We Are Not the Only Ones Singing--November 21, 2025

We Are Not the Only Ones Singing--November 21, 2025

"Let the sea roar, and all that fills it,
  the world and those who dwell therein.
 Let the rivers clap their hands,
  and let the hills ring out with joy before the Lord, who comes to judge the earth.
 The Lord will judge the world with righteousness
  and the peoples with equity." (Psalm 98:7-9)

There really is a different feel to watching a game in person compared to watching it on a screen from the comfort and relative quiet of your living room.  The energy is almost electric when you are at a ballpark, stadium, or arena and you get to watch your team play.  Sitting at home to watch is certainly convenient (and you don't have to pay for parking), but it doesn't feel the same, right? There is something both humbling and exhilarating about cheering alongside hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of other people, rooting for the same players you care about, roaring at an impressive play, or celebrating a victory. It changes your perspective, doesn't it? Being there in person reminds you that you are a part of something bigger than yourself... and also that there are others who are just as excited as you are when the home team wins. 

I get that same feeling from these verses at the end of Psalm 98, which many would have heard, read, or sung in worship this past Sunday.  It's a reminder that we humans are not the only ones in awe over the goodness of God. Even if we don't realize it most of the time, all of creation--including seas, rivers, and hills--rejoices in God.  In particular, this passage from the psalms even suggests that the whole world, from the soil and rock of the mountains to the waters of the ocean, celebrates the justice, equity, and righteousness of God.  All of creation is cheering for God, celebrating in God's victory, and singing in praise to God.

The psalmist is great at imagining that with his faithful imagination: the sound of the rushing river is like the clapping of hands in thunderous applause or rhythmic percussion; the seas are roaring, too.  The hills are not merely inanimate, here in the poetic view--they are joyful about God, glad to see God setting things right.  It's like the change of perspective that happens when you walk into the stadium or the ballpark and see that you are not the only one who has been cheering for your team--you are surrounded by so many more who are all as jubilant as you are.  To read (or sing) Psalm 98 is to see that we are not alone in being swept up in praise, thanks, and awe toward God.  We have a place in the crowd, but we are not the only ones.  The trees and the flowers, the rain and the sun, the fish and the birds, all of them are part of the cheering congregation of the universe, praising God by being what God has called us each to be. It's like that beautiful line of Nikos Kazantzakis, "I said to the almond tree, 'Sister, speak to me of God.' And the almond tree blossomed."  All of creation, all living things, as well as, apparently, things we usually think of as inanimate, like rivers, seas, and hills, all of it is overjoyed at the goodness of God.  We humans have a particular perspective, since we can see and know and appreciate things with our unique senses, intellect, and capacities.  But we are not the only ones singing.  

For a very long time in what we have often dubbed "advanced" Western society, conventional wisdom has treated the world as merely a pile of raw materials to be consumed and exploited.  We have forgotten what the Scriptures keep saying: all of creation is in relationship with God and rejoices over God's goodness.  We are not separate from that chorus, or "above" it; we are a part of it.  Taking that seriously will change not only the way we relate to God (maybe a little humbler, maybe a little more appreciation of our connectedness), but it will also change the way we treat the world in which we live.  If you are in a choir, you don't start eyeing the tenor section to pilfer its music or plotting to take over the seats of the sopranos--they are a part of the same ensemble to which you belong, and you share a common calling to sing together.  Similarly, if you are at a stadium cheering for your team, you know it doesn't help the team at all to take the big foam finger of the fans sitting next to you so you can use it to cheer.  You are both on the same "side" wanting your team to win, after all.  Maybe listening to the psalmist here will help us to see the rest of creation as our fellow singers, and we will learn to listen to their voices alongside our own.

O God, with all creation and the whole cosmos we praise you--not just for your greatness, but for your goodness.

Why We Need New Songs--November 20, 2025

Why We Need New Songs--November 20, 2025

" Sing a new song to the Lord, who has done marvelous things,
  whose right hand and holy arm have won the victory.
  O Lord, you have made known your victory,
  you have revealed your righteousness in the sight of the nations.
  You remember your steadfast love and faithfulness to the house of Israel;
  all the ends of the earth have seen the victory of our God." (Psalm 98:1-3)

If you hang around a church for very long, at some point, you will hear someone grousing about the music--especially if involves change. "Why are they printing new hymnals? What was wrong with the old ones?"  "Do they really expect us to shell out the money for buying more song books for our pews?"  "What if they get rid of my favorite hymn?"  "Why should we have to learn new songs if God is still the same as always?"  And that's before we even get to the knock-down drag-out fights that erupt over style and instrumentation: guitars or organs, screens or the printed page, "contemporary" or "traditional," praise-chorus or four-verse hymns in four-part harmony? We church folk can be an ornery bunch when it comes to having to learn a new song.

So, let's dare to ask it: why should we have to learn new songs--especially if God is the same as always? Can't we just stick with the songs we already know? Can't we just listen to the psalms that are already in our Bibles?

Well, that's just it.  Sometimes the psalms that are already in the Bible are the very voices telling us, quite literally, to "sing a new song."  These words from Psalm 98, which many would have heard or sung in worship this past Sunday, are a case in point.  Here we have a song from the Bible telling us, "Don't let these be the last words to be sung!  Keep coming up with new songs!  Keep bringing new praises!  Keep writing lyrics--sing a new song to the Lord!"

Why would we need a new song? Or beyond that, why will we keep needing new songs for the rest of our lives and into eternity?  To hear the words of Psalm 98 tell it, there's a two-fold reason: for one, God keeps doing marvelous things, which are just begging to be sung about for their sheer awesomeness... and for a second, so that more and more people will come to know both the greatness and the goodness of God.  We sing new songs, in other words, because God keeps doing things that need to sung about, and because the world keeps needing to hear about who God is.  So it's not that God changes and we have to keep reworking our lyrics to keep up with the latest version of the divine, like installing software updates for your phone or laptop.  It's that God's constant, faithful, steadfast love keeps acting through history, and we want the world to know, hear, and see it.  The whole idea, the psalmist says, is that God's righteousness--God's fundamental goodness--will be revealed among "the nations."  That is to say, the Gentiles.  Yeah--THOSE people.

I can't help but hear that as a boundary-pushing sort of welcome and invitation to outsiders.  That's a big deal.  The psalmist doesn't say, "We have to keep our God a secret because God is our private personal possession and nobody else can find out about God's steadfast love or those foreigners will want some, too, and there won't be enough to go around!" Rather, the poet says, "We had better keep writing and singing new songs about God's faithfulness, so that everyone will want to hear about it--especially all the nations beyond our borders!"  The Scriptures themselves--here in the words of this psalm--are directing our attention beyond the bounds of these set words keep looking outward at the new things God keeps doing in the world and the people we haven't met yet who are waiting to hear about the goodness of God!  The Bible itself keeps pointing us beyond its own pages to see the God to whom it witnesses and offers psalms of praise, acting and moving in marvelous and new ways.  That's why we are called to "sing a new song"--the Bible itself is calling us to do just that.

But, just to be clear here, if we do keep writing and singing new songs to God, it will change us.  Our perspective will shift, such that we will start to keep our eyes open to recognize how God is moving in the world.  We will no longer picture God as a relic of the past--the hero of past legends who has since retired and hung up the ol' divine spurs--but rather we will see God still doing marvelous things and wonders we had not expected.  And when that happens to our vision, we might just find that we are spurred to be a part of what God is up to as well, rather than just sitting on our hands telling stories wistfully about the "good old days." That might change our lives in ways we cannot even fathom yet.

So, I suppose, take this as a word of warning: if we dare to follow the Scriptures' lead and "sing a new song" of God's wondrous love and marvelous goodness, we will not only be pointed outward to reach out to people we had never thought about before, but we will likely be pulled to join in the work God is doing in the world around us.

Where will the next new song lead us?

Lord God, we praise you for your new movements in the world and your marvelous love--strengthen our voices to join in the new song of your goodness.

Even in the Fire--November 19, 2025

Even in the Fire--November 19, 2025

"See, the day is coming, burning like an oven, when all the arrogant and all evildoers will be stubble; the day that comes shall burn them up, says the Lord of hosts, so that it will leave them neither root nor branch. But for you who revere my name the sun of righteousness shall rise, with healing in its wings." (Malachi 4:1-2a)

I know these words can sound scary and threatening, at least the first half of them.  But these very same words--even the ominous imagery of a fire that consumes the stubble--are also good news, too.  We would do well to sit with them for a bit and let them speak hope to us, rather than rushing off to the more pleasant poetry about the sun rising "with healing in its wings."  Even in the fire, there is good news.

So bear with me for a moment as we muster up our courage to jump back into these harsh-sounding words from the last book in our Old Testament, which many of us heard in worship back on Sunday.  

The first thing I think we need to get clear on in this passage is how to make sense of this fire and oven business.  We are used to hearing fire used as an image of punishment, like in the scenes of Dante's Inferno from the Divine Comedy, where sinners are tormented in flames out of some notion that God needs to inflict a certain amount of pain on people in order for justice to be done.  And yeah, if that's what the prophet Malachi were envisioning, I'd be tempted to close up my Bible and go home.  But that's a matter of us projecting our own baggage onto the Bible.  The way Malachi uses the image of a fire in an oven isn't about punishing or inflicting pain. It's about saying that evil and rottenness will not get the last word.

In Malachi's day, that was a needed word of hope.  For people whose parents had lived through the exile in Babylon, it sure seemed like the empires of the day always won.  They knew the stories of how their mothers' and fathers' generation had seen the arrogant Babylonians mock the people of Judah, destroy their Temple, and kill their neighbors.  Then, when the Babylonians were replaced by the Medes and the Persians, they saw more of the same: arrogance, cruelty, and crookedness from the new conquerors.  Malachi might not have known it, but there were more of the same on the horizon, too--the Greeks and the Romans would follow, and they would also have their own peculiar violence and domination.  And as Malachi watched the returned exiles try to start their lives over back in Judea and find some version of a "new normal," he is troubled at the signs that the same patterns of greed, crookedness, and corruption will spread to his own neighbors.  And in times like that, it can feel like the crooks and the bullies will always win.  It looks like nothing will ever thwart them, and that evil will win the day.  Honestly, if all you, your parents, and your grandparents had ever seen was one round after another of villainy and brutality, it would be terribly easy to give up hope of things ever getting better. And it would be very tempting to give up on doing good yourself.

But Malachi is given this assurance from God--no, even though it looks like the tyrants and the terrors will last forever, they won't.  They think they are immovable and eternal, but their empires will crumble in time, and they will end up in the dustbin of history  It's in this context that Malachi warns that "all the arrogant and evildoers will be stubble." It's not about God needing to torture people in flames as though God is a celestial sadist; it's about God saying that the "Big Deals" and bullies will not get the last word, and all the empires of history who think they are the be-all-end-all will be reduced to ash.  It's a shocking and countercultural word of hope, especially for people who feel like, as Evey says in V for Vendetta, "Every time I've seen the world change, it has been for the worse."  Malachi says in response, "No.  That's now how it will always be."  There will come a point when things are put right, and those who have been stepping on others for so long will be like the chaff used for kindling in the oven.  The prophet knows that from the perspective of the present moment, it looks like the meanest, the loudest, and the most arrogant will never be thwarted.  But from the vantage point of heaven--from the edge of the eternal, so to speak--cruelty, greed, and pride eventually consume themselves like the proverbial snake eating its own tail.  God insists that there will be relief for those who are suffering, and the bullies will at last be put in their place.

In many ways, these words from Malachi are an appropriate prelude for the song of Mary we'll be hearing in just a few weeks, who sings in what we call the Magnificat about God accomplishing exactly what Malachi was talking about.  Mary says that God "has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts" and "brought down the powerful from their thrones," while having "lifted up the lowly" and "filled the hungry with good things" (see Luke 1:46-55).  Mary dares to say that her baby, still growing in the womb, is the means by which God will at last stop the bullies in their tracks and put the world right again.  But in a way, her song only makes sense as the answer to the promise that Malachi raises here.  For people who have lived all their lives seeing schemers get away with their scams and pompous blowhards never being taken down a few pegs, Malachi speaks the promise, "It won't always be this way.  Evil doesn't always get the last word.  God is still committed to restoring everything that is broken, and to thwarting those who cause harm."  

If you have ever ached for suffering to be stopped and for those who are hurting others to be restrained, then you can hear Malachi's message as good news.  It will not always be this way.  The rottenness of the present moment will not last forever.  Some days, that's the most we get to keep us going--but that's enough.  Sometimes, all we can cling to is the hope that God is not asleep, aloof, or indifferent to the pain of the world, and that God will not let evil get the last word.  We still have to make it through the trouble of the present moment, but we do it from a different perspective.   We face it with the confidence that we are not alone in this struggle, and God is longing for things to be put right, too.  We may not get to see in our lifetimes how accomplishes that restoration--even Malachi didn't get to see the coming of Jesus, whom we Christians are convinced is the key to God's kind of victory against evil. But we do face this day without despair, even in the fire, because we believe that God is not giving up on making the broken whole again.

Maybe that's all we can pray today, but that will have to be enough.

O God, heal what hurts in the world; hold back all those forces that cause harm; and give us the strength to keep going through the troubles of this present moment.

What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

What If It Costs Us?--November 18, 2025

[Jesus said:] "You will be betrayed even by parents and siblings, by relatives and friends, and they will put some of you to death. You will be hated by all because of my name. But not a hair of your head will perish. By your endurance you will gain your souls.” (Luke 21:16-19)

These words of Jesus were never merely hypothetical.  And the risks of following Jesus didn't end with the Roman Empire.  The question put to us by this passage from Luke's Gospel, which many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, is the same question Jesus asks of us today: Will you still share in my way of life if it costs you everything?

And in all honesty, I'm not sure many of us have really wrestled with that question as though it were a real possibility.  In the United States, at least, a good many folks tend to equate Christianity with being a model citizen--you could never be looked down on, hated, or disowned for being a Respectable Religious, person, right?  We tend to assume that physical injury, imprisonment, or even death were only dangers of the era of the Roman Coliseum, when they fed Christians to lions for sport or the Emperor blamed Christians for the fire that burned parts of Rome.  Or we make persecution seem far off and exotic--something that only happens in distant countries with official policies of atheism or communism.

But that's not the way Jesus talks here.  You don't get the impression that there's an expiration date for his warning, or fine print with an asterisk that says, "Danger only lasts until the end of 1st century AD" or "Residents of North America exempt from risk."  Jesus seems to be preparing any of us, and potentially all of us, to meet with the hostility of the world because we are committed not only to naming the name of Jesus but walking the way of Jesus.  We should at least be honest, too, that over the centuries, Christians have been jailed, tortured, or put to death not only for confessing the name of Jesus, but for taking the kind of stands that came with such a confession.

In the book of Acts, for example, when the Christian community was just beginning, the trouble we often got into came with charges like "disturbing the peace" or "inciting riots" even when we were not being violent, but rather absorbing the blows of others in the crowds who were being violent.  Or sometimes we were accused of threatening the local economy--there's a curious scene in Acts where Christians get into trouble because their teaching threatens the business of local silversmiths who make idols of the goddess Artemis.  At other times, we were accused of being subversive and treasonous because we wouldn't burn incense in honor of the Emperor or confess "Caesar is Lord." Nobody charged those first disciples with "being Christian"--rather, they found other charges to bring against us that grew out of our commitment to Christ.

Or, in a much more recent century, you likely know the words of Pastor Martin Niemoller, who was a Lutheran pastor in German in the 1920s and 1930s, and eventually (but too late, he would admit) resisted the rise of the Third Reich.  His most famous words begin, "First they came for the communists, and I did not speak up because I was not a communist. Then they came for the socialists; and I did not speak up because I was not a socialist...." and then continue on about his hesitancy to speak up for the trade unionists or the Jews, because he was neither of those.  Finally, he writes, "Then they came for me, and there was no one left to speak for me."  Niemoller regrets that he should have spoken up for others who were being mistreated, arrested, and made to disappear, and he sees in hindsight that he should have done so precisely because of his faith in Christ.  That is to say, his lament is not, "They came for me eventually because I am a Christian," but rather, "Because I am a Christian, I should have been speaking out for the well-being of others, even those who do not share my faith as a Christian."  The way of Jesus--the eternal perspective that Jesus gives to our vision--should have prompted him to speak up.  But he did not. 

Part of the horror of Martin Niemoller's witness is that he lived in a nation that proudly claimed to be "Christian," and maybe that is part of what made it so difficult even for pastors like him to realize that his own Christian faith should have led him to care for those who were being grabbed off the street and loaded into vehicles, never to be seen again. It is hard to come to the conclusion that just because you live in a society that publicly names the name of Jesus, it does not mean that such a society is in tune with the character of way of Jesus.  It is sadly quite possible that a community or a country can talk the right religious talk but negate its words by actions that run counter to the character of Christ. Looking back, Neimoller had become aware that his faith in Jesus should have led him to advocate for others, but he did not make that connection until it was too late.  Of course, the hope of his well-known quotation is that we might learn from his example and not wait until it is too late.  We who have memorized the "First they came for..." poem are meant to let those words challenge us not to miss the times when our faith in Jesus leads us to speak up, to show up, or to act up for the sake of others who are being harmed, harassed, or dehumanized. These are not hypotheticals. These are questions for this day.

Maybe even the era of 1930s Germany seems too far and remote for us.  Maybe even that era seems too much "a long time ago in a land far, far away." But then we are hit with the witness, just last week, of seven or more pastors and other faith leaders who were thrown to the ground, zip-tied, and arrested in Chicago for praying and speaking up against the mistreatment of those who have been detained recently in immigration raids in their area.  These pastors, from a range of denominations including Lutherans, Presbyterians, and Baptists, as well as other people of other faiths, went to pray, to speak, and to witness, just last Friday--and they still have the bruises on their bodies from being there.  They were trying, as well as they knew how, to take seriously both the words of Martin Niemoller, and the challenge of Jesus in these words from Luke's Gospel.  They were trying their best not to make the same mistake Niemoller came to regret--of failing to speak up until it was too late.  And like the stories of the first Christians in the book of Acts, they knew that the charges against them would make them sound like they were dangerous subversives or violent criminals; they would be accused of being "violent rioters" or "disturbing the peace," just like in the first century church.  All of this is to say that the question of following Jesus even when it costs us our reputations, our families, or our physical safety is not a moot point in the 21st century.  There are fellow disciples of Jesus whose faith is leading them to pay those prices right now.  It is worth us taking time on our own to ask what we will do if we are led to speak up in similar ways for those who are most in danger right now.  It is worth our asking what counsel Pastor Niemoller would give you and me in our place and time today.

If our faith in Jesus is more than a brand-name we wear for status, we will have to take seriously Jesus' warning that following him will cost us--perhaps the support of our family, maybe our reputations as upstanding respectable citizens, and possibly even our bodies. The news of the last week reminds us it is still true, not far from where we live. Will we let that faith lead us to speak up and show up for others who are suffering, or will we find ourselves looking back too late, wishing that we had only been brave enough earlier?  Or maybe, beneath those questions is a deeper one: do we dare to believe, as Jesus promises here in today's verses, that even when we suffer because of following Jesus, that he will preserve our lives and help us to endure?

May God give us the courage and strength to dare such a witness, and not find ourselves one day looking back wishing we had been brave.

Lord Jesus, give us the confidence to go where you lead us, to speak what you give us to speak, and to risk our well-being in ways that flow from your character and love for all.

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

Before You Give Up--November 17, 2025

[Jesus said:] "...they will arrest you and persecute you; they will hand you over to synagogues and prisons, and you will be brought before kings and governors because of my name. This will give you an opportunity to testify. So make up your mind not to prepare your defense in advance; for I will give you words and a wisdom that none of your opponents will be able to contradict." (Luke 21:12-15)

I am tired of the constant deluge of meanness around. No, not just tired--I am wearied by it. I am wearied, some days almost to the point of exhaustion, just of the dissonant chorus of voices that runs, non-stop, like a grating hum in the background all the time, selling a vision of a way of life that runs counter to the way of Jesus.

It is a constant angry babbling, and it is punctuated by bursts of hatred, of self-centeredness, of endless avarice, and of arrogant bragging.

It is the noise of the unending news cycle, reminding me how to keep track of the days by where the latest mass shooting was in our own country, how long wars have been grinding on in far-away places, and how many people have been unable to feed their families.

It is the din of pundits and politicians on the radio and TV, tying themselves up in knots as they bend over backwards to say the opposite of the thing they said yesterday, and telling us to forget that we ever heard anything different.

It is the dull roar of angry voices demonizing whatever group of people they see as "the other," and casting "those people" as the enemy.

It is the unnerving shouting of TV preachers and Respectable Religious folks posturing for attention and clamoring for positions of prestige and influence, but sounding less and less like the message of Jesus of Nazareth the more they talk.

I don't know about you, but that constant racket of noise in the background of life sometimes feels overwhelming, and I am just about exhausted by it. I am no longer surprised by it, but it still wearies me. And sometimes it is just so tempting to turn it all off and look away--to ignore the news reports of body counts, or to just give caring about the shouting-matches between the talking heads with a nihilistic shrug to say, "It doesn't matter who wins today's argument anyway, because they'll be back at it again tomorrow." It is tempting, too, to feel like our only options in response to all that noise are either to shout even more loudly and angrily, or to give into apathy and say nothing.

Sometimes, we can even feel like the question forming on our lips is a defeated, "In the face of all this, what's the point of even trying?" And maybe we struggle to come up with a solid answer to that unspoken question.

And yet, over against that daily babel sound, there is this whisper of a voice that says to us--to you and to me--"You are my witnesses in the midst of this. I will give you words. I am here with you now." It is the voice of Jesus, who has promised to give us wisdom to share when it feels like the world around us has lost its mind, and an authentic word to speak when it feels like the world around us has sold its soul.

I am reminded by these words of Jesus from late in the Gospel of Luke, words many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, that Jesus' promise to be among us now is not merely a sentimental thing, or a warm and fuzzy feeling. Jesus promises to be with us right here and now because he knows we'll need it. We'll need it to keep our sanity in times that feel deeply troubled, and we'll need it to speak a different message--what the book of Hebrews calls "a better word"--than the angry and anxious and fearful cacophony around us. Jesus' promises to be with us to give us words, because he has appointed us to be witnesses to another way--his way.

Jesus reminds his followers, even in the late days of his earthly ministry, that he is commissioning us to be a sort of counter-cultural witness. We will be the minority report that can both tell the emperor when he is wearing no clothes and also can speak of the amazing grace of God that clothes us in the righteousness of Christ. We will be the voices who say a firm but loving "No!" to the transactional thinking of the world's powerful, in which everything is reducible to "I do X for you, and you do Y for me in return," and who speak instead about God's economy of grace. We will be ones who risk being rejected, who risk being called "losers," who risk getting lumped in and thrown to the ground with whatever group is being cast as "the other." This is what Jesus calls his followers to do and to be--in other words, we are called to be an alternative to the endless noise in the background from all those other sources.

And to do that, Jesus has promised to be with us--in order that he can whisper to us a different message than the yelling and posturing on our screens and speakers. Honestly, we need nothing less than his presence, because without him, we will just fall back into the same fearful and selfish shouting of everybody else. We are good at that by nature. But Jesus enables us to be an alternative.

Today, we are given a calling--we do not have permission simply to stick our heads in the sand, nor do we have authorization to answer immature and petty yelling with more of the same. We are called to speak the good news that there is an alternative to the wearying flood of the world's messages, and we are called to listen for Jesus (rather than our own inventions of what we would like Jesus to have said) to know what the alternative is.

Before you give up, just pause. Just hold on for a moment. Don't throw the radio or tv or your smart phone against a wall when the voices that drive you crazy are at it again. Listen, but over their noise, listen for the whisper of Jesus who, like the Creator in the beginning, speaks a word that makes new worlds come into existence. Listen for Jesus, who will give us a wisdom to answer the noise of this moment.

And dare trust that he will speak.

Speak, Lord Jesus, your wisdom to answer the nonsense of the day and times in which we live, and give us the grace to be your witnesses and your counter-cultural option for the world which you yet love. Touch our ears to hear you whisper.

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

A God Who Doesn't Need Defending--November 14, 2025

"I call upon you, O God, for you will answer me;
    incline your ear to me; hear my words.
 Wondrously show your steadfast love,

    O savior of those who seek refuge

    from their adversaries at your right hand.

 Guard me as the apple of the eye;

     hide me in the shadow of your wings,

 from the wicked who despoil me,

    my deadly enemies who surround me." (Psalm 17:6-9)

God never needs our protection; we are the ones who constantly need God's.

Maybe that seems obvious--I would hope so, honestly.  But truth be told, sometimes we Respectable Religious Folks get the orientation of our faith all backwards and convince ourselves it's up to us to "defend" or "protect" or "fight" for God somehow, when in actuality that suggests a pretty weak deity. A god who has to be defended by devotees isn't worth worshiping, and a religion that needs people in positions of power in order to "save" it in some sort of culture war is hardly worth giving your life to.  The living God turns the tables on that perspective, by instead always being our refuge and never needing to hide behind us for shelter.

Again, I would hope that this much is already pretty clear, just from a cursory surface-level reading of the Scriptures.  That old cliche is right on the money: you defend God like you defend a lion--you just get out of the way.  And that certainly seems to be the picture here in these verses from Psalm 17, which many would have heard read this past Sunday from the Revised Common Lectionary.  The invitation throughout the Scriptures, and especially in prayers like this one from the psalms, is always for us to find shelter in the strength of God, and for us to rest in God as our refuge.  It is never the case that God needs our firepower, fury, or ferocity to keep God safe from outside threats.

And yet, I've got to admit, for just about as long as I can remember, and I expect for longer before that, too, there's always been a chorus out there somewhere of religious voices, tv and radio preachers, and parachurch pundits, who always seem to be afraid of God being defeated by enemies or of Christianity being overwhelmed by external boogeymen.  In my lifetime alone, we have lived through the fears (which they have often helped to stoke) of "-isms" like Communism and Marxism, of quasi-spiritual movements like "New Age" or whatever the latest trend was, and of academic entities like universities, modern science, and philosophy. I've heard accusations aimed at institutions like the United Nations, public schools, and local libraries. We have lived through sermons that were both fiery and fearful labeling everyone from foreign nations, opposition political parties, or even other branches of the Christian faith all as dangerous enemies of God.  And over and over again, I know I at least have heard lots of loud and anxious voices trying to rile up church folks to "save Christianity," to "fight for God," or to "defend the Gospel," quite often by prodding us to push for more political power, elect a particular party or candidate, or leverage our influence in order to fend off whatever the Threat Du Jour happened to be.  I suspect you have heard them too. 

And what hits my ears, every time I hear one of those voices talking about how Christianity needs help from people in power in order for it to be "saved" or how we need people to "fight for God," is how weak and empty those sentiments make God out to be.  I am left with the impression of a god that is a needy pet or a fragile piece of porcelain--in other words, an idol.  The real and living God does not need our help in fighting off enemies--after all, ours is the God who simultaneously protects us in the face of those we feel are enemies while also calling us to love those same enemies.  But at no point is God dependent on our help or our power.

When we are clear on that, we can pray with the poet here in the psalm: we can truly and confidently ask for shelter in the "shadow of God's wings" like we are baby chicks held within Mama Hen's downy presence.   We can ask--and believe that we can rely on God when we do--for God to be our refuge, as well as for God to be the refuge of all who have been forced to flee from their former homes and places of safety.  We can count on God to guard us like the ramparts of a fortress that absorb the incoming fire of the enemy's arrows.  After all, that is exactly what the cross is all about, isn't it?  There at the cross, God in Christ chooses to absorb every last attack, to take the hit for us, to bear the blows and beatings, all the way to death, in order to provide refuge for a world full of people desperate for protection?  The Crucified Christ doesn't call out for his followers to rally together to protect him or to defend him from the hostile forces of the Romans or the angry mob. He doesn't summon his disciples to form an army to keep him safe. Just the opposite--in the Passion stories, Jesus is the One putting his own body between the danger and his disciples.  He is the One telling the soldiers and temple police, "I am the one you are looking for, so let these men go." Jesus is the One who offers protection for his beloved; he does not need them to keep him out of danger or pain.  That's the One in whom we put our trust.

All of that gives us to reasons to breathe out in relief and peace: for one, it means it's not up to us to have to defend Christianity, protect God, or some other such culture war nonsense.  And second, it means we really can rely on this God--who doesn't need defending--to be our guard, our refuge, and our shelter, because the living God never needs our protection in the first place.

O God, be our shelter, and free us from the illusion of thinking we ever had to defend you.

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

Spotting the Fool's Gold--November 13, 2025

"Let no one deceive you in any way, for that day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the lawless one is revealed, the one destined for destruction.  He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God. Do you not remember that I told you these things when I was still with you?" (2 Thessalonians 2:3-5)

At some point, I bet you learned about pyrite.

Maybe it was your eighth-grade geology class, or chemistry in high school.  Maybe you were one of those kids who had a rock collection or who got a science lab kit for Christmas one year.  Maybe you spotted some of the stuff out in the real world somewhere and thought you had struck it rich--only to discover that in actuality, you had fallen for fool's gold.

That's the more common name for pyrite, the mineral also known as iron sulfide. The presence of sulfur (yep, literal brimstone) makes it shine with a yellowish metallic luster, and plenty of people over the ages have been duped by its appearance into believing they have real gold, when in truth they have a much less valuable rock.  If your only criteria are, "Is it shiny and yellow?" you are setting yourself up to be disappointed.  There is a reason that Shakespeare gave us the line, "All that glitters is not gold."  The Bard knew in his day what is still true today: it is easy to fall for counterfeits and to be fooled by fakes.  And it requires a sharper, keener kind of vision to be able to know whether you are looking at the genuine article or a ginned up fraud.

Believe it or not, the early church wrestled with a similar concern when it came to the coming of Christ.  As we saw in yesterday's devotion, reflecting on a passage which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, there was some worry among the church in Thessalonica that maybe they had missed Christ's coming in glory.  And the response in this letter was, "You didn't miss him!  Don't let anybody make you worry that you missed out on Christ's coming or the Day of the Lord--you won't be able to miss them!"  Well, that must have been something of a sigh of relief for that congregation... but there's more to be said.  The apostle continues, warning that they do still need to keep their eyes open for counterfeits, frauds, and fakers who will try and convince the world that they are the Real McCoy, but are in fact pretenders.

In particular, these verses describe a figure referred to as "the lawless one," who "opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, declaring himself to be God."  Now, on the one hand, that sounds like some pretty exceptional idolatry, the sort of thing that would stand out in unique ways.  But really, over the centuries prior to the New Testament era, there had been a whole host of empires, kings, and regimes that put themselves in the place of God or demanded worship as divine.  In ancient Israel's own history, there were the Assyrians and Babylonians who had conquered the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah and whose kings claimed divine status and demanded worship of their own likenesses in statue form. Then there were the Greeks, including a particularly nasty ruler named Antiochus IV, who called himself "Epiphanes," which meant something like "the god made manifest" and who set up a shrine to the Greek god Zeus in the Jerusalem Temple, on which he sacrificed a pig (an unclean animal by the Torah's commandments, making this an especially egregious act).  And by the time of the Roman Empire, you had Caesar Augustus calling himself both divine and "savior" and the beginnings of a tradition of emperors demanding worship and incense to be burned as an act of devotion in their honor.  In other words, by the time the letter we call Second Thessalonians was written, there had already been a long line of rulers and demagogues who put themselves in the place of God (or gods) and claiming to be divine.  This notion was old hat.

So when the writer of 2 Thessalonians warns of a "lawless one" doing this same thing, I don't think it's meant like some esoteric Nostradamus-type prediction of a single specific person who is fated to come on the scene as some wholly new and original malevolent force.  I think it is a warning that this same pattern, in which evil tries to pass itself off as good like a cheap knock-off, will keep repeating itself until Christ's coming, and the Christian community needs to be prepared to spot a fake whenever it appears and to call it out as a fraud when that happens.  In other words, we are called to be able to tell the difference between the real precious metal and the fool's gold of pyrite, and not to fall for the frauds.

This is important for us to be clear about, for starters, because sometimes Christians have gotten particularly hung up on identifying a singularly diabolical figure, sometimes given the title "Antichrist," to be on the lookout for, as though there's only one dangerous counterfeit out there. Sometimes that line of thought has led Christians to focus so exclusively on an expected super-wicked evil figure that we fail to speak up against ordinary evils or dismiss lesser frauds as unimportant just because they're not "The Big Bad," so to speak. You end up with church folk debating whether the antichrist is Hitler or Stalin, or whether to look for a charismatic but insidious leader in Europe or in Asia or in America, rather than being able to speak up against any and all instances where popular leaders invite people to worship them unquestioningly. We forget that the one place in the Bible that uses the word "antichrist" (the letter we call First John) actually refers to "many antichrists" who had "already come" by the time it was written (see 1 John 2:18) in the first century!  

In other words, the New Testament isn't trying to narrow our focus to just a singular evil leader on the world stage (even though an awful lot of religious fiction has made it seem like that's all we need to worry about), but rather to keep our eyes open to recognize the pyrite pretenders who want to put themselves in the place of God wherever they might turn up.  The Scriptures are teaching us to spot the counterfeits so we don't fall for them, whether they come wearing Caesar's diadem marching in an imperial parade or a suit and tie shouting from a podium, and so that we continue to give our allegiance solely to our true Lord, the One whose throne is a cross and whose crown is made of thorns.

Taking these verses from Second Thessalonians seriously, then, will mean that we are prepared to call "Baloney!" on any figure, from political leaders to cultural icons to tycoons of business and technology, who calls for our unquestioned devotion or casts themselves as savior.  It's not just that we are supposed to be on the lookout for one bad actor who will turn out to be "The Antichrist," but rather than we be courageous enough to speak up against any powerful voices that run counter to the way of Christ--the way of enemy-love, the way of mercy and justice, the way of lifting up the lowly, the way of serving and self-giving love, and the way of the cross.  Any voice--past, present, or future--who tries to get us to shout "Me and My Group First" or to value money and power over love of neighbor is speaking contrary to the way of Jesus; that is to say, such voices are anti-Christ. We are called to recognize them as counterfeits that might be shiny, but are not genuine gold.

The best way, of course, to get better at recognizing a fake is to become more familiar with the genuine article.  You learn how to recognize fool's gold by knowing how it is different from real gold, just like bankers learn to spot counterfeit bills by knowing what real money is supposed to look like.  So we are called to get to know Jesus more deeply, then, in order that we will know how to spot the frauds from a mile away and we will know not to listen to them when they try to get our attention.  Today, how can we be listening more closely to the voice of Jesus so that we will know its sound and cadence over the din of all the others?

Lord Jesus, help us to recognize your way and your voice today.

No More Fear of Missing Out--November 12, 2025

No More Fear of Missing Out--November 12, 2025

"As to the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gathered together to him, we beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed, either by spirit or by word or by letter, as though from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord is already here. (2 Thessalonians 2:1-2)

Countless young men and women have sought guidance from their parents about the matters of the heart, asking in some form or another, "How will I know when I've found the person I want to spend the rest of my life with?"

And countless mothers and fathers have replied with a twinkle in their eye, "Oh, you'll know.  Don't worry.  When it's true love, you'll know it."

There's something funny to me about that repeated exchange across the generations, since typically the parents who give their response remember what it was like when they were young asking, "How will I know if I'm in love?"  And for so many of them, when their parents first gave them the same mysterious advice, they had been frustrated at how ambiguous it seemed; now, when the tables have turned and their own children are asking the question, they find themselves coming back to the old line, "You'll know.  Don't worry--you won't be able to miss it when love gets a hold of you." And they say these same words to their children, not to frustrating the next generation, but precisely because there's not really any better way to put it.  There is no litmus test or rubric. There is no parting of the clouds with a ray of sun falling on the beloved.  There is no scientific proof. There is only the sudden gripping awareness that you have been caught hold of by love and, well, rather like Elvis sang it, you "can't help falling in love."  And so, the older generation keeps coming back to the best words they know to answer the question of each new generation: "You'll know.  Don't worry--you won't be able to miss it when it happens.  You'll know."

I find myself hearing similar echoes when I read these verses from what we call Second Thessalonians, which many of us heard back this past Sunday.  Except the question being asked and answered in this first century letter isn't "How will I know if I'm in love?" or "How will I know I've found The One?" but rather, "Did we already miss Jesus' coming in glory?"  I know it might seem hard to believe, but there were at least some early Christians who found themselves looking around at the world, seeing that life was pretty much continuing on as it always had, and wondering if maybe they had missed something.  Had Jesus already come?  Did the "day of the Lord" that they were taught to hope for already happen and maybe they didn't realize it?  Or, even more pessimistically, was this it?  Was life-as-they-knew-it as good as things were going to get, and maybe should they lower their expectations a bit and settle for the status quo?  In short, the question is, "How would we be able to tell if we were experiencing 'The Day of the Lord'?"

And in response, the answer from the author of the letter feels a great deal like a wise parent with a knowing smile and a twinkle in the eye: "Don't you worry--you won't be able to miss it.  When it happens, you'll know."  In other words, it's not a response meant to gin up fear and anxiety, but hope and assurance.  "We beg you, brothers and sisters, not to be quickly shaken in mind or alarmed," he says.  In other words, "Don't worry.  You haven't missed anything.  Jesus' great and glorious coming to restore all things hasn't happened yet, and you didn't sleep through it.  When Love comes to make all things new, you'll know it.  In fact, you won't be able to miss it."

Part of the reason behind these verses, then, is to calm the worries of early Christians who didn't know what they were really waiting for or how long they were supposed to wait.  They had been told from the very beginning that Christ was not only risen from the dead but coming in glory, and that God was going to set all things right and make all things new--but a good many of them assumed that Jesus was coming in a matter of maybe days, weeks, or months, rather than years, decades, or... millennia.  So after having heard that Jesus was coming "soon," and that the Day of the Lord was nearing, and then nothing happened that felt like what they were expecting, you can understand why some might have looked for a voice older voice and asked, "Uh, did we miss it?  Is it over?  Is this all there is?"  

Everybody who is new at love is a little uncertain of how it works and what to expect, right?  Same thing for those who were just figuring out what it means and what it looks like to be loved by Jesus.  "How will we know that this is the real thing?" we ask. "How will we be able to tell that the time has come?"  And of course, sometimes folks think they are looking for a set of predictable signs or events in world history.  There have been folks for all of the last twenty centuries convinced they had the date of Jesus' coming in glory firmed up and locked in on a certain date on the calendar, or they knew what events would trigger it.  A great many self-described end-times experts have published predictions, called out the headlines they thought would usher in the Kingdom of God, and then all proceeded to be wrong.  Every last one of them, so far.  Maybe the coming of Jesus really is a lot like finding "The One" and falling in love--maybe all you can say is, "You won't be able to miss it.  When it happens, you'll know."

At least as far as today's verses, that's how the author of Second Thessalonians begins.  "Don't worry--you haven't missed it.  You won't be able to miss it when the real thing happens.  You'll know."  That kind of answer frees us up not to obsess over the timing or trying to predict when Jesus will come.  It frees us from constant fear, from constantly looking over our shoulders for ominous signs or secret messages, and from the worry that we might miss out on the party.  And instead, we are freed for something: we are freed to pay attention to the needs of the people around us, the opportunities we have to share our faith in this day, and the direction of God in our everyday ordinary lives.  We don't have to be constantly nervous about whether today is the end of the world when Jesus comes in glory and instead can simply focus on today as a gift of God in this world and where we will cross paths with people who bear the face of Christ for us as we bear the face of Christ for them. When I'm not constantly overcome with "fear of missing out" (what they sometimes abbreviate as FOMO), I can actually be more present to the people in the world around me, instead of seeing everything merely as cogs in an end-times countdown clock.

And there's one other thing that these verses do for us.  By assuring us that we won't be able to miss the day of the Lord because of its sheer obviousness, it reminds us not to settle for the brokenness of the status quo as the final verdict.  Instead of saying, "This is the best it will ever get, so learn to like it," over all the pain and suffering of the world, the New Testament says, "It is not God's will to leave the world broken, or to abandon creation. It is God's intention to make all things new."  That's important, because quite frequently the loud voices of our culture will tell us, basically, to settle. You know how the logic goes: "Look, in an ideal world it would be great if there were no war and everybody got to eat, but hey that's not realistic, so you should only care about your own belly and your own skin. That's just how it is."  Or sometimes it's, "Look, I would love to help out all the hungry people or the ones sleeping in their cars, or the ones fleeing from rubble piles and war zones, but we've got to look out for Number One in this life, so that's all we can hope for."  All of that thinking is aimed at getting us to stop hoping for the fullness of God's great restoration of all things, and just to fall in line with supporting the status quo.  

But the writer of Second Thessalonians points in the opposite direction.  He says, rather, "The coming Day of the Lord will be so dramatic and so complete a renewal of creation that you won't be able to miss it.  So don't give up hoping for it to happen, and don't settle for merely accepting the crookedness of the Way Things Are as the most you can ever aspire to.  Keep holding out the vision of a new creation.  Keep holding out the hope of a love that sweeps you off your feet.  Keep holding onto to the promise that when The One we've be waiting for comes in glory, you won't be able to miss him.  You'll know."

That's the word for us today: don't give up hope, don't let fear of the future freeze us in our place, and don't fall for any ploy to settle for less than the fullness of God's Reign that Jesus will bring in his own good time.  He is worth waiting for.  And, like anybody who has ever been loved before can tell you, when he shows up to meet us, we'll know.

Lord Jesus, free us to use this day well while we wait in hope for your coming in glory.

Who Gets The Last Word--November 11, 2025

Who Gets the Last Word--November 11, 2025

[Job said:] "O that my words were written down!
  O that they were inscribed in a book!
O that with an iron pen and with lead
  they were engraved on a rock forever!
For I know that my vindicator lives
  and that in the end he will stand upon the earth;
and after my skin has been destroyed,
  then in my flesh I shall see God,
whom I shall see on my side,
  and my eyes shall behold, and not another.” (Job 19:23-27a)

Does death get the last word in the world... or does life?

Does injustice win out in the end over justice, or does good get the final say rather than evil?

Those might seem like abstract quandaries for armchair philosophers who don't have enough real-life worries to attend to, but really at the core of each moment of our lives are these fundamental questions. Will death and rottenness carry the day in the end, or will it be life and righteousness?  And how do we know?  On what basis do we come to our conclusions?

These questions are the beating heart of the book of Job, which was the source material for these verses that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  And while the whole book is a sort of extended debate set within the story of one man's story of profound suffering, these verses get at the crux of it all.  By this point in the story, Job has lost everything--his wealth, his children, his health, and even the support of his spouse.  He is lamenting all of that loss, and his three friends who had come to console him at some point got tired of empathy and decided to start blaming him for his suffering, each of them basically trying to convince him that since God is just, Job's suffering must have been deserved, and all that he is going through must be because of some sin that Job has committed.  Job, however, insists that he hasn't done anything to warrant all this tragedy, and he is convinced (or at least he hopes) that at the last, he will be vindicated.

The verses that many of us heard on Sunday are one of those moments in the saga where Job confidently declares his belief that at the last justice will be done, and he will be shown to have been in the right.  He believes that his suffering will be revealed not to have been a divine punishment, and that it will be clear that the calamities he and his family have endured will not be the end of his story.  Even if his sickness leads to his own death, he says, he believes that his "vindicator" (other translations render this word as "redeemer") will be revealed, and even beyond death, he believes that God will turn out to have been on his side.  Job is both confident that he hasn't committed some terrible sin worthy of all this particular pain, and that in the end, God will ensure that things are put right.  He doesn't know how that could happen--Job doesn't rattle off some list of reparations or compensation, and he doesn't exactly speak of "resurrection" the way Christian voices of much later times would.  But he does have this deeply-rooted conviction that the last word will not go to death or crookedness.  Somehow, he believes, life and justice get the final say.  That is what leads him to keep going, to endure through times of immense pain, and to keep speaking up over against his friends, or his wife's advice to simply "curse God and die."  Job will not, because he believes that death will not get the victory in the world's story, even if he can't prove it or see it.

Now, I sincerely hope that you never have to endure the kind of intense, all-encompassing kind of trauma that the book of Job describes for its main character.  I hope you are spared such intense loss, grief, and devastation, and I hope that in whatever times you do have to bear suffering, that you are not surrounded by pompously pious so-called "friends" who think they know it all and invoke terrible cliches like "Everything happens for a reason," or "God won't give you more than you can handle," or "Heaven must have needed another angel."  But I do think that Job's words here speak to us on the days when the world feels like a dumpster fire and when it seems like rottenness is winning the day.  It is all too easy to see crookedness going unchecked and violence running roughshod over victims and to decide, "There's no justice in the world, and all that matters is who has the most power." It is tempting to believe that there's no point in being decent, fair, or honest in a world where terrible things happen and where perpetrators so often seem to get away with their crimes. It is easy to give in to despair and to give up on the hope that the world could be put right.  And once we go down that road, it becomes terribly easy to justify doing whatever we feel we have to in order to get ahead.  If I don't have any real hope of justice being done, and if death is going to eventually win out over everybody anyway, then it is very alluring to believe that life is just about seizing as much for ourselves as we can, stepping on as many people as we have to, and insulating ourselves from pain at the expense of others. Read the headlines or listen to the news on any given day, and you'll see just how popular that mindset is.  But Job dares us to believe, in spite of the evidence, that crookedness will not win the day, and that death will not get the last word.

That's the choice we face every day: in the face of plenty of examples of violence, suffering, and death, we can either say, "All of this rottenness is inevitable, so there's no point in trying to defy it. And if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?" or we can say, "No.  I won't be complicit in any more of this. I will act as though life wins out against death in the end, and that good gets the last word rather than evil."  It is a choice to see the world from a different perspective from what seems obvious, though, and sometimes it is difficult to hold onto that alternative vision.  Plenty of folks will tell us we're crazy, naive, or out-of-touch to spend our energy in the work of healing rather than harming, and of seeking the good of all rather than just our own narrow self-interest.  Even Job's friends try to get him to give up hope that he will be vindicated in the end and to just confess to some sin he didn't commit.  But Job also reminds us that it is possible to keep living our lives even through pain, and even when all the evidence at hand suggests that the bullies win every time (including the biggest bully of them all, Death). Job's witness dares to trust that death will not get the final say, and that crookedness will not get the last word, and to make choices now in light of that hope.  Like Douglas John Hall used to put it, "God reigns, all of the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding." Living by that kind of hope will always make us stand out, because it means we will be standing off to a distance from the crowd of common sense on the edge of eternity.  But it is possible to see the world from there, and to keep putting one foot in front of the other in spite of all the reasons not to.

Let us dare.

O God, assure us again of your promise to bring life out of death and goodness out of evil.

In God's Grip--November 10, 2025

In God's Grip--November 10, 2025

Some Sadducees, those who say there is no resurrection, came to [Jesus] and asked him a question: “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies leaving a wife but no children, the man shall marry the widow and raise up children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers; the first married a woman and died childless; then the second and the third married her, and so in the same way all seven died childless. Finally the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Those who belong to this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy of a place in that age and in the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. Indeed, they cannot die anymore, because they are like angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. And the fact that the dead are raised Moses himself showed, in the story about the bush, where he speaks of the Lord as the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is God not of the dead but of the living, for to him all of them are alive.” (Luke 20:27-38) 

Jesus keeps showing us that God's vantage point is likely to surprise us. Quite often, he says, the view from the edge of the eternal takes our usual perspective and turns it completely upside-down.

We saw that last week when we looked at Jesus' statements of blessing and woe from the Sermon on the Plain, to be sure.  In a world where conventional wisdom says you know you're blessed if you're rich, and you know you are under God's disapproving scowl if you are suffering, Jesus turned the tables and announced, "Blessed are you who are poor" and "Woe to you who laugh now."  Underneath those individual statements is the reminder that God's view of reality is often the opposite of our human perspective.  And of course, Jesus' intention is to change our vision--so that we will no longer settle for the "conventional wisdom" version of things and instead let our perspective be shaped by God's way of seeing the world, the most vulnerable people around us, and ourselves.

Now today in this passage, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our Gospel reading, Jesus does it again.  This time Jesus shows us that from God's vantage point, even those who have died remain alive and present to God.  As Jesus talks with this group of Sadducees, he insists that God is not bound by our limited understanding and our finite mental categories. These religious leaders have come to Jesus with a question cobbled together from a Bible verse (a commandment from the Torah) and their own reasoning, which to their minds disproves the possibility of resurrection from the dead.  They take the commandment from the law which directed the brother of a deceased man with no children to raise children with his widow to keep the family line going and provide for the widow in a time where there were no other structures of a social safety net.  So they imagine a hypothetical in which a whole family of seven brothers had all been married, in succession, to the same woman, and then they ask Jesus whose spouse she would be in the resurrection, since she was married to them all.  Their assumption is that because they cannot imagine how to sort out these matters of marriage in the resurrection life, therefore resurrection must be impossible.  And even though they don't say so explicitly, the underlying assumption of these Sadducees is, "If I can't understand how resurrection would work in categories that make sense to my mind, then it can't be true."

Jesus' response is interesting, not so much because he gives them a logical argument to prove metaphysically how the dead could be raised, but because ultimately he grounds his conviction in the character and identity of God rather than in some rational proof or quantifiable scientific evidence.  In the end, Jesus' confidence in the hope of resurrection comes down to saying "God is the God of the living, not of the dead."  Therefore, Jesus says, from God's vantage point, even those who are separated from us by death remain alive to God.

For Jesus, the critical issue is not, "How can I prove to another person that resurrection is possible?" but rather, "Who is God?"  And for that answer, Jesus hearkens back to the classic refrain of ancient Israel, that theirs is the God "of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" (and, of course, the God of Sarah, Rebekah, Leah, and Rachel, as well).  But, of course, those patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel's earliest memories had lived hundreds of years before even Moses, who was remembered as the one who wrote down the commandments of the Torah.  Jesus, however, says, that since God is "the God of the living" these patriarchs and matriarchs of many generations past must still be alive to God.  Somehow in God's presence, in God's perspective, they have never been lost--not even for an instant.  Jesus once again insists that God's vantage point views things quite differently from the human perspective.  To us, those who have died are gone, leaving us to mourn and make into trick hypothetical questions to trap Jesus with.  But to God, those who have died have never been out of God's grip.  

I am reminded of how Robert Farrar Capon describes God's power to hold onto our lives, as the late Episcopal theologian described the story of the biblical Lazarus (whom Jesus revived from the dead in John 11).  Capon writes, “Jesus says that as far as his way of holding Lazarus’s life is concerned, Lazarus was never unplugged at all—that when Lazarus died, he lost only his own power to hold his life. He emphatically did not lose Christ’s power to do so.”  We are once again back at the question of whose vantange point really counts in the end.  By human accounting Lazarus is dead and all hope is lost for him.  The same would be true of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, too, I suppose, along with everybody else who has shuffled off this mortal coil.  From our vantage point, death gets the last word over all of us, and there is nothing we can do by our own reasoning or power to stop it.  But from God's vantage point, none of us have ever been out of God's view, God's grip, or God's power to give life. Even after I lose the ability to hold onto my own life, God keeps holding onto it with God's own grip.  That's the hope--even when we don't know how to prove it, diagram it, or proof-text it.

The challenge on this day is to let Jesus shape our view of the world this way--in the confidence that God never lets go of any of us, even through death--and even when it flies in the face of what seems obvious to our senses and "common sense."  Today, we are invited to see our lives, as well as the lives of every face that has ever been, held in the tireless grip of the God of the living, the God before whom all of us come to life.

Lord Jesus, help us to see our lives and our world in light of your resurrection promise.

Everyday Radicals--November 7, 2025

Everyday Radicals--November 7, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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