A Worthy King

A Worthy King--March 27, 2019

"And when [Pilate] learned that [Jesus] was under Herod's jurisdiction, he sent him off to Herod, who was himself in Jerusalem at that time. When Herod saw Jesus, he was very glad, for he had been wanting to see him for a long time, because he had heard about him and was hoping to see him perform some sign. He questioned him at some length, but Jesus gave him no answer. The chief priests and the scribes stood by, vehemently accusing him. Even Herod with his soldiers treated him with contempt and mocked him; then he put an elegant robe on him, and sent him back to Pilate." [Luke 23:7-11]

It is a too-rarely heeded bit of wisdom that says "You don't have to attend every argument you're invited to."  That's smart.  We would do well to consider that policy in this age of instant outrage, immediate forms of communication, and viral media.  Sometimes people seem to be spoiling for a fight, and they bait you into taking it, because they have been just waiting for the chance to vent their bitterness over whatever has upset them at the moment.

But it's okay to send your regrets instead of an RSVP for that invitation. It's okay not to get baited into the bluster.

The more I think about it, the more amazed I am at that dimension of the trial of Jesus before the Roman governor Pilate and the Roman-installed puppet king Herod.  Jesus doesn't take the bait.  He doesn't speak, not because he isn't the Messiah, but because he is mature and grounded enough as the Messiah not to get sucked into a childish fight on their terms.  There are indeed exchanges in the gospels that Jesus has with the leaders of the Respectable Religious Crowd, and he does trade a few lines with Pilate before all is said and done, but Jesus never lets himself get drawn into a shouting match or a volley of insults.  

And let me make this utterly clear: Jesus' refusal to get drawn into such a petty fight with the powers of the day is evidence of his superior courage and strength, not of weakness or cowardice.  But that will only make sense if we are willing to accept, too, that Jesus' kind of victory is not to out-shout his opponents, nor to intimidate them with threats of force or violence, but rather to lay down his life for them.

If you are still hung up on how people see you, what others think of you, and what your reputation is like (like Herod and Pilate surely are), you are going to get suckered into having to shout back an insult for every taunt thrown your way.  If you are still convinced that the way to "win" in this life is to push your way through, then, yeah, you'll be drawn into answering back every jab with a counterpunch of your own.  But, even if that way of thinking is still popular among the Herods and Pilates of every age, it is still terribly childish, and ultimately self-defeating.  And I suspect that Herod himself didn't realize in the moment how very petty and immature he comes off in this scene.

This, I think, is part of what the Gospel writers want us to see: this showdown is a face-off between two contenders for the title of "King of the Jews."  Herod, on the one hand, claims the title even though he is not strictly Jewish (the Herod dynasty came from the neighboring region of Edom/Idumea), comes from a family of paranoid tyrants like his father Herod the Great who handed him his reign, and seems to be more interested in provoking petty and childish outbursts than in actually leading his people.  And on the other hand, there is Jesus, the homeless wandering rabbi who keeps his cool and won't be baited into answering Herod's goading. Which is truly "King of the Jews"? The contrast is stark--Herod hardly deserves the title, and is clearly beneath the office he has been granted by the Empire, while Jesus embodies a self-control that unmasks Herod's childishness for what it is.

It is worth lifting up that level of self-control here, because it reminds me that Jesus didn't just suffer with strength while he was nailed to the cross.  But every choice not to give into the pettiness of the so-called rulers around him, every decision not to give into their infantile power grabs and threat-making, every instance of Jesus' refusal to take their bait took conscious, deliberate strength on Jesus' part--especially knowing that the Herods and Pilates would take his silence for a sign of weakness or fear.  And yet Jesus doesn't give them the satisfaction of getting drawn into their game of bullying and bellowing.  He won't even let his divine power be turned into a sideshow for Herod by doing a miracle on command like a trained monkey.  Jesus shows a greater courage and integrity all along the way to the cross than the Herods and Pilates will ever understand.

And while it is not our calling to have to die on a cross for the sins of the world, that same strength is indeed a hallmark of the disciples of Jesus.  There are voices all around who seem to think that all that matters is if people "get the job done," regardless of whether they do it with integrity, character, strength, or honor.  They advise us that it doesn't matter if someone is bombastic and petulant like Herod, or amoral and ruthless like Pilate, if they maintain "law and order" and keep the trains running on time.  They suggest that it doesn't matter if you are a childish tyrant like the Herod family dynasty as long as the markets are up and the end of the day.  But that is not our way... because it is not the way of Jesus.

Only Jesus can die for the sins of the world, but all of us who walk in his footsteps are dared to live in the same strength and freedom that Jesus did, which includes the freedom not to get drawn into petty fights that shed only heat but no light.  It does matter, not just who looks like they have come out on top at the end of the day, but how you conduct yourself.  It does matter if we have honor and character, rather than bluster and bullying.  It does matter whether we let ourselves get provoked into sinking to the level of answering hatred for hatred and evil for evil, or whether we dare to trust that Jesus actually knows what he is doing.

Maybe, then, this is the question for this day: between Herod and his childishly petty antics on the one hand Jesus and his measured silence on the other, who seems more fit for the title "King of Israel"?  

Now, follow the path of the one who is worthy of that office.

Lord Jesus, let us walk in your footsteps, even knowing they lead to a cross, as we trust your kind of victory.

Jesus Loses It All

Jesus Loses It All--March 26, 2019

"They were on the road, going up to Jerusalem, and Jesus was walking ahead of them; they were amazed, and those who followed were afraid.  He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” [Mark 10:32-34]

Jesus had to lose.

And he was willing to do it.  Not that it is ever easy, or anyone's first choice--but Jesus was willing to lose it all.  

Maybe even harder is that Jesus had to lose to someone--to the Respectable Religious crowd, as well as to the Big Deals of the Empire--and he had to endure them all licking their lips and salivating over his defeat.  He had to endure having all the people he had upset by exposing their hypocrisy now thinking that they had gotten the upper hand. He had to listen to them brag about finally besting him, and he had to listen to them mock him while his lungs slowly gave out.  We have been taught by the movies to expect that the hero will find some way in the last minute to pull out a victory in one of those moments when the chips are down, so the bad guys can be exposed and silenced, and so the hero can be vindicated.   We have been taught to expect that the good guys have to win, and the bad guys have to lose--and the world has to watch them lose, so that we can see justice done.

But Jesus has to endure losing all the way, with no quasi-magical come-from-behind secret move, no extra gun taped to his back a la John McClane in Die Hard to overtake the hostage-takers, no revenge fantasies fulfilled or comeuppance for the ones calling for his crucifixion.  Jesus loses, while the world watches, all the way to death.  And after death, the world stops watching.

I think that may be one of the most difficult things, both about what Jesus had to endure, and about the Christian faith as a whole: the fact that Jesus doesn't get a moment to get revenge, or vindication, or even just an "I told you so" to the ones who have brought aobut his death.  Yes, to be sure, there is resurrection on the third day, but there is some part of us that wants there to be a scene for Jesus to get even--some post-Easter appearance where Jesus goes and punches the ones who had mocked him on Good Friday, and to get them right in the face.  And that never happens.  Jesus doesn't get to have a public "win" within the timeline of the Gospels where he gets to publicly shame the people who insulted or turned him over to the Romans.  There is no point in the story where Jesus interrupts their victory celebrations to say, "I'm back."  No--as far as they are all concerned, they won over Jesus, and they got the last word.

And there is a part of me that is just very indignantly upset that this is how the Story goes.  There is a part of me that wants the big showdown between Jesus and his opponents, not just so that Jesus can come out a winner--but because (to be honest) I want to be seen backing a winner, too, rather than following around a... loser.  And yet this is what Jesus knowingly chooses: defeat without a public rematch, loss without a settling of scores, death without getting even.  The resurrection is very much real, but it is not a revenge fantasy.  And some part of me--of all of us, I suspect--doesn't want a savior who really, actually dies and loses in order to save people.  We want a Christ who leaps down from the cross at the last second, a cigar in his mouth like in a Schwarzenegger movie, who delivers some pithy tough-guy one-liner, cocks his shotgun, and puts his enemies in their place--not one whose last intelligible sentence is, "My God, why have you abandoned me?"  But we are given no such movie-star "winner" Christ for a savior--only the Christ who loses it all.

Robert Farrar Capon makes a similar point in a classic chapter from his brilliant book Hunting the Divine Fox where he points out how much human beings want a hero-savior like Superman rather than a cross-bound one like Jesus.   Capon writes, "We crucified Jesus not because he was God but because he blasphemed: he claimed to be God and then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It's not that we weren't looking for the Messiah; it's just that he wasn't what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from the cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn't do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying."

On the days when it looks and feels like good is getting hammered, the days when it feels not only like the crooks are getting away with their crookedness but rubbing it in your face that they did, it is hard not to want the kind of Savior to arrive on the scene who gets the upper hand, punches the gloating schemers while everyone watches, and shows that he was never really in danger of losing after all.  But that is not the way of Jesus.  And Jesus doesn't save us from losing. He saves us by losing, even if we don't like it or indulge in hero fantasies that switch out the crucified rabbi with a movie action-hero.

That means there will come times--maybe whole seasons--when arrogant and cocky jerks win the day, and they make no secret of relishing their triumph.  And even though we have a deep hope in the ultimate justice and vindication of God, that doesn't mean that you or I are promised any revenge fantasies ourselves.  And to be honest, sometimes the arrogant blowhards are just looking to get a rise out of you anyway, and really want you to take their bait and attack them back.  That sinks to their level and lets them think they are justified in their bragging over against you.  So, today, we are going to have to do two difficult things: we are going to have to let Jesus be the kind of Savior who doesn't go settling old vendettas for the sake of his sullied reputation, and we are going to have do the hard work of not getting sucked into the shouting matches the braggarts want to draw us into.

Today, as hard as it is, let us dare to let Jesus lose for us, and lose it all.  There is resurrection to come, but not personal revenge.  There is salvation, but not a showdown.  And there is no Savior without a real and honest defeat, which makes possible a new creation.

Lord Jesus, it is so hard for us to swallow our pride and accept that your way of saving us is through loss, and that your kind of redemption comes in what looks unmistakably like loss.  Save us your way, anyhow, and grace us with the willingness to let your weakness become our strength.

Who Gets the Last Word

Who Gets the Last Word--March 25, 2019

"Pilate spoke to them again, 'Then what do you wish me to do with the man you call the King of the Jews?' They shouted back, 'Crucify him!' Pilate asked them, 'Why, what evil has he done?' But they shouted all the more, 'Crucify him!' So Pilate, wishing to satisfy the crowd, released Barabbas for them; and after flogging Jesus, he handed him over to be crucified." [Mark 15:12-15]

Something terrible happened.  Something wicked and crooked and just-plain wrong happened, and there is no covering it over or hiding it behind governmental bureaucracy to make it look like nothing.  No matter how much Pilate wants to make himself look like he has done no wrong (and maybe he even convinced himself!), there is no erasing the utter injustice of the execution of Jesus.

And at the very same time, neither the immoral cruelty of the cross nor the amoral rottenness of Pilate's role in it can undo God's ability to yet bring something beautiful and good from it.

We can say both things at the same time.  In fact, we need to.

Let's start with the part that even Pilate himself doesn't want to face.  He, along with all the other political and religious leaders who figure in the scene, as well as the stirred up crowd, are complicit in the death of Jesus.  Pilate wants to think he is innocent. He can publicly say it all he wants, as he even does in Matthew's Gospel, trying to "wash his hands" of Jesus' death.  And maybe Pilate actually thought that because the idea of killing Jesus wasn't his idea, that he's not responsible.  Maybe this Roman-installed governor actually thought that he could plead his own innocence because the request for Jesus' death started with others coming to him to propose it.  Maybe Pilate even thought if he kept saying, "No complicity here!" it would come true.  Maybe he fooled himself into thinking it was.

But thinking you are exonerated of guilt just because you keep shouting it at the crowds doesn't make it so.  And the bottom line is that Pilate chooses what was politically expedient (getting rid of a troublemaking rabbi) even if he thought that Jesus of Nazareth hadn't done anything worthy of crucifixion.  Pilate, in the end, subverts justice for the sake of what will help keep him (and the Empire) in control.  That's not innocence--that's a perversion of justice.  There's no way around it: Pilate is a crooked, rotten ruler, who appears to be more interested in keeping himself in power than in actually serving justice.  So let's dispense with the charade that Pilate kept trying to toss out: even if he didn't pound the nails himself, he participated in the plot.  He was the authority whose responsibility was to uphold justice, and he willfully ignored that responsibility because it would have made him unpopular.  The buck was supposed to stop with him, but Pilate took the coward's way out by authorizing Jesus' crucifixion and then trying to shrug it off like it wasn't his fault.

So instead of letting Pilate off the hook the way he wants, let's just be absolutely clear: the fact that Pontius Pilate seems to have thought Jesus wasn't guilty of a capital crime, but still has him both flogged and then crucified actually makes him even more despicable and cowardly.  It's not so much that he is immoral--trying to convict someone he knows is innocent, but rather that he is amoral--that Pilate doesn't even care what the truth is, in the end. All that matters to him is what will keep him in control and cover his liabilities.

And the fact that every week in Christian worship, disciples of Jesus recite his name when they confess in the Creed that Jesus "was crucified under Pontius Pilate" is a reminder that the only reason this crook is remembered at all by history is for the way he caved to the pressure of others and perverted justice to kill the Son of God because he thought it would be in his personal interests to do so. Other than that, Pontius Pilate is utterly forgettable... and forgotten.

But at the very same time, the travesty that Pilate authorized becomes the turning point for human history.  The crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth, whose shame Pilate tries to wash off of his hands, becomes the victory that breaks the power of Rome and every other empire since, defeats the juggernaut of death, and rescues a sinful humanity from oblivion. 

Now, to an outside observer, the death of Jesus at the hands of the Roman Empire looked like any other criminal's death.  And to be sure, the Romans crucified a lot of people.  But God intended something beautiful, something redemptive, in this act. And even though it is notoriously difficult to prove intent, the heart of the Christian faith hangs on the claim that this public and shameful death was yet intended by God bring life and restoration, even for Jesus' executioners.  Pilate cannot see that at all, because he cannot even bring himself to admit to his complicity with the other players calling out for Jesus' death.  But that refusal to see the truth is not powerful enough to negate God's power and intention to bring life through that death.

Both are true, then, and at the same time: it is true that Pilate is a crooked and corrupt leader who cannot wash away his complicity in the death of Jesus (even if he insists that a splash of water can exonerate him), AND simultaneously the living God is stronger yet that Pilate and used that act of cowardice to bring about redemption for the world--yes, even though I can't prove God's intent to you beyond a reasonable doubt.

This is how we live all our days, too, by the way.  There are terrible, rotten, crooked things that happen--sometimes by people who are aware of what they are doing, and sometimes by folks who have convinced themselves they are doing right.  The terribleness and rottenness are true and real... and we need to be able to say so.  And at the same time, we are convinced that the God who saves the world through a Roman cross is also able to take the rottenness and death that pervades our daily lives in this world and to bring resurrection and renewal.  The new creation God makes does not make what crooks and cowards do "OK," but it does mean that the Pilates of history do not get the last word.  God does.

And that is a word of good news today.

Lord God, we lift up to you the things we cannot make sense of, the injustices and crooked places of the world in which we live, calling them what they are, but also offering them up to you to transform and redeem. Here... see what you can make of us.

God's Foolishness

God's Foolishness--March 22, 2019

"For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

     'I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

         and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.'

 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scribe? Where is the debater of this age? Has God not made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolisness of our proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews demand signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishess to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and wisdom of God.  For God's foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God's weakness is stronger than human strength." [1 Corinthians 1:18-25]

Let me rattle off a few of the basic tenets of "common sense" that I regularly hear tossed around. There are plenty of variations, but I bet you've heard enough of these that you could sing along, too, if you like. The "pearls" of convention wisdom that we've all heard before go something like this:

"You have to look out for Number One--yourself!--in this life."

"You have to get THEM before they get YOU in this dog-eat-dog world."

"The only people who really matter are the 'winners' of life, and you can tell who the winners are, because they have more money, more influence, more power, more fans, more muscle, and more stuff."

"If you're a winner, you can do anything you want. The losers are forgettable."

If that isn't conventional wisdom, I'll eat my hat.  And it is that kind of conventional wisdom that leads people to bribe admissions official to get their kids into more prestigious colleges or universities.  It's the mindset that shows up when folks bellow and fume in inane and childish fights on Twitter. It's the rationale for always wanting to have a bigger stick... or sword... or rifle... or cannon... or nuclear missile, so that you can get the other guy before he gets you.  We are drowning in the sea of conventional wisdom.

So it shouldn't surprise us that when God sends us a life-preserver on those billowing waves, the watching world thinks that God's way looks weak and stupid.  God knows that's what the world thinks.  God just doesn't care.  And even more significant, God won't get lured into a petty shouting match with the world that thinks God's way of saving the world looks like losing.  God is big enough not to need to answer every childish taunt or idiotic comment from the world, and God won't be baited into sinking to that level.  (This by itself should make it clear that God's way is NOT the prevailing conventional wisdom of the world's so-called powerful and expert classes.)

Now, to hear Saint Paul tell it, that is exactly what the cross is all about--God has chosen to rescue a world full of powerless nobodies and unschooled anybodies whom the world labels "weak" and "losers," precisely by becoming one of those "weak losers" too.  The cross looks like utter defeat, and it sounds like nonsense to say that the way to save anybody (much less the world) is by getting killed by your angry enemies.  The world, both the sophisticated minds of the intellectual crowd, and the folks who want shows of power and greatness, sees a man getting executed and says, "That's a terrible shame--if God had wanted to mount a rescue operation, God should have consulted us for advice and muscle."  The world's assumption is that the way to get things done is by having more force, more power, more guns, more missiles, or more money--possibly all of the above.  It looks at the cross and figures that Rome must be the hero of the story because it killed a troublemaker who was foolish enough to let himself get called "king" without bringing an army to back him up.  Jesus, the crucified one, must be the defeated opponent.

But Paul teaches us to see just the opposite.  Yes, the cross of Jesus doesn't look ANYTHING like what the world calls "greatness." But that's not a design flaw on God's part--it's actually the whole point of everything!  It's the world that's got it all wrong and bass-ackwards, as they say.  It's the loud yellers of conventional wisdom who bark about "winning" who are really so pathetically out of touch.  God's way of saving the world is decidedly NOT to play by the world's rules--those rules about winning and losing, about "greatness" and "weakness," they are at the root of the problem with us all in the first place!   Of course God doesn't redeem the world at gunpoint with an army or a team of lawyers and a pile of money--those things have never worked to solve things.  That would be like telling the drowning man that what he really needs is a lead weight tied around his ankle and a tank of water dumped over his head.  God refuses to use the expected methods of "conventional wisdom" because conventional wisdom is really so often just our way of defending our own sinful selfishness.  What we need--and what God does at the cross--is to rescue us from the terrible death-dealing morass of what the world calls "conventional wisdom" and "greatness."

That's what I think these days when I hear someone make a remark like, "Why would anybody risk letting homeless people stay in their church building, or let strangers into worship once the opening hymn has started?"  It's what I think any time I hear someone say, "We have to put ourselves and our own interests first--that's just common sense!"  It's what comes to mind when I hear parents teach their kids to 'punch the other kid before he punches you' to avoid looking weak." And it's what I need to remind myself of, too, every time I catch that same voice in my head that wants to judge the success of congregations by who has more people or more money or more followers of Facebook.  All of those, from the need to have more missiles to blow up the world than your enemy, to the worry over whether your neighbor will think your kids are "weak," they are all evidence of the conventional wisdom of the world, which is the very thing we need rescuing FROM in the first place.

So of course, the way God mounts a rescue operation will look different from the world's standard operating procedures--they're the thing that's killing us in the first place.  That's why it makes its own kind of perfectly upside-down sense that God's way of saving us is through death, through weakness, and through loss: because the un-ending race to "win" and look "strong" has really been killing us with a slow, terrible death. 

Now, if we dare to take the message about the cross seriously, it is going to dramatically change how we see everything else--including our own lives.  It will mean we care less and less about looking tough or impressing our neighbors. It will mean we no longer need to rely on having more sticks or sabers or shotguns or surface-to-air missiles to feel secure or keep us safe.  It will mean we no longer have to call attention to our titles, our degrees on the wall, our professional status, our tax bracket, or our kids' varsity jackets to make us feel acceptable.  In fact, we won't need to seek our own advantage anymore, because we will see that God's way of saving the world frees us from that tired old rat race once and for all.

Taking the upside-down perspective of the cross is going to mean serious revision to how we evaluate our lives, and that will take work.  Maybe a lifetime of rethinking what has mattered all along.  So maybe for today it is enough to begin to ask the question: what things have we accepted as "the way the world works" that are actually killing us?  What things have we assumed to be true because we were told they were "common sense" but are really at the root of our pain as humans?  And what might it do to the day in front of us to let the Crucified Christ turn our old picture of victory upside down?

What if we just didn't have to care anymore what the world thought "success" or "greatness" or "winning" looked like... and what if instead we could simply look to the cross for a new vision?  What if we dared to be immersed in God's foolishness?

Let's dare it today.

Lord Jesus, turn our old vision of the world upside down in the light of your way of saving that same world.

A Long Day's Dying

A Long Day's Dying--March 21, 2019

"After this, when Jesus knew that all was now finished, he said (in order to fulfill the scripture), 'I am thirsty.' A jar full of sour wine was standing there. So they put a sponge full of the wine on a branch of hyssop and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the wine, he said, 'It is finished.' Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit." [John 19:28-30]

"It is finished," Jesus says.  But, to be clear, what, precisely, was finished?  What was brought to completion in that moment?  What was finally brought to its conclusion and fulfillment in that moment?

I mean to ask, is this simply an autobiographical statement from Jesus about the end of his life, or was he saying that this death was accomplishing something?  Was the cross, in other words, just the scene of, to borrow a beautiful phrase of Frederick Buechener's, a "long day's dying," or was something else actually done, once and for all, as this tortured Jewish rabbi breathed his last on a Roman execution stake?

Well, I'll lay my cards on the table here.  It appears that the New Testament insists that this moment is more than just Jesus saying, politely, "I'm dying over here."  The final word from the cross in John's telling (and in the Greek, it is one elegant word, "tetelestai,") is a claim not just about the end of one human life, but about the completion of something that cannot be undone.  

The writers of the New Testament, John here included, are convinced that the universe is a different place because of this life given up--a life that in a very real sense, Jesus was giving away all along, as he healed, preached, taught, lived, and then died.  They are convinced that humanity has a different standing, a different relationship, because of Jesus' death.  And the New Testament would have us believe that this is a change that God has brought about, without our help, or assistance, or jump-starting it.  The new reality brought about by the cross of Jesus is complete on its own, and does not require our prayers to make it effective, our subscription to get access to its benefits, or our trying-hard to keep it from expiring or going sour like milk.  It is a done deal, and there ain't nothing that can undo it.

This, I think, is a really, really important point that the Scriptures insist on, but it's also one that we (at least we respectable religious types) have the hardest time with.  We always are looking to add to the cross like there is more needed to make it effective.  We treat it like yeast you have to "activate" in warm water before you can go putting into your bread dough.  There are lots of religious-sounding ideas of what else has to happen, but they are all variations on the same theme that you need to do your part in order for the good news really to be true.  Otherwise, so the respectable religious voices will say, it sounds like God is just giving redemption away at no charge.

And that, not to put too fine a point on it, is the very crux of the matter.  Literally.  The claim of the New Testament writers is that, indeed, God has given redemption away for free, completely, paid in full, check cancelled.  We don't even have to get the tip.  If Jesus really means something more than "I'm dying now," when he says, "It is finished," then we have to believe that "finished" means "finished"--that when Jesus says he has completed something, it really is complete, and he's not waiting for us to earn what he has already paid for.

The reason we need to be clear about this is that from time to time (I just read a piece with this problem earlier today) you'll hear those very serious sounding religious voices who insist that "You can't say that God has forgiven everything you've ever done and everything you'll ever do--that sounds like you're letting people off the hook and being lax about future good behavior!"  Or they'll say, "Don't make it sound like God's mercy is unconditional--people will never repent properly if they don't think they have to do it right first if they want grace!"  And all of that amounts to saying that on the cross, nothing is really finished--it's just a work-in-progress, waiting for you and me to finish it.  If that's really how things are--if God's forgiveness is only potential, or available, or a possibility, because of the cross--then really what Jesus should have said in his dying breath was, "It is partially started--act now and get your share of this!"

The thing we are going to have to come face to face with if we take Jesus' dying words seriously is that he really seems to think that he has accomplished the great act of reconciliation, not merely that he has begun a dialogue, kicked off an opportunity, or opened a door.  Robert Farrar Capon has a similar train of thought when he considers the opening verse of Romans 8.  Capon says:

"Saint Paul has not said to you, ‘Think how it would be if there were no condemnation;’ he has said, ‘There is therefore now none.’  He has made an unconditional statement, not a conditional one—a flat assertion, not a parabolic one.  He has not said, ‘God has done this and that and the other thing; and if by dint of imagination you can manage to put it all together, you may be able to experience a little solace in the prison of your days.’ No.  He has simply said, ‘You are free. Your services are no longer required.  The salt mine has been closed’.”

Either the cross really does finish something--and we really are already forgiven, reconciled, and justified from God's vantage point--or it is more like the cross is a helpful, but partial, down payment to be followed up with monthly installments on our part so that our salvation doesn't get repossessed.  We, in all of our respectable religiosity, want to keep adding fine print to the transaction in the name of propping up good morals, but Jesus really and truly insists that he has done all that needs doing.  The only question we can ask, if he is right (and I think it is a good assumption that he is), is what we will do with our lives, now that we are freed from worrying if we have done enough. If (correction: when) it turns out that I am still a mess-up, after having been forgiven, Jesus seems to have been willing to take that risk and gave his life up already anyway. Jesus, in other words, was willing to lay down his life for me, even if I never got around to being a better person, even if I struggle with drinkin' and cussin' for the rest of my life, and even if I am a thief nailed to the next cross over pleading, "Jesus remember me" in my dying desperation.  

Jesus really did complete something at the cross, more than a long day's dying. There are no payments left to make.

Today, then, maybe we can quit wasting our time (and Jesus' time) by trying to make the Gospel's free gift sound more reasonable and restrained.  Jesus will have no part of that.  It is either true that Jesus has paid it all in full, as it were, or the whole Gospel is a fairy tale--but there is no room for making the Christian faith into a self-improvement seminar where Jesus gets you started and then you have to pay the balance once the free-trial-offer has expired.  So instead of trying to tame grace by making it subject to the fine-print of showing sufficient moral progress, requiring adequate public shows of repentance, or insisting on a pray-this-prayer-to-make-Jesus-come-into-your-heart, what if we just let Jesus' words stand as they are? 

It is finished.  It really is.

Lord Jesus, let us dare to take you at your word.  Let us trust that you have reconciled us to yourself already, and then to live like that is true.

Scar Revision

Scar Revision--March 20, 2019

"When [Christ] was abused, he did not return abuse; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he entrusted himself to the one who judges justly. He himself bore our sins in his body on the cross, so that, free from sins, we might live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed." [1 Peter 2:23-24]

I was listening to someone talking on the radio about our skin.  There was a panel of experts--some talking about proper UV protection and cancer prevention, others about moisturizing and cleansing, and the whole nine yards.  (I don't think I would have chosen this topic on an ordinary day, but I was a captive audience on a longer drive and was waiting for news headlines to come on at the top of the hour.)  Well, after a lot of only half-listening while the panel talked about SPF ratings and the benefits of cocoa butter, there was a medical doctor who talked about treatments that now exist for treating old scars.  And all of a sudden, I knew why I had been listening all along.

The expert on scars said that these days, the specialists don't talk about "scar removal" procedures anymore, but rather about "scar revision."  And at first, her distinction was to say that many times, doctors cannot completely remove all traces of past scars, whether from injuries, surgeries, or grafts.  That is simply not possible with medical and surgical technology at this time, and so most of the time, our bodies hold onto physical marks in some form or another of the hurts we have been through. But instead, the expert said, doctors can "revise" a scar--making things less pronounced, helping the body to heal more fully, making the marks more subtle and less jarringly noticeable.  They do not remove scars, but they revise them.

Well, now the conversation on the radio took a vital turn.  It was not simply about minimizing the physical presence of bodily scars--there was the chance to revise the meaning of the scars people have endured. And the expert said that was precisely what they aimed to do: to help people who had been through terrible, traumatic, even abusive episodes in their lives, to own the scars on their bodies in new ways--no longer as signs of victimhood or weakness or unworthiness, but of strength.  Scars can be revised, and so can their meaning--they can be signs of endurance, of healing, of the power that faces adversity and comes out the other side weathered but hopeful.

And in that moment, it occurred to me that the New Testament makes the same kind of claim for what happens at the cross.  The crucifixion of Jesus looks, to the watching world, like nothing but the ruthless execution of a troublemaking rabbi at the hands of a powerful empire cheered on by a feverish mob.  But the writers of the New Testament, like medical experts of our day, do the life-giving work of scar revision.  They do not remove the death of Jesus from the Gospel's story--not at all!  But rather, they give a radically new way to see what the scars of Jesus mean.  Instead of seeing a loser getting crushed by the victorious power of Rome, voices like today's from First Peter help us to see that the cross is God's way of winning over the powers of death and evil.  What seemed like a testament to the cruelty and near omnipotence of the Empire becomes a picture of the love that does not let us go, does not flinch, and does not give up, even through death.  What seemed like a terrible act of expedient violence to exert imperial control can now be seen as the perfect expression of God's power that is made perfect in weakness.  

In other words, the scars are still there, but they are revised.  The meaning of the cross is NOT that the powerful and the violent and the powers of the day get the last word, but rather that God's way of getting the last word is to outlast and out-love even the worst that Pilate or the crowd or the lynch-mob or the grave itself can do.  The scars of Jesus remain forever--even in the resurrection he wears the wounds--but their meaning is turned inside out.

And if this is possible on a hill outside of the city gates of Jerusalem two millennia ago, then the scars we wear can be revised, too.  Yes, in fact, that is exactly what the Christian life is all about.

For a writer like First Peter, that meant, for example, that when followers of Jesus refused to return evil for evil or abuse for abuse, it wasn't a sign of weakness or cowardice, but of great strength and courage.  The followers of Jesus were strong enough to endure the meanness of the world and not to become infected by it.  Like the civil-rights marchers of the 1960s getting beaten up by the authorities to protest segregation or having the police dogs set loose on them to speak up against Jim Crow, these early Christians showed the strength of their faith and their character by refusing to resort to hatred when they were hated.  The scars were not something to be ashamed of, but rather in revision could be seen as signs of strength and grace.

And today, when we bear scars on our hearts from carrying others' burdens, these are not signs of weakness, but rather of the strength of our love to keep on keeping on, even when it wears on us.  

The frustrated and depressed mother, aching over the pain of her child and sleepless from staying up to attend to fevers and fears, she is not weak or a failure--she is strong.  The dark circles under her eyes are not marks of defeat, but signs of her willingness to endure in love for her little one.

The friends who keep getting cursed out and yelled at by another friend caught in addiction, who gets mean when they get drunk and doesn't want to face the bridges they have burned, those friends who have the courage to confront and hold an intervention may feel like they are failing their friend, but really are revealing the strength of their devotion by having the courage to tell the truth.

For the person who risks speaking up for others who are getting picked on, who are excluded, or marginalized, even if it makes other people roll their eyes or turn their target sights on the one speaking up, that is an act of courage, of love, and of strength, not of failure or weakness.

For the one who calls out the hatred, racism, or bigotry around them where they see it, only to get angry internet trolls piling onto them, or un-friended on Facebook by people who didn't want to have their world shaken up, it is not a sign of weakness to refuse to answer name-calling with name-calling while still speaking up for those who are being treated as "less-than."  Refusing to sink to the level of the trolls is not weakness, even if some think it looks like running away from a fight.  It is a sign of strength to bear the rottenness of their words and still to speak truth and love without becoming poisoned with bitterness.

All our lives long, really, the things the world will look at and call us "losers" for, the cross of Jesus turns into a kind of scar-revision.  When we respond to hatred with love, the hurts we sustain for loving are badges of honor, not sources of shame.  When we carry wounds in our hearts from enduring hardship with others, those become marks of beauty.

Today, perhaps we can hold our own scars up to the cross of Jesus and find them transformed into signs of love and witnesses of strength, carried in our own bodies.

Lord Jesus, revise our scars.  Do not take them away, but change the way we see them, so that love and grace and strength can be worn in our own skin.

Unsummoned Angels

Unsummoned Angels--March 19, 2019

"Suddenly, one of those with Jesus put his hand on his sword, drew it, and struck the slave of the high priest, cutting off his ear. Then Jesus said, 'Put your sword back into its place; for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But then would the scriptures be fulfilled, which say it must happen in this way?' At that hour, Jesus said to the crowds, 'Have you come out with swords and clubs to arrest me as though I were a bandit? Day after day I sat in the temple teaching, and you did not arrest me. But all this has taken place, so that the scriptures of the prophets may be fulfilled.' Then all his disciples deserted him and fled." [Matthew 26:51-56]

Jesus has the opportunity to protect himself, to put himself first, and to keep himself and his group safe from outside threat.  And he chooses not to.

Jesus had a position of privilege, I suppose, and he could have used that access to call down angel armies to fight off the religious leaders, the Empire-backed police force, and the volatile crowd.  Jesus could have asked for an easy out from his dad to step in and intervene and make the problem go away, I suppose.  Jesus--this same one who speaks to the winds and waves and they obey him--could have called down for lightning to strike the lynch-mob and walked away unscathed as screaming enemies fell and flames billowed behind him, in action-movie-style slow motion, no less.  He could have even just zapped one--just one measly person, maybe even Judas who surely deserved it!--to make an example out of him, and then sent the rest away running for their lives in fear.  Or, if Jesus had preferred not to use any pyrotechnics at all, he simply could have let one of his followers just keep the crowd at bay with his sword drawn.  Jesus could have gotten himself his own sword, too, if he didn't want to have to make his disciples do his dirty work for him, I guess.  

Jesus could have done any of those things, and he knows it... but he does not.

Let us be clear, then: this is Jesus' intentional choice not to answer the violence of the whipped-up crowd with violence of his own. He deliberately chooses not to meet the evil they have aimed at him with malice of his own.  The unsummoned angels are left up in heaven on purpose--because Jesus has chosen the way of self-giving love.

Now, you could say, if you wanted to, that Jesus just chooses not to carry his own weapons or call down angelic bodyguards because, as he says, "the scriptures must be fulfilled."  But Jesus doesn't seem to mean that in an impersonally fatalistic sense, like something out of a Greek tragedy, wherein the power of "fate" simply decrees that he must die, no matter how much he would strain against it.  Jesus doesn't mean that he wishes he could get out his angel-army-summoning-satellite-phone and dial up Michael the archangel to wreak havoc, but alas, some inexplicable predictions of dead soothsaying oracles prevent him from it.  Jesus means that the Scriptures themselves have made it clear that God's way is not to answer evil for evil.  Jesus knows that God's way of defeating the powers of evil is to die at their hands, not to kill them.  The way of the cross is not a blip on the radar, some kind of exception to the rule of how God is "supposed" to operate--it is the defining, essential picture of how God does things.

And that is the real wonder here.  If ever someone had the right, the authority, and the opportunity, to call down supernatural assistance to scare off his attackers, it is Jesus there in the garden.  If ever anyone had the inalienable right to defend himself, or even just to threaten with his lightning-bolt finger a little bit, it is this scene. The fact that Jesus does not, but instead surrenders to the powers of the day, cannot be seen as anything other than a conscious choice.  It is the way God wins the battle, despite the fact that it looks like an utter defeat.

And it is a clear-cut renunciation of the impulse to put "Me and My Group First," even when the "Me" in question is none other than Jesus.

So often we treat Jesus as an exception to the rule rather than the touchstone for how God operates in the world.  So often we respectable religious folks will say things like, "Well, ok, Jesus didn't let his disciples attack with swords or the angels swoop down with flaming divine vengeance, but that's only because for one brief instant in God's plan God made an exception to the usual kill-or-be-killed rules of the universe."  We may allow (because the Scriptures undeniably insist) that Jesus refused to carry around a sword to keep himself "safe", but we end up tying ourselves in knots trying to make Jesus the outlier, and looking for our own ways justify the old persistent "Me-and-My-Group-First" mindset that would let us line our coats with knives and daggers to use on "those people" who make us afraid.

But Jesus doesn't let us get away with that kind of move, at least not with any honesty or integrity.  If, as we so often confess in other areas of our faith, Jesus really is the unique center of everything, why is it that we are so insistent on convincing ourselves to ignore these scene from the gospels?  Why do we say, "Jesus is the key to everything else in our faith--but just don't pay attention to him when he says and does things that undermine the Me-and-My-Group First imperative?"  Why do respectable religious folks and church leaders make such a very big fuss about pinning down the very moment you accepted Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior... and then promptly ignore Jesus' dogged insistence NOT to preserve his own life at the cost of others' lives?  Why, in other words, do we give ourselves permission to say, "Jesus is the Lord of my life... except any time he tells me that I should not put my own needs or wants first"?

I am reminded of a line of Kierkegaard's along these lines, where he says that we respectable church folks have a way of being a bunch of "scheming swindlers" (I love that phrase from the translation I know best of this quote) who want to talk a lot about Jesus but not actually listen to what he tells us or do what he models for us.

And maybe that's just it.  We are glad to use Jesus as our mascot, our figurehead, and our rallying cry.  We are happy to have the name "Jesus" to shout and to lament about how people don't talk about Jesus "like they used to" anymore, as a way of looking down at the un-religious and puffing ourselves up.  But when it comes to actually looking at how Jesus handled real life situations with people who were undeniably out to get him, we look for any reason, any dodge, and excuse or loophole, to say that his choices don't have any implication for us or that we can't be expected to actually pattern our lives around Jesus' way of life in the world.  Because honestly, the moment we actually consider how Jesus responds to his actual enemies here in the garden, we will realize that the "Me and My Group First" mindset is incompatible with the way of Jesus, and we don't want to let go of either the mindset or the illusion that Jesus endorses it.  We want to stay self-centered, and to have God's blessing on our us-against-them way of seeing the world, because as long as I can keep seeing the world in Us and Them terms, I am allowed (no, divinely required!) to look out for my own interests first and to hate the "other."

There is only one problem with that: Jesus insists on keeping us honest.  The central moment of our faith--the suffering and death of Jesus--is predicated on Jesus' refusal to put his own well-being, safety, and comfort before the needs of others, even of his enemies.  Jesus forces us to choose between him and the Me-and-My-Group-First way of thinking, no matter how popular it is, how well it polls, or how convenient and comfortable it feels.  

Jesus compels us, in other words, to leave the angels unsummoned so that we can follow him in the way of the cross.

What will we do with the day in front of us?

Lord Jesus, turn our eyes to you, and keep us fixed on the way you give yourself away at the cross, and all along the way there.