A Juneteentheology--June 19, 2020

A Juneteentheology--June 19, 2020

"For since death cam through a human being, the resurrection of the dead has also come through a human being; for as all die in Adam, so all will be made alive in Christ." [1 Corinthians 15:21-22]

I am thankful for today--more and more thankful, in fact, each year when it comes around on the calendar.  In addition to what Juneteenth means to our national history, and in particular to the descendants of formerly enslaved people here, this day and its story have helped to deepen my theology and to awaken my faith--moreso, I dare say, than any other holiday or observance on the secular calendar that's not first and foremost already a sacred observance.  That is to say, over the last eighteen or twenty years since I first learned about (not in school or even in college, mind you), in addition to better understanding our nation's history because of this day and its story, I have also come to understand the Gospel better because of Juneteenth.

Even a short summary version of that story is compelling.  Most of us learn in school at some point that Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, and in that edict declared all enslaved persons held in the treasonous Confederate states to be set free.  (Now, that by itself needs a bit of clarification: Lincoln's proclamation did not liberate slaves held in states that remained in the Union, like Kentucky or Maryland.  You could argue that this indicated the direction of the trend of things, but for Lincoln this was a move first and foremost about trying to weaken the power of the states that had seceded from the Union and to bolster the cause of the Union with a moral urgency.)  In any case, many slaveholders in the Confederacy simply refused to comply, or moved west to places like Texas, where there would be even less chance for the Union to enforce the Proclamation.  So even though Lincoln's decree was made at the very start of the year 1863, it wasn't until June 19, 1865--a full two and a half years later--that news of the liberation finally reached Texas.  There, in Galveston, Major General Gordon Granger made the announcement that those who had been held in slavery had been--already--set free. Now, mind you, this was not only two and a half years after Lincoln's declaration, but it was even more than a month after the surrender of the traitorous Confederacy at Appomattox in May of 1865!

At one level, I am just fascinated by the sheer historical impact of that story.  We who live in an age of instant communication, where a word can be said and the communicated around the world in a matter of moments, we forget that for most of human history, there were delays in messaging, even in world-shaping, life-changing news like the liberation of the enslaved.  And at another level, just from a historical point of view, this day speaks both of deep joy for those who were freed from chattel slavery and also the deep and tragic injustice that even in being set free, there were delays and hold-ups and stalling tactics at work by those who wanted to keep others, made in the image of God, enslaved and owned as property.  To celebrate liberation, after all, requires the acknowledgement that there was a need for it in the first place, much as the celebration of resurrection requires the acknowledgement of the injustice and sorrow of the cross and the grave.  Even just at the level of the purely historical, I am grateful as an American for the story and observance of Juneteenth, because it continues to make me think more deeply about how long-lasting and persistent the powers of evil are, and how they insist on holding people in its greedy clutches for as long as they can.

But something else happened for me on that day, a little less than two decades ago, when I first learned the story of Juneteenth. And even though the previous generations on my family tree are about as white as they come, tracing back to England and Germany for as far back as anyone has record, I have come to see something essential in the Juneteenth story that makes me see it as vital good news for all of us, regardless of where our ancestors came from or the color of our skin.  And that learning, for me, is just as voices like Dr. King and Emma Lazarus each famously put it:  "No one is free until we are all free."  The story of Juneteenth has made me see that the Gospel itself is not just individual good news, but it is about God's work to set all people free, to rescue all humanity from the power of death, and to bring resurrection and restoration for all of creation.

That's essential for us to be clear about, because so much of popular religion in our consumeristic culture is peddled as an individual product for single-serving consumption.  In our day, most of us have been bombarded with messaging from the Respectable Religious voices around us that says the Gospel is pre-packaged for individual consumption.  It starts with Jesus' resurrection--good news for Jesus, right?--and then God just makes the offer to us as individual consumers to accept the "deal" God is offering, and if you are lucky enough to live in a place where it is offered to you easily (like near a church), good for you.  And if not, well, hey, there's nothing that can be done about it.  Some version of that is how a lot of us heard the Christian faith growing up--that it offers salvation a single-serving commodity, and that you can be free from death and sin and the powers of evil, while having no obligation or connection whatsoever to the people near you.  You and your relationship with God is a separate transaction from anybody else, and your choice to accept the "deal" is all that the transaction requires--there's no connection to helping bring life to others around you, because, you know, "that's their problem."

But the story of Juneteenth helps me to see what was so evident even to the apostle Paul in the New Testament itself: we are all connected, one to another, so that God's work of redemption and resurrection isn't done with Jesus alone, but always pushes toward reaching everyone.  That means my freedom isn't complete until and unless all are free.  My hope of life in Christ is never just a single-serving--it is part of the great sweeping movement of God to bring life to all.  And much like freedom for the enslaved peoples in the Confederacy wasn't "done" until the word actually reached the last of the holdout plantation owners in the last pockets of resistance to that liberation, God didn't stop working to bring new life once Easter Sunday was done.  The resurrection of Jesus, like the Emancipation Proclamation, announces God's declaration to set free all humanity from the powers of sin and death--but that work is still happening, as the power and presence of the Spirit works to bring all people to freedom, all people to release from the power of death, and all people to newness of life.

Without the story of this day on the calendar, I was well on the way to just uncritically regurgitating the consumeristic gospel of single-serving portions of "salvation" that had been pitched to me in pop religion from my infancy, the same bad deal-making theology that's been popular in our culture for a couple of centuries.  But the story of Juneteenth opened my eyes to see what was already there in the Scriptures, but which I had not been able to see: that God's work of redemption is always corporate--for all creation, all peoples, all nations, tribes, and tongues--and that God's work isn't done with Easter, but is just getting going.  My freedom in Christ isn't full until all are free in Christ, and my ability to have life in the full is not accomplished until all experience that abundant life.  And I don't have permission to shrug off the needs of my neighbor just because I think, "Well, that's their problem--my needs are already met, because I already know Jesus."  Just the opposite: if I am convinced that Jesus has made a difference in my life, then I am compelled to work for letting all people have fullness and abundance of life around me.

And maybe there is one other really important thing I need to keep learning in my faith because of the story of Juneteenth:  it's not all about me.  God doesn't rest with just bringing me to life and faith in hope, but God keeps reaching out, seeking, saving, restoring, and redeeming all people.  I can rejoice over the way God is at work for good in others' lives, even if that doesn't directly benefit me, because I get it: it's not all about me.  I'm not the center, and I'm not the end-goal for God's work of restoration.  I am a part of it, but God doesn't stop just because I have now come to faith.  And similarly, I don't get to say, "Well, my life and my immediate interests are covered, so I guess I don't have to care about anybody else." No, my neighbor's well-being and mine are intertwined.  The Gospel was already telling me so--that is my hope, in fact!--but it is all-too-easy to ignore that reality if all we are listening to are the sale-pitches of consumeristic individualist religion that calls itself Christianity.

My well-being is caught up in the well-being of all.

My life is entwined with Christ's resurrection--and with God's work for "all" to be "made alive in Christ."

And none of us are fully free... until all of us are free.

Thanks be to the God who keeps freeing the enslaved--from Pharaoh' Egypt to Galveston, Texas, to the enduring power and presence of evil even today.

Lord Jesus, keep widening my vision as you keep making all people free and restoring all creation to new life.

Free, For Real--June 18, 2020

Free, For Real--June 18, 2020

"So Jesus called [the disciples together] and said to them, 'You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all.  For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many'." [Mark 10:41-45]

This is it, folks.  This is the way of Jesus in all its simplicity, all its breathtaking beauty, all its radical power.  We lay down our lives for the sake of one another.  In turn, others lay down their lives for us as well.  We put the interests, the needs, the feelings of the other before our own--and at the very same time, on the other side of the equation, the others who walk this way with us are putting our needs, our interests, and our feelings before their own.  It is an elegant dance, where each one bows to the other and is lifted up in turn.  And it is given to us as a gift, with Jesus himself taking the lead and bending low for all of us first to set the tempo and bring us into his cadence.

Like so many places in the Scriptures, this scene cuts me to the quick and at the same time moves me to joyful tears.  And strangely enough, both happen at the same time.  One the one hand, these words seem so clear, the vision so obvious and compelling, that I think we should all be experts at this way of being "great" by serving.  And then I take a look at our actual track record, we Respectable Religious folk... and I look in the mirror... and I look at social media... and I find myself so utterly... disappointed.  Disappointed in myself, sure, and in an awful lot of what we allow to pass for Christianity.  

Maybe it's the difference between the actual way of Jesus and what Frederick Douglass called "slaveholder religion," but whatever the phrasing, however we call it, it seems to me that Jesus has got to be heartbroken over us.  He seems to be disappointed in his own inner circle of disciples, so much so that he has to call them over for a literal "come to Jesus" moment so he can get them to see how wrong they've gotten it again.  They have started fighting with one another about who is greatest, and they have been vying with one another for the best positions at Jesus' side in glory, seeking after their own benefit, their own name, their own cushy, privileged positions... and Jesus has to figuratively smack them upside the head (in love) to get them to see they've got it all backward.  And he has to make the contrast clear to them: "The powers of the day, and the rulers of empires play the game like that, sure.  They all grab for power. They will not concern themselves for who they step on.  They are interested only into what's-good-for-themselves, and they will try and convince you that Me-and-My-Group-First is the way everybody operates.  But don't fall for it.  It's a lie.  It is not so among you."

When Jesus calls the disciples on the carpet for falling for the diabolical lie of "Me First," I know he's got me in his sights, too.  He sees into me and this crooked heart of mine, too.  He sees the way I let my own ego get the best of me.  He sees the ways I want to assume I'm right and block out or ignore anybody who says something that might upset my assumptions.  And he brings me up short.  

And yet, there is such hope in the way Jesus speaks, too.  "It is not so among you."  That's an indicative-mood declarative sentence--it's not a wish or a hope or a possibility.  It is reality.  For us, who seek to be followers of Jesus, the Me-and-My-Interests-First mindset just isn't an option for us.  We are free to discard it.  We are free not to listen to its squawking.   We are free not to not to insist on our own greatness or to get as much for ourselves as possible.  We are free to be humbled and to learn from others rather than getting defensive.  We are free from the need to abuse or exploit others, and we are free from the compulsion to block out and ignore the ways we have abused and exploited them, too.  We are free, too, to look at our own stories, our own histories, big and small, with honesty, rather than looking for ways to make ourselves into the heroes all the time.  We are free from all that garbage because Jesus just simply says, "It is not so among you."

When we catch ourselves playing by the world's rules again, Jesus' words just come in and shake us up.  "No--it is not so among you."  And with that we are free again.  Free, for real.  It is not conditional upon a waiting period or adequate test scores.  But we are free.  Jesus pulls us up out of the death-dealing ways of the world's game-playing, and he just plants our feet on solid ground again, makes us alive again, and says, "You are free.  Because you don't have to do things the old way anymore.  You just don't."

It's like being raised from the dead with each new day.  Every time I plunge myself back into the rottenness of "Me-and-My-Interests-First," Jesus will not let my dense thinking or selfish attitude be the last word.  And he keeps on pulling at me, calling to me, compelling me into the beauty of his way in the world.  And that means, too, that for all the ways I am sure I let Jesus down, he does not give up on me.  For all the ways any of us Respectable Religious Folk say and do some pretty terrible things (or defend terrible things on social media... or stay silent in the midst of rotten things in front of us... or ignore the awfulness lurking in our history that we don't want to face and would rather whitewash), Jesus doesn't give up on us, or on his way.  

I need that.  I need him to keep tugging on my arm to pull me back on track, and I need the assurance of knowing he is not done with me even when I'm a disappointment.  And what do you know--there he is again.

Lord Jesus, don't give up on us.  Show us how we have blown it.  Shake us up to help us let go of the terrible things we are entangled in.  And pull us close to you again.

The Cost of Silence--June 17, 2020

The Cost of Silence--June 17, 2020

"Mordecai told them to reply to Esther, 'Do not think that in the king's palace you will escape any more than all the other Jews. For if you keep silence at such a time as this, relief and deliverance will rise for the Jews from another quarter, but you and your father's family will perish. Who knows? Perhaps you have come to royal dignity for just such a time as this.' Then Esther said in reply to Mordecai, 'Go, gather all the Jews to be found in Susa, and hold a fast on my behalf, and neither eat nor drink for three days, night or day. I and my maids will also fast as you do. After that I will go to the king, though it is against the law; and if I perish, I perish'." [Esther 4:13-17]

I need to learn courage from this Jewish beauty-pageant winner-turned-queen. She has the kind of courage that saves lives by speaking up.  And the date on the calendar reminds me that there is a terrible cost for staying silent.

Five years ago, today, a young man sat in a Bible study in a church in South Carolina, and then stood up, pulled out a gun, and proceeded to murder nine people gathered there for the discussion of Scripture, because they were black, and because in his own words to his victims, "You're taking over our country--and you have to go."  The shooter, a 21-year-old white man named Dylann Roof, had posted a manifesto attempting to explain his motivation for this horrific act at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and amid the Confederate flags and other symbols of white supremacy that were also on his website.  And he made it clear that his actions were the deliberate, pre-meditated, calmly planned conclusion of a mindset rooted in terror and fear of those he thought threatened his (and other white people's) position in the world.  This is all old news by now, and you surely have heard these details in the five years since Charleston became one more name in the litany of places where mass shootings and racist-instigated violence have happened.  And certainly, I hope and expect that if you are reading these words, you, too, decry and condemn Roof's actions, mindset, and motivation.

But what we are slower to acknowledge, I confess, is the terrible silence that preceded Roof's cowardly and hateful racist killing spree.  And the terrible silence is, in part, mine.  Roof had been a confirmed member of a Lutheran congregation--even in the very same denominational body, the ELCA, of which I am a member, and in which I serve as an ordained pastor.  And that fact, although it is no secret, either, and has been known for the past five years since the shooting as well, still brings me up short every time I think of it.  Dylann Roof sat in church, a church not all that different from the one I grew up in, and not all that different from the ones I serve.  Dylann Roof went to catechism class, had to learn what were decreed to be the "essentials of the Christian faith," and would have promised at his confirmation that he would "strive for peace and justice in all the world."  And yet... there had to have been a terrible silence proceeding from the Christians around him that allowed him to think his faith in Jesus was in any way compatible with both the racism and the violence to which he was driven.

That's what gets me. It is the horrifying thought that no one--seriously, no one?--spoke to him in a way that got through to him to say that white supremacy is antithetical to the Gospel of Jesus Christ?  It is the terrifying possibility (probability?) that, for all the sermons he heard in his two decades of life, no message had gotten through to him.  Or maybe, there is the even more damning possibility that no pastor, no teacher, no mentor in the faith ever actually said it.  And who knows?  Maybe all his pastors all assumed he knew that white nationalism was a despicable evil.  Maybe they all were convinced it went without saying.  Maybe his pastors were afraid <gulp, wrote the fellow Lutheran pastor and religious professional> that if they spoke up in a sermon about the evils of pervasive racism, they would be called out for being too political, or for saying something everybody already knew was "bad."  I can think of a million reasons why no one ever said anything.  Maybe it wasn't just one.

The thing is, the silence from voices of faith in his life had a price.  Because no one made it clear to him that his faith in Jesus was incompatible with his commitments to white nationalism and racial hatred, his thoughts became habits, and his habits became a mindset, and his mindset became a plan, and his plan became a nightmare.

Silence has a terrible cost.

I know these are not peppy, upbeat, happy words to start off your day in a daily devotion, but maybe on a day like today, we cannot let ourselves off the hook with a quick and light-hearted pick-me-up and a prayer.  Maybe we need to spend a moment thinking about this, because it is painfully obvious to me day by day that there is still this nonsense floating in the air around us from some that says, "Racism isn't really a problem anymore, and if we would just not talk about it, it would die out altogether."  There is still an attitude that says, "Don't go riling people up by talking about it, because as long as I'm not wearing a white hood or burning a cross, I can't be part of a racism problem (which I don't even really think we have anyway)."  And there is still a mindset that says, "If I have a black friend, that's my contribution to making the world a better place--just the honor of my company for my one black friend."  And all of those, even when they are meant harmlessly enough, become permission for silence.  And when people who mean well are silent, the Dylann Roofs around us get the impression that their fear-based hatred are ok--because no one has ever spoken up to tell them otherwise.  Maybe none of us northern-European church-folk (like me) "mean" to be racist, or "mean" to harm others whose skin color and ancestry are different from our own, or maybe we don't "mean" to be cowards who are too afraid to speak.  But our silence has a price. And most cruelly of all, it is possible for us to think that price doesn't matter because we don't think "we" will be the ones to have to pay it.  And that is a most-grievous sin.

This is why I need to learn the courage of a brave and faithful woman like Esther.  Her story is not, despite the attempts of "Christian" moviemakers to re-brand it, the Bible's version of a Disney princess story.  But rather her story is one of honest, open-eyed, struggling, wrestling faithful courage that knows the cost of speaking up and of not speaking up.  Without rehashing the entire plot of this short book, Esther is a Jewish woman who has been chosen as queen to the Persian king, and there is a plot by an enemy (Haman) to wipe out all of the Jewish people.  Esther is in the position where she could bring this to the king's attention and stop this vile action, but there are risks.  It is against the law to come before the king (even for the queen) without having been summoned first.  Esther knows that it could be costly to speak up (in fact, speaking up is what got the previous queen kicked out of her position).  But with some faithful conversation and wise counsel from a mentor named Mordecai, Esther realizes that the potential costs to herself are far smaller than the terrible price of her silence for countless others.  She decides she must be brave, because there is the hope that her courage will save life.

Esther's story both provokes me and gives me hope.  It provokes me because I know a million reasons why it is easier, or less confrontational, or less risky, not to speak up about the ongoing ways that we live in culture that is OK with putting one group over another.  I can say, "Surely, everyone else around sees it, right?  Surely everyone around me thinks that white nationalism, white supremacy, and racial bigotry are anti-Christ, right?" Or maybe I think, "That's really better handled outside of a church setting," or that someone else will come along to speak up.  Maybe I think, "Look, no one I know is actively planning a mass shooting, so the little snide remarks, or the casual bigotry, or the Confederate flags are not worth calling out." Or maybe I think, "Hey, I've just got to preach 'the gospel,' and that means just sticking to talk about souls going to heaven, or I'm likely to be out of a job."  I can come up with a litany of more excuses, too, without breaking a sweat.  And Esther's example jabs me out of that complacency and says, "No.  The cost of your silence is too high.  Now learn to be brave like me and stand up, you chicken-heart."  (She's right, of course--I'm usually something of a chicken-heart.) 

But at the very same time, as I say, Esther's example and story give me deep hope--a hope beyond what I have earned and deserve.  Because her courageous act actually makes a difference.  She speaks up--she uses her position of privilege to call attention to the systemic evil that is at work trying to destroy her people, solely on the basis of their race--and her courageous action exposes the plot and saves the Jewish people.  It means that change is possible, and that life really can be snatched out of the jaws of death, even through something as seemingly weak as human speech.  Courageous words really can bring forth life.  It really is possible--but it requires that those who are in positions to speak actually do so.

On a day like today, I need both the provocation and the inspiration that Esther's story gives so freely. I need to be reminded of the terrible cost of silence, even when that silence thinks it is well-intentioned and innocent.  And I need to be reminded of the life-giving power that can be unleashed when people of faith dare to be brave and use their positions of privilege to reveal the presence of evil and hatred, and to speak up for those who are endangered.  All too often I have been quiet.  All too often, in too many Sunday School rooms and pulpits and online church social media posts, we have been too chicken-hearted to speak out, clearly and courageously, against the ongoing reality of racism in the places where we still live.  And there have been costs to our silence.  The shooting at Mother Emanuel was only five years ago--this is not the distant past, and it is not just "someone else's problem."  The question is whether we will dare to have the kind of courage that Esther has, or come up with a reason to keep our mouths closed.

I believe with all that I am that one day in glory, I will have the chance to look Queen Esther in the eye and talk with her about what she did in this critical moment.  

I hope that I can say to her on that day, "I learned to be brave like you, eventually, your highness."

Lord God, we don't know but that perhaps you have placed each of us where we are, with whatever influence and power and platforms we have to speak against hatred and violence, and to direct wayward minds and hearts back toward your way of love for all peoples.  Give us the courage to use those other gifts, and to speak where it is ours to speak.

For the Weary--June 16, 2020

For the Weary--June 16, 2020

[Jesus said:] "Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.  For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." [Matthew 11:28-30]

The thing is that we're all tired.  All of us.  Each of us carries something different, most of it hidden away where no one else will see, but we are all carrying something.  And I suspect--at least I can say this much for myself--we are all getting kind of tired of being tired.  We are weary of the weariness.  We are feeling threadbare in a moment in history that just keeps throwing one thing after another at us, and we are feeling the strain of having to catch them all as they come lobbing through the air.  We're all aching for rest... for peace.

There's no need to try and play a game of "Who's Carrying More Burdens," or to get defensive when someone else reveals to you a little of what they are going through.  We humans are like that, though, aren't we?  We turn everything into a competition, and the moment one person breathes a word of what they are struggling with, it seems there's always another who turns it into a game of "Top This!" by rattling off their troubles, as if to prove that they have had pains to bear in life, too.  We've all been there, I imagine--we've all been both.  But trying to impress each other about the heft of the burdens we are each carrying (or trying to downplay what someone else is carrying because I don't want to think that someone else has had a bigger struggle than I have) doesn't actually do anything to relieve the weight.  That's all just posturing, and it's a waste of time and precious energy while we struggle to keep trudging on.

But Jesus cuts past all of that.  He insists he is able to bear with us (like two oxen sharing a yoke, side by side) whatever we are carrying... and he says it to all of us.  Think about that--there's no need for competition. There's no need for me to get defensive and say to you, "Your burden can't be very bad, because I've never had to deal with that problem!" and there's no need for me to try and top your story of struggle with my own.  Jesus isn't just offering his help to one worthy contestant from a sea of applicants.  There is no chocolate factory, and Jesus is not Willy Wonka offering fantastic prizes to only a select few lucky golden-ticket-holders.  Jesus explicitly says he is offering his strength to "all" who are weary.  That means there is no scarcity of peace, no limited supply of rest, for which we must compete.  Jesus can bear my burdens (which feel very heavy to me), and also the burdens of my neighbor who carries a different set (and which may, in fact, turn out to be much heavier than mine).

And all of a sudden, I don't need to keep the old habit of comparing hardships.  I don't have to make your struggles seem small, or pretend they don't count, just because I haven't faced the same ones, in some kind of attempt to shore up my ego.  I just don't have to play that game anymore.  When I hear Jesus' words that way, now I can see that my freedom is caught up with yours, and yours is related to mine as well--instead of thinking Jesus only has a spot to carry either your burdens or mind, I realize that my burden is only relieved when yours is lightened as well.  Instead of making it a competition, I can see that all of our lives are bound up together, and what relieves your weariness also in turn helps me to be refreshed.  Jesus bears it all with us.

I wonder how much of my time and my energy on any given day has been wasted in trying to puff myself up by making my own troubles seem harder than anybody else's, while dismissing and belittling what someone else says they have struggled with because I can't relate to what they have gone through.  What a shame--what and honest-to-goodness damned shame.  Because in doing that, I've not only wasted time trying to compete for a spot with Jesus when he says he is here for us all... and I've cut myself off from the people around me who are struggling their way through life, too, in their own ways.  But it doesn't have to be that way.  

To take Jesus' word seriously means I bring whatever I am struggling to carry, while I also let you bring what you are straining to bear, too--and Jesus will carry it all with us.  And maybe in that there is the beginning of peace for each of us... for all of us... because right away, it means we are done spending our energy trying to compete for what is freely given to all.

If you are weary today, here: let us both find relief together, naming what we have been given to bear, and lifting it up to Jesus to shoulder alongside each of us.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

Receive the gift of peace.

Lord Jesus, we are weary.  All of us.  Carry what is heavy on our hearts for us today, and give us your peace.

A Parting of Ways--June 15, 2020

A Parting of Ways--June 15, 2020

[Jesus said:] "Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  

For I have come to set a man against his father,

    and a daughter against her mother,

    and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law;

    and one's foes will be members of one's own household.

Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it." [Matthew 10:34-39]

It's easy to say, "Love your enemies" if you don't have any; but Jesus teaches his followers to love their enemies while at the same time telling them that following him will earn them lots of hatred from folks they used to be close to.

The hostility that will come because of Jesus isn't because he is unfriendly or cruel; it's because Jesus says and does things that shake our old commitments, question our old certainties, and force us to see unpleasant truths in ourselves.  And once we actually start listening to Jesus, we are going to have to decide if we would rather have our old comfortable ways or let him go overturning tables in our lives.  And because there are always people who would rather keep their lives and their world unchanged than let Jesus rearrange their mental furniture, just the mere fact of Jesus' presence in the world will cause division.  Jesus is never a jerk to other people, but other people often decide they can't live with Jesus' truth-telling, system-challenging, all-embracing, hypocrisy-exposing way in the world... and so they part ways.

I am reminded of a line from the graphic novel/movie V for Vendetta from a few years back.  I don't often recommend taking life lessons from vigilantes wearing Guy Fawkes masks, but in this case, I'll make an exception, because the protagonist of the story offers this truth: "Fairness, justice, and freedom are more than words--they are perspectives."  And I think that's just the issue.  Jesus talks in more than glittering generalities, and once he actually gets specific, that's when things start to make us squirm.  When we see what Jesus actually means when he talks about showing love, or who counts as our neighbor, or the blessing of God, it makes us uncomfortable, because Jesus insists on reorienting the way we see and think about everything.

At first, it's hard to see why Jesus could ever be controversial--isn't he all about loving people and kindness and goodness and light?  Well, yes, of course he is. But Jesus doesn't just offer those words as empty vessels you can fill with whatever definition you like.  Jesus pushes our buttons with the specific thrust of his understanding of love... or our neighbor... or even of God.  That's what I mean with the line from V for Vendetta:  as long as all we ever say is, "We are pro-love!" that's easy for people to nod their head to.  But then Jesus pushes us, and he compels us to understand love, not simply as a warm and fuzzy feeling for people I like, but the commitment to doing good even to those who are different from us... or with whom we disagree... or who hate us, well, that starts to rub us the wrong way. 

Or think about Jesus' radical understanding of neighborliness: everyone can support the idea of caring for your "neighbor," as long as that's a fixed (and small) circle of people who are close enough to me geographically or similar enough to me in demographics.  That way loving my neighbor is really just a matter of protecting my own interests--you know,  because looking out for the people who look like me, live near me, or think like me will come back to benefit me in the end.  But Jesus doesn't stop there: and he won't let us stop with a "Me and My Group First" mentality of neighborliness.  When Jesus talks about neighbors, he insists on crossing the boundaries that separate "us" from "them," making hated Samaritans into the heroes of his stories and coming to the help of foreigners (you know, folks from the "wrong" racial, cultural, ethnic, and religious groups) time and time again.  That started to upset people.

And when Jesus starts talking about "blessing" and "blessedness," my goodness, that overturned the apple cart for people.  Everybody likes the idea of "blessing," right?  But when Jesus starts getting specific, declaring things like, "Blessed are the poor," or "Blessed are the peacemakers," or "Blessed are those who get into trouble for doing the right thing," that started to rile folks up. It's easy--and basically meaningless--to just say as a generic statement, "All people are blessed!" But when Jesus calls attention to God's particular concern for those who are regarded as least, last, and left behind, that made Jesus enemies.  That caused division.

If we only look at Jesus from a distance, before we can discern any detail, we can imagine him to be and to say whatever we like.  But if we actually let him get close enough to show us his perspective, we are going to run into times where his view of God's world runs counter to ours. And at that point, we will have to decide which is more important to us, keeping our comfortable ways, or being on Jesus' way.  Jesus is just honest that there will be folks who would rather keep their "Me and My Group First" mindset than his vision of the Reign of God.

And Jesus is honest, too, that no matter what we have to lose when others get upset with us for following the way of Jesus, we will really be more fully alive than we have ever been before.  He doesn't pretend that following him, learning to be like him, and coming to see the world through his perspective rather than with mere empty generalities, won't come without a price.  It will.  Others will be upset by our willingness to surrender the old comfortable routines and rotten systems, because our willingness to let go of them will force them to think twice about their own commitments.  Others will choose to stick with greed, or hatred, or apathy, or indifference, or "me-and-my-group-first," and when that happens, they may be offended or irritated or put off.  We have to decide if we can bear that, or whether we would rather part ways with Jesus, too.

But to be sure, the life Jesus offers us, even when it brings into focus the differences between Jesus' ways and the perspectives of the world around us, is worth it.  It is worth losing everything else for the sake of being a part of his kind of life.  After all, it is the sort of life spent where he is... and "wherever Jesus is" is the best possible place to be.

Lord Jesus, help us to take honest looks at ourselves and our lives to see the world from your perspective, even when it is difficult or costs us the illusion of fragile niceness.

The Hungry Idols--June 12, 2020

The Hungry Idols--June 12, 2020

"[King Josiah] defiled Topheth, which is in the valley of Ben-hinnom, so that no one would make a son or a daughter pass through fire as an offering to Molech. He removed the horses that the kings of Judah had dedicated to the sun, at the entrance to the house of the LORD, by the chamber of the eunuch Nathan-melech, which was in the precincts; then he burned the chariots of the sun with fire. The altars on the roof of the upper chamber of Ahaz, which the kings of Judah had made, and the altars that Manasseh had made in the two courts of the house of the LORD, he pulled down from there and broke in pieces, and threw the rubble into the Wadi Kidron. The king defiled the high places that were east of Jerusalem, to the south of the Mount of Destruction, which King Solomon of Israel had built for Astarte the abomination of the Sidonians, for Chemosh the abomination of Moab, and for Milcom the abomination of the Ammonites. He broke the pillars in pieces, cut down the sacred poles, and covered the sites with human bones." [2 Kings 23:10-14]

If the statues, idols, and monuments around you demand that you sacrifice your (or someone else's) children to them, then pulling them down is an act of saving lives.

I know this passage from the book of Second Kings looks insanely tedious and obscure, and I know that this hardly looks like there is any blessing to wrestle from this text.  Honestly, I was a student in college before I had ever read any of the biblical accounts of King Josiah, and so there's no reason to blush or be embarrassed if you read this and scratch your head going, "What on earth is this all about?"

Let's do a quick recap.  Over the course of the generations, the kingdoms of Israel and Judah often had kings who would dabble in worship of the gods of their neighbors, usually for political purposes.  It was "good for business" to have altars (sometimes just called "the high places") to the gods of other peoples, just to hedge your bets, too--you know, just in case Israel's God didn't come through for you, you could go consult another god or goddess who specialized in what you needed.  That was the thinking, anyway.  And over time, plenty of Israel and Judah's kings had added their own personal altars, temples, idols, statues, monuments, and sacred poles for a whole pantheon of other gods in addition to the temple to Yahweh, the One we call on as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (rendered as "the LORD" in our English translations).  In fact, after enough time, most people in Israel and Judah thought these statues and monuments--whether dedicated to Astarte, Chemosh, Molech, or any of a number of sun gods, storm-gods, or harvest-fertility gods--were basically harmless.  After all, the thinking was, if it turns out they aren't real, well, who cares, and if it turns out they are, you definitely want to tap into their divine power by having a place to offer them sacrifices, right?  And the longer the shrines stood, the more they just seemed to be historical artifacts, monuments not just to the gods to whom they were dedicated but to the legacy of the kings who had set them up.  So at some point in time, it wasn't just about having a statue for worshiping the sun, it was about the "historical legacy" of the kings who had set those statues up.  In other words, at some point, the official party-line from the palace was, "It is patriotic to have these statues of horses dedicated to the sun, because our previous kings set them up!  If you love your country, people of Judah, you will want to keep these up forever."

But there was a cost to having the monuments to these gods.  There's always a cost.  Shrines, statues, and monuments become focal points for us--they tell us who and what we believe are worthy of our attention... our devotion... our allegiance.  Who and what we build monuments to says a great deal about who we are... and in turn, the shrines we set up shape the kind of people we, and our children, become.  Whether we acknowledge it or not, then, we are always giving our children to whatever we have given our allegiance to--whether it is a god with a name like Baal or Molech, or to a subtler god called "the Market" or "Success," or to the pernicious gods like white supremacy, greed, or hatred.  Or to the God of life.

So at some point in Israel and Judah's history, it had just become part of the normal routine that there was a shrine in the valley outside Jerusalem where people literally burned their children alive as sacrifices to the god Molech (in exchange, they thought, for better harvests, or divine favors, or whatever else one might pray for), just down the hill from the site where Yahweh was worshiped in the Jerusalem Temple.  I guess if you have a statue like that up for long enough, at some point everybody just assumes it has always been there and doesn't find it scandalous anymore that people are feeding their children to the god whose image is set up there.

Well along comes a king named Josiah, and as the storytelling goes, Josiah actually reads the book of God's instruction (what we call the Law, or the Torah), and he discovers that God had told the people long ago not to go meddling with foreign gods or monuments to hungry deities.  And Josiah realizes it is slowly destroying his people to have them offering up the lives of the next generation at shrines to Molech and Astarte and sun gods and harvest gods and all the rest.  Josiah realizes that the things you allow to command attention in the public square become thing things you give your heart and mind to... and that it is too costly to let his people keep sacrificing their children before these monuments and shrines, even though they have been there for a very long time and most folk are just "used" to having them around.

So Josiah pulls them all down. And what we have in the passage above is a listing (and just a partial one at that!) of the monuments, shrines, and statues that Josiah tore down, knowing full well that it would be met with hostility from folks who didn't realize the ways those shrines were devouring their children. Josiah knew he was going to make enemies who just saw the idols of the sun god or the sacred poles and pillars as part of their nation's great historical legacy.  But he did it anyway--not because their history as a people didn't matter, but because Josiah knew that statues and shrines aren't really about teaching the past; they are about directing our allegiance in the present, and shaping the direction of our future.

Josiah knew that they were sacrificing their future--literally burning their sons and daughters as offerings to these gods--by keeping the statue to Molech where it was in the Valley of Hinnom.  Josiah knew that worshiping the sun at the outside of the Temple was not compatible with worshiping the Creator of the sun on the inside of the Temple.  And he knew that any real deity worth their salt would not need to be fed with the blood of their children, no matter for how long people had gotten used to the idea.

In short, Josiah knew that pulling down the long-standing statues to the likes of Molech and Astarte and the rest was ultimately about saving the lives of those who would otherwise be fed to insatiable idols by parents who had gotten used to the system they lived in that demanded more blood to be spilled.  Josiah knew that saying NO to those altars and shrines was the necessary precursor to saying YES to the God of Life, on whom Israel had relied from the days of being freed from slavery in Egypt.  Josiah knew that "but it's been here a long time" is not a valid reason to leave something in place if it is costing the lives of someone's children, the same way doctors still cut out a tumor from the body even if "it's been here a long time."  

Maybe we need to take an honest look in our lives--both on the very personal individual level, and on the wider societal and national level--at the idols we have gotten used to, and which always come with a cost.  Maybe we need to re-examine the idol called "Wealth" toward which we so often push our children, thinking they will be successful and that we can be proud, if they make enough money--even if it makes them hollow and empty inside. Maybe we need to think again about what corporate logos command our kids' attention, and how it has come to be that they are growing up as good little consumers who are never satisfied, and we hadn't noticed it was happening.  Maybe even we religious folks need to ask if we are proud of having ornate, expensive, and impressive looking church buildings when the funds used to build them could have been spent giving shelter to a homeless family, digging a well for a community without clean water, or rebuilding a town after a hurricane or war.  And certainly, we need to ask about what literal monuments and statues we want to place our children in front of--because the things we place with honor on pedestals become the things that shape the kind of people our children and grandchildren will become.  And if we have gotten used to feeding someone else's children to the things set up on plinths in the public square, perhaps we need the courage to take them down in spite of the fact that we have gotten used to them being there.

Nobody in Josiah's day forgot their history when he pulled down the shrines to the hungry idols that they had all gotten used to; in fact, pulling them down was what helped them to remember Who it was that had been faithful to them all along from the days of slavery in Pharaoh's Egypt and ever since.  Getting rid of the death-dealing gods they had all grown accustomed to allowed them to remember their calling as God's people of life.

It is never easy work to root out the idols in our lives, whether in my own heart or in our collective consciousness.  But doing that difficult work is vital, because it determines the direction not only of our lives, but of what we give our children to.  It really is a matter of choosing death or life.

What do each of us need to say "NO" to... in order to more fully say "YES" to the God of life?

Lord God, we keep setting up idols and sacrificing our children to them, and we need to be free of them.  Pull down whatever takes our allegiance away from you, no matter how respectable or familiar, so that we can find fullness of life in you.

Making House Calls--June 11, 2020

Making House-Calls--June 11, 2020

“When the scribes of the Pharisees saw that he was eating with sinners and tax collectors, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?’ When Jesus heard this, he said to them, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick; I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’”  [Mark 2:16-17]

To hear Jesus describe himself, he is like a doctor for our deepest needs—a healer not just of scrapes and skinned knees or even stomach pains, but of spirit and soul. But if he is like a physician, Jesus is like one of those old-fashioned doctors we remember from decades past—the kind that made house-calls. 

This is really what irks the official religious crowds about Jesus—that he goes to the “sinners” on his own terms without making them go through admission or jump through any hoops first. The Pharisees were not evil—they were all in favor of seeing sinners get their lives turned around. They just couldn’t imagine someone like Jesus—a good, religious, pious rabbi—going out to the sin-sick folks. They can’t imagine a healer of the soul making house calls; they expect the sinners to get their act together with right law-keeping and rule-following. In the mind of the Pharisees, the sin-sick are welcome to be healed—if they’ll only get themselves to the hospital first. It’s a “you-come-to-us” picture, and Jesus has turned that upside-down by crashing a party at Levi’s house and eating with the sell-outs and sinners there. 

This is the real scandal of Jesus: he keeps going out to where the sickness is to draw out the infection, rather than making his patients come to him during appointed office hours. 

We are going to have to get used to this if we are going to take our identity as Jesus’ followers very seriously at all. Because, truth be told, where Jesus is, his followers are going to be found, too. So we had better learn to deal with the fact that Jesus is not the kind of doctor who has a respectable practice in a nice office park with fake trees in the waiting room and a brass name-plaque on the door. Jesus is the old-fashioned kind of doctor, the kind we can scarcely imagine was real at one time, who makes house calls. Jesus is the one who comes to where the sickness is, in order to make us well. He is the one who goes to the leper colony to heal our wounds even though it means being in the constant present, not only of the sick, but of the sickness. And of course, Jesus has it in mind to make his patients into his physician’s assistants, too. So the moment we find ourselves triumphantly praising God that Jesus has “saved” us or “given us the victory” or “taken our sin” or “healed our souls” or whatever religious language you want to use, we had better also be aware that we are still headed for the leper colony with Jesus, now to be alongside him healing, touching, and loving the same people Jesus heals, touches, and loves. And we had also better be aware that he continues to do the same for us in our ongoing treatment. 

In other words, being a follower of Jesus means admitting we are—at our best—in recovery ourselves, having been healed first by Jesus, the Great Physician, and that we will be sent out along with Jesus to love, eat with, and throw our lot in with a whole lot of other sin-sick souls like us. The church is, as the old saying goes, not a museum for saints, but a hospital for sinners. It’s just that the hospital staff is made up entirely of patients, too, the whole lot of us. Or maybe to tweak the image just a hair in order to be faithful to Jesus’ own actions, the church is an ambulance for sinners, and we are all his EMTs, constantly on the go with him outward to where the hurt people are. 

This is probably the part about the Christian Good News that rubs most people the wrong way: the fact that Jesus does not simply set up a booth like Lucy from Peanuts and wait for people to get their act together enough to come to him first. That we could handle. That sounds like respectable religion: “If you can get yourself to the hospital, treatment will be available for you—but first, you must get yourself well enough to drive yourself to the keeper of the medicine. You move first.” That the Pharisees could allow. 

But Jesus upset the religious folk there in the first century, the same way he upsets a lot of religious folk in the twenty-first century, by being the one who makes the first move. He makes house-calls. He comes to us in our mess, contaminated and contagious as we surely are, because that is how divine love works. Jesus hasn’t come to judge a beauty contest and crown a pageant-winner. He has come to bring us to life--to mend our broken places, and that means coming to where we are, as we are. And it means, too, that for those of us who are striving to be his followers, we are going to be sent out the same way, healed and healing all at once. Be ready: both will happen in your midst today if your ears are open to hear the call coming in. 

O Christ, our Physician and our Leader, make us well and use us in your work of healing others this day.