead end, God speaks new possibilities we could not achieve ourselves.  But it does require great courage to step out in faith and believe what God says about us in the face of what our past, our inner monologue, or other people say about us.  It takes great trust in God to believe that we are who God says we are, and to answer when God calls each of us by a new name.

I don't know what the details of your story are. I don't know what past mess-ups you wish you could leave behind, but are afraid or unable to let go of.  I don't know what parts of yourself have been foisted on you by others, that you wish you could release.  I don't know what new directions you are feeling called to.  And I don't know if there is something inside you that has been feeling unsettled, like you were waiting for someone, even the living God, to finally call you into a new identity and call you by a new name.  But I know that's the sort of thing the Bible announces that God just might do.  And I know that when it happens, and at last you hear a voice calling you by a name that is different and yet somehow summons forth who you were really meant to be all along, something beautiful and holy is happening.

Maybe today our work is to listen for the voice of God, and to be ready when God calls us by that new name, to let God transform us into who God says we are meant to be.

Lord God, you who have called light out of darkness and called your people into new identities and new hopes, call to us now, and make us brave enough to believe your word when you say we are your new creations.

More Than Mesmerized--January 22, 2025

More Than Mesmerized--January 22, 2025

"Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee, and revealed his glory; and his disciples believed in him." (John 2:11)

There were plenty of people who once saw Siegfried and Roy put on their magic act, complete with white tigers, over the years, but nobody left the theater quitting their day jobs to follow the show wherever it toured.

There were certainly numerous crowds who watched David Copperfield or David Blaine making things disappear before their eyes, only to bring them back with a flourish to thunderous applause, but I don't believe anybody then committed their lives to the philosophy of Copperfieldism or became born-again Blaine-ians.

Jesus' disciples, however, find themselves compelled by what they have witnessed at a village wedding reception after the caterers ran out of wine, and they rearranged their whole lives forever after.  That's something, isn't it? That's really something.

I don't mean to belittle the miracle here, not at all, but simply to say that I think there was more going on here than just that Jesus' disciples were impressed that Jesus did "a cool trick" when he turned water into wine.  After all, we might all be stunned, impressed, or dumbfounded by seeing some spectacle we cannot explain, but we typically don't overhaul our whole lives just because we saw a rabbit pulled out of a hat or a lady sawn in half.  Even if you see some astonishing image while you are doomscrolling on social media, my guess (and my hope!) is that you don't automatically decide to believe every crazy conspiracy theory that also gets dumped into your feed by the algorithm because you saw one photo or video clip that left you speechless. You know better--or at least you should, especially in this age of doctored photos and AI-generated images--that just because someone shows you something inexplicable or amazing, you are not obligated to believe everything else that comes out of their mouths.  So if somebody at a party should one day make it appear that they have turned clear water into dark-red burgundy, I would advise caution to you before you leave your family to become their roadies simply on the basis of a parlor trick.

My point is to say that if you and I know not to be bamboozled solely on the basis of a magic trick, no matter how impressive it might have appeared, that Jesus' disciples are drawn to faith in him by more than just being impressed at the unexplainable cups of wine where there had only been jars of water before.  They are more than mesmerized--they are captivated in faith by the compelling way of Jesus. They didn't rearrange their whole lives simply because they got an unbelievably good glass of Bordeaux from nowhere.  They did it because in this moment, they became convinced not only that Jesus had amazing power, but that he was using it for good... for compassion... for the sake of life.  And that was worth upending everything else to be a part of.

Mind you, the disciples do in fact uproot their lives as a result of this story.  When John says that Jesus' "disciples believed in him" because of what they witnessed at the wedding banquet, it's not as passive spectators in the stands, shouting, "We believe in you!" to a team they are merely watching.  To say that the disciples "believe in" Jesus marks the beginning of a relationship of trust that would change their lives. They did in fact leave behind their day-jobs--literally dropping their nets at the shore, in some cases--to go follow Jesus.  They did in fact let go of their old view of the world and how God works in it, trading it in for the vision Jesus gave of the Reign of God.  They did in fact discover Jesus was pulling them across boundaries--social and cultural ones, as well as geographical--to strike up conversations with Samaritan women at wells, to join tax collectors throwing dinner parties with paid escorts on the guest list as well, and to help foreigners and even sworn enemies who were in need.  The disciples of Jesus were changed because they "believed in him," that's for sure.

All of which brings me back to the underlying question: was it just because they had seen something unexplainable that they put their trust in Jesus?  Was it only a matter of being astounded at the water turned into wine?  Were they only hoping for front-row seats for the next show, the next trick, the next spectacle? Or perhaps was there a sense that this Jesus was worth giving direction of their lives over to because, for someone with this previously-hidden astounding power, he was willing to use it, not to draw attention to himself or make himself the hero, but precisely as a behind-the-scenes gesture of compassion?  Could it have been that the disciples longed to be transformed, too, even if they didn't know what this Jesus would make of them, only that they knew they could trust themselves in the hands of someone who turned water into wine? Perhaps, did they see that the "sign" they witnessed pointed to the character of Jesus, who stood out as someone whose power was used for love rather than for fame, power, wealth, or self-interest?

Honestly, I have to think that something like that is going on here.  Sure, the spectacle at Cana was eye-catching, but I am convinced that the thing that held the attention, and ultimately the faith, of the disciples, was that the One who wielded this miraculous power used it to help a poor couple on their wedding day rather than to make himself rich or crown himself king.  What makes Jesus different is not merely that he works wonders, but that he uses his wondrous power for life, for healing, for others, and not to build an empire, smite his enemies, or amass a fortune.  That's the difference between Jesus as the professional illusionists, traveling hucksters, and magic acts throughout history: the others might put on a great show, but they're doing it for the paycheck, the power, or the prestige.  Jesus is compelling because whatever power he has access to is used in love for others. That's why the disciples see this wonder and put their faith in him.  

I don't know about you, but I'm just plain tired of seeing folks who cast themselves as Big Deals use their power, position, or perch only use it for themselves.  I'm wearied by the ones who wield their influence or aptitude to make themselves richer, stronger, or "greater." I'm disgusted, honestly, every time I hear someone with a grip on power use it like a cudgel to smash other people down in petty revenge or leverage it for their own advantage--because Jesus so very clearly gives us an alternative.  And when the followers of Jesus hear those loud voices bragging about their power, it falls to us as Jesus' disciples to say, at least for ourselves, "No.  This is not how WE do things, because this is not how JESUS does things."  We find ourselves captivated by the way Jesus uses power in the service of compassion--like the first disciples, that is what first caught our attention and kindled our faith, and that is what we dare to embody, as well as we are able, for the world.

Today, as people who are drawn to Jesus, not merely because he channels divine power, but because that power is never self-serving, we step into the world to speak against all other self-serving abuses of power and to act for the use of our own power, such as it is, for the sake of those most at risk across our path, whether in a wedding reception in Galilee, in the next aisle at the grocery store, taking an ESL class at a local church fellowship hall, or crossing your path in the next ten minutes.  That's what it looks like for us to behold Jesus' glory... and to believe in him.

Lord Jesus, let us be captivated again by your compelling way of using power in love, and let us do the same as we follow you in faith.

Called to Risk--January 21, 2025

Called to Risk--January 21, 2025

"[Jesus] said to [the servants who filled the jars], ‘Now draw some out, and take it to the chief steward.’ So they took it. When the steward tasted the water that had become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the steward called the bridegroom and said to him, ‘Everyone serves the good wine first, and then the inferior wine after the guests have become drunk. But you have kept the good wine until now.’ "(John 2:8-10)

Imagine for a moment you are one of the wait staff at this wedding reception, and some stranger (and his mom) just start giving you absurd-sounding directions.  I know we church folks are no longer surprised at the unexpected plot twist of this story, so it's no longer a shock that Jesus turns water into wine, but imagine if you were living through this moment.  Imagine some upstart rabbi tells you to do something that sounds downright preposterous without even explaining to you what his plan is, all while the guests at this wedding are getting increasingly suspicious about the lack of refills at the bar.

And now imagine... that for some reason, you just go ahead and do what the stranger directs you to do.  And something amazing happens.

Like I say, we are so used to this story that we call it "The Water into Wine Story," or the title headings in our study Bibles give away the ending before it's even begun.  But if you didn't know how things were going to turn out--and if you were one of the people asked to do something that sounded insane by someone you had quite possibly just met, what would do?  Would you have followed Rabbi Jesus' directions and filled the heavy, awkward stone jars with water?  Would you have dared to serve some to the wedding planner who was running the party without knowing what had happened to the water from the jar? 

My guess is that it would have been very hard for any of us to follow Jesus' instructions if we had been on the service staff at the wedding banquet that night.  We don't like to make utter fools of ourselves.  We don't like to risk getting people mad at us (as surely, the steward of the catering service would have been if the cup you just handed him turned out only to have water in it).  And to be quite honest, we don't like to be directed out of our usual routines and familiar tasks with nothing more to go on than the instruction of a stranger who hasn't told us his plans.  But there's something about Jesus, I suppose, that makes people willing to go beyond their comfort zones and risk looking like fools.

Maybe that's how we have to let this story hit us: we haven't been asked to fill up stone jars with water in the seemingly impossible notion that it will become wine just on Jesus' say-so. But we have been called by Jesus to risk ourselves, our routines, our reputations as Respectable Religious Folks, in other ways.  When he calls us to share our resources so that the hungry can be fed and neighbors without safe housing can have a warm place to call home, that can sound risky.  When Jesus directs us to love our enemies, or to welcome foreigners, or to forgive the ones who have hurt us, it might well sound as preposterous in our ears as filling up those stone jars with water and waiting for them to become Cabernet Sauvignon.  But we dare those things, as outrageous as they are, because we have found Jesus compelling.  Somehow, when Jesus calls us to go into all nations, to eat with sinners, or to walk on water, we go, because when he tells to dare, we can't help but dare.  Somehow it doesn't matter that Jesus will take us far away from our comfort zones and beyond the bounds of the "reasonable."

I wonder: where his call will lead us today?  And I wonder if our willingness to risk making utter fools of ourselves in the ways we love... and welcome... and forgive... and serve... and celebrate... and proclaim... will turn out to be the most powerful witness we have.  After all, because a handful of servants at a wedding did the crazy thing Jesus asked them to do, a miracle happened, and people came to believe in Jesus from that crazy thing they saw and tasted.  Maybe you and I will turn out to be part of the reason someone else dares to place their trust in Jesus, because they see what happens when we let Jesus direct us as he will.

Lord Jesus, make us confident by your call to do what you direct us to do, and to share in the joyful miracles you have in mind.

Stepping Past Plan A--January 20, 2025

Stepping Past Plan A--January 20, 2025

"On the third day there was a wedding in Cana of Galilee, and the mother of Jesus was there. Jesus and his disciples had also been invited to the wedding. When the wine gave out, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine.' And Jesus said to her, 'Woman, what concern is that to you and to me? My hour has not yet come.' His mother said to the servants, 'Do whatever he tells you.' Now standing there were six stone water jars for the Jewish rites of purification, each holding twenty or thirty gallons. Jesus said to them, 'Fill the jars with water.' And they filled them up to the brim...." (John 2:1-7)

One of the things that gives me hope on the days I am struggling in this life of faith is the assurance that Jesus never calls us to do something he isn't already willing to do--and in fact, that he has done first. That's an especially needed encouragement in a season like this one as we are focusing on "life on the edge... of our comfort zones," because, well, because I'm so often afraid. We are fearful of going out beyond our comfort zones--and yet Jesus himself did the same first.  This story, which many of us heard in worship on Sunday, is evidence of that.

I know it might sound strange to our ears--Jesus, had to be coaxed out of his comfort zones?  Jesus had to do something he didn't seem ready to do at first?  Really? That somehow doesn't seem right, does it?

And of course, most of the time, Jesus does seem to be completely at ease and in control of what he does and when.  Most of the time Jesus seems to walk into situations knowing exactly what he intends to do or with whom he'll talk, and it's everyone else who is left surprised or awestruck.  But this scene from the beginning of John's Gospel has a different feel to it, doesn't it?  It's Jesus who has to deal with an unexpected situation, and it's Jesus who has to decide ultimately if he will insist on keeping with the original timeline of Plan A... or if he will let himself respond to someone else's need and figure out a Plan B on the fly.  Let it sink in for a moment just what it means that Jesus--the Incarnate Word of God whose coming was the fulfillment of centuries of hoping and the result of infinitely complex timing--decides ultimately to improvise and come up with a Plan B.

That's really what's going on here.  When Jesus' mother alerts him to the situation--that the newlyweds have run out of wine at their wedding celebration, and they will be utterly put to shame if the secret gets out--at first, Jesus' response seems rather cold.  "What is that to you and to me?" he asks in reply.  In other words, helping produce wine for a party doesn't seem to be what Jesus had planned for the evening.

But on second thought, let's consider why Jesus might not be looking to start his public ministry by becoming known as "the guy with the wine trick."  For one, this is not a life or death situation.  There will be times when Jesus takes the initiative to help people or to heal them, and there will be times when action is urgent.  But this is not about saving life.  You wouldn't ask a new resident ER physician to help you buy a keg for a tailgate party or your high school reunion, would you? No, my guess is that you would know that while an ER doctor might be a lovely person, it's not really their "thing" to score you free booze in large quantities.  And you can see why Jesus might think that this is not a wise precedent, as well.  If Jesus helps this couple out, is he now obligated to provide cases of Merlot for every young bride and groom in Galilee for the foreseeable future?  Is he on the hook for making ice cream sundaes at his second-cousin Jacob's bar mitzvah in two weeks?  Is he derailed from his mission to become the Free Caterer of Galilee?  You can understand why Jesus wouldn't want to be put in that position, or in the difficult position of having to say to somebody else, "Sorry, I don't do that sort of thing anymore."  Once you open that door, it's hard to get it closed again.

And deeper than that is a second reality. Jesus says to his mother that his "hour" has not yet come.  Throughout John's gospel, that's a sort of shorthand for the timetable that takes Jesus to the cross.  Later on, when an angry crowd wants to string Jesus up, he is able to pass right through their midst, because "his hour had not yet come." But later, when he knows that it is at last time to head to Jerusalem and the cross waiting for him there, he says, "Now my hour has come."  In other words, Jesus has a sense that once he begins his public ministry, the sand starts slipping out of the hourglass, counting down to his own death--as well as heartbreak for his mother, who will end up being there at the foot of the cross when it happens.  So here at the beginning of it all, at the wedding in Cana, you can almost hear in Jesus' voice a hesitancy for her sake. It's almost like he's saying, "Mom, you know that if I help out now, and if I launch my public ministry right now, it starts the clock running out on my time with you, too.  There is heartbreak waiting for both of us there, and you're asking me to start racing toward it when we would have had a little more time together otherwise."  You almost get the sense that Jesus sees how much more is at stake than just one wedding banquet running out of wine.  And I think I can at least understand why Jesus would have decided that Plan A was not to do anything about the wine.

And all of that, as reasonable and sensible as it is, is also why I find it amazing that Jesus is willing to let his mother persuade him to change his planned course of action and pull him out of his comfort zone to help the couple with their wedding reception. For all of his good, well-thought-out reasons to keep a low profile at the wedding reception while the DJ played Cha-Cha Slide and the Macarena, Jesus was ultimately willing to step in and help spare a couple some embarrassment and to make their wedding joyful.  It wasn't a life-or-death situation, granted; but it was a moment when compassion was called for.  And Jesus answers.  That matters.

Like I say, it is an encouragement to me when I am being pushed out of my comfort zones for the sake of my faith to remember that Jesus, too, was willing to be led out beyond his comfort zones, too, in a manner of speaking. He was willing to set aside Plan A and to figure out Plan B on the spot, for the sake of compassion--even when it wasn't a matter of someone's life being in danger.  Life is going to send those kinds of situations at all of us, and in those times, there is something terribly powerful in the impulse to stay where we are comfortable and not stick our necks out.  There are going to be times when it's easier to keep our heads down, not to step up and help, not to take the risk, and not to deviate from our planned itinerary for the day.  I know, and obviously, so does Jesus.  But Jesus also shows us what can come from being willing to let love lead us outward, beyond what was comfortable and on the schedule, to what the need of the day is.

You and I won't always be able to fix or help or make things better in every situation that comes our way.  But we don't have to let fear or inertia keep us from showing up in those situations where we can do something.  Jesus allows himself to go beyond his plans and into something new in this moment, and it made a difference for that couple. Maybe we can keep our eyes and ears open in a new day, too, and let compassion--and the nudgings of the Spirit!--lead us beyond our comfort zones to the places we can offer help to someone in a way we never expected, too.

Lord Jesus, give us the courage like you to be willing to step beyond our Plan A framework when you are leading us into something new.

Taking Jesus Seriously--January 17, 2025

Taking Jesus Seriously--January 17, 2025

(Jesus said to his disciples:) "Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom. Sell your possessions, and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also." [Luke 12:32-34]

"The thing is, Jesus, I like my stuff."

That's the long and the short of it, really. I like my stuff. I like my clothes. I like having a car. I like my collection of books. I like my computer. I like my favorite coffee mug, and I like having a bag of my favorite dark roast coffee handy to make more at the end of the day. I like these things... and therefore, I will confess, I will do an awful lot to go out of my way to ignore, blunt, divert, or shrug off Jesus' words here.  Maybe the question for me (and all of us) to ask is whether I prefer the comfort of my familiar possessions more than I love Jesus, because listening to Jesus might well lead me beyond those creature comforts.

It's funny (or maybe I mean, it's sad) how my attachment to my "stuff" leads me to willfully deflect Jesus' words or even to convince myself he isn't speaking to me. It's like somehow I use my piles of belongings (and all the storage space they require, in closets, in the basement, in the garage, and so on...) to block Jesus' words from my field of vision like an eclipse, so I don't even know they are there. I can't hear him speaking... because I have turned up the volume on my Amazon Echo smart speaker to drown out the sound of his voice.

I confess to you--I have heard many a sermon, read many a book, and been in plenty of Bible study discussion groups over the years in which the claim was made, "Jesus may have told that one rich young ruler to sell his possessions and give to the poor, but he never made that a universal statement. It was just this one time, to that one guy... and therefore he is not speaking to us now." And for a while in my life of faith, that resolved the question. "Jesus doesn't talk about giving up possessions as a general practice for his followers," I had been taught, and therefore, any time I read him saying something that sounded like that, I should assume, "This must be a message for someone else." I had even convinced myself until recently rereading these words of Jesus in today's verses that all those sermons and books were correct--that Jesus had only once ever told one person to go sell his possessions, and that it was never a broad directive of Jesus for his followers.

And then my eyes fell on Luke 12 again... and I realized that I had been missing these words staring me right in the face, but which I had been unwilling to see, or had chosen to forget.

Because here it is, right in black and white on the page: Jesus is talking to a whole group of followers, (part of a block of teaching addressed to "his disciples" at the start of the passage, starting in 12:22), and these words are found on Jesus' lips: "Sell your possessions and give alms. Make purses for yourselves that do not wear out, an unfailing treasure in heaven..." And now I have nowhere to run: Jesus isn't just saying it to "one rich person on one random occasion," but he is saying it broadly, without asterisks, without fine print, and without qualifying it or putting conditions on it, as part of his way of life for "his disciples." If I am going to make a fuss about how important it is to take Jesus seriously, or for people to read their Bibles more, I am going to have to come to grips with this directive of Jesus to get rid of stuff in my life, so that I am free to use my energy, time, and resources for what matters to God.

We church folk, we Respectable Religious Crowd, we can be real stinkers when it comes to Jesus and his authority. You'll hear lots of people saying (often they are shouting) or posting memes on Facebook and Twitter and elsewhere that cry out, "What our country really needs is more people reading the Bible!" And believe me, I am all for reading the Bible. But it is funny (again, I think I really mean sad here) to me how curiously selective we can be when it comes to beating the "Read the Bible more!" drum. It's funny to me how we can cherry pick this issue or that issue and insist with fiery indignation (whether it is righteous indignation or not I will not venture a guess) that "People just need to listen to what the Bible clearly says on this!" and be absolutely sure we know exactly what Jesus thought on our modern questions and issues, and yet when we find Jesus saying something simply, directly, and clearly like "Sell your possessions and give the proceeds to the poor," we all of a sudden become all thumbs and start hemming and hawing about how uncertain and unclear Jesus' teaching is, and whether it really applies to us or is "just for another time and another group of people." We are stinkers, and that's the truth. We already have a set agenda we want to get Jesus to endorse, and we will be happy to quote him in support when we can find a Bible verse we can shoehorn into supporting our preferences. But when Jesus says something that threatens to get between me and my stuff... all of a sudden, we decide he's being metaphorical, or he's talking to someone else.

We show our true colors pretty quickly, we Respectable Religious people: we don't really want to learn or to hear what "the Bible clearly says," in most cases--we want someone to confirm for us that that Bible says what we already want it to say, and when someone (say, even Jesus) says something counter to that preconceived picture, we fight it tooth and nail. There's a powerful quote of Kierkegaard's along these lines, that goes (in part) like this:

“The matter is quite simple. The Bible is very easy to understand. But we Christians are a bunch of scheming swindlers. We pretend to be unable to understand it because we know very well that the minute we understand we are obliged to act accordingly. Take any words in the New Testament and forget everything else except pledging yourself to act accordingly. ‘My God,’ you will say, ‘if I do that, my whole life will be ruined.’ Herein lies the real place of Christian scholarship. Christian scholarship is church’s prodigious invention to defend itself against the Bible, to ensure that we can continue to be good Christians without the Bible coming too close. Dreadful it is to fall into the hands of the living God. Yes, it is even dreadful to be alone with the New Testament."

But here we are today, coming face to face with words from Jesus that we can't run from any longer. Jesus really does dare his followers not to be possessed by their possessions, and that will lead us out of our comfort zones as people ensconced in affluence. Jesus really does say it would be better to sell our stuff and give the money away to those who have nothing--not so that they can have our discarded dregs, but so that they can eat. And on top of that, Jesus also doesn't seem to have any qualifications about the inherent "worthiness" of the people who receive your and my alms--the word "alms," after all, comes from the Greek word for "mercy," (and the same word that Christians in many traditions sing out week by week in the liturgy when they sing out, "Kyrie eleison--Lord, have mercy!" as our own prayer), and mercy is not dependent on worthiness or earning.  As Dorothy Day put it so well, "The Gospel takes away our right forever to discriminate between the deserving and the undeserving poor."

Jesus seems to think that our possessions get a stranglehold on us, and that I would be freer myself if I wasn't tied down to keeping track of all my belongings... and buying a large enough home or storage shed or rental storage place to house it all... and paying for special extended warranties on it all... and getting all the accessories... and always having the latest upgrades... and then having to take regular time from my weekly routine to dust and vacuum and clean around all my stuff. Possessions aren't inherently evil--but they certainly do take up a colossal chunk of my available time and resources, not just to buy, but to maintain, to insure, to polish, and to store. And before I know it, I am drowning in piles of things and stacks of bills to go with the things, dying of affluenza and calling it all the American Dream. And maybe Jesus knows, too, that anything that commands such a large chunk of my life's attention, time, resources, that isn't a living thing... is an idol. And idols are terribly possessive gods--they keep on taking more and more of what's around until they have it all. So maybe being freed from some of my possessions might be easier on my knees, when I don't have to worship at their altar any longer, and maybe I'll be able to breathe easier, too, when I don't feel like I'm drowning in "stuff" that requires more and more and more space and time and money for their upkeep.

The underlying truth in all of what Jesus says here in today's verses is that he really does believe that the living God is trustworthy to provide for our needs, and that exorbitant hoarding beyond what we need is not good for us, but turns out to be stifling and suffocating. Jesus knows--and challenges us to trust him on this--that more is not always better; sometimes it is just more.  If that leads us to do some uncomfortable inventorying of our lives, then so be it.

So the question on this day is simply this: will we trust Jesus enough to take him up on his dare, and to part with... at least something? Will we dare to look honestly at the piles we have each amassed, and to see where there are things that are not making us more fully alive, but which might actually be choking us out? Nobody will check--I cannot go to your house and audit the contents of your closet. But maybe might we, dare we, could we find things in our lives that are dead weight, get rid of them, and give the money (either what we make from selling, or just what we don't have to pay any more for managing and upkeep) to someone who has greater need that we do? Could we dare it, and see what happens?

After all, Jesus says, all the treasures we hold onto in this world are bound for the trash can eventually. Maybe we could start taking out some of the trash now.

Lord Jesus, we will admit that we sometimes do everything in our power to avoid listening to you. But in this moment we dare to listen, and we ask your help to accept your challenge to let go of the possessions we have allowed to possess us.