Justice Is Learned--January 10, 2023

Justice Is Learned--January 10, 2023

"[God's Servant] will not grow faint or be crushed until he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands wait for his teaching." [Isaiah 42:4]

Whatever justice means in the end, apparently it comes from the instruction of a teacher rather than the point of a sword or the barrel of a gun.

I've got to confess, I'm sure I've heard this verse dozens of times in my life in church services, and then read it before on my own plenty of times beyond that--but I don't think it has ever dawned on me how Isaiah connects the gentleness, the kindness, of God's Servant with bringing justice.  But here it is--the thing that this justice-hungry world really is waiting for is instruction, not invasion.  We are in need of compassion, not a conqueror.

Today's verse [which again might be familiar to folks who were in worship this past Sunday] doubles down on the vision the prophet gave us yesterday in Isaiah 42:1-3, where God's Servant brings justice with gentleness.  The same One who doesn't need to shout in the streets to get attention, and who won't break off a bruised reed or snuff out a struggling candle's flame, is the one who will "bring forth justice" for "all nations."  And here again today, the prophet says that God's Servant, the One we confess we have met in Jesus, will keep going strong in his work "until he has established justice in the earth."  But the conclusion of that thought is simply dumbfounding: the world in need of justice is apparently longing for teaching, rather than coercion, for that justice to arise.

This is going to make us stop and think more carefully about what we think the word "justice" really means, because to a lot of ears, the word "justice" is just a synonym for "punishing lawbreakers for committing crimes" or "getting revenge for past wrongs."  For the multiple generations who grew up with the opening monologue of TV's Law and Order playing in the background, "justice" is about catching bad guys and convicting them.  And for those who remember the beginning of the two decades of war in Afghanistan, we cannot help but recall that the invasion of that country, meant to respond to the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001, was originally designated as "Operation Infinite Justice."  In other words, in our culture, we are often told that justice is something you achieve with weapons in hand.

And without denying the very real need in our world for stopping bank robbers, murderers, or terrorists from being able to harm people or steal from them, I find it striking that when Isaiah imagines justice for all the earth, he describes it coming at the hands of a teacher who is so gentle he wouldn't even break a bent reed along his path.  There is no vision here of a commanding general ordering troops in to kill their enemies or "make them pay."  There is no description of "getting even" or "getting back" at some villainous "them" waiting in the shadows around every corner.  There is not even a sense of needing to punish people for bad actions--there is, rather, a longing for instruction in a good way of life.

And this, of course, runs counter to what we have accepted as "conventional wisdom" for just about all of human history.  Over the centuries, empire after empire and superpower after superpower has insisted that it was tasked [by history? By fate? By the gods, or a particular god?] with enforcing "justice" on all the unruly places that had not yet submitted to the powers of the day.  The Romans insisted they had come to save the world and bring it justice... by conquering it.  The Third Reich was certain it was fated to bring order and peace by its rule.  The militarism of the Soviet Union was all for the sake of economic "justice," according to its propaganda, no matter how many people died under its tank treads or in gulags along the way.  And certainly we have done our share of convincing ourselves we are always and only the guarantors of justice, and that therefore, we are permitted to overthrow governments, drop atomic bombs, or invade other countries. It is always easy and tempting to tell yourself that you are permitted to do terrible things because you and Your Side are on the side of "justice," while "They" are on the side of evil.

Isaiah envisions something different.  And he is convinced that God does, too.  Isaiah imagines that God's Chosen One--God's "Servant"--brings justice through kindness, and that gentleness and teaching are what we are most in need of.  Echoing the images from the opening chapters of Isaiah's book where the nations come to the mountain of God to learn the ways of peace, so that they can beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks, here the prophet pictures the whole world being taught a new way of living, until justice comes forth.  That means rethinking what justice really means--because as Isaiah describes it, it looks less like a fixed balance sheet that must be paid back in terms of retribution, but more like something you grow and nurture like a seed.  It is an active reality we keep practicing, keep getting better at, and keep growing into--not a matter of "getting even" to restore some unchanging ledger line.  To the prophets, "justice" is not something you threaten or shoot your way into achieiving, but something you learn by doing, a way of life that ensures everybody gets to eat and nobody gets taken advantage of.  That might include restoring things that have been taken, damaged, or lost, but not the need to get some "pound of flesh" to satisfy debts.  If that is our picture of justice, then we are the ones who have caricatured it into a crude matter of settling scores--the Hebrew prophets keep calling us to see justice as a way of life for everyone in a whole community, not just a matter of catching robbers or putting crooks in jail.

All right, then, so what?  What difference does it make to shift our thinking of justice from "invading armies" to "instruction in a way of life"? Well, for one, it helps us make sense of Jesus and his mission.  We Christians are people convinced that the Servant of God turns out to have been not a king, a general, or a Caesar, but a homeless itinerant rabbi who gets executed by the Empire--and in the name of the Empire's kind of "law and order," mind you.  But Jesus never calls for invading the people who don't accept him, killing his enemies to get even with them, or riling up his disciples to storm the praetorium if they don't get their way. Whatever "justice" looks like to Jesus, it looks more like everyone being fed bread and fish, the jubilee year of debt cancellation, and a blessing pronounced on the last, the least, and the left behind.  It looks a lot like learning how to love with kindness.  Without a voice like Isaiah's showing us that this has been God's way all along, we might take one look at Jesus and dismiss him with a shrug, saying, "But when does he get revenge and make his enemies pay--you know... justice?"  We might miss that Jesus' way of life IS what justice looks like, and that Jesus' way of living is the means by which justice grows up out of the ground.

That also means each of us has great power in our hands in small acts of teaching and learning from one another how to treat one another decently and equitably--before someone steals, hurts, or kills.  Every time I teach my kids to speak kindly to other classmates who get picked on rather than joining in the bullying to save their own skin, it is a matter of teaching justice through kindness.  Every time my kids remind me about sharing good things with others who do not have what they need, they are teaching me about the way compassion breathes life into justice, too.  Every time we dare to listen to someone else tell us how our actions have affected them, even if we didn't realize those effects, we come to see how being good to one another feeds the growth of justice, too. 

Perhaps, too, we'll come to see like Cornel West says, that "justice is what love looks like in public, just like tenderness is what love feels like in private." Instead of seeing "justice" and "kindness" as opposites--where justice is about cold, calculating punishments and kindness is warm, squishy feelings--we can see that justice and kindness are two sides of the same coin, and that they are both part of a way of life we learn together, rather than something we have to be scared into doing for fear of punishment.

I don't know about you, but I could see myself spending a whole lifetime learning from Jesus about how to love others rightly, and I don't think it would ever get old.

May we be such faithful learners of justice from God's Servant, Jesus, today.

O God our Instructor, your ways are good, and you lay a good path before us.  Guide us into your justice and mercy, and keep us along your way in this day.

A Gentle Strength--January 9, 2023

A Gentle Strength--January 9, 2023

"Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations. He will not cry or lift up his voice, or make it heard in the street; a bruised reed he will not break, and a dimly burning wick he will not quench; he will bring forth justice." [Isaiah 42:1-3]

Did you ever see a kid step on a bug just because he could?

Have you ever been the one who yanked a flower out of the soil where it was struggling to blossom, or snapped a limb off of a tree for no other reason than that it was there?

I suspect if each of us is honest, we've been there before.  We've seen it, and we've been the ones breaking things, squishing things, or even killing things, just because we can.  Not because they were in our way or harming us, not because they posed a threat to us or anybody else, and not even because of fear--but because we had the power and whatever happened to be in our target sights had no power to stop us.  And, not to be too harsh on ourselves, realizing that we have power over some things in our world is probably one of those steps in our mental development as human beings.  You learn that you have the ability to affect your environment, and sometimes little children figure that out by breaking or stomping on things in that environment.  You just hope that before long, each of us learns to outgrow that kind of gratuitous destruction.

But to be honest, I'm not sure that we always really do arrive at the realization that gentleness is a mark of maturity--not raw power.  The ability to crush, break, or step on things isn't really a sign of greatness, but we don't always realize that.  We still do fall for the childish thinking that raw power is a mark of strength, rather than the ability to temper and harness power in ways that nurture life rather than destroying it.  One of the sad lessons of history is how often crowds rally in support of the strongman, the authoritarian, the dictator, and the bully, all because they fool the people into confusing recklessness with strength, and gentleness with weakness.

God, of course, is not fooled by those demagogues, and never has been.  We sometimes forget this, too, and think that whoever has the most sheer raw power at any given moment must have God's endorsement [although I'll bet Goliath, Pharaoh, and Nebuchadnezzar would all beg to differ].  If we've been actually listening to the voices in the Scriptures, though, we'll hear that God has always chosen to work in gentleness and kindness rather than domination and cruelty.  In fact, the prophets were convinced that such compassionate love would be the telltale sign of the Messiah.

I love the way this passage from Isaiah 42 puts it--in speaking of God's chosen "servant," the prophet says, "a bruised reed he will not break," and "a dimly burning wick he will not quench," and yet he will bring about justice for all peoples.  God's chosen one--whom we often name "the Messiah" or "the Christ"--doesn't resort to sheer displays of domination or cruelty in order to get things done.  He isn't even the sort of person to snap a bent stalk off of a plant or snuff out a weak flame.  He wouldn't even step on a bug "just because he can." He doesn't need to shout obnoxiously or rile people up to get their attention.  And he doesn't need to pick on someone smaller to make everybody else in the schoolyard afraid.

Those kinds of tactics, however, are exactly how empires operate--from Pharaoh insisting on the enslaved Hebrews making more and more bricks without straw, to Rome crucifying whomever it saw as a potential troublemaker, just to set an example of what they could do to you, to every empire and superpower since.  Bullies flex their imperial muscle like that because they think it makes them look strong... when in actuality it makes them look childish.  God's chosen one knows that and doesn't have to resort to saber-rattling, angry yelling, or shows of brute force to do God's work.

We are constantly reminded of the brutish--and childish--things people are willing to do if they think it will make them look great or put them on top.  The day's news keeps giving us disappointingly fresh examples of that tired way of doing things. But the prophet's witness to one who doesn't snuff out fragile flames or break what is bruised offers us an alternative to the bullying we are so used to settling for.  Today, it is worth asking, "Where have I allowed myself to think it was OK to step on someone else to get ahead?  Where have I let myself believe that sometimes you have to flex muscle and intimidate others in order to get your way?  Where have I let the voices around me persuade me into believing that gentleness is weakness, or that domination is strength?"  And maybe we might find the way of Jesus, God's chosen one, to be just the antidote we didn't know we needed.  

Perhaps we'll recognize that our whole lives are made possible because the Almighty God doesn't just step on beings that are smaller [or troublesome] just because God "can." 

And perhaps we'll come to see the true strength that comes in love that is kind, rather than power that is cruel.

O Gentle One, where we are bruised and dim breath life and strength into us again, so that we may grow and shine... and walk in the ways of your Chosen One, Jesus.

Speaking Our Language--January 6, 2023

Speaking Our Language--January 6, 2023

"In the time of King Herod, after Jesus was born in Bethlehem of Judea, Magi from the East came to Jerusalem, asking, 'Where is the child who has been born king of the Jews? For we observed his star at its rising, and have come to pay him homage'." [Matthew 2:1-2]

It is an investment of great love to learn to speak another person's language.

Truly, it's almost like something out of a romantic comedy where the lead falls for someone who speaks another language and stumbles through communicating in the love-interest's native tongue, with hijinks and mix-ups along the way for laughs, of course.  If you find you are so committed to showing love to someone else that you are willing learn to speak their language rather than insisting they learn yours, you've really got something there.  It's a sign you are willing to spend time and energy and effort, and it's a way of honoring the other person, showing that they are worth the work it takes to learn something about their experience, life, and background, rather than making them abandon it.  There is a sort of tenderness about being willing to learn to speak someone else's langauge, too, because it's not something you can show off with like flexing muscles or showing off your wealth.  Learning a language says, "You are important enough to me for me to get outside of my comfort zone in order to get through to you."

[I also can't help but think right now of the classic Beatles' song, "Michelle," which basically takes this set-up as its premise--that Paul McCartney has met a girl named Michelle, but he doesn't speak French. He only knows the phrase, "Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble," which means something like, "These are words that go together well." Of course, it also seems like a pretty feeble gesture only to make enough effort to learn one phrase that doesn't seem terribly useful, rather than to learn the basic skills to carry on a conversation.]  

Even when there's not a literal language barrier, it is a powerful thing to learn how to communicate in the terms that someone else will understand.  In pop psychology, they sometimes talk about people having "love languages" to refer to the different ways people express care.  For some people, it's in giving gifts; for others, the way to show you care is to spend time with them, or to do acts of service for the ones you love.  The wrinkle, of course, is that not everyone is wired the way you are--and so sometimes [or maybe rather often] you have to learn what allows the people you care about to feel loved, even if it's different from what you are used to.  Now, that may not look like as much work as becoming fluent in Spanish or Swahili, but it really can be challenging to learn to put yourself in someone else's shoes and think about what they would like, rather than just assuming based on what you like.  It means a whole new mindset, one based on empathy, and that takes a lot of effort and energy.

So what does it mean, then, that when the Christ is born, God doesn't merely tell the news to "in-group" Israelites who were already hoping for a Messiah... but reaches out to outsiders, from faraway nations and foreign cultures, and chooses to communicate in terms they'll understand?  That's really what's going on in the story of the Magi who visit the young Jesus, in the story we call "The Epiphany."  God had gotten through to the shepherds outside of Bethlehem with an angel, sure. But to reach people far away who don't know what they're looking for and who will have to travel for months if not years in order to arrive at their destination, God has to resort to other means.  To get through to people who don't have their own copy of the scroll of the prophets, God must speak a message that doesn't require them to know the Bible already.  To convince people who believed the alignment of the stars in the sky foretold events on earth, God chose to put a light in the sky to guide these Zoroastrian astrologers in the right direction.  That is to say, God was willing to use their language, their way of understanding, in order to bring the news to them.  There is deep kindness and great tenderness in that choice, and it means that God was more interested in reaching the Magi, and with them the whole world beyond "in-group" Israel, than in being efficient.

Not only that, but God was willing to work through the means of astrology and celestial wonders even though The Rules said that astrology was bad.  Seriously, there are commandments in the Torah against trying to foretell the future through the signs in the sky, and there were clear prohibitions in Judaism against divination of any kind.  A more respectable deity would insist that the Magi give up studying astrology before inviting them to meet the Messiah.  A god who is more concerned with projecting a certain reputation would keep out the foreigners who haven't learned the "right" language, perhaps.  But the God whose love is kind does the opposite, choosing the kind of thing the Magi will understand as a way to communicate with them. Setting the "star" in the sky for them to notice is like choosing to use their language, even when there are religious rules against "their kind" being included.  That kind of love has been staring us in the face all along from the pages of the Scriptures.  I wonder--have we been able to recognize it?

If you know what it is like to have someone care about you enough to learn how to communicate that to you, whether learning your "love language" or studying a literal foreign language, then you have a sense of the lengths God's kindness will go to reach us... all.  Rather than insisting we have to learn how to speak on divine terms, God keeps seeking ways to communicate in human terms.  Ultimately, of course, that comes in the very human form of Jesus, the one whom the star led the Magi to see.  Just think--if that's how God's love reached to pagan star-watchers thousands of years ago, surely God loves you no less, and with the same deep commitment to get through to you.

How might we go above and beyond to reach people who are beloved of God, but maybe don't dare believe it yet?  How might God's kind of tenderness become our way of showing kindness?  How might we pull down the things that would otherwise have been barriers keeping people from knowing the goodness of God, and how might we make the effort to express God's love in every language there is?

That's the challenge, and the invitation, for us today.  What do you say--are we ready?

Lord God, we give you thanks for your commitment to find ways to reach us, to speak our language, and to meet us on terms we will understand.  Thank you for your tenacious kindness.

Fingerprints of Compassion--January 5, 2023

Fingerprints of Compassion--January 5, 2023

"A leper came to Jesus begging him, and kneeling he said to him, 'If you choose, you can make me clean.' Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, and said to him, 'I do choose. Be made clean!' Immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean." [Mark 1:40-42]

I know this doesn't feel like a Christmas-time story, and in truth it isn't, exactly.  But it is a story that reveals the kind of person Jesus is, and what it was like to be around him.  As the gospels keep showing us, Jesus is a person with a kind heart.  The angels and shepherds all fade back into the woodwork while Jesus is still in diapers, but the kindness of his love persists.  In fact, it seems like wherever Jesus went, the impression he left on people was his goodness toward them.  Plenty of people in this world throughout history have sought to build buildings, conquer nations, or create a masterpiece to ensure their legacy would be remembered, and here Jesus is content to leave fingerprints of compassion.

Sometimes it was the way Jesus sought out the people who were regarded as outcasts and invited himself over to their houses in a radical act of inclusion.  Sometimes it was how he treated women as equals in conversation when others in his time would have dismissed them altogether.  Or the way he stopped and noticed the small acts of generosity that others performed, when it would have been easy to overlook a widow's offering or a young boy with some loaves and fishes in a big crowd.  Or, like in this story, it was the way Jesus took special care to restore the dignity and humanity of someone treated for so long like a pariah because of his sickness.  What stands out is not the miracle of healing, so much as the tenderness with which it is accomplished.

You almost have to think that this man sick with leprosy was ready for disappointment and steeling himself for rejection as he came to Jesus.  He is confident that the increasingly famous rabbi and worker of wonders is capable of cleansing him of his disease--he just wants to know if Jesus is willing.  Maybe he's been turned away too many times before from others to get his hopes up with the man from Nazareth.  Maybe he's gotten used to people looking away or staring at the ground when he walks past.  Maybe he's afraid of hearing--yet again--the bad theology of passersby who are sure his sickness is the consequence of his sinful actions, or that if he would pray harder, he would have been cured already.  Whatever it is that makes him hedge his bets as he approaches Jesus, Jesus' kindness is on glorious display.

It's worth remembering that when Jesus wants to, he can heal people with just a word, a silent prayer, or even from a distance.  There's no magic ritual or recipe, and that means he doesn't have to touch this man in order to heal his disease.  But Jesus chooses to.  He heals the man's leprosy, and not only that, he does it in a way that restores his lost dignity and self-worth.  He treats this man as more than his disease, regardless of the worry about whether Jesus himself would now risk getting leprosy through touch [or at the very least, become temporarily unclean himself].  Jesus shows this man he is not afraid of him or repulsed by him, no matter what others have said or done before when he walked through the streets.  Jesus' touch leaves behind kindness that changes everything.

I cannot imagine that Jesus looks at you with anything less than the same compassionate love as he shows to this man in the story.  And I say that confidently, even though I don't know what you carry or what you've been through that has made you sometimes feel like an outcast.  I don't know what others have said to exclude you or reject you, and I don't know how many times someone else has condemned you or ignored you.  But I do know this about Jesus--he sees people beyond the labels of "clean" and "unclean," or "worthy" and "unworthy," and he simply chooses to touch us with kindness.  All of us.

And I know this, too, about Jesus' kind of compassionate love.  It is ours to practice as well.  We may not have the supernatural power to heal like Jesus' does, but there is nothing preventing us from showing the kindness Jesus embodies here.  That doesn't require divine ability or supernatural power.  Kindness that restores the dignity of people and honors their personhood, that is something we can do any day, any place.  Compassion that lifts up the ones who have been treated as "less-than" by others, that is within our grasp right now, even in the day ahead--with the sad looking cashier at the Dollar General store, or the weary neighbor who is grieving at this time of year, or the person still living with the effects of a terrible sickness, or the ones shunned by Respectable Religious people for not fitting their expectations.  Such kindness is not reserved only for the Messiah in ancient stories; it is right at our fingertips, right now.

O Jesus, restore us where we have been hurt by the world, and allow us to pass on the touch of your kindness to others.

Of Shepherds and Sovereigns--January 4, 2023

Of Shepherds and Sovereigns--January 4, 2023

"Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pasture!  says the LORD. Therefore thus says the LORD, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who shepherd my people: It is you who have scattered my flock, and have driven them away, and you have not attended to them. So I will attend to you for your evil doings, says the LORD.  Then I myself will gather the remnant of my flock out of all the lands where I have driven them, and I will bring them back to their fold, and they shall be fruitful and multiply. I will raise up shepherds over them who will shepherd them, and they shall not fear any longer, or be dismayed, nor shall any be missing, says the LORD." [Jeremiah 23:1-4]

There is a world of difference between a shepherd and an emperor, or a rancher and the general of an invading army. It is the difference, you could say, between genuinely good news and the same old tired rottenness we're all sick of.

And so it is worth noting, right off the bat, that when the ancient Israelites thought of their leaders, even their kings were described in terms of shepherding, guiding, and providing, rather than as conquering heroes or tyrannical emperors.  An emperor's job is to dominate and to soak in the perks of luxury [that's why Mel Brooks kept coming back to the punch line, "It's good to be the king..." in The History of the World, Part One].  But the vocation of the shepherd is to serve.  It is a calling of kindness and compassion, not of crushing and conquering.  

Just that fact by itself was meant to set the people of Israel and Judah apart from their neighbors. They weren't supposed to play the games of invading empires or military-industrial complexes.  And their kings weren't supposed to leverage their power over their people--they were supposed to use their power to care for them, like a shepherd risks his own life for the lives of the flock. 

They didn't, of course.

That was the trouble--that's always the trouble.  People with power rarely use it to serve, and easily use it for their own benefit.  The kings and powerbrokers of Israel and Judah were lured into the same old game they'd seen played by the kings of other nations--squeezing their subjects for money, ruling by fear and intimidation, and allowing the most vulnerable and marginalized to be stepped on if it meant keeping the economy humming and the markets climbing. So God speaks up for the people--the sheep who have been poorly taken care of by their shepherds.  And God promises a change.  In fact, God promises to be the change: God vows to step in and to be the shepherd where crooked kings and selfish sovereigns have failed.

This really is an amazing promise. It's not simply that God will fire the bad king and hire a new good one--although sometimes it is refreshing enough just to get rid of the crooked and corrupt rulers.  God's promise is to be the shepherd that none of the kings of the past had ever been.  God, it turns out, is not above the serving and nurturing role of a good shepherd, even if the occupant of the throne in Jerusalem tried to weasel out of caring for the flock.  "I myself will gather the remnant of my flock," God says, "and I will bring them back."  God promises to step into the story, not as a distant observer, but as the shepherd that all the kings had failed to be.

For Christians, of course, we cannot help but see this as a description of what God has done in Jesus.  God has not simply shouted from the heavens, "You're doing a bad job, O King--get your act together!"  Rather, God has come among us in Jesus to be the shepherd we need--the One who rules by serving, the One who risks life and limb to guard ours, the One who doesn't use power for selfish ends, but to comfort and encourage in the face of fear.  God chooses to offer tenderness where we are used to tyranny, and kindness where we have become accustomed to conquest.  God is the shepherd we never knew we needed, who comes in the human face of Jesus.

When we say that God's love is "kind," this is an important piece of what that means.  God doesn't stay off in some heavenly throne room merely lobbing threats at bad kings or shrugging divine shoulders that there's nothing to be done to change things because, "Hey, that's just how kings operate." Rather God offers a different kind of power, one that is more interested in making sure the sheep are gathered in than in building another palace or erecting another monument to his own greatness.  Jesus is God's answer to the bad shepherds who have worn the crown.  Jesus is what God's kindness looks like, and therefore what God's kind of kingdom looks like as well.  This, dear ones, is how you are loved.

It is worth remembering, then, too, that in whatever situations we have power, or influence, or a platform, these are never meant to be ends in and of themselves, and they are never meant just for our own selfish benefit.  They are tools meant to be used to serve, whether or not we have official titles.  Whatever power we have, in whatever capacity we have it, is always meant to show kindness to others, never to dominate.  

That, after all, is how God shepherds us.

Gracious God, teach us to serve and nurture others the way you shepherd us with tender love.

Invited into Tenderness--January 3, 2023

Invited into Tenderness--January 3, 2023

"And because you are children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave but a child, and if a child then also an heir, through God." [Galatians 4:6-7]

The mail that comes addressed "Resident" barely makes into the house before it goes in the trash. The letters that come with your proper title and last name are more likely to be opened and get at least a perfunctory skim.  The handwritten notes that open with, "Dear..." and your first name are almost certain to be read.  And the times you get something written by a child, addressing you by your relationship [which they sometimes treat as your name], are not only read, but treasured and kept safe.  You know, "Dear Mommy," or "To Auntie Susan," or "Dear Grandpa and Grandma," those are the kind of notes that are worth their weight in gold, even if their penmanship is harder to read than the form letter, and even if there are more misspellings than the bulk mail ads.

I came across one such note from my daughter yesterday, doing the annual, "New Year's Tidying Of The Desk and Office Space."  And it almost made my knees buckle just seeing the handwritten envelope, simply addressed, "Daddy," in blue pen.

The difference between this and the water bill is obvious, even though the water bill comes with a lot more verbiage in the fine print of its monthly statement of how much we've used and how much we owe.  Even a simple one-sentence note from a daughter, addressed "Daddy," bears an immense amount of meaning and love in between the words, because it bespeaks a relationship that I just don't have with my utility providers.  It conveys love.  It communicates tenderness.  It carries kindness between giver and receiver, writer and reader, and back again.  And, as my mother used to remind me any time I approached her with the question of why it is impolite for children to call their parents by their first names, to get to call someone "Daddy," or "Mommy," or "Grandma," or "Gigi," or "Papa," or "Grandpa," or "Uncle Stu," or "Aunt Jean," or whatever, is a special privilege, because it implies a relationship not everyone gets.

And this is the amazing thing that the Scriptures tell us we are given with God.  No less than the living God and the Creator of the universe invites us to call on the divine with "Mommy" and "Daddy" language, rather than impersonal titles like, "O All-Knowing and All-Powerful One."  The word Paul uses here, "Abba," is not only a carryover from the same Aramaic language that Jesus himself spoke, but has the familiar feeling of "Daddy," or "Papa."  In other words, because of Jesus' coming into the world and our adoption into the family of God, we are drawn into a relationship of tenderness.  We are pulled into the kindness of God's love.  We don't have to be Dorothy standing before the ominous floating head of the Wizard, addressing God like "The Great and Powerful Oz," but we are invited to call on God with the same blue-pen hand-lettered intimacy that children are invited to with their parents.  We don't have to constantly worry about proper protocols, titles of nobility, or formal language.  We are invited to trust the kindness of a God who has pulled us into a particular kind of relationship--of parents to beloved children, rather than as employees of a boss, conquered subjects of a emperor, or anonymous "residents" at an address.  And in a culture that so easily reduces each of us to a Social Security Number, credit card number, or bank PIN, it is amazingly good news to know that God sees us as beloved children rather than faceless customers.

Today, it is worth cultivating that kind of deep, trusting, and close relationship--both with God and with others.  That means our prayer lives don't have to sound like cover letters for a job application or a petition to your governor--they can be honest and real, grounded in trust like a child's handwritten note to "Daddy."  And it means, too, that we would do well to look at other relationships in our lives and see how we can treat others with personal kindness and tenderness rather than as anonymous strangers.  It will mean we take the time to talk with people rather than rushing past them, to hold doors and offer help, and to reach out to people even if we won't "get" anything out of the exchange.  It will mean we resist the temptation in a social media and screen-obsessed environment to treat other people with the grace and dignity of family members, rather than with the cruelty and rudeness that are so easy when you can't see someone's face.  In other words, we are called to treat others with the same kind of personal kindness that God has shown to us, and which we can experience every time we call on God without worrying about formalities or titles.

That truly is a gift.  Perhaps today it is time to remember just what a gift it is... and to let that affect all of our relationships today.

Abba--you who have loved us with the tenderness and strength of our parents--enable us to lean on the assurance of your gentle love, and to live out of that love toward everyone else around us today, too.

Making Us Family--January 2, 2023

Making Us Family--January 2, 2023

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." [Galatians 4:4-5]

It's more--so much more--than a transaction.  What God does is to make us family.  In the coming of Jesus, God extends the kindness to us of making us belong.

We need to stop and sit with that today, because it is so easy to rush past the meaning of Christ's coming and to leave the news of God-with-us in the dust, along with last year's broken resolutions and the torn wrapping paper of the Christmas morning frenzy from last week.  Already the shelves at Wal-Mart have moved on to Valentine's Day, with Saint Patrick's and Easter all ready to go as well.  Already the rest of the world has moved on from whatever breath of "peace" there was during Silent Night on Christmas Eve, and drones and missiles have resumed raining down on towns and homes in Ukraine.  The world, it seems, has moved on from whatever observation of Christmas it was going to have, distorted by consumerism and watered down by marketing departments as it was already.

And not to be outdone, the church, too, has a way sometimes of rushing past the coming of Jesus or reducing it to being merely a divine transaction.  There's an impulse sometimes to talk about Jesus' coming as though it is ONLY and ENTIRELY about getting to the cross.  Sometimes Respectable Religious folk, trying to avoid the sentimentalizing and schmaltz of Christmas in the wider culture, will say things like "Jesus was only born so he could die for our sins," or "The manger of Bethlehem is meaningless except that it sets up Jesus paying for our sins the cross of Calvary."  That kind of thing.  And I get it--we can't separate the love that is embodied in the infant Christ from the love that empties itself all the way to death on a Roman death-stake on Good Friday.  And yes, the New Testament talks about the cross as more than a mere accident or tragic martyr's death--but rather that it follows a trajectory of Jesus' whole life and ministry.  Yes, yes, yes, all of that.

But we make a mistake when we say, either out loud or by implication, that the coming of Jesus is only about the cross.  And we get it even more wrong when we reduce the cross and the incarnation of Jesus to being just an impersonal transaction with God, where the Almighty demands satisfaction for the infinite debt incurred by humanity's sin, and Jesus pays our tab by dying on the cross for us.  Sometimes Respectable Religious folks, and well-meaning ones at that, get so focused on talking about Jesus "paying our debt" that we end up making God sound like a miserly banker who is only interested in the bottom line and sees all of redemption as merely a bit of accounting.  And again, while it's true that sometimes the biblical writers speak of the cross like the paying of a ransom or the cancelling of a debt, that's not all of what they have to say. The chorus from the Scriptures doesn't want us to believe that God is only interested in getting a "pound of flesh" like a Shakespearean villain, or that God wants some kind of abstract "satisfaction" to pay for our sins. And if we're honest, sometimes church folk, again often with good intentions, have ended up making God sound more like an investment banker seeking to get restitution for a financial loss than Someone who loves us.  And when we leap forward from the manger to the cross, sometimes we make it sound like Jesus is only important as the currency for paying off our debts to a cold, calculating, and impersonal Divine Department of Accounts Payable.  By contrast, the apostle Paul reminds us that Jesus' coming is deeply personal--it is about bringing us into the family and adopting us as children, beyond just being a heavenly transaction.

God's own Son--God in the flesh, as the early church would affirm in the creeds--came among us not merely to be groomed and raised to adulthood to be slaughtered as a sacrifice to an angry and bloodthirsty deity, but to claim us as children.  In other words, the coming of Christ has everything to do with the kindness of God's love, and we miss something big if we distort it or reduce it to merely being about divine accounting.  To hear Paul tell it here, Jesus came, not so much because God has some financial need to settle up the accounts we have defaulted on as though God just wants the cash, but in order to bring us into God's own family, "so that we might receive adoption as children."  It's not about cutting a deal, satisfying a debt, or sealing a transaction--it's about making us belong.  It's about inclusion in God's family for a bunch of outsiders and misfits.  If we've missed that along the way in our rush from the manger to the cross, we've missed an important part of what makes the Good News actually good.

So today, let's allow it to remain Christmastide [today's the day for nine ladies dancing, after all, and we ought to let them have their moment], and let's consider Paul's own reminder that Christ has come in order that we might belong in God's family, that we might be children of God, and that we might know we are beloved.  That is so much more than a deal, and so much better than a transaction.

Lord Jesus, thank you.  Simply thank you, for making us to belong with you as our brother in the family of God.