Unnatural Relations--December 10, 2019

Unnatural Relations—December 10, 2019

“The wolf shall live with the lamb,
     the leopard shall lie down with the kid,
     the calf and the lion and the fatling together,
 and a little child shall lead them.
The cow and the bear shall graze,
     their young shall lie down together;
     and the lion shall eat straw like the ox.
The nursing child shall play over the hole of the asp,
     and the weaned child shall put its hand on the adder’s den.
They will not hurt or destroy
     on all my holy mountain;
for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord,

     as the waters cover the sea." [Isaiah 11:6-9]

We need to have a conversation about the word "natural."  

More and more I notice that the marketing experts use the word "natural" as an automatically positive adjective.  You know the refrains; they are a popular litany in the religious liturgy of consumerism: "You should try this new herbal supplement--it's ALL-NATURAL!" or "Don't buy that brand of soda--you should buy this other one that is made with NATURAL sugar!" or "I don't get the store-brand, because I want the one with the packaging that says it's the NATURAL choice!"  We get sloppy with our logic and accept the reasoning that anything you can call "natural" is automatically good, and anything that is "un-natural" is automatically bad.

Well, things aren't that simple. Sure, whole grains and sunshine are natural.  But so it cancer. Malaria is natural, as is viral meningitis.  So are lead and mercury.  And on the flip side, you know what things are not found in nature?  Vaccines, or water purification, or indoor plumbing.  MRIs that catch tumors before they grow too big to treat are un-natural, too.  And a good many life-saving drugs out there are things you won't find in nature, either.  

Death is natural.  Resurrection is un-natural.

Maybe things are more complicated that just saying "unnatural is always bad" and "natural is always good."

The natural world itself, for example, seems built on death... and therefore also on fear.  In the animal kingdom, we say that there are two groups of creatures: the hunters and the hunted.  You've got to eat your opponent or run from your opponent, but basically your choices in nature are limited to "fight or flight."  We say things like "It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, and only the fittest survive--that's just the natural order of things."  We seem to just accept that our lives should be lived forever under the cloud of fear of being eaten, and we accept just as easily the idea that you might just have to step on somebody else if they get in your way to climbing to the top of the hill.  That's all just... you know, natural.  The way it is, and the way it must always be.

Trouble is, God seems committed to making a whole new kind of creation--a resurrected creation--that looks, to our eyes, quite un-natural.  Of course, to the person who's been sitting in a dark room all day, the brilliance of the daytime sun is going to seem too bright for their eyes.  And for us who are accustomed to a world built on the fear of death, a new kind of creation will seem dangerously un-natural, too.

But look at the way the prophet Isaiah envisions the promised new creation that the Messiah will bring:  it is staggeringly UN-NATURAL.  All the creatures have exchanged their "natural" relationships as enemies for new and gloriously "un-natural" relations as friends now.  Just look at how hilariously un-natural the whole scene is: wolves and lambs cozying up next to one another, and leopards and baby goats lounging next to the cows and bears, and nobody is eating each other!  

Kind of makes you think that maybe what we are quick to label "un-natural" might not be "unacceptable" after all, but in fact might just be gloriously good!

The old logic of death, and the old engine of fear that kept the old logic churning, is gone.  No longer is the assumption that it's a kill-or-be-killed world, and there is no longer the either/or choice of fight or flight.  Instead, there is a new way of relating, a new way of being in relationship with one another--and it comes from learning the peaceable ways of God, according to Isaiah.  At the coming of God's anointed one--the time when the long-awaited Messiah appears--creation itself will be turned inside out, resurrected, and pulled into a new form.  Like the resurrected Jesus is able to pass through walls and go without being recognized, and yet is still clearly the same Jesus who was nailed to the cross, the new creation will be the same as this one--and yet resurrected.  Transformed.  Renewed.  And yet, we aren't scared of the risen Jesus.  We don't kick him out because his risen way of being human is "un-natural" or "abominable".  No, his resurrection itself is gloriously unnatural!

My point in all of this is that the future toward which God is bringing all of creation sometimes seems scary to us because it runs contrary to what we are used to--what we call "natural," and yet it is a good and beautiful future.  The idea of a peaceable kingdom can seem frightening to us if we are used to "peace" through the threat of death, "peace" at the point of a sword, or "peace" won through intimidation and fear.  What God calls us into is a completely different way of relating to one another--a way grounded in the courage to be vulnerable and to let down our guard, rather than in baring our teeth at one another and needing to dominate others for fear that they'll dominate us.

The world around us seems run on the tired old logic that says, "You gotta get THEM before they get YOU!" and says it is only natural to see everyone else around you as a threat--either a predator out to get you, or other prey that can leave you to be eaten by a lion if they outrun you.  But the God who raises the dead opens up a new possibility--a new way of living with one another, even if it seems to run counter to what everybody else swears is "natural."

Our hope as followers of Jesus is not that the coming Messiah will give us special weapons to give us an advantage against our opponents in a dog-eat-dog world.  Rather, our hope is that the One we are waiting for is the one with the nail-scarred hands to prove that there is a new kind of creation in store for us, one that might not look "natural" at all, but is actually, with God's blessing and by God's design, gloriously "un-natural."  It is the peaceable kingdom where old animosities are set aside, where old systems are done with and put away, and where God makes it possible for wolves and lambs, lions and cows, all to share a table.

Our Advent hope is for just such a promised future as that--a future of gloriously unnatural relations.

Lord God, make us new in your surprising love, and bring about your new order of things where old enemies can reconcile in peace.

Hope for a Cynical Heart

Hope for a Cynical Heart--December 9, 2019

"A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,

     and a branch shall grow out of his roots.

 The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,

     the spirit of wisdom and understanding,

     the spirit of counsel and might,

     the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.

 His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.

 He shall not judge by what his eyes see,

     or decide why what his ears hear;

 but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,

     and decide with equity for the meek of the earth..." [Isaiah 35:1-4]

I used to think the cat was out of the bag with Jesus, and that I could no longer be joyfully surprised by the coming of the Messiah.  But God always has a few tricks up the divine sleeve.

Honestly, I think sometimes we church folk think we've got all the plot twists of the story of God figured out, and that they can't catch us off guard anymore.  This time of year is one of the reasons.  We Christians re-read passages from the prophets and say, "They were predicting the Messiah, but he's already come now, so there's nothing left for us to glean from these ancient poems."  We have a way of dismissing all of this Advent tension of delayed gratification as just a game we play every year--since we know that the baby will be born in a manger, and we are no longer surprised that the angels show up to see shepherds working the night shift.  We sometimes even treat the whole idea of a long-awaited messiah with a "been-there-done-that" attitude, like watching the same old Christmas movies year after year and pretending you don't know whether the hero will "save Christmas" this time or not.

I know I do this myself--it is tempting to think we are masters of these ancient texts, and that we have wrung every drop of meaning from them already.

But then I read these well-worn words again, and I discover that I am not nearly as in control of them--nor of the God to whom they witness--as I had thought.  The old poets and dreamers have things to tell me that I was not expecting... or maybe that I had never paid attention to before.

Take this for starters: the prophet here doesn't simply promise that there will be a new king one day who will come from David's (and Jesse, David's father) family line.  Honestly, that wasn't much of a headline in the days of Isaiah the prophet, since he lived during a time when there was a Davidic king already, and there would be more Davidic kings for another 150 years or so, give or take.  The surprise wasn't the announcement of that there would be more kings in this particular dynasty.  

But what makes this promised coming "branch" from the family tree of Jesse and David special is that for once in the world's history, this new sort of king won't be swayed by appearance, won't be motivated by the need to hold onto power for power's sake, won't be directed by greed or fear, and won't put his own personal interests over the interests of his people.  For once, Isaiah says, there will be a ruler who won't be fooled into caring only about surface appearances or what "plays well," but rather will be guided by righteousness, by equity, and by wisdom.  For once, in other words, there will be a ruler whose power is seen in serving those who are most vulnerable ("the poor" and "the meek of the earth," as Isaiah puts it) rather than trying to extract benefits from those who are most influential.

The real surprise, in other words is not the sentence, "There will be another king coming," but rather, "There will be a good one for once--a ruler who is genuinely and truly good, all the way to the core."  The world has been waiting for such a thing.  The world is waiting, still.  The prophets were not suckered by the official royal propaganda coming from the palace in their day that just assumed God blessed and approved of everything the kings of the day did. Isaiah had seen half-decent ones and terrible ones, but never one that was wholly good, just, and wise. The prophets saw through the spin-doctoring and PR management offered by king after crooked king, and they recognized how the powerful people of their day were all more or less entangled in getting themselves more power and keeping it. And so the prophets kept on daring to dream of a better way... a better kind of king. A completely different kind of king, honestly: one whose power is revealed in self-giving, and whose authority is used to lift up the lowly. Sometimes I forget just how radical an idea that really is for a ruler.

I think what surprises me and my cynical heart is the hope that Isaiah holds onto that things could really be different. It is so easy any more to see rottenness everywhere that we just assume that's how things must always be.  Heads of state, heads of corporations, and heads of institutions all seem bent on holding onto their power, or enriching themselves, or gaslighting their supporters, or making empty promises, and it is terribly easy just to assume that it must be OK because "everybody is doing it."  It feels any more like even just asking, "But what is the truth here?" is precariously close to being an out-of-fashion question, because so many pundits and experts seem only interested in what is popular, or what can be gotten away with, or what plays to a particular base.  In a time when we are all so tempted only to listen to voices or watch the channels that will tell us what we already want to hear, it is hard to imagine the Coming One whom Isaiah says will not act based on what tickles his ear, but on what is just and right and true.  

Sometimes you'll hear Respectable Religious types join the cynicism, too.  They'll say, "You don't have to hope for someone who is decent and honest and just and wise. You don't need a Boy Scout in charge--you just need someone who will do the favors on your wish-list in exchange for your allegiance.  Just make that kind of deal and you'll get things that you want, too."  But Isaiah doesn't let us off the hook for hoping for just making deals or selling out like that.  Isaiah dares us to hope this surprising hope--that at the last, God's intention is for a world ordered by justice and peace, rather than self-interest and competing hatreds.  Isaiah dares us not to be satisfied, and not to settle, for pinning our hopes on anybody or anything less than the promised shoot that comes out from the stump of Jesse, the One we know by the name Jesus.

Christians are people who have come to name Jesus as that king of whom Isaiah and the other prophets dreamed. In that sense, we are in on the secret--nobody expected in Isaiah's day that the king will be laid in a used food trough on the day of his birth. Or that his royal entourage will be made up of illiterate fishermen, outcast tax collectors, undervalued women, notorious sinners and little-faithed doubters. Or that he will reign from a cross, executed by the empire of the day, before he breaks out of his borrowed grave.

Just when I think I have gotten these old words of the prophets wrestled into submission and that they have no more surprises for me, Isaiah comes along and pokes at me just where I wasn't expecting it.  The prophets pull me out of my cynicism to look with hope to Jesus.  They call us not to settle for accepting rottenness, and to call it out wherever we see it.  They dare us keep holding on to the longing that at the last God will set all things right, and that we can anticipate it now in the ways we live, and love, and serve, and spend our selves.

Even now, all these centuries later, the surprising word from the prophets is, "Hold on.  Don't settle.  Justice, mercy, and peace really are on the way."

Lord God, keep us stubbornly hopeful, all our days, as we watch for your Reign among us.

A Resurrection of Hope--December 6, 2019

A Resurrection of Hope--December 6, 2019

"The wilderness and the dry land shall be glad, the desert shall rejoice and blossom; like the crocus it shall blossom abundantly, and rejoice with joy and singing....For waters shall break forth in the desert; the burning sand shall become a pool, and the thirsty ground springs of water; the haunt of jackals shall become a swamp, the grass shall become reeds and rushes.  A highway shall be there, and it shall be called the Holy Way; the unclean shall not travel on it, but it shall be for God's people; no traveler, not even fools, shall go astray." [Isaiah 35:1-2a, 6b-8]

Sometimes the thing that needs resurrection in our lives is the dead-end we find ourselves in.

Twenty-five centuries ago, give or take, God performed just that kind of resurrection--a resurrection, not of dead bodies, but of direction for hopeless people.  And it is worth retelling the tale, and how the prophets like Isaiah understood it.  It is worth knowing this story because, in all honesty, some day you and I will find ourselves in a dead end and wondering where hope is to be found in the middle of nowhere.

So, like I say, just over two and a half millennia ago, a minority community living in Babylon were on the verge of giving up hope.  They had been carried away--or their parents had been carried away--from their homeland in Judah, and brought as spoils of war when the arrogant blowhard ruler of the Babylonian Empire, Nebuchadnezzar, had conquered their homeland, destroyed their capital and its Temple, and ransacked the most valuable treasures.  The exiles were living in a foreign land, defeated and despairing.  And as far as they could see, their hope was dead.  They weren't sure if their God YHWH (the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) had been defeated by the Babylonian gods, or whether YHWH had just abandoned them for sinning so much, but the exiles were sure that things were done between them and their God.  The covenant was broken. The Temple was in ruins. And they had no way of getting home, so long as Babylon held them in captivity and there was a vast desert between Babylon and their old homeland.  Hope itself was dead.

And in the midst of that utter dead-end of a situation, God whispered in the ear of a prophet we know as Isaiah.  And Isaiah dared to dream up nothing short of resurrection for deceased hope.  Isaiah brought the message that God was going to make a way where no way existed, and that God was going to perform a resurrection of the destroyed nation.  God was going to bring the exiles home, and along the way, everything that God touched would burst into life.

Now, you can imagine that if you were convinced that your nation was functionally dead, it would sound like foolishness if someone said there could be a homecoming and a new beginning.  And if there were a thousand miles of barren wilderness that separated you from your old homeland, you would say the idea of a pathway back home seemed preposterous.  After all, even if for some impossible reason the Babylonians gave you permission to leave and go back home (and they wouldn't), you would have no idea how to get back (no GPS), and even if you knew how to make the trek, there was a literal desert of hundreds of miles between you and home, whose inhabitants were wild predators, and which offered no water, no food, and no respite along the way.  Even if you ventured outside the gates of Babylon to try making the journey, you would surely die under those conditions... right?

So this is where the prophet speaks God's word of hope that takes the impossible and creates a new possibility, a word which takes the dead-end of the wilderness and dares to imagine life bursting out along the road God would build.  At God's direction, Isaiah envisions a highway being laid out ahead of the people, going right from Babylon to Jerusalem.  And everywhere God touches the ground to carve out that road, life breaks out--crocuses bursting up out of the cracked and parched ground... springs of water where there was nothing before... cattails and marsh reeds where there was only brown crabgrass.  In other words, it is God answering every angle of the hopelessness with new hope.  How will the exiles get home?  God will make a road?  How will they avoid getting lost on the way?  God will make it so foolproof that even the most directionally-challenged guy who couldn't find his way out of a paper bag cannot get lost on it.  How will the people survive along the way? God will provide water... which will provide plants... which will provide sustenance all along the journey.  The ground itself will be transformed from death to life, and along with it, hope will be resurrected.

This is how God deals with dead-ends--in particular, how God deals with dead ends for people who are on the verge of hopelessness and who cannot see a way forward.  This is how God looks out for the people on the margins, the people who, like the exiles in Babylon, are a small minority looking to keep their way of life going.  This is how God creates new possibilities where all we see is the impossible.  God resurrects hope by taking our dead-ends and making roads in the wilderness where the Empire-approved-GPS cannot chart a course to follow.  

And in your life and mine, the same God is at work.  The same God who promised homecoming for exiles, and the arrival of a Messiah to people waiting for generations for his coming, is the same God who resurrects our hopelessness into hope when we are desperate and can't find a way forward.  This is who our God is, forever creating a way where there was no way, and forever creating hope for the folks who have been told by the powerful that their lives don't matter.

Now, where will this same God resurrect hope from hopelessness around you today?

Lord God, where we long for an end to exile, bring us home.  Where we ache for a way out of the dead-end, lead us forward.

Is There a Place?--December 5, 2019

Is There a Place?--December 5, 2019

"I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the LORD!'" [Psalm 122:1]

All my life, I have been told I was welcome in God's house.

Wow.  That's really something.  I mean, for those of us who grew up as part of church life, we have a way of taking that for granted.  We just assume we can stroll into a sanctuary, walk up to a pew, and make ourselves at home.  We have been made to feel that we are welcome and are allowed to join in whatever activities are happening, from the social hall to the Sunday School to the sacristy.  And that is a beautiful thing.

For me, at least, that meant I was pretty much always glad when the sentence, "Let's go to church!" was spoken.  I realize I was lucky that way.  I can relate to the excitement the psalmist has when he says, "I was glad when they said to me, 'Let us go to the house of the LORD!'"  He sees it as a place he is welcome. The pilgrimage that faithful Israelites would make every year to the Jerusalem Temple at festival times was a happy one, because those who made the journey knew they would find doors open, gates lifted, and welcome when they arrived to celebrate and praise God's goodness.

It is, indeed, a good and beautiful thing to know you are welcomed into the place you associate with God's house, and it is a privilege to get to live your life knowing there is always a place for you--a place at the table, a place for your voice to be added to the chorus, a place for safety and sanctuary.  I am glad and grateful that such has been my life's experience.

But I also realize that my experience is not universal.

And for whatever twists and turns in my life that made me always feel welcome underneath a steeple and within stained glass windows, that has not always been true for everybody.  And it occurs to me in those more honest moments that I have a way of taking for granted the welcome that was never in question for me, even though I'm a pretty big sinner and a pretty consistent mess-up.

There are a lot of folks who aren't glad when someone says, "Let's go to the house of the Lord!" because they have been turned away before.  They have been told they do not belong, that they are not acceptable, that they are not dressed properly or don't behave well enough. They have been told that the company they keep disqualifies them, or that their native language or skin color means they "just don't fit in."  They have been told their kids are too noisy, or that their shoes are not proper.  They have been told, whether in words or in scowls, "You're just not 'our kind of people'."

Or maybe even more cruelly, they have heard words of hospitality at the beginning, maybe even the sentence, "All are welcome here!", only to be told they do not qualify for Jesus' table, or that there was an invisible asterisk and fine print beside the word "welcome," which meant they were not really welcome as they were.

And so they leave.

Maybe they try again once or twice when they work up the nerve to show up on a Sunday again, but at some point it is less and less a "glad" thing to hear someone else say, "Let us go to the house of the Lord."  At some point when you've been turned away for long enough, you feel like you're just setting yourself up for another rejection, just waiting for a shoe to drop or a scowl to stare you out the door.  At some point, when you hear enough people wearing cross necklaces say, "Go back where you came from," you not only stop trying to find a welcome there on Sunday, but maybe you even give up on the God associated with the cross they so casually wear.

I have to give credit to the folks who are brave enough to walk inside a church, whether by themselves for the first time, or invited by a friend, even if you don't know anybody else.  I have to give credit to the folks who come back to churches they went to in childhood but at some point felt they were not really welcome in, even if it is just to visit at Christmas or Easter, despite the way preachers often single them out as unworthy or take cheap shots at "those people."  

But beyond just giving those folks credit for their courage, maybe we are called to something more.  At least, if we really are followers of Jesus, we have some obligation to change things when people feel they are not really welcome in our local houses of God.  And if we really do seek to worship and honor Christ, it will mean we give special attention to the folks who have been told before that they do not belong.  Especially in this season when we retell the story of a certain unmarried couple looking for a place to stay while their baby is born, only to be told, "There is no place for you here," it is worth remembering that our Lord knew what it was to be unwelcome, to be rejected, to be seeking refuge and a safe place to stay, and to be homeless.  Jesus knew what it was to be told, "Go back to where you came from," too.

All my life I've heard folks in churches complain that people don't come to church like they used to, when really it also seems to me that we've done a lot of things to drive people away and tell them they didn't really belong anyway.  So if we are upset that the pews aren't full or our halls aren't bustling with the sounds of children, it is worth asking first, "What reason have we offered for people to be glad when someone says, 'Let us go to the house of the Lord'?"  What have we done to the Good News if instead of welcoming people--all people--through the doors to be fed and to find belonging, people shudder and decide they don't want to get burned again by Respectable Religious folk?  And what could we be doing to get out of the way of Jesus, who keeps on inviting everybody, because he knows, too, what it is like to be unwelcome?

Maybe in this Advent season when we turn our attention to the baby who was laid in a manger because somebody else told Mary and Joseph, "There is no place for you here," it is worth asking what we will say when an expectant mother comes to our door, or when new faces from out of town show up in need of our welcome, or when someone who has been turned away before looks for sanctuary among us.  Because ultimately our hope as Christians is about the welcome Jesus has given us--all of us--despite all of the things that should disqualify us.

What if we dared to be the church where people really were glad when someone else says, "Let us go to the house of the Lord"?  

What would that look like?

And... what's stopping us from daring it right now?

Lord Jesus, as you have welcomed us and made our hearts glad to be in your presence, let us welcome others whom you love and call to as well.

On the Anvil--December 4, 2019

On the Anvil--December 4, 2019

"In days to come the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the highest of the mountains, and shall be raised above the hills; all the nations shall stream to it. Many peoples shall come and say, 'Come, let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; that he may teach us his ways and that we may walk in his paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth instruction, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. He shall judge between the nations, and shall arbitrate for many peoples; they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." [Isaiah 2:2-4]

You'd think peace would be the easy thing, and war the difficult one.

You'd think that quiet and calm for our souls would be an easy sell, and that hatred and strife would be difficult to stir up.

But it appears we are ornery critters, we humans, and once we have given ourselves to the ways of fear... and greed... and violence to get our way, we have a lot of unlearning to do in order to learn peace.

And, do you see it?  That's just what the prophet imagines here.  Peace isn't just a default setting that happens when we are all tired out from fighting.  Peace--at least genuine peace that is always entwined with justice--is about learning and practicing different ways of living with one another.  Peace is about what happens when we are brave enough to say, "I was wrong," rather than dig our heels in about something truly indefensible because we are embarrassed to admit our mistakes.  Peace is about what happens when I am no longer threatened by your success, because I do not see all of life as a zero-sum game where your good fortune is a loss to me.  Peace is about what happens when I am more committed to everybody being able to eat and feed their kids than I am about imagining some "god-given right" to hoard and consume without end.  Peace is about what happens when I am courageous enough to forgive rather than set off a cycle of revenge... and about what happens when I am courageous enough to ask for forgiveness rather than ruin a relationship.  Peace is about what happens when I let God's ways of justice and mercy become more important to me than me getting "my way" or putting "me and my group first."

Peace requires, in a sense, then, death and resurrection--a death to an old way of doing things, and the resurrection that leads me to live in this world differently.  Same me, and yet, I really become a whole new kind of creation--one that is no longer hunched over with hatred and bound up with fear.  Peace requires a sort of re-forging of my character, my attitudes, my skills, and my strengths--to use those same gifts, but with a new shape, a new form, and for a purpose that brings life rather than death.

That's part of what makes the image of swords being beaten into plowshares, and of spears into pruning hooks, such a powerful notion for me.  It's a sort of resurrection in and of itself, too.  To take the already cast forms of weaponry and to hammer them, to melt them, to re-forge them anew into something new and life-giving, well that is something of a resurrection, too, isn't it?  The vision of the prophet is not just of diplomatic treaties on pieces of paper, which could be backed out of, or ripped up, on the whim of the next king, but of an end to the old way of doing business, and the beginning of a new way of life. Even the swords get melted down to become farm tools. Even the spears become gardening equipment.  The old metal is still usable, but its old form is put to death, so to speak, so that a new form can be made from its substance.  

When we talk about our hope in the God who brings us to life, this is a part of the picture.  The Christian hope is not simply that God will raise up my same old molecules--and my same old ornery, greedy, and often fearful temperament with it--and just plop me down on my two feet alive again in order for me to be the same jerk I have been for so long in this life.  God has it in mind to make me a new creation--to use my sharp edges in new ways, ways that give life rather than destroy it, to take the substance of me and give it new form.  God is re-forging all of us--and it begins even now, even in this day, this year, this life.  And for whatever rough edges yet need to be polished or sanded or hammered when I breathe my last, God reserves the right to raise me up in resurrection fully transformed, too.

It is a lifelong thing, this unlearning of the old ways of death, and the new learning of God's ways that bring life.  It is a matter, not just of praying a prayer once or having a mystical experience, but of day by day choosing to let go of the ways of hatred and fear and greed, of "my way" and of "me and my group first," and instead to learn new ways of living together where kindness and justice make it possible for all of us to eat.

And for that transformation, it will take God's willingness not just to re-forge weapons into tools, but to re-forge us from being the wielder of weapons to being the users of the tools.  It will mean God re-forges my heart like is a little resurrection connected to God's grand resurrection of all things.  

Dare we invite God to work such resurrection on these ornery hearts of ours?  Dare we let God re-forge our blades and gun-barrels?  Dare we let God begin it now, and put us on the anvil today?

Lord God, take this rusty iron heart with all its sharp edges and make something new of me that will be useful in your peaceable kingdom.

God's Refusal--December 3, 2019

God's Refusal--December 3, 2019

“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.” [John 1:3b-5]

There didn't have to be anything.

Like, at all. There didn't have to be a universe.  Or a Milky Way.  There didn't have to be a yellow, middle-sized star, and there didn't have to be a rocky sphere ninety-some million miles out from it, just far enough for its light to support life on that rocky ball's surface.

There didn't have to be light at all... and there didn't have to be life.  Green blades of grass and red leaves on a Japanese maple, iridescent butterflies and high-leaping deer, none of them had to exist at all.  Not even you or I are strictly... necessary to existence.  There didn't have to be any of us.

And yet... here we are.

The opening verses of John's Gospel remind us that we are here, not because the universe needed us to exist in order for the math to work out right, but because God has willed to bring the cosmos into existence and to give us life.  We aren't a random side effect or a pleasant coincidence to the universe, but God's unflagging desire to give us the gift of ourselves, the gift of life.

And so, like a chain reaction of grace, God set the universe on fire with a flash of light and light (scientists like to call it the Big Bang), and as one flash of light begat other shining spheres, swirling in spirals and condensing into balls, one of those stars shone light enough for a miracle of chemistry: life.  From plants taking in the sunlight to my own body taking in the nutrients of spinach leaves, peaches, and bell peppers, my existence and yours are made possible because of the ongoing gift of light.  And day by day, God sustains the light in order to sustain your life and mine.

But here's the thing.  Despite God's persistent giving and the continuous shining of the light to give us light, we seem hell-bent on wallowing in the shadow of death.  Our many kinds of cruelty--to each other, to animals and forests, to an abstract "them" and "those people" far away--are evidence of how we seem driven to destroy what God so lavishly gives.  Our many distractions--our rectangles of technology, our love affair with pain-killers, and our need to run off to the next "fun" thing--they reveal that we would rather sleepwalk through existence rather than live fully aware of what is going on around us.  Our many forms of apathy--indifference to the needs of others around us, complacency when others are treated as disposable, and the wish to stay comfortably numb rather than be troubled with the suffering down the street--they all reveal how used to death we are.

We seem driven to wipe ourselves out, whether slowly or quickly, intentionally or indirectly.  And yet... God refuses to let our death-wish be the last word on thing.

God refuses to stop shining the light.  God refuses to let life be snuffed out. God refuses to let us keep the light out forever.  That is what Christ's coming is all about, really.  It is about the lengths to which God goes to reject our rejection of the light, to refuse our refusal, of life.  As much as we keep running into the shadows, God enters into the night among us--not only giving us sunlight for life, but giving us God's own self in Christ.  Our stubborn "no" to God's gift of life for all will not be the end of the story.

And so, in a very real sense, the whole Christian story is about God's "No" to our "no," about God's refusal to leave us in the darkness of the grave, and to keep shining the light, even when we seem bent on turning away from it.  Christ's coming is the culmination of the grace that began with "Let there be light," and it makes possible a life beyond the grip of death, even after we have done our worst to one another and to ourselves.  Our cruelty and complacency would let others perish in the darkness of death, but God refuses to let our hatred or apathy get the last word.  So Christ comes, to call back to life and light all who are mired in death.

Maybe it doesn't sound like a very jolly or sentimental thought, but it is deeply good news: these days of centering on the coming of Christ are about the good news of God's refusal--God's refusal to let us stay dead, God's refusal to let our crookedness win the day, and God's refusal to let the light be overcome.

When we say "death," God says, "life."
When we say, "shadow," God says, "light."
When we say, "despair" with a shrug, God speaks hope that wakens us out of our numbness.

Don't let this season--don't let your whole life--be about anything less.

O God of Life and Light, don't let our stubborn self-destructiveness be the end of the story.  Refuse our refusals, and bring us to new creation.

God's Job Description--December 2, 2019

God's Job Description--December 2, 2019

"We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies." [Romans 8:22-23]

Whatever else we can say about God, this much seems sure: God is constantly bringing things to life.

People--humans in all our great diversity, across spectrums of color, race, gender, language, tribe, and culture.  God calls them to life.

Animals, too, in all of their varieties: wolves and lambs, bears and cows, blue whales and krill, killdeer and kangaroos.  

The tiniest quark and the vastness of the whole universe--all of this creation, we believe, has been given existence as a free gift by God whose self-chosen job-description seems to be something like "Giver of Life."

From the opening verses of the creation poem in Genesis 1 to the dream of a new heaven and a new earth in the tail end of Revelation, we are introduced to a God who brings life where there is no life--whether there is nothing there to start with, only chaos swirling around in the dark, or even where death is present. God is about the business of bringing life.

Honestly, we sometimes forget just how big and beautiful that job-description of God's is, and we end up imagining that God is simply our personal finder of lost keys and good parking spaces, or the distributor of warm and fuzzy spiritual feelings, or the mascot for my personal political platform. Those are all far too small, honestly. Let the parking spaces and partisan politics go on the back burner--God is up to something infinitely more compelling.The God we meet in the Scriptures is always about the vast and deep mission of bringing us to life: life out of nothingness, life out of death, life out of desperation, life in its fullness.

Now, at the beginning of the story, we call that giving of life "creation."  When there's nothing but swirling chaos and a void where not even space exists yet, bringing things to life is an act of originality.  Each blade of grass, each photon of light, each pebble on every shore, is a brand new thing.

But that's not where we find ourselves in the story.  We live in the midst of the ache.  We live where that once-beautiful creation groans.  We live amidst the relentless doggedness of death, in a world where wildfires rage, species go extinct before we even have the chance to lay eyes on them, shooters go on near-daily rampages (yesterday's was in New Orleans, in case you are still able to keep track), and where, as Thoreau once remarked, most of us "lead lives of quiet desperation." Turn on the news for a hot minute and the rottenness and crookedness come shouting off the screen. We live in the midst of a world suffering from sickness-unto-death.

And what we long for--what we groan for like a pregnant mother in the delivery room--is for resurrection.  We long for creation to be brought to life again.  We long for every nook and cranny of the universe where death and decay and entropy reign to be brought to fullness of life again.  The whole shootin' match, born all over again.  We are desperate--and not even quietly so--for the God who spoke the cosmos into being at the first to call our names out of the darkness like Lazarus in the tomb.  Nothing less will do.

That, and nothing smaller, is what the Gospel is all about.  Resurrection--when God calls the dead to life again--for this whole aching universe.  And that is why we start here, as the more liturgically-minded (read: "church-nerd") among us start the season of Advent.  We start the seeking here with a reminder that the Christian faith is about nothing smaller, nothing less significant, than a whole resurrection of all creation.  Any time we shrink it down to lessons about respectable behavior, proper formulas for prayer, or life-coaching tips for "your best life now," we are selling God (and the universe God loves) terribly short.  God is about the work of bringing life, and Advent reminds us that it is the whole world aching for that newness of life.

So we start this season with the twin gifts of honesty and hope: honesty about the mess of injustice, violence, enmity, and death that the world is... and hope about the mosaic of justices and healing, peace and life that God has promised to resurrect from the ashes.  Advent--and indeed the Gospel itself--requires that we be truthful about the many ways things are broken, so that we can be honest about all the places we are stuck in the grip of death... and then be set free from them.

Don't let these weeks of anticipation be just about setting up your manger scene or getting your Christmas cards out in the mail. We need to take the time before we get to the angels and shepherds to remember just how big a project God has undertaken, since it is nothing less than resurrection and re-creation of heaven and earth themselves.  We need the time to steep, like tea leaves, in the idea that God is raising all of creation from death into new life.  Let it take the time.

Today, maybe it is not a bad idea to begin to make a running list of the places in our lives, in our communities, and even as wide as our whole world, that are in need of being brought to new life... so that we will have a sense of just how wide, how deep, and how specific God's mission really is.  Because God is committed to bringing all of it--every square inch of the universe--back to fullness of life in God.

Yeah, let's put the worry about finding a parking space on the back burner.  We are embarking alongside God in the work of resurrection.

God of life, for all the many ways we are settling for death, call us into your marvelous resurrection light.