Aliens Like Us

Aliens Like Us--November 11, 2016

"All of these died in faith without having receiving the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them." [Hebrews 11:13-16]

Somewhere along the way, we forgot who we were, who we still are. Somewhere along the way, the followers of Jesus forgot that we are resident aliens, non-citizens, in the places where we live.


Funny, in that narrow way that things can be both awful and funny at the same time, how easy it can be for respectable religious folks to want to be gatekeepers and bouncers for other refugees and aliens, when the Bible itself has been telling us for two millennia now that we are people without papers here in the world. We are aliens.  We are not meant to be at home under the rule of Caesars and Nebuchadnezzars. And that also means we should recognize ourselves as living as foreigners dependent on the hospitality of others around us, because this is not our home.


Now, that kind of talk can be misused. It can be co-opted to sound holier-than-thou, and it often has been--like Christians are in an exclusive club and can look down on the rest of the world.  It can sound like Christians are just biding their time to get to some ethereal afterlife rather than living where we are and caring about hungry people, excluded people, justice, and reconciliation now.  It can sound like sentimental religious escapism.


But that misses the way the Scriptures really teach us exiles to live.  When it was the people of Israel/Judah who had been conquered and taken into exile in Babylon, the word from the Lord was "Seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you," which is to say, "seek the welfare of Babylon."  The message was that wherever God's people go, we are to be a presence for good, a presence of graciousness in a graceless age.  The message was that God's people are to seek the benefit of others exactly because we know that this is where we live our days until that great promised homecoming. 


The Jewish exiles in Babylon were called to be good neighbors, just and fair in their business dealings even with the Babylonian citizens next door, and not to resort to violence or hate because they were forced to live under the rule of a pagan egocentric nut-job like Nebuchadnezzar.  They were called to be good, but not to ever fall for the official Babylonian party line about how great life was going to be in Babylon, and never to put their trust in the powers of the day. That is what kept the exiles on solid footing, and it was what kept their minds and hearts free: Babylon may have won the day when they captured Jerusalem, but they could not capture the allegiance of the people who were conquered.  If your heart belongs to the homeland that is waiting for you, you will not be fooled into giving it away to the powers of the day.


The New Testament borrows all of this imagery to talk about our presence in the world as the followers of Jesus.  We are aliens, too.  We are called always to work for the good of all around us, but we are called to do it with an eye toward our promised future.  And so we will live now according to the constitution of God's Reign, rather than settling for the ways of whatever places we find ourselves in.  So, for example: in God's promised future, swords are beaten into plowshares and wolves and lambs lie down together--and so, in light of our promised homecoming, we are called right now, in this life, not to be people of violence but people of mercy. In the Jesus Administration, there is enough for all, and you know who is the greatest, not because they have to toot their own horns and say it about themselves, but because they are the ones washing feet, wiping tears, and taking the lepers and outcasts by the hand. 


The world will see all of that behavior, and it won't make sense to them. Nebuchadnezzar thought his greatness was measurable in his gold-embossed towers, portraits, and statues. Caesar thought he was lord of the world while a homeless baby was born to two refugees and laid in a food trough, but the baby turned out to be none other than God-in-the-flesh. The followers of Jesus are called to be people who stand out because we live now like life will be in the full Reign of God.  We will keep giving ourselves to making "the city where God has sent us" better and better, but we will not let ourselves get entitled into thinking that Babylon will give us a prize for doing it.   And we will not simply let ourselves look backward to some mythical time in the past--as Hebrews says, if we "had been thinking of the land they had left behind they would have had opportunity to return." For the followers of Jesus, the homeland we are seeking is not in the past--not in the 1950s, not in the 1960s, and not in the '70s, '80s, '90s, or first decade and a half of the 21st century.  We aren't looking to recreate something--we are living now like we will in God's promised future, not a religious nostalgic past.  That promised future is our home--right smack dab the middle of God's love.


Tonight, as I write, news is just breaking about the death of Leonard Cohen, the songwriter and poet who wrote some of the most powerful and poignant lyrics of the last four decades.A line from his well-loved, "Anthem," comes to mind:  every heart, every heart to love will come, but like a refugee."


That's us.  We are refugees.  And because we have been found by Love, we live differently now even before we arrive in our home country. Because in a sense, everywhere Love goes, we are at home.


Lord Jesus, let us live now in light of the promised day when your grace wins and fills all in all.

The Un-Last Word

The Un-Last Word--November 10, 2016

"The sword rages in their cities, it consumes their oracle-priests, and devours because of their schemes. My people are bent on turning away from me. To the Most High they call, but he does not raise them up at all.  How can I give you up, Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? ...My heart recoils within me; my compassion grows warm and tender.  I will not execute my fierce anger; I will not again destroy Ephraim; for I am God and no mortal, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath." [Hosea 11:6-9]

After the door has been slammed in God's face, God reserves the right not to walk away.

After we have chosen despair, God reserves the right not to stop speaking hope.

After we have chosen fear, God reserves the right not to give up sending angel after angel who announces in the dark, "Be not afraid."

In other words, even when we seem hell-bent (literally) on choosing the worst and turning away from the way of life, God refuses to let our arm-crossing, brow-furrowing temper tantrums be the last word.  God lets us speak those words, sure.  But God doesn't have to stay silent after we have thrown the plate against the wall in anger, or slammed the door in a huff, or shouted, "Fine! I'm done!" in the face of Mercy.  God's patience lets us speak our foolish, childish, selfish rants... and then God's grace is strong enough not to let our ugliest outbursts be the last word.

This is the story again and again in the Scriptures.  It is the story in the Garden, when human beings decide to throw away a life of balance in harmony with one another, with God, and with creation in order to grab more for themselves and throw each other under the bus... and then how God does not give up on the whole project of creation, but clothes the now ashamed and naked couple and starts them over.  It is the story of Israel in the Hebrew Scriptures, over and over, who keep falling into the same godforsaken pattern of throwing their allegiance behind whatever latest ruler or altar or stockpile comes their way, and then how God keeps starting over with them, stripping them down to essentials and making a new go of things with them.  It is the story of Jesus and, well, just about everybody he ever met: Zacchaeus the sell-out tax collector, Peter the arrogant boaster with a frequently chicken-hearted resolve, Saul the bloodthirsty religious zealot, looking to round up and punish everybody who didn't follow his exact code of piety and orthodoxy...and anybody else you might add to the list.  Every last one of them turned their backs on the way of grace, the way of life, the way of self-giving love, and traded it in for a rotten collection of fear, empty boasting, and blustery rage--and yet grace didn't let their awful choices be the end of the story.  Grace reserved the right, once the door had been slammed in its face, still to embrace, still to seek, still to open the door right back up again, even if the plates were flying again, and speak another word.

That's what it means for us to believe--to confess--that grace wins in the end.  It is not a pie-in-the-sky, "Let's-forget-about-how-rotten-things-are-now-because-it-will-all-be-better-in-heaven" kind of wishing in religious robes.  And it is not the equally vain hope that everything will all be better today because we wish it would be.  It is the promise, grounded in the character of the God we know in Jesus, not to let our stupidity and selfishness be our own death warrant.  It is the conviction that even after we keep turning away, God keeps saying, "How can I give you up, O my people?"  It is the way that after God has said NO to our choice for violence, for fear, for cowardice, and for selfishness, God then speaks another YES to staying with us, being with us, and transforming us.  It is the divine prerogative of God not to let our choice for godforsakeness be the last card laid down. 

God lets us speak our little angry rehearsed speeches, lets us build to our dramatic conclusions, and then lets us say our most hateful final sentence, thinking we have gotten the last word... and then God says, "But I have something more to say... yours, it turns out, was the un-last word."

There's a beautiful, haunting little acoustic song by the band OkGo, called "Last Leaf," which keeps coming back to me as I think about the persistence of grace despite our rotten choices.  The lyrics go like this:

If you should be the last autumn leaf, hanging from the tree

I'll still be here waiting on the breeze, to bring you down to me

And if it takes forever, forever it will be.

And if it takes forever, forever it will be.

If you should be the last seed in spring to venture out a leaf

I'll still be here, waiting on the rain, to warm your heart for me.

And if it takes forever, forever it will be.

And if it takes forever, forever it will be.

Some days you wake up feeling caught in the pile of rotten choices you are tangled in--some your own, some choices that others made that still tie you up.  And on those days, it can feel like any other voice in your life would say, "Fine, have it your way.  You've made your bed--now lie in it.  I'm done here."  It can feel like there is no reason to believe things can be made better again.  It can feel like you regret speaking the awful, hateful last word the moment it has left your lips, and that you wish you could un-choose the rotten choices you have made. 

It can feel like you and I have slammed the door in the face of the way of Life.

But God reserves the right still to wait, still to love, still to open the door back up again and say, "O, my people, O my beloved... I will not let your hate be more powerful than my love."

And so we begin again.  And the next time we make a stupid or selfish choice, grace waits again, insistent that it will win in the end.

And if it takes forever, forever it will be.

Lord God, give us hope on this day that we can begin anew, even when we have gotten ourselves into a godforsaken mess and slammed the door on love, on mercy, on courage, on truth, and on peace.  Open the door we thought we had locked behind us. And crash into our world again with your fierce love.

All of this

Why We Sing

Why We Sing--November 9, 2016

Then I saw between the throne and the four living creatures and among the elders a Lamb standing as if it had been slaughtered, having seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent out into all the earth. He went and took the scroll from the right hand of the one who was seated on the throne. When he had taken the scroll, the four living creatures and the twenty-four elders fell before the Lamb, each holding a harp and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints. They sing a new song:
‘You are worthy to take the scroll
   and to open its seals,
for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God
   saints from^* every tribe and language and people and nation; 
you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving^* our God,
   and they will reign on earth.’ [Revelation 5:6-10]

Consider this a spoiler alert: the last note is a C-natural.

In the hymnals in our church, the great classic hymn, "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," is in the key of C-major, and it ends with a resounding double whole note C-major chord.

Now that I have told you that, should we still bother ever singing it?  After all, I've already told you how it ends.  What's the point of going through all the trouble of singing it, now that you already know (if you didn't before) that the song ends on a major chord?

For that matter, I'll go ahead and spoil the ending of the lyrics for you, too.  In our hymnals, the translation of the last verse of "A Mighty Fortress" concludes, "Were they to take our house, goods, honor, child, or spouse... though life be wrenched away, they cannot win the day: the Kingdom's ours forever!"  So, now you know, too, that at the end of the hymn, there is hope and confidence that even if everything else you held dear just got yanked out from under you, God's good reign will prevail and we are promised in Christ that we share in that victory.  So, all of that is a given.  Now that we are all clear on how the song ends, why bother singing it again?

Well... maybe a song of faith isn't like an M. Night Shyamalan movie that needs some kind of surprise twist in the ending to be enjoyable, but that doesn't stand up to repeated viewings (I'm looking at you, The Village).  Maybe the songs of our faith aren't like a pulp mystery or thriller novel that you only read to find out the killer in the last chapter.  And maybe the great Story of the Scriptures isn't a Dan Brown adaptation that depends on edge-of-your-seat plot twists and MacGuffins to go in search of.  Maybe the great Story that the Scriptures tell actually has more power for us when we know the ending from the start.


Of course it is silly to think we wouldn't still sing a song just because we already know how its words and melody end.  If anything, the opposite is true--we have all the more courage to dare singing a song of faith when we know how the melody goes, and when we know the words.  And we can dare to sing the difficult words in the middle stanzas, too: "Though hordes of devils fill the land, all threatening to devour us..." because we know the next line goes, "we tremble not, unmoved we stand."  It is knowing the end of the song that gives us courage to sing the middle verses while our stomachs are all tied up in knots and our hearts are fearful and saddened.  Nobody says, "Skip the song because we know how it ends already," but rather, "Sing it again--we need the hope of those words that have gotten us through dark times in the past."


This is the whole Christian life, too.  We are people who live day by day in light of the hope that grace wins in the end.  It may or may not "feel" like that on any given day--some days it really doesn't feel like the way of Jesus is victorious--but we dare to live now with a hope in the promised end of the story.  This hymn ends on a C-Major chord.  This Story ends as a divine comedy where all the false lords are unmasked and God triumphs through a cross and empty tomb.  The story of the universe ends with a surprise victory from the slain but triumphant Lamb, even when every other set of eyes thought that Jesus had lost the battle when he breathed his last and said, "It is finished."  The story of creation ends in God's victory, and right now, the followers of Jesus hold onto that promise and live out our lives, daring to sing the middle stanzas when everything seems lost, because we know the last verse ends with "The kingdom's ours forever."


And in light of that promised resolution, in light of our hope in that C Major chord and the victory of God, we face this day differently.  We face every day differently--at least we can.  We can be people who can be honest--brutally honest--about what is wrong in the world around us, because we are not afraid that this is all there is.  We can be people who say so when the emperor is wearing no clothes.  We can be people who are gracious to those who have been jerks to us, because we trust that by the last verse of the song, all creation will be set right.  We can be people who don't resort to anger or hate or violence, because our Lord is the slaughtered Lamb who won the victory by dying rather than by killing his enemies.  We can be people who tell others who are downhearted, "This isn't the end of the story. We aren't there yet."


And so... in the fifth chapter of the book we call Revelation, there is a scene where all of heaven breaks into song.  And John the visionary who penned the book gives us the words of the song now.  Spoiler alert--it is all about the God who reigns from self-giving love, the God whose victory is in a cross, the God whose power is in in weakness, the God who always stands on the side of those labeled "loser," the God who, as Mary famous sang, dethrones the powerful and sends the rich away empty.  That is our song.  You and I know it now.  We can sing it now already--in fact, in the churches where I live and serve, we usually do sing a version of this song about "the Lamb who was slain" and who "has begun his reign" most Sundays.  That is our song now, and that song gives us the hope to be gracious in a graceless world and to have hope in hopeless times.  We know the song, and we know it ends on a major chord.  And because we know those notes ahead of time, we can sing all the more boldly, even on days when we cannot make sense of anything else.


"The kingdom's ours forever," proclaims the old song.  Indeed it is.  That is why we sing.


Lord Jesus, give us the courage to live with your grace and your hope, by giving us the promise of the end of the song right now, while we are still living in these fearful middle stanzas.

Hope in a Watertight Jar

Hope in a Watertight Jar--November 7, 2016

"Jeremiah said, The word of the Lord came to me; Hanmel son of your uncle Shallum is going to come to you and say, 'Buy my field that is at Anathoth, for the right of redemption by purchase is yours.' Then my cousin Hanamel came to me in the court of the guard, in accordance with the word of the Lord, and said to me, 'Buy my field that is at Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, for the right of possession and redemption is yours; buy it for yourself.' Then I know that this was that this was the word of the Lord. And I bought the field at Anathoth from my cousin Hanamel, and weighed out the money to him, seventeen shekels of silver. I signed the deed, sealed it, got witnesses, and weight the money on scales. Then I took the sealed deed of purchase, containing the terms and conditions, and the open copy; and I gave my deed of purchase to Baruch son of Neriah son of Mahseiah, in the presence of my cousin Hanamel, in the presence of the witnesses who signed the deed of purchase, and in the presence of all the Judeans who were sitting in the court of the guard. In their presence I charged Baruch, saying, Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Take these deeds, both this sealed deed of purchase and this open deed, and put them in an earthenware jar, in order that they may last for a long time. For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Houses and fields and vineyards shall again be bought in this land." [Jeremiah 32:6-15]

Nothing more heartwarming than an obscure accounting of a real estate transaction, right?

Well, this is, honestly, one of the most hope-filled stories in all of the Bible.  If that's hard to tell at first, it's because we may be missing some of the context.

This scene was from just about the darkest time in the history of the nation of Judah (the southern kingdom that had continued on independently after the northern tribes of Israel were conquered by the Assyrians).  Judah was surrounded by the latest empire of the day--the forces of Babylon, and their capital, besieged by the invading armies, was slowly starving to death.  It got bad--people will do horrible, unspeakable, things when their food supply is cut off.  And there came a point at which everybody inside the city walls realized that this was not going to end well.  Babylon was going to win.

The king, of course, did not want to hear that.  Ol' King Zedekiah didn't want to hear any of the doom and gloom and was mad at the local prophet Jeremiah (who was stuck inside the besieged city, too) for being so honest.  Zedekiah wanted to hear, "Rah, rah, God will come back and save the day for us," and he complained to the prophet, "God can't let us be conquered--God owes us!  Don't be such a downer, Jerry!"  But Jeremiah was still convinced God was letting the siege, the conquest, and the defeat happen.  Jeremiah knew, and so did everybody else, that there was soon coming a day when the Babylonians would finally breach the wall, destroy the city, and occupy the whole nation, ending anybody's property rights in Judah as the invaders plundered and re-settled their land.

And at that precise moment, Jeremiah goes to buy a field.

At exactly the time when the whole country was about to go under.  Yep.  You got it.

To any outside observer, this is utter nonsense.  This is like buying stock in the company that has just announced it is going bankrupt.  It's like buying all your Christmas gifts as gift cards for the store in the mall that is closing next week.  It's wasting money on something that everybody knows is going to be worthless very, very soon.

And Jeremiah does it anyway--because he has hope. 

Not hope that disaster will be averted by wishful thinking.  That is not Biblical hope.  No, Jeremiah's hope is of a future on the other side of disaster.  His hope is of a national resurrection on the other side of a national death.  His hope is not that the Babylonians will all magically go away if he ignores them and just carries on with business as usual--but rather that after the Babylonians have come and gone, there will come a day again when God's people will come back to their land, and when the deed he has just purchased will mean something again.  For Jeremiah, the purchase of the field in Anathoth is not a biblical boondoggle of epic proportions, but a defiant act of hope in a future restoration. 

And most amazingly of all, Jeremiah buys the field with the full awareness that even if the restoration comes and his deed is one day a meaningful legal document again, Jeremiah himself will not live to see it.  Jeremiah's book of visions and oracles includes the announcement that the coming exile in Babylon would last for 70 years--and by that time, Jeremiah himself was no spring chicken.  He was buying the field, not as his own future retirement nest egg, but simply as a symbolic act of hope.  He dared to trust the promise of the living God, that there would come a day when his people would come home, even if he didn't live to see that day himself.  The deed, sealed up in a water-tight jar, was a symbol for everybody there living in the darkest days of the siege--it was a promise that after the dust had settled, there was indeed coming a time when grace would win in the end, and God's people would come home even though they had been stinkers.

This is the kind of radical hope we are called to...right now.  To be a part of the people of God now is to reach for the symbols that will speak to hearts around us now, and to offer them up.  To be a part of the people of God now is to look for fields in Anathoth to buy right now, as acts of defiant hope that the gloating, blustery Nebuchadnezzars of the day will not get the last word.  To be a part of the people of God is to choose to stay in towns, or city neighborhoods,  or communities that everybody else has written off as "dying."  It is to choose to love people who have given up.  It is to choose to look for symbolic actions, ones that might not benefit us directly, but which will say to others looking for hope, "Restoration will come." It is to choose to plant the apple tree today, even if you know the world is going to end tomorrow.

If we dare to believe that grace really wins in the end, and that at the last, the way of Jesus really will turn out to have been the way of life, then we are called to live hopefully now and to practice hope now for others to see.  It is true that some of what "once was" may never come back the way it had been before--not everybody who went into exile eventually found the courage to come back home when it was time.  But there will be restoration.  There will be a day for opening up the jar to get the deed back out. 

The people right around you need that kind of hope.  They need it in big bold lettering and with flashing lights.  They need symbols they can latch on to--they need property deeds stored in clay jars that speak of a future day of homecoming.

Today, that is your and my calling--bring the presence of hope to them.  Bring the symbols of promise.  Bring the message the world needs to hear: that grace wins in the end.

Lord Jesus, teach us to practice hope today in defiance of the powers of the day, and let us trust your promise to put all things right.

Bringing Jesus to a Gunfight

Bringing Jesus to a Gunfight--November 4, 2016

"For [Christ] must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death." [1 Corinthians 15:25-26]

While there are a handful exceptions in pop culture, TV, and movies, the conventional wisdom seems to agree that you should not bring a knife to a gun fight.

In case that lovely little pearl of wisdom isn't already hanging on your living room wall as a plaque you got from Cracker Barrel or embroidered on the throw pillows on your sofa, the gist of the expression is that one should not be underprepared or underequipped in any situation, especially one in which there is conflict.  And if everybody else at the OK Corral has brought revolvers, you will feel awfully vulnerable if you have only got a switchblade on you. Thus the expression, "Don't bring a knife to a gunfight."  You could file that proverb as a variation on the theme of "Sometimes you have to fight fire with fire."

But in all honesty, God believes that kind of thinking just doesn't go deep enough.  Bringing a gun to a gunfight may be a fine strategy if the worst enemy you have to face is the desperado pointing his six-shooter at you from behind the saloon doors.  But the New Testament says that Jesus is not aiming for just another gunslinger--Jesus has his targets set on death itself.  And you cannot shoot at death, nor, for that matter, cut it with a Bowie knife.  You must go deeper still and undo the power, the fear, the grip that death has on us.

And the Christian faith is, if you think about it, the amazing claim that God won the universe's great victory, not by bringing a bigger caliber gun to a showdown with Pontius Pilate or wily old King Herod, or even the self-satisfied Pharisees.  Jesus wins God's great victory without having the bigger gun in the gunfight, and without even having so much as a pocket knife.  Jesus wins the victory against death by dying--by being swallowed up by death himself and then breaking its power from the inside out.

That is a totally different--and more radical--kind of victory.  It is, as the apostle says elsewhere, not a battle against flesh and blood, but against the powers (remember them?) that are bigger than any one person or mind.  That means Jesus' kind of victory--and the kind that we, his followers, are called to be about--wins by transforming enemies into reconciled and beloved sisters and brothers.  Jesus doesn't destroy enemies by killing them--that is, frankly, too sloppy and ineffective for Jesus.   Jesus "destroys" enemies by dying for them so that they are not longer enemies but forgiven children.  In other words, if you bring Jesus to a gunfight, he sees the bigger picture--it's not the guys in black hats who are the enemy; it is the death and fear and hate that have them ensnared.  Killing the "bad guys", from Jesus' perspective, is not only cowardly, but insufficient and just plain shortsighted. It's like smashing the shards up more because you didn't have the patience to put the pieces of the vase back together. It's like thinking you've cured yourself of smallpox by scraping the blisters and pock marks off your skin while leaving the virus to course through your veins.   The real enemy is death.  The real enemy is the way sin distorts and infects and sickens our hearts.  You don't defeat that enemy with a knife or a gun or a bomb or a drone--you deal with it by breaking the power of death from the inside out, pouring yourself out in self-giving love.  Love is the only scalpel that goes deep enough to excise the cancer.

We need that reminder in a world and in a culture that believes that the right way to deal with an enemy is simply to select the right weapon to take to the fight, that you fight fire with fire, you fight angry yelling and mud-slinging with more angry yelling and mud-slinging, and you stop a bad guy with a gun by getting an even bigger gun.  But Jesus has promised us a victory that is not so meager.  Jesus has promised us a share in his victory that is won by getting at the real enemy--death itself--by breaking death open, rather than playing by death's rules.

Don't ever forget, even though we do still live in a world where evil has to be restrained, that Jesus' kind of victory is what creation really needs.  Don't ever forget, even though there needs to be restraint against gun-wielding drug dealers, armed terrorists, and cruel tyrants who gas their own people, that the real triumph does not happen by shooting the other side, but in the prayer, "Father, forgive them...."  And don't ever get comfortable with the inadequate means the world uses to try to fix things.  We are, after all, followers of Jesus, who only brought nails to the showdown on that Friday afternoon... and, it must be said, they turned out to be sufficient for the fight.

Lord Jesus, give us confidence in your ultimate victory over death, and your victory over the hate and fear in each human heart, so that we will no longer seek to destroy one another, but to let your love and justice victoriously transform enemies into reconciled sisters and brothers.

Lessons from a Company Man

Lessons from A Company Man--November 4, 2016

"If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied. But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died. For since death came through a human being, the resurrection of the death has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:19-22]

My grandfather was a company man.

In a cynical age like ours, in which people are constantly on the look-out for a better deal at the firm next door, and in which companies no longer promise you the same job, or even any job, for a whole career, that is a rare thing.  It is, in fact, sometimes difficult to read my grandfather's old work correspondence without a smirk--the sheer optimism, the dedication to helping the company succeed, the assumption that all his subordinates would share his unqualified commitment to hard work for the sake of hard work, those are all hallmarks of a different era that can seem foreign to the early 21st century. 

But my grandfather was not naïve.  He worked hard as an accountant for a big well-known company, and he put himself into his work with dedication for decades there--and then, at least as the family storytelling goes, he was pushed out and forced to retire when it suited "the company's interests" with little fanfare and hardly sufficient appreciation. But my grandfather was never one to let on.  He never said a word about it, not in all the years I knew him, and not in all those conversations.  He had drunk deeply from the words of the great poem by Kipling,

"If you can make a heap of all your winnings, and risk it on one turn of pitch and toss/ And lose, and start again at your beginnings, and never breathe a word about your loss..."

That is to say, my grandfather worked hard for a company with great loyalty and great dedication, and got rewarded with a shove out the door... but he never moaned and complained about it, because he had known better than to put his trust in "the Company."  (And truthfully, I don't know that it would have been a good thing for him to have stayed in the business any longer than he did--I don't know how well he would have gotten along with the rise of computers and technology anyhow, and the ways they made it possible to skimp on thoroughness.) 

I think often of that part of my family history, because I think that kind of voice, that kind of mentality, is sadly missing in our day and age.  Ours is an age and a culture that gets whiny and entitled when a business or an industry changes, or that acts surprised when a company lets you down.  I was talking with someone the other day about a business that had closed a few years ago in a nearby town, and the other person remarked, "It's sad that they went out of business," with a sort of simmering anger as though an injustice had been done.  Perhaps it is my own cynicism coming to the surface here, but that rather seems naïve to me--it is sad for the people who lost their jobs, to be sure, but I sometimes wonder where we ever got the notion that we should expect "the Company" to be there for us.  The market doesn't care about giving people jobs.  The market doesn't care about how many families are struggling.  The market doesn't care whether an old industry goes belly-up--it didn't when telegraph operators stopped being in demand, and it doesn't care now as people stop buying print newspapers and magazines to read them online.  The market is basically a jerk. If we are putting our trust in "the Company" or "the Market" to be good to us, we are in for disappointment.

These days I hear a lot of anger, and a lot of wistfulness for "how it used to be," and that is often tied in with a wish for business to be "the way it used to be."  Some part of me gets that... but at the same time, I wonder why we ever expected "the world" to be fair or right or just.  The world will yank the rug out from under you--in Hemingway's words, "the world breaks everyone... but afterward, many are strong at the broken places."  We can either stew in anger over a world that doesn't reward us the way we would like and that is changing faster than our towns and communities can keep up with, or we can ask again where our hope should have been all along.  Because... maybe The Company was an empty and dumb idol all along.  And unmasking it--calling an idol an idol--removes its power over us.

Look--"the Company" is going to continue to be at best indifferent to you, to me, to all of us.  "The Company" is, along with "The Government" and "The System" and "The Media" and "The World," one of what the New Testament calls the powers.  They are forces bigger than any one of us, and they are not looking to do us good.  But the followers of Jesus were never meant to put their hope in the Company, or the Government, or the System.  We are supposed to know better. 

That doesn't make us cynical--it should make us free, and focused.  Instead of complaining or stewing that the world is changing right underneath us, instead of demanding that business stay the same as it was thirty or fifty years ago, and instead of bemoaning that nobody is buying telegraphs anymore or railing against the Government for regulating lead in gasoline and making it less profitable, we are meant to be people who put our trust in the living God who promises to put all things right at the last.  "The Company" never will care about you, not really--if you put your trust there, you are bound for disappointment.  "The Market" is deaf and blind to your concerns; don't be fooled.  "The Government" will never love you--it can count, tax, regulate, or even organize you, but it will never love you. The rest of "The System" is all the same, too--once we are free from expecting the powers to save the day, we are able to focus on the One who does care about us, and who has already saved the day.

The World is going to treat you and me, and everybody else, pretty rough from time to time.  I can moan about it, or I can admit that "the world" was never looking to do me any favors in the first place. And once I'm free of that illusion "the world" has no power over me anymore.  I am free instead to find God has been faithful all along.

As Paul says it, "if for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied."  It's not about expecting The System to be sweet and kind, or even to stay the same.  No, our hope is in Christ.  And then we are freed to give ourselves fully--yes, even to work hard in our jobs for "the Company," but to do it because the work is worth doing, the energy is worth putting in, and the effort is worth making, regardless of whether "the Company" gives you a plaque  or certificate of appreciation or not.  We will pour ourselves into what we do like we are risking everything on one turn of pitch-and-toss... but we aren't doing it to impress or win favors from the Powers of the day.  We are done with that nonsense.  We will spend our lives, our energy, and our days in response to grace, not because the Company found a new carrot to dangle in front of me.

So I am done with whining and excuse-making about how "things are different from how they used to be." I am done with angry, petty Facebook posts wishing to make today into some supposedly great era that has past.  I am done with the bitterness of having expected The System to do more or do better for me.  The System, the Market, the Industry, the Company, and the Government, were always bound to let me down.  They cannot hold power over me anymore, because I am done with putting my hope in getting more stuff in this life.  The System no longer has the power to let us down; our hope is not rooted there.

My hope, and yours, too, and all of ours in Christ, is instead on the One who promises that grace will raise us up at the last, the One who promises life beyond the grip of death, the One who is loyal and faithful even when The Company isn't, or when The Industry packs up and moves on.

Do you feel it now?  We are free.

Lord God, keep us rooted in your promise to make all things right, so that we will not put our trust in the empty idols of our day.

The Divine Comedy

The Divine Comedy--November 3, 2016

"Then I heard what seemed to be the voice of a great multitude, like the sound of many waters and like the sound of mighty thunderpeals, crying out, 'Hallelujah! For the Lord our God the Almighty reigns.  Let us exult and give him the glory...'" [Revelation 19:6-7a]

Is this a comedy or a tragedy?

The universe, I mean.  History, I mean.  All of it.  Are we living in a story that ends bleakly, or abruptly, or in agonizing lack of resolution, like a chord with a major seventh in it as the last beat of a march?  Or does the Story of which we are a part end with things somehow put right?

There was an underappreciated movie from a few years ago called Stranger Than Fiction, a quirky film with Will Ferrell playing a man who starts to hear a narrator in his life (and who wouldn’t be surprised to start hearing Emma Thomspon’s voice everywhere you went?) giving a voiceover exposition to everything he did and said.  And while he is questioning his own sanity over hearing such an omniscient voice describing his actions, it turns out the voice is an author—and Ferrell’s character is the protagonist of her latest novel!  So, he turns to a literature professor who tells him that the first thing he has to do is to find out whether he is living in a comedy or a tragedy.  He has to know whether there is a happy ending in store, if he is going to figure out how to live in between the present moment and the last chapter.

It might seem at first like an absurd premise for a movie… except that in a sense, the Christian claim is not all that different.  We don’t get a voice-over from a famous actress narrating our choice of breakfast cereals in the morning, perhaps.  But we do start each day having been told that the end of the Story is a good one, a true and sure and satisfying one.  We Christians have been promised that the Story of the universe is a comedy--and a divine one at that!--even for all the awful and tragic things that happen in our lives, and that have happened throughout history.  (Perhaps there is wisdom in the old comedians’ wisdom that comedy equals tragedy plus time.) 

And maybe at its most basic, to be a Christian is to be someone who trusts that, by God’s promise and with Christ as the down payment on history, indeed as the famous mystic once put it, one day “all will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be made well.”

We lean on promises like these from Revelation, which say to us that the end of the Story is satisfying, and that, as theologian Douglas John Hall puts it, "all the evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, God reigns".  This is where our hope holds: for whatever is going on at this present moment, history is a comedy, without denying the tragic that comes along the way.  All WILL be made well, even if not yet.

And maybe that’s the other thing we need to be clear about—and, honestly, that we Christians GET to be clear about in a way that others may not be able to be.  The Christian hope, the hope of the Scriptures, is NOT that everything will go the way you want it to in life.  The individual chapters sometimes have rotten endings, both because of our own actions and because of the actions and choices of others far beyond our control.  Horrible things happen in this life, certainly. And the Christian faith is NOT a false optimism that EVERYTHING is guaranteed to work out right now by some invisible rule of fate.  There is a lot that happens in the in-between chapters of our lives that plays out as a result of our choices, or someone’s choices at any rate. 

And that means we bear a great deal of responsibility about how things go in our lives.  To say that the Story of the universe has a satisfying ending is NOT to say that I will always get the job I apply for, or that the girl will always say “yes” when you ask her out onto the dance floor. It does not mean that the candidate you vote for will win.  It does not mean that the candidate you vote for, even if victorious, will do a good job.  It does not mean that God is always on the "side" of those who use the most religious-sounding language.  It does not mean that I am entitled a career in the field I wish for, or that a career will just fall into my lap.  A lot of things in life require working for, and if they happen, they happen because you got yourself up off the couch and did them.  The Christian hope about the end of The Story does not mean the middle chapters are irrelevant--just that God promises us that all the loose ends and unfinished story-arcs will be gathered up by the last scene.

That also means that if we Christians are honest, we can say that we are not guaranteed that every relationship works the way we hope for.  Yes, sometimes people live decades estranged from a brother, a sister, a parent, a grown child, or a spouse.  We are not guaranteed that every relationship will be reconciled in this life—if it happens, it will happen because we have worked on mending the fences and restoring broken trust.  It means that we are not guaranteed that we will all get the 2.5 kids and the white picket fence life (and, whether that was ever the recipe for happiness or not anyway, is a matter of serious doubt, too, by the way).  It means that you and I are not owed or entitled to a string of bigger and bigger houses, or kids with steadily improving batting averages and report cards.  If you want your kid to get better at baseball, you have to spend the time playing catch. If you want a better shot at the job you want, you have to work hard and pour yourself into it. If you want the relationship to have a better chance of reconciliation, you have to be willing to do the hard work of lowering your defenses and daring both to forgive and to ask for forgiveness.  Much is possible by making those investments.  But those kinds of things are not “guaranteed” as a matter of Christian hope.  And any TV preachers who tell you otherwise are, not to put too fine a point on it, selling something—usually their own books. And Rule #1 of the gospel is "Beware of salesmen and sales pitches--real grace is always free."

Christian hope—real hope that the Story ends with hearts mended and a world restored—allows us to be honest about what is NOT our hope.  Knowing that the end of the story is the part that is assured, we can be truthful without spin about the things that are coming unglued right now.  And once we are honest about what is coming apart around us, or within us, we can then get to the point of asking what we will do about them.  We are not on our own in the midst of the brokenness of the present, either.  But we do need to be clear about what we have been PROMISED, and what has not been promised.  The end of the story is assured—history is a divine comedy.  The chapters along the way will contain heartache—but we can invite God to be present in the midst of them, too.

What if today, you and I started with an honest inventory of what things we CAN count on in this life, and what things are up to our decisions and choices and those of others? What could we have confidence in, and how would we face the work that is cut out for us then?

It's a comedy--the universe.  History. Everything.  There is a joyful promised ending.  It's a hilarious divine comedy.  Now, go face today.

Lord Jesus, assure us today of the end of our story, so that we can live through the middle today.