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

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

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

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

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

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

You would be right. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

Christ the Convict--October 2, 2025

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

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

That really is remarkable.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

Scandalously Satisfied--October 1, 2025

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What Breaks God's Heart--September 30, 2025

What Breaks God's Heart--September 30, 2025

 "Woe to those who are at ease in Zion
  and for those who feel secure on Mount Samaria.
  Woe to those who lie on beds of ivory
  and lounge on their couches
  and eat lambs from the flock
  and calves from the stall,
 who sing idle songs to the sound of the harp
  and like David improvise on instruments of music,
  who drink wine from bowls
  and anoint themselves with the finest oils
  but are not grieved over the ruin of Joseph!
  Therefore they shall now be the first to go into exile,
  and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away." (Amos 6:1a, 4-7)

The story goes that Bob Pierce gave the last five dollars in his pocket to help care for a young girl from China who had been abandoned, back in 1947, and that began the worldwide ministry that would come to be known as World Vision.  The same Bob Pierce is credited for a prayer as well, one that still provokes me to this day: "Let my heart be broken by the things that break that heart of God."  All too often, that's our problem: our hearts remain untouched and unchanged in the face of things that break God's own heart.

That's really what the prophet Amos is getting at in this passage, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  I know that the opening phrase, "Woe to those..." sounds ominous, and the talk about going into exile sounds pretty grim, but this whole passage is really an impassioned plea for people who have gone numb to the suffering of others to start feeling things again.  This is Amos' way of speaking to people whose hearts no longer break over the things that break the heart of the living God.  That's literally what the core of this passage is saying: there were people (a good many of them) in Amos' day who lived in the lap of luxury, eating and drinking the best food, lounging on expensive furniture, and insulated safely and comfortably in the well-to-do swanky neighborhoods of the capitals of ancient Israel (Samaria) and Judah (Zion/Jerusalem), which were the centers of governmental and religious power, and they didn't care about all the ways others were suffering.  Elsewhere in the book of his words, Amos calls out the ways that business owners were cheating their customers and overworking their employees, along with how the courts were privileging the interests of the wealthy and ignoring the claims of the poor.  And here in this passage, Amos says basically, "You all know about all these rotten things going on--and yet you don't even care enough to notice they are happening!  You are so comfortable drinking your expensive wine and eating your four-star, five-course meals that you don't even realize how other people outside your immediate field of view are suffering."  That's what angers the prophet most of all--the active, willful choice of the people who could help to ignore the needs of others, even ones within their own society.  It is possible, Amos warns, to so insulate our hearts and wrap them up with so many creature comforts that they can no longer feel anything--so they will no longer break, even if God's heart is already broken by the sorrows of others.

That's just it: Amos is sure that God cares.  Amos, like all the true prophets of Israel, doesn't picture God as a stoic, unfeeling cosmic referee, who is indifferent to the suffering of human beings (and I say that with all due respect in contrast to the theology professors I had in college who insisted that because God must be unchanging and eternal, God must also be "impassible"--that is, incapable of suffering or emotion).  The reason Amos believes he can be so bold in calling out the apathy and numbness of his own people is that he is certain God cares about the people who are being taken advantage of, cheated, pushed aside, and told they don't matter in Israelite society.  It is because God cares that Amos insists that his people be stirred up and provoked, if necessary, so that they will care.  It is because God's heart is already broken over "the ruin of Joseph"--the ways Israelite society was so screwed up--that Amos calls for his own people to let their hearts be broken.  And if they refuse, insisting instead on hardening their hearts rather than learn empathy for their neighbors, then God will reserve the right to pull those people out of their comfort zones and away from the things that have made them numb.  

That's really, I believe, what the threat of exile is all about here. It is less about needing to punish for sake of meting out punishment, and more about how you get people whose hearts have grown numb to start to feel something again.  And if part of what has made these well-heeled Israelites so apathetic is their opulent lifestyles, fancy decor, and gourmet food and drink, then God will remove those things so that they can again begin to hear the cries of their neighbors, see the crookedness they have been ignoring, and feel the sufferings of others.  God will take away the things that are numbing them, not for the sake of being mean or cruel, but the same way that you might pour out the bottles of booze that your alcoholic friend has been using to self-medicate and avoid dealing with the problems of real life.  God will take away the things that mask the pain, because numbness is dangerous. The person whose hands cannot feel heat will get burned and not realize it; the person whose feet cannot feel the pain of stepping on something sharp could end up slicing their feet on stones or glass and not realize how much blood they are losing.  And when the part inside us that it is meant to care for other people can no longer feel anything, God will do whatever is necessary to make us feel again--otherwise, we are just the walking dead.  That's what Amos is trying to say to his listeners in Israel: to those who are so insulated from the rottenness around them that they no longer even care or notice it, Amos brings a wake-up call. What he wants for them is the same thing Bob Pierce sought in prayer for himself, too: that their hearts would be broken over the same things that break the heart of God.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Doctor Amos would give us the same diagnosis as well: that we have found so many ways to numb ourselves, distract ourselves, and distance ourselves from the pain of others that perhaps we can no longer feel what we are meant to feel.  Perhaps our hearts have become hardened and need healing.  And perhaps at the very least, we need to seriously re-evaluate the various things we have put in our lives which keep us from that kind of empathy, especially those we often think of as "blessings."  That's the hitch, isn't it?  It's good to have enough food to feed your family, but when I am so overstuffed and oversaturated that I no longer give a thought to my neighbors who are going hungry, something has gone wrong.  It's wonderful to be able to provide housing for my loved ones, and have a safe place to be when it's cold or raining--but if I let that cocoon me inward so that I can no longer care about the people without homes, or those in my community who are sleeping in their cars at night, then the "blessing" of a nice house is also a curse.  It's convenient to have enough money in my bank account that I can trust I could be OK for a couple of months if something drastic happened and I could not work any longer, but if that leads me to stop caring about the people around me who don't have that kind of safety net, then maybe that money is more like anesthesia than real help.  We could add in the constant distraction of television, social media, and the playlist of songs you go to when you don't have to have to deal with the world or the news, too.  We have invented countless more ways to avoid being aware of the suffering of others, or to drown out the voices of our neighbors amid the sounds of all the other noise.  Amos would simply remind us that these things are not all good, at least not if they are means of numbing ourselves to the pain of the world.

The fine-dining, wine-sipping Big Deals of Amos' day did their best to keep the troubles of others at arms' length, in the hopes that they wouldn't have to care about people they couldn't see. God's words through the prophet call us out when we try to do the same and ignore the folks on the margins, and they invite us to risk compassion again, rather than numbness.  That is a risk worth taking, the prophet says, even if it means the possibility of heartbreak.  After all, the whole point of being the people of God is to learn to let our hearts be broken by the things that break the heart of God.

Lord God, let our hearts be broken by the things that break your own heart.

Unsettled by Jesus--September 29, 2025

Unsettled by Jesus--September 29, 2025

[Jesus said:] "There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man's table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was being tormented, he looked up and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. He called out, 'Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue; for I am in agony in these flames.' But Abraham said, 'Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.' He said, 'Then, father, I beg you to send him to my father's house--for I have five brothers--that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.' Abraham replied, 'They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.' He said, 'No, father Abraha; but if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.' He said to him, 'If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead'." [Luke 16:19-31]

The problem is not about being rich--it's about being indifferent.

And by telling this story to us (which many of us heard on Sunday in worship), Jesus doesn't mean to merely make us mad--but he does mean to unsettle us.

And maybe it's about how easy it is for us to use our abundance to insulate ourselves from the needs of the neighbor on the other side of the walls we set up so that we can reinforce our apathy. There's the real tragedy of this story: the nameless rich man has normalized his indifference, and because of that, he's dead inside already even before his heart stops beating. He has made it ok (with himself) simply not to even notice the man outside his gate, sick and dying and hungry--a man on the margins. And because he won't let himself see Lazarus, he has let himself off the hook for doing what Moses and the prophets all said to do for the neighbor in need. Because the rich man has given himself permission not to care for the neighbor God has sent across his pathway, he has hardened his heart from ever being able to see Lazarus' face... or to dare to invite him to dinner and to share a table.

I've got to tell you, I used to get upset by this story for all the wrong reasons. The Lutheran in me would get nervous because it sounded like this was a story about earning your way into heaven, whether by good deeds or somehow through suffering in poverty in life (I was never quite clear on how that would have worked when I thought that's what this parable was about). The respectable member of the American middle-class in me got uncomfortable at the idea that Jesus could so casually talk about a rich man being tormented in hell, when so many other voices around told me that being rich was what I was supposed to aspire to. And some other part of me was just confused about whether Jesus was actually describing the literal geography of the afterlife, with its chasms, flames, and the presence of Abraham (who somehow seems to be a giant in this story, if Lazarus is curled up at his bosom). There were lots of reasons for me to be unsettled by this story over the years.

But I'm not sure that any of those were the right reason to be unsettled.

The more I spend time with this story, the more I see that Jesus tells this story to un-normalize our collective indifference. We have all become numb, both to the needs of our neighbors on the margins and to our unavoidable calling to love those neighbors, and Jesus has come to make our apathy wrong again--or rather, to remind us that it was never God's will for us in the first place. He tells this story to wake us up, to shake us up, and to see the ways we have told ourselves it's OK not to care about the faces outside the gates, simply because they are on the other side of the fence. And as Jesus tells this story, he is fully aware that he is simply repeating what the law of Moses and the oracles of the prophets had been saying all along. What the Torah gave in commandments like, "You shall love your neighbor as you love yourself... you shall not oppress the poor... you shall care for the widow, the orphan, and the alien..." and such, and what the prophets declared in poetry and visions, Jesus just tells in a story. But the driving point is the same: we have allowed ourselves to become dead inside by normalizing indifference. And that is not ok. This story, then, is less a roadmap of the underworld, like Dante's Divine Comedy with its curious pathways through limbo, hell, purgatory, and paradise, and more like a rhetorical defibrillator meant to shock our stilled hearts back to beating again.

And this, I believe, is the correct reason to be unsettled by Jesus' story. He means to unsettle us--that is his point. Not to offend for the sake of causing offense, or to be crude for the purpose of riling up anger. But to unsettle and provoke us in places we have allowed our souls to become deadened, and our hearts to become hardened. He tells this story, like Dickens told Scrooge's story in A Christmas Carol, for the purpose of shaking us out of our catatonic state of self-centeredness to see that God has always intended for us to care for one another, especially when the "other" is right at your doorstep. Jesus wants us to see that God's command all along (indeed, from the beginnings of Israel's story in the books of Moses) has been that we cannot turn away from the neighbor outside our gate, because all are beloved of God. And yet somehow, we, like the unnamed rich man, have all simply grown accustomed to the idea that "those people" don't matter because, well, they're outside my fenced-in area. We have somehow convinced ourselves that being indifferent is acceptable, that everybody does it, and that we cannot be obligated to care for others if it would mean losing some of our precious first-quarter profits. We have deluded ourselves--and deadened ourselves--into thinking that Lazarus is to blame for his poverty and sickness, and that the rich man can't be blamed for stepping around his sore-covered body without a second thought as he goes out his front door to work in the morning.

And, as I say, Jesus has come--both in this story and in his entire ministry--to say that we have normalized something terrible by allowing that indifference. We have eroded the old expectations that we would take care of one another, and we have given ourselves permission simply not to think about the Lazaruses of the world as people who matter. As long as we don't have to see their faces, we don't really have to think of them as human... or neighbors... or children of God made in God's own image. And Jesus has come to tell us that normalizing what was unconscionable is not ok. He isn't here to threaten us with hell if we make too much money, or to tell us that if we don't do enough good deeds we'll be on the wrong side of some postmortem chasm. He simply intends to bring us to life where we have let our hearts become dead inside.

This is a story, then, about two resurrections: Lazarus' and ours. As far as Jesus is concerned, you don't have to worry about Lazarus. God's got him covered. Even though the indifferent rich man wouldn't give him the time of day, God never forgot about him or his name. (The rich man, ironically, never even has his name remembered--for all of his attempts to be "great," his big name in gold letters on his properties is ultimately forgettable in the final analysis.) So, at one level, this is a story about how God reserves the right to raise up from death those who are most stepped on and stepped around. This is a story about God's commitment to raise up those who are regarded as unimportant, negligible, and forgettable by the world and to remember their names, to honor them, and to give them life. But this is also a story that is told for the purpose of bringing us to life where we--who are probably a lot more like the unnamed rich man than Lazarus, if we are honest with ourselves--have let our hearts become dead inside. This is a story that speaks hope for us, not unlike the visit of the Ghost of Christmas-Yet-To-Come creates a new possibility for Ebenezer Scrooge, that our deadened souls, insulated behind walls of our own creation, might be quickened back to life right now. This is about the God who raises what is dead in us--and about our need to admit how much of our hearts we have allowed to die of spiritual gangrene.

So today, may we have the courage to hear these words once again, and not to be upset or concerned about them for the wrong reasons. But instead, let's allow Jesus to unsettle us, as he always does, to see the faces of our neighbors, to welcome them to our tables (yes, maybe even into our very homes or churches or neighborhoods!) because at last we see that our life is bound up in theirs, and that God just might use those neighbors brought to our doors to resurrect our dead hearts to new life again.

Let's allow Jesus to make apathy wrong again... and to make our deadened, numb hearts alive again.

Lord Jesus, quicken what is dead in us as you open our eyes to recognize the faces of those we have been ignoring on the other side of the gate, and to see how deeply you love them... so that we may see anew how your love resurrects us, too.

Dylan, Jafar, Gollum, and Jesus--September 26, 2025

Dylan, Jafar, Gollum, and Jesus--September 26, 2025

[Jesus said:] "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Luke 16:9-13)

It's interesting: Jesus doesn't offer any options where we get to be masters, only servants.  The question Jessu puts to us is whether we will serve God or wealth (the original Greek uses the word "Mammon" for "wealth," which gives the feel of an idol or false god in clear competition with the true and living God).  But there is no third option where we get to be masters of wealth.  Apparently, Jesus would have us believe that the moment we turn our focus toward wealth, thinking we will stay in control and can always "make our money work for us," it turns the tables on us and holds us in captivity and servitude.  

Bob Dylan was right, then (again): "You gotta serve somebody--it may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."  There is no live option of being the boss in this world, not really. Jesus warns us that anybody who tries to persuade us otherwise is just trying to get close enough to fit us for chains to be enslaved to money's power.  It's rather like the climactic scene from the Disney animated Aladdin, where the villainous sorcerer Jafar uses his third and final wish from the genie's lamp to make HIMSELF into an all-powerful genie, only to realize too late that such power comes with the constraints of a lamp and the cuffs that limit his power in granting the wish of his own master.  "Infinite power, itty-bitty living space," it turns out.  Well, that's not a bad theological perspective on money, at least if you ask Jesus.  It promises to give us power, and the moment we take the bait, it gets its hooks into us and we end up serving Mammon like a false god or an idol rather than being the bosses we aspired to be.

This is a whole other dimension of the Bible's teaching on wealth that we don't often think of: sharing our resources and using our money for the sake of others isn't only about helping the recipient--it is also a way of preventing our money from becoming our master. Now, don't get me wrong, it is certainly good to give generously to others for their own sake--there are people who are hungry while we throw away leftovers we "got tired of eating" from our own fridges, as well as people without homes while we sit in spacious houses and complain that we have "more room than we know what to do with" sometimes.  There are folks halfway around the world whose children would grow up healthy and survive to adulthood if their town had a well with safe drinking water, while we complain that our local restaurant doesn't have our particular favorite flavor of soda as an option, so we'll be forced to choose from one of the eight other lesser options.  Yes, at one level, it is good to give our resources to others because we can make a real difference in improving someone else's life in a life-or-death kind of way, and others really do need the kinds of assistance that our abundance could make possible.

But there is the other half of the equation that Jesus calls attention to in these verses, from the tail end of the Gospel reading that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship: namely, that the more centered I am on my wealth, the more it gets power over me and the more I become ensnared in its grip.  It's almost like gravity, really--the larger a planet, a star, or a black hole is, the greater its gravitational force, and the closer you get to it, the stronger that force pulls you in until you can't escape its hold on you.  The same is true about the power of wealth in our lives: a little might not exert very much force on me, but a jackpot of millions exerts a huge force that can threaten to rip apart my values and suck me into only want to protect, preserve, and grow the bottom line.  Being friends with others who have a lot of money might not distort my values, but when that money gets into my account, it has a way of changing my attitudes and making me focus on getting more rather than giving it away.  We don't realize it, but money really does have a way of trapping us like Jafar in the Aladdin movie, to the point that once we get our hands on a sizable amount, we are more and more inclined to focus just on getting even more, even though you might think that's when can afford to be the most generous.  But Jesus knows the power of money over us--even when we should know better and should be able to wriggle out from the leash it puts on us, we end up staying tethered to it, thinking we can still be the boss somehow.

Part of the unique power of money to hold us captive is that it promises to last--even if that is ultimately an unreliable promise.  In the earliest forms of human society, before we invented coins and currency as placeholders for value, we were really just trading things that were immediately useful, but also had a limited shelf life.  If I bartered some wheat for some milk, we each got something of value, but its value had to be consumed as food pretty soon, or else it went bad.  It would be hard to hoard perishable products like that (although I'm sure we could do it if we tried).  Money, on the other hand, had a technological advantage in that I can save it up and use it later, and it still holds value.  And certainly, that is a lot more convenient than having to drag a wagon full of wheat with me wherever I go to do my shopping in the hopes of bartering everywhere.  

But something else happened when our ancient human ancestors started minting coins and stamping shekels: we shifted the aim of our value from the immediately useful thing (wheat to feed my family, milk to drink or make into cheese, lumber for building a house, wool for making fabric, or the skill of an artisan to do a task I could not do for myself) to the shiny pieces of metal as things that were "worth" something in and of themselves.  We stopped thinking of them as placeholders for the real-world objects I needed--the groceries or raw materials for life--and started seeking the money itself as though just having more was a worthwhile goal, regardless of whether I already had my needs covered.  That brought a HUGE change into human society.  I can only hold onto to so many eggs or skeins of yarn or boards of lumber before I reach a point where getting more becomes as much of a hindrance as a help.  But money gave us the illusion that there was never a maximum, and that there is never such a thing as "too much."  I could get more and more and it would always be there for me... as long as I kept protecting it and didn't start giving it away or using it.  Quickly money gained a power over our species like the One Ring wielded over Gollum in Tolkein's The Lord of the Rings--it promised to give us what we wanted as long as we regarded it as "precious," and all the while we didn't realize how it was distorting and disfiguring us into grotesque caricatures of our former selves.  Even today in the age of cashless transactions, discontinued pennies, and precarious inventions like Bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, money still makes the same empty promise to us... and we still keep falling for it.

I am reminded of Alice Walker's powerful poem, "We Alone," which feels like it is on the same track.  Walker writes:

"We alone can devalue gold 

by not caring 

if it falls or rises 

in the marketplace. 

Wherever there is gold 

there is a chain, you know, 

and if your chain 

is gold 

so much the worse 

for you. 

Feathers, shells 

and sea-shaped stones 

are all as rare. 

This could be our revolution: 

to love what is plentiful 

as much as 

what is scarce."

This, I believe, is Jesus' point in this passage.  We don't realize it as it is happening (and our pride keeps us from ever admitting it), but wealth has a way of both making us into its servants and distorting us from our truest selves, the more and more we chase after it.  So when we hear Jesus talk about our call to share our wealth, or when he dares a would-be disciple to sell all their possessions and give the proceeds to the poor, it is not because HE is hoping to get rich from our money, and it is not because he is just trying to make it hard for us to follow him.  Rather, it's because he knows that money holds a power over us that is already slowly killing us--it is one of those rare addictions we do not see as a danger but instead put up on the cover of magazines.  Jesus often calls people to practice intentional forms of giving away resources precisely because he knows that otherwise, it gets a stranglehold on us that we do not realize we are caught in until it is too late.

So when we give money to help someone else--say, to an inner-city meal program, or to help kids in your local school district have enough to eat over the weekends if there is no reliable food source at home, or to help dig a well in a village somewhere without potable water, or to support the whole variety of ministries happening in your home congregation--part of the act of giving is about helping whoever is on the other side of that transaction, yes, of course.  But part of it is also the deliberate practice of dethroning money from becoming the master over our lives.  And every time we make the choice to value people over our money, we shape our character in a certain direction.  Every time I make the choice to use my resources for the sake of others rather than just piling it up to keep (like Gollum, staring in hypnosis at the Ring while he calls it "Precious"), we take another step to break the power wealth has over us, and to slip out of the fetters we didn't even realize it had put us in.  And in the act of giving it away, money itself can be transformed: from being an idolatrous power that makes us its servants, to becoming a blessing for someone else, precisely when it is used (rather than hoarded as "potential") in a way that brings others more fully to life.  But as long as we are clutching onto it (and telling ourselves that Mammon is under OUR control), the danger is there that we will actually be held captive in its grip.  Jesus intends to free us--and at the same time, to bless the lives of those who could truly use what hoard in overabundance beyond our possible need.

Today, then, what could be the places where we can take small acts of resistance in defiance of the tyranny of Mammon in our lives?  What would be some small acts of rebellion to dethrone Money as a power in our lives, some act of pulling down the altars we have set up in our hearts dedicated to Wealth?  And how might we find ourselves actually more free and more alive in the act of giving?  That's the challenge of this day... and every day.

Lord Jesus, turn our hearts to serve you, rather than our piles of money. Allow us to use our resources for the good of all.

Seriously, Nobody--September 25, 2025

Seriously, Nobody--September 25, 2025

"[God] desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth.  For
 there is one God;
  there is also one mediator between God and humankind,
 Christ Jesus, himself human,
  who gave himself a ransom for all
—this was attested at the right time. For this I was appointed a herald and an apostle (I am telling the truth; I am not lying), a teacher of the gentiles in faith and truth." (1 Timothy 2:4-7)

If you ask the apostle who wrote these words, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, there is nobody God intends to leave out.  Seriously, nobody.  Literally, nobody.

Sometimes we don't pause for long enough to take that in or come to terms with what this passage from 1 Timothy is saying about God, but it really is a pretty breathtaking claim.  "God desires everyone to be saved" is the starting point, and then as if to back up that claim about God's wishes or aspirations, he adds that God has put God's money where God's mouth is, so to speak, in Christ Jesus, "who gave himself a ransom for all."  That's a pretty wide reach, if we take it seriously, and it seems like the writer doubles down on just how big a claim he is making.  He doesn't walk it back and say, "Well, God will take as many as God can get," or "God will make a reasonable effort to reach as many people as God can." But rather, the claim is that God both desires to save everybody in the end, and that God has given Jesus as a ransom for all.

That had to be scandalous in the ears of the first listeners to this letter; after all, it is still mind-blowing to our own, who live in a culture where every resource is seen as a scarce commodity, whose value only comes from being limited to "some" rather than "all."  When these words were first written, the Christian community was truly wrestling with the question of whether God's saving love was just for religious insiders who had grown up within the ethnic ties of ancient Israel and Judah, or whether God was now including outsiders ("gentiles") who didn't share DNA, religious background, or the shared language and culture of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob's descendants.  There were some who were convinced that God's saving love was a limited commodity like gold, silver, cryptocurrency, or rare-earth minerals, and that it was only available to people from the right places, the right ethnicity, and the right religious prerequisites.  And then there is the tradition that comes out of the apostle Paul, that dared to say a big ol' NO to that train of thought.  And both Paul and his later proteges made the counterclaim that God's will was to reach everywhere, to seek out everyone, and to save not just one group, or a sizable collection of individuals, but the whole nine yards.  God intends, as we see here in these verses, for everybody to be saved; if we needed proof, continues First Timothy, we need only look at the cross at which Jesus offers himself like a ransom "for all."

This month we have been focused on the theme of going "with Jesus... on the margins," and this passage is one more example of what we mean by that.  Here we have a clear voice from the New Testament saying that God is intent on going into every crevice, corner, nook, and cranny of the universe to seek and find us like a shepherd going after a lost sheep, and that God isn't willing to just settle for holding onto a large number of us, or even the majority of us.  God "desires everyone to be saved," and that's a much stronger claim than just God offering some commodity called "salvation" with a "take-it-or-leave-it-I-don't-care" kind of indifference.

God is not, in other words, like the cashiers at your local retail or grocery store. They want my business (that is, my money), but they aren't particularly invested in getting me to buy THIS particular product, or even necessarily getting ALL the business in the neighborhood.  The managers at my local grocery store know that they are competing with other stores like them, along with big box stores like Walmart, convenience stores, fast food restaurants, and farmers markets.  They want enough of a share of the market that they can keep their business open, but they don't really care if I'm the customer or my neighbor is, or the lady who lives the next block over. That is, it's not really "me" they are after, but just "enough" of the local population to keep their own profits up.  And of course, all too often, we treat church the same way--that we are just one more vendor of one more commodity, and as long as we get enough "market share" of people to keep meeting our budget expenses, we can be satisfied.  That sounds very much like conventional business sense, but it doesn't sound like the God being described in today's verses.

Rather, when the writer of today's passages pictures God, it is not with the self-interest of a business trying to boost income, but with a longing for each one of us individually.  We are important to God, every last one of us, not because we represent a pie-slice of "market share" in the religion industry, but because God actually loves each and every one of us and desires us to be pulled into salvation.  And there is nobody God leaves out of that love or that desire.  There is no point at which God just shrugs the divine shoulders and mutters, "You can't win 'em all," before letting some of us slip through the cracks.  There is never a point at which God says, "Well, I tried, but now I'm too tired to bother with Steve over there--he's just too much of a stinker and a lost sheep, and he's not worth the trouble of saving anymore!"  And, as 1 Timothy tells it, there is never a person of whom God says, "I don't care about saving you." It's all of us that God is after.  It's all of us who are included in the ransom exchange in Christ.

Now, given all of this, there are two questions we are left with as we face another day in God's world.  The first is simply this: if God sees every last one of us as worthy of the love, effort, and cost of saving, then how can any of us treat anybody else like they are less-than?  And second, given 1 Timothy's assertion that God "desires all to be saved," do you think that in the end, God really gets what God wants?  That is, in the end, when all things are made new, do you suppose the story of the universe truly ends with God giving up in frustration and saying, "I tried, but I just wasn't strong enough to do it. I guess I'll settle for whatever percentage of humanity went to church or believed in Jesus through the proper wording of the creeds..." or do you think that ultimately God will get what God desires for the whole world?  The way we approach those questions changes the way we view other people.  If we believe that God will eventually settle for something less and end up giving up on some people, then we will have reason to give up on people or regard them as potential collateral damage without losing any sleep over them.  But if we believe that God sees every person as worthy of costly sacrifice and infinite effort to save, then we can't dismiss somebody else--no matter how far off to the edges of our perception they are--as unimportant or not worth our love.

So, what do you think?  Will we take seriously the New Testament claim that there is nobody left outside of God's desire to save?  And if we do, how will it affect the way we treat people--even (or especially) the people we struggle to love right now?

Lord God, stretch our love to be as wide as yours, and deepen our care for reaching other people to be as full and strong as your own desire for all to be saved.

Even for Kings--September 24, 2025

Even for Kings--September 24, 2025

"First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. This is right and acceptable before God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth." (1 Timothy 2:1-4)

In the first century, within the occupied territory of the Roman Empire, it can't have been easy for Christians to pray for "kings and all who are in high positions," because that included the very Roman officials who were throwing them into prison, beating and torturing them in displays of imperial muscle, and putting them to death for treasonously questioning the lordship of Caesar.  And yet, they did it anyway.  That astounds me, and yet it also speaks a deep word of good news that I didn't even know I needed.

Maybe you know that line from the musical Fiddler on the Roof, where the rabbi of the small Russian village of Anatevka is asked, "Rabbi, is there a blessing even for the czar?" to which the rabbi replies, "There is a blessing for everything: May the Lord bless and keep the czar... far away from here!"  It's a great punch-line for a joke, but it also begs an important question: are Christians supposed to pray for leaders even when those leaders are awful, or cruel, or foolish, or all of the above?  And what would it mean for us to pray for them--are we supposed to ask God to help terrible kings, cruel emperors, or inept rulers to continue in being terrible, cruel, or inept?  That doesn't seem to be faithful.  So let's unpack all that's going on in this passage from what we call First Timothy, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship as our epistle reading. I have a sneaking suspicion that we'll learn something important, both for what the New-Testament-era church was dealing with and for how we live out the same faith in our own time. 

The first thing we have to be clear about is that followers of Jesus pray not just for the people we like, but for the people we do not like as well.  We do it, not because it is fun or easy to seek the good of those we strongly disagree with or those who just rub us the wrong way, but because Jesus has called us to practice the same kind of enemy-love that God has first shown to us.  And for whatever else prayer does to the people we are ostensibly praying for, it also has a way of changing us who are doing the praying.  Praying for someone, especially by name or with the specificity of their situation in mind, has a way of forcing me to see their face, to remember they are human beings (despite whatever other things I might not like about them at the moment), and to recognize the image of God in them.  The early church was committed to that, even though the folks they might have most struggled to pray for were not just fussy neighbors complaining about your kids leaving their footballs on their grass or the people who voted for a different party from you who lived down the street, but the occupying military forces of the hostile Roman empire.  The stakes were a lot higher for the early church than we might realize--and yet they were committed to prayer even for enemies.  After all, Jesus had taught them as much, both in his words (literally, "pray for those who persecute you, and love your enemies") and in his actions (think, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do" from the cross).

So when the writer to Timothy directs Christians to pray for "kings and all those in high positions," it is in NO way with the assumption that those who are in power are sympathetic to them, share their faith, will help the Christian cause, or are currently rightly carrying out their proper vocation of promoting the common good, establishing justice, and keeping people safe.  Those in positions of power and authority weren't typically even neutral, as the book of Acts reminds us, since typically anywhere early Christians went, they were accused of disturbing the peace and even "turning the world upside-down" (see Acts 17:6).  Pretty much, the New Testament assumes that praying for "kings and those in high positions" is very near to praying for "your enemies," because so often for the early church, those in positions of power declared those first Christians their enemies and deliberately tried to harass, imprison, or get rid of them.  And yet, the community of Jesus prayed for public leaders just as surely as they held onto Jesus' teaching to pray for those who persecute you.

Maybe we should clarify, though, what we are actually praying for when we pray for those in positions of power and authority.  For one, regardless of whether you like your leaders or voted for your rulers, we do want the common good to be preserved and sought.  Public leaders, whether they are elected, appointed, crowned, or chosen by casting lots, are tasked with the responsibility of promoting the common good, and that is worthy of asking God's support for.  That is not the same thing as saying, "Well, I prayed for my leaders, so therefore whatever they do from here on out must be God's will."  Neither does that mean that God endorses their agenda, their platform, or their values.   If I pray for my favorite baseball team, that does not guarantee they will win--and if they do make it to the playoffs, that is not proof that God is a fan of my team. If I pray for my friend who is an alcoholic and they still refuse to get help or go into rehab, that doesn't mean God is endorsing their addiction, either. That's not how it works.  (It's worth remembering that even with spiritual matters like prayer, correlation is not the same as causation!)  

When we pray for our leaders, it is one more way of praying for God's Reign to happen (or as we sometimes say it in the Lord's Prayer, "Your kingdom come") in the here and now--"on earth as it is in heaven." But praying for that to happen, and praying for God to help establish the common good, does not necessarily mean that whatever happens next after you say "Amen" is God's answer to your prayer.  The ancient Israelites cried out to God for four hundred and fifty years, as the story goes, for God to move Pharaoh's heart to let them out of slavery.  The fact that it didn't happen for all those generations didn't mean AT ALL that God willed for slavery to continue.  So, bottom line, praying for our leaders is simply that--asking for God to do good through them, in whatever ways God may end up choosing to work, acknowledging also that God's response might include working through those leaders, in spite of those leaders, and even in those leaders to change their outlook or values.  Praying for leaders is not the same as saying they are already in sync with God's priorities or the way of Jesus; it is a way of saying, "Where they are on the right track, help them do their job well--and where they are on the wrong track, help them to change course and do better!" Prayer is not a stamp of approval, but a request for help--if that's true for us, then it is certainly true for those in positions of power and authority.

So when these verses from 1 Timothy direct us to pray for "kings and all in high positions," it doesn't mean that the author thinks the Roman emperor at the time is already being faithful to God's will or represents God's values--it's rather a plea for God to bring change to the heart of the emperor where he is off base and acting against the way of God and also for God to bless whatever things the emperor is doing that are actually for the common good.  It has the feel of saying, "Wherever our leaders are already working for the common good, strengthen them, and wherever they are working against the common good, redirect them."  Either way, God's help and presence are called for--but the prayer itself is not an endorsement of whatever the emperor, the king, the governor, or the local rulers happen to be doing at the moment.  It could in fact be a realization that they are currently doing the opposite of God's will and need to be redirected, because their choices and decisions affect the livelihoods of others.  When we pray for "those in high positions" in our own time it is the same--not a blank check of unqualified support for whatever our leaders might do, but a plea that where they are not promoting the common good that God would thwart their harmful policies, redirect their misguided priorities, and lead them instead to do good for those in their care.

So for us, the call to pray for "those in high positions" doesn't require us to like our leaders, nor to believe that they are in line with God's priorities simply because they are in power.  Where they are helping the common good, we pray for God to help them succeed--and where they are opposed to God's justice and mercy, we are praying for God to change their thinking, acting, and leading.  Just as when we pray for our enemies, we are not asking for God to help our enemies do evil or--where they are wrong--to keep them in the wrong.  Rather, when we pray for our enemies, we are asking for God to bring change to them where they are in the wrong, to change us where WE are the ones who are in the wrong toward them, and to turn all of our hearts where each of us is out of sync with God's way.  Because nobody who is actually wrong about something believes that they are wrong, we need God to help get through to us--praying for our enemies (even the hostile Roman empire of the New Testament era) is a way of asking God to help us see where we are the ones who need to grow and change, as well as asking God to do the same for others since we cannot force others to change their hearts or minds, either.  In a political system like ours, with two major political parties vying for power, and in a time like ours when people feel so fragmented and hostile toward people on the other side of the line, that will mean that praying for our leaders will always include some amount of praying for people whose beliefs we don't agree with, whose policies we do not like, and whose character we may find abhorrent.  Praying for them does not mean approval of what they are currently doing--it is plea for God to work through them where possible, in spite of them where necessary, and in them to reorient them where they are not seeking the common good.  And as First Timothy's situation certainly reminds us, praying for our leaders does not assume that they are seeking our well-being in return--we are freed to pray for God to do good in them, even if our leaders are currently doing things that harm us or we do not agree with (as surely was the case for the early church that was being persecuted by the Empire when these words were written).

The witness of the early church reminds us that sometimes the emperor is NOT seeking our well-being or the common good in general; it might even be the stated policy of Caesar to hate his opponents, as it was surely in the New Testament era.  But we are not bound by the hatred of others--we do not have to accept their terms. We are free to pray for our leaders both when they are good and virtuous (in the hopes that God will further the common good through them) and when they are rotten and cruel (in the hopes that God will redirect them and thwart their rottenness in the mean time).  Either way we pray.  Either way we ask God to bring about justice and mercy all around.  

Praying that way does something to us, even apart from whatever God does in the hearts and minds of the people "in high positions." It compels us to see all people--even those who wield authority--as human beings, made in God's image, struggling in many ways and in need of God's direction.  And it keeps us from becoming bitter and hateful ourselves, even in the face of bitterness and hatred around us.  As much as I don't want to admit it, I need that kind of help to keep me from meanness and vitriol.  Praying for my leaders, like praying for my enemies, is one way God keeps my heart from turning to stone.  And so we pray...

Lord God, for all those who are in positions of authority, we ask your help.  Where they are already in line with your vision of justice, mercy, and the common good, strengthen them.  Where they are turned in the wrong direction, reorient them.  And where others are suffering because of cruelty, foolishness, or corruption from leaders, deliver those who suffer, and change the hearts of leaders toward wisdom and compassion.

What Makes God Different--September 23, 2025

What Makes God Different--September 23, 2025

"Who is like the LORD our God,
     who is seated on high,

 who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?

 He raises the poor from the dust

     and lifts the needy from the ash heap,

 to make them sit with princes,

     with the princes of his people.

 He gives the barren woman a home,

     making her the joyous mother of children.

 Praise the LORD!" (Psalm 113:5-9)

It's easy to look down on people.

We human beings have spent an awful lot of the last several thousand years inventing new ways to do it, too.  We rank each other's worth based on how much shiny metal each person has--and then, when our currency turned to paper, we compared stacks of cash, and now we use the even more fictional inventions of crypto-currency, too, to do the same thing!  We compare who has the larger house or the nicer car, as well as who has the more prestigious job or who lives in a fancier neighborhood.  We judge one another based on whose family looks more like some fictional cookie-cutter pattern of the "ideal," and criticize those whose households don't measure up in our estimation.  We invent classifications for people so that we can deem "outsiders" as inferior--whether it's based on where you come from, what language you speak, how much money you make, or whether you agree with my group's politics. We end up ranking people who are "like" us first, and then create a descending scale of value from neutral strangers to suspicious outsiders to downright worthless enemies. And of course, we invent religious notions that there are gold stars out there to be given by God as rewards for personal holiness, public piety, or respectable rule-following, all in order to make ourselves look better than "those people" (however you want to describe "those people").  

We have been doing this sort of thing as a species for as long as we've been writing down records of our own history (bean-counting has a long and storied history with our kind), and all of it boils down to coming up with new ways to look down on someone else. Somehow, we tell ourselves, we are slightly better than the rest as long as there is someone beneath us on the list of rankings, so we keep coming up with new ways to play that same old game.  So there is nothing really unique or special about being in a position to look "down" on other people.  Whether you actually have a position of authority, responsibility, or leadership, or you have just come up with another stupid ranking on your own terms to belittle others, that sort of condescending posture is old hat. We've seen it done from the Pharaohs of Egypt, the kings of Babylon, and the Caesars of Rome to the follower-counts of social media and listings of the Fortune 500 still today.  There is nothing new, different, or even interesting about finding yet another way to look down on someone.

That's why the Scriptures are so refreshing, honestly.  We are given throughout the pages of the Bible a different picture of the living God--one that doesn't look down in arrogance or self-inflated pomposity, but that lifts up the ones who have been looked down on by everybody else.  You can hear it all over the place in the Bible once you to know to look for it, but it's on full display here in this passage from the Psalms, which many would have heard or sung in worship this past Sunday in the Revised Common Lectionary.  

This section starts out picturing God high up, in a sense, looking "far down on the heavens and the earth." You might at first think we were going to get a sort of comparison between Israel's God, YHWH, and the other gods of the surrounding nations.  You could imagine the temptation to have said, "You know how WE can tell that OUR god is better than yours?  Well, OUR god has a throne that's even higher than yours!"  You could imagine a rhetorical contest of deities, each one trying to outrank or out-perch the others by comparing their powers, their mythologies, or the status and wealth of their worshipers.  You could imagine someone trying to puff up the reputation of their god by arguing, "Our god is the best because our god's followers have a higher GDP, or a bigger army, or larger territory, and that's how we know!"  You could imagine a psalm saying, "Our god is worthy of praise because our god's worshippers are the movers and the shakers, but those other gods are only worshipped by nobodies, weaklings, and losers!"  All of that would just be more of the same stupid, petty game-playing we've been doing to look down on each other since time immemorial.

But that's where the psalmist does something unexpected.  This poet doesn't launch into a contest of "Which deity has a taller throne?" but rather says that the living God--despite being far beyond heaven and earth altogether--chooses to see the most lowly, the most at-risk, and the most marginalized, and to lift them all up to places of honor.  The real difference is not a matter of looking down on someone else, but of lifting up the ones who have been stepped on, forgotten, and pushed aside.  That is what makes God different--both from the idols and pantheons of the surrounding empires, and different from the typical human way of looking down on each other.  God sees the folks who have been regarded as "less than," and instead of using that to puff up the ol' divine ego, God looks for ways to raise them up.  God, the poet says, "lifts the poor from the dust, and the needy from the ash heap." God brings the lowly to sit at places of honor beside the nobles and royalty.  And God finds the women who had been told they were "damaged goods" or "second-class" because they had no children and gives them a home.  None of that smacks of arrogant condescension.  It is all about God's care for the people most on the margins.  And over against all the kings, emperors, gods, and goddesses of history, that really is different.  The living God doesn't look at the world through the lens of some cosmic rankings with pious worshipers at the top being rewarded with perks, and then strangers, losers, and enemies all further down in less importance.  God deliberately goes to the end of the line and puts the last first, lifts the lowly up high, and gathers the outcast back in.  That kind of upside-down motion is what makes God different.

It will make us stand out in the world, too, if we are going to be associated with this table-turning, lowly-lifting God.  I was in the gas station the other day and when I got up to the cashier inside, the attendant asked about my lapel button, which simply says, "the last first" on it.  It looks like this:

When I simply replied, "Oh, my button says 'the last first' on it," she pressed me further: "What does that mean?"  So I simply said, "Like when Jesus says, 'The last shall be first and the first shall be last,'" she just sort of shrugged me off and started making small talk with the other cashier, with a vary look on her face like I might actually be an alien or someone with three heads. Everybody was pleasant, and nobody was rude, but it was certainly a moment that reminded me how unusual it really is that we Christians dare to believe in a God who reprioritizes things that way.  We do not believe in a god who merely rubber stamps the world's rankings of who matters and who doesn't.  We do not believe in a god who endorses our habit of looking down on others as "less than." Rather, ours is the God who seeks out the empty-handed and fills them with good things. Ours is the God who seeks out the folks who have been pushed out to the edges and brings them to the table to be welcomed to places of honor. Ours is the God who just comes out and says, "The last will be first."  Even if the world isn't always downright hostile to that sort of thinking (and it often is), the world will be surprised by that kind of messaging and that kind of God.  We had better own it: the God of the Scriptures is perfectly willing to be counter-cultural that way.  The God we meet in the Bible chooses to stand out, not by looking down on all of us with scorn and self-importance (even if God has the "right" to do so as Creator of all things), but by lifting up those who are down in the dumps and crushed into the dust.  God's choice to seek the people who have been most stepped-on and to raise them up in honor and love is what makes God worthy of our worship, according to the psalmist.

Look, plenty of tyrants and bullies throughout history have puffed themselves up by looking down on the people they see as "less-than" or "major losers."  Plenty of pompous blowhards have proudly bragged about how much they hate their adversaries and would only do good to those who would paid them back with favors or fawning praise.  The God of the Scriptures is neither.  The psalmist says God is worthy of praise for being different--the living God does good to the empty-handed, the excluded, and the enemy.

If that is the God whose way we seek to walk in, then we should be known for the same kind of care for those who are most looked-down on by everybody else.  And we should be ready to get funny looks for trying to point to the surprising ways of this God in our everyday lives.

Lord Jesus, make us brave enough to be willing to stand out from the crowd in the ways that we honor other people.