A Good Trade

A Good Trade--September 11, 2018

[Jesus said:] “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” [Mark 8:36-38]

The old cliché is right:  the one who dies with the most toys in the end… still dies. 

If we have come to that realization, then the real question is, What is really of any worth?  What has real value, if all the "stuff" we spend our time and energy is just... stuff?

And, ultimately, what is worth spending our lives on? 

See, there’s the hitch:  you can’t help but spend your life on something.  Every moment that ticks past is gone, done, spent, and can’t be gotten back.  You spend your minutes and your days on something.  The question is whether it’s worth the trade: what would you exchange sixty seconds’ worth of breath away for?  How much is a minute of life worth to you?  And what things that you spend your life on will really last or matter in the end?  What things will endure?  What things aren’t even worth the time it takes to buy them, much less the time spent working to pay for them?

There was a movie that came out a few years ago called In Time, that put the question very clearly.  The premise was a future in which people are bio-engineered to stop aging at 25, and then have only 12 more months to live, unless they buy or sell minutes of life, to be added or subtracted through counters embedded under your arm like a digital clock tattoo.  So movie tickets or coffee cost a mere few minutes of your life, and a car costs years and years.  The metaphor is obvious:  time is money.  Or at least, time is something you cannot help but spend.  The open question is what is worth the trade.

Well, the moviemakers clearly didn’t invent the idea that our lives are spent on something.  At best, they are riffing on the point Jesus makes here.  You could spend all of your energy raking in piles of possessions, or even gain the “whole world,” but if it costs you your life, what would be the point?  All of a sudden you can hear the song “Cat’s in the Cradle,” in the background, can’t you, with the well-worn message that if you spend your life at the office, you shouldn’t be surprised if your life is empty later on when the kids are spending their lives at the office, too.  What’s worth the trade of your span of years?  What is worth a life, or part of a life?

In truth, it’s more than just a length of time that Jesus is talking about.  When he talks about forfeiting your “life” or what can be given “in return for their life,” the word he is using means something like, “the self” or “whatever it is that makes you you.”  It is the word we bring into English as “psyche,” and it sometimes is also translated “soul.”  What is worth spending your self--your most essential core--on?  What is worth giving your life for?  What would you be willing to trade your deepest self, your very soul, for?  Not just years of existence, but the pieces that make you you—what are they worth?

Well, it’s a sobering question, because I suspect if we ask it honestly and with our eyes open, an awful lot of the things we do spend time on will seem awfully shallow and hardly worth the cost.  Most of the time spent in front of the television, for example—not just in the sense of the hours we have lost with our eyes glazing over to have background noise on, but also for the way we trade away a part of our selves to become shaped into a new “self” with the likes and dislikes that the advertisers and TV producers want us to have.  We lose a little of ourselves when we submit to those messages—not just minutes or breaths of our lifespan, but we lose a little of what makes us "us" when we let other messages stamp themselves on our minds and hearts. That's selling out--that's selling our "souls" in a manner of speaking. Is that worth the cost?

Of course, it’s easy to beat up on television. and our other little rectangles of technology. Well-respected people have been doing that for decades.  It’s harder to see that a great deal of the rest of our lives is equally shallow, and that maybe even the things we think are the most permanent are the things that matter the least.  Our houses and cars, and the need to have “bigger” in both of those categories, turn out not to last too long in the big scheme of things, especially if we also buy into the belief in our culture that we should never put roots down in a place for very long anyway.  It’s all about making a profit when you sell the house anyway, right?  

Sometimes we religious folk sell out by trading our integrity for access to political power.  We promise not to speak up when people are getting stepped on if someone will make us a deal to keep our own situations comfortable.  We look the other way at hypocrisy and cruelty because it is convenient to, or because naming it out loud might make some waves with the people who have influence and clout.  And let's make no mistake about it: when religious leaders and church folks give our endorsement to voices and agendas that are completely opposed to the character of the Reign of God as we have seen it in Jesus, and we use the excuse, "But look how much we get in return that benefits our interests!" as cover like it is some kind of deal, there is no other way to describe it, but that we have sold our souls for things that do not last.  And that's not artful deal-making--that is simply selling out.

Even the recurring human desire to become permanent by chiseling our legacies in stone, to get our names on towers in big gold letters, or to leave behind a record of your presence in brick and mortar, none of these last much more than a few decades—and even at that, all that gets remembered with words carved in stone are the arrangement of letters we called our names.  These things are not worth spending ourselves on.  

Jesus dares us to be honest about that, so that we can instead see that the only thing we can really do with our lives to secure them is to give them away.  That is not common business sense, and maybe the so-called experts would not consider it very artful deal-making... but that is Kingdom-of-God thinking.  Give your life away—spending it for the sake of others, dedicating it to the love of God and neighbor, offering it up warts and all to the Creator of the universe—and you will find it never really gets lost.  Try to clutch onto it for yourself, and you’ll discover that life is too slippery to stay in our grip for very long.  

What will you and I spend this day on… and when you lay your head down at day’s end, will it have been a good trade?  Ask that question, and in the attempt to answer it honestly, you'll get a decent picture of what really has value.  

Maybe the only way to avoid selling your soul or selling out in this life is to give yourself away for free in love.

O God of all our days, give us the wisdom and courage to use these lives, these selves, on what really matters and endures—the Kingdom you have given us in Christ.

Losers Like Jesus

“Losers Like Jesus”--September 10, 2018

“[Jesus] called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their crosses and follow me.  For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.’” [Mark 8:34-35]

In Jesus' list of values, "winning" (whatever that might mean) doesn't even make the list.  The way the big-shots, power-brokers, and blustering loudmouths thinking of "winning" is not even on Jesus' radar--it's not worth talking about, not worth aiming for, and as sure as heaven not worth spending your life on.  

Not to put too fine a point on it, but in Jesus' book, to use up your days and your passion just trying to be a "winner" is a waste of a lifetime.  It's a dead-end and a shame--from Jesus' vantage point, that misses the whole point of life.

On the other hand, Jesus is convinced that the best possible way to use your life is to use it up--to "lose" it, in a manner of speaking, but to lose it intentionally.  The loudmouths and the people who fancy themselves as "important" will never understand, but that doesn't stop Jesus.  Jesus is insistent on being as complete a loser as possible... and on calling each of us to be losers like him.

Now, mind you, there is a difference between losing something unintentionally and consciously, knowingly, purposefully giving something away.  Even if both look the same—i.e., something isn’t there anymore that used to be there—there is a world of difference.  You don’t lose your car keys in the couch cushions, for example, the same way that a lifeguard loses her life saving a drowning child.  There is no power in losing your keys, or in losing that good parking space to the steely-eyed soccer mom in the mini-van coming the other way, or in losing your savings at the roulette tables trying to make a quick buck.  There is amazing power, power that is life-saving and world-saving, in a chosen act of giving oneself away.  And that is why the life spent "losing" yourself in Jesus' way is the key to understanding all of Jesus' values.

A word about this powerful way of losing: one of my favorite songs of all time is by Jon Foreman with his band Switchfoot, a song by the name of “Daisy.”  Its opening line goes like this: 

Daisy, give yourself away

Look up at the rain, the beautiful display

Of power and surrender, giving us today

When she gives herself away.

The only power the rain has is when it gives itself away.  When the clouds hold in the rain, you have nothing but constipated clouds, and things dry up, wither, and die.  But when the rain lets go—when the rain loses itself, so to speak—plants come to life, dirt is washed away, rocks are worn down, and canyons are carved.  That is power that shapes the world… and it only comes from losing, not holding back.

It is this kind of losing to which Jesus calls us.  Jesus doesn’t call us to drop our keys or lose a sock in the dryer.  Jesus doesn’t call us to misplace things, but to give ourselves away.  He calls us to be, well, losers.  And he does it because he is calling us to follow after him, and Jesus’ way of reigning is to give himself away for us.  Jesus’ kind of power, his way of being the Messiah, is by laying down his life, the way rain gives itself away… nurturing life, washing the dirt away, and then coming back full circle into the clouds again. 

So… what will it look like for us to be Jesus’ kind of “losers”?  And will it always mean literal crosses for us?  Well… no, probably not.  But we are called, we followers of Jesus, to follow after Jesus in his strange kind of upside-down power by giving ourselves away.  That will take a million different forms over our lives.  Elaine Puckett puts it well:  "When we think about laying down a life for another we usually think in terms of a single event. But it is possible for us to lay down our lives over the course of a lifetime, minute by minute and day by day.”  In the quiet gifts, given when no one was looking, in the labor spent and the sore knees endured that no one knew you offered, in the willingness to speak up fo someone who is being stepped on, in the pouring out of your life’s energy for your children, or for others’ children, or for people you will never meet this side of glory, we are laying down our lives in a conscious, chosen, purposeful act of losing. And that will be the mark we leave on the world, like the mark the rain makes on the parched and crackled crust of the desert. 

You know, in a parallel version of today’s verses, Luke records Jesus as saying that we are to “take up our cross daily” and follow.  “Daily” means that we will be looking for new ways, and keeping at some of the same old ways, too, morning by morning, giving ourselves away for others as a lived sign of the way Jesus has given himself away once and for all. 

Lose yourself today—not like your car keys or your pocket change, but in a conscious, loving act of self-giving.  And see how it unleashes the same power we have come to know in Jesus.

Even if the world's big-shots call it being a "loser," that's the way to spend your life... just like Jesus does.

Lord Jesus, you have called us to lose ourselves as you gave your life away, and to find ourselves the same way you found your life again in resurrection.  Help us to do it, freely and joyfully.

The Center of Gravity

The Center of Gravity--September 7, 2018

[Jesus said:] "Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint, dill, and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law: justice and mercy and faith. It is these you ought to have practiced without neglecting the others. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel!" [Matthew 23:23-24]

Jesus' sharpest criticism was not aimed at atheists, but at respectable religious people.

That might seem counter-intuitive--we might expect Jesus, of all people, to be the cheerleader for all things "religious," but that's really only the shallowest possible understanding of Jesus.  

No, in fact, Jesus can deal with people whose faith wavers--he knows how to respond to the honest response, "I believe--help my unbelief!"  He can even pray for forgiveness for the pagan Roman soldiers who crucified him, because, as he says, "they know not what they do."

But Jesus' harshest words were undoubtedly for the religious culture-warriors of his day, who had appointed themselves the arbiters of righteousness and respectability.  And Jesus was at his most ferocious in his criticism of the Respectable Religious Crowd, not because they were robbing banks and burning orphanages in a blatant display of premeditated wickedness and depravity, but because they were sure--damned sure--that all they were doing, saying, and teaching was holy and righteous and good.  Blaise Pascal famously said that people "never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from a religious conviction."  Jesus, it would seem, wholeheartedly agrees.

Jesus is most upset with the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day, not because they are black-hat-and-mustache-twirling villains with maniacal laughs, but because they had missed the boat on what really mattered, and yet because they claimed to speak with divine authority for knowing what "mattered," they were giving a terribly distorted picture of the character of the living God.  And the God (or "god"? or idol?) which the Respectable Religious Crowd presented to the world seemed astoundingly similar to their own preferences. The god of the scribes hated all the people and things that the scribes themselves hated--what a coincidence! The god of the Pharisees was oh-so-impressed with meticulously measured tithes and offerings of the harvest even from their herb gardens, but was not grieved when real people got stepped on--imagine that!  The god of the respectable religious crowd, they insist, is very, very interested in bookkeeping, in official pronouncements of affirmations and denials, and in keeping the respectable religious crowd in power--how convenient!

And Jesus says they have missed the boat on what matters--what truly matters--to the real and living God: justice, mercy, and faith (with its sibling "faithfulness," which is the same word in the original Greek of Matthew's gospel here).  Jesus' problem with the "scribes and Pharisees" of his day was not that they were trying successfully with all their might to do the worst evil possible, but that they were convinced they were doing right and godly work in teaching people to focus on their preferred issues while leaving aside justice, mercy, and faithfulness.

This raises a really difficult issue for us to face.  Jesus compels us to see that, even though all people are created equal (as we like to quote from our founding national documents), the commandments of God are, curiously enough, not all created equal.  At least, not according to Jesus.  Jesus insists--without saying that he has come to "break" or "abolish" the Law--that there is a difference in the gravity across the instructions of God.  There is a certain weightiness, a heaviness, so to speak, at the core of it all, and Jesus locates that core in "justice," "mercy," and "faithfulness."  (Interestingly enough, the Hebrew word for "glory" comes from the word for "heavy" or "weighty," so there is reason to suggest that the Jesus sees the true "glory" of God in justice, mercy, and faithfulness, even more so than in golden altars, ritual sacrifices, holiness codes, and liturgical precision.)

We are going to have to let this sit and simmer for a bit, because a lot of church folk in the 21st century have been taught differently--we learned somewhere along the way that the whole Word of God is all equally important, such that the commandment against wearing two types of fabric has to be weighed the same as the commandment not to sacrifice your children to an idol.  We say we are doing it out of respect for the Bible, and we insist that anybody else who takes a different position clearly is dishonoring the Scriptures or tailoring it to suit their own agenda.  But Jesus himself here is the one who says that there is a gravitational center to God's Word, and that means there are some parts that are, in his words, "weightier" than others.  He never takes the scissors out to cut out parts that are difficult or unpopular or provocative.  But he does insist that justice and mercy and faithfulness are at the core of what matters to God... and that in the big scheme of things, God is much less interested in our offerings of mint and dill, or for that matter, oregano and cilantro.  

If we are going to take this realization seriously, it will mean that we need to be constantly recalibrating ourselves to see if our bearings line up with Jesus.  We cannot just say we are "pro-Bible" and then proceed to wield verses that seem important to us as weapons to smack other people with.  We will need to keep ourselves re-centered in the perspective of Jesus, who keeps pulling us back to the gravitational center of the Scriptures in justice, mercy, and faithfulness, and who also keeps showing us in his words and actions what those actually look like.  If we don't keep allowing Jesus to re-orient us in line with that center of gravity, we are bound to end up like the Respectable Religious Crowd who had traded in the living God for an idol in their own image without even realizing it.

Today, then, and every day after, let this be our focus--to keep coming back to justice, mercy, and faithfulness as the heart of God's list of values, and to let everything else fall into place around those, as Jesus shows us what they look like.

Lord Jesus, keep us grounded in what matters to you and to the God whom you bring near--keep us centered on justice, mercy, and faithfulness as we have seen them in your nail-scarred, leper-touching, table-turning, enemy-loving hands.

Truth Without Weaseling

Truth Without Weaseling--September 6, 2018

"Again, you have heard that it was said to those of ancient times, 'You shall not swear falsely, but carry out the vows you have made to the Lord.' But I say to you, Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is the throne of God, or by earth, for it is his footstool, or by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. And do not swear by your head, for you cannot make one hair white or black. Let your word be 'Yes, Yes,' or 'No, No'; anything more than this comes from the evil one." [Matthew 5:33-37]

The truth matters.  

Honesty matters.

And being able to be counted on when you speak, when you make a promise, and when you give your word to someone, all of that matters deeply.

These things should be obvious.  It should be able to go without saying that being truthful is not simply "important," but essential for living as grown-ups in the world.  And it is important to be able to say, "This is true, this is solid," about things, even when those solid truths are uncomfortable, or when they depict us in a negative light, or when they force us to see our own weaknesses.   I am not surprised when my children try to play games covering up who spilled their cup on the dining room floor, or when they stay they brushed their teeth but clearly have not--I am not happy, mind you, when they want to fudge with the truth, but I am prepared for that kind of childish self-preservation.  But among grown-ups, that kind of game playing is something we should have grown out of.  Truth-telling is essential for mature people, even when it is a hard truth.

But that kind of truth-telling is not only about being able to say, "Two plus two equals four," no matter how unpleasant it is to catch our own adding mistake when we had accidentally put it down as five, but also about having the courage not to leave ourselves weasel-room to give us loopholes to back out of our words once they are spoken.  That, too, is a matter of truth-telling and honesty.  And Jesus calls us on that, too.

When Jesus starts describing the sorts of things that matter to him in the Sermon on the Mount--the platform of the Reign of God, so to speak--one of the early values Jesus lifts up is this kind of truth-telling.  He teaches his followers to be of such integrity that you don't need to say anything more than "Yes--yes, that's how it is," or "No, that is not the case," without adding oaths or swearing vows to try and assure people your words are true.  And the flip side of that is also in view here, too--that we not hedge or fudge things so we can walk back our words if it turns out they get us into trouble.  (We all remember the circus that came out of the sentence, "That depends on what the meaning of 'is' is..." from the highest chambers of power a little over twenty years ago.)  

Of course, the objection wants to be raised: how will someone know you are really telling the truth unless you can underscore and emphasize the seriousness of your words by having to swear on a Bible or testify under oath?  How will we know when anybody really means what they are saying?

And this is the truly radical thing--that shouldn't have to sound radical at all--about Jesus' teaching.  Jesus intends us to be people who are always truthful, even when it is uncomfortable and even when it reveals our weaknesses, so that people know we are telling the truth any time our mouths are moving.  You have likely heard the old adage that originated from 12-step programs and recovery circles: "How do you tell when a using addict is lying?  Their lips are moving."  Well, Jesus intends to create an alternative community to that.  He intends to create among us a kind of integrity that others can take to the bank.  He intends us to live so truthfully and transparently that people will know we are being honest--because our mouths our moving.  In other words, we will not need to add lines like, "And this time, I mean it!" or "Can I be honest with you?" because we will be known always to be honest.  And when that trust is the grounding of our relationships, I can rely on you and you can rely on me.  When we know we can trust each other, love becomes more durable.  And at the very least, when others come to learn they can trust us, they will be able to rely on our word when we tell them about the gracious God we have come to know in Christ, as well.

What makes it possible for us to dare to tell the truth about ourselves, even when it is unpleasant?  What makes it possible for us to make commitments, "Yes," or "No," without wiggle words or weaseling to walk back our bombastic outbursts?  What makes it possible for us to be so real with other people that they will know we are being truthful?  In a word... grace.  Grace makes truth-telling possible.  Jesus' teaching about letting your "Yes" be "yes" and your "no" be "no" (a teaching picked up later in the book of James, so we don't get to wave this passage off like it's a one-off, or an exception) can only make sense if we know first that we are beloved and accepted--unconditionally, irrepressibly, and relentlessly.  When we know that there is nothing I can do or have done in my past that will disqualify me from God's love, when I know that there is no past track record or future failure that can separate me from the grip of grace, I can bear to see--and even to show--the unpleasant and unflattering truths about me.  We can bear to tell the truth, and to own my actions and words, because we know that grace has declared us acceptable and beloved with eyes wide open to all of them.  And grace says, "I love you anyway, all the same.  Now, let's face the truth together."

It is a shame--a literally damned shame, if you ask me--that ours is a time where we have to say things like, "Honesty matters," and "The truth, however unflattering, needs to be told."  These things should have been obvious.  But even if this is a moment that it needs to be said, let us say it with the knowledge that grace makes such truth-telling possible, and that the unconditional love of God makes us able to be honest with one another, since we know that we cannot lose such love.

Today, let us be truth-tellers, you and I.

Let us be of such integrity over the long haul, that nobody ever needs to ask anything more of us beyond our yes or no.

Lord Jesus, teach us to value truth like you do, in an era when it is treated like something to be packaged, spun, or hidden.  And give us such assurance of your grace that we can find the courage to be truthful, residing in a love that will not let us go.

In the Smallness

“In the Smallness”—September 5, 2018

"[Jesus] sat down opposite the treasury, and watched the crowd putting money into the treasury.  Many rich people put in large sums. A poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which are worth a penny. Then he called his disciples and said to them, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” [Mark 12:41-44]

“More that all those who are contributing to the treasury,” really?  Of course not…. Right?

By straightforward human accounting, Jesus is just plain wrong, laughably wrong, about the widow’s offering.  We have to get that much clear from the outset so we do not confuse the wonder of the kingdom with cheap, schmaltzy sentimentality.  It doesn’t turn out that her “two copper coins” were rare wheat pennies with a valuable misprint engraving on them, or that they are really solid gold underneath a coating of rust-red dirt.  It doesn’t turn out that the widow is really some rich empress from foreign lands, come dressed up in secondhand tatters to hide her true identity. 

This is not a Christian version of a fairy-tale where the plain-looking widow turns out to have been a beautiful wise sorceress, or the pixie queen in disguise.  The frog does not turn into a prince.  The beast doesn’t turn out to have been a rich and handsome suitor for Belle, but who was just made to look ugly by some witch's curse.  No, she is as she appears:  a poor widow scraping by--a nobody, by the world's accounting, who has nothing to offer.  And her offering is just that:  two practically worthless coins.  For whatever Jesus means about her gift being “more” than the others, it doesn’t mean that they were a hidden treasure in disguise, actually worth more in dollars and cents (or denarii and shekels) than the big checks of the upper-crust donors.

Now, that would be fairy-tale logic: that you should accept the meager offering of the frog because it might turn out he will really be a prince who has a fortune to give.  But that is not the way our story goes.  No, the frog only has lily-pads to offer, and they stay lily-pads, they do not turn into gold or lead to a buried treasure.  The widow’s gift stays as it is—two coins you would probably leave in the tray at the gas station check out if you saw them.  And the widow remains a widow.  

This is the real wonder of Jesus in this scene: he honors the woman’s gift in its smallness, not because it is really something different underneath.  And what is honorable about her gift is that she gives all of her smallness.  It is not the bottom-line monetary value of the coins.  It is not the straightforward accounting of her donation or the value of the tax deduction she could claim from having made it.  It is that, in one act of giving, she not only put her money to God’s service, but her life in God’s hands.  By giving all she had, her gift was also an act of faith, an act of trust that the same God to whom she gave would be the God who provided her daily bread.  And she was able to give all she had because she was convinced that God was (and is) worth it.

And now we are getting to the question that really matters in this story.  It’s not, “How much was the woman’s gift worth after all?”  The real question to be asking is, “How much is God worthy of?”  And there is only one way you can truthfully answer the question: all.  God is worthy of all that I have, all that I am, all that I will be, even when that “all” is small.  What makes the widow stand out is that she has the clarity of mind to ask the only truly relevant question:  how much is God worth, rather than how much can I afford?  Because, after all, if the God to whom you are giving really is worthy of our lives, such a God is capable and willing to provide, too.  But all of those questions can be answered without ever even knowing what the monetary-value is of anybody’s offering compared to another.  

In his book The Jesus Way, Eugene Peterson puts it well: “As we bring our offering we are saying, ‘This is the best we have, this is the best we can do; but it isn’t good enough, it doesn’t satisfy my need to be whole and saved, it hasn’t worked.  Here it is, God, it’s your turn.  See what you can make of it.’” That is what makes the widow’s gift so blessed:  it is given as the one answer to the parallel questions, “What is God worth of my possessions?” and “To whom can I entrust all that I am?”  Her offering of her last two coins is, simultaneously, both her statement of faith that God is worth all she could ever offer of all she could ever be and her statement of trust that God able and willing to care for her life.   In one action, complete surrender and complete reliance meet… even in the smallness of her gift.

Now, the flip-side is also true here in this scene.  Not only does the this unnamed widow think that God is worthy of all that she has, but the God to whom she is offering her coins is the sort of God who, the Scriptures keep telling us, is particularly concerned for the people who have nothing. The God of the Bible has, it would seem, what theologians call "a preferential option for the poor"--that is, God has a way of particularly looking to lift up the lowly, fill the hungry with good things, deflate the puffed up and arrogant, and pull pompous tyrants and demagogues down from their thrones (you know, all the stuff Mary sings about in her Magnificat).  So really, it's no wonder that this widow trusts her life to the hands of such a God. After all, the God of the Scriptures has a reputation for providing enough to sustain the unnamed widows who give all they have (think of the widow who bakes Elijah a bit of bread with what she thought was the last of her flour and oil, whom God sustains for years through the drought by preventing the jars of meal and oil from running out). This woman trusts that ours is a God who keeps an eye open on the nobodies and anybodies who don't have two coins to rub together, because that is God's way.

The powerful people, the influential crowd, and the prestigious so-and-sos of the world see her as nothing.  She has no wealth. She doesn't have "brand recognition." She doesn't have leverage.  And she has no power.  They look at a gift like hers and say she is insignificant, because she does not have anything they think they can use--no bargaining chips, nothing to make a deal with.  But the God who loves in the smallness sees her as utterly beloved precisely because of her empty hands.  She doesn't need anything else to be beloved but herself, and the living God knows that her offering of her two coins is an act of trust in God's reputation as One who provides for the nobodies who have nothing.

That is how the God we meet in Christ values people--not by their net worth or ability to grant favors or make connections, but deeming them precious in their smallness, in their empty-handed trust.

For us today, then, there are two questions to ask when it comes to how we use what we have in this life.  And they are not the usual questions preachers are expected to ask in order to goose the bottom line of offerings and tithes.  The right questions are not, “How much can I afford to give?” or “How much do my gifts of time and talent and treasure stack up against the next person?” but rather, “What is God worthy of?” and “To whom can I entrust my whole self?”  Let us ask ourselves those two questions today, and then just see if we can dare to answer them honestly.

Lord God, what we have to offer is not enough—not enough to make us whole, and not enough to exhaust all that you are worthy of.  But we trust that you are the God of loaves and fishes, so take them, and us, as we are, and do with us what you will.

A Lesson from the Dying

A Lesson from the Dying--September 4, 2018

[Jesus said:] "So have no fear of them; for nothing is covered up that will not be uncovered, and nothing secret that will know become known. What I say to you in the dark, tell in the light; and what you hear whispered, proclaim from the housetops. Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both body and soul in Gehenna." [Matthew 10:26-28]

Day by day, I find increasingly I am indebted to the dying.  

I have much to learn, I find, from people who know that they are nearing the end of this life.  And so I am trying, lately, to pay attention to what they can teach me as they gain clarity from seeing the lesser things fade from concern, and focusing on what remains.  For all the sadness that death's shadow casts on our lives, I find that it also has a way of allowing us to be especially honest, maybe more so than is common for daily life in our culture anymore.  And I have found that people who know they are close to death can be direct about what matters and what things they have found were not worth as much of their time, or their money, or their hate, or their obsession, or their energy, as they had given in their years.

And one of the things in particular I have heard on the lips of people near death--some of whom I had known for years and years, some of whom I crossed paths with only a few times--is that there are indeed worse things than death.  There are worse things that can happen in a lifetime than ceasing to breathe at the end of it.  And there are things more valuable, more vital, more essential, than clutching onto the things we think will preserve or extend our own lifespans.  It matters, I have learned in the faces of dying friends, how we have loved... how we have given ourselves away... how we have spoken and acted with integrity... how we have held to the importance of the truth... how we have not gotten too big for our britches with arrogance or pomposity... and how we have considered the needs of others.  These things matter, it turns out, and have a way of either weighing us down when the shadows lengthen, or lifting our hearts with relief and contentment over a life well-spent.  No, it is not the stopping of my pulse that concerns me--it is much more a matter of whether I have used all the heartbeats that lead up to that day well and wisely or wasted them in self-centeredness, illusions, and lies.

I have learned this as people near the end of their lives look back on what they have done, and what they have left undone... on what things they are proud of, and on the things for which they can only lean on grace.  I have heard them say, "I am ready to go.  I have lived a good life," and I have heard them speak regrets, too, of what they wish they had done differently, and of what they would change if they could.  And even for people who are anxious about the prospect of finding out for themselves what it is like to leave this life, I rarely hear people say they are afraid of the actual moment of death--more that they are mindful of what they did with the span of time between their birth and their death.

And so one lesson I am trying to take away from that recurring bedside classroom in which I frequently find myself is to be clear that there are things worse than death... and that a life ruled by the dominating fear of death ends up distorted and stunted.  

Of course, Jesus has been saying as much for much longer. It's just that I'm more than a little slow on the uptake sometimes.  Jesus, in fact, has been reminding us that the biggest thing to fear is not death--not "those who kill the body" but who cannot touch the deepest part of ourselves.  But rather, God (who by the way, Jesus says, has the power over our bodies, souls, spirits, minds, and everything else about us) is more important, and more to be taken seriously, than death.  And that means the real issue in life is not, "How can I avoid or put off the unpleasantness of dying?" but rather, "How can I live my life aligned with the priorities and character of God, for however long a life I get?"

See, here's the thing--and both Jesus and the people with whom I have shared bedside conversations near death have been making this point: if I spend my lifetime focused solely on saving my own skin and preserving my own lifespan because I am afraid of death, I will end up seeing everyone around me as a threat, every object in the world as a scarce commodity I have to hoard for myself, and every day as another round in a dog-eat-dog competition.  If death is the thing to be most afraid of, I will never really care about you... or anybody else... I'll just care about how to preserve my own health, resources, and vitality.  Fear of death has a way of twisting our hearts--you could say it costs us our souls--because it makes us see others as "the enemy" or "competition," and we start to justify all sorts of indifference and cruelty toward others if I am persuaded that they are a threat to me... and if I am convinced that the preservation of my life is more important than theirs.

Being ruled by the fear of dying sees a stranger by the side of the road and says, "I can't stop to help him--it might be a trick, and the robbers might come and ambush and attack me, or worse!"  Being ruled by fear of dying says, "I have to build bigger and bigger barns to store all my stuff in, so that I'll be able to live for a long time in comfort, rather than sharing with my neighbor."  Being ruled by fear of dying says, "You've got to shoot the other guy first before he draws on you, because extending your own life is the highest value."  And my goodness, I have to say that that kind of life looks downright terrible to me.  Familiar, because we all slip into that mentality, but terrible.  It makes everyone else around us into "the enemy," and it poisons our ability to love and be loved.  But make no mistake, this is what happens when our biggest fear is the ending of life: the fear distorts our hearts, indeed our very souls.

The alternative, then, is what Jesus offers: a life reoriented around what matters to God.  That doesn't take away the truth that one day my heart will stop--but it gives me deep hope for the power of this God to hold onto me beyond the grip of death, and it sure as heaven gives me a different perspective on what I do with my life today while my heart is beating.  And most of all, I don't have to be ruled by the old fear anymore.  And when I am free from fear of dying, I can go to the man by the side of the road and help restore him to life... I can share my abundance rather than hoarding it for myself... I can lay down my life for someone else rather than being petrified of letting it go.

Jesus isn't talking about giving out heaven points for good behavior.  He doesn't say, "Be good and if you do well enough, I'll let you into my afterlife club." Rather, Jesus is freeing us from the insidious grasp of our culture's fear of dying, so that we can see each other rightly and entrust ourselves into God's hands.

Today, we don't have to be ruled by the old fear of death. Death isn’t the biggest kid on the playground, and I don’t have to let my fear of it force me to see everyone else around me as a threat to be fought. It doesn't have to take the top slot of worries for us.  Instead, the question is, how can we use this day in such a way that we will not regret it when we get our final moments in this life?  And in that moment, how will our lives have focused on the things that matter to God?

Lord Jesus, give us clarity about what matters to you, and give us the deep confidence that helps us to let go of fear of dying.

What Matters Most

“What Matters Most”—September 3, 2018

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that [Jesus] answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”  Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”Then the scribe said to Jesus, “You are right, Teacher; you have truly said that ‘God is one, and besides him there is no other’; and ‘to love God with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the strength,’ and ‘to love one’s neighbor as oneself,’—this is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” When Jesus saw that he had answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.”  After that no one dared to ask him any question. [Mark 12:28-34]

Just because something is simple does not mean it is easy.

And at the same time, just because something isn’t easy doesn’t mean it’s not worth it. Case in point, this conversation between Jesus and a member of the Respectable Religious Crowd of his day.  It centers on a huge question--in a sense, the biggest, most fundamental question of all--namely, "What matters most?"  In life, in the commandments of God, in the whole of creation, what matters most?

And Jesus' answer, although simple, is not simplistic, nor naïve.  It is, in a word, love.

Love matters most. Physicists since before Einstein have struggled to come up with a single, unified, grant "theory of everything," and there Jesus has up and done it.  Love is what matters most.  Love of God, and love of others--since Jesus' definition of "neighbor" is all-inclusive to embrace whomever God sends across your path.

But once those words are out of Jesus' mouth, we are left with a follow-up question: what does that do for all the other commandments, and what does that practically mean for how I go to the post office, or buy my groceries, or choose a political party?  How do we get from the extremely simple sentence, "Love God and neighbor" to the complicated messy details of our actual lives?

Well, for starters, we should be clear that both in the original question and in Jesus' answer, the issue is framed in terms of "the greatest commandment," not "the only commandment." Nobody is suggesting that there is only one commandment that matters and the rest are just dead weight.  And nobody is suggesting that the other commandments are completely unrelated to whatever the “greatest” one is. From the vantage point of the Hebrew Scriptures, all of the commandments hang together as a way of life--they are not a random assembly of arcane rules, but the commandments about not being envious (coveting) goes along with the commandments about sabbath rest and sabbath year and debt forgiveness and welcoming the foreigner and taking care of widows and orphans, and all of the rest.  The expert in the Law wasn't asking Jesus to erase all but one of the commandments: he was asking if there is a way that you can hold up one as the lens through which you see all the rest.

In a way, it is a question of key-signature.  

When you get a piece of music in front of you, the notes are something of a jumble on the page until you look at the key-signature on the staff.  That tells you how all the notes relate to one another.  It gives you an answer for which note is the root, the tonic note, that makes all the other chords “work”, and toward which all the other chords in the piece are going to lean into in order to resolve.  If you don’t end on your root chord, the piece feels incomplete, whether the composer intended that or not.  Now, of course, a key-signature doesn’t eliminate the other notes—a piece in the key of C Major doesn’t only have endless series of C-Major chords in it.  It’s just that the root chord tells you, in a sense, where you start from and where you end up.  It feels like home, so to speak.  This is the question that Jesus and the scribe have been discussing:  of all the various commandments in the Law, among all the thou shalts and thou shalt nots, which is the root chord?  Where do we begin and end?  What commandment helps us make sense of all the rest, and which one do the other commandments want to resolve towards?  

So the answer, on which both Jesus and this scribe seem to agree here, is the two-fold commandment of love:  Love God with all your heart, mind, and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Problem solved, right?  Question answered, right?  Well, in one sense.  But knowing the key-signature of a piece of music is hardly the same as being able to play it.  I could tell you at a glance what key something is in just by looking at the listed sharps or flats on the page, but would have to practice for a long, long time to get most anything really playable under my fingers.  It is, I suppose, a reminder, that just because something is simple (like a key-signature) doesn’t mean it is easy.

That’s just it:  the answer to “What is the greatest commandment?” is the kind of answer you spend a lifetime growing into and growing better at.  Love isn’t the kind of thing you can check off a list with a single action or word or feeling.  Burnt sacrifices, on the other hand, you can check off a list:  “How many sins did I commit today?  Well, put another ox on the fire and that will cover me til Tuesday, I reckon.”  Ritual cleansings can be done with a simple set of instructions followed like a recipe and then you’re done for the day.  Proper prayers can be memorized or read off of a book, and you’ve done your duty there, too.  Laws about fasts and festivals, circumcision and Sabbath, pure foods and proper clothes, they can all be checked off your list and put out of your mind.  They may involve elaborate rituals or complicated parsing of regulations, but they are more or less easy to do—it’s just a matter of following instructions.

We might wish in our own day for a similar check-list of "required religious stuff" that will earn us heaven-points.  Did you recite the creed? Pray the right prayer to ask Jesus into your heart?  Post a Bible verse on Facebook to make sure your friends all know you're a religious person? All of those are terribly easy things to do, and we like to do such things in the thought that it will get us off the hook for the harder stuff that we don't want to do and aren't as good at--like being kind to someone who has been rotten to you, or putting the needs of a stranger you'll never meet before your own.  We would love it if Jesus would just give us an easy checklist of things we could do in the first few minutes of the day so that we could have the rest of our day free for our own agendas.  But he does not.  Any of those others showy things we might attempt are easy.

Love, on the other hand, is a simple command, but one that consumes and fills a lifetime.  Love, whether of God or of neighbor (or of stranger or enemy, as Jesus would point out) calls forth a relationship, and a relationship takes energy, commitment, time, passion, and a willingness to suffer… even to give yourself away. That is easier said than done.

And yet, that kind of relationship—with God, and with the people God puts in our paths in this life—is perhaps the most beautiful and blessed thing there is.  It is what we are meant for.  It is what we have been meant for all along—lives lived in love with the God who called us beloved first, and lives spent carrying one another and being carried in turn, as we each take our place serving and being served in the beloved community.  “A neighbor’s blessed burden, within reason, becomes a burden borne of all and one,” sings Colin Meloy of the Decemberists.  That sounds an awful lot like one half of key signature of the whole Law.

It is not easy, and indeed, like anything in life, it requires practice.  But it is what life is all about, the “life that really is life” as 1Tim. 6:19 puts it.  That is what the whole Kingdom of God has always been about—life, lived fully, by being lived in love with God and with the people put in our path.  As hard as it may be, it is worth it.  Love is what matters most to Jesus--the determination to put the good of the other before your own needs or comfort. And  simply put, if we dare to follow Jesus, then such love is what will matter most to us as well.

Lord Jesus, having heard your call to us to love God and our neighbor, now enable us to do that in this day, and to find the fullness of life even when it is not easy to do.