The Resurrection Project--June 10, 2020

The Resurrection Project--June 10, 2020

These twelve [disciples] Jesus sent out with the following instructions: "Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of Israel. As you go, proclaim the good news, 'The kingdom of heaven has come near.' Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received with out payment; give without payment." [Matthew 10:5-8]

Maybe it really is this clear: our purpose in life as followers of Jesus, I mean.  Maybe it really is just this clear, and vital, and beautiful.  We are here to bring the people around us more fully to life, starting with the people right around us (rather than automatically going across an ocean to "fix" those "backward people over there"), and as we do, we tell people, "This is what God's Reign is like.  This right here."

It's amazing to me both how much and how little is really involved in that mission.  I mean, on the one hand, my goodness, it's about life and death, right?  Jesus sends his disciples out literally with the authority to raise the dead and speak against the powers of evil!  That's potent stuff right there.  What could be a bigger, more important mission--what bigger difference could you make in the world--that being an agent of restoring life for the people around you, right?  And to think that Jesus just places this resurrection project into the hands of a bunch of thick-headed, unschooled fishermen, ex-Zealots, and former tax collectors, believing that they will actually be able to do it?  That amazes me!

On the other hand, look at how little of that job description looks like what we usually call "religion."  I mean, yeah, the disciples are told to announce, "The kingdom of heaven has come near," but there's no sales-pitch for joining a club here.  There's no, "If you will all pray this prayer with me, then you'll be given access to the kingdom at some point in the future, you know, after you die."  There's no hook that goes, "We have the power to raise the dead and cure your sicknesses, so if you sign here on the dotted line and make a contribution, we can help you out with a miracle or two... and by the way, we take cash or card."  There is absolutely ZERO deal-making (because the Reign of God is not a transaction or a deal, ever, ever, ever). And there is no "catch," either.  Jesus makes a point of that when he says, "You received without payment, so give without payment." In other words as the disciples go from town to town, they are to do good for the people right around them in ways that will make them more fully alive, and doing it for free is part of how others will see the character of the Reign of God in it.  Doing good for free, right in the midst of the folks who are around you, in ways that bring everybody more fully to life--that's the way to give people a glimpse of how God runs the universe.  And you don't need building with steeples or hymnals and offering plates or even a copy of Robert's Rules to do that.  There's no need to "close the deal" to get someone to make a decision for Jesus as a prerequisite for the help--after all, Jesus has already chosen to help all the folks in the surrounding towns by sending the disciples!  Whatever "decision" had to be made was made already by Jesus himself! 

My goodness-what if it really is that simple, then?  Not easy, maybe.  Not accomplished in a half-hour or less like delivering a pizza, for surely this sort of mission will last us the rest of our lives.  But, come on... what a way to spend a lifetime, right?  As our churches emerge from the three-month-long exile from our buildings that we've been living through in these days of the coronavirus, maybe this is where we need to start the conversation.  Maybe we're not waking from hibernation like a bear that comes back out of his cave the same lumbering beast he was when he went in, but rather a butterfly emerging out of the chrysalis having become something entirely new, alive in a different way than she was before. Instead of worrying first about "Will we get enough money to meet our budget?" or even, "When will our church services look and feel exactly like they did back in February?" maybe the place to start is just to ask, "How can we bring people more fully to life around us, right where we are, and to do it as a free gift for them?"  And that's where our work begins.  I suspect we'll see that an awful lot of the ways we can think of don't require us to be inside a church building or under a steeple.  I bet we'll discover that it doesn't necessarily sound "religious" at all to most ears, either.  And I bet it will happen in places that many wouldn't expect a Respectable God to show up (but that's kind of Jesus' calling card, isn't it?)--it will be at your job, and when you go out for coffee somewhere, or in the streets with signs to show solidarity with those who suffer, or bringing a meal to someone who can't cook for themselves, or at the roadside when you help the stranger with the four-way flashers on in the shoulder.  

And honestly, when people find that your graceful gifts of time, of love, and of help bring them more fully to life, they will want to know what makes the difference in your life, and they'll want to be a part of the movement, too.  But maybe it doesn't have to be any more complicated than that, and maybe all of the other stuff we call "church" is only really useful if they are tools in that resurrection project Jesus has entrusted into our hands, too.

Dear Lord, it is so beautiful and clear, this mission you have given to us.  Stop us from over-complicating it, and free us from the baggage we have added to it, so that we can simply be a part of your work to bring one another more and more fully to life.

An Experiment in Love--June 9, 2020

An Experiment in Love--June 9, 2020

"I pray that, according to the riches of [God's] glory, he may grant that you be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love." [Ephesians 3:16-17]

It all comes down to love.

Breathe in.  Breathe out.  Say it again with me: it all comes down to love.

Once more, louder, for the folks in the back--it all comes down to love.

I mean, think about this for a moment.  Let the flow of this rather lengthy sentence (which is even worse in the Greek!) soak in, and watch what the apostle is saying here.  Of all the things he could pray for that God would give to us... and of all the infinite lavishness of God's abundance... the apostle here prays that we would be strengthened by being (here it comes now) "grounded and rooted in love."

Ask the book of Ephesians what gift Christians need most, and the answer isn't, "Politically powerful well-connected friends," or "To get the economy booming again!" or even "A more privileged position for the church in society."  Those don't even make the list.  Instead, if you ask the writer of Ephesians what is worth praying for... what to look for as the tell-tale sign of genuinely strong faith, the answer comes back simply: love. We will be rooted and grounded in love.

Think of how you would picture that.  Being rooted is an image of where you start from, it's the soil you are planted in.  It's about drawing on that good solid place so that the love that feeds and sustains you flows through you and out in the rest of your life.  Like when a kid gives food-dye-colored water to a vase of plain white carnations and the petals change colors as the stem drinks in the water, God has rooted us in love so that it will soak deep into us and blossom out of us.  Love is the starting point. Love courses through us along the way.  And love is the goal that comes to fruition in us, too.

And to be clear about it, this love that the author of Ephesians is so fervently praying about isn't merely a feeling.  Paul isn't praying for his readers to find romance, and he's not particularly interested in It's not that we would always "feel" a certain way, but that we would be rooted in God's unconditional commitment to do good to us, even when we are turned dead-set away from God, so that we, too, will seek to do good for others, even when they have shown nothing but rottenness to us.  To be rooted in God's love is to be free from needing to "get" something in return for our goodness toward others. It is to be done with the shallow and empty logic of transactions, where everything is a matter of giving in order to get.  And the followers of Jesus are freed from it, because instead of cutting deals, we are rooted in God's kind of graceful love.

Now, if you want to know how to practice--how to get better at this love we are rooted and grounded in--then start with this: find someone you have a hard time getting along with, someone who irritates you, someone whose opinions always run counter to yours, someone you really have a hard time putting up with, and do something good for them.  You don't have to "like" their terrible social media posts that you completely disagree with, or become their best friend.  But you can do something that is genuinely, rewardlessly good for this person.  Don't do it in the hopes that it will change their heart; right now it's not about them.  It's not even about you.  It's about letting the love you've been rooted in flow through you and out the other side as it blossoms in your words and actions. But try it.  Try it, and watch what happens to you as you do--feel the strength that rises up when you refuse to let someone else's rottenness to you define your response to them.  Try it, and feel the power that surges within you, like water flowing through a stem, to bring you more fully to life. That's what the writer of Ephesians has been praying for you... for you and me.

It all comes down to love.

And it all flows out from love, too.

Lord Jesus, strengthen us in your love so that we can do good for all around us, and so that we can bring your love to blossom within us.

Where the Wound Is--June 8, 2020

Where the Wound Is--June 8, 2020

"But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honor to the members that are lacking, that there may be no dissension in the body, but the members may have the same care for one another. If one member suffers, all suffer together with it; if one member is honored, all rejoice together with it.  Now you are the body of Christ and individually members of it." [1 Corinthians 12:24b-27]

Look, I'm not gonna lie to you--we have a lot of "owwies" in our household.  

You know, boo-boos, bumps, bruises, scrapes, rug-burn, road-rash, and a mess of other small injuries. (Yes, I am a part of that high tally of injuries, just due to my own clumsiness, but we do have two primary-grade aged kids who are always running, jumping, rolling, biking, and climbing things.  So that means we have to keep a pretty sizable stock of stick-on bandages--with characters ranging from Star Wars to Toy Story to Disney's Frozen--at all times.

We are also in the phase (my goodness, I hope it is just a phase) where it is tempting for said children to treat these cartoon-covered adhesive bandages as fashion accessories. That means I have to be pretty vigilant with my daughter to make sure that she doesn't put on three or four band-aids all over her body for a single scrape on her knee.  And I have to make sure my son doesn't try and go through our whole box opening bandages until he gets his favorite character.  This is an ongoing issue we are working on in our house.

But the refrain that I keep telling my kids over and over again, whether it's a skinned-knee or a scratched elbow, is this:  the bandage is for the part that is hurting.  Makes sense, right?  Seems obvious, right?  Whatever the means of daddy-administered first aid might be, from C-3PO band-aids to ice packs to the timeless remedy of the boo-boo kiss, you apply it to the part that's injured, and that makes the whole body feel better soon enough.  That's not just a matter of not going broke to pay for bandages, but it's really just basic biology: you don't need to put the bandage on the part that isn't injured, because the bandage isn't meant to be a prize or a fashion accessory, but a help for what hurts.  

My kids have to learn that still, but grown-ups should get it: putting a band-aid on the scraped knee isn't meant to be a slight or disrespect to your elbow or your earlobe.  It's just that the hurt is on the knee, and so that's where the attention goes for the moment.  As long as your earlobe and elbow aren't also bleeding (and if they are, how did THAT happen?), you just need the one bandage, and you put it where the cut is.  That's just how we are made.

Paul sees that, too.  That's part of why the apostle found the imagery of the human body to be such a handy way of thinking about our life together in community.  And the metaphor has a couple of important points to it: first off, we are all connected to each other.  To be a Christian is to be in community; it is a contradiction in terms to imagine that you can be a follower of Jesus without being drawn into relationship with others.  There may be many in your circle, or just a few; you may relate to them face-to-face, or, as so many of us learned to do this spring, you may be connected through remote means like phone, letters, or the internet.  But we are all inseparably connected to each other.  

And as Paul sees it, that means that when one part of the body hurts, we all hurt.  Just like in my body--when my daughter comes to me in tears because she's taken a tumble off her scooter, she is usually a hot mess of tears, and it takes a little while to see what part of her body is hurting, because in that moment, it's all hurting.  In Christian community, we don't have the option of ignoring someone else's suffering because, "Hey, it's not my fault, and it's not my problem."  We belong to each other, and so when someone else tells me they are hurting, I don't get to say, "Well, I'm not in any pain, so you much be fine."  Just the opposite--we are called to show up and share the pains of others, because we are all part of something bigger than any one of us individually.  And so just because things are feeling fine to me doesn't mean that someone else in the body of which I am a part isn't also suffering.

That's an important learning for me, day by day: you know what?  It just isn't all about "me."  If I am comfortable and unbothered, good for me--but if someone else tells me they are suffering, I don't get to ignore that because it doesn't affect me directly.  And I don't have to make a big deal needing to get attention for myself when someone else gets the attention they need for what they are suffering.  The band-aid--Star Wars logo or otherwise--goes on the part that is hurting; the rest of the body doesn't need to be covered in them.

And that leads to the second learning to get from this community-as-body metaphor.  When you help the part that is hurting specifically, the whole body starts to feel better.  When I have a headache, a couple of ibuprofen will help relieve the pain there... and before long I notice my temper isn't so touchy, and my whole demeanor improves.  When you've got a knee or hip that's hurting, you get the help needed for that part of the body, and watch how your posture improves, your energy levels rise, and probably your amount of exercise increase because it won't hurt so much anymore to move the joint.  

And it is the same in our life in community, too.  In normal (non-pandemic) times, I may go to the hospital to see someone who is sick, and everyone else in the congregation understands that's where I need to spend my time.  I don't get messages on the church machine from perfectly healthy folks saying, "I hear you visited Mr. Smith today before his surgery--well, what about me?"  People know that you spend the time and energy where the hurt is.  And when someone from the congregation makes a pot of soup and brings Tupperware containers of it to the church members who are either alone or not as able to cook for themselves, they don't get berated by other church-folks who are perfectly able to cook their own soup demanding a bowl of beef vegetable, too.  This is so obvious that it doesn't need to be explained in ordinary church life, or in your family, or among your neighbors.

So maybe we just need to take a moment to make the connections to other parts of our lives, too.  Because other community-as-body connections are everywhere.  And the same underlying idea applies: you put the bandage where the hurt is, and that makes the whole body more fully alive.  So, for example, in the wake of seeing so many local businesses hurting during the quarantine efforts of the last several months, it could be a really good idea to help those who are most at-risk by supporting local businesses, restaurants, and stores, rather than the super-giant chains that are doing just fine.  Or when farmers are going through an especially difficult time (which is a lot of the time, because, man, it's hard work being a farmer), we can make sure to support local farmers by our choices in where we buy our food from, or being willing to pay a little more to make sure you know you are helping neighbors who are in an especially difficult spot.  And the same is true right now with our black sisters and brothers who tell us they are hurting in a hundred different ways, dying the death of a thousand cuts, in the ways they are treated by others, from deaths like George Floyd's or Breonna Taylor's to being redlined out of buying a home, to being followed in stores and viewed with suspicion because of their skin.  If you or I haven't ever experienced those things, good for us!  I'm glad we've never had those particular kinds of suffering--but just because I've never had it happen to me doesn't mean that others are not hurting. That's why we hear the repeated refrain that "black lives matter"--not because others are not important, but because there is a part of the body that is hurting in a particular way. And if they are hurting, then that's where the band-aid goes.  You put the bandage where the wound is, so that the whole body can be brought fully to life and health again. The uninjured elbow doesn't need it, but the skinned knee does. It's not divisive to only put a band-aid where the cut is--that's exactly how you make the whole body feel well again.

If my kids can learn than about actual band-aids, so that they only apply first aid to the parts of their bodies that actually have been injured, maybe I can work on learning to do the same in the rest of my life.  Maybe I can start every day looking for who around me in this vast community called the body of Christ is hurting, and even if I'm not affected by the things that are hurting them, maybe I am being called to stand with them... to listen to them and trust what they have to say... and to help apply the bandage where the wound is, so that all of us may be made fully alive.

Maybe then we will discover grace at the places we heal each other, and, like the old Persian poet said, that the wound is where the light enters.

Lord God, open my eyes to the pain of others, even if it is not my own, so that in healing others, we may all be made whole.

The Scandalous Buffet--June 5, 2020

The Scandalous Buffet--June 5, 2020

"On this mountain the LORD of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of well-aged wines,

    of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.

 And he will destroy on this mountain the shroud that is cast over all peoples,

    the sheet that is spread over all nations;

    he will swallow up death forever.

 Then the Lord GOD will wipe away the tears from all faces,

    and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,

    for the LORD has spoken.

 It will be said on that day,

    Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.

This is the LORD for whom we have waited;

    let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation." [Isaiah 25:6-9]

This is where all the universe is headed.  This is how the-world-as-we-know-it ends: neither with a bang, nor a whimper (as T. S. Eliot guessed), but with a dinner party.  And everybody's there. 

What a vision, right?   Sometimes, it surprises me that a vision this scandalously joyful and universal made it into the Bible.  It sounds just so... all-encompassing, so unconditional, so recklessly, lavishly graceful.  And I'm sure there were folks in Isaiah's day who couldn't fathom that God would make such a widely-offered promise.  I'm sure there were folks who liked the idea of God throwing a big ol' celebration banquet one day, and who liked the day of "their group" getting to be the winners, but they could not dare to imagine that God was really going to invite--<gasp!>--"all peoples" to the party, too!

And that's just the thing: Isaiah underscores here that the guest list isn't just Jewish people, or citizens of Israel, or descendants of Abraham, or people who all spoke the same language or even came from the same culture or prayed the same way.  Isaiah dares to dream that there would be a day when God would gather "all peoples"--that is, every nation, every tribe, every language, every shade of skin color, every race, and every culture--to a party where the menu was fantastic, and where the entertainment for the evening was to see God swallow up death forever.  Who knew God had a hidden talent, like those sword-swallowing performers at magic shows and circuses?  The scene Isaiah describes here is utter celebration, utter joy, utter jubilation, and everybody's there.

It really is no wonder that prophets like Isaiah were regularly run out of town, pelted with rocks, or executed by the king for speaking against the government's policies.  This scene that the Spirit whispered to Isaiah smashed apart any notion of superiority that Isaiah's hearers might have held about their group.  And, wow, that's controversial stuff.  It seems like every human culture wrestles with some version of "we're better than they are," or "All that matters is us first, and who cares about anybody else?" or "We don't have to care about THOSE PEOPLE, because they aren't us."  Surely that was an issue in Isaiah's day and time.  Even though Israel was meant to understand itself as a light of hope to other nations, at its worst and sloppiest moments, it let that become a self-serving sense of supremacy--as though all other peoples or nations were less-than, not-good-enough, or inferior in God's eyes.  God had intended them to hear the message that they were "chosen" as a gift of grace--that they were chosen, not because they were "great" but exactly because they had been enslaved, oppressed, and were NOT in power.  But over enough time, under the influence of Respectable Religion, that sometimes came to sound like, "We must be better than everyone else, and God is on our side, because God is our possession!" rather than, "What a gift of mercy that God has been kind to us even in our smallness and weakness--I wonder what that says about the character of God!"

For Isaiah to hold up this vision where people from all corners of creation would find an equal welcome, where all would be freed from the power of death, and where all would find the very hand of God wiping away the tears from their faces, well, that kind of picture just about brings tears to my eyes right now thinking about it.

Dear ones, this is the sort of vision the Scriptures actually give us about where the world's story is headed.  This kind of vision, that is recklessly graceful, scandalously inclusive, and outrageously good, this is actually what prophets like Isaiah believed was in store for all the world--people from every nation, every culture, every race, gathered by God... because all are beloved.  Somewhere along the way we traded that compelling vision for cliche jokes about waiting at the pearly gates bargaining with St. Peter about being good enough to be let into the club, or the terrible (both in writing and in theology) notions of "rapture" from novels about being "left behind" (which, again, is not, not, NOT what the Scriptures actually teach--we can have that conversation another time).  But instead of all those low-quality counterfeits, the Spirit has breathed us this kind of a vision and has been holding it out for us to see and cling to for something like twenty-seven centuries now.  This is where the world's history is headed: a scandalously large banquet with room for everybody and with a universal welcome.  If it upsets us to hear such a wide and graceful vision, we should take it up with the God who makes such a sweeping and beautiful promise.  But here it is, and right on the printed page of your Bibles, too.

There is, I suppose, however, one catch to all of this.  It's not a line of fine-print with a list of good deeds you have to do in order to earn your invitation to this party. It's not an asterisk with a footnote buried at the end of the passage saying, "Just kidding, this is really only for ONE kind of people in the end." And it's not that the God who speaks is prone to exaggerate or write checks he can't cash.  No, sisters and brothers, this promise really is real... and it really is just that big and wide and free.

The catch is this: once you let your hopes be stretched wide like this, for a day when all peoples will be gathered at God's death-destroying, sorrow-stopping grand buffet, all of a sudden, you will become dissatisfied with any lesser or smaller vision that only includes "your group," or "your nation" or "your race" or "your kind of people."  Once we hear Isaiah's vision and can let it fill us with hope, we will never be able to be able to find hope any longer in the voices and systems and policies that only care about some... even if the "some" that benefit includes you.  Once we take Isaiah's vision of God's restaurant at the end of the universe (to borrow a phrase from Douglas Adams) to heart, we will never be able to accept the mindset that says, "Me and My Group First," because we know... there is a day coming when all peoples will be gathered at God's table, by God's own invitation.

And from there, we will no longer be OK with situations that treat some as "less than" because they don't fit the cookie-cutter.  And we will no longer think it is acceptable to make fun of someone or belittle them because they are different, or because of their language, their appearance, or their clothing.  And we will no longer be able to turn away from the long-ingrained patterns and systems, maybe even ones we grew up with and were taught were "just how it is," that teach us to fear and to hate and to look down on others.  If we really believe what Isaiah says about God's scandalous buffet for all peoples, we will find ourselves speaking up against all the lesser visions, the cruel jokes, and the deep-seated prejudices we have all been taking in all our lives like it's in the atmosphere around us.  Believing Isaiah will mean we can't keep letting those things be thought of as "OK."  They are too small a vision, and they are too stingy a hope to give our lives to.

So today, just let Isaiah's provocative vision sit with you.  Let it percolate over you and through you, and let God's Word do its good, holy, transformative work on you... and I'll do the same from where I am.  Let this prophetic word make us permanently dissatisfied with anything less than a world where all are beloved, and where all find that there has been a place set for them at the table in the very house of God.

Lord God, keep speaking to us your expansive vision, and let it give us a hope so wide we will no longer be able to live with anything less than your abundant grace for all peoples.

What Keeps Jesus Going--June 4, 2020

What Keeps Jesus Going--June 4, 2020

"Now during those days Jesus went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God."  [Luke 6:12]

What brought Jesus to life?  Like in the sense of daily rejuvenating him, what kept Jesus--the actual homeless brown-skinned Galilean rabbi Jesus--going in his work?  What kept him able to face his dense and thick-headed disciples again after they did or said something stupid (again)?  What enabled him to keep facing hostile attacks from the Respectable Religious Crowd and to respond with a graceful truth-telling that neither let them off the hook nor gave into answer hatred with hatred?  What gave Jesus the strength to keep putting himself in those provocative situations where he ate with sinners, helped someone from a different nationality, touched the untouchable, engaged women like equals, or healed someone on the sabbath day? What fueled his righteous outrage when he saw structures and institutions meant for good--like the Temple itself--being used in ways that preyed on people? And what grounded Jesus, on the days he felt like the loneliest person on the planet, to assure him that he was and forever would be God's Beloved Child?

Quite simply, he prayed.

Jesus prayed, and it certainly seems that this regular practice brought him to life at those points he was running on empty and needed to be both filled and reoriented to face the world again.  He prayed--which is nothing more than saying he picked up a conversation with God and continued it right where he had left off--and it kept Jesus centered on what he needed to do, even when it was difficult, or unpleasant, painful, or demanded courage.  Praying, it seems, was a big part of how Jesus himself could keep on keeping on.

And I have to think that part of why Luke tells us so often about Jesus' habit of going off by himself to pray, even through the whole night, is that he offers Jesus' way as an open invitation for us as well.  I do believe that the Gospel writers think that praying like Jesus will have a way of sustaining us--of keeping us alive and renewing us--when the days are difficult to get through.  And they are, aren't they?  They are so difficult, sometimes it feels like we are juggling too many terrible things at once and are about to drop them all.  But Jesus always had a lot on his plate, too.  You never see Jesus twiddling his thumbs (or using them to scroll through the screen of his smart phone out of boredom) because he's got nothing to do.  And yet, for all the furious busyness and the weight laid on him, Jesus was brought to life with each new day in his regular practice of praying.

What if that gift really were there for us... just waiting for us to make use of it?

Because... it is.

Now, to be clear, praying isn't magic.  It wasn't for Jesus, and it isn't for us.  Praying doesn't make your troubles go away, and it doesn't work mechanistically.  Prayer isn't really even a means to an end, because the point of praying is--praying.  That is to say, prayer is conversation, connection, contemplation, and even communion with the God who is life.  So if you want to be more fully alive, yeah, it makes sense to be intentional in what the old saint called "practicing the presence of God."  It's not like a reward--God doesn't sit up in heaven promising good feelings as a positive reinforcement for every time you mutter the Lord's Prayer or for every five minutes you keep your eyes closed and your hands folded.  Prayer is connection with the living God--it is the being in touch with the very Source of Life.  

We don't get any sense that Jesus spent his prayer time just demanding things (or even wishing things) from God, so much as he spent his time listening, asking, seeking, and re-centering.  Those things don't usually take the form of, "God give me this thing and I'll be happy."  We have a way in our consumeristic culture of seeing prayer primarily as a way of "getting" things--and that's why there's a cottage industry of religious-people's books offering their proposals for how to get God to answer your prayers, or what words to use.  But that's not how Jesus used prayer.  It was his lifeline like drinking water from the canteen is what keeps a thirsty soul alive in the desert.  

So maybe it's not about getting the technique right, or the number of times a day we do it, or whether there is incense or candlelight in the background.  And maybe instead it is simply about facing the day with intentional invitation to the Source of Life, the God of mercy and justice, the Christ who claims us, and the Spirit of creation to speak... and to make us to listen.  Maybe the way you and I find the energy to keep going back into a world full of rottenness is to pray like we are picking up a conversation with an old friend.  Maybe the way we keep the resolve and courage to keep trying to be decent people in indecent times is to pray for God's presence to carry us through.  Maybe the way to keep our heads on straight when we feel like we are losing them is to ask God to keep turning us in the right direction.  And maybe the way we work up the nerve to do some honest truth-telling with ourselves about our failings is to come to the God who has already forgiven us.

The world is going to demand a lot from you today, just to keep your head above water.  But when we are on the verge of wilting in our souls, we are invited to be brought back to  life simply by opening up the conversation with the One who is our life.

May we take that time today, so that we may be made fully alive--and so that we may be ready to face what God will send us into.

Lord God, help us in this new day.  Ground us in your love.  Equip us with your gifts.  Show us your way.  Fill us with your life.

When I Am the Villain--June 3, 2020

When I Am the Villain--June 3, 2020

"About that time no little disturbance broke out concerning the Way. A man named Demetrius, a silversmith who made silver shrines of Artemis, brought no little business to the artisans. These he gathered together, with the workers of the same trade, and said, 'Men, you know that we get our wealth from this business. You also see and hear that not only in Ephesus but in almost the whole of Asia this Paul has persuaded and drawn away a considerable number of people by saying that gods made with hands are not gods. And there is danger not only that this trade of ours may come into disrepute but also that the temple of the great goddess Artemis will be scorned, and she will be deprived of her majesty that brought all Asia and the world to worship her'. When they heard this, they were enraged and shouted, 'Great is Artemis of the Ephesians!'" [Acts 19:23-28]

A warning: be careful when you decide to make business your religion. The gods of profit are fragile things and easily broken... and yet they have an insatiable hunger for human sacrifice.

Look, I know that this strange little scene buried in the back-nine of the book of Acts probably seems obscure and distant from our daily life.  And I know it may seem that a story centered on people who make little silver idols of a pagan goddess will have very little to do with our day and our culture, which likes to imagine it is vaguely Christian (or at least has memories of calling itself Christian).  But in a way, this lesser-known story from the early witness of the church is just the kind of story we need to take an honest look at ourselves, and what we will and will not allow to interfere with the comfortable systems we live in... the systems that pay our paychecks and fill our bellies.

Because here's the thing: this random silversmith named Demetrius has just said out loud all the things that we are constantly tempted to live by--but that we are afraid to admit are true.  And maybe we owe him and his conniving scheme to get Paul and the Christian movement into trouble a debt of gratitude.  He forces us to take an honest look at what lengths we go to for the sake of holding onto money, power, and prestige. As the saying goes, Demetrius here "says the quiet parts loud." That is to say, he comes out and says the unsavory things that nobody else wanted to admit they thought.  And as uncomfortable as that may make me, even reading his words two thousand years later, I know I need it.  I need to be pushed beyond what is comfortable to see where I have made systems of money or privilege or comfort into my god.

The gist of this scene is actually pretty simple, and Demetrius' logic, although deplorable and amoral, is at least sound.  He is a silversmith--his job is making stuff out of silver.  In particular, their city is famous for having a temple dedicated to the Greek goddess Artemis, and part of that whole cult of Artemis is the use (and therefore the selling) of silver shrines to her.  In other words, she happens to be the goddess with a local temple in town, but the thing Demetrius is most concerned about is losing his business if something should affect the worship of Artemis.  This is not a guy who is really convinced that Artemis is a real divine being, so this is not like his deeply held piety is in crisis.  This is a guy who knows that religion is good business... and so he has made a living in the business of religion.  When he gets the other silversmiths together, he just lays it all out like that.  They have to silence this guy Paul they've heard about (this would be Saint Paul, the apostle who wrote half of the New Testament), not because he is actually disturbing the peace or violently causing an uproar to others, but because his message will be bad for business.  Demetrius sees that they have to get Paul branded as a troublemaker, a rabble-rouser, and a dangerous public enemy, because they realize that their bottom line is threatened by his message that little metal figurines aren't real gods, no matter how shiny they are.  Demetrius is mad about losing money, and so he organizes the others in his business to bad-mouth Paul and start a riot to get Paul either in trouble with the authorities or hurt him enough to get him to go away.  Like Eisenhower's famous warning about the "military-industrial complex" becoming a never-ending cycle where we "needed" to have more and more weapons, not because there were necessarily more and more enemies, but because it pumped the economy, and so we convinced ourselves that more and more weapons were needed to fight ominous enemies everywhere, Demetrius knows that there's a religious-industrial complex that will always demand to be fed and protected.  At least he's honest about what is really driving his motives, I guess.

Almost like a stereotypical action movie villain (I hear echoes of Goldfinger's big evil scheme speech while James Bond overhears) reciting his plan to his henchmen, Demetrius just puts it out there: they need to keep the system the way it is, because they have a vested interest in it.  Their comfortable lifestyles and cushy places in society come from keeping the Artemis-cult in full swing, and so they will do whatever it takes to keep that business booming.  It is a matter, not only of money, but of keeping the status of their city and keeping their influence in that city.  And boy, when money, prestige, and power are on the line, it sure is tempting to sell your soul to hold onto that unholy trinity.  

The thing that just haunts me about this snippet from Acts is that if you're Demetrius and his gang, all of this seems good and noble.  If you're part of the Silversmith Lobby of Ephesus, it seems indeed right and salutary to want to do everything in your power to stop Paul.  From their vantage point, Paul is a direct threat to everything they hold dear: the "greatness" of their city, their heritage, their prestige, their identity, and yes, their fortunes.  Being opposed to idol-worship in Ephesus would be taken as subversive, unpatriotic, and dangerous to the local economy!  Of course any red-blooded Ephesian would be willing to rough up some outsider named Paul and his religious message that was opposed to that whole system--they wanted to keep making money, and they wanted to protect their local economy, and they wanted to keep telling themselves they were "great."  And as long as they had a booming cult of a popular goddess, they could keep all the other wheels of business turning.  It would have to be pretty hard to stand up against all of that and speak up against it.  You'd be viewed as an insidious threat, even if all you ever used were your words.

So, yeah... we don't have silver-smithing as a major economic power these days.  And by and large the First Church of Artemis doesn't have the sway it once had, maybe.  But without a doubt there are the same pressures, the same competing impulses, and the same wicked logic around us all the time.  So often, we get swept up in preserving "the system"--the way things are, all around us--because we build our jobs, and our families, and our livelihoods, and our pride on those systems.  And when anything--even the Gospel of Jesus Christ--seems to threaten that system, we find ways to stifle it, discredit it, silence it, or to ignore it.  Once we decide we are committed to keeping things "the way they are," we will start getting defensive about anything that rocks that boat or threatens the way the system works--even if the system is terrible for some people.

Let's stop kidding ourselves--what we believe about the God revealed in Jesus Christ is going to upset a lot of the systems we have all built our lives on.  In the first century, it was the way Paul's message threatened the local economy of idol-manufacturers.  Eight hundred years before Paul it was the way the prophets called out the business-owners of Israel who didn't want to give time off for sabbath because it would cut into their profits.  And in this moment, it is quite possible we don't want to consider the way my comfortable way of life comes at the expense of other people who aren't able to get by.  We have gotten used to systems that told (and still tell) black people they were worth less than white people's lives--from the original Three-Fifths Compromise written into our Constitution, to the segregation of schools and businesses, to the way black bodies seem to be more easily regarded as collateral damage in the course of doing business than other bodies.  And for whatever ways we have made progress as a society over the centuries, they have come only because folks were willing, like Paul in Ephesus, to speak in ways that challenged "the way things were," even when Demetrius and his gang were waiting for them and pounding their fists.  It has been much the same in the ways women are regarded in our society, or the way people with disabilities are regarded, or any of a number of other challenges to "the way things are" over time.  It is always terrifyingly easy to assume "the way things are" is the same as "the way they have always been and always should be, forever and ever, Amen." But Paul's example shows us it just ain't so.

Sometimes I think we assume that Christianity only ever enters those conversations as a voice of "let's keep things the way they are," and that's because often Respectable Religious folk have used the trappings of Christianity in only that way.  But if we take this story from Acts seriously, it seems that from the beginning, Christians with credentials as solid as Paul himself understood that sometime the Gospel will run counter to "what's good for business," or "what's comfortable for me," or "what lets me stay insulated from the troubles of others."  And when Paul's message ran into people whose livelihoods and sense of "greatness" depended on keeping the system the way it was, Paul knew he was headed into trouble, even though he was never one to cause destruction or violence or harm to others.  

Look, I'm not asking any of us to become martyrs here, and I'm not trying to excuse any of the destruction happening across the country we live in where peaceful protests curdle into opportunistic looting and violence.  But I do see in myself the temptation to want to ignore the sincere voices of protest because it is uncomfortable to have to look at the ways I am Demetrius, which is to say, when I am the villain--the ways I am entangled in all kinds of systems and patterns in my own life that come at the cost of others.  I want to imagine, as a religious professional, that I am always on the side of goodness and truth and light... and yet, so did Demetrius.  We all want to imagine that whatever is good for business, or for boosting community pride or national greatness, must be perfectly consistent with the Gospel of Jesus Christ.  And yet the witness of the actual Scriptures testifies otherwise--that there are an awful lot of ways each of us has gotten entangled in patterns and habits and systems that benefit "us" but harm others, and when that happens, we get defensive, rather than letting the Gospel rearrange our priorities and disentangle us from those systems.

The hope I hear in this passage, as odd as it may seem to call this hope, is that despite all the attempts of the Ephesian Gang of Silversmiths, the Gospel came to town and compelled people to re-examine their allegiances.  As uncomfortable as it may have been for them, some people did let the Spirit of God rearrange their lives, even if it meant they made less money or their city's "greatness" (rooted in literal idolatry) was tarnished.  And that gives me hope that God won't give up on me when I am the defensive one, clutching onto "the way things are" because I'm afraid the Gospel will make me squirm.  

God doesn't give up on us, even when that means God has to keep sending truth-telling "troublemakers" like Paul, who force us to see where our lives our out of sync with the way of Jesus.  For all the ways I am still stuck in systems I want to pretend aren't even there, that is good news to my stubborn ears.  God won't give up on me.  God hasn't yet.

Lord Jesus, make us to see the ways we are stuck and don't want to admit it, and help us to hear your Gospel as the way of freedom from all that we are entangled in... so that all can be free.

Through the Smoke--June 2, 2020

Through the Smoke--June 2, 2020

"Many crowds followed [Jesus], and he cured all of them, and he ordered them not to make him known. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: 

'Here is my servant, whom I have chosen,

    my beloved, with whom my soul is well pleased.

 I will put my Spirit upon him,

    and he will proclaim justice to the Gentiles.

 He will not wrangle or cry aloud,

    nor will anyone hear his voice in the streets.

 He will not break a bruised reed

    or quench a smoldering wick

 until he brings justice to victory.

     And in his name the Gentiles will hope'." [Matthew 12:15b-21]

In the Bible, the greatest examples of power show up as gentleness.  And the truest forms of strength look at first blush like being "weak."  Full stop.

Now, I get it that saying this runs counter to our usual expectations.  For sure, it is the opposite of the way that conventional wisdom sees power or strength.  Those voices you and I already know.  We can't get away from them--after all, they ain't called "the powers" for nothin'.  They shout and bellow and threaten, and pose for photo ops to do it, and then dress it all up with the appearance of Respectable Religion.  And yet, against all the background noise of that bluster, and through all the smoke, there is an alternative.  It is the way of Jesus.  And the Gospel writers have been pointing to him through that haze all along, calling us to see, not a spectacle of domination or force or violence, but of compelling gentleness.  The biblical writers want us to see it, too: that true power doesn't cajole or rattle a saber in one hand while holding a Bible in the other, but stoops to lift up a bent blade of grass, and pauses to help a flickering candle to shine again.  This is the power of God, not the loud counterfeits that surround us at every turn.

This really is a radical thing to say.  It certainly is today, but it was just as scandalous when Matthew wrote these words about Jesus and quoted from the prophet Isaiah.  After all, back in the first century, Rome proudly declared to the world that THEY were the true power, and that their WAY of showing you their power was to dominate anybody who stood in their way.  Rome's strategy was to overwhelm anyone who threatened their law and order with ruthless force, and to try and win popular support by casting anyone who opposed them as dangerous, lawless brigands, terroristic zealots, or barbarians.  That way Caesar could cast himself as the noble hero, guardian of peace and safety for all... when in actuality, Caesar was just one more loud brash blowhard waiting to be tossed into the dustbin of history.  Everywhere you looked in the first century there were signs of Rome promoting itself, and Caesar casting himself as the divinely-appointed head of the empire.  They put it on banners and flags, they stamped it on coins, and they carved it in marble.  They made shows of military force in pompous parades marching through cities,  keeping the residents of the cities they occupied petrified in fear and then they had the gall to call it all "the Pax Romana"--the "Roman peace."  If you lived in the first century, in Palestine, you were taught from your earliest memories that the mark of power was having your boot on someone else's neck, and that you must be "weak" if you did not threaten others to make them do what you demanded.  

And over against all that, here comes Matthew, the Gospel-writer, daring to say that a homeless rabbi from the imperial backwater was in fact the true Lord of the universe and the Chosen Servant of God.  And the kicker was Matthew's proof--he said, "The way you know Jesus really is God's Messiah is that he DOESN'T threaten or cajole or bluster, but uses gentleness to bring justice."  Matthew quotes the prophet Isaiah as if this clinches it: "Here are the receipts!  They show that Jesus is really what God's kind of power look like--see, Jesus is the kind of person who doesn't need to even raise his voice; he doesn't need to intimidate, because he hasn't come to make anybody afraid.  His way of ruling is to bind up what is broken, to lift up again what has been stepped on, and to give his strength so that others who are weak may be empowered.  But he doesn't need to yell or bring in any armies to do it--that's how you know it's God's kind of power."

Look, the choice is actually pretty stark: either "real" power needs shock and awe and spectacle (and a dose of religious pageantry) to get our attention and scare people into obeying, or true power is just the opposite: the quiet actions to heal and help those who have been stepped on, done without an audience or a photo op to look pious.  The contrast could not be more clear, and day by day we are asked to make the choice about how we will spend our lives.  Will we listen to the loud voices of the powers of the day, or will we believe what the writers of both Testaments have been saying all along: that God's power looks like healing the broken and gently caring for the wounded, rather than Caesar's carefully choreographed shows of power?  We don't get to pick both--Caesar will always laugh at Jesus' way and call him "weak-looking," and Jesus just never had any use for waving banners to draw attention or making himself look more religious than he really is. Caesar is always most interested in asking, "What will make me look tough?" and instead, Jesus is simply interested in living out the answer to, "What will bring people more fully to life?" The question today--maybe the only question that really matters day by day--is simply, "Whose vision of power will I accept as the truth?"

Matthew, for his part, has laid his cards on the table, and he is openly admitting where his allegiance lies.  If we dare to take his words authoritatively--you know, like as Holy Scripture, the answer is pretty clear, too, even through all the smoke.

Lord Jesus, we dare to confess you as our Lord and the true picture of divine power, even though you look nothing like the way the world recognizes power.  Strengthen us to follow in your way, even if the world thinks it looks like weakness.