But Monday's Coming--April 27, 2020

But Monday's Coming--April 27, 2020

"Now on that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem, and talking with each other about all these things that had happened. While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him. And he said to them, 'What are you discussing with each other while you walk along?' They stood still, looking sad..." [Luke 24:13-17]

I know this isn't the end of the story.  And yes, I know that usually, when someone points out "Hey, this isn't the end of the story," it's because they want to jump ahead to the part that is yet to be told.  The kids get scared in the middle of the story, so you skip past the bit with the wolf right to the happy ending with the woodcutter.  (Or they start to yawn with boredom in the story, so you skip ahead past the exposition to the next exciting bit of swashbuckling or magical happenings.)

We church folk do it, too.  The quintessential case in point is the slogan, "It's Friday... but Sunday's coming!" that you sometimes will see posted on social media or church signs when folks don't want to dwell on the scandal, the sadness, and the cruelty of God on a cross.  At its best, that motto, "...but Sunday's coming!" is a reminder that death doesn't get the last word.  But when we get sloppy, lazy, or scared, that becomes away of fast-forwarding through the parts we don't like, or the elements of the story that make us squirm, and to skip ahead to the happy ending.  At its worst, it shows up in the terrible practice of skipping Good Friday altogether and jumping right from a happy parade celebration on Palm Sunday to smiling happy angel faces (no weeping women, of course--they are edited out of the picture, too) on Easter Sunday.  If that isn't the way popular religion tries to handle the cross, I'll eat my hat.

But for a moment, stay with me here (to borrow a phrase from later in the scene).  Stay with me in this part of the story we often call the Walk to Emmaus, before we get to the realization that the seemingly uninformed stranger really has been Jesus all along.  Stay with me in this moment before the happy ending, before Cleopas and his companion (wife? roommate?) realize that their hearts were burning within them while Jesus spoke, and before the famous line from the last line of this episode, "The Lord is risen indeed!"

Stay with me to consider what it means that, before Cleopas and company are ready to believe it, Jesus shows up anyhow.  Stay here for a moment and let's allow it to sink in that the risen Jesus neither waits for an invitation nor demands a sure enough faith before he will make an appearance.  Let's just let it percolate through our theological systems that Jesus invites himself into the situation first because the two travelers on the road are too scared, too hopeless, too dense, or too heartbroken to ever dare to believe that the rabbi was alive again without help.

We usually get it backwards, we religious folks.  We tend to think (and often put this into pamphlets, tracts, and best-selling titles in the "Christianity" section) that Jesus is more than glad to come into someone's life, provided that they (1) take the first step of inviting him into their lives, (2) can correctly and completely articulate a faith-statement of correct propositional statements about Jesus, and (3) are now going to leave behind all their doubts and sadness in exchange for a permanent smile that does wonders for the church's P.R.  But that is exactly NOT how this story goes.  

No, instead, Jesus meets the travelers on the road exactly when they can't believe the resurrection news, and he breaks into their conversation to help them understand what has happened without being invited first.  Jesus takes the first step when we are too chicken-hearted to take it ourselves.  Jesus opens our minds and clarifies our vision when we do not see clearly or understand what to believe.  And the fact that these two travelers are on the verge of hopelessness--even though they have already heard the women's report that the tomb was empty--doesn't prevent Jesus from sharing their walk and their heartache.

And this is what gives me such hope when I am on the verge of hopelessness, too:  Jesus shows up even for folks who know the Easter message but are still trudging through despair.  This story is set on the evening of that first Easter Sunday, and as Luke tells it, Cleopas has heard the report from Mary and the other women that an angel of God vouched for Jesus' resurrection. That means, the hopelessness of Cleopas and his companion isn't a matter of a lack of information or up-to-dat news.  They have come through the news of Easter morning and are still despondent--and now they are running out of daylight on Sunday, and Monday's coming.  But Jesus makes a special trip to see them... and he stays with them to lay the groundwork that will enable them to believe.  And he does it even though they already had the "news" that Jesus was alive.

Jesus meets us where we are at. He walks with us for the journey we are actually taking--not one prescribed by where a religious pamphlet tells us we are supposed to be.  And he makes it possible for us to face returning to life on the other side of Sunday.  He knows that Monday's coming, too, and that we need to be prepared to face how we live in a world where it sure looks like death is still calling the shots.

So yeah, there's more to the story here--and more even than just the happy ending when the risen Christ is revealed "in the breaking of the bread."  There will be Sunday night, and Monday, and its night, too, and a whole new week and lifetime beyond that.  And not all of that will be sunshine and gumdrops.  In fact, a lot of it will be kind of heartbreaking.  (As the wise line from The Princess Bride puts it, "Life is pain, your highness--anyone who says differently is selling something.")  But what lets us face this day is not simply a one-time message, but a Christ who keeps on showing up and inviting himself into our heartbreaks to help us sort through them, to walk with us in them, and to invite himself into the mess in our minds before we have had the wisdom or courage to ask him in.

This is really where all the "You have to ask Jesus into your heart first" stuff out there just comes completely unglued.  Because if you actually read the stories, it's just the opposite.  We keep carrying our fear and sorrow, which keeps us from ever daring to ask Jesus in the first place, and he just invites himself into our mess and goes to work on us.  And because we know he is willing to meet us in our confusion, grief, and fear, we know he will keep on being with us when Sunday turns to Monday again and we have to head back into the regular routines and expectations of the day.

So, to be sure, there's more to the story.  Some of it will have a happy ending moment on Sunday. But Monday's coming, too--and now that it is here, the same Jesus who met us in our fear and sadness on the way will keep walking with us through it all on this day, too.

Lord Jesus, keep showing up in our midst, even before we have invited you in--so that we will recognize you, listen to you, and let you kindle our hearts in this moment.

No Matter What--April 24, 2020

No Matter What--April 24, 2020

"For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain." [Philippians 1:21]

Ten little words in English, but they sure are powerful.

Surprising, too, maybe. And against the grain of our usual thinking. But powerful ones.

Let’s be clear, though: Paul isn’t just mismatching opposites here. He isn’t just saying “black is white and up is down” to sound profound like some caricature of a zen master. There is an underlying logic, even if it sounds like the opposite of common sense at first.

Let’s start at the end: dying is gain. At first blush, that doesn’t sound right at all! Dying is sorrowful. Dying is heartbreaking. Dying means pain and separation. And loss. Certainly not “gain.” Think of how we even talk about death: “He lost his battle with cancer,” we say, or the doctor comes into the family waiting room and says, “We tried everything we could, but we lost her and couldn’t get her back.” Death doesn’t seem like it’s about gaining anything.

At first, we might want to be angry at Paul for saying such a thing. How insensitive, Paul! Don’t you know that kind of remark is going to rub salt in the wounds for anyone who has felt the sting of grief? How can you so glibly say that “dying is gain” when we, who have lived through the deaths of people we have loved continue to feel such loss over it?

Ah, but Paul has lost people, too. Paul knows that death involves loss. Paul has wept over friends and fellow brothers and sisters in Christ who have died. Even Jesus wept over the death of his friend Lazarus—mere moments before he was to raise him from the dead! But, of course, all the pain of that loss is really for us who remain alive. We feel the pain of loss. We feel the empty place in our heats. But Paul is talking about himself here—he is saying, “When the time comes for me to die, it will really be for my gain!” Death is loss, but it is also the end of loss—it is the point at which there is nothing left to lose. And Janis Joplin is not too far off the mark on her refrain that “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” Paul got that and said as much 1,900 years before “Me and Bobby McGee” hit the charts.

For someone whose life is hid in Christ, dying means freedom. It means release from the weights we carry, the burdens of life, and the responsibilities we shoulder. For us who have found our hope in Christ, death really is gain, because it means death can’t do anything more to us—the power of sickness, of separation, of sorrow, they are all broken, and we will find ourselves in the immediate presence of the God whose love was so strong as to face death for us, too. If we did not have that hope of a God who will not lose his grip on us, then sure, death would be nothing but loss—the ultimate loss of our grip on ourselves. But because of Christ, death becomes not a stopping point, but a gateway. It doesn’t mean we seek out death, of course. And of course, the world may not understand it, but for us who have found our hope in Christ, dying really does mean gain.

But now, here’s the thing that gets me about Paul’s powerful little sentence in Philippians 1:21—the first half of his little pair is not “To live is loss.” You might expect that, given the way it ends with “dying is gain.” That would have had a nice rhythm to it, a nice balance and symmetry. We might expect Paul to say something like, “Since dying is really about gaining eternity, this life is awful and miserable by comparison,” or something like Thomas Hobbes’ famous decree: “Life is nasty, brutish, and short.” And to be truthful, sometimes Christians do get sloppy and say things like that—that because we’re going to heaven one day, this life is just a waste, or just a practice, or just a matter of putting your time in until the streets of gold and gates of pearl.

Paul doesn’t say that. In fact he goes out of his way and breaks what would have been a neat and tidying pairing in order not to say that. Instead of saying, that “living is loss and dying is gain,” he says that living is Christ. Now, what on earth could he mean?

Well, he’s really only saying the other half of what allows him to say that “dying is gain.” Dying is only gain for us because we are joined to Christ’s death and resurrection. Death’s power is broken over us because we have been united with Jesus’ death and his new risen life. So when we die, our lives are still held in Christ, who never dropped us or loosened his grip on us even for a moment. And when we continue to live, we are still living with Christ in us. So at every moment, even right now as you read and as I write, Christ dwells in us, and living this moment is a matter of letting Christ live more and more fully in us.

But see how that changes our perspective on this life. It’s not meant to be tragic, dire drudgery. It’s not meant to be just putting our time in or paying our dues. It’s Christ himself, active in us, equipping us, recharging us, renewing us, and working through us. It means that every moment of this life, and every minute of this day is filled with divine purpose and beauty. Yes, dying may be gain—the gain of freedom from having to carry the weights of this life. But for us, living is not drudgery, either—it is the privilege of being allowed to have Christ live and move and act through us. And that, if you ask me, is some pretty powerful stuff in its own right.

So today, no matter what happens in this day, there is good news to be spoken. If we live through this day, Christ will be present in us, working through us and filling us to fullness, because we are indwelt by Christ. And if it should happen that you or I breathe our last on this day, we know that there is nothing death can do to us any longer, and its power is broken, because we are held by Christ.

On the one hand, filled by Christ. On the other, held by Christ. No matter what today, you and I will be brought right into the very presence of Christ. Let us have our eyes open.

Lord Jesus, we give you this and all that will happen in it. Grant us to see the gain for us no matter what is in store in this day.

This Miraculous Disaster--April 23, 2020

This Miraculous Disaster--April 23, 2020

"... as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possession everything." [2 Corinthians 6:4-10]

The thought that terrifies me in a movie about genetically engineered dinosaurs is also the word that fills me with resilient hope in my real daily existence:  life finds a way.

You probably recognize that four word refrain as a line from Jurassic Park, where it comes as a double-edged sword foreshadowing a breakout of velociraptors and a very irritable Tyrannosaurus rex.  And that theme, of life "finding a way," becomes the vehicle for hanging all sorts of plot twists... and a whole mess of sequels, reboots, and sequels to the reboots.  A lot of money has been made in books, movies, and merchandise, on the premise that "life finds a way."

And maybe it's fair to say that I am now officially tired of hearing the phrase, "life finds a way" in the dark of a movie theater.  But in my actual lived-out waking hours, I need the reminder that sometimes the surest sign of life is just the way we keep on keeping on.  Sometimes the shape of resurrection looks an awful lot like resilience--the ways we adapt, grow, and rise up again to face the next challenge, so that we can continue with, to borrow a well-worn phrase, "a long obedience in the same direction."  I need the reminder that the followers of Jesus have always understood that our life in Christ will mean taking hits, getting knocked down, and then getting up again.  There is, quite simply, no honest version of Christianity that can avoid suffering, sorrow, pain, or change--because these are all part of what it is to be human, and being Christian is, in so many ways, really about learning how to be human again.  The question, really, is how we face the sufferings, pains, and hardships that come with this miraculous disaster we call life.

For the apostle Paul, there were a lot of those disastrous moments.  And even though it can feel at times like Paul is always playing a game of "Top This Suffering," his point isn't to say that he's tougher because he's been through so much.  Paul isn't trying to say that he's stronger or greater or braver or anything like that.  Rather, he's giving the reason for his hope that life, at least our life in Christ, so to speak, "finds a way."  He is showing the receipts to prove that his hope isn't just Polyanna-ishly groundless optimism, or the naivete of not having really struggled in life.  He's saying, "Look, I believe that God is going to bring us through whatever we face, because look, God has brought me through this whole long list of things."  

And more to the point, God has given Paul the ability to respond to that long list of sufferings without selling out his integrity, his character, or his compassion.  It's not just that Paul has been through beatings, riots, and imprisonments--but that even when he was put through those things, he didn't give up on following the way of Jesus in how he dealt with them. He didn't decide that it was too difficult a time to practice selflessness, or that you can stop being kind to others when you are going through a rough time.  Paul doesn't say, "Oh, well, when you are really in a pinch, you're off the hook for truthful speech and genuine love."  God gives the ability, not simply to "keep calm and carry on" like the slogan of the old British WWII era posters, but to respond to hardship in the way of Christ.  God ensures, not merely that "life finds a way," but that the way of Jesus is brought to life in us.

Put another way, practicing the love, the truthfulness, and the priorities of Jesus is not an option we can set aside when it seems like it will be hard.  Christians don't get to say, "We are all for loving everybody" when the markets are up and the sun is shining, only to start eating our own when things get tight.  We don't get to sing, "Amazing grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me," and then decide that it's just too costly to care about some other person in a wretched position.  We face hardship the same way we face the easy days: with the life of Christ filling us and flowing through us.

In days like these when it is getting difficult to keep on keeping on for many folks, that reminder tells us two things: first, that we will find, like saints before us have found for twenty centuries, that the Giver of life will find a way.  We will be carried through, and sometimes, just the ability to keep going is enough of a victory for the day.  If there comes a day when it feels like all you've gotten done is simply to have kept your head above water, that's ok.  There were lots of days for Paul where his greatest accomplishment was just to keep breathing--every day wasn't writing Romans and preaching at the Areopagus.  And those lovely daffodils blossoming around our yards and streets these days spent an awful lot of time before now just pushing their way through dirt to break free of the ground.  It's OK if that's where you are--today, or any day.

And then, second, and just as importantly, is Paul's insistence that it's not just about facing adversity, but about how we face it--and that as followers of Jesus, there is not an option to ditch being Christ-like just because it seems hard... or we don't want to... or because, as everybody keeps saying ad nauseum these days, "these are unprecedented times."  Paul's point is that everything he went through--even when it was unprecedented for him, too--he was given the grace to face in a way that rang true to the way of Jesus.  Truth-telling, even when it would have been easier to lie or cover things up.  Kindness, when it would have been efficient to overlook other people.  Genuine love, when it would have been more convenient to be self-centered.  So when we see folks on the news at rallies carrying posters that literally say, "Sacrifice the weak," we will say, "No. That is not the way of Jesus--and we don't get to set aside the way of Jesus just because it has stopped being convenient at the moment."  For us, it is not enough simply for life to "find a way"; for us, in adversity, we trust we will be given the grace and vision to trace the way of Jesus.  And that will make all the difference.

Face today, however much you are able to face.  And face it knowing that the same God who brought Paul through his laundry list of sufferings will give you and me the grace to face today with the love of Christ, too.

Lord God, bring us through the miraculous disaster of daily life on Earth with the grace and strength of Jesus.

The God Who Outlasts--April 22, 2020

The God Who Outlasts--April 22, 2020

"[Peter said,] 'The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of our ancestors has glorified his servant Jesus, whom you handed over and rejected in the presence of Pilate, though he had decided to release him. But you rejected the Holy and Righteous One and asked to have a murderer given to you, and you killed the Author of life, whom God raised from the dead. To this we are witnesses." [Acts 3:12-15]

You could say that God's greatest power is the ability to outlast and to exhaust the worst  of humanity (and the best—look how much evil is done with good intentions!). God's surprisingly determined faithfulness is what sends Jesus, risks Jesus' rejection and death, overcomes it in the resurrection, brings healing to those who are still broken and hurting, and then withstands the skeptical looks from this crowd. It is the goodness of God that keeps coming back, even though, at every turn, that goodness has been met with rejection.

That faithfulness is given shape in enemy-love; that is, Peter tells a story of a God who does not merely wait for us to come back to him like a faithful dog waiting at the back door of the house, but who actively goes out and seeks those who have participated in rejecting him. Peter tells this crowd that they are complicit in Jesus' death—they are accomplices, and they cannot merely pass the blame or pass the buck to the empire for getting rid of Jesus. They are—and we are—enemies of God, who stand in a long line of people who have rejected God's goodness and grace. And if God just did the "common sense" thing to do, God would have left us behind a long time ago. But to hear Peter tell it, this same God whose vision for a new world keeps being rejected, and this same God whose Chosen One, Jesus, was put to death, this God has not given up on blessing the world and mending the very lives that had conspired against him.

The resurrection, it would seem, is the sign of God's determination not to take our violent "No" to be the last word in the conversation.  Or, as Frederick Buechner has put it, the resurrection means that the worst thing is never the last thing.

Knowing that gives us the courage to face the worst in ourselves, much as Peter's speech here pulls no punches with revealing the ways we keep rejecting God.  We can't look away--and we don't have to anymore--from all the times and all the ways we have slammed the door in God's face and said, "No, I think I'd prefer to do things my way, thank you very much." Peter's speech here doesn't let us forget that we are complicit in Jesus' death, and we cannot push the blame off onto any other lone group—we can't blame "the Jews" as had been done (wrongly, in case it needs to be said again) for so long in the church's history, and we can't blame "the Romans" as though we would have had the courage to liberate Jesus if we'd have been there, and we cannot blame the random cruelties of fate. 

No, we are a part of this mess, and we have dirty hands. The resurrection of Jesus shows us God's refusal to let that be the end of the story, and so we are given the courage to name it when we would much prefer to brush all of our histories of rejection under the rug. Because ultimately these words of Peter are about the persistence of God—this God who keeps seeking us out even after our repeated rejections.  The God whom Peter calls on as "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," is shown throughout the Scriptures to be "gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love." Perhaps we cannot help but see our failures, but we are also invited to see the God whose love simply outlasts and outlives and exhausts our failures and rejection and animosity, and who keeps coming back to find us. We are met with this love that will not let us go—ever.  That is part of what the resurrection means, too.

Today, it may be that the task in front of us is two-fold: first, I am called to dare being honest about all the ways I reject God's goodness and all the blessed opportunities to live in God's new way of things that I pass by. And then second, seeing that God refuses to let that be the last word, I am dared to jump into God's love in a way that makes it possible for me to love others without waiting on them to love me first or deserve it. God's faithful love is a love for enemies as well as strangers and friends—and that is the love into which I am pulled today. We get to be a part of Jesus' movement to keep reaching out to a world that keeps rejecting God, knowing that in the end, God's death-defying love persists, nevertheless.

Good Lord, today let us see ourselves truthfully and hopefully. Break down again the walls we have built to keep you out—keep besieging us, Lord, with the love that will not let us go.

Nothing But Ransomed Refugees--April 21, 2020

Nothing But Ransomed Refugees--April 21, 2020

"They sing a new song [to the Lamb]:

  'You are worthy to take the scroll and top open its seals, for you were slaughtered and by your blood you ransomed for God saints from every tribe and language and people and nation; you have made them to be a kingdom and priests serving our God, and they will reign on earth'." [Revelation 5:9-10]

One of the defining marks of the resurrection community is that it includes all kinds of folks from all kinds of places.  Seriously.

It's a pretty radical thing, if you think about it, that what began as a teaching group of basically twelve Jewish peasants so quickly became a new kind of community altogether, made up of people from every nationality, gender, class, language, skin color, and culture.  The New Testament writers saw this as something made possible by the death and resurrection of Jesus, and it wasn't just incidental.  It wasn't just a quirky coincidence or accident of history that the people of Christ were from everywhere--it was, to borrow the words of a song, "a new way to be human"! Just like the risen Jesus is human but with a new kind of body (one which, for example, could materialize behind locked doors and vanish in an instant), so the community of Jesus is a new kind of humanity.  The resurrection is the inflection point, and it starts the creation of a family called church that isn't bounded by DNA, by a common language, or by shared heritage.  The "kingdom" to which Christians belong is only and always a kingdom of immigrants from every other corner of creation--and that is by God's design.

Read the story of the early church in Acts, and you see how the new community called church took that new identity seriously.  In addition to welcoming people from Gentile and Samaritan nationalities, they shared their common life.  They learned the importance of small things like eating together across the old dividing lines.  They supported each other financially when one group was struggling.  They knew that belonging the Christ was more than just about "letting those people in" but about genuinely including them in everything from leadership to resources to everyday life.  It was, quite honestly, an experiment.  Prior to this moment in history, you pretty much either had nations made up of a single common ethnicity, language, and culture, or you had an authoritarian empire forcing people together from above with at the point of a sword.  But the Jesus-community came to understand that they were meant to be a motley crew of refugees from everywhere, people who were welcomed as they were, and who were called to look out for the well-being of others who were different.  That much was baked in from the beginning.

And here in the last book of the Bible, you get the picture, too, that this was seen as something to celebrate.  Here as the narrator John gives us another song in the musical production that is Revelation, the whole heavenly chorus is praising Christ (the Lamb) because his death and resurrection redeemed people from all nations and tribes and languages into this new community.  And that's just it: the church is--and has always been--nothing but a bunch of ransomed refugees, immigrants and exiles, sojourners and asylum seekers gathered up in Christ from everywhere else.  Unlike every other people-group on earth, we don't have to worry about keeping up a birth-rate to avoid from dying out, because we have always been made by the risen Christ who grabs hold of us from wherever we had come from before. And unlike the fearful ethnic nationalist movements bellowing loudly still today, we don't traffic in any fears of being "replaced" by other people-groups, because that's just not how things work for the Christ-community.  We have always been nothing but welcomed-in former outsiders, by God's intention.

It's worth remembering that the news of the resurrection is always about more than just the afterlife--it's about a new kind of belonging that has been given to us, and to folks from everywhere on earth.  And because of that, the resurrection means we don't have to fear demographic changes, or be resentful when others live in our neighborhood who speak different languages, or live in fear because the complexion of our community is different than it was decades ago.  That's not something to be afraid of, or a reason to long for a vanished past--it is, rather, a vision of the promised future.

Lord Jesus, thank you for gathering us from every corner of creation.  Let us welcome others as you have welcomed us.

Defusing the Fear--April 20, 2020

Defusing the Fear--April 20, 2020

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! By his great mercy he has given us a new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, and into an inheritance that is imperishable, undefiled, and unfading, kept in heaven for you, who are being protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. In this you rejoice, even if now for a little while you have had to suffer various trials..." [1 Peter 1:3-6]

It's our fears about the future that make us no use to anybody in the present.

Have you noticed that in yourself before?  I see it in me, for sure.  When we are anxious about something coming up on the horizon, it has a way of taking up all of our attention, all of our field of vision, right now in the present, so that we can't deal with the needs and opportunities of the moment.  Folks who are worried about their finances or whether they will be laid off next week are going to be extra guarded about giving away money to someone else--and understandably so.  People who are worried about where their next meal will come from learn the coping mechanism of taking (or stealing or hoarding) extra food and hiding it away, because it gives them some small feeling of control when they have so little over anything else (ask kids who have spent time in foster or group homes about that).  And others who are uneasy about change--in their way of life, in their community, in their country, or in their culture--have a way of becoming afraid of anybody or anything different in the present, and we start seeing "enemies" or "threats" or "those people" instead of seeing "neighbors."  

The common thread is how our fears about an uncertain future make us antsy (or worse) in the present.  All too often, our worry about "what will happen to me," even if there are fair reasons for the worry, ends up poisoning our view of the world and of life right now, so that we value other people and their well-being less and value our own interests more--even if we have to sacrifice the well-being of others for our own sense of security in the present.  So... what if there were a way to neutralize our big picture fears about the future?  What might happen then... and what might it mean for the way we live in the present?

I want to suggest that's just what the opening lines of the book we call First Peter are intended to do: in the midst of uncertainty and anxiety, here is a voice that says, "You don't have to worry about your future in the end--your needs are covered, your destination is secure, and your life is in the hands of a love that will not let you go."  And because of that, the writer says, we don't have to get all fussy about with worries on the future horizon that it becomes a fog over our present, too.  Because we know our lives are forever in God's hands--the same Father who raised Jesus from the dead--we don't have to live hobbled up with fear in the present moment.  We don't have to run away from the things that scare us and then bury our heads in the sand, but rather, we can face them with eyes wide open to deal with them.  I don't have to become consumed with fear that my needs won't be met, and therefore I don't have to view everyone else around me as competition for resources or a threat to my existence.  You and I don't have to start treating each other as expendable dead weight, or obstacles to each other's success--we can see each other as gifts from God for one another.  All of that is possible when my worry about an uncertain future is defused with the assurance that God really does have me held by the scruff of my neck like a mama cat carrying her kittens to safety.

You know how I saw that play out recently for me?  Toilet paper.  My goodness, I know we're all sick to death now of jokes about people hoarding toilet paper in these days.  But there was a point a few weeks back when we were near the end of our supply in the house, and I started getting short with the rest of the people in my house as I stewed in anxiety about it... and when I saw someone else post on social media that they were running low themselves and that they had seen bare shelves at their local grocery store, for a split second, I had this gut reaction in my head where I thought to myself, "I hope they don't ask me for any, because I'm not sharing."  Man--where did that come from?!  It was such an ugly sentiment from the reptilian part of my brain that is only concerned with my self-preservation, and wow, did I do a LOT of jumping to conclusions in a split second!  Of course, it wasn't long at all that another grown-up in the house assured me that we did have more toilet paper, and that, after all, we had some in the back bathroom I had not even thought about... and that if someone else really were down to the end of their last roll, we could help out.  An awful lot of mental drama from me for just a bit, but it is now unnerving to me to see how quickly I could revert to an almost animalistic mix of fear and territoriality.  And on the other hand, it has stayed with me how that malice and negativity dissipated like the morning fog as soon as a reliable voice told me that our needs were already covered, and that there was no need to be so obsessed.

That was a two-minute conversation about toilet paper--but imagine what it is like to live your whole life constantly in the fear that there won't be enough for you... or that you're on your own in this life... or that everybody else around you is a threat to your well-being!  My goodness, that would quickly lead me to think it was OK to do some terrible stuff, all in the name of me getting to preserve my comfortable way of life.  And on the other hand, what would it be like to live all of the time seeing the world clearly, rather than with a vision clouded by suspicion of everybody else and anxiety that we're alone and defenseless?

For both the very vulnerable first readers of First Peter and us today two millennia later, the promise and the invitation is the same: we really can live and move in this day unencumbered of the anxiety that no one has our back.  God does.  God always has.  The resurrection of Jesus gives us a hope that means we don't have to be constantly obsessing about the uncertainty of the future.  For people in the first century who were peasants, slaves, or scattered refugees (the sort of folk First Peter was written to), there was the promise that we have an inheritance nobody else can take away... that isn't susceptible to the fickle whims of the market or the possibility of spoiling.  And for us today, who live in times when people hoard toilet paper out of fear and folks start calculating the cash value of letting others die, all stirred up because of anxiety about the future, we need the same message, too.  

So here it is: In the big picture, God's got us.  

In the final analysis, your future is secure, and nobody can take you out of God's hands.

Not Caesar in all of his boastful, incompetent crookedness, fiddling while Rome burns.

Not the specter of sickness in the ancient or modern world.

Not thieves in the night or con artists in the daytime.

And not, as another biblical writer would put it, "anything else in all creation."

When we dare to trust that our future is the hands of a God whose grip will not let us go, we live this day with a peace that makes us so much more... useful in this day.  We can stop being agitated like a cornered animal, and we can instead live with open hands, ready to help the neighbor, ready to receive our daily bread, and ready to accept the nail-scarred embrace of the one who has already been to death and back for us.

Go ahead, breathe out.

Go ahead, trust that there will be another breath to take in.

The resurrection of Jesus gives us a hope for the future that makes us ready to face the present.

Go to it.

Lord Jesus, keep speaking your assurance to us that you hold us... so that we can let go of our unnecessary anxieties and be freed up for doing good in this day.

Under New Management--April 17, 2020

Under New Management--April 17, 2020

"[Peter said:] ‘You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know—this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law. But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power....'" [Acts 2:22-24]
I was once a part of a conversation at a coffee shop about the Apostles' Creed, and the question came up why so little of Jesus' actual life was included in that statement of the faith. We skip from "...born of the virgin Mary" and move right to "he suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried," before catapulting into "on the third day he rose again." No mention of the people he healed, the new way of life he embodied and taught, nor the signs and miracles that made so many of our flannel-board lessons in Sunday School. The words of the Creed—which go back pretty early, to maybe the 2nd century AD—center on the death and resurrection of Jesus. It does seem curious, at least.

I think the same kind of thoughts when I hear these speeches and sermons in Acts. Whether Luke has a little-known tape recording of what Peter said, or whether Luke is doing his best to represent the spirit of the central message of Peter and the early disciples, there is a similar push toward the resurrection. As Luke tells it, Peter gives this surprisingly brief summary of Jesus' actions, mentions nothing of what he taught or said (which is interesting for Luke, since his gospel has so many powerful parables, stories, and sayings of Jesus that don't appear in any other gospel), and then makes an oratorical bee-line for the death and resurrection of Jesus.  And even if you keep reading the rest of Pete's sermon in this passage from Acts, you'll see he really spends the most time talking about the resurrection of Jesus.

So what's behind all this—and what does any of it matter? Well, the long and the short of it is this: the resurrection of Jesus is both the message the first followers of Jesus brought and the power that drove into the world to bring it. Plenty of people had heard rabbis teach before, and plenty of people had heard interesting parables illustrating what any given teacher thought about God or the Torah or the right way to live. Beyond that, plenty of people had seen local healers do impressive "stuff" to cast out demons or cure the sick. And any self-respecting Jew even half-familiar with the stories of God's people in the Torah knew that Pharaoh's top magicians could show off a few impressive parlor tricks to copy Moses', like turning water red and turning their walking sticks into snakes. To be able to pull off a stunt like those was not necessarily cause to tell the world—maybe just enough cause to tell the people hungry for entertainment there's a new show in town, but not the kind of big speech Peter makes here. 

The difference is the news of the resurrection. For the kind of faithful Jewish travelers who came back to celebrate the festival of Pentecost, the notion of resurrection is not just the curious report of one person who had been resuscitated in a medical anomaly, but the announcement that the universe was under new management. Resurrection was the hoped for sign of the breaking-in of God's final and beautiful reign over things—when the broken would be mended, relationships put back in balance, and death finally defeated. Resurrection is what made the difference between hearing Jesus' teaching as one more do-it-yourself scheme for how to make the world a better place (and schemes like that were, and are, a dime a dozen) on the one hand, and hearing Jesus' words as pictures of the way things are when and where God fully reigns on the other. 

Resurrection—as in God's act of breaking the usual rules of things to raise the dead—was worth Peter risking making a fool of himself by trying to defend his band of preaching former fishermen who, to any outside observer were liquored up and mouthy at 9:00 in the morning. Resurrection was the reason it was worth it for all of the first disciples to risk their lives passing the word along and getting arrested and moving to new places and turning the world upside down. And resurrection is still the reason it is worth it for anyone else to listen and join the new community of Jesus' followers—after all, the world has already heard plenty of sales pitches before about self-improvement and how to 'be a better you.' And from there, having heard the news that with Jesus' resurrection the Reign of God really has begun in a new and definitive way, the new followers of Jesus then come to hear about what this Jesus had to say and what it looks like to live in the Kingdom.

Resurrection is the news that says things really are different, even when it doesn't look or feel different.  Resurrection is what assures us that Caesar isn't calling the shots, and neither are any of his successors through history.  Resurrection is what tells us there is more to hope for than piling up bigger profits in this life.  Resurrection is what tells us that the powers of death have been expelled from office; they no longer have final authority over us.

So back to us, and our witness to the world. There will be all kinds of opportunities in this day to be witnesses to our faith, and there are all kinds of schemes for "selling" and promoting our churches, our congregations, or our programs. But people have seen so many of them before and found them to be just one more tired marketing scheme, one more program, one more self-help plan to 'become a better you.' And frankly, so many of those sales pitches come across and needy and self-serving, like all the would-be messiahs who came before Jesus who really were recruiting their armies to prepare to rise up against Rome. But this Jesus is different, because his story is one of resurrection, not just as God's impressive parlor trick, but as God's way of overturning the old rules. Death is no longer given last word among us. Violence is no longer a given assumption about how we get things done. The hoarding of "stuff" is no longer what defines us—a new regime has begun, and we see it with the resurrection of Jesus. 

That's not to say that we are uninterested in what Jesus has to say. It's just that only with the word of resurrection—of God raising the dead and bringing about new possibilities—can Jesus' teaching be anything other than one more bestselling self-help scheme or self-interested marketing campaign. That poses some interesting questions for us—what is the news we are sharing with people when we invite them (if we can dare to invite them) into worship or church life with us? Are we settling for talk about how nice the music is or how proud we feel of our numbers? Because people have heard all of that before—and none of it is news. But if we are willing to talk about how resurrection has changed things among us—how the raising of Jesus is creating a community that is willing to risk like Peter and the gang, how the raising of Jesus is daring us to risk new kinds of serving, and how the raising of Jesus takes the pressure off of us to fix the world and lets God be the one to bear the responsibility for mending the world, even as it comes through us—all of that changes our message to be both good and news. And it tells those we invite, those we work with, those we meet on the street, that we are not passing along the news of Jesus because of what we get out of the deal for ourselves, but simply because this is the way things are when and where God reigns.

Resurrection is where we begin and end. How will people know that by our words and actions today?

Living God, help us today to peel away the layers of "stuff" that we think makes a better sell than the impossibly good news that Jesus is alive again and the universe is under new management. Help us today to let that news soak into us good and deep, and help us to witness to your new order of things in the ways we love, welcome, advocate, and listen today.