The Real Stain-Fighter--November 4, 2026

The Real Stain-Fighter--November 4, 2026

"Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, 'Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?'  I said to him, 'Sir, you are the one who knows.' Then he said to me, 'These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb'." (Revelation 7:13-14)

This is a detail worth mentioning: the central defining feature of all those innumerable people gathered around the throne of God, for all their differences, is that Jesus' blood has cleansed their robes.  That is to say, the sole qualification for belonging mentioned here in this scene from the book of Revelation (which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday) is what Jesus has done for us, rather than what we have done for Jesus.  In the end, the reason we can stand in the presence of God in the new creation is that Jesus has laid down his life for us, rather than our accomplishments, permanent records, or public performances of piety.

Now, on the one hand, especially for Lutheran Christians, this might seem perfectly obvious.  After all, we belong to a tradition that is centered on the affirmation that we are "justified by grace through faith, apart from the works of the law." And we didn't make that up ourselves: we learned it from the apostle Paul, who makes that idea a core conviction of faith.  And once you see it in Paul's letters, you can recognize the same truth running throughout the story of the Scriptures: our standing before God is NOT a matter of our achievements, but is a gift made possible through the cross and resurrection of Jesus.  God repeatedly saves and claims people, and only then are they called to live a new way in response--not as a precondition for earning divine approval.  God rescues and delivers people in the midst of their messiness, not only after they have racked up enough good deeds to outweigh their bad ones.  God sets free and restores us as we are, not contingent upon our moral progress, but simply on the basis of God's goodness that makes it possible for us to trust God's promise. Once you know that tune, you start to recognize how often the biblical writers are singing it.

The one wrinkle for many of us, however, seems to be the end of the story and the last verse of the song.  "Wait!  In the end, aren't we judged on the basis of our actions?"  "What about my list of vices and virtues?"  "Isn't God going to do a worthiness check at the door to make sure that only the truly holy and righteous get into heaven?"  We have somehow told ourselves that all of this "justified by grace through faith" is a lovely thing to hold onto in this life, but surely at the end of the story, it will still come down to "Who has been a good boy or girl, and who has not?"  We have been led to believe that in the last act of the play, the One introduced to us as "gracious and merciful, abounding in steadfast love," will turn out to have been a miserly bean-counter after all, posting angelic bouncers to keep out the riff-raff and the ones with soiled garments.  All the tired jokes and cartoons depicting the long line at the pearly gates as a white-bearded Saint Peter checks the heavenly account books have given us the impression that at the last, The Rules must change, and God will suddenly demand we audition for a spot or present our papers at the entrance to heaven.  But for all those pop-religion assumptions, that's not what we actually hear from the book of Revelation here, is it?

Rather, when the visionary John of Patmos describes the crowd from every nation, tribe, language, and people there in the heavenly throne room, he doesn't mention anything THEY did to make themselves presentable.  There's no secret formula of "Good-deeds-and-spritz-of-club-soda" to get out the stains of sin.  There's no discussion of these countless throngs having "prayed the sinner's prayer," or "gone to church regularly," or "helped enough elderly neighbors across busy intersections." The thing that defines this group is not what they have done, but what Jesus, the Lamb, has done for them.  The Lamb has shed his blood--that is, Jesus has gone to the cross and given his life--and these people's robes have been made clean on the basis of Jesus' blood. He's the reason they belong.  He's the reason their clothes are clean--Jesus is the real stain-fighter, so to speak.  He is the reason they all find themselves in the presence of God.  It's all been a gift.

From beginning to end, this is the hope on which the Christian faith really hangs: our standing before God isn't something we have achieved, but rather something we have been given.  It is something you discover has been put in your hands already, not something you have to go out and get.  And there will be no last-second bait-and-switch or changing of the rules, as Revelation tells it.  We depend on grace every day of our lives now, and we will still rely on grace in the new creation, too. We, along with everybody else who will be there in the new creation from every language, culture, and nation, will find ourselves found by grace--because of what God has done for us in Christ, rather than what we do for God as payment.

That's news worth staking our lives on, even right now.

Lord Jesus, grant us to trust in your goodness all our days, and into all of our tomorrows.

A More Expansive Hope--November 3, 2026

A More Expansive Hope--November 3, 2026

"After this I looked, and there was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages, standing before the throne of God and before the Lamb, robed in white, with palm branches in their hands. They cried out in a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation belongs to our God who is seated on the throne, and to the Lamb!' And all the angels stood around the throne and around the elders and the four living creatures, and they fell on their faces before the throne and worshiped God, singing, 'Amen! Blessing and glory and wisdom and thanksgiving and honor and power and might be to our God forever and ever! Amen." (Revelation 7:9-12)

Sometimes I really need a word of hope.

And sometimes the need is even more fundamental--sometimes I need a word to remind me what hope even looks like.

On days like that, visions from the old dreamers like John of Patmos here in what we call the Book of Revelation come to me, and they remind me not just to hope, but how to hope again.

And here today, in words many of us heard just this past Sunday for All Saints Day, I am reminded of the expansiveness of hope once again--how vast, how deep, how full, and how beautifully compelling God's promised future is for us. On the days when we are fumbling with even how to hope, amid all the fearful voices, all the simmering tension, all the worst-case scenarios chattering in the back of our awareness, and all the anxiety we feel about our immediate present and future, God speaks again the ancient-but-ever-new vision: we will be gathered with people from every language, culture, nation, and category into the very presence of God, breaking into song over the joy of it all.

I need to remind myself of that expansive hope, because I am tempted--and I suspect we all are--to settle for too small a hope, on too short a time frame. But the dreamer of Revelation keeps telling us here, "Don't settle for too small a vision--don't accept too meager a hope. At the end of this story, God throws a party, and everybody's there. The old boundaries and borderlines can't and won't keep anybody out. Remember that."

That's especially important on a day like today, the Election Day that comes as the climax of a fiercely-contested (and often bitter) season of voting, campaigning, and rallying. We are tempted, first off, to settle for too small a hope--just of your side or my side "winning." And I get that--everyone wants their candidate to win, and everyone thinks their own viewpoint is the "correct" one, so of course we want things to go our own way. But please, let's be honest--the winner of this year's election will not be the one to bring about the vision John offers us of all creation made whole, and all peoples gathered in the love and worship of God. And, to be more painfully honest, even after the last ballots have been cast, counted, and certified and a winner is known in every last race across the country, there are still a lot of relationships that have been put through the wringer. The crude and cruel things that have been hurled over these days have still damaged friendships. The ways we have allowed the worst to be brought out of us--that will leave marks on one another. And the folks who have lost respect for neighbors, friends, or family members over the ways we have behaved, or the behaviors we have condoned, will still be hurting, even after confetti is released, balloons are dropped, and this election is done. At some point, those things will have come and gone, and we'll still have to decide how we live with one another--how we comfort those who will feel upset and scared, how we will mend relationships with people we need to apologize to or forgive, and how we will be decent and good to people we still will disagree strongly with on a whole host of issues, topics, and problems. 

We will have to ask again how to love not just "people who are like me" or "people who agree with me" but also "people who oppose what I believe" and "people who have been rotten toward me," and we'll have to do it knowing that these aren't merely hypothetical people or faceless crowds from far away, but right down the street, right in the next pew, and right there on your social media feed. Pinning all our hopes on "getting my side to win" is too small a hope--and quite frankly, it is the wrong shape of hope, too.

The book of Revelation teaches us how to hope again--and what is worth hoping for. The vision we are given here is of a new creation in which all the old allegiances that had kept us separated are pruned away, so that we can be part of the great multitude so numerous that they cannot be counted. The hope, in other words, is not that just "Me and My Side" will be there, but in fact, folks from all groups, all sides, all languages, all nations, and all cultures and tribes and peoples will be there. That has to include folks who have been enemies before. That has to include folks who don't agree on the proper rate for the capital gains tax. That has to include people who said terrible things to and about each other on Facebook. That has to include people who vote like you... and people who voted for the other guy. And the hope we are given in the Scriptures is not that those decisions or differences were unimportant in the end, but that at the last, everything in me that resists God's way of goodness, justice, and mercy will be transformed. At the last, we will no longer be threatened by one another, or by our differences and diversity. At the last, we will let go of our pet agendas and platforms and the idols and demagogues we have projected them onto, and we will see that at the center of everything is a Lamb who was slain that we might live. The national flags will all fall. The shouts and chants and angry yelling will be silenced. And there will instead be a song that rises up, centered on the God who is love.

If all we can focus on today is, "I hope my party wins this election," or "I can't wait to be done with all the ads and yard signs," or "I'm sure we'll all be fine and get along as soon as the polls close on Tuesday," we are setting our sights on too small a hope and too short-term a future.

But if we live today in light of that ever-more expansive hope--the one that is Lamb-shaped, cross-and-empty-tomb-shaped, and in fact, shaped like a crowd from every corner of the world--it will enable us to make it through difficult days, lingering tensions, and bruised relationships. There will be much still to be done after the dust settles and the smoke clears, when the last of the last ballots is marked down. But we can be a part of that work, knowing that God's promise is to lead us all toward a new creation where our old pet hatreds are hammered straight, our old bitterness is transformed, and our old wounds are healed and scarred over enough for us to reconcile with the crowd of everybody else who is there at God's party.

Don't settle for too small a hope. Not today. Not ever.

Lord Jesus, give us your expansive vision of new creation today, so that we can love through difficult days.

Particular Blessings--November 2, 2026

Particular Blessings--November 2, 2026

"When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain; and after he sat down, his disciples came to him. Then he began to speak, and taught them, saying: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you." (Matthew 5:1-12)

I have a hunch that Jesus did not waste words. And beyond that, I think it safe to say that Jesus, as we meet him in the Gospels, was one to choose his words carefully.

You don't get stories where he blurts out one answer, then hears from his disciples that his latest parable didn't score well with the focus group, and then has to backtrack and "clarify" what he "meant all along," the way we are all used to with politicians. And you don't get any sense at all that Jesus would just ramble off-the-cuff on a given subject, until a random word salad eventually produced something insightful, like the old line about a room full of monkeys eventually typing Shakespeare. We are pretty familiar with that from politicians, too, these days. Even when someone is upset, or surprised, or put off by something Jesus says, he doesn't bring in consultants to re-brand his message--he is willing to be unpopular.

So if my hunch is correct, and Jesus chose his words deliberately, then let me pose a question: why would Jesus go to the trouble of listing off all these different groups of "the blessed" at the start of what we call the Sermon on the Mount?

That is to say, why doesn't Jesus just get up and say, "All lives are blessed," and be done with his sermon?

The follow-up questions are obvious--they practically ask themselves. Doesn't Jesus think that everybody is blessed? Doesn't Jesus think that all people are important to God? Was Jesus just riffing on a theme of "blessing" and rambling off the top of his head--should we excuse him for focusing on certain people or categories of people as "blessed" because he was just speaking impromptu?

Or maybe... just maybe... are we willing to grant that Jesus chooses his words deliberately, and that he could have but chose not to make a broad sweeping generality about "all lives being blessed"? Because if we are going to say that we "take the Bible seriously," then I don't think we have the option of writing Jesus off or ignoring both what he says and how he says it. We are going to have to face the reality that Jesus deliberately chose to highlight God's blessing on "the poor/poor in spirit," the "persecuted," the "grieving," the "peacemakers," and such, and that Jesus could have, but chose not to say, something generic.

So, why? Why would Jesus specially call out attention to, say, "those who mourn"? Is Jesus saying that happy people are not blessed? Why would Jesus call attention to "those who hunger and thirst for righteousness/justice"? Is Jesus saying that those who have not been denied justice are not blessed? We could go on through the whole list we usually call the Beatitudes and ask the same question: by saying "Blessed are the... _________," isn't Jesus implying that some people are not blessed?

NO. Just no. This is one of those places where we can find ourselves getting all worked up where Jesus doesn't intend it. And maybe it's also one of those places where we want to slant, or distort Jesus' words to keep him from making us uncomfortable where we need to be made uncomfortable.

The long and the short of it is, NO, Jesus was not saying that only the poor in spirit are blessed, or that only the grieving are blessed. Just because he says, "blessed are you when people persecute you for my sake," it doesn't mean that all of us faithful disciples who are not being fed to the lions are not blessed, just because we don't live in the days of Nero. No, but the people who are being persecuted are the ones who most need to know that they are blessed nevertheless. And maybe we who are not being persecuted need to be reminded that those who do suffer for their faith and for doing the right thing are still blessed of God, and we cannot write them off. We who are comfortable cannot just forget those who are suffering, simply because we aren't affected by their suffering. Jesus announces blessing on them, and on others like them, so that we will not forget that God's blessing is given to those who are persecuted and suffer.

Both Matthew and Luke give us some version of these statements of blessing, and we don't get the sense from either of them that people walked away from hearing the Beatitudes saying, "I'm offended--why doesn't Jesus just say that All Lives are Blessed?" They knew instantly that blessing on those who mourn did not rule out blessing for anybody who is not grieving, rather that those who mourn are particularly in need of the blessing of comfort. Everybody who heard Jesus speak knew he had a universal view of human beings--that everybody matters to Jesus. But within that, there are folks who particularly need to hear that God cares for them, and there are folks WE need to remember are not disposable or ignorable. Jesus announces blessing on the poor in spirit, the brokenhearted, and the like, as a gift of grace--and when he tells the particular truth that these folks are blessed of God, it is not meant as a dig or belittling of anybody else. But rather, these are people who need to know that they are blessed, because there will be plenty of challenges to make them question it.

One of the things about grace is that God is smart enough and honest enough to know who most needs it. And the person who has just been beaten up for standing up for someone else needs to know that they are blessed, and needs to hear it, probably moreso than the person who sat on their couch comfortably watching the game and eating chips in the comfort of air conditioning. Both people--the one who got beaten up and the one who ate chips on the couch all day--may well be blessed of God... but the one who has been beaten up needs to hear that more than someone who wouldn't even notice the sound of a blessing over the background noise of the TV.

Maybe we would do well to follow Jesus' example, to listen closely to his words in the Gospels, and to consider who are the people in your world and my world who most need to hear the gracious word that they are blessed. God reserves the right to bless everybody, sure, but who are the people who have been so forgotten about that they need the reminder that they, too, are blessed? Let's look in this day for people who are already beloved of God, but to whom God might be sending you right now, to bring a concrete reminder of God's love from the beginning.

Lord Jesus, who calls us all blessed, help us to see those we have left in the margins, so that we can be your agents of blessing for all who need it.

Nothing to Brag About--October 30, 2026

Nothing to Brag About--October 30, 2026

"Then what becomes of boasting? It is excluded. Through what kind of law? That of works? No, rather through the law of faith. For we hold that a person is justified by faith apart from works prescribed by the law." (Romans 3:27-28)

If you asked the apostle Paul how to spot a Christ-follower out in a public place full of strangers, he might have told you, "Listen to the people talking--the followers of Jesus will have nothing to brag about.  They don't need to boast anymore."

Yes, I know, he might also have pointed to Christians confessing Jesus as Lord, or refusing to give their allegiance to Caesar and his empire, or the practice of self-giving love, or generous giving to those who are hungry.  Any of those are also fair hallmarks for Christian discipleship.  But I think somewhere on Paul's list of descriptors for Jesus' followers would be a freedom from boasting, because we are honest enough to know that our standing before God isn't something we have accomplished, but something we have been given by grace.  We don't have to keep tooting our own horns about our achievements, and we don't have to push other people down to make ourselves look better by comparison.  We don't need to make a public show of our piety or shouting about our own greatness, because we don't have to impress anybody.  Not God, not our neighbors, and not even the face in the mirror... because we know we have been put in a right relationship with God simply by taking God's word for it, which is to say, by faith.

Think about how utterly freeing that realization is! Think of all the time, energy, worry, stress, and money we typically spend trying to make ourselves look better, seem more important, or convey importance in our lives. Think of how much stress and tension is added to our lives worrying about how we compare to other people because we have some deep-rooted insecurity that if they are doing "better" than we are by some measure, we won't be acceptable. And think of how all of those dynamics are poisoning our ability to enjoy each day of life, all because we believe the voices who tell us we have to puff ourselves up and brag about our achievements in order to be seen as "good enough" in the world.

This is one of those places where having bad theology really does make an impact on our daily lives for the worse.  If I'm convinced that I have to earn my place on God's list, it will filter into every part of my life--I'll be constantly worried whether I've done enough or gotten proper credit, and I'll be obsessed with making sure I'm adequately recognized.  Chances are, then, I'll be bragging left and right (so that everyone knows why I'm so virtuous) and it will be harder for me to listen to anybody else around me, because I'll need all the air-time available for selling myself.  And if I've told myself I have to keep up only good press about myself, it will be very hard for me to be honest and brave enough to see my weak spots, admit my mistakes, or see my need for improvement.  And all the while I'll be missing out on real connection with other people because there will always be an added boundary between us of mentally comparing myself to them to see who's "winning." That sounds like a miserable way of life.

What Paul offers us, then, is not just assurance of life after death because we have been justified by grace rather than our achievements or rule-following. He also offers us a more joyful life here and now, free from the unnecessary baggage of comparing ourselves to others or living up to some imaginary quota.

When I consider all that, I want to be that kind of person. I want to be the kind of person that a stranger might well identify as a Christ-follower because they notice I don't have a need to brag, I don't have a fear of hearing where I can improve, and I am done playing the game of needing to be better than somebody else. What could it look like for each of us today face the world as people who are free, exactly because we have nothing to brag about?

Lord Jesus, ground us in your free gift of grace so we no longer have to waste any time boasting about ourselves.

We Are Children--October 29, 2026

We Are Children--October 29, 2026

"For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to demonstrate at the present time his own righteousness, so that he is righteous and he justifies the one who has the faith of Jesus." (Romans 3:22b-26)

Every day, in countless households around the world, children wake up hungry, and parents set a breakfast in front of them, or pack a school lunch for them, or both.  And every day, none of those children are presented with a bill from Mom and Dad for their meals.

Every day, in countless families wherever you might roam, children find they have clothes they can wear for the day, which have been first bought (or made) and also washed and dried (and maybe even folded) by the adults in the house who make sure they are clothed appropriately for whatever the day's weather will be. Is there a charge for these services presented to the children? No, dear reader, there is not.

Why is it, in a culture like ours, where goods and services are typically exchanged only where there is a monetary transaction, that all of this food and clothing and cooking and washing and folding is being doled out without a price, and without earning?  Well, it just seems obvious, doesn't it?  Families do not operate on an economy of buying and selling--they are operated according to grace.  You get food as a child, not because you have the ability to pay for it, but simply because you are a child in the family.  You get clothing, not because you bought it yourself, but because people who love you have provided it for you.  And all you can do is trust the promise of the adults in the house who show (and hopefully also say) to you that they love you... and that you belong.  All that you need is provided to you, free of charge--which is to say, as a gift.

Now, for any of us who grew up in such a household or who have lived as a parent in such a household, all of this is quite obvious and doesn't need explaining. A family isn't a business, and the kitchen table is not a restaurant. You receive what you need simply because you belong in the family--because you are claimed as a child who belongs here--and there is no assumption or expectation that you will ever pay your parents back (or even be able to do so).

Similarly, it is obvious that the reason the parents in this sort of household are willing to keep providing for their children is love.  They aren't calculating and conniving about how they'll make a profit one day when the kids grow up and pay them back.  They don't think about some sort of transactional advantage that will mean a nice return on their investment.  They just know, "You are my children, and therefore we will care for you as a gift." Whatever costs there are to be paid--the grocery bill, the costs of the clothes, the time and energy in the cooking, cleaning, and laundering, and all the rest--are a part of what it looks like to love the children.  Costs are paid, but not by little ones. The adults give up their own otherwise disposable income, time, sweat, and attention, because that is the nature of love.

So far, none of this should sound odd at all--like I say, this is the seemingly natural order of things in many of the houses on your street and in your town and around the world. The ruckus is when we dare to suggest that this is also how God runs the universe. The scandalous claim of the Gospel, as Paul gives it to us here in these words many of us heard this past Sunday, is that God's economy for all of us is built around the giving of gifts and not the selling of products. Since we can neither earn nor buy our way into a right relationship with God, God just gives it to us for free--as Paul says, "as a gift." That's because our relationship with God is not one between a Divine Vendor and us as mortal customers, but rather between a parent and children. The relationship is unconditional from God's vantage point, the same way parents will provide for their kids all they need to be functioning members of the family as free gifts.

Now, of course, in human families, eventually children grow up. And along the way, they take on new responsibilities (ideally) or they learn the consequences of not being responsible (like if the "dog eats their homework" or they leave dirty clothes piled up on their floor).  And to be sure, there often does come a point in human families where the tables turn and the roles reverse, and the grown children take on caregiving for aging parents.  Yes, all of that is true.  But it was never why the parents did the giving in the first place.  Moms and dads don't conspire at night in their bedrooms thinking about how much they will make their kids pay them back for all the years of food, transportation, clothing, and worry spent on them.  So while the comparison between God and human parents has limits, the point Paul is making is clear: what we cannot earn anyway has been given to us as a gift by God.  And God ends up absorbing the costs for loving us, like moms and dads pay the costs for stocking the pantry and running the washer and dryer.  In our relationship with God, of course, we're not talking about sliding a debit card through the reader at the Kroger or Aldi checkout line; we are talking about the cross.  God has taken on the costs of loving us, the costs of bearing with our sin, and the costs of our breaking relationship, and absorbed all that loss into God's own being through Christ. But for us, it has all been a gift--that's just how things word in a family. And of course that's the promise: we have been incorporated into the found family of God, which has embraced us in all of our messiness and all of our need, and gives to us grace upon grace as sons and daughters in the house.

In a sense, all of that is easy enough to understand, but it might well take a lifetime for it to sink in and for us to realize it is really true.  Today, that's our work: to let this good news seep down into our bones and to let it shape our perspective and change our responses to the world, knowing that we have been given as a gift what we could never earn or buy... because we are not employees or customers of God.  We are children, and we are beloved.

Lord Jesus, help us today to believe what you have done for us, and to live our lives in trust of your goodness.

The Ring, Not the Gavel--October 28, 2026

The Ring, Not the Gavel--October 28, 2026

"But now, apart from the law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed and is attested by the Law and the Prophets, the righteousness of God through the faith of Jesus Christ for all who believe." (Romans 3:21-22a)

What if God's kind of "justice" sounds less like the banging of a judge's gavel that directs the bailiff to throw you in jail, and more like someone's wedding vow promising you, "All that I have is yours, and you are mine..."?

I'm tossing this question out because I think that's actually what the apostle Paul is trying to say to us in these verses from his letter to the Romans, which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday as a part of Reformation celebrations.  The thrust of Paul's argument here is that we have all grossly misunderstood what terms like "righteousness" and "justice" mean, and then we've projected them onto heaven to make God seem like a trigger-happy tyrant in the sky looking for reasons to zap us, when God is really more like the love of your life promising faithfulness to you forever.  If that sounds unbecoming and unfitting for a respectable deity, maybe we need to revise our picture of God.  Maybe, in fact, we have unwittingly switched out the Scriptures' portrait of the living God with a carbon copy of the lightning-bolt-wielding Zeus or some other vengeful divine notion.

And maybe the problem for us begins with the words.  In our ears, "righteousness" so often smacks of cold, antiseptic, tedious rule-following, like a line judge on a tennis court making judgments about what is in or out of bounds, or an health inspector with a white glove checking for unseen dirty and unswept cobwebs in our souls.  The word Paul uses here is the same word you would use in ancient Greek for "justice," too, which equally conjures up its own set of images--largely courtroom scenes where the guilty are sent away to their punishments and where verdicts are declared based on cold hard facts.  What did all those years of Law and Order episodes ingrain in us, but that justice has to do either with the police who catch criminals or the prosecutors who put them on trial?  Could it be that Paul has something different in mind?

Spoiler alert: yes.  Yes, Paul's whole point here is that if we have gotten hung up on picturing God as some emotionless cosmic judge smiting sinners or writing up citations for spiritual health-code violations, we have been missing the point.  After pointing out (as we looked at in yesterday's devotion) that none of us can rack up a perfect score or avoid any bad marks on our permanent record, not even the religious "insiders" who had access to the Law of Moses for centuries, today Paul says that "apart from the law," God's kind of justice has been seen through Christ.  And ultimately God's kind of justice (or "righteousness"--same word in Greek, remember) isn't about zapping sinners for their sins or spiritual bean-counting at all.  It's about Christ giving us his own "righteousness" for ourselves.  It's about Jesus saying, "You can count all my goodness as yours, because I'm giving it to you." It's about the living God promising--as in a marriage vow--"All I have is yours, and you are mine."  God's justice is less about meting out punishments and more about mending our broken relationship with God.

As it turns out, this is precisely the insight that our older brother in the faith Martin Luther picked up and ran with in the 16th century after some intensive reading of Paul's letters (especially Romans, in fact).  Luther rediscovered that when Paul talks about the "righteousness/justice of God," he doesn't have in mind a divine umpire calling balls and strikes or a celestial judge condemning sinners to hell, but a young couple pledging their lives to each other in marriage and saying, in effect, "All that is mine is yours and all that is yours is mine."  Righteousness is about God in Christ giving to us all of Christ's own goodness, much like you receive all of your spouse's belongings into your household when you get married, and your spouse receives all of yours.  As we talk about marriage taking two flesh and making them one, we are united to Christ, so all that is his becomes ours and we become his.  That's how God mends and restores the relationships we have broken from our side in sin--not by throwing lightning bolts but by making promises, not by banging a gavel but by giving us a ring, so to speak.

If we've had the wrong picture in our minds all along, today is a day to get the right one put in its place. Today is the day to hear all the Bible's talk of "the righteousness of God" not as something to make us afraid, but as something to give us hope.  All we can do is trust that what God promises, God will do. 

The knee is bent. The ring is out.  The vow is made.  You are beloved.

Lord Jesus, thank you for giving us all that you have and all that you are, and for taking all that is ours into yourself.  Make us righteous and just as you are righteous and just, by indwelling us with your own presence.

Un-Weaponizing the Bible--October 27, 2026

Un-Weaponizing the Bible--October 27, 2026

"Now we know that, whatever the law says, it speaks to those who are under the law, so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world may be held accountable to God. For no human will be justified before him by deeds prescribed by the law, for through the law comes the knowledge of sin." (Romans 3:19-20)

Sometimes, somebody's got to remind the Respectable Religious people that the Bible isn't meant to be used as a weapon against other people, but as a guide and a corrective for ourselves. Enter Paul the Apostle: he takes it as one of his personal missions to remind the self-righteous not to beat other people with God's law, but to let it speak to them and hold themselves accountable.

That's really what's going on here at the start of this passage from Paul's letter to the Romans, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship (if you were celebrating Reformation Sunday).  Paul has the challenge of writing to a congregation made up of both devoutly Jewish Christians, who grew up rigorously observing the Torah's commandments, and also new Christians who came from Gentile backgrounds that wouldn't have known about, heard of, or kept the rules of the Mosaic Law.  And Paul is convinced that both of these groups have been brought into right relationship with God, not by their public performance of piety, but by trusting in the free gift given through Christ.

Now, to the non-Jewish members of the church, this was a pretty obvious claim.  They had all come from all sorts of different faiths--from worshiping the Greek and Roman gods whose temples were on every street corner, to the traditional gods of their own ancestral peoples and tribes, to the Empire's demand that its subjects worship Caesar and the personified deity version of Rome itself, a goddess they called "Roma." These Gentiles knew that they had been welcomed into the community of Jesus as former outsiders.  They knew that they had been received without having kept the Torah's commandments, or observed a sabbath day, or circumcised their sons, or eaten according to the fastidious roles of the kosher laws.  If you had come to believe in Jesus after having been a pagan idol worshiper or dutiful Caesar-devotee, you were under no illusions that your rule-following had earned you your spot at the table.

But on the other hand, those who had come from the rigorous observance of the Torah--those who had been steeped in the stories, covenants, and practices of ancient Israel--might have been tempted to tell themselves that their religious performance made them "better" than all those newcomers.  You might have convinced yourself that the reason you belonged in the people of God was that you had been a good commandment-keeping, Torah-observing, kosher-eating, idol-rejecting rule follower, and therefore that all these outsiders who had just recently shown up at your church were not really acceptable.  You might even point to the Law and say, "This is why you Gentile outsiders aren't worthy--you don't keep this Law. Therefore you are not eligible to belong to the people of God who follow Jesus!"

And it is precisely this group of people--who have told themselves that they are respectably religious and therefore truly righteous--that Paul has in mind in these verses.  He can tell that the church folks who see themselves as "long-standing members" and "who know how things are done around here" because of their Judean background are just itching to use "The Law" as a weapon with which to attack the new faces from Gentile backgrounds. He can tell they want to look down on these outsiders and disqualify them because they have never kept the rules before.  So Paul just up and says, "NONE of you have earned your way in by your rule-following, and ALL of us are completely dependent on God's grace to belong."  And, as a corollary, if you are using God's Law to smash other people down rather than to keep yourself and your own actions in check, then you are missing the point of the Law.  God didn't entrust us with the Scriptures to wield against other people like a sword, but to address US, and perhaps like a surgeon's scalpel, to cut out of our own lives the things that are malignant inside us. When we get that confused and start weaponizing "The Law" to attack others, we are abusing God's good gift, not mention committing theological malpractice.

Paul intends for those Torah-observant members of the First Church of Rome to recognize that the "Law" they are so hot and bothered about actually holds them accountable and shows them their own failings and faults.  Paul will point out to his readers over the course of this letter that the ones who think they are doing a great job of keeping the festivals and avoiding bacon cheeseburgers have some failings when it comes to loving their neighbors well and not turning their money or status into an idol.  And in that case, the Law exposes their failings and compels them to see that they could never earn their way into God's good graces.  Nobody's got a perfect record, and nobody's kept all the rules all the time.  So instead of weaponizing the commandments to keep other people out, Paul says, the commandments have a way of holding a mirror up to our lives and showing us where we are out of sync with God's good intentions.  And I can't weaponize that--I can only let it show me uncomfortable but necessary truths and then let it reshape me to be more in the likeness of Christ--of God's own character.

Today, then, what if you and I make the commitment to un-weaponizing the Bible all around, and instead to let God's Word speak to us as it will, both to hold us accountable and to offer us grace?  What if we promise each other we will do our utmost to resist the temptation of lobbing Bible verses at other people like hand grenades and instead letting them speak to us both to comfort and to correct where we need each of those?  And what if we celebrate with joy that God is choosing to draw in new people from all over creation, every background, language, culture, and story, to be a part of this found family we call church?

That seems like a better way to spend our day.

Lord Jesus, let your Word show us what we need to see about ourselves, as well as to hear the hope you tell us about your love for us.

A Deal Unlike The Rest--October 26, 2026

A Deal Unlike The Rest--October 26, 2026

"The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt--a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the LORD. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the LORD; I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, 'Know the LORD,' for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the LORD; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more." (Jeremiah 31:31-34)

You and I are living in the future.

No, still no jetpacks. Still no flying cars. But we are living in the future that ancient dreamers envisioned, prophets like Jeremiah, people who dared to listen to the Spirit's voice saying, "I will make a new covenant..."

You and I are living in the vision that Jeremiah could only hope for, long for, and look forward to. You and I are living in the future that the Spirit held out to the prophets, because you and I are people who live in the midst of the "new covenant" inaugurated in Jesus. When many of us heard this passage read on Sunday, we might not have realized how bold and audacious a vision this really is. It is strange in a way how we can take for granted what those ancient prophets dreamed of. We have a way of forgetting how surprising this passage must have sounded in the ears of Jeremiah's first hearers. Because the way God speaks here of a new covenant... well, it flies in the face of the way the world usually does business.

At the brink of exile, Jeremiah and other prophets of his generation were navigating the people of Judah through a crisis of their faith and identity. Exile was the end of the line. It represented an end to the relationship with their covenant God, Yahweh, so they thought. For centuries, the basic theology of the day said, "We do certain things to live as Yahweh's people, and in return, Yahweh gives us divine protection and blessing." And hanging over their heads in the background was always the fear, "If we mess things up so royally, so completely, by turning away from God and turning toward violence, greed, and the ways of other nations around us, then the worst that could happen would be for God to let those foreign powers overwhelm us and carry us away into exile." As the Babylonians came knocking at the door, armed with siege-works and soldiers, folks in Jeremiah's day could see exile coming. And that meant, they assumed, that their relationship with God--their covenant partnership--was at worst obliterated, and at best, thoroughly broken.

This would be the moment for a contract renegotiation. This would be the moment where self-proclaimed business experts would push to get more concessions from the people of Judah. This could have been God's moment to exert some leverage and tell the people, "Well, if you want to continue in relationship with me, I'm gonna need to see a big increase in what I get out of the deal." This could have been the moment for the Almighty to push for more offerings, or increased sacrifices, or to regulate a certain code of additional moral purity, with the threat of exile cajoling the fearful Israelites into re-negotiating on the Deity's harsher terms. That's at least how plenty of powerful folks would insist on doing things today, at any rate.

Except--and this is important here--the God of whom Jeremiah spoke is not a colossal cosmic Jerk. The God who speaks new covenant isn't looking to push for better terms that benefit God or to make a "deal" that yields God bigger profits. Rather, the God of Jeremiah 31 speaks of a new covenant that will NOT depend on what the human actors bring to the picture. It will depend, in a word, entirely on grace, and not on what humans "do" for God.

This is the wonderfully counter-intuitive way the God of the Bible works: instead of leveraging to get something "better" on God's side of the deal, the God of new covenant says, "It is all grace. I will remember your sin no more. You are forgiven." No negotiating a tougher deal. No heated contract negotiations.  No leveraging power to look like a successful tycoon.  And instead, an unbreakable new covenant--unbreakable, because it does not depend on our effort to make it hold, only God's.

That is the new covenant Jeremiah envisions, and for the followers of Jesus, that is the reality we are invited to step into right now. Already. Today. The rest of the world may think that it's a good idea to push for getting more for yourself when you are re-negotiating a deal, but that's not the way Christians are called to see the world. Rather, we are called to see things through the lens of the New Covenant--the relationship between us and God that has everything to do with God's grace and nothing to do with God "getting" more out of the deal. Jeremiah dreamed it. He envisioned it would happen. He hoped for its coming. And we get to live in it.

We are included, we are given hope, we are welcomed... because when the God of the Scriptures revises a covenant to make it "new," God has a way of giving away the farm for free. If God were a selfish jerk, sure, God could insist on "getting more" out of the deal, the covenant, between the divine and the human, but blessedly God is not a selfish jerk.

And instead, the God who spoke to Jeremiah offers us a future that depends entirely on God's goodness, and not upon what we bring to the table. That is an amazing reality to consider--and we have received it by grace. The assurance of grace that holds us together is a gift that countless prophets like Jeremiah dreamed of and waited for... and you and I get to live in it and lean on it now. Today, then, as much as we keep envisioning and picturing what else is in store, this is a moment to consider that we already live in the gracious future God had promised to voices like Jeremiah's.

We get to live in light of the new covenant.

Lord God, write your word on us and make your new covenant in our hearts and lives and deepest selves.

Paul, Gandalf, and Sojourner--October 23, 2026

Paul, Gandalf, and Sojourner--October 23, 2026

"...and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead—Jesus, who rescues us from the coming wrath." (1 Thessalonians 1:10)

Maybe we could say it just this simply: even if we don't know all of what is in ahead of us, we know the One who is coming to walk beside us.

I don't mean to be glib or offer tidy, pat answers, but I do think that assurance is important. There is a great deal we don't know about the future, and there are plenty of frightening things we may well have to face in our lifetimes--but we have not been abandoned to face them alone. We are looking for Jesus, who has already gone through death itself, and he will accompany us to bring us through whatever fraught and fearful turns may come our way in life. And if Jesus has already endured the worst and scariest thing we can imagine by staring down death and swallowed up by the grave before bursting it open through the other side, then whatever else crosses our path cannot be worse. We cannot face anything more threatening or destructive than what Jesus has already endured in Friday's cross, Saturday's tomb, and Sunday morning's rolled stone. He has even endured the experience of being "godforsaken," if we are to take the cry from the cross echoing Psalm 22 at face value, which means that Jesus has even experienced whatever we think we mean by the "wrath of God." And having faced all of that already, and been raised up to life again to come to be with us, then whatever else this day may bring is a lesser challenge by comparison.

I say all this, not to belittle those challenges or the struggles we face every day, nor to minimize the troubles of the world which erupt into our awareness every time we turn on the news or read the front page, but precisely because those things are so large and intimidating. Only if we have the assurance like the one we are given in this verse from First Thessalonians (which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday) can we look the troubles of this life squarely in the eye without melting in fear. Without the promised presence of Jesus, we will always look for rose-colored lenses to see the sorrow and pain of the world, or for a way to stick our heads in the ground like the proverbial ostrich to avoid having to deal with it. But exactly because our hope is in Jesus who comes to face the future with us, we can keep our eyes open to all of it without flinching.

Christians, then, should be the most realistic people in the world. We should be the ones willing to see real problems in all their messy complexity without having to cross our fingers, massage the data, or resort to wishful thinking. We should be the ones in society most honestly, openly, and bravely talking about things like war and poverty, disease and hunger, environmental damage and racial injustice, because we are convinced that the risen Jesus is present with us to face and respond to all of them. Our faith is not that Jesus will "beam us out" of the world's problems like some sort of spiritual Star Trek transporter device, but that Jesus will be with us as we face them, whatever it is that comes to us in our lives or our part of the world's history.

I suspect you may know that poignant exchange from The Lord of the Rings in which Frodo, already weary from having to carry the One Ring on his journey to destroy it, laments to his companion Gandalf, "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had happened," and to which Gandalf responds, "So do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us." J. R. R. Tolkein was a man of deep faith, and you can hear the way that faith shaped his writing. He would remind us, I suspect, along with Paul here in his letter to the Thessalonians, that while we cannot guess all the travail and turmoil that await us in the time to come, we do have the ability to choose, with our eyes wide open, how we will face whatever comes. And because we are convinced we have Christ to face it all with us, we do not have to be paralyzed with fear. We can endure it, work to relieve suffering in the midst of it, and be faithful witnesses through all of it, because the risen Jesus is at our side.

I am reminded, too, of that great insight of Sojourner Truth, who said, "If the Lord comes and burns--as you say he will--I am not going away; I am going to stay here and stand the fire, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego! And Jesus will walk with me through the fire and keep me from harm." That's what Paul is talking about here. We have a confidence because of who Jesus is and what Jesus has already endured for our sake that we can stare down whatever other troubles come to this world in all of our lives. We don't have to look for an escape hatch, a rocket ship to Mars, or a hill of dirt to stick our heads into--we can face it all, because we do it with Jesus who promises to abide with us having already come through death himself.

That's the way we face this day... and the next day, and the third day, too. Let's go.

Lord Jesus, be with us today and help us to see you in our midst as we respond to the real troubles and pains of the world and our fears of the future.

In Ordinary Ways--October 22, 2026

In Ordinary Ways--October 22, 2026

"For the word of the Lord has sounded forth from you not only in Macedonia and Achaia but in every place your faith in God has become known, so that we have no need to speak about it. For they report about us what kind of welcome we had among you and how you turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God." (1 Thessalonians 1:8-9)

When you are the real deal, you don't need to toot your own horn or make a big to-do about your own greatness.  People will know who you are and what you are like from seeing your actions in the world. You won't need to advertise or run a PR campaign--your reputation will precede you, as they say.

That much is clear here from these ongoing verses in the reading many of us heard this past Sunday from Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonica, as he commends these Christians for a faith that is so obvious he doesn't have to bring it up on his travels.  Paul says here that as he has been traveling from place to place all throughout modern-day Greece and even further around other congregations he visited, the Christians he meets in all those places already know the witness of First Church of Thessalonica.  Paul says here, "I don't even have to talk you up to the other churches around, because they already know about your faith in God and how you received the Good News!"  What a beautiful and powerful thing to be said about someone--what a witness one must be that nobody needs to generate extra "buzz" or "hype" about them, because their real and authentic self is compelling enough as it is.

I am often reminded of a line of the late Margaret Thatcher, who once said that being powerful is like being an elegant lady--if you have tell someone you are, you aren't.  The apostle might have said, similarly, "If you have to tell people you have strong faith, you don't." Or put conversely, when you do have living and authentic faith in God, you won't have to try to persuade people about how devout you are.  People will already know.  They will have seen it in your actions, heard it in your words, and experienced it from the way you carry yourself in the world.

And more to the point, when we are grounded by trust in God's love for us, we realize we don't have anything to prove to anybody else.  We no longer have to waste time, energy, effort, or breath in trying to persuade people about how pious or virtuous or religious we are, because we know that it doesn't matter what other people think.  And we know that God's love for us isn't awarded like a blue ribbon based on our piety or performance, but is given out as a gift of grace.  And when you know you are loved already as you are, you don't have to make a fuss projecting a reputation or creating a public persona to impress.  You can simply be who you are, becuase you know whose you are.

What if it really is that simple?  What if we didn't have to spend any time at all hoping to get noticed for our church attendance, acts of service, faithful insights, or discipline in prayer--but we just did the kind of things that followers of Jesus do, without drawing attention to them?  What if, in a culture where it feels like everything is documented and photo-edited to be put on display in social media feeds, we were just willing to practice our faith in ordinary ways every day, and to let that be enough?

I think we would feel a whole lot freer.  And I suspect our witness would be a great deal more compelling, just by being ourselves.

Lord Jesus, free us from the worry of what other people think of us, so that we can simply and honestly follow you with our lives.

Becoming Who We Are--October 21, 2026

Becoming Who We Are--October 21, 2026

"For we know, brothers and sisters beloved by God, that he has chosen you, because our message of the gospel came to you not in word only but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction; just as you know what kind of persons we proved to be among you for your sake. And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for in spite of persecution you received the word with joy from the Holy Spirit, so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia." (1 Thessalonians 1:4-7)

You know what they say: imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. At least our mothers used to say it to keep us from getting too upset at younger siblings when they were going through a copycat phase. And with marginal success, it pacified us as children to think that young Jonny or Mary was imitating you because he or liked you so well and was trying to win your approval.

For the Christian community, however, imitation isn't ever supposed to be about flattering anybody--it is about training spiritual muscles to move in a certain way. It is about learning how to walk the Christian walk--learning how to live the strange new life that Jesus was pioneering, a life of generosity, hospitality, courage, patience, and love. It is about letting Christ be seen in you... and in me, when other see us, and when we look in the mirror.

See, for us Christians, rules have never really done the trick. And truth be told, that's not a Christians-only thing--it's really more of a human thing. You can bark all the rules you want at us, but we have a hard time really keeping them. Sometimes, that's because we're little stinkers who look for loopholes or deliberately cross the line. But sometimes it's because we don't really know what a certain commandment or rule really means. Take "Love your neighbor," for example. Is that a command to feel a certain way toward other people? How big is the radius extending out from me to tell me who counts as my neighbor (we have a particularly hard time with that one, and we seem to keep wanting to re-ask it, because we never like how broad his answer is)? What kind of actions count as "love"--do I actually have to do something for my neighbor, or is it enough just to not actively seek to harm my neighbor? And what about when "loving" is not the same as "being nice"--like when love means confronting a neighbor? How do I know what love really means? You can see pretty quickly with even a seemingly simple, no-brainer kind of commandment that it can be hard to know what a rule really means, or how anybody should actually apply a vague principle like "you should always do the most loving thing." Who gets to say what "the most loving thing" is?

The earliest followers of Jesus knew this all too well, and so we have never relied all that heavily on "rules" for our shared life in the found family of God. We have always learned the particular steps of our walk by walking with others and imitating--copying, to be honest--the kinds of moves and actions we've seen in other faithful saints. The same way you learn to play basketball, not by merely reading the rule book and learning that you're not supposed to run with the ball, for example, but by actually practicing the skills of dribbling, shooting, and blocking, Christians learn to become who we are by practicing alongside other disciples. We watch how they hold the ball. We learn to put our hands in the positions they use. We train our bodies to move the way theirs do. We imitate them, in other words. And as we imitate others who imitate Christ, we just might catch a glimpse of Christ in our own reflection, too.

So when we starting asking questions like, "What does it really mean to love my neighbor?" we find the answer in the real-life examples of Jesus, of Paul, of Mary, of disciples over the ages like Francis of Assisi and Saint Lucia, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Corrie ten Boom, or Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass, or Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin, or Dorothy Day and Mother Theresa. Even more to the point, we see the answer in the lives of people we actually have met and seen with our own eyes, like your father, or my favorite Sunday School teacher, or the people you know whose faith and love are just so compelling that you can't help but keep an eye on them. We imitate those fellow followers, past and present, whose actions have been informed by the disciples who went before them, going back in a chain of imitation all the way back to Jesus and his first band of followers. We learn what it looks like love our neighbor by watching and trying it ourselves--seeing how the saints of 1930s Europe practiced real hospitality by hiding Jewish families from the Gestapo, as well as how people welcome strangers and practice mercy in 2026 America. We learn what love looks like when we hear the story of Jesus washing his disciples' feet, and when we see saints around us giving up their time and energy to serve at the weekly meal in a forgotten neighborhood of the city or feeding neighbors in their own back yard.

We know the cold sterility of rules alone cannot make us into the kind of people we are meant to be--but we can have our spiritual muscles trained and toned as we imitate the motions we have seen in faithful disciples before us. That is how our revolution keeps its momentum--we don't handout rule books to memorize while you're toweling off at the font after baptism and say, "Go for it. See you in heaven if you can figure these out." We keep learning from each other, letting the actions of faithful saints before us and around us teach our arms and legs and hearts how to move.

Today, think of those faithful followers of Jesus you have known--those whose generosity, or humility, or extravagant love, or deep courage have captivated you--and let them be guides along the way as we get another chance today to live deeper into reflecting Christ for the world.

Lord Jesus, train my arms, my legs, my hands, my feet, and my heart--and use the lives of others around me as guides and mentors, training my whole self in the ways of your movement.

Reasons for Gratitude--October 20, 2026

Reasons for Gratitude--October 20, 2026

"We always give thanks to God for all of you and mention you in our prayers, constantly remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ." (1 Thessalonians 1:2-3)

First things first--and gratitude should always be first.

Note merely as a matter of good manners or refined etiquette, but as our perspective for facing each day and looking out at the world.  It matters to begin from a standpoint of thanks, which requires us also to have our eyes open to see, to notice, and to recognize the things for which we can then give thanks.  Gratitude, then, might actually be a way of seeing as well as a practice of expressing appreciation for the good things we have made a habit of choosing to look for.

I think all of that is there in these few verses from Paul's first letter to the church in Thessalonica, continuing the passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  He is starting from a place of gratitude--and that frames the entire letter differently from what would have been written if the apostle took everything for granted.  Seriously, this is the opening greeting of his letter--Paul has just barely gotten through the return address at the top of the page, and he is now actually talking to the people in the congregation.  And his opening words are ones of thanks. He is thankful to the disciples in Thessalonica to be sure, but even more so, he is thankful to God for them.  His opening message is not, "Remember to be good!" or "Please make a donation!" or even some first-century version of the modern internet salutation, "Don't forget to like a subscribe!"  But rather, he begins with, "We always thank God for you."  Imagine getting a letter like that in the mail--to hear that someone else lists you as a reason they are grateful to the Creator of the universe.  It certainly has a way of making your to-do list on an ordinary Tuesday seem a little bit more worth the doing, doesn't it?

One of the things I find so beautiful about this opening passage to Paul's letter is that it would have been so terribly easy for Paul to tell himself that he had no reason to thank his readers.  He could have seen his relationship with them as entirely one-sided, with all the good things being provided by him, and the Thessalonians merely as recipients with open hands.  He, after all, was the apostle. He had come and founded the congregation.  He had been their pastor and teacher. He was the reason that many of them had come to faith in Christ in the first place, and changed their lives forever.  Paul could have simply said, "I did all these great things for you, so you're welcome," and then moved on with his letter. Instead, even though it is true that Paul had done a number of lovely and good things for these folks, he flips the script and begins with appreciation for all that they had done to support him and to endure in lives of faith, hope, and love.

And you know what?  It doesn't come off as being forced or fake to me.  Sometimes you can tell when someone is just being polite or forcing a performed gratitude rather than something genuine.  But I don't think Paul is pretending here.  I think he has cultivated gratitude as a perspective long enough that he really does see the world through the lens of "God has put good things in my life, and I merely need to open my eyes to recognize them." I suspect it is part of what keeps Paul going through the difficult days he often has to endure as he is writing this letter--between shipwrecks, stonings, and imprisonments, he is able to see good and beautiful things that have been put into his life.  He reminds me, in that regard, of that powerful line of Thornton Wilder, who said, "We can only be said to be alive in those moments when our hearts are conscious of their treasures." I think Paul is more fully alive because he is able to see--and to be grateful for--the good things God has put in his life through the other people around him, including the Thessalonians to whom he is writing.

In that regard, there is good reason for us to follow Paul's example, then.  If you and I want to be more fully alive, we would do well to practice gratitude like Paul models for us here.  We will start to notice things, things that didn't have to be the way they are, but are there nevertheless: the colors of the leaves, the sound of birds, the beauty of the moon... and then also, the kindness of the person who holds the door for you, or the generosity of the friend who gives you an hour of their time, or the neighbor who brought over soup.  These people and these good things around us may well have been there all along, but the choice to practice gratitude helps us not to miss them, and then to express appreciation to the people who show these kindnesses to us and to the God who puts all of them in our lives.

That might be a good place to start a new day.  What are ways you and I can deliberately open our eyes to reasons for gratitude today, and then how can we express it?  What difference might that make in our lives, even just starting with today?

Lord Jesus, we give you thanks for all that you have put in our lives for good; we ask, too, that you would further give us the vision to see more fully all that you do for us.

In on the Divine Conspiracy--October 19, 2026

In on the Divine Conspiracy--October 19, 2026

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, to the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: grace to you and peace. (1 Thessalonians 1:1)

Everybody in this verse is a conspirator, no exceptions. So were James and John and Peter and Andrew and even old doubting Thomas. So were Mary Magdalene, Priscilla, Tabitha, Mary the mother of Jesus, Joanna, an anonymous woman at a well, and lots of other women. Jesus, too. And truth be told, Paul's wish, if he thought much about people reading his words 2,000 years later, would have been that everybody who ever reads this verse and the letter that follows would become a co-conspirator, too. Their dream was that bold and their vision was that wide.

To read this or any letter in the New Testament, and certainly the Gospels, is to be pulled into a concerted effort by an underground movement to turn the world upside down with the new ordering of the God whose power is enemy-love and whose agenda is mercy.

"All right, all right," I can hear you saying to yourself, "isn't this all a bit melodramatic here? I mean, may be Paul himself had a flair for adventure, what with always being on the run or thrown in prison, and getting himself lowered out of city walls in baskets or shipwrecked. And maybe it was an exciting time to be a Christian back in the first century. But a conspiracy? Really--from Saint Paul, the man we name churches and half of the Twin Cities after? And saying that the church today is part of a conspiracy, too? Most people I know think of church as the local community bulletin board and the place where raffles and bake sales are held, not a place of daring adventure, or a revolutionary movement. Can you just cut the drama and let us get back to having a nice plain Bible study, so I can check the 'religious activity' portion of my to-do list and get on with some other errands?"

No, I'm sticking with conspiracy. The church is one--or at least, is supposed to be a part of God's grand conspiracy, and we are all drawn into the thick of it. It's not a cover-up in the style of a Dan Brown novel, where "the Church" is behind a fiendish plan to hide scandalous things about Jesus. It's quite the opposite--we are part of a movement going back two millennia to show and tell the world all about Jesus (including some rather scandalous bits, to be truthful) in our words and actions. And the conspiracy is about how to do it in ways that will catch the world's attention without playing by the world's rules.

I'm also sticking with conspiracy because of the word itself--as plenty of others have pointed out recently, the etymology of this gorgeous word means literally, "breathing together." (Yes, that "spir-" part in the middle of the word is the same as in "respiration" or "inspiriation" and even "spirit." And the "con-" at the beginning is the root for "together" or "with," as in "construction" or "concord.") A conspiracy, then, is those who are breathing the same air, whose sails are caught by the same wind. We are people who breathe the same air, we Christians, or more to the point, who breathe the same Spirit, who has been seen to indwell us. All of us, then, who are filled with the Spirit, are a part of what Dallas Willard calls "the divine conspiracy."

It's not a conspiracy of our invention--it's not a bunch of Christians getting together saying, "Let's become really powerful in political circles and accomplish our own pet agendas." Awful things tend to happen when supposedly Christian folks sell out the Kingdom vision of Jesus and trade it in for a spot at the table of Caesar. The conspiracy comes from the Spirit himself (or herself, if you like, since the Hebrew word for "Spirit" is feminine), who brings to us and breathes into us God's agenda, God's design, and God's vision of a restored creation and of victory over death through Jesus.

All of that brings us full circle--we are all conspirators, we Christians. That's an important part of the Christian message and way of life. We are all players. We are all a part of same world-changing, life-changing movement. We all will play our own roles, and not everyone will go running all over the world like Paul did, but we are all a part of the movement. We are all conspirators. It's the same in our local congregations. Maybe it feels sometimes like we are tucked back in the safety and obscurity of small towns. Maybe we like to imagine that Christianity is just a small compartment of my life that is there to give me warm, fuzzy feelings when I am feeling pouty, but it's always been a movement meant to grip all of us--anybodies and nobodies and everybodies. It's not up to pastors or book-writers to carry the movement forward. It's not up to "youth ministry experts" or "praise bands" to draw people in. We are all a part of the movement--we, in the 21st century, our older brothers and sisters in the faith who lived in 1st century Thessalonica (on modern-day Greece), and Paul, Silas, and Timothy, too. We are all conspirators, breathing the same Spirit.

The real surprise about our conspiracy--or really, God's conspiracy that we get to be a part of--is that, as the last words of this opening verse say, our movement is about filling creation with grace and peace. We're not about getting a political party elected, our economic philosophy carried out at the Fed or on Wall Street, or putting ourselves in power. We should be the first to object when somebody tries to co-opt our faith and brand themselves as the standard-bearers for the Kingdom of God. That's not us. No, we are about infecting (if you can hear that word in a positive sense) a graceless and hostile world with the reconciling grace and peace that come from Jesus. That is the revolution we are caught up in. That is what makes us fellow-breathers, co-conspirators, with the likes of Saint Paul himself.

Today, what difference would it make if you saw yourself, not so much as a mild-mannered respectable citizen who fits in religious 'stuff' in between the kids' hockey practice and dance lessons and your favorite TV show, but rather if you and I saw ourselves as the New Testament imagines us: conspirators set on turning the world upside down with the unexpected justice and mercy of the God whose face is Jesus?

O God who is the Source of all life, as you did in the beginning, breathe into us, your people, again, and bring us to life. Give to us the life that really is life--the kind of life offered to us in Jesus, and let us breathe together with all your people of all times and places the same Spirit that drives us forward and sends us out to be your agents of grace and channels of peace. We pray it in the name of Jesus, whose motion began and sustains our movement.