At the Very Same Time--June 1, 2026

 

At the Very Same Time--June 1, 2026

"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them.  When they saw him, they worshiped him, but they doubted." (Matthew 28:16-17)

We don't get to divide the world into two separate piles of "wholly devout, unwavering believers" on the one hand and "impious, incredulous doubters" on the other.  At least not if we take the Gospel seriously.  We are always simultaneously both: the faithful and the fickle, the devout and the doubtful, the trusting and the skeptic.  And that means our belonging in the family of Jesus isn't a reward for being staunch believers with unquestionable and unquestioning faith.  Our belonging comes because Jesus has claimed us, knowing full well that even in our best moments our sincere worship is laced with honest doubt, too.

That's a detail we sometimes overlook here in these final verses of Matthew's Gospel, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Often we are quick to skip ahead to the so-called "Great Commission," when Jesus charges his disciples to go and "make disciples of all nations," which sends us galavanting off to share our faith with others, tell people the Good News and to "bring a friend" to church with us (if we dare to do any of those things).  But before we get to that high-minded mission, let's spend a moment with the introduction Matthew gives us to this final scene of his movie.

When Jesus had appeared at the empty tomb at the beginning of Matthew 28, back on what we call Easter Sunday, the risen Christ told the women at the tomb to pass along the message to the disciples to meet him in Galilee, and now here they are assembled at the particular spot Jesus had told them about.  They see him--and in Matthew's telling, this is the first time they have seen him alive and risen from the dead--and their response is two-fold: "they worshiped him, but they doubted."  Both, presumably at the same time.  And perhaps that is completely understandable, because this moment must have been simply overwhelming.  The last these disciples had seen Jesus was either the night of his arrest in the garden before they abandoned him, or from the cross as he died--and now he was alive!  It seemed quite literally too good to be true.  They were overjoyed and dumbfounded at the same time. They were beginning to realize that if indeed Jesus was risen from the dead, he wasn't simply a good man, a wise rabbi, or a new prophet.  Maybe he wasn't even merely a human messiah coming to set up a kingdom. It was beginning to dawn on them that this Jesus really had been "God-with-us" all along, and the thought blew their minds.  It was an impossibility that was happening right before their eyes--either Jesus really was the presence of God in their midst, and therefore worthy of their utter worship, or it was all an illusion.  So they do two things at the same time: they worship, and they doubt.  They believe, and they question. I suspect you and I would do the same thing as well in their sandals.

And honestly, I think that's part of the point of why Matthew tells his story this way.  He's not trying to get us to sort each other into piles of "good Christians" who only believe and "bad Christians" or impostors who only doubt.  I think he's reminding us, as he's shown us throughout his gospel's account, that we are always both believers and doubters--"ye of little faith," as Jesus so often calls his disciples in Matthew's storytelling.  This is an important part of getting the translation correct in these verses for today, because other English translations (including the one I grew up with in church, and maybe you did, too) tried to segregate doubt and worship into different categories of people.  I grew up hearing these verses saying, "they worshipped him, but SOME doubted," as if there was a subset of doubters.  But the Greek of Matthew's Gospel doesn't say that.  There's no word "some" in there, and the verb "doubted" presumably takes the same subject as the verb "worshipped."  In other words, the clearest reading of this passage in Matthew's original Greek is saying that the same ones who are worshipping Jesus are the same ones who are also doubting, in that very same moment.  

Thta's important to be clear about, because that's us. We are always wobbly-faithed, struggling to believe, hesitant to trust, wrestling with the impossibly good news right before our eyes, doubtful-believers.  We are Peter, simultaneously calling out to Jesus, "If it is you, Lord, call me out onto the waves to walk on the water to you," and starting to sink the moment we see that we are doing it.  We are the disciples all swearing up and down that we will never abandon Jesus and then bailing out on him when the authorities come to arrest him in the Garden.  We are the ones confessing that Jesus is the Messiah and the very Son of God, only to rebuke him for insisting that his way of being those things is to lay down his life on a cross rather than conquering the world in triumph. We are always struggling to believe Jesus' good news that he is welcoming sinners, outcasts, and mess-ups into the Kingdom of God and then doubting it could be true as we scowl and shoo away the folks we think are "too bad" for God to love.  This is us: the faithful followers and double-talking doubters, all at once.

It is always a temptation in church life to want to weed out the folks we don't think should make the cut: the ones who can't articulate their faith with the precision we might wish for, the ones who don't show up on Sundays as often as we would like, the ones whose families, style of parenting, or politics don't match our own, or the ones who, we tell ourselves, "just don't fit in." It is always alluring to want to draw a line between the good and dedicated True Believers (and we always put ourselves in that category, don't we?) and the unworthy, uncommitted Reprobates, Sinners, and Doubters.  We do that because that lets us believe that we've earned our spot in God's good graces because of our excellence in believing, the strength of our faith, and the high quality of our devotion, rather than admitting it's not something we've achieved.  We want to tell ourselves we deserve our spot in heaven, because we believed the right things, and we believed the fervently enough, rather than hearing the real Good News that God's trustworthy grip on us is what holds us, rather than the strength of our grip on God.  But that's how it really works for the followers of Jesus: our grip on him is always rather precarious.  

Ultimately, though, we don't put our trust in the strength of our belief in Jesus; we put our trust in Jesus himself.  And Jesus himself is the one who holds us, who won't let us go, and who still holds onto us at our points of deepest devotion and committed worship as well as our points of greatest doubt and deepest disillusionment.  Even when those are all happening at the very same time.

Lord Jesus, hold onto us today--all of us--in this mix of doubt and faith, struggle and worship, where we find ourselves today. Assure us that no matter what, you will not let us go.

Not for Sale--May 29, 2026

Not for Sale--May 29, 2026

"For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ. For in the one Spirit we were all baptized into one body—Jews or Greeks, slaves or free—and we were all made to drink of one Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:12-13)

In a world where just about everything is treated as a commodity, there are countless ways for us to be consumers. 

We choose not only which groceries we buy (and which brand of green beans or energy drink to put in our carts) but also which brand of grocery to buy them from.  We choose which platforms of social media to use, clicking buttons of approval and teaching algorithms how to market more products in front of our eyes to buy.  We consume news sources (and more often, opinion sources that dress themselves up as selling news), movies, TV shows, and which streaming services on which to watch them all. And of course, we select our which politicians we support, which representatives we elect, and which influencers we allow to shape our thinking.  All of them are viewed in our culture as products to be consumed, purchases we make with our money, time, and attention, and commodities for sale.

And the thing about buying a product is that you, the individual customer, are free to come and go from the transaction as you like.  You have no obligation to stay with any particular brand, style, or store. You can be a repeat customer if you wish, or you can go somewhere new with every shopping trip.  You can buy what is popular, or you can choose something that you alone happen to like.  And the moment you get tired of it, you can throw away the still half-full box into the trash and get something new--maybe even "ranch" or "nacho-cheese-flavored." And once your transaction is complete, the relationship with the store, its suppliers, and the cashier is over. No strings. No lingering requirements of connection. We have built a whole way of life around having impersonal and interchangeable transactions of consumption, and it has a way of making us see everything in the world in those same terms.

But the Christian community is different.  In fact, it is different in a great many ways and at multiple levels, compared to the modes of consumption in the world's grand marketplace.  For one, we are not ever merely customers shopping for a preferred "religious experience."  It is, of course, tempting to think of ourselves that way--sometimes, folks even talk about "church shopping" like they are browsing for a new dishwasher or deciding which Mexican restaurant to try out next weekend.  But the writers of the New Testament don't think of it like that.  These words which many of us heard this past Sunday make that certainly clear.  You don't hear Paul say, "Just as the shopping mall has many stores, and you are each individually customers choosing which one to shop at."  He doesn't write, "You are all consumers of church, and you can come and go as you please from one franchise to another, because you're the customer, and you're always right!"  And neither does the apostle claim, "With your membership in Christco, you can each choose to drink whatever flavor of whatever beverage you wish!" We aren't consumers paying for a product or an experience; we are members of a body who belong to one another and are interconnected with one another. That makes the Christian community unlike any commodity or club.  We are a family bound by the Spirit.

And at least part of what that means is that we don't just walk away from Sunday mornings like satisfied customers, having filled up our "religion gas tanks" until we decide which different brand, station, or grade of fuel to get next week.  We belong to a community together, sharing both joys and sorrows together, bringing each of our differences, and making space for one another's gifts.  In Paul's imagery we are members of a body, and the parts of a body are attached to one another; you don't quite know where the hand stops and the wrist or the arm begins. The nerves that run through our legs connect back up to our brain.  Each eye needs the other in order for our brains to make a full and three-dimensional picture for our senses.  And in the body of Christ as well, we are not just a random assemblage of isolated parts or individual customers.  We are connected to each other, in such a way that your unique experience and perspective helps me to see things I would not have noticed otherwise.  My gifts help meet the needs that you bring.  That's a very different way of experiencing the world compared with the never-ending shopping experience of our commodified culture.

When you walk into a grocery or department store, you don't have to interact with any other customers if you don't want to. You are an individual on a mission to buy bananas and shampoo (or whatever else is on your list), and it doesn't affect your goal one way or another if the next customer pushing the cart behind you gets what they are looking for or not. The Law of the Big Box Store is It's Every Shopper For Himself, right? But in the community called "church," we do have an obligation to help one another to be nourished, strengthened, fed, and forgiven.  We do have a commitment to honor one another's gifts, bind one another's wounds, and help shape one another in the likeness of Christ. We aren't just here to consume (and then rate the experience of what we have consumed); we are here to build one another up.  It is unlike so much of our lives these days, and it is just the kind of counter-cultural way of living that the world needs.

Today, what would it look like for us to see the world, not as a colossal shopping experience where we each scavenge alone for what we want, and instead as a communal enterprise to help each of us grow and all of us to mature in love? That's the invitation of this day--and every day. That's not a product; it's a gift. And it's not for sale.

Lord Jesus, deepen our connections to one another, and help us to resist the impulse to see everything as a commodity for sale.

The Community of the Re-Storied--May 28, 2026

The Community of the Re-Storied--May 28, 2026

"Therefore I want you to understand that no one speaking by the Spirit of God ever says, 'Let Jesus be cursed!' and no one can say 'Jesus is Lord' except by the Holy Spirit." (1 Corinthians 12:3)

Let's clear something up: treating Jesus like your mascot or personal possession is easy. It's cheap. It's popular. And anybody can do that. They can even dress it up in the language of piety to sound deeply devout--but it's still about trying to use Jesus to endorse your own agenda. And, to be even more honest [perhaps uncomfortably so], it's a really common thing to do, even among Respectable Religious folk.

But to make the claim that Jesus is "Lord"--well, that's really saying something. Or at least to mean that claim, rather than just mouthing it as pious lip-service or reciting a creed from memory like a parrot that doesn't understand the sounds it has been trained to mimic, that's a big deal. To name Jesus as Lord isn't about invoking Jesus' power or status to back up our own agendas, but rather it is about declaring our allegiance to his agenda. And that is something that we need the Spirit's help to do--on our own, we keep trying to crown ourselves sovereigns over our own lives like Napoleon. It takes the pull of the Spirit in our lives to redirect our hearts and hands to give our allegiance to Jesus and his upside-down Reign where the last are first and the lowly are lifted up.

That was certainly even more evident in the first century when Paul first wrote these words that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship. We have become so familiar with the phrase "Jesus is Lord," and we can so callously utter them without consequence in our lives, that we might well miss just how radical a claim it really is to confess Jesus as Lord--if we dare to take that claim seriously. In Paul's world, it was as stark a statement as saying that up is down or day is night. It was as risky--and counter-cultural--a claim as Copernicus saying that the Earth went around the Sun rather than the accepted conventional wisdom [insisted on by the Keepers of Respectable Religion in his day, mind you] that the Earth was the center of the universe, with the Sun and all the planets orbiting it. To say that Jesus was and is "Lord" was a clear rejection of the Empire's claim that Caesar was Lord--in fact, it was that very statement that the Empire demanded its subjects, including Christians, affirm. And it was that very claim that ancient Christians refused to endorse--they would not mouth the words, "Caesar is Lord" or offer even a pinch of incense to Caesar on an imperial altar, even though that defiance cost many Christians their lives. From Paul's perspective, nobody just glibly said "Jesus is Lord," because everybody in his world knew that saying those words risked a death sentence--and nobody gambles with their life so recklessly if they don't really believe the words they are saying. [To borrow an insight of C.S. Lewis, while plenty of people in history have died for things they believed in that turned out to be incorrect or outright lies, nobody dies for a lie that they know is a lie.]

For that matter, even to people who weren't big fans of the Empire, it looked simply absurd to claim that a man who had been crucified by the Empire was actually the Lord of the universe. To the watching world, it seemed obvious that whoever is doing the crucifying is really in charge, and whoever is getting crucified must be weak, foolish, and defeated. But Christians, from the very beginning, made the outrageous claim, not only that Jesus was and is the true Lord of all, but that his way of accomplishing victory and establishing his Reign was precisely at the point that looked like an utter loss: the cross. Nobody says something like that by logical deduction. Nobody, at least not in Paul's time, makes a claim like that because it is popular. Nobody who heard the story of a homeless, weaponless rabbi getting executed on Caesar's orders would have said, "That's predictable. It sounds exactly like the rabbi won and the Empire lost"--well, nobody except someone who had been given the eyes to recognize it by the Spirit of God.

That's actually what Paul had said back in the very first chapter of this same letter (see First Corinthians 1:18 and following). The message about the cross sounds like weakness and foolishness--utter nonsense!--to the watching world, but to those who have been called by God and given the eyes of faith to recognize it, we see in the cross the power and wisdom of God. By sheer logic, conventional wisdom, and "common sense," it looks like Jesus is a loser who got crushed by the powers of the day, but by the direction of the Spirit, we can see a completely different understanding: that the Crucified One is indeed the Lord of all creation, and his way of reigning is the power of self-giving love that was willing to be killed by his enemies [and for their sake] rather than to kill them.

In a sense, that means being a part of the Christian family means being "re-storied." To be a Christian is to learn to tell a different story from what the rest of the world tells--about Jesus, about true power, about the world, and about who is really Lord. Emperors like Caesar are so insecure about themselves and their legacies that they need to build monuments and stage gladiator fights to try and convince people they are powerful.  The Spirit shows us that Jesus is Lord from a cross. They are two totally different stories. To a world that just keeps rehashing the same old tale of "Might makes right," and "You've got to look out for your own interests first," the story we call the gospel sounds ridiculous. But we have been shown by the very Spirit of God a different story--one in which the loser turns out to be the victor, the cross turns out to be Jesus' triumph, and the powers of the day are exposed to be empty husks.

In our time, the trouble is that church folks have gotten so used to reciting the phrase, "Jesus is Lord" that we run the risk of forgetting how radical a notion that really is. We keep wanting to take the title "Lord Jesus" and slap it on our same old notions of power, and Respectable Religious folks keep wanting to let Jesus get co-opted to prop up their political agendas [often to support things that don't sound very Christ-like, at that], or to pretend that Jesus blesses our selfishness. But when Paul talks about confessing "Jesus is Lord," he doesn't mean just reciting those words as an empty slogan or magic words to guarantee we will get what we want or have divine endorsement on our power-grabs. The only way to really mean "Jesus is Lord" is to recognize that the One you are calling "Lord" is the One who laid down his life and endured execution by the Superpower of his day, and that his kind of lordship doesn't look like imperial conquests but the washing of feet, the welcoming of outcasts, and the love of his enemies. Jesus' lordship doesn't come at the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun, but with a towel and basin and nail-scarred hands. The only way anybody can possibly see such an outlandish claim as the God's-honest truth is if the Spirit of God shows it to us. When it finally clicks for us that this surprising claim is the truth, we'll realize that the Spirit has brought us into the Community of the Re-Storied at last.

Today, then, let's be done with the cheap ways we try to misuse the name of Jesus on our own personal or partisan agendas. Let's be done with using Jesus as a mascot to endorse our own wishes for control, money, or status, and instead allow Jesus' upside-down reign to surprise the world, ourselves included.

In other words, let us dare to confess that Jesus is Lord... and let us dare to mean it.

Lord Jesus, let us mean what we say about you in the ways we live this life according to your upside-down Reign where the last are put first and the lowly are lifted up.

New Eyes for a New World--May 27, 2026

New Eyes for a New World--May 27, 2026

[Peter said to the crowd in Jerusalem:] "Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o'clock in the morning. No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 'In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams. Even on my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy. And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist. The sun shall be turned to darkness, and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord's great and glorious day. Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved'." (Acts 2:14b-21)

It's like a whole world ending... and a whole new one coming to life.

That may sound overly dramatic to our ears. But in all honesty, if we take seriously what the Reign of God in Jesus is all about, it will sound to us like the ending and the beginning of a whole new world, a whole new order of things. And once you are cued in on the new thing that God's Spirit is up to in the world, you cannot help but see things differently--like you are living at the overlap of the ends of the ages.... like the whole world is being made new.

Peter gets that.

In fact, what our narrator Luke gives us here as Peter's off-the-cuff speech on the day of Pentecost is all about seeing the ending of an old world order and the beginning of a whole new creation... right in the midst of the world looking like it always had. These words of Peter's, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are framed as Peter's response to the confused crowds in Jerusalem after the Spirit had been poured out on the followers of Jesus to gather in people from all languages and nations, all customs and cultures (yes, side note, that is always how the community of Jesus has been intended to look--it was multilingual and multinational from Day One).

And as Pete sees that happening, as he hears the different languages, as he sees visitors from foreign nations all across the empire coming to hear the Good News of Jesus, he sees that this is what God had been promising all along. And Peter finally understands that even the ancient prophets of old looked ahead to a day when God would act to welcome all, to send he Spirit on all sorts of surprising folks, and to change the vision of people in unexpected places from unexpected corners.

This passage from Acts, as you might be able to tell, is largely Peter quoting from the prophet Joel, and Joel himself had been describing some future moment he calls "the Day of the Lord." And at least on Joel's lips, that sounds at first blush like a scary moment. The sun goes dark, the moon goes blood red--it's like the most solid, most constant things you could think of in the ancient world all suddenly get wobbly. And Joel sees these as going hand in hand with the moment when God pours out the Spirit "on all flesh." Men and women. Old and young. Rich and poor. Even those still caught under the wheel of slavery. All people, not just a select few, or the priests, or the religious professionals. As Joel saw it, when God would do something like that, it would feel like the whole tired mess of the old world was coming to an end, and a whole new creation was being born.

Now flash forward about... oh, maybe seven hundred years, and there is Simon Peter watching the Spirit rush through his previously scaredy-cat friends (we usually call them "the Apostles," but come on, until this moment, they were all pretty cowardly when push came to shove). And Peter sees the way even these uneducated fisherman, ex-revolutionaries and former tax collectors are given the presence of the Spirit and the ability for others to understand their words in many languages. And Peter realizes that this is what it looks like when God sends the Spirit--everybody is welcomed. Everybody in their own language. Everybody as they are. And Peter says, in effect, "This is what Joel was talking about! This is it happening before your very eyes!" even if, to everybody else's eyes, it was just an ordinary Sunday morning at 9:00am.

It's funny to me: Peter has no problem seeing this moment, with the many languages and the wind of the Spirit rushing through them, as the fulfillment of Joel's vision--even though there are none of the scary signs that Joel had talked about. No sun into darkness--not even a partial eclipse. No red moon. No blood or fire. Not even a whiff of "smoky mist." None of the scary celestial signs or astronomical anomalies happened that day--but still Peter is convinced that this is what Joel was talking about all along. (This is perhaps a warning to us about how we read the prophets ourselves--sometimes religious folks want to turn the prophets into fortune tellers or Nostradamus-types, but they are just as often poets who are describing touchable, tangible human events with the startling language they need to use to get people's attention.) Peter sees that the coming of the Spirit really is like the ending of an old, tired, and miserable regime and the beginning of something new, like the whole world was born all over again.

And maybe even Peter himself doesn't quite grasp yet just how radical a moment this is. But it won't be long in the book of Acts before God uses this same Peter to reach out even wider to include and welcome outsiders, Gentiles, and even members of the enemy occupying army (like Cornelius the centurion, to whom Peter will be sent soon in the book of Acts). Peter is witnessing the creation of a whole new way of being human--one that is no longer bound up with separate ethnicities or exclusion based on language. He sees that God is creating a new kind of community based on the grip of grace, not on our DNA. And that floors him. That is like the end of a world and the start of a new humanity. Peter says, "That's what Joel was getting at all along." Peter took his Bible seriously... but he was able to see that Joel was less interested in predicting eclipses as he was in envisioning God's Reign breaking in.

We have a way sometimes of missing the boat, we Christians. (Surprise, surprise, right?) We have a way of not being able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to the words of these ancient poets and dreamers we call the prophets. Instead of trying to sift through their visions looking for clues about the "end times" or trying to tie in yesterday's eclipse with some ancient scripture passage, perhaps we could listen the way Peter did--to see that the real end-of-the-world moment was also the beginning of a whole new creation, the inauguration of the Spirit-led movement of the followers of Jesus. So often, we stifle and squelch what God has been trying to do--we end up further dividing ourselves, and acting like the old lines of language, nationality, and culture still must divide us, like the old allegiances still claim us. So often we accept those as givens, while trying to figure out what astronomical signs some old prophet was trying to predict. Instead, we ought to be hearing the prophets tell us together that God is doing a new thing--a thing meant for all, for me... for you... and for people you don't particularly like, too.

If we listen to Peter there on the day of Pentecost, we will find our eyes are changed. We will begin to see, with him, how God has begun a new creation right in the midst of the old order. We will see that God has breathed a new breath into the universe, and just like the Spirit brooded over the waters at creation, now the same God has breathed the Spirit onto the motley crew that makes up the Kingdom. We will see, as we look at how varied the faces, how different the voices, how many the languages and cultures and customs of people who are being gathered into God's New Thing. We will see that the old way of living in the world--divided and segregated and isolated from one another, viewing the other with suspicion and fear--is coming to an end. We will see that God has begun a new order of the day, and it is taking shape among us right now... right here... right before our very eyes.

That's what Peter says we are offered as well: new eyes to see a new world unfolding now.  That's what the Spirit gives among us, too--the gift of a new way of seeing that changes everything and includes everyone. We will get to see signs that God is doing something new and wonderful ... and then we will get to be a part of it, too.

Great God, do your new thing among us, and help us to see it.

A People from Everywhere--May 26, 2026

A People from Everywhere--May 26, 2026

Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” (Acts 2:5-11)

It would have been almost certainly easier if things had been kept in a single language, rather than God's miraculous choice to enable this cosmopolitan crowd to hear the news of Jesus in their own native languages.  But God has never been one to just pick the easy way.  Rather, God has always had a thing for doing things with extravagant love, even when that meant doing something much more complicated and difficult.

These verses from the familiar story of Pentecost, which many of us heard this past Sunday, give us a glimpse of that choice of God's from the very beginning of the community called "church." As it happened, a large crowd of religious pilgrims had come back to the city of Jerusalem for the Jewish festival of Pentecost (also called the festival of "Shauvot" or the Feast of Weeks), and they had come from all over the Mediterranean and near Eastern world. After centuries of the Jewish people being scattered throughout various kingdoms and empires, they had made lives and homes in other territories but kept their Jewish identity, faith, and worship.  So these people had grown up speaking a whole host of various languages from the places where they had settled--the list here in this passage is pretty lengthy, with more than a dozen people groups and ethnicities represented.  

And if God's intention is to get all of these people to be able to hear the news of Jesus and understand it as they go back home to their families, neighborhoods, and communities, God has two choices, you could say.  One option would be to miraculously give everybody the ability to hear and understand one language--say, the Aramaic that Simon Peter and the other disciples would have grown up speaking.  That would have made things nice and simple, and from then on the whole church could have insisted on a single language for uniformity and consistency. They could have said, "Anybody is welcome to be a Christ-follower, but first you have to learn Aramaic, because that's what the first disciples spoke." Or, the more complicated option would have been to enable everyone to hear in their own native language, somehow, presumably with attention to all the nuances, idioms, and quirks of each language. This seems like it would have set up a messier precedent, because it would have opened the doors to saying that the Good News of Jesus could be translated into any language and could be understood by anybody without making them learn a single common language first.  And from there, the church would have had to find ways to accommodate not just the languages, but the cultures, the backgrounds, the foods, and the complexions of people from all over.  And yet, as you and I well know, this is the choice God makes.  God deliberately brings about a miracle that meets everybody where they are, speaking their own language rather than insisting that they all learn one chosen language first in order to belong.  And God does that, I am convinced, because that's the nature of the Gospel: God meets us as we are, where we are, in order to make us a part of a people from everywhere.

And so here we are, twenty centuries later, worshiping, singing, praying, studying, and talking about the news of Jesus in English--a language that didn't even exist in the first century!--while other Christians in other places speak their own languages, too. Our belonging, and our acceptance, just as we are, comes from God's choice in this moment.  Our favorite hymns, and the cadences of our favorite Bible verses as we memorized them once upon a time, they are included in the praise of the church because from this critical moment onward, God did not impose a language requirement on the followers of Jesus.  Sometimes that choice makes things more complicated for us--just see what happens when you get two different translations side by side at a Bible study, for example.  But from God's vantage point, that's the beauty of the whole thing: God would rather be committed to the difficult work of finding ways to reach everybody than to just take the easy way out of requiring that we all learn Aramaic, or Hebrew, or Greek, or Latin, first.  For the sake of reaching everybody, God chooses to set the precedent with all the languages of the Day of Pentecost.

This is the kind of community we belong to as the church. We aren't just the local County Historical Society that retells the events of our particular piece of ground.  We aren't just a religious version of your high school Spanish Club or French Club, either, focused on a single language and culture.  We are a people from everywhere, and there is room for each of us because God insists there is room for all of us.

How might that affect the way we see others whose stories, cultures, and languages are different from our own?  How might it change the way we see our own belonging here in the church?

Let's see how our witness might be widened today because of God's choice to speak in every language and meet people where they are.

Lord Jesus, send us out with your wide vision of love for all people as you have first reached out to us.

Ever-Widening Circles--May 25, 2026

Ever-Widening Circles--May 25, 2026

"When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability." (Acts 2:1-4)

Something like three billion years ago, something amazing happened that just made the news in our lifetimes.

Maybe you caught the first news story a few years ago when for just scientists first observed gravitational waves, which are ripples in the very fabric of space-time itself. It was headline news when these discoveries were first measured about ten years ago, and ever since they've been finding these waves--about three hundred instances since the first discovery around 2015.  Einstein had predicted that such things would exist as part of working out the theory of relativity, but it was a hundred years later before scientists at the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory) had developed an instrument sensitive enough to pick them up. And that's because ripples in the fabric of reality itself are only caused by really really really big cataclysmic type events... but those events happen very very very far away from us making the ripples dissipate the further they travel (picture circular ripples in a pond).

Well, here's what they observed: somewhere in the neighborhood of three billion light-years away, two black holes (each one already a giant, voracious mass whose gravity is so strong that even light itself cannot escape it) collided with each other. First, they approached each other in a sort of swirling motion, circling each other like sharks in the water, or like dancers doing the tango. And then, after getting closer and closer and closer to each other--bang!--they collided and formed a new, even larger black hole. (And if the scientists' math is anywhere near the right ballpark, in that instant, twice the amount of all the matter in our Sun was converted to energy, a blast so powerful that, well... it literally shook the fabric of reality.

And this is the cool part for us here on earth. These really really smart scientists figured out how to build a machine (well, actually two of them, one in Washington State and one in Louisiana) that could actually measure a ripple--tiny, by the time it reached us all these billions of light-years away--in the space-time continuum. Wow. Just... wow.

Ok, so let's pause for a moment and get the non-jargon version of what happened. An event happened a long, long time ago, releasing immense (like mind bogglingly big) amounts of energy and setting off waves of motion throughout the cosmos. They kept radiating. The motion kept expanding. Ever wider. Ever further. Across interstellar--intergalactic--distances of cold, largely empty space. Where there was nothing but space, space itself rippled, and carried the energy from that first flash. And now... after all this time, and all that distance, the waves from that collision--met us. Us, here. On this lovely little blue planet of ours. We are now experiencing the same motion, the same waves, the same momentum, that began from one event all that time and all those impossibly large distances away. But now, it has reached us and we can see it here.  Those who have eyes to see it now (like scientists with these special detectors) can still see it happening all around us, in fact.

I want to suggest that what happened on the day of Pentecost was something like that. Here were these fearful, confused, withdrawn barely educated fishermen and their friends, all huddled together in one room, still afraid of what scary things might happen to them if they took a step outside the confines of those four walls. And then, the Spirit comes. And in an instant, light. Energy. Fire. Passion. Vision. Direction. Movement. And from that instant, these women and men were changed. The world didn't all of a sudden change. The world didn't stop being a scary, possibly dangerous place. But these disciples are changed--they are given a borrowed courage to see things wider, bigger, further out and including more and more and more... all the way to the ends of the earth. A movement began that day. It began to ripple out like circles on a pond, or really more like gravitational waves in the fabric of the universe itself.

Something changed them. Before the Spirit's outpouring, these folks were generally pretty thick-headed, fickle-faithed, and kept making the mistake of assuming Jesus was picking the right moment to raise up an army and make himself king. Before the Spirit's outpouring, these disciples had heard Jesus' teaching and maybe even seen Jesus' kind of love in action, but they weren't very good (or maybe not brave enough yet) at practicing it themselves. They keep wanting to limit it to the well-behaved, the reasonable, the folks who seemed enough "like" them... and Jesus had kept telling them, "No, always bigger... always wider... always reaching out to all people." But all the color commentary in the world wasn't going to change them. They needed to get swept along in the motion of a wave--in the power and presence of the Spirit who first brooded over the rippling waters of chaos at creation.

And from that instant, the movement has been going on. It included all the language groups visiting there in the city of Jerusalem on that day of Pentecost... but before long, it was spilling out into the surrounding area of Judea... and then beyond that to the "hostile territory" of Samaria... and then across the whole Roman Empire. And now you and I are a part of that motion, too. You and I are part of it. It is all the same wave--it has just gotten a lot bigger over time.

That's what I want to invite you to picture as the story of these two thousand years of the church's life story--it is the story of a wave rippling out in ever-widening circles. And it goes back to the original moment of explosion--the pouring out of the Spirit "on all flesh" as the old prophet imagined it. What began at Pentecost did not stop with the end of the book of Acts, or the closing of the first century. It didn't stop when Rome fell, or when the Renaissance began. It wasn't over when a young Augustinian monk nailed a list of debate topics to the local church door in the year 1517. It wasn't stopped amidst all the crises of religion and science and belief and evidence and reason in the last few centuries. It hasn't stopped, even though there are plenty of angry religious voices round all bemoaning the end of Christianity, or warning us to fight others with violence in some kind of clash of civilizations. The ripples aren't stopped by other events or other the vast coldness of human hearts. The motion continues. The movement is still happening.

And you and I are being swept up in it. We don't simply gather on Sundays to rehearse the good old days when God "used to" do things. We don't simply leave the boundaries where they were yesterday--because the motion of the Spirit is, like a gravitational wave, always outward, always wider, always including and reaching out further to embrace all. To be a Christian--well, to be a follower of Christ who is carried along by the Spirit of that same Christ, at any rate--is to be caught up in a wave that began long ago and is rippling out in a bigger and bigger circle, and to let the motion of the Spirit move the boundaries out wider and wider, moment by moment.

What will it look like today for you and me to be swept up in the motion of the same Spirit today? Where will we be sent? How will the Spirit end up surprising us with a love and a reach that is bigger than we dared to imagine?

Lord God, as your waves of mercy reach us from across all those centuries and miles, let us be caught up in your movement and join you in reaching out further and further to include all in your love.

Real Faces Gathered--May 22, 2026

Real Faces Gathered--May 22, 2026

"Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey away. When they had entered the city, they went to the room upstairs where they were staying: Peter, and John, and James, and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew and Matthew, James son of Alphaeus, and Simon the Zealot, and Judas son of James. All these were constantly devoting themselves to prayer, together with certain women, including Mary the mother of Jesus, as well as his brothers." (Acts 1:12-14)

It's like the calm before the storm... the silence of the orchestra before the conductor's first flick of the baton... the waiting between contractions in the delivery room.  The community of Jesus' followers is in this curious in-between place in these few verses which conclude the story many of us heard this past Sunday, between the ascension of Jesus into heaven and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost ten days later. They are waiting for something, but they are not quite sure what it will look like when it happens. They are holding onto Jesus' promise that somehow they'll know it when they see it, and in the mean time, they are holding on to one another.

This is one of the details it's easy to overlook. We are so quick to focus on the big moments of action with supernatural special effects--the cloud carrying Jesus up to heaven, the rush of the wind and dazzling flames over the apostles' heads, the sound of people speaking in many languages--that we might not even give a second's thought to the way Luke has rattled off a list of names and mentioned that they stayed together in prayer while they waited for The Next Big Thing.  But I think there is something really important about what's said here. In those in-between times of life, the thing that keeps us going is being together as the Christian community, as the family of Jesus.  We keep gathering with each other, and we keep allowing ourselves to be re-centered and re-focused in prayer, so that when the next moment for stepping up in action comes, we will be ready to respond.  And we find strength from being in the company of other real faces gathered and intentionally oriented to listen for God.

In other words, the first Christian community knew that it was more important to stick with each other and to stick together for each other than to each go home alone by themselves and wait in isolation for whatever Jesus meant by the "coming of the Holy Spirit." They didn't all just walk off in different directions.  They didn't say to each other, "Well, I guess our work here is done--see you in heaven, everybody!  Have a good life until then!" They stuck with each other, supporting each other, even when there wasn't a project to be done, a trip to be taken, or a goal to be achieved yet.  Those moments would come soon enough--they would go on great voyages to spread the gospel, they would collect resources to feed the hungry in the community, and they would discuss important issues together.  The whole book of Acts is full of those Big Actions, Major Projects, and Important Decisions.  But in order to be ready for the next prompting of the Spirit--"Go here..." "Talk to that person..." "Do this..." and in order to be able to recognize when the nudge they are feeling is the Spirit of God rather than their own gut impulses or personal agendas, they need to be together, listening, praying, and sharing insights with one another.  The first followers of Jesus knew that they needed to be with each other, not just for the climactic moments of history, but for the ordinary daily routines of life, which are the times that form the kind of people we are in the big decisive moments. We do the same because we are being formed still in the same way--together.

That's so important to take seriously. In a culture and a time when so many things are marketed to us as hyper-individualized experiences, the Christian life is decidedly communal. In a time when it is easy to just watch life from my own personal screen, the Christian community deliberately gathers together with one another to be shaped in Christ's likeness together.  In a time when folks are increasingly turning to AI-powered computer chatbots for a facsimile of human conversation, we find ourselves drawn, almost as if by gravity, to real faces of real people.  It is sometimes tempting to imagine that the Christian faith is just about "Me and Jesus," but Luke reminds us here that it always includes a whole family of believers with real faces, stories, and names--like Peter and James and John and Mary... and you and me.

Today may not bring obviously huge turning point moments in your life (although you never know), but it does bring the chance to be shaped more fully in the likeness of Christ, to be guided by the direction of the Spirit, and to be strengthened by the presence and witness of other disciples.  That's why we still keep gathering together--this is the family in which grow to maturity.

Lord Jesus, keep bringing us back to the gathered community of your family, among whom we see your face reflected in the faces of others.

Home At Last-May 21, 2026

Home At Last-May 21, 2026

[Jesus said to the disciples:] "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” When he had said this, as they were watching, he was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight. While he was going and they were gazing up toward heaven, suddenly two men in white robes stood by them. They said, “Men of Galilee, why do you stand looking up toward heaven? This Jesus, who has been taken up from you into heaven, will come in the same way as you saw him go into heaven.” (Acts 1:9-11)

There is a routine in my household just about every weekday morning, and I bet you have experienced something similar. It goes something like this. With lunches packed and travel mugs of coffee poured (one iced, one hot), the four members of our household head out, by school bus or by car, to school, to work, and to the church, each to our own tasks for the day, all of us knowing we'll be back in the house by the end of the day.  There are no teary-eyed goodbyes, no anxious exits, and no dramatic scenes over the morning commute (typically), because we all know we will be back home after each of us has done what is ours to do for the day. We will be apart for a while, but we will be back home soon enough. And that assurance is what enables each person in the family to do their thing for the day.  You have lived through some version of that morning send-off, too, I expect.

In a way, this scene from the first chapter of the book of Acts has a similar feel to it. Maybe you noticed that, too, if you heard this story as many of us did back on this past Sunday.  At first blush, this story seems like a farewell, and a pretty final-sounding one at first. Jesus, having been raised from the dead forty days before on Easter, is now ascending to heaven; as Jesus had told his disciples back on the night in the upper room, "Where I am going, you cannot come." Jesus vanishes from their sight enfolded in clouds, and the disciples are left staring up at the sky. Meanwhile, they have been given a mission of their own, too: they will be sent to "Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the earth" from that spot on the mountain together. Or as Matthew's telling puts it, "Go into all nations and make disciples..." In other words, everybody left that mountaintop scene pointed in different directions--Jesus, heavenward, and the rest of the disciples getting psyched up to go out to every point on the map.  Staying together on the summit was not a choice for any of them.

And yet, you don't get the sense that this is meant to be a sorrowful scene of final farewells.  Even the angelic messengers who show up frame the moment with a sort of "What are you doing still moping around here?" expression.  They don't feel the need to offer comfort in the moment, but just give the matter-of-fact reminder that Jesus will come again.  And, after all, the disciples have work to do of their own in the mean-time, anyway. In other words, this isn't a goodbye forever; this is closer to the morning routine while everyone goes about their tasks.  This isn't a parting for which there will be no reunion--this is the start of the workday, at the end of which everyone will be gathered back home at the last.  Like your family members heading out to school, to errands, or to work in the morning, all looking forward to being back under the same roof before the sun sets, Jesus and his followers are assured that they will be gathered back together in due time. They are, after all, a family, and eventually everyone in the family will find their way back home.

If we see the story this way, then there is deep hope for us every day.  We are not abandoned to fend for ourselves in a dangerous world without God. The ascension of Jesus  to heaven while the disciples are sent to be witnesses on earth is more like the morning routine in which each member of the family goes about their work in the confident hope of homecoming at the last. Each of us has a calling in this day, this life--to embody the Jesus way of life, to witness to his love and welcome, and to draw others into the disciple community as well. But we do that work in hope that at the right time, our labors will be ended, and we will find ourselves reunited with Jesus and the rest of the whole family.  We are not doomed to be Sisyphus from the Greek myth, forced to push the boulder up the hill every day, only to have it roll back down each evening and to be repeated forever, endlessly. And we are not scattered into the world alone, either, with no hope of homecoming.  We do the work to which we are called today, and for as long as it is ours to do it, but with the assurance that we will be welcomed back to the family table in time for supper. Like family members headed out of the house to school and work and their list of errands, we know there is a return trip in store that will find us back with one another when the time is right.

That changes how we face each day, doesn't it?  And it means that the story of Jesus' ascension is not an ending, but a beginning of sorts.  An adventure has begun, and you and I are a part of it.  And when the time for coming back to the house arrives, we will catch each other up on all the things we have done with our time, our energy, and our love. And we will know we are home at last.

Lord Jesus, give us hope as we face this day so that we can do the work to which you have called us, until you gather us in your presence back home.

These Dense Disciples--May 20, 2026

These Dense Disciples--May 20, 2026

So when they had come together, they asked [Jesus], “Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel?” He replied, “It is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority…” (Acts 1:6-7)

To me it is always reassuring to see that even the hand-picked followers of Jesus didn't "get it," and that he was willing not to hold that against them. 

It's not that I like to gloat in the failures of others, but rather that it says there is hope for me, someone who so often doesn't "get it" either. This is one of those moments. Here are the apostles whom Jesus is about to send out into the whole world with the news of God's Reign and of the resurrection of Jesus, and they still miss the point of what Jesus is all about. It would be enough to make me worry, if I were Jesus, whether I was making a wise move leaving the movement in the hands of these largely thick-headed followers.

What's the issue? Well, the disciples have seen Jesus throughout his whole ministry, and not once did Jesus indicate that he was about to overthrow the Romans in a violent revolt,  stage a coup against Herod, take the crown for himself, build an army for God, "take back their country for the Lord," or even impress people with his own glorious power. And beyond that, they have heard Jesus say that the way he would bring about the kingdom was through his death and resurrection, not in spite of it. But the disciples just want everyone else to see that they backed a winner—that they bet on the right horse. The disciples want Jesus to show power as they know power and kingdoms as they know kingdoms, and they are thinking that maybe now, this is their moment to "restore the kingdom to Israel." Now, they think, they'll get their rewards. Now, they'll get their heavenly prizes. Now, they'll get… and then they fill in the blank with their wildest dreams.

Or, maybe they won't get those things, after all, because Jesus just isn't interested in declaring a war of armies with Rome. And Jesus isn't interested in making himself a king like Herod or a governor like Pilate. Jesus has bigger fish to fry—but the way Jesus will go about his work will not look like it is very impressive at all. He is about to leave the work of the Kingdom in the hands of these same former fishermen and tax collectors who just don't get it for so much of the time. No, Peter, there will be no Inaugural Ball. No, James and John, there will be no fire or lightning called down from the sky to show people who's boss. No, Matthew and Andrew, we will not be marching our soldiers and parading our tanks down the streets to strike fear in the heart of our enemies. No, we will let the when and the how and the where of the Kingdom of God be left in the hands of God. God will reign over all things when all is said and done, Jesus seems to say, but it will be on God's terms, not ours. And God seems surprisingly crafty at picking the terms that we least expect—and even that most offend us.

Jesus just isn't interested in "taking his country back for God" with weapons and wealth, but instead inaugurates God's Reign in the self-giving love of a cross and empty tomb. And now, despite the fact that his followers still don't get it, he entrusts them--including us!--to embody that Reign by speaking the truth, welcoming the left out, and healing the broken. Peter and the gang have been tempted to envision a swelling army in shiny armor and flaming angel swords, and Jesus has in mind something closer to the Island of Misfit Toys. No, children, it's not up to you to tell God how or when or where to "restore the Kingdom." It is all so much intriguing, if also comically misguided, theorizing from these disciples. If they'd have been listening to Jesus at all up to this point, they might have even heard the strange-sounding news that the Kingdom was already breaking out among them like a holy rash.

And yet... it is precisely among these trigger-happy, foot-in-mouthed disciples who seem like failures for a fair amount of the time that Jesus knows the Spirit will come. He doesn't hold back their past [or present] misunderstandings against them, but chooses still to work with this dense bunch of disicples. Despite the fact that they disappoint at every turn—and in truth, so do we—Jesus does not think it's too much work for the Spirit to handle. As much as it is hard for us to be the waiting ones in life, when the word from Jesus is to be patient. But perhaps it is also true that Jesus is doing a good bit of waiting, too—that he is the one patient with these disciples, refusing to give up on them even when it seems they've not been listening much at all, and that Jesus is waiting alongside us until we are ready to receive what he has to give. The Spirit will be poured out on these dense disciples soon enough when he speaks these words that many of us heard this past Sunday, and Jesus is willing to be patient with this band so that they will be ready for the gift.

In this day, too, our hope is in the same patient, unresentful Christ, who bears with our questions that sound foolish—and often reflect the fact that we've not been paying much attention at all to Jesus. Our hope is that the same Jesus who refused to scrap his whole mission when the disciples still didn't get it (even after the resurrection and forty days' worth of "convincing proofs") is the same Lord over us. We may be stumbling through the process of discerning just what Jesus is up to among us and in us, and yet the story Luke gives us is of the risen Jesus as one who can bear with our rather slow learning curve. Jesus' vision and work will not be held back by our bumbling in the big picture, and yet Jesus is also able to wait with us, to wait alongside us, to wait for us to let our ears and eyes finally be opened to what he has been saying and showing us all along. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the rise of a political party to wield power for the truly religious people. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like the protection of one country at the expense of all others. No, children, the Kingdom will not look like me getting a cushy, luxurious life while others are left starving and ignored. No, children, the Kingdom will not even be reducible to higher attendance and offerings at my local congregation. Jesus just plain has bigger fish to fry than any of those. But even though we keep missing the point about what it is Jesus intends to do among us and through us, we get an assurance in this story that the risen Jesus bears with us in all our comically-misguided theorizing and will continue to pour out the Spirit to drench us in the power and presence of the Kingdom of God. Yes, even on a day like today.

Good Lord, you bear with us better than we can bear with ourselves. Give us not only the peace of knowing your patience with us, but also then give us open ears and eyes to recognize the Kingdom you are unleashing, the Kingdom you brought near in Jesus, the Kingdom you bring to the world even through the likes of us as we share your Word, your love, and your ways. We ask it in the name of your patient Way, Jesus.

What Jesus Prays For--May 19, 2026

What Jesus Prays For--May 19, 2026

[Jesus prayed:] "All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given me, so that they may be one, as we are one.” (John 17:10-11)

Being allowed into someone else's prayer life is a profoundly personal experience.  Even more than reading someone's favorite book, listening to their current playlist, or even sneaking a peek at their diary, when you know what someone else is praying about, you get a pretty clear glimpse of their soul. We reveal our deepest hopes, name our greatest needs, confess our most potent fears, and offer up our strongest loves in prayer. 

It's true of you and me, and it's true of Jesus, too.  That is to say, we learn something remarkable about Jesus by overhearing what he prays for, as we are getting the chance to do with these words from John 17 which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  Here in what is often called Jesus' "high priestly prayer" Jesus brings to the One he calls "Father" and "Abba" his deep concern for... us, of all people.  Jesus prays in this moment, maybe mere minutes from heading to the garden in which he will meet the lynch-mob and religious police who will arrest him and then send him to the Romans for torture and execution, and yet John our narrator here wants us to see that Jesus isn't concerned about his own comfort or safety, but rather the ongoing community of his followers... who have also become his friends.  And by the end of the whole prayer, Jesus has even included "those who will come to believe" in his concern, which means that you and I were on Jesus' mind as he stared down the shadow of the cross.

Just that reality by itself is amazing to me.  In a time when so many other Big Deals and So-and-Sos seem to care only about their own interests, saving their own skin, or managing their own fortunes, Jesus is more concerned about the likes of us. Rather than angling for a way to protect himself, duck responsibility, or burnish his own reputation, Jesus seeks our well-being before his own. That kind of love is mind-boggling.

But once we get a bit deeper, there is even more to surprise us about Jesus' prayer life. And that's because what Jesus prays for on our behalf might not align with our personal wish-lists or expectations.  You don't hear Jesus praying for "health, wealth, and prosperity" for his followers. You don't hear any talk of helping us get more power or prestige, and there's not a whiff of asking for divine assistance in "taking back their country for God" or working the levers of political power.  Jesus isn't launching an empire or seeking financial success for his disciples.  And given how many of Jesus' followers ended up giving up their lives as his witnesses, it seems that Jesus doesn't even prioritize our physical comfort and security in his prayer life, either.  Instead, Jesus prays that we, his followers would be "one" in the same manner of unity that Jesus himself and the Father are One.

Now, that's saying something.  For church nerds who know about the backstory of the ancient Creeds, that's a gobsmacking claim.  Classically, Christians have professed that Jesus, who is God the Son, is "of one Being with the Father," and in fact is "God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God."  To be as "one" as the Father and the Son is the kind of unity you have with your own thoughts and actions, or the overlap between you and your words, or you and your own image in the mirror.  Christians confess, following the lead of John the Gospel Writer, that Jesus is the very Word of God, which is to say that Jesus is God's chosen and clearest self-expression.  So the same way that the Father is one with the Son, that's what Jesus now prays for us his followers to be.  He prays for our unity, our being bound together in love, and for our fully and mutually shared life in community.

Wow.  That's what's on Jesus' heart on his last night with his disciples.  He prays for us to be held together in love, the same way God's own Being is comprised of the love between Father, Son, and Spirit. How different that is from the way we are sometimes tempted to think of ourselves--as isolated individuals, or even like customers of church who come and go as we please and take our business elsewhere if we find a product we like just a smidge better.  It is easy in our day and age to think of ourselves as individual audience members when we come to worship, and to imagine that we have no need to interact with the other people around us. After all, if we are just like moviegoers in a theater, I expect everyone else to keep to themselves so I can enjoy the latest Marvel movie or romantic comedy.  Sometimes we let ourselves believe that's what we are in church--just individual ticket-holders who share nothing in common, necessarily, with the people next to us.  But Jesus' prayer life says differently.  He prays for us to be more than random strangers who happen to gather in the same building on Sunday morning.  He prays for us to be held together even more closely than a family, held by the relentless love of God that embraces us even when we are at our worst. We cannot avoid sharing life with one another--our joys, our sorrows, our struggles, and our successes, because we are being prayed into the same kind of loving unity that holds God's own triune life together.  For us there is never the option of saying to another, "I don't have to care about you."  We belong to one another as fully and completely as God the Son and God the Father belong to each other.  

Sounds like we are in this for the long haul.

Today, how might it change our approach to interacting with each other to take Jesus' prayer life seriously, and to see our connection with each other as something Jesus thought was so important that he prayed about it more than saving his own life on the way to the cross?  How might we be changed by realizing what Jesus prays for?

Lord Jesus, let us be shaped by your own prayer, and bind us together in love with one another.

Quality and Quantity--May 18, 2026

Quality and Quantity--May 18, 2026

After Jesus had spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, "Father, the hour has come; glorify your Son so that that Son may glorify you, since you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all whom you have given him. And this is eternal life, that they may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent." (John 17:1-3)

Let's face it--as a species, we humans tend to be suckers for quantity over quality. Or at least, we tend to focus on "how much" of something we will get, rather than "how good" the something is which we are getting.

As Exhibit A, let me offer the vast abundance of all-you-can-eat buffets across our fair land, which all advertise in one way or another that they offer a "great deal" on their food, because they promise you can get a large quantity of food for relatively little money. And I will not dispute their math at all--indeed, you can get a lot of food at your average all-you-can-eat-buffet, and spend relatively less than you would at many sit-down restaurants. But whether that is a "great deal" or not, in truth, depends in the end on whether it is of greater value to have a lot of mediocre food, or a sensible amount of very, very good food. In other words, the question is whether we should be so focused on defining worth in terms of quantity (how much) rather than quality (how good) in the first place.

As Exhibit B, let me offer a brilliantly funny line from an early episode of the quirky sitcom, "The Good Place." Kristen Bell's character is talking with Ted Danson's character about how popular frozen yogurt places are in their neighborhood, even though they both admit they prefer the richer taste of good old-fashioned ice cream. And Danson's character Michael says, "There's something so human about taking something and ruining it just a little bit so that you can have more of it." There's something spot on about that, isn't there? We reach for quantity rather than quality.

Surely plenty of other examples abound, all of which would confirm the dictum of a writing teacher I recall from high school, who said, "Sometimes more isn't better; sometimes more is just more."

So here's why I wanted us to spend a moment owning our tendency to define "good" in terms of "increased quantity" rather than "higher quality." It turns out that when Jesus himself talks about the kind of life he has come to give us, it is more about a certain quality, while we have all just been taught somewhere along the way only to think of it in terms of quantity. We hear the phrase "eternal life" and tend to assume that it essentially means "more" of life--that is, life basically like what we know now, but for years and years and years and so on--when Jesus actually talks about a different (better, you could say) quality of life when it is lived in God. But we get hung up on quantity and just assume that the whole point of what we call "eternal life" is just getting an infinitely long supply of minutes to live, like we have just arrived at the Chinese buffet of existence and can have as many helpings of sweet and sour chicken with fluorescent orange sauce as we would like.

But for a moment, humor me. Let's actually look at how the text reads here in John 17. Before we bring any of our baggage or assumptions to how understand "eternal life," let's hear how Jesus describes it. (We won't even have to get bogged down in the weeds of the Greek today--suffice it to say that the word translated "eternal" here in the New Testament is the Greek word "aiōnos," which means in a woodenly literal sense, "of the age" or "of the ages," in which case we still have to figure out what "life of the ages" means to Jesus.) Here's what Jesus says: "And this is eternal life--that they may know you..." Huh. How about that. It is a kind of life, a quality of life, a set of circumstances, that Jesus has in mind. And it is profoundly relational. You know--like belonging in a family.

Honestly, if Jesus had wanted to stress that this thing called "eternal life" was a quantity thing more than a quality thing, you would have expected him to say something like, "And this is eternal life--living, for a long, long time..." or "And this is eternal life: an infinite number of years of the same ol', same ol'..." For that matter, if Jesus' primary concern were streets of gold or gates of pearl, or getting to go fishing up at your favorite fishing spot, or free sports cars and fancy mansions, this would have been a place to mention any of those. Jesus doesn't describe the life that is eternal in terms of stuff, or time, or the endless shrimp cocktails on the lido deck. It is about the kind of life lived knowing the One who is Love, the One by whom we are already fully known. The life we call "eternal" is about relationship, and the way that relationship changes everything else. This is the life that Jesus gives us.

When John the gospel writer gives us Jesus' words saying, "This is eternal life--that they may know you, the one true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent," it isn't simply "knowing" in the sense of facial recognition or name recall. Knowing someone isn't really just about putting a face with a name, but about the other sharing some of their own self with you, and inviting you to share your own self back. To "know" another person is to let your soul touch theirs. That's probably why, after all, a favorite biblical euphemism for procreation is "to know" someone, as in "Adam knew his wife Eve, and she conceived a son..." He didn't just recognize her face.

The life that is eternal is, at least as the Gospels themselves describe it, first and foremost a particular kind of life--a quality, you could say. Sure, part of that quality is that is no longer confined by the grip of death. But it's not just an infinite loop of more, more, more, like an all-you-can-eat-buffet of Being. It's about a life worth living--a quality that takes shape by knowing the One who knows us. What we call "eternal life," then, is really a life "lived within God," so to speak--a life where my being touches right up against God's, so that I come to see everything through the light of God's own presence, like a lens. And to see everything in light of God is to see everything around me as a gift of grace, every person around me as bearing the face of Christ, every moment I live as a precious treasure I did not earn, and each day as an opportunity to share in God's kind of self-giving love. To "know God" means, too, that I come to realize that I am known by God already... and beloved all the while. It is not that God is still forming an opinion of me, waiting to see how I turn out, or whether I'll do enough good in my life to win a spot in the club, but rather knowing that God sees me precisely as I am and says, "You are mine." That frees me from all the stupid game playing we do in this life trying to impress others, to find some other connections that will make us feel acceptable, or to puff ourselves up. Knowing God frees me to see that I am beloved... and so is the person next to me, whether I like them myself or not. Knowing God means knowing that God loves both me and my enemy, the people I like as well as the people I can't stand, and that changes how I use this life, with every breath I get.

Funny how we get all excited about what a great deal it is to pay $5.99 for repeat trips to a buffet that we will end up regretting after we eat, but we overlook the sheer goodness of a home-cooked meal made by someone who loves you enough to know what you like and don't like on your plate, and who gives it to you for free. That's us, though--suckers for quantity over quality.

Perhaps, just for a change, we might skip the buffet and listen to Jesus on this one today, and embrace the life that is eternal in quality--the life lived knowing God in Christ.

Lord Jesus, you give us life--not just in minutes, years, and decades, but in beauty, justice, grace, and truth. Grant us to live in this "eternal" life you make possible, right here and right now.

A World Put Right--May 15, 2026

A World Put Right--May 15, 2026

[Paul said to the crowd in Athens:] "...While God has overlooked the times of human ignorance, now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will have the world judged in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed, and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.” (Acts 17:30-31)

The Christian faith hangs on the resurrection, but maybe not only in the ways we are used to. As Paul tells it, the resurrection of Jesus is the "assurance" that grounds our faith's story. In other words, Paul would say to us, the reason there is a Christian faith at all is that Jesus is alive again. Without Jesus being raised from the dead, we might as well all go home or pick from one of the other choices in the buffet of religions out there.

Okay, so far, so good. Jesus' resurrection is the lynchpin of our faith, the keystone that holds everything else in place--that sounds pretty much like standard Christian theology. But just what is it that Jesus' resurrection assures us of? Paul talks about the resurrection as though it is a guarantee of something wider and bigger, but what is that "something"? We might expect it to be something like this: "Jesus was raised from the dead, and therefore I know that I will go to heaven when I die." That is quite often how we use the resurrection. And that's not incorrect; elsewhere the New Testament does make that kind of move--that Jesus' resurrection is a confirmation that we, too, will be raised to new and unending life beyond the grip of death. But what's interesting to me is that this is not the move Paul makes here. He sees the resurrection of Jesus as an assurance of something more, something bigger than just a "me-and-Jesus" thing or a "I-get-to-go-to-heaven-when-I-die" thing. Paul talks about the resurrection as the assurance that God will put the world right again. The world is to be governed in righteousness, which in Greek is the same word as justice; and in fact, it will be governed by the same one who was raised from the dead. It will be governed by the risen and living Jesus, who teaches us what righteousness--that is, justice--really looks like.

And Jesus gives us some surprising pictures in his life and ministry and teachings of what "righteousness"/"justice" is: it looks like laborers who get paid all the same amount ("what is right," according to the parable in Matthew 20); it look like a blessing on the poor in spirit, the grieving, the meek, and the peacemakers; it looks like food for the hungry, clothing for the naked, and compassion and visitation for the sick and imprisoned (in the parable about "the least of these" in Matthew 25, note that the ones who do these things are judged to be "righteous"); and Jesus even says that it looks more like the tax collectors and prostitutes who turned their allegiance to Jesus when they heard him rather than the professional holy people of the day. Jesus, in other words, gives us a picture of "righteousness" throughout his life, and this seems to be a vision of the way he will govern and judge the world at that appointed day. And Paul says to us, you know it's true because Jesus is alive again. This is all part of what the resurrection means. It is not just a stamp on my ticket to heaven for those lucky or smart enough to get in while the getting was good. The resurrection confirms that Jesus' understanding of what it means to be "righteous" or to do "justice" is in fact God's understanding of righteousness and justice. The resurrection is a sign that Rome's rule is not permanent, and that the powers of the day will not last, no matter how much they bluster. The resurrection confirms Jesus' agenda as well as his authority.

That is a much bigger picture than we might be used to. We are used to pulling out the resurrection of Jesus and dusting it off once a year on Easter Sunday, or at All Saints' Day, or at a funeral. We are used to saying that the resurrection of Jesus is my personal proof that there is life after death. And while it means at least that much, Paul calls us to see so much more that is a part of God's vision. God's raising of Jesus is also our assurance that God will not let the world remain broken. The resurrection is our keystone for a whole new way of life that no longer has to live as though death is the biggest thing in town. The resurrection is the key for us no longer letting scarcity and fear dictate my life--so I no longer need to hoard for myself at the expense of my neighbor, and so I no longer need to seek to kill my enemy (before he kills me!) out of crippling fear. If the power of death really has been broken, then we do not have to live as though it is still the cock of the walk here and now, either. The resurrection of Jesus grounds not only our hope of heaven, but our way on earth, too, as God's strange people.

I wonder how that would change the ways we invite people to know about Jesus. We might not try and sell our religion to people as a ticket to heaven as much as we might speak his call to a new allegiance and a new movement in life. We might not just say, "Believe in Jesus now, and you'll get all kinds of neat bonuses after death," but instead, "Be a part of Jesus' community now, and you'll get a taste of what his rule over all creation will be like when he rules the world in his own merciful kind of justice." or "Being a disciple of Jesus lets us recognize that he has the authority to mean it when he tells us our sins are forgiven." The resurrection is our assurance as Christians--but it turns out to assure a much bigger web of things than we might have first recognized. Because of the resurrection, we have hope for a world put right. 

Christ is risen--he is risen indeed.

Risen and Living Lord, just when we think we have you figured out and understand what your life means for us, you open up our vision to see more than we had bargained for. Your life and your way, though, are always more than we had bargained for, since they are such precious and free gifts. So open up our vision again, as wide as you dare to, and then open our mouths to share the Good News of your reign with all today.