Surrender as Faith--September 23, 2021

Surrender as Faith--September 23, 2021

"By faith the people passed through the Red Sea as if it were dry land, but when the Egyptians attempted to do so they were drowned." [Hebrews 11:29]

Sometimes, as we have seen in recent days, faith requires bold, daring action; but in other moments, faith takes just the opposite form and allows God to be the one to do entirely what we cannot do ourselves.  Sometimes faith looks like surrender, and the humble acceptance of the fact that God is the one who does the saving, and we are the ones who bring empty hands to the table.

In the actual storytelling of the book of Exodus, there's a moment where God says very clearly to the people about to be delivered from slavery and death at the shores of the Sea, "You have only to be still--God is the one who will fight on your behalf and deliver you today."  It's a reminder that the people don't save themselves by killing Egyptians or carrying out a scheme of their own devising--they are rescued beyond their own power or understanding by the God who liberates.  Their job--their act of faith in that moment--is to let God be God, and to allow themselves to be the recipients of God's saving power.  That's an important element of faith, after all--the ability to put yourself into the hands of One who can do for you what you cannot do for yourself, and to get out of the way of the help.

That's true in relatively ordinary daily life, too, if we're honest.  If I have appendicitis, or a gall bladder in need of being removed, what would be most helpful on my part is simply to show up at the hospital for the surgery and let the doctors, nurses, anesthesiologists, and the rest of the surgical team do the work that will heal me.  If I try doing surgery on myself, I will almost certainly make it worse, since I don't really know where my appendix is, or if I can reach it with my own two arms, and I'd likely bleed out or pass out from the pain of trying to operate on myself without anesthetic.  There's one of those times where my attempt to "do my part" will make it worse, but what I really need to do is to let someone else do the saving.

Same if I'm in a car accident and need the jaws of life to get me out, or if my heart would stop and I need someone to administer CPR or use an AED on me.  There are times where I simply can't do anything to save myself, and where my role is to trust I am in good hands when the ambulance crew arrives on the scene.  

Even the first action of any twelve-step addiction recovery program has the same starting point: the recognition of being powerless to save ourselves, and the need for a power greater than our own to intervene.  Even when the saving we need doesn't transpire in a single jolt like from the defibrillator paddles, or the moment a surgeon removes an appendix before it bursts, but rather unfolds slowly in the move from addiction to sobriety, we find ourselves in need of One beyond ourselves who can tell us, "Be still.  Quit striving and straining.  Let me save you. Take my hand."

Resurrection doesn't happen because the deceased will themselves back to life, but when the voice of Life himself calls to you and says, "Lazarus, come out," or "Little girl, arise." Faith, then, isn't about my trying to prove to God how devout I am in order to win heavenly prizes from God, but rather about surrender that lets me trust God to give to me what I cannot achieve on my own.  Like our older brother Martin Luther says in his explanation of the Creed, "I believe that by my own understanding or strength I cannot believe in Jesus Christ my Lord or come to him, but instead the Holy Spirit has called me..."  In other words, faith isn't so much about me impressing God about how well I believe the correct facts about God, but the surrender that God makes possible so I can get out of the way of myself and let God raise up to life all that is dead in me.  It's not an achievement, and accomplishment, or another line to add to your resume.  It's the opening up of empty hands to allow God to take us by the hand and lead us through a path in the Sea.

Today, then, maybe the most faithful thing each of us can do is to pause, to be still, and to trust the One who has taken our hand.  That will look to others like being passive sometimes.  It will look like we are not constantly "achieving."  It will look like letting God bring us to life rather than trying to perform heart surgery on ourselves.  And it will make possible the peace in these hearts of ours as we realize we are held with a love that will not let us go.

In this day, before we get back to our lists of things to do and accomplish, let it sink in: God does the rescuing, the saving, and resurrecting, and ours is simply to live the new life God hands us.

Lord God, call us back to life where we are dead, save us where we are in trouble again, and let us be still in the goodness of your grace.

More Trustworthy Than Tacos--September 22, 2021

More Trustworthy Than Tacos--September 22, 2021

"By faith [Moses] kept the Passover and the sprinkling of blood, so that the destroyer of the firstborn would not touch the firstborn of Israel." [Hebrews 11:28]

To live by faith is to trust things to work even when we don't understand how they work, and to have the humility enough to acknowledge they can do their function with or without my understanding.  It requires being able to say, "I don't know how this does what it's supposed to do, but I have reason to trust that it does." And to live by faith in God, then, is the capacity to be able to say, "I don't know how you'll do it, or what you're up to, God, but I trust you to do what I cannot comprehend."

That shouldn't be controversial, honestly, because we place our trust every day in countless things without really grasping how they work or why they do.  I can't really explain how tiny controlled explosions under my car's hood get me to work without blowing me up, but I trust my little sedan to get me on the road safely every morning and every evening.  I have almost no clue about how my smart phone knows when I've moved or turned direction just a few feet and can give me directions, but I trust it to get me to places I've never gone before.  And aside from a foggy recollection from high school biology about sugars and chemical energy, I'm not really clear on how my body takes a taco and turns it into new muscle or skin cells and a supply of energy to get through the day.  I don't know how tacos work, but I keep putting them in my body, because, well, I have faith that food keeps me alive, even when I don't really understand the mechanics of it.

We could add to that list everything from how ibuprofen helps alleviate a headache or muscle pain for me, or the MMR shot I had to get back in seventh grade in order to go to school, or the COVID vaccination I got back in the spring.  I don't really understand, beyond the very simplest level, how these chemical concoctions work--but the question, really, is whether I have reason to trust that they will, along with tacos, GPS on a smart phone, and the internal combustion engine.  

Now, certainly, to be sure, every one of those things I regularly put my trust in can let me down in some ways.  Sometimes a spark plug needs to be replaced and the car's engine doesn't get me where I'm supposed to go.  Sometimes GPS makes a mistake and tells me, curiously, "Recalculating... recalculating."  If I take too many Advil over too short a time I could do serious damage to my liver, and sure, I could still get a COVID diagnosis even if I've gotten the shot.  Even tacos can let you down--or have you running from the table with urgent indigestion--if you get a bad taco.  But you get the gist--because each of these regular parts of our lives have shown themselves dependable, I trust them.  I have faith that each of these things will do what it is supposed to do, apart from whether I truly understand how they work.

That's the kind of faith Moses had to have--and to nurture in a whole nation of his people--when God describes the Passover to him.  Seriously, this idea would sound like nonsense to anybody who didn't trust the God speaking the instructions: "You kill a lamb, and take its blood and put it on your doorposts, and then eat the lamb for you dinner... and while you're eating inside, I'll be striking down the firstborn of everyone in Egypt, but when I see the blood on your doorposts, I won't kill any of you.  You know, because of the blood."  No one had ever seen anything like that, and for that matter, no one had ever seen a plague like God was announcing, that would kill the firstborn in every family!  There had to have been some people whose initial response was, "I don't even believe this plague stuff is real!  There's not going to be a death of the firstborn, because this is all made up. So I'm sure not going to go put lamb's blood on my doorpost over such an outlandish story!"

But Moses trusted, and he convinced the people to trust him as well, even though they really didn't know how to explain what was about to happen, and even though they didn't have a way of understanding what was in the lamb's blood that would make it able to prevent them from dying. That's hard--maybe it even sounds impossible.  But when you trust the one who is telling you to do something, even if you don't understand how it will work, you trust what they tell you to do.

Now, it's true that there are lots of messages thrown at us every day, all with a product to sell us, and they are not all worthy of your trust or mine.  From the endless medications and their long lists of side-effects on TV and internet ads, to the all-too-often empty promises of political candidates and parties, we are constantly having to weigh and sift the claims made to us and then have to decide which are trustworthy and which are selling snake-oil.  But when you have reason to believe someone is trustworthy, then yes, be prepared to trust even when you understand how it will work.  Trust, even when you don't know what the point is.  Trust, even if you can't explain or predict what comes next.  When you know you are in the care of someone trustworthy, that's what you do.  That's how faith works.

Today it is surely worth being smart and reflective about which voices and promises you'll trust.  Absolutely.  But if you have found the living God to be trustworthy, then, yeah, let's do what the living God leads us to do, even if sometimes we don't know how it works, or what God will accomplish, or if we can't see the endgame of all of it.  Maybe we don't have to know how something works in order to trust that it does.  The question is whether the One in whom we place our faith is worthy of it.

God is.  God is even more trustworthy than tacos. But you don't have to take my word for it.

Lord God, give us the courage and humility to faith in you even when we don't see what you're up to, and show yourself to be worthy of our trust in this day.

Solidarity as Faith--September 21, 2021

Solidarity as Faith--September 21, 2021

"By faith Moses, when he was grown up, refused to be called a son of Pharaoh's daughter, choosing rather to share ill-treatment with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin. He considered abuse suffered for the Christ to be greater wealth than the treasures of Egypt, for he was looking ahead to the reward.  By faith he left Egypt, unafraid of the king's anger; for he persevered as though he saw him who is invisible." [Hebrews 11:24-27]

Moses chose to side with the people being abused rather than the people brandishing whips, even though it cost him status, comfort, and safety, because he was convinced God was on the side of the ones being oppressed, rather than maintaining Pharaoh's kind of "order." What will we do?

It really is just that stark of a choice sometimes. And to be honest, I'm grateful that a voice like our author's here in Hebrews helps us to see that choice with such clarity.  There were high stakes for Moses in choosing to identify with his people, even when he had the opportunity to pass for an Egyptian and stay comfortable and secure inside palace walls.  Moses doesn't leave behind his old identity and privilege under Pharaoh's roof naively or without understanding the implications.  But with eyes wide open, Moses made the choice to stand in solidarity with the ones who were being mistreated, exploited, and enslaved.  Moses chose solidarity, because sometimes solidarity is the shape faith takes.

I would hope that we can see the sharp contrast between the sides of this situation from the Exodus saga, because they really are quite clear.  Either one was ok with Pharaoh enslaving people to prop up his empire, wealth, and projections of national strength, or one has to say, "No!" to Pharaoh and say "Yes" to identifying with the people being treated as animals.  No amount of gaslighting, no amount of smoke-screening, can be allowed to hoodwink us.  Surely, Pharaoh would have insisted that it was "legal" to keep the Hebrews enslaved, to threaten them with whips, and to exploit their labor as an entire ethnic group, because it was his decree that made things "legal," and made their attempts to leave Egypt "illegal."  Surely Pharaoh would have told his citizens that it was the Israelites who were the real threat to Egyptian society, because they were the outsiders, the foreigners, and the suspicious "others" who needed to be wrangled into submission and prevented from harming their way of life.  Surely Pharaoh would have cast himself as the one meting out justice--or at least stability, which can be dressed up to look like justice--when he had his taskmasters corral the enslaved children of Israel or punish them for trying to get away and make their own new lives.  But the writer of Hebrews isn't fooled, and we shouldn't be, either.  There are clear sides in a situation like this, and it is never righteous to be on the side of people treating other people like animals.

The challenge for us--as the writer of Hebrews sees, too--is to make the leap from this ancient Bible story to our daily lives.  It's pretty easy, I hope, to know that we are supposed to side, along with Moses, with the Israelites in the Exodus story.  It should be pretty clear, I expect, to know we are supposed to root for the enslaved Israelites seeking freedom.  And it should be obvious, too, that Moses does the right thing--the righteous, just, and faithful thing--by giving up his personal comfort to side with his people.  

But there's a reason that the writer of Hebrews has been telling us all these stories of our faith-family history, and it's not because there will be a history test later. He's telling us these story to show us what faith may need to look like in our day, our times, and our situations.  He's reminding us of what faith looked like in all these different situations, so that we, too, will know what we may be called to, as well.  And in Moses' story, faith looks like the kind of love we call "solidarity"--standing with people who are being mistreated, rather than with the powerful, precisely because they are being mistreated.  The question for us is how we will take the clarity in this story and see honestly in the situations around us in our daily lives.

Most of the time, we would hope, things are not going to be as dire in our daily interactions as they were in Pharaoh's Egypt.  We would hope that we won't encounter literal slave-drivers oppressing and abusing people, and that we would recognize it if people would be dehumanized right before our eyes.  We should see it, shouldn't we? We should know it when it happens, right? Except... most of the Egyptians in Moses' day were completely oblivious to what was being done right before their eyes.  It's not that they weren't aware of the situation of Hebrews--they knew that Pharaoh's treasure cities and fortifications weren't being built by magic, or by elves in the night like in the children's tale.  The Egyptians all surely knew what was happening with the enslaved Hebrews, but they could not longer recognize it as something they needed to change or speak up against.  They had grown so accustomed to that system, and after having been told it was right because it was "the law," that they put up no protest.  They had come to expect that their "greatness" as a nation, their comfort as a society, and their way of life as an empire, were worth the the cost if that cost was being paid by enslaved Israelites, rather than themselves.  They could not see what was happening right before their eyes any longer--or at least, they could not see why what was happening should have any need to change.

That's the truth that haunts me from all of this.  Moses, who had the most to lose from leaving his position in Pharaoh's house as the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, was able to see that he needed to stand in solidarity with his people for the sake of faithfulness and justice. But just about everybody else in Egyptian society looked the other way, or insisted that the Hebrews had to be treated like animals, because otherwise it would undermine all that they held dear.  Everybody else, who knew just as well what was going on, could no longer see how terrible it was, even while it was happening in real time around them.

Sometimes the fear that keeps me up at night is that there are terrible things happening around us, all the time, and it is so much easier for me to drown out the noise of it by turning the radio up or distracting myself on a screen, than to face what is happening and to take the costly step of standing with those who are being hurt or dehumanized.  And if the Egyptians in Moses' day could all have become numb to the atrocities happening before their eyes, what will keep me from being desensitized when there are people brandishing whips and treating others as less-than-human in real time around me?  What hope can there be for me--or any of us--to have Moses' faith that takes the form of solidarity?

Honestly, I don't have any easy or satisfying answers there. But it seems that the writer of Hebrews is on to something by telling us this story and preventing us from forgetting what Moses' faith led him to do.  Because at least when we tell those stories and hear again about such costly courage, maybe we'll be more able to look at our own lives, our own situations, and the day's events unfolding right before our eyes in real time, and ask the questions of where we need to be, and with whom we need to stand.  Maybe the work of solidarity is never finished in this life, but we need to keep asking the question, day by day, moment by moment:  with whom is God standing right now... and therefore, where do I need to be in my words and actions?

Let's face that question today, then, with as much courage as we can muster.

Lord God, show us today the people with whom you are standing, so that we can know where we need to be as well.

Resistance as Faith--September 20, 2021

Resistance as Faith--September 20, 2021

"By faith Moses was hidden by his parents for three months after his birth, because they saw that the child was beautiful; and they were not afraid of the king's edict." [Hebrews 11:23]

Sometimes saying "Yes" to God--and to the people God loves entrusted to your care--means saying a clear "No" to the powers that be.  Sometimes faith takes the shape of civil disobedience, whether in public acts of protest or private acts of conscientious objection to whatever Pharaoh or Caesar says.  Sometimes, in other words, resistance flows directly from our faith, not in spite of it.

Now, that can open quite a can of worms.  And to be sure, we need to listen closely to this story from the book of Exodus that our author is riffing on here in Hebrews, because this is not a blank check for declaring whatever thing you don't want to do a matter of faith, and therefore demanding protest, resistance, or civil disobedience.  (In our day, for example, the impulse to claim a "religious exemption" to wearing a face mask in a school or at work among some ostensibly Christian voices seems like a pretty clear abuse of this train of thought, because there is literally nothing in the Christian faith that precludes wearing a face-mask for the sake of your neighbor's well-being.  And yet, wow, it sure is easy to get riled up and dress up that hot-button issue among some into a matter of religious persecution.)

So, okay, that's the challenge for us today: to navigate the roadway between two ditches on either side, and to avoid never resisting the powers of the day as an outflow of our faith on the one hand, and on the other, to take our personal pet peeves or soapboxes and try and baptize them into matters of faith that demand civil disobedience.  Everybody wants to think they would have stood up against the Nazis or against Jim Crow, and yet it's pretty clear that in those different contexts, there were actually an awful lot of Respectable Religious folks who turned the other way or actively supported the status quo, rather than being voices of faithful resistance.  And on the other hand, everybody wants to think that their own politics are divinely approved, but an honest look for each of us reveals how often we cover over our own blind spots to avoid inconsistencies between a party's platform and the implications of our faith in the God we know in Jesus.  The challenge is finding the right course without falling into either ditch.  And this example lifted up from Hebrews might give us some direction.

The story is from the infancy of Moses, the son of two enslaved Hebrews living under the rule of a cruel Pharaoh in Egypt.  Pharaoh had become so afraid of foreigners overpowering their culture--and had stirred up that fear among the Egyptian people, we should be clear, too--that he had gotten popular support to enslave the Israelites. And then when he was still afraid of their growing numbers and the changing demographics of his country, he began a policy of killing the baby boys born to the Israelite mothers, in order to cut off the threat of losing his power. (It is interesting, of course, that he assumes the only threat was from boys, when it turns out the Hebrew midwives--women--Shiphrah and Puah, and women like Moses' mother and sister, were the ones who set into motion the liberation of the Hebrews, right under Pharaoh's nose!) I can't help but hear echoes of Pharaoh's fearful rage in the unhinged manifesto of the perpetrator of the mass shooting in El Paso a few years ago, who was so fearful of outsiders becoming an "invasion" and an "infestation" (in his words) that he felt compelled to go on a shooting rampage outside a Texas Walmart--it is the same fear of losing power and cultural importance that pushed both the shooter and Pharaoh to think that killing the ones deemed a "threat" was morally acceptable.  We have not learned much, it seems.

Pharaoh's edict meant difficult choices for any Hebrew parents who had a boy (not unlike the heart-wrenching choices put to parents under China's former one-child policy, in a way).  But Moses' parents loved their son, and they dared to believe that it was right to keep their son alive, even if that meant breaking the law, than to let their child be killed by Pharaoh's police force.  They hadn't been given some angelic message that their child would be kept safe, and they didn't know yet that their son would be the one to lead the Israelites out of slavery.  They just knew that their love compelled them to act, and they were confident that the God of their ancestors was on the side of saving life rather than destroying it.  So they chose to hide their baby rather than have him killed by Egyptian officers who might have come to their door.  Their faith in a God who cares about such things, and their love for their child, led them to make the choice to break the law--to resist.

I want to suggest that this is a helpful guide for our own wrestling with questions in our day.  Yes, sometimes our faith will lead us to resist the decrees or actions of the powers of the day--but the way to tell has everything to do with the character of the God we have come to know in Jesus (and in stories like the Exodus) and with acting out of love, and very little to do with baptizing our partisan platforms or sanctifying our selfishness in the name of "my rights." Moses' parents resist a decree of Pharaoh that would literally have killed their son, simply for his very existence as a Hebrew boy.  It isn't that his policies were inconvenient, or uncomfortable, or made everybody go a little bit out of their way for the sake of helping neighbors.  It was that Pharaoh was codifying murder, and Moses' parents would not participate.  Note, too--their resistance was not about killing someone else pre-emptively.  They didn't think they had to go killing Egyptians to make their point--they were simply willing to take the risk of defying Pharaoh, including bearing whatever consequences might occur if they were caught, as a means of protecting the child whom they loved, whom they believed was beloved of God as well.

This seems like a helpful model for us as well.  The more we are shaped by the character of the God we know in Jesus (and the God of Moses and Miriam, too, for that matter), the more we will know where we have to resist Pharaoh's rottenness, and also where we can distinguish between our personal preferences and the dictates of obeying God.  The more we ask, "Is this issue a question of love in the way we have come to know love through Jesus, or is this about me not wanting to be made uncomfortable for someone else's sake?" we will be able to discern when it is time to resist--risking that we will bear the consequences for our actions--and when it is time to live with something we just don't happen to like.

And that's a humbling thing, too:  learning that being human in this world means sometimes things happen that I don't like, but that does not necessarily mean I am being persecuted.  When my faith in the God of the Exodus and the cross leads me to stand up, to resist, or to defy Pharaohs and Caesars, okay, we will have our "Here I stand, I can do no other," kinds of moments.  But those will be shaped by love that looks like a cross rather than a Don't-Tread-On-Me snake logo.  It is love that leads Moses' parents to hide their son in defiance of Pharaoh, and it is faith in a good God that gives them hope that their defiance is not doomed to failure.  But we are not given stories in the Scriptures of people whose mere individual self-interest or personal comfort is reason enough to form an angry mob.  Tracing the path of Moses' parents and how they arrived at their choice to resist Pharaoh may give us solid guidance for how we face whatever the questions of our day are, and whatever the issues of tomorrow will be.

Today, then, it's worth asking the question: Where does my faith in God lead me to say "yes" to things happening around me, and where does my faith in God lead me to say "no"?  And then the follow-up is important, too--where I am called to say "No" to the situation around me, or some Pharaoh or Caesar's claim, what shape does that "no" take?  And how, in all things, can I be a reflection of the love I have come to know in Jesus?

Turns out Jesus is one again the touchstone for us--for how we navigate those questions and challenges of our daily life.  Good thing we've got him. Or rather, good thing he's got us.

Lord God, give us the courage to know where our Yes to you means a No to the order of the day, and give us the honesty and humility to know where we are trying to use you as an excuse for things we just don't like.

Beyond the Horizon--September 17, 2021

Beyond the Horizon--September 17, 2021

"By faith Joseph, at the end of his life, made mention of the exodus of the Israelites and gave instructions about his burial." [Hebrews 11:22]

I will be honest: it is hard to conduct your life now in light of a future you cannot yet see.  And yet, that is the challenge of faith--to live now, in light of God's promised future.

It's hard at any age, but I am a witness to a thousand different glimpses of the struggle with the children and grown-ups in our house.  For kids, it is especially difficult to think of the future, especially to change your intended actions now in light of the future.  Every time my kids get a little bit of spending money, whether from doing extra chores or as a birthday gift or from the tooth fairy or whatever else, they insist, "I'm saving this up for..." and then they name some big-ticket purchase they happen to be salivating over.  But it is never very long before they start wrestling with the temptation to go blow it all on candy and bubble gum, an action figure, a doll, or a trading card, or an especially indulgent snack at the movies.  Sometimes they can keep their focus on that future thing they'll want or need, but an awful lot of the time, they can't hold out.  Or rather, they choose not to.  Same with doing homework--there's always the temptation to goof off after school, or play video games, or whatever else, and tell themselves, "I can do the homework in the morning!" And then when the morning comes and homework is left undone, they are kicking themselves for not having done it the day before as soon as they came home from school.

Adults are the same,  too--every year, I promise myself I want to do our taxes earlier, and somehow it seems every year, I convince myself to keep kicking the can down the road.  But April 15 is coming every year, and it would be wise of me to just get it over with as early as possible because I know that future moment is coming.  For that matter, every time either my wife or I hit the snooze bar on our alarms, it's a sort of small refusal to life in light of the dawning day.  The stakes may be low when it comes to getting a bit more sleep, and eventually my mature self does get up to face the day, but in a sense I'm still living the struggle my kids have with homework and money burning a hole in their pockets.

It is hard, just plain hard, to live our lives with an eye toward future realities.  And it is harder still to live our own lives in light of futures that can seem distant or beyond a direct impact on us.  When it comes to my kids' spending money, they're the ones who miss out in the future if they've already spent all their tooth fairy money on Mike and Ikes at the next matinee.  I'm the one who finds myself rushed and running late if I hit the snooze bar one too many times.  But deliberately making choices now in light of a future that is beyond my own lifetime?  That's really, really hard.  And we are great at conning ourselves into selling the future short for a bit more instant gratification in the present.

So again, to hear the writer of Hebrews uphold faith as a forward-looking reality is important for our own discipleship.  And that's what he highlights about Joseph, the dreamer son of Jacob who eventually becomes second-in-command in Egypt and prevents a famine from causing ruin for the Egyptians and countless people around.  You know that part of the story, I'm guessing--whether you heard Donny Osmond sing it in "Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat" or enacted on a flannel-board in childhood once upon a time in Sunday School.  Even in that part of the story, Joseph is forward thinking.  When he interprets Pharaoh's dreams to learn that a famine is coming, Joseph wisely recommends they start saving grain in the present in the plentiful years so there will be enough when the lean times come.  That's making choices now in light of a future you can see on the horizon all by itself.  And honestly, in an age like ours where we can see problems on the horizon and our go-to response as a society is to kick the can down the road while lamenting as we look backward nostalgically about how great things "used to be," it is a real wake-up call to see even these ancient people like Joseph and Pharaoh being more mature and forward-thinking that we often are.

But beyond the plot points of the musical version or Sunday School lesson retelling of the story, there is an important coda to Joseph's life that we don't often talk about.  The writer of Hebrews, however, knows his Bible well, and points not to the dreams or the great reversal from prison to prestige for Joseph, but to the very end of Joseph's life.  He has secured a stable and happy enough life for himself in Egypt, now with a wife and two sons of his own.  And he his famine-relief plan of saving up grain made it possible for his whole extended family to survive--not only that, but all of Jacob's sons and their children are all welcomed to come and live in Egypt as resident aliens for as long as they need.  The Pharaoh of the time welcomes these immigrants and sees that their presence is a blessing for the whole nation of Egypt, and so Joseph knows that his family will be safe for his entire lifetime.  But still, even old man Joseph looks further down the road to a time yet beyond the horizon--and he sees that there is more to the story.  Joseph tells his sons to keep looking forward to a day when their whole family--by then, a nation in its own right--will leave Egypt and find a home in the land God had once promised to Abraham.  Joseph is so confident that eventually their family's story will leave Egypt and make it to the Promised Land that he instructs his descendants to bring his bones to that new land when they get there, so that his body can be at rest in the place where his many-times-over great-grandchildren will make their homes.  

In other words, Joseph is teaching the next generation to look ahead and anticipate a future they cannot yet see, and to act in light of a reality they may not even get to experience themselves.  After all, it would turn out to be four hundred years, as the Scripture tell it, before Jacob's descendants were finally set free from slavery when a new Pharaoh came to power and put them in chains.  So Joseph was looking ahead to a time centuries into the future, and still told his own children to act in light of that coming time.

Faith makes that kind of forward-looking outlook possible.  It reminds us that "the way things are" is not "the way things always will be," and that we have a hand in shaping the future that comes along, or at least preparing ourselves and our loved ones for how they face that future.  Sticking our heads in the sand or pretending nothing will ever change is as tempting as putting off tomorrow's homework, especially if we tell ourselves, "I'll never live to see the consequences!"  But it is a shirking of our responsibility to those who come after us to do that--and to hear the writer of Hebrews tell it, it is also unfaithful.

In an age and culture like ours that often gets stuck in the run of instant gratification, it is a countercultural thing to say, "My faith leads me to look ahead to the future rather than only focusing on some glorious golden age that exists only in my memory." But that is what we are called to do.  We are called to envision the future beyond our own immediate self-interest, both to the future of the world, this world, that we will hand to the generations who come after us, and also to God's promised future of a renewed creation where wolves and lambs lie down safely together, where swords are beaten into plowshares, and where people from all nations, tribes, and languages are gathered in the presence of God.  If that is where all of creation is heading, then it will change how I treat others even now, in a time where violence, greed, hatred, and fear so often seem to be running the show.  

Today, let us live this day--which is the only day we have been given--but let us live it in light of the future we cannot yet see, but to which we are responsible.  Steward your resources, love your neighbors, care for the world you'll leave behind for the seventh generation after us, deal with enemies knowing one day we may well find ourselves at the heavenly banquet table seated across from them.

That's the challenge of this day as people of a forward-looking faith.

Lord God, give us the confidence to know that the future we cannot see is still in your hands, and so help us to be good caretakers of what you have placed in our hands in the present.

Keeping the Embers--September 16, 2021

Keeping the Embers--September 16, 2021

"By faith Isaac invoked blessings for the future on Jacob and Esau.  By faith Jacob, when dying, blessed each of the sons of Joseph, 'bowing in worship over the top of his staff.'" [Hebrews 11:20-21]

Sometimes faith means holding onto things until the time when they can be used rightly, and keeping them in good condition because you believe that time will indeed come.  That kind of faith isn't glamorous or showy.  It rarely makes headlines, because you almost can't see anything happening.  It's not like Peter walking (momentarily) on water or anybody moving a mountain.  It's more like a mother praying over her children while they sleep, or the elementary school teacher who tells his students, "I can't wait to cheer for you on the day you graduate from high school and get your diploma." These are subtle acts of faith and can be easy to miss, but they are deeply powerful at the same time.  And for each of us, they are the shape of living by faith on most days.

They are, in a manner of speaking, acts of tending the embers.

The well known Roman Catholic writer Sister Joan Chittister speaks of the Gaelic word "grieshog," which refers to the practice of burying the still live coals of a fire in ash overnight so that they will be warm enough to kindle a new fire in the morning once again.  It's a beautiful image for how we live oriented toward the future as people of faith, even when the present moment is a difficult one.  To bury the embers for use in the morning presumes that there will be a new day, that there will be a need for a fire, and that your actions now can be taken in light of that future you are anticipating, even if right now there is not only darkness.  Letting the embers go out uncovered is a sign you are either irresponsible about the future, despairing about the future, or that you won't be around in this same spot tomorrow to build a fire.  But if you are committed to sticking around and doing good--and maybe getting some breakfast going when the sun rises--you keep the embers warm by saving them in the ashes.  Quite often, that is exactly the shape faith needs to take.

As the writer of Hebrews keeps tracing the stories of faith from our ancestors in the family saga of Israel, he comes to Isaac and Jacob and sees both of them as examples of this grieshog faith.  Their faith is in actions for the future, even if that future is one they know they will not see.  When Isaac is an old man with failing eyesight, he blesses his sons, trusting that God will take care of them even after his days are done.  And then when Isaac's son Jacob becomes the father, he too, blesses his grandsons even though he knows he will not live to see them grow old in turn.  It is an important part of genuine faith that we make choices for the sake of a future we may not see yet ourselves, but which we trust is coming.  Like heaping the coals in the ash for the sake of those who will kindle tomorrow's hearth, people of faith make decisions beyond our own narrow and short-sighted self-interest, exactly because we believe that God cares about tomorrow.

In church life, when I see patriarchs of a congregation doing work that should last for decades into the future, even though they themselves may not enjoy all the fruits of that labor, I see grieshog faith.  When we teach young children the good news of God's love, even though we know it is likely that they could move away to a new place when they grow up, it is grieshog faith, too.  When we make choices now about how we care for God's creation, conserve natural resources, and prevent damage to the world our grandchildren's grandchildren will inherit, it is with the same grieshog faith as Jacob blessing his grandsons in his dying moments.  When you plant an acorn knowing you will not live to see the oak tree that shades someone else's descendants, but because it is a good thing for the world to have shady oaks for other people's children to sit in, you are acting by faith.

We need to be clear about this because sometimes the notion of "faith" gets hijacked and turned inside out--sometimes Respectable Religious folks will say things like, "I have faith, and therefore I don't have to care about the state of the world tomorrow, since God will just trash this world and make a new one" (which is not at all what the Christian notion of "new creation" is really about).  Or sometimes it will be, "We can't sacrifice profits today for the possible improvement of tomorrow! God has given us all the wealth and resources of the world to maximize today!"  You know the infinite variations, I'm sure.  But none of those are faith, even if they are dressed up in the language of God-talk. Rather, they are a refusal to trust that tomorrow is important to God and the people God loves.  They are a refusal to practice grieshog faith.

Today is a day to think, not just about me-and-my-present-interests, but to act by faith for the well-being of people who will come tomorrow, people who will make tomorrow morning's fire and who will need warm coals to kindle it, people whose life stories we may not get to see all the way through, but who matter to God all the same.  Our capacity to envision that God can take our actions and do good things through them for other people--and that it is worth such action even if we don't get to see the benefit ourselves--that is the kind of faith Isaac and Jacob each have as they speak blessing to their children and grandchildren.  Such is the faith we are called to practice on this day, too.

Right where you are, prepare the embers for the fires that will be kindled in a new day.  Let that be the shape of your faith today.

Lord God, help us today to live in light of what you will do tomorrow, not just in our own lives or the lives of those we love, but for all whom you love in generations beyond us.

Resurrection Realism--September 14, 2021

Resurrection Realism--September 14, 2021

"[Abraham] considered the fact that God is able even to raise someone from the dead--and figuratively speaking, he did receive him back." [Hebrews 11:19]

There's a great line of Lesslie Newbigin that comes back to me in times like this.  The late theologian said, "I am neither an optimist nor a pessimist: Jesus Christ is risen from the dead."

It might sound odd, but the more I think about it, the more I am convinced that the Christian hope of resurrection is what grounds our faith in reality--a reality where, yes, death is real and cannot simply be wished away or ignored, and yet a reality where death does not get the last word.  Mere optimism wants to say, "Let's hope things don't get bad," or "The sun'll come up tomorrow!" or "I can feel things are getting better!" when those things may or may not happen.  Faith isn't about wishfully thinking that the worst won't happen--rather, trust in the God who raises the dead allows us to stare down the possibility that sometimes the worst does... and then God brings newness where we never saw it coming.  Optimism says, "Hopefully we can avoid the dark valley." Pessimism moans that we're in it already, all alone, and will probably never find our way out.  But faith in the living God says, "Even when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I don't have to be afraid, because you are with me, O God.  You promise to bring me through."

Abraham's faith was like that, as our author in Hebrews tells us.  When he ventured out to offer up his son Isaac as a sacrifice, Hebrews says that Abraham went with the faith that even if it came to it, God could raise the dead and restore the child of promise to life.  (And, not for nothing, in the original storytelling from Genesis 22, Abraham goes up the mountain with Isaac telling the hired men waiting behind, "We will go up and offer sacrifice, and then we will come back down to you," almost as if the old patriarch dares to believe even then that God can raise Isaac from the dead and send him back down with his dad.)  There's no swerving away from the reality of death--but there is the daring hope that God can and does call forth life again out the other side.

Sometimes I think we need the reminder that the Christian faith is that kind of death-and-resurrection thing, rather than a naive optimism that bad things won't happen to us because we believe in God.  We live in a time when folks use the word "faith" to mean all sorts of nonsense, from "I have faith, not fear, so I know I can't get COVID and don't need to get vaccinated," to "I have faith and have prayed, and therefore my team will win the game" (as though there weren't people fervently praying for the other team, too) or "Nothing bad will happen to the environment, because God will stop it from becoming a problem," or even, "I have faith that God will give me a bigger house, more money, and honor-roll kids."  These are not faith--these are nonsense dressed up in religious garb.

But real living daring faith can stare down the truth, unflinchingly, and yet trust that God can bring new creation where the worst happens.  Sometimes you don't get the job.  Sometimes the loved one doesn't get the miracle cure.  Sometimes the team loses. And sometimes the hurricanes are more intense than anyone imagined the would be.  Naming those realities isn't a lack of faith, but the necessary truth-telling that allows us to trust God even when everything else is coming undone, and to know that God reserves the right to call forth life to our dry bones.  

That's the crux--literally--of the good news: that God isn't just here to help us look on the bright side, but to bring new creation when everything has come apart in death.  Like Robert Farrar Capon says it, "Jesus came to raise the dead.... He did not come to improve the improvable.  He did not come to reform the reformable.  None of those things work."  From Abraham on Mount Moriah to the present day, the living God has been inspiring that kind of trust.  Mere optimism isn't enough, and relentless pessimism is inadequate as well.  We are called to be resurrection realists--who face the truth when rotten things happen rather than using piety as a pretense to avoid it, and then who place our confidence in God's ability to roll stones away from our deathly places.

Today, let's aim for that: let's be honest and real about the troubles and challenges in front of us, rather than wishing them away with some empty hope that "Things will just go back to normal!"  Let's face them down in our family life and our local economy; let's face them down in our churches and our schools.  Let's face them down in our cities and in our fields.  And then let us hand to God all that is dead within us and allow God to bring resurrection forth from us as well.

Lord God, call us to life again.  We dare to believe you can do it.  We even dare to believe you are summoning us in to resurrection right now.