A Scarcity of Love

A Scarcity of Love--July 12, 2017

“So he came and proclaimed peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near; for through him both of us have access in one Spirit to the Father.” (Ephesians 2:17-18)

The fear is a killer—the fear that there won’t be enough love to go around.  That’s the fear that you lose sleep over.  That’s the fear that keeps me up at night.  It cuts to the quick.

Little children have it sometimes, about their siblings and their parents.  How can my parents love me and my brother, me and my sisters, completely and fully for all of us?  Isn’t there a limit to how much love they can spend on the others if they are still going to love me wholly?  How can mom and dad say to each of us, “I love you with all my heart?”  Can you remember, even if for only a moment, that fearful thought going through your mind—that there just wasn’t enough love to go around, and that you might be the one to get the short end of the stick?  Everything else in this life runs out at some point, we figure--doesn't that mean there must also be a scarcity of love?

To be honest, that’s not just a worry of the young. That fear is a vicious one with claws that can hang onto us and dig into us well after childhood.  Adult siblings still fight and fear over who will get more of their parents’ affection, as measured in inheritances and estates—perhaps not because of the cash value of things, but because we let dollar signs stand in as a gauge of love. 

Or we look at the busyness in the lives of other people in our families, people under our own roofs even, and we can’t help but fear that we will be lost in the cracks between their many commitments.  We ask, “Will there be time, and love, enough for me, too?” while the lyrics to “Cat’s in the Cradle” play in the background of our heads.

Or it’s the worry of foreseeing your friends becoming more distant to pursue other things.  Whether it was watching them all go off in different directions after high school, or seeing the way their social lives change as new people come into their families—spouses, kids, etc., or seeing them be uprooted to move across country for a new job, or just watching them grow apart from you as they pursue other things.  There’s that same fear—that something else will come along and take the love that was yours, and consequently, that there won’t be enough love to go around.

Come on, let’s tell the truth here: these are real fears for us, and we are not children anymore.

And to be really and truly, even brutally honest, they are not foolish fears. 

With other people, other limited, finite, only-so-much-time-in-the-day people like you and me, there are limits to how much attention or love can go around.  Love is not just a feeling; it is expressed in time spent, energy expended, pain shared, and attention given undividedly. As Zadie Smith puts it, “Time is how you spend your love.”  And there is only so much of yourself you can give.  There is a limited number of people you can make (and mean) lasting commitments to before you run out of minutes or attention span.  So, yeah, the fears we feared as children are maybe not so childish—they are realities that go along with knowing your friends from grade school will not always be your friends. And even though you insist to your retiring coworker that you’ll still stay in touch, you and he both know that unless you make the time and expend the effort, that is a lie. There is a reason that we fear there won’t be enough love from others to go around, and that I will be left the odd one out: all too often, that is just the truth.

But…

But—things are different between us and God.  Different, honestly, from every other relationship in your life.  Because God truly isn’t limited in love, and God’s love really will go around for all, whole and complete and perfect.  Today’s verses from Ephesians are meant to wipe away the fear that makes us hostile toward each other.  When we are overcome with the fear that there won’t be enough of God’s love to go around, we start to see each other as competition: if God loves you, then I am threatened.  If God loves me, then I can hold that over against you, I think.  In the early church that fear was expressed as the Jewish versus Gentile conflict—each group was afraid that if God really accepted the other, that their own access to God was cut off.  “If God loves the law-keeping, tradition-observing Jewish Christians,” thought the Gentile Christians, “then it means God can’t love us, who don’t do all of that keeping kosher and the like.”  And on the other hand, the Jewish believers worried, “If God is accepting these new Gentile believers, then what are we—chopped liver?  Doesn’t it matter how hard we have tried to show God we love him?  Doesn’t that count for something?  Is God kicking us out?”  It’s the same old fear—the fear that the love will run out.

Maybe it’s an understandable fear, since every human relationship in our lives does come with limits, and we can only divvy up our time, our attention, our care, and our thoughts, so many ways for so many people.  But the difference, Paul says, is that God is unlimited.  How did Paul say it at the beginning of this chapter?  God wants us to know “the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  In other words, God’s love is so big and so full and so infinitely wide that it doesn’t detract in the least from me to know that God loves you. 

I know, I know—that really is different from the other loves in our human experience.  Everybody else can only spread themselves out so far.  With everybody else, the choice to give some of your time and attention to someone comes at the cost of not being able to spend that same time and attention on someone else.  You pick how you spend them, but you can only spend them once. 

But it isn’t that way with God.  It just ain’t so.  There is no scarcity of love.

Once we get that difference—that God’s love for you is not a loss to me—we can rejoice at the sheer immensity of God’s love.  We can be glad that God has brought “those who were near” and “those who were far away” all together into one.  We can, with tears of joy, be glad that each of us can come close to the Father and know we are deeply beloved.  Nobody gets shortchanged.

That is news the world deeply needs, because every other love it has met is limited.  God’s love, at last, is the one thing that we never have to fear running out of.  That’s the thing about God’s love—you can’t run out of it, you can’t run beyond it, and you can’t outrun it, either. There’s more than enough.

Lord God, let us believe the truth about your inexhaustible love for us.  We are almost afraid to believe it, because we have learned to live with limited love and to expect that there’s only so much to go around.  In your divine abundance, fill us up so that we are not threatened by the way you fill the people around us with your love, too.

On Having Mass

On Having Mass--July 11, 2017

"You Philippians indeed know that in the early days of the gospel, when I left Macedonia, no church shared with me in the matter of giving and receiving, except you alone. For even when I was in Thessalonica, you sent me help for my needs more than once. Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the profit that accumulates to your account. I have been paid in full and have more than enough; I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Ephaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God." [Philippians 4:15-18]

"I just don't want to be... a burden."

I don't know how many times I have heard that sentiment expressed, whether in those precise words or in some other manner of speaking.  "I just don't want to be a burden," people say, "to my family... to my friends... to anybody."  Parents say it, looking at their children and at the future, and anxiously wishing they will not develop some kind of debilitating sickness that makes them dependent on their kids some day.  Kids say it in young adulthood as they weigh the question of how long they should live with their parents before they move out--and they worry about it when they apply for jobs or choose a major in college, nervously hoping there will be a future in their chosen career path.  Friends say it to themselves, questioning in their minds whether they dare confide in the other about whatever heartache or need is on the horizon, because they do not want to be the friend who dumps on everyone else all the time. 


All of that is to say, chances are, you have spoken that sentence, or at least wished that wish, "I don't want to be a burden," at some point along the way in your life.


And while we are just getting things out in the open, let's call that wish what it is--really, it is a fear.  We are afraid of being burdensome to others. We are afraid of being dependent on others.  We are afraid of straining the relationships of love in our lives by bringing our needs to others, because deep deep down, we are afraid that the elastic will give out, and the love will snap, and those we had asked to help carry our load will say, "No."


That means that really and truly, our fear of being a burden is just a polished-up way of saying we are afraid of being rejected because we aren't carrying our share, and we are afraid of having to see the uncomfortable reality that we aren't self-sufficient.  We try and make this sound all brave and noble and virtuous by saying it in a folksy, low-key way with a shrug, "Awww, shucks, I just don't wanna put you to no trouble... I don't want to be a burden...." but really we are covering our own fear.  We don't want to have to see that we are dependent on others... and we are afraid that if others see we depend on them, that they will reject us.  It turns out that's not really noble--that's just being fearful without wanting to say so.


And then I see these words of Paul the apostle's, where he just flatly and unapologetically talks about how he relied on the generosity of his friends in Philippi when he was going through a particularly rough patch in his life. And that's saying something for Paul--as he would have been glad to tell you, he lived through shipwrecks, beatings, imprisonments, riots, stonings, and being run out of town on a regular basis.  And in the worst times of his life, in the hardest times, he did indeed receive help from others.  He had been--gulp--a burden.


But instead of denying it, or pretending it didn't mean anything, or just sweeping it under the rug, Paul underlines it, highlights it, and calls attention to the generosity of the sisters and brothers in Christ who learned and developed their skill at giving... by having the chance to give when he was the one in need.  Paul was able to get over himself, and the fear of "what people will think" or whether folks would "respect him less", because he knew that his own need was also the laboratory for others to grow in their practice of love.  Paul owns his need--and lets it become the opportunity for the Reign of God to take shape in the lives and love of others.  They would learn how to be generous, how to give without being condescending or patronizing jerks, and how to give without pity, by loving Paul.  That is to say, they carried Paul when he was a burden... and so they built up their own spiritual muscles, the way you develop muscle tone by lifting weights.


Do you think Paul hadn't gone through his own phase of imagining he was an island, invulnerable and self-sufficient? Do you think Paul hadn't gone through his own fear of being a burden?  He was just like us in that way--he had to stumble over his own ego, and wrestle with his own sense of worth, and figure out how to deal with his own pride and imagined self-portrait of not needing anybody else.  And at the end of it, Paul just gave up on the illusion and owned it, "Yes... there are times when I am going to be a burden.  And I will need to lean on the strong arms of those Jesus has put around me to carry that weight for a while, and I will have to swallow my pride and let them do it."  Like Simon Peter letting Jesus wash his feet, like Jesus himself asking the Samaritan woman for a drink of water, there are those moments when the most faithful thing you can do is to own your need.


So, I'm going to try and listen to Paul's example today.  I'm not going to wince at the thought of sometimes being a burden to other people who love me.  In fact, I fully expect I'm going to be a burden to my kids one day--how else will they learn to love rightly, if they don't have me to practice on?  I don't mean that I'm going to go rack up gambling debts and make my children take extra jobs at night to pay off my liabilities while I sit on the couch and eat chips.  But I mean that in the course of life, just the normal course of life, I know it--and maybe Paul is teaching me not to be ruled by the fear of it any longer--there will come times when I am a burden to people I love.  There will be days of deep sadness when I lean on someone else to pick up the pieces of my heart.  There will be days when I get sick, and I need someone else to pick up the slack that I cannot pull.  There will be times when I am in one of those dark nights of the soul and will reach out to my kids, at whatever age they are then, to pull me out into the light.  There will be times I am a burden. 


There will be times for each of us to be a burden on others we count on to love us--we cannot not be.  After all, burden is just another word for weight, and anything of substance in this life has weight to it.  The only thing in this universe that doesn't have any mass is light.... and as another New Testament voice says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.  But for anybody else in creation, we have, and we are, loads to be carried.  The quicker we are honest about it, the quicker we can be free from the fear of being a burden.  We will simply own it, rather than being ruled by the fear of something as inescapable as gravity.


That brings up a helpful point here, too--when we say that Mercy moves us beyond the country of fear, it doesn't mean that the scary things in the world vanish. It means we are freed from being ruled by them.  To say that the grace of God is leading me beyond fear of being a burden does not mean I won't be a burden to anybody--it means I no longer have to live in the fear of it happening, or the fear of being rejected because I don't pull my weight, or the fear of seeing I am not self-sufficient.  If I am held in the arms of mercy, if I am carried in nail-scarred hands, I will trust that embrace to hold me, no matter how heavy I am or for how long.  And maybe with all the energy I save from not having to cover up my own neediness, I will have the ability to help carry someone else today who needs it on this day. 


My turn will come in its own good time.  I'm just not afraid of it anymore.


Lord God, carry us, and let us allow ourselves to be carried by the people you put in our lives... and give us the grace to carry others when it is their turn, as well.

The New Math

The New Math--July 10, 2017

"Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep."  [Romans 12:15]

I think, if we are really honest with ourselves, this is one of the scariest verses in the whole Bible for us.  At least if we are doing our math the old way.

See, for a lot of us--or maybe to be fair, for all of us at one time or another--we operate and see the world as though life is a zero-sum game.  And in a zero-sum game, every "plus" somewhere in the closed system is a "minus" for someone else.  Your win is my loss, and vice-versa. 

Some things in life, of course, really are like that--a baseball game has one winning team and by definition one losing team.  The election for senior class president that you lost back in your high school days might have been your defeat, but it was a victory for Susie Heffernen, who put it on her college applications and got into a good school on account of the win. A childhood chess match against your uncle.  The lone popsicle left in the box on a hot summer afternoon, and there you are, scowling at your brother as you realize there is only one treat and two people who want it--it seems like one of you is destined to be the winner, refreshed with artificial cherry flavoring dribbling down your chin, and the other will be the loser, parched, envious, and left with nothing.  That's zero-sum: one person's win is simultaneously someone else's loss.

When we are children, that tends to be how we see everything.  And accordingly, we have a hard time being happy when someone else has good fortune, because we instantly see their positive as a loss to us.  I see this with my kids all the time--and at the ages of four and five, it is perhaps excusable, maybe even inevitable.  One gets their bowl of cereal first at breakfast--not because I am trying to show favoritism, but because I only have two hands and can only carry so much to the table at once.  And even though the other will be getting their cereal in a matter of mere moments, the one who is left waiting stares daggers into the eyes of the sibling with Cocoa Krispies, because to a child, it looks like a zero-sum game. 

At some point, you hope you grow out of that kind of thinking, maybe because after enough breakfasts, you see that sometimes you get the bowl of cereal first and sometimes the other person does... and the world doesn't end.  Maybe because eventually you see that the bottom line is that everybody gets to eat, even if some start thirty seconds ahead of the other.  Maybe even you come to see that when you care about someone, like a brother or a sister, you come to want their wellness and happiness more than your own, and you would actually rather they get the good thing first.

But in the mean time, for as long as you are stuck seeing the world as a zero-sum game, it is virtually impossible to be happy for someone else's good fortune, and just as hard not to indulge in a little schadenfreude when something bad happens to them.  As long as we are stuck seeing the world from that childish vantage point, we will find it impossible to be happy for someone else's happiness, and it will be hard, too, to share in someone's sorrow. 

And the reason?  Fear.

For as long as I see the world as a colossal zero-sum system where my loss is your win, I will always be afraid of losing. As long as I am assuming that the mathematics of one person's gains must be counterbalanced with an equal and opposite amount of loss for someone else, I will always be afraid of losing out, of losing status, of losing my comfortable position, of losing my privileges, of losing my place on top.  And so anybody else having something that looks even remotely like success is going to intimidate me and make me insecure, because I'm afraid that if they are the winners, then I must be the loser, and I don't want that.  Once you accept the picture of the world that says your win is my loss, you are already doomed to be stuck in fear.  It's the tyranny of zero-sum math. And from there, fear kills our ability to rejoice with those who rejoice... and to weep with those who weep.

This is why the only hope for us to become people who can genuinely accompany people--to weep in their weeping and rejoice in their rejoicing--is Mercy.  To see the world through the lens of the grace of God, to see that God runs the universe, not as a zero-sum game, but as a table spread where everybody gets to eat, breaks the old childish view of things.  Once we see that it is possible for someone else's good turn to simply be... good... and not an automatic loss for me, it changes everything about how we see the world, and how we see one another.  Fear no longer makes me feel threatened by your success.

There are still plenty of childish voices around us (and if we are very, very honest, they still bubble up from within us, too), some with far too many decades of life to have gotten stunted that way and who should know better.  There are still plenty of voices that assume that the world is broken up entirely and completely into "winners" and "losers," and that every choice, every action, every decision, will either be good-for-me-and-bad-for-you, or bad-for-me-and-good-for-you.  There are still plenty of voices that see every moment as either me winning out against everybody else, or me losing out to someone else, as though every moment is a monumental clash for the ages.  It is there on the international scene where you get the voice of the powerful who feel threatened when someone else has success.  It is there in that ping of envy in your own heart when someone else gets a promotion at work.  It is there when I get all fussed up about someone else being given a break in life, and it is there when I complain about other people being able to feed their kids or go to school because I have to pay my hard-earned money in taxes.  It is all still the same childish zero-sum thinking that chooses to see the world divided into wins and losses, us and them, good-for-you-equals-bad-for-me.

And into the midst of that childish zero-sum world, there is this minority report we call the Reign of God, the economy of mercy where all are fed without talk of crowning some 'winners' and some 'losers.'  It is the eyes that are aware of Mercy that gain the courage to rejoice over someone else's success and to share tears with someone else in their loss.  Grace makes it possible for me to no longer be threatened or insecure when something good happens to you, and instead to know that good for you can be good for all... and that in the household of God, everybody gets to eat.

Today, the Mercy of God is moving us beyond the country of fear into the realm of genuine compassion, because mercy breaks me from the grip of fear that makes me envious and bitter.  Today, mercy moves us beyond childishly seeing everything as a contest, and into a whole new order of the day.

Today, the mercy of God is teaching us to rethink how we have been doing our math... and to see that in the power of God, the world is not a zero-sum game of winner, losers, and Cocoa Krispies. Everybody gets to eat.

Lord God, move us beyond childish fear so that we can genuinely rejoice with those who rejoice and weep with those who weep.

Facing the Weather

Facing the Weather--July 6, 2017

"On that day, when evening had come, [Jesus] said to [his disciples], 'Let us go across tot he other side.' And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said, 'Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?' He wok up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, 'Peace! Be still!' Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, 'Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?' And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, 'Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?'" [Mark 4:35-41]

A summer storm came through a couple of weeks ago, and the resulting flooding caused some major damage for folks around town here.  One neighbor down the street lost their furnace from the amount of water that filled their basement.  Others lost whatever treasures they had been storing in their basements and brought the ruined remains of shelves, boxes, couches, and such out onto their tree lawns in the following days to be pitched. 

There are plenty of deeply devout, utterly faithful people in our community--but the storms still came.  There are plenty of folks in our county who trust in Jesus, but the flash floods still cost them.  To say that Jesus leads us beyond the country of fear, as we have been exploring this week, does not mean that we are given some promise that nothing bad will happen in life--to us or to those we love.  Living out from under the shadow of fear does not mean we are invulnerable, nor that God will not allow your boat or your basement to be swamped with incoming water.  Ask the disciples. 

Or consider this news item of the last few weeks.  There is an iceberg about to calve off of the Antarctic ice shelf--a monster of ice hundreds of feet thick down below the surface of the water, and as large across as the entire state of Delaware.  Scientists say it is perhaps the largest piece of ice to break off there in all of years humans have been recording such things.  That thought fills me with dread--dread for the ships that might encounter such a beastly block of ice... dread for the thought of some ship's crew member who will think he sees land in the distance and how his heart will sink to his feet when he sees that the "island" is coming toward him and his vessel with terrible speed... dread for what it might mean for the world that larger and larger icebergs are forming, and what will happen when this one's 2,300 square miles of ice melts into a trillion new gallons of seawater. 

Now, I believe in God.  And I believe that the God we meet in Jesus does indeed free us from the grip of fear... but I also have to believe that giant icebergs are real.  Faith in God does not suddenly glue the ice shelf back together, and it makes no promises that this new iceberg will cause no damage or have no lasting repercussions.  As much as I believe that faith in God's goodness and grace leads us out from being ruled by fear, I also believe that disastrous things still happen.  The Christian faith is not--or at least is not meant to be--license to believe in immunity from bad things.  The boat with the disciples still takes on water when the storm comes--and it still comes, even with Jesus onboard.  The houses full of people of deep faith still get basements full of water when the pop-up thunder cell overwhelms the storm sewers--and those summer rains still come, even for church-going people in a pleasant town.  The iceberg will still break off of the Larsen ice shelf, along with whatever portentous meanings or ominous consequences that brings--and such things still happen, along with hurricanes, famines, epidemics, wars, bombings, and shooting rampages, even though this is God's world.

All of this is to say that whatever it means to have faith in the mercy of God, and whatever it means to let such faith free us from captivity to fear, it does not mean that terrible things may not still happen in life.  They can.  They do.  Being free from fear does not mean being free from seeing reality as it is. Freedom from fear (for the followers of Jesus) is not the right to stick our heads in the sand or ignore dangerous realities, or the power to wish them away. 

Notice that even in a story that ends with Jesus calming a storm--the storm still comes.  The ship takes on water.  And the disciples really are feeling like Jesus must not care.  To be a disciple of Jesus does not mean you are spared storms or their consequences, and it does not even guarantee us a warm, fuzzy feeling inside that everything is happy and fine.  The disciples go through their share of storms.  For that matter, they would each one day lose their lives for their faith in Jesus--trust in Jesus does not mean being spared suffering or loss.

So when we talk about being free from the power of fear, it is not because we have been given some inside information that nothing bad will happen.  It is not the kind of easy bravery you find when you know nothing unpleasant will happen.  That is hardly bravery--that's rather like being in the old Monty Python sketch where the Spanish Inquisition uses "the comfy chair" and the "soft cushion" to get prisoners to talk.  Nobody lives in fear of the pain of "the comfy chair" because there is no pain.  Real freedom from fear, on the other hand, arises precisely in the midst of real suffering and real pain.

To say that mercy moves us beyond the country of fear, then, is not to say that I can use God as some magical good luck charm to ward off the storms from hitting my house, or the waters from overwhelming my boat, or the sea levels from rising on my home planet.  Simply saying, "I believe in God" does not put a protective force field around my house when the flood comes.  And simply choosing to ignore a problem by saying, "Well, God will fix it" is not what faith really means.  Being freed from the grip of fear is not license to dress up willful ignorance in religious garb, and genuine Christ-like courage is not permission to be naïve.

Rather, when Jesus mercifully leads us beyond the grip of fear, it means the ability to see things honestly, truthfully, even with stark clarity (whether we like what we see or not), and then to respond with our wits about us, rather than either being throw into chaos or covering our eyes and ears.  To be led beyond the country of fear is to be freed from having fear dictate how we deal with a world that is still full of swirling seas and scary things.

So as you and I step out the door today, grounded in faith that our lives are held by a God of grace and swept up in Jesus' movement of mercy, we do so with open eyes and heads held high.  Dangers still lurk in the world--we do not pretend they do not.  Terrible things happen in life--we do not get to imagine that God is our magical good luck charm to ward off thunderstorms, icebergs, cancer, or other people's hatred.  But rather being led beyond the country of fear means we no longer have to dwell in fear--that we no longer have to live under its authority.  We can see the troubles of the day in their right perspective, with clear eyes, and then to deal with them compassionately and wisely.

You'll note, here in this story from Mark's Gospel, that when Jesus is awakened and has calmed the storm, he does not say to his disciples, "Didn't you boneheads know that there was never any danger?" nor does he say, "There wasn't ever really a storm--that was all a hoax!"  The storm is real, and the danger was real, too.  Rather, when Jesus asks, "Why are you afraid?" it is as if to remind them that they do not have to be ruled by fear, but can face the situation with honest vision and grounded clarity.  The promise, in other words, is not that we will face no storms in this life, but rather that Mercy changes the way we endure them. 

Living by fear will throw me into a meltdown of panic when the storm starts, and I'll be no use to anybody, whether in my own house, my own boat, or to the neighbors down the way (did you notice that these verses from Mark say that there were other boats around in this story, but the panicking disciples don't even think to ask about how they are doing?).

Living by willful ignorance will send me off in my boat for a three-hour tour with the mistaken assumption that no storms can come because I am a Christian, or that storms aren't really very dangerous after all.

But living beyond the country of fear means that when the storm comes, I don't suddenly lose my head, or start blaming the rest of the people on the boat, or forgetting about the people in the other boats around me, either.  Being free from the rule of fear means that I can keep my head and heart above water enough to still respond to danger with compassion, so that instead of saying, "It's every man for himself!" I can help pull someone into my boat who was thrown overboard from theirs when it was sinking.  Being free from the rule of fear means that when someone else is seeking refuge from the storm, I can still have the compassion to take them in and offer shelter, rather than telling them to fend for themselves.  It is not that awful things will not still happen in life because we believe in God, but rather it is following Jesus that gives me a whole new way to respond to the awful things that happen with clarity and with love.

There is likely rain coming today.  We don't have to pretend it's not... and we don't have to lose our heads over it.  But... maybe you and I can have the calmness and clarity of mind to remember and umbrella today--and to keep any eye out for someone else who is getting drenched and to offer to share ours.

Lord God, give us the clarity and compassion to face whatever the weather brings today, so that we are not ruled by fear, but able to face fearful things wisely.

The Gospel According to Luke (Cage)

The Gospel According to Luke (Cage)--July 5, 2017

"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because he first loved us. Those who say, 'I love God,' and hate their brothers or sisters, are liars; for those who do not love a brother of sister whom they have seen, cannot love God whom they have not seen." [1 John 4:18-20]

We all have this untapped superpower, resting within us, and waiting to be unleashed.  It's true.  Sometimes it just takes a while for us to think it through and to trust that it is real.  But when we do... look out--the world gets turned upside down.

I have been re-watching the Marvel TV series "Luke Cage"--I say re-watching because although I jumped in with both feet when the show was first released on Netflix a year or two ago, my wife is sorely behind in her comic-book-inspired superhero TV watching and now in the days of summer she can catch up on this very important work.  I should confess that until our kids started watching Spider-Man cartoons a few years ago, I had never even heard of Luke Cage (also known from time to time as Power Man in the comics), even though he has been around as a comic book character since the early 70s.  At least in the Netflix series, Luke Cage is given both superhuman strength and indestructible skin.  And in the arc of the show's first season, Luke comes to realize that since he can't be stopped by bullets, he doesn't have to be afraid of facing the bad guys head on.  

So there's a great montage in one episode where Luke Cage goes around to all these local bad guys who have stolen things from his neighbors in Harlem, and without any anxiety or rage, he just walks right through their gunfire and takes back the things that have been stolen, so he can return them to their rightful owners.  He will take bad guys' guns (or even the guns of misguided friends who think they need weapons to win) and crush them in his hands, but he will not shoot back or kill them.  He will take whatever shots they aim at him, but the bullets bounce right off of him.  Luke Cage is a hero in a bullet-hole-riddled hoodie who doesn't run away from doing good because he is no longer afraid of what anybody can do to him.  And because of that, he is completely free.

And the more I think about it, the more I let that image of the bulletproof hero in the hoodie roll around in my mind, the more I think this version of Luke Cage makes for a powerful picture of the people caught up in Jesus' movement of mercy.  I don't mean to suggest that following Jesus makes one bulletproof, or immune to the sorrows, troubles, or difficulties of life.  No, not at all--and despite what the televangelists and radio preachers peddling their latest books may say, believing in Jesus is not a ticket to health and wealth.  But what I find so captivating, and so illuminating about the image of Luke Cage walking through the rain of gunfire with his head held high is the way his freedom from fear leads him to do good to others around him.  Being free from fear of what anybody can do to him leads enables him to help... to defend... to protect... in a word, to love.

This is the connection that today's verses from First John are making as well.  For the people of God, there is no longer any need to be ruled by fear--and once that sinks in, we find ourselves courageously entering into the troubles, heartbreaks, injustices, and broken places of others to accompany people there.  John starts with the idea that genuine love--God's "perfect" love--casts out fear, like a demon being exorcised.  And then John makes a crucial point: "for fear has to do with punishment."  So often, we let ourselves be ruled by fear because deep down, we are afraid of some kind of punishment or pain.  Sometimes it is a fear of the pain of being laughed at, rejected, excluded, troubled, or getting picked on if we dare to live the love of Jesus.  Sometimes the fear is that God is out to zap us.  Sometimes it's all of the above.  As much as we may say we believe the Gospel's promise that we are "saved by grace through faith apart from works," there is still some nagging voice inside us whispering doubts to us.  "No, that's too good to be true!  You can't really count on God's totally free forgiveness--you can't really believe that grace is real!  There must be a catch!  Something you have to DO to earn it!"  We struggle with this nagging guilt that we aren't really acceptable after all, or that God's love really turns out to be as conditional as a contract, rather than a free promise and a total gift. 

But John keeps point us back to the scandalous notion of love that really is unconditional.  And if we dare believe that--if we dare believe that God isn't looking to punish us or zap us, well then, Sweet Christmas! we are freed.  If we dare believe like Paul could say to the Romans, "I am convinced that nothing--neither height nor depth nor things present nor things to come nor anything else in all creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus," well, then, all of a sudden, we don't have to be afraid of what anybody else can do to us, either.  And when I am no longer petrified over some fear that God is looking for reasons to shoot me with a lightning bolt, and no longer afraid of what someone else will do or think because I dare to live by the love of Jesus, well, then, I am free to head back into the world to do good... to love others, to offer welcome to people who have been told they don't belong, to speak truth where it needs to be spoken, to listen to those waiting to be heard, to bind up the brokenhearted, to share the sufferings of someone else. 

And in a very important sense, even though we aren't bulletproof, the followers of Jesus are part of an invincible (ultimately) movement to gather all things, all people and all creation up into the love of God.  We are meant to be people who are no longer afraid of "what people will think" or "what looks reasonable" or "whether we look like winners or losers to others."  We no longer have to be afraid of God watching over our shoulders to threaten us or punish us--we have been promised that we are permanently and unchangeably accepted in Christ.  And when we really take that seriously, when we no longer fear what anybody else can do to us and when we really do trust that God is unconditionally "for us" as a gift of grace, we don't just stay put behind closed doors.  We go out, into a dangerous world and a rain of violence sometimes, but we go... because we are no longer afraid.  God's love has cast out fear... and as people no longer ruled by fear, we are free to love.

When you and I catch ourselves withdrawing again, turning our faces away from others, ignoring the suffering of others, or pretending we don't have to deal with them, what if we would stop and ask ourselves, "What am I really afraid of here?  And why do have I have to be afraid of it any longer?"  After all, if it is true that nothing can separate us from the love of God--nothing at all, not even our own worst mess-ups or lingering guilt or fears of being unacceptable--if it true that we are unconditionally loved, we simply don't have to be afraid anymore.  And we are able, with our heads held high, to step into the face of danger to bring the presence of love.  The love of God leads us beyond the country of fear.

That is the superhuman ability placed in your hands today.  That power--the power to love fearlessly is waiting to be unleashed on the day ahead.

Lord God, let your mercy make us free from fear, so that we can love as boldly as you do.

Beyond the Country of Fear

Beyond the Country of Fear--July 4, 2017

"Then Moses went up to God; the LORD called to him from the mountain, saying, 'Thus you shall say to the house of Jacob, and tell the Israelites: You have seen what I did to the Egyptians, and how I bore you on eagles' wings and brought you to myself. Now therefore, if you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you shall be my treasured possession out of all peoples. Indeed, the whole earth is mine, but you shall be for me a priestly kingdom and a holy nation. These are the words that you shall speak to the Israelites.'" [Exodus 19:3-6]

Go to a Passover Seder meal sometime, and notice the tense of the verbs.

As the great story of God's deliverance of the Hebrew slaves is retold, as the unleavened bread is broken and passed, as the bitter herbs and salt water recount the tears and bitterness of centuries of bondage, and as the announcement of the defeat of Pharaoh is recounted, notice that the storytelling in the Passover Haggadah is framed in the present tense. "This is the night..." the recitation goes, not "A long time ago, God used to do stuff like this..."  "God set US free..." the storytelling says, not simply, "A long time ago, God freed a long-since dead group of our ancestors."  The storytelling telescopes the flow of time, as if it is all happening now... as if humanity is in constant need of being set free.

And that is exactly the point. 

The story recounted in the Exodus--the great drama of being set free from Pharaoh and the ways of Pharaoh's Egypt--isn't just a one-time fluke, a solitary intrusion of God into one moment in history.  It is the way God is always at work in the universe--always setting people free, always drawing people who were told they were nobodies and calling them precious and treasured, always taking those on the margins and giving them a new home, always lifting up the lowly and deflating the puffed-up powerful pretenders like Pharaoh.  The God whose story is told around every Jewish household's Passover Seder plate is the God who keeps leading people from the dominion of fear... into the new wilderness territory of hope, courage, mercy, and love.  And the reason that the Passover storytelling is recounted in the present tense is that God keeps moving us beyond the country of fear.

The Passover story is all about breaking the power of fear.  Fear was how Pharaoh ruled. Do what Pharaoh says... or else his soldiers will silence you in this life, and the gods at his command will punish you in the life to come.  The whole national economy of Pharaoh's Egypt was run on fear--slaves were to be afraid of their masters, lowly peasants were afraid of being made into slaves, nobles were afraid of losing their status, and (although he dared not admit this out loud) Pharaoh was afraid of being overpowered by the slaves... and so he kept threatening, cajoling, and blustering to make them afraid.  It was a vicious cycle, and it fed on itself like an ouroboros, fear begetting fear begetting fear.  Fear is a clever demon, it turns out, and it was (and is) clever enough to hide behind the scenes and let everyone simply become petrified of one another, and of Pharaoh most of all.  So when the God of the Hebrew slaves strikes down the arrogance of Pharaoh and sets the Israelites free, it is a frontal assault on the grip of fear to keep people in that horrible circle.  The Exodus story is not simply the story of an ethnic group making a journey on a map--it is the story of God's victory over the power of fear that kept the Israelites enslaved.

The letterheads of the powers of the day may change--Pharaoh's Egypt, Babylon, Rome, and the rest of the litany of empires that rise and fall--but they are all really the same country of fear.  And we human beings keep selling ourselves into captivity to fear, to the point where we forget what it was like to ever not be afraid.  The labels of the fears change, too, but fear's demonic power still makes us all eye "them" with suspicion, just like fear made everyone in Pharaoh's Egypt afraid of everybody else.  Fear doesn't respect national boundaries or the century markers of history--it keeps setting up shop in every new era, across the globe, and fear keeps captivating human hearts to dwell in its dominion.

We like to celebrate our freedom, we Americans.  Especially on a day like today, when we recount the story of our own national independence.  We like to draw comparisons, too, envisioning ourselves as a sort of new exodus story, with the British cast in the role of Pharaoh's Egypt.  And then we imagine that with the signing of the Declaration of Independence, or with the end of the Revolutionary War, or the drafting of the Constitution (pick a moment, if you like), we imagine that the captivity ended, and that we have ever since been free from the rule of a dominating power, simply because we were no longer subjects of King George. 

And in that sense, we sound an awful lot like the so-and-sos who debate with Jesus in John's Gospel and who say, "We are children of Abraham--and have never been slaves to anybody!" while forgetting that most of the story of those descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob was lived either as slaves, as occupied people, or as exiles.  That is to say, we have forgotten that while the letterheads on the empires come and go--from Babylon to Britain, the power of fear keeps reaching its claws around us to capture us again.  We forget that even if there is no longer a crown involved, we keep offering ourselves up to become subjects once again of the dominion of fear.

Of course, fear knows no borders, no party lines, nor limits to its jurisdiction.  To be human is to be constantly susceptible to surrendering ourselves to fear.  And so we let ourselves, again and again, be made afraid.  Afraid of "them"--whoever we are persuaded to believe the dangerous "them" might be in any given era.  Afraid of losing our comfort.  Afraid of losing our security.  Afraid of losing our status.  Afraid of losing the golden-tinted time in our memories or imaginations when things were better.  Any and all of those fears grab hold of us and declare us to be their subjects, and without even realizing we have done it, we surrender to them, and allow ourselves to live in the country of fear again. And when that happens, we do just what the biggest scaredy-cat in the whole Exodus story, Pharaoh himself, did--we hate.

Pharaoh was afraid of having his power, his privilege, and his established system overturned by the growing numbers of the Hebrews... and so he lets the fear blossom into hate that seeks to oppress, enslave, and exterminate the ones he is afraid of.  Pharaoh justifies it in the name of preserving his comfortable, traditional way of life.  He says he is only protecting his society from the influence of those dangerous new faces who have settled in his territory. He forgets the way those same newcomers had saved Egypt once before in the days of Joseph and the famine, and instead he lets fear whitewash his memories to cast himself as the hero and these foreigners from Canaan as a dangerous threat.  Even though Pharaoh is, in a sense, the head villain of the Exodus story, we sometimes forget that he is the one most afraid in that whole saga, and that it is his fear that drives him to reckless violence and dangerous tyranny.  Fear makes him hate, fear makes him suspicious of "them," and fear makes him believe that any means are justifiable to keep his grip on "the way things are."  Pharaoh doesn't realize that he has made himself a willing subject under the rule of fear, too.

If we find ourselves doubting that we, too, live in the country of fear, just take a look in the bathroom mirror.  Have we allowed fear to make us hate people too?  Have we allowed fear to make us divide the world, or our country, or our community, into groups of "us" and "them"?  Have we gotten comfortable with the idea that "they" are expendable because I need to look out for me and my group first? Have I gotten comfortable with the thought that I would kill someone else without a second thought if it would keep my house safe and all my oh-so-valuable possessions from being lost?  Have I gotten numb to the ways I start to clutch my bag closer to me, or cross to the other side of the street when I see someone different--and have I convinced myself that's just a "normal" response to someone I deem suspicious?  See, the diabolical genius of fear is that convinces us that what it whispers in our ears is normal, is usual, is just the price of doing business, and that it is really a life of vulnerable love that is foolish and strange.  Pharaoah didn't see how he had become captive to fear's power, either.

See?  The need for deliverance from captivity wasn't just millennia ago under Pharaoh--the need for exodus from the country of fear is ever-present.  Just when we have convinced ourselves we are finally free of its grasp, we invent a new thing, a new group, a new reality to be afraid of, and we let it bend our hearts into hating again, into justifying any means for the end of making the new boogey-man go away.  The labels and letterheads change, but the fear keeps clawing its way back.

This, dear friends, is what the movement of God is all about in the world--freeing us from the dominion of fear, wherever and however it rears its ugly head.  God's movement--the movement of grace and liberation--is always a present-tense motion to gather us up, like the Hebrew children from under Pharaoh's boot, and to love us into freedom beyond the country of fear.  And you'll notice, it is a movement of mercy from beginning to end.  The children of Israel haven't earned a thing, followed any rules, or kept any commandments first--God just up and frees them, because God will not accept the rule of fear, whether it is going by the name of Pharaoh's Egypt, Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon, Nazi Germany, the Jim Crow South, or anybody else's label.  God makes a point of saying to the Israelites, "Look here--see how I freed you, I took you out from under Pharaoh's grasp, and I brought you to myself... so that you would not have to become a new version of Pharaoh's Egypt every again."  The hope--God's own hope--is to set us free so that we will not keep selling ourselves back into indentured servitude to the latest version of fear's dominion.  And even though we do keep finding ways to let fear take hold of us, and then to let fear curdle into hatred and suspicion, the living God keeps pulling us outward, forward, and beyond the country of fear.  Freedom from the power of fear is not a reward for good behavior, it is a gift of grace.  It is the movement of mercy, because the living God did not make us to live under the grip of fear.

Nobody is meant to live in fear--not the Hebrew slaves, not the Egyptian citizenry, not even Pharaoh.  Nobody is meant to live in fear today, either--not refugees of an endless war in Syria, not you and me, anxious about terrorism or a mass shooting breaking out, and not the powers of the day, either.  And yet... we all are captive to the power of fear yet again.... even all these millennia after the great exodus story was first told.  And so, what we most deeply need on a day like today, is both the honest, open-eyed awareness of all the ways we have let ourselves, whatever our position, become ruled again by the power of fear... and the mercy of God that keeps finding people trapped in fear and bringing them out into the stark clarity of the wilderness beyond Pharaoh's grip, beyond the rule of the powers of the day, beyond the country of fear.

This is the movement to which we are called.  As you and I eat hot dogs and watch fireworks today, as we remember one moment of independence from an empire past, let us be honest as we also look at the ways we keep letting ourselves be ruled by fear in new disguises, and let us dare to hope, like the Passover storytelling teaches us, to say, "This is the day in which God sets us free once again."

Today, God is setting you... and me... and all people... free from the power of fear and of hate.  Let us dare to believe it is true.

Lord God, you who freed slaves in Memphis, Egypt and in Memphis, Tennessee, you who keep setting people free by bringing us beyond the country of fear, give us the courage to see ourselves truthfully, to recognize our own captivity to fear honestly, and to step forward beyond it as you lead us.

Lovingly Stuck

Lovingly Stuck--July 3, 2017

“There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all.” (Ephesians 4:4-6)

I can’t get Gerry Rafferty’s voice out of my head singing the refrain of the Stealers Wheel song:

“Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right—here I am, stuck in the middle with you.”

Maybe that doesn’t sound like a very complimentary way of describing the community of God’s people, the community we usually call “church.”  But if Paul is right that we belong to the body of people who share one faith, one baptism, and one God who is named Father of us all, well then, part of being a Christian means being… stuck with each other.

That might sound like complaining—I do not mean it to be so.  I mean, rather, that if Paul is right (and I think we ought to take that as a default assumption here), then we can’t “opt out” of belonging in this body of believers.  We can’t decide to stay home and phone it in or just watch from a distance.  And we can’t just adopt a “I’m taking my toys and going home” attitude and go off looking to do this faith thing on our own.  To be a Christian is not only to be in a relationship with God through Jesus—it is to be drawn into a relationship with everybody else claimed by God through Jesus, too. We can’t separate ourselves from the rest and say, “I don’t need you—I’ve got Jesus, and he’s all I am interested in. The rest of you can just go home.”  We are stuck in the body… with each other.

But that’s really a good thing.  In fact, it’s a grace thing.  And it's a Spirit thing.

It’s a grace thing because it means that God doesn’t give the option of us voting someone off the island—or of someone else voting ME off the island—and out of the body, just because we don’t get along.  Grace means that I belong, and I belong alongside everybody else who belongs, in spite of my rough edges, or careless words, or my failures.  And there’s no second-class-citizen status, or leper-colony-on-the-outskirts-of-the-church where I can be banished because I don’t fit in.  To belong in it means to belong fully, completely, and wholly.  There is no “bronze level” for newbies and then a “silver” and “gold” and “platinum” level for the better connected Christians.  There is one body.  There is one faith.  There is one baptism that washes us and claims us all.  There is one Spirit who gathers us all together in one great sweeping motion like children in a mother's arms. So even when I’m the joker or the clown, I have a permanent place at the table. We are all blessedly “stuck” in the middle with each other… because Christ himself is committed to sticking it out with each and all of us. 

We live in the age of the paid-membership—where you can belong in a community, but only for so long, and only if you pay your dues to stay in the club.  We are taught, then, to think that all relationships are temporary, and that all belonging is conditional.  But Jesus brings us into something new: a love that won’t let us go.  He says to us, “You are mine, and I will not leave you or vote you out or get tired of you.  I will see this through with you.  I will stick it out with you.”  He says it to you—but he also says it all of us, not just some imaginary “diamond-level” Christians who have racked up enough God-points. 

The edge to all of this is that it means there are going to be other members of the body that you don’t particularly like but still are bound to in love... because the Spirit says they belong.

The grace to all of this is that it means that even if nobody else in the body thinks you are worth keeping around, even on the days you feel like just dead weight, Jesus says you belong, and he is the only one who gets a say.  Claimed in the waters of baptism, you and I are part of the one body.  His one body.

Looks like Jesus has chosen to be “stuck”—lovingly stuck—in the middle with you.

Lord Jesus, enable us to believe that we belong, and enable us to love all those whom you insist belong alongside of us, too.