The Good Stuff--August 6, 2024

The Good Stuff--August 6, 2024

"When [the crowds] found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, 'Rabbi, when did you come here?' Jesus answered them, 'Very truly, I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. For it is on him that God the Father has set his seal." [John 6:25-27]

You know the scene: you go to a nice restaurant, and after your server brings you a basket of rolls wrapped elegantly in a cloth napkin, someone wisely reminds the table: "Don't fill up on bread--the entrees here are so good you'll want to have room to eat your meal!"  And sure, you probably already know not to fill up on bread before the salad course even comes, but it's worth remembering.  It's not really much different from the same reminder I give to my kids when they are circling the pantry like sharks in the water shortly before dinner, insisting they are "starving right now," and when I tell them that if they eat junk food now before dinner they won't feel hungry when the real food is set out, and then they'll end up hungry again (for junk food) late at night.  And that's not good.  So, yeah, don't fill up on bread... or chips and salsa... or any of those things.  You don't want to miss out on the good stuff.

Well, if you have been either on the giving or the receiving end of that bit of culinary wisdom, then you also know where Jesus is coming from when he talks to the crowds who had been fed by the thousands on the shores of the Sea of Galilee.  The day after the miraculous "feeding of the five thousand," Jesus has made his way across to an opposite shore near Capernaum, and the same crowds have tracked him down.  Jesus knows, of course, that what got their attention was the free lunch from the day before, and not just the food but the spectacle of it all.  And it's not that it was wrong or sinful somehow that they ate that miraculous feast--no, of course not, since Jesus was the one who had offered to provide the meal for them all.  But it's more that Jesus doesn't want them to fill up on bread, so to speak, and to miss... the good stuff.  Jesus doesn't want them to miss out on the even more glorious gift he has to offer them in himself.

"Don't work for the food that perishes," he says, "but for what truly lasts."  And he's not talking about Twinkies (despite their famously long shelf-life).  It's more about not spending your life pursuing things that may not be "evil" but are ultimately empty.  Like Jesus says in Mark's Gospel, "What will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?"  Or like he teaches in the Sermon on the Mount, "Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also."  The same theme runs throughout Jesus' teaching--that while there may not be anything innately wicked about having clothes, food, or a house, if we center our lives on just accumulating more and more possessions, we're missing out on what live is really all about.  We're filling up on bread or chips for the moment, and missing out on partaking of The Good Stuff--the kind of life that Jesus shares with us.

It's worth noting that the early church understood it, too. The first Christians continued to pass along the teaching they first learned from Jesus that when we chase after money or status or privilege or power as the center of our lives (things which may by themselves be morally neutral), they very easily become obstacles that get in the way of participating in the fullness of life God intends for us.  The late New Testament letter we call First Timothy, for example, closes with these words of guidance (and warning):  "As for those who in the present age are rich, command them not to be haughty, or to set their hopes on the uncertainty of riches, but on God who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. They are to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share, thus storing up for themselves the treasure of a good foundation for the future, so that they may take hold of the life that really is life" (1 Tim. 6:17-19).  We're back to a question of gorging ourselves on junk food a few minutes before dinner, or instead filling our plates with what is genuinely satisfying.

A culture like ours has a hard time even imagining that "more" isn't always better, or that having more "stuff" might be incompatible with a truly fulfilling life.  But Jesus has been telling us as much all along.  It's fine to have been fed with loaves and fishes at the Miraculous Meal Jesus hosted on the shores of Galilee in the first century, or to have gotten to eat breakfast today in the twenty-first century. But it is a terrible shame if we let shortsighted interests like making a larger pile of money, or getting a grander house, or obsessing over the day's close in the stock market get in the way of "the life that really is life," which is centered on what Jesus gives.  It's like skipping the gourmet meal and the perfect glass of wine because you filled up on stale potato chips and Mountain Dew before dinner was served.

I don't know about you, but I want to taste the good stuff--even if that means recognizing that what Jesus knows about the REAL "good stuff" sounds crazy to a culture fooled into believing it's all about bigger bank accounts and fancier possessions.  I want to dare to trust Jesus and not to fill up on empty spiritual calories, but to partake of what will really nourish me.  I want to spend my life on what matters, even if it's not the same as what the Talking Heads on television or Experts in Success think matters.  I want to savor what endures, not to fill up on garbage.  And if that's where you are, too, then maybe we can share this life in community, striving to encourage each other to take up Jesus' invitation to center our lives on the Really Real, on the food that endures, on the treasure that doesn't rust or corrode.  Maybe that's why we live this life as Christians together, as table companions in the Beloved Community: because together we can remind each other of the wisdom some part of us already knew--don't fill up on dinner rolls.  Focus on partaking of the good stuff.

Lord Jesus, help us today to stop chasing after illusions and empty calories of the soul, and to be fed with what really lasts--your own life and love.

How Jesus Sets A Table--August 5, 2024

How Jesus Sets A Table--August 5, 2024

"When it was evening, the disciples came to Jesus and said, 'This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.' Jesus said to them, 'They need not go away; you give them something to eat.' They replied, 'We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.' And he said, 'Bring them here to me.' Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds." [Matthew 14:15-19]

Honestly... nobody knew what was going to happen next. But, for all the ways they could sometimes be dense or doubtful, in this moment, Jesus' disciples trusted his directions even when they made no sense, and they got to be participants in an utter miracle.

For all of us who have heard this story before (it is, after all, the one miracle other than the resurrection that's found in all four gospels), the surprise plot-twist is spoiled already. We know what to expect. We have been taught to call this story "The Feeding of the Five Thousand" (which gives away the ending right there in the title) rather than "The Time Jesus Told His Disciples To Do Something Crazy With Some Bread." But that familiarity means we might miss what a leap of faith it is for the disciples to do what Jesus says here. And we might not realize how that foundation of trust makes it possible for them to play a role in Jesus' amazing act of love here for a hungry crowd of thousands.  But this how Jesus sets a table.

At the start of this story, Jesus' disciples actually sound like the collective voice of reason here. They're the ones gently nudging Jesus to call off his impromptu free clinic curing the sick until evening, and they're also the ones suggesting it might be wise to send the crowds home early enough that they could all find some food on their way home back to their villages and towns. They're not being stingy, miserly, or selfish--they're just realistic about the size of the crowds, the lateness of the hour, and the utterly colossal amount of money and resources it would take to feed the literal thousands of people there on the hillside. Their first proposal to Jesus ("Send the crowds home for today so that they can get back to their homes and get some food...") is a sensible plan to manage the large crowd and keep them from becoming a hangry mob (you know, being angry from being hungry is called "hangry," right?). By contrast, when Jesus tells them to take what might have been a passable lunch for maybe two people and tell the thousands to sit down and get ready for a meal, it sounds patently absurd. No rational person would look at the mere handful of morsels they had in hand and conclude, "This is enough for everybody here!" It wouldn't have even been enough for Jesus' inner circle of twelve disciples!

But when Jesus directs them to do it, the disciples dare to believe that there is a method to his madness. They will trust him, and they will do as he asks, even if they don't know what he has in mind or up his sleeve. They have faith in him--not merely in the academic, catechetical sense of "memorizing correct theological facts about Jesus"--but they trust him enough to do what he directs them to do, whether or not they understand what difference it could make. Like the famous line from Dietrich Bonhoeffer's classic The Cost of Discipleship puts it, "Only those who believe are obedient, and only those who are obedient believe." In other words, when Jesus tells you to have the crowd sit down and prepare to distribute five little dinner rolls to feed thousands of people, actually believing Jesus means doing what he says, regardless of your understanding of his plan.  It requires a willingness to let Jesus set the table the way he wants... for everyone he wants to include at this table. 

That is precisely what the disciples do--they dare to believe him, by doing what he calls them to do. And when they carry out Jesus' directions on faith, they are part of a colossal act of compassion for the hungry crowds. They are moved beyond what is "reasonable" to what embodies Christ-like love, by letting themselves become a part of Jesus' miraculous meal. They don't know how he will provide for everyone, but they believe it is worth doing what he says--and so they help carry out a mass-feeding that communicated Jesus' love for all those people gathered in the grass.

Something changes in us when we let our first question be "What is Jesus' love for all people leading me to do, even if I don't see how it will work?" rather than "What is reasonable, rational, and sensible?" Something happens in us when we allow Jesus to spread a table larger than we dared to imagine. It's fine to want to be logical, but Jesus is always going to reserve the right to pull us into something bigger than our minds can comprehend, and in those times, we need to be prepared to do what Jesus calls us to do whether or not it fits anybody else's definition of "reasonable." Jesus' kind of compassion is always more than our tiny, shriveled, miserly thinking about being "reasonable" can grasp.  And Jesus' kind of meal is always going to have a bigger guest list than even his own disciples think is proper. Like the hymn goes, "Build a larger table, not a higher wall."

Today, there might be moments when you know you are being called to join into what Jesus is doing in our time and place--and you might not be able to see where it's leading, or how your part will make a difference. Maybe sometimes the smallness of our efforts, our power, and the vastness of the need makes it seem futile and irrational to even try to do what Jesus calls us to. Maybe it feels like taking five loaves and two fish and trying to feed thousands with it. But... for the disciples, this became the moment they trusted Jesus even when they didn't know how his plan would work out, and because of that, they could be instruments of help and compassion on a huge scale. When you think that your voice, your time, your efforts, and your energy are too small to make an impact for good, it's worth it to stop and say to yourself, "I will trust that Jesus knows what he's doing--and I will be a part of his movement of mercy in the world." That's how faith opens the door that leads into the dining room where Jesus is setting a table.

Lord Jesus, call us where you will, and give us trust enough in you to go where you lead, and to do what you call us to do, even if it seems impossible.

The Real Virtuoso--August 2, 2024

The Real Virtuoso—August 2, 2024

“Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, forever and ever. Amen” [Ephesians 3:20-21]

There are hard and fast limits to what I can accomplish by myself. But there are virtually no limits to what the living God can accomplish through us. A pretty good chunk of the Christian life is learning the humility to accept that first notion, while also nurturing the faith to believe the second.

In a sense, though, it is the truth of so many things in our lives: instruments which have little ability on their own can do extraordinary things in the hands of a master. A piece of copper wire will just sit there on its own impotently, but if you run an electric current through it, energy will flow through the wire that can illuminate a room, power a toaster, or charge your computer. A bow for a violin is just some coarse horse hair strung on a wooden stick, but when it is drawn across a violin by a gifted musician, it can bring forth music that soothes, encourages, or moves us to tears. A brush can’t paint a masterpiece by itself, but in the hands of an artist, it can produce a work of beauty that speaks in ways that words cannot.

Well, to hear the book of Ephesians tell it, we who count ourselves among the people of Jesus are instruments in the hands of the real Virtuoso. By ourselves, we are copper wire, horse hair, and brushes. But in the hands of the One “who by the power at work within us” we are conduits for God to “accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine.” There is nothing shameful in that acknowledgement; there is only the humble recognition that we aren’t here to achieve our own little agendas, but rather to be participants in God’s grand magnum opus, a whole new creation.

When we recognize that difference—that we are instruments for God’s creativity, rather than God being a divine power tool for me to use to my own agenda—we begin to understand our lives rightly. Mother Teresa of Calcutta knew that well. As the line attributed to her puts it, “I am a little pencil in the hand of a writing God, who is sending a love letter to the world.... He does everything, and sometimes it is really hard because it is a broken pencil and he has to sharpen it a little more.” There are both the humility and the tremendous honor: each of us might be, on our own, broken little pencil stubs. And a pencil, even fresh out of the box, doesn’t have the right words in it—a pencil requires the mind of a writer who pulls the sharpened lead across the page to craft a novel or create a poem or write a letter that says to a Beloved, “You are mine.” In the hands of the right author, a little broken pencil can be the most powerful thing in the world. And here, Teresa would tell us, like an earlier love letter to the Ephesians puts it, is the place our whole lives as Christians take place: we live out our days in the hands of a God who is writing a love letter, painting a masterpiece, and composing a symphony that will electrify and illuminate the whole universe.

Taking this seriously, of course, will come at the cost of our old personal agendas. We don’t come to God with our little laundry-lists of private blessings we want or selfish favors, and we don’t get to use God like a tool, or wield prayer as a magic formula to get what we want. We come, surrendering our own myopic visions (“I want to make more money so I can have a bigger house…” or “I want my political party to win, so I’ll tell myself that MY party has the backing of GOD!” or “God’s will is for interest rates to go down so I can finally buy that boat that will make me the envy of my neighbors!”), in order to be useful as instruments and tools in the hand of God. We let go of our old assumptions and agendas in order to be a part of how God the Master Artist creates something beautiful that was beyond our capacity to conceive of. We open our hands and let go of our scripts for “The Way Life Is Supposed To Go” in order to be surprised at the glorious key change in the finale of God’s symphony—and even more astounded that God has used us to add color to the harmonies with our meager notes from the back of the orchestra.

This is the kind of life we have been drawn into as the people of Jesus. And we can only imagine where it will take us next…

Lord Jesus, work through us in ways beyond what we could even dream of, using us as we are to be a part of your beautiful handiwork.

Love and Astronomy—August 1, 2024

 

Love and Astronomy—August 1, 2024

“I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses all knowledge, so that you may be willed with all the fullness of God.” [Ephesians 3:18-19]

There was a time when the brightest minds in scholarship thought the Earth was the center of the cosmos, and that the whole cosmos didn’t go beyond the night sky, where they assumed the sun, moon, and stars were placed like holes in an upside-down colander.

Then there came an age when Copernicus shifted our view to see the sun at the center of a much larger arrangement, with the Earth and other planets going around the sun in what we call now “the solar system.”

At some point later, we discovered that our seemingly gigantic solar system was just a tiny pinprick of light in a vast celestial pinwheel of stars that we call our home galaxy, the Milky Way (and that the light colored strip across the night sky was actually a spiral structure that we were ourselves a part of.

Now, with space-based telescopes sending us images from the furthest reaches of space, we are learning that there are countless galaxies, each one teeming with billions of stars themselves, and each of those stars potentially a host to planets orbiting them in solar systems of their own. Those same telescopes are showing us, too, that there are objects in the universe that cannot even be seen with the kinds of eyes we have, but are only visible in infrared, or gamma, or x-ray radiation. And while we are on the subject, they are also teaching us that the space in between those galaxies—the actual empty space itself!—is expanding, almost like air bubbles expanding in a growing loaf of bread as it proofs and then bakes in the oven.

The universe, in other words, is getting bigger all the time; and it is getting bigger in dimensions and measures we did not even have words for at an earlier time in our history. So to a large extent, being a scientist in one of the fields that studies the universe (say, astronomy, or cosmology, or the physics of interstellar space and forces like gravity) requires a willingness to let your mind be increasingly stretched by an ever-widening awareness of just how big the universe actually is. It’s not so much a matter of learning you thought one way and then were proven wrong (like you thought the cosmos was 7 units big when it was really 8), but more like realizing that the scale of the universe is constantly growing, and along with that growth, your mind itself has to adapt to bigger and bigger frame of reference.

For the really good scientists out there, that constant expansion of their awareness is a good thing, not something to get frustrated about or angry over. It is a source of wonder for them, and it doesn’t lead those scientific minds to give up on the search for deeper understanding, but rather spurs them on to learn more while humbly preventing them from thinking they have the Final Answers.

And in a very real sense, that’s the way the writer of Ephesians talks about the goal of the Christian life—for all of us. In these words which many of us heard this past Sunday, we hear the apostle pray that his readers, along with “all the saints” (that is, all of us who belong to the people of Jesus) would come to comprehend the sheer vastness of the love of Christ in every dimension: “the breadth and length and height and depth” until we ourselves are filled with the fullness of God. It’s like the way astrophysicists keep revising their understanding of how big the universe is, and the way they humbly come to realize that the cosmos didn’t need their permission to get bigger. Rather, they discover that the universe has been expanding in every direction all along, and they have come, like guests late to the party, to realize its infinite scope. To be a part of the people of Jesus is to constantly have our sense of the scope and scale of God’s love in Christ stretched wider, always bigger than our frame of reference, and always beyond our capacity to contain or control. This is what the New Testament writers pray we would all have.

In other words, this isn’t just a discovery for the so-called experts. It’s not just for theologians or pastors to ruminate in ivory-tower conversations while they debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s an awareness for all the people of Jesus, because only with an expansive understanding of God’s love in Christ can we rightly understand our place in the universe. Only when we realize, both how small each of us is within the endless expanse of God’s love, and how deeply beloved each and every one of us is within that love, can we rightly follow Jesus or make sense of our lives. And I suspect a good number of the ways we human being screw things up in life arise from our insufficient awareness of the unlimited vastness of God’s love in Christ. Maybe that’s why the writer to the Ephesians makes this his prayer, rather than for power, wealth, status, or a leg-up in the next battle of a culture war.

So often, our fear and animosity toward other people boils down to some gut assumption that “THOSE PEOPLE” are outside of the scope of God’s love—and therefore are “dangerous” or “suspicious” or “negligible” and unworthy of our care or compassion. All too frequently, our focus on who has the most money or influence is a matter of our thinking that only the well-heeled and widely-known matter to God’s purposes. And every time we draw a line around “Me and My Kind of People” to separate us from “outsiders” in whatever ways they differ, we keep trying to fence in God’s love to stay within the boundaries and borders we have drawn. In other words, so many of the troubles we human beings get ourselves into (the usual churchy word is “sin”) are consequences of our failure to comprehend, as Ephesians puts it, breadth, length, height, and depth of the universal scope of God’s love in Christ. Genocides and holocausts, territorial wars and religious crusades, all metastasize from a cancer that starts as a myopic view of God’s love.

All this past month we have been exploring what it means to be the people of Jesus. And I hope over the course of these reflections, it’s been clear, on the one hand, that belonging to the people of Jesus is an utter and complete gift, with no tests, points, or prerequisite accomplishments on a theology exam. And at the same time, on the other hand, I hope it has been clear, too, that as we discover we are indeed a part of the people of Jesus, we will find ourselves like astronomers peering out at an expanding field of vision to see the growing universe, and we will have our understanding of God’s love grow in breadth… and length… and height… and depth. And like star-watchers who realize that we ourselves are a part of the universe we observe, we will realize, too, that we are located already within the sweep of God’s infinite love in Christ.

Probing those vast reaches just might take us a lifetime, maybe even an eternity. But it’s worth exploring today. Open your eyes.

Lord Jesus, open the eyes of these hearts from squinting out a small circle to see the stretch of your love in every direction and all dimensions.

Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

Alexamenos, And All of Us--July 31, 2024

[Jesus said:] "Blessed are you when people hate you, and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice in that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven; for that is what their ancestors did to the prophets.... Woe to you when all speak well of you, for that is what their ancestors did to the false prophets." [Luke 6:22-23, 26]

Let me tell you about one of my favorite depictions of Christ in art.  (And no, it's not the one everyone seems to be fixated on since the opening ceremonies of the Olympics the other day, although we can certainly have a conversation someday about the merits and limits of Da Vinci's famous mural, "The Last Supper.)

No, the piece of artwork I have in mind is much less-well-known, but it's also much more ancient.  In fact, it might be the earliest depiction of Christ EVER to have survived to the present-day.  And it wasn't made by a Christian at all--it was apparently made to mock both Christ and Christians, and yet at the very same time actually points to the compelling beauty of this faith of ours.  Here's what it looks like:

What you're seeing is a line-drawing version of a piece of graffiti originally scratched into the stone wall of a Roman building, probably etched in the 2nd century AD, give or take.  It's intended to be a mockery of Jesus and someone worshiping him, and it says in crude Greek, "Alexamenos worships [his] god."  The figure on the left is presumably a man named Alexamenos, and the figure he is worshiping looks to be a crucified figure with a donkey for a head--an image intended to mock Jesus.  (Some think that goes back to a pernicious myth that floated around the ancient world that the God of Judaism was a donkey; others think it might echo the lowly donkey Jesus rode into Jerusalem.  And another possibility is just that it is intended to humiliate Jesus by depicting him with a lowly donkey's head--much like it is still today not a compliment to call someone a jackass.)  No matter what, it certainly seems like the gist is to mock this poor Christian, Alexamenos, because his "god" (Jesus) isn't the sort of pomp-and-circumstance cosmic showman or bully that Zeus, Jupiter, or Caesar were thought to be.  Jesus was the opposite--lowly, non-threatening, and crucified.  For whatever other ways the ancient pagan world mocked or misinterpreted Christianity, it does seem that they understood that the One at the center of our faith was a crucified homeless rabbi, which was utterly scandalous to their worldview.

Now, here's why I want you to know about this crude anti-Christian cartoon by a 2nd century would be Banksy, and here's why I call this one of my favorite images of Christ in the history of art.  The artist didn't realize it at the time, but his attempt to mock Christ actually reveals the beauty of the Gospel.  That is to say, at the heart of our faith is the scandalous claim that God in Christ was willing to bear all the scorn, all the shame, and all the ridicule that humanity could fling at Jesus--and he absorbed all that evil without returning it and lobbing back mockery at his tormentors.  At the cross, Jesus endured not just the physical pain of crucifixion, but all the worst mockery, insult, and psychological torture the Romans could inflict on him--and this is precisely the way God has chosen to save the world!  Jesus doesn't threaten the centurion back or say, "I will have my revenge!" but rather prays for his executioners, "Father, forgive them, for they do not understand what they are doing."  This isn't a sign of Jesus' weakness--it is the glorious expression of his utterly limitless strength.  

Jesus does not give into the impulse to spew hatred back in the face of hatred or vitriol in response to vitriol from the mob shouting "Crucify!"  The poor schlub who thought he was making fun of Jesus for being crucified (and a Christian, Alexamenos, for worshipping such a Christ) didn't realize that he had actually stumbled on the thing that makes the Gospel sublimely unique compared to all the boasting and bitter braggadocio of the Greek and Roman pantheon of deities.  Zeus, of course, wouldn't submit to humble serving like Jesus.  Jupiter would never lay down his life for mere mortals.  Caesar, who regularly adopted divine titles for himself, could never imagine that true power came not from crucifying your enemies but loving them even while being crucified at their hands.

This was the message that the early Christians brought to the world, and this is what made the Gospel they brought actually sound like "Good News," even as strange as it sounded to its first hearers.  The God of the universe, it turns out, doesn't need defending, certainly not by us. (Like the old saying goes, you defend God like you defend a lion: you just get out of its way.)  The God we meet in Jesus is not so fragile, not so insecure, as to crumble in the face of insult or mockery; rather, the very power of Jesus' saving love is his capacity to endure the worst we humans can say about him and still to stretch out his arms for us at a cross anyway.  The most we can do is simply to point at the Crucified One and say, "Yes--this is my Lord.   Yes, this is how God saves the world."  It will sound like nonsense to the watching world, but for Saint Paul, that was the power of the gospel: it sounds like "foolishness" and "weakness" but turns out to be the wisdom and power of God.

And that brings us to Alexamenos himself.  Everything else about this ancient disciple is lost to history, but we know he was a worshiper of Jesus, and someone thought it would rile him up to point out that the Jesus we confess as Lord endured utter humiliation.  I'm sure it wasn't fun to be the butt of this graffiti artist's joke, but I do think that Alexamenos, whoever he was, knew that this was a sort of solidarity with Jesus himself.  After all, Jesus had told his disciples that they were blessed when people made fun of them for his sake.  Jesus doesn't goad his disciples to get mad when someone mocks their faith or ridicules them for being associated with him; he says, rather, "Remember--that's what happened to the prophets before you."  And instead, the way we respond to those insults with love becomes a way of pointing to the love of Christ.  The way we answer others' mockery, whether it is clever or crude, by refusing to answer their meanness with more meanness, is a way we point to the goodness of God.  It becomes our way of glorifying God--and no fussy indignation or flustered clutching of pearls is necessary.  That's the way we offer a witness.

In fact, that's the one other thing we know about Alexamenos, the otherwise anonymous Christian from those first centuries.  In the room next to the one where this piece of ancient graffiti was found, there is another inscription, made in Latin, presumably sometime later.  And all it says is simply, "Alexamenos is faithful."  

How beautiful, you know?  How absolutely lovely that Alexamenos could be recognized as faithful, even in the face of mockery of both him and Jesus.  And yet nobody needed to lash out, make threats, or cause a big stink that Jesus was being depicted this way--it was, in a flourish of divine irony, actually revealing the glory of God who goes to a cross and endures our mockery for the sake of the world.  

That's what our response is meant to be in the face of hostility or mockery from the wider world.  And again, like I say, we can have a separate conversation about what was or was not going on in the opening ceremony of the Olympics, and whether anybody was supposed to take offense at it or not.  Even imagining the worst-case scenario that it was a deliberate shot at Christians (and again, there is sound reason to believe that's NOT the right way to interpret what happened there), the question now falls to us, who do confess Jesus as our Lord: will we be bitter, melodramatic, and vengeful, or will we embody the kind of love we have found in Jesus precisely at the cross? Will we, like Alexamenos did all those centuries ago, simply say, "Yes, this is our Lord. This is how he saves and reigns: in humble love, all the way to a cross"?

Ultimately, the cross is what makes our faith in Christ immune to ridicule. In the cross of Jesus, God bears the worst mockery humans could lob; so when people try to insult Jesus, the gospel replies, “Yes—this is precisely what God has endured for the world.” The cross steals the thunder of anybody who wants to try to mock Jesus--you can't insult Jesus any worse than what they already did to him, and he endured it to the end. And when others mock Christians, for our hypocrisy, we should really be grateful they are pointing out truths we didn’t want to see. Only when we Christians forget the meaning of the cross will we get defensive about people ridiculing Christ—and if we forget the meaning of the cross, we deserve the criticism.  The way we respond to mockery and insult as the people of Jesus can become a reflection of the love of Jesus--if we are willing to respond as Jesus does.

So, what will we do in this day, or whenever the day comes, when someone makes fun of our faith in Jesus?  Once we've set aside the criticism of hypocrisy that we might need to hear... once we've dealt with accusations that are not true or don't accurately reflect our faith, what will we do if someone pulls an Alexamenos-type insult on us?  Jesus himself would tell us that's a moment simply to sit with the blessedness of loving people like Jesus does in response, and letting that be enough.  

It is enough, after all, just to be faithful.

Lord Jesus, let us be faithful as we point to your crucified love, no matter how scandalous it seems to the world.

Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

Like Oxygen in Our Cells--July 30, 2024

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

It's more than just willpower, you know?

And it's more than just a self-help book.

Sometimes (maybe most of the time) Christians are not great at remembering that. We have some sort of belief, probably, that following Jesus will change us... but if we are pressed to explain it, we often just slide into talking about willpower. We end up sounding like we are saying, "Well, Jesus guarantees we get into heaven... but now it's up to you on your own to become a moral person." We end up falling into fads like wearing bracelets with WWJD on them, as though all it takes to be Christ-like is a momentary pause to ask yourself, "What would Jesus do?" In other words, we end up picturing Jesus way "out there" in front of us--so far in front of us that he's either waiting already in heaven twiddling his thumbs until we get there on our own, or he's ten steps ahead of us while we do our best to copy his moves from a distance. Either way, it ends up sounding like Jesus is merely a means to an end--just a ticket to heaven or a template we have to figure out how to copy.

But the writers of the New Testament don't picture the scene that way. They don't think of Jesus being just way out in front like the lead pacer in a horse race, while we are left in the dust. The writers of the New Testament keep talking about Christ living and dwelling within us. He's not just "out there" or "up ahead." And our job is not simply to follow the footprints to go where Jesus already went long before. The life we call Christianity is not simply our willpower trying to force ourselves to retrace Jesus' steps. No--the audacious claim of the New Testament is that Christ himself comes to be the animating presence within the people of Jesus, who trains our spiritual muscles to walk and move and reach and stretch in new directions... from the inside. Like the old campfire scary story puts it, the call is coming from inside the house.

That is to say, for the followers of Jesus, growing in love is not simply an option I can either choose to do or not to do. It's not just that Christians take a look at Jesus' example and then decide if they will or won't try to copy it. It's that--even in spite of my continuing resistance--Christ himself is within me, changing me from the inside out. My sheer willpower doesn't have much force to it--ask the half-empty bag of Fritos in the pantry if you want confirmation of that. And on my own, I am going to keep sliding back into selfishness, fear, suspicion of those who are different, hate of others, hypocrisy, and lying. We are all wired with that fight-or-flight, angry rage or fearful retreat, kind of outlook on the world on our own--but Christ makes something new possible. And Christ does it, not by just giving us an example for us to try to copy, but by residing within us in a real, meaningful way.  The people of Jesus, in other words, are not merely a fan club of admirers of Jesus, nor a troop of impersonators workshopping their best impression of Jesus, but people in whom Jesus himself lives and dwells, putting roots down through us into the good soil of God's love.

Ask a kid who is just learning how to hold a pencil to copy da Vinci's "Vitruvian Man," and even if you have a poster-print of it right in front of the child, you will end up with stick figures rather than anything close to a reasonable facsimile. Same with us and Jesus--if all we have is Jesus' example to look at and then to try and copy with our own messy lives, we will never come close to looking like Christ that way. It's not possible, anyway, to simply extrapolate Jesus' first-century life and world into twenty-first century situations--at least it's not like you can do it with mathematical precision. But that's not what the Christian faith is about--we are not meant to copy by rote the picture in front of us and get it right by our sheer willpower and determination. We have Christ within us, teaching us to move, training our hands and feet, so that our pictures of Christ look more and more like Jesus' own self-portraits, traced not on paper or canvas but on our own lives.

In all honesty, the good news we call "the gospel" is not (despite so many billboards saying otherwise) that Jesus is merely a means to an end like a ticket to get you into heaven, while you continue to be a relentlessly self-centered jerk forever. And nor is the good news, "If you can copy Jesus well enough, you'll be deemed acceptable to get in." Both of those imagine that Jesus is unconnected and unrelated to me and my actions now. But the New Testament instead says that Christ fills me even now, so I am brought into daily communion with the Creator of the universe right now, already, every day of my life, as Christ grounds me in his grace. And as Catherine of Siena says (one of my favorite medieval Spanish mystic women theologians, if you are keeping score), "All the way to heaven is heaven... because Jesus said 'I am the Way.'" If the reality we usually call "eternal life" is really about being in the very presence of the One who IS unending life, then Catherine is exactly right--Jesus isn't just a ticket to "getting" some other thing called "eternal life" or "heaven." Jesus IS this reality of life in the full--he IS what eternal life looks like. He IS what makes heaven...heaven. Not gold streets or pearly gates. But Jesus. And if Jesus is not simply "out there up ahead" but dwelling within me, and you, and us, then the Christian life is not really about "getting TO heaven" so much as it is about increasingly discovering the One who IS eternal life already permeates our being like oxygen in our cells.

How would it change your outlook in this day--and even your outlook on your whole faith--to consider that it's never been about chasing Jesus from behind to find a way to get to some other place called heaven... but rather that the One who is Life already dwells in you and is shaping the way you live and move and speak, so that you begin to participate in his own fullness of life right here and now?

See? This is good news that is so much better than "Use your willpower to copy Jesus. And use a bracelet if necessary to remind you to do it." All the way to heaven is heaven already.

Lord Jesus, direct me so that I live already like your abundant life is coursing through me already, beyond the bounds of my weak willpower and innate anxieties.

Like Seashells from the Sea--July 29, 2024

Like Seashells from the Sea--July 29, 2024

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name." [Ephesians 3:14-15]

Put a seashell up to your ear, and what do you hear?  Well, of course, your junior high school science teacher would tell you that it's actually the sound of air moving through the chambers in the shell.  But poetically, we say, "You can hear the sound of the ocean and the roar of the waves."  There is something lovely, I confess, about the idea that you can hear the sound of the sea when you listen to a seashell.  At least in some sense, it seems right, somehow fitting, that the individual shells that have washed up on the shore should show some connection to the place from which they came.  It seems appropriate that they should reveal their origin, and that you should be able to tell by listening that the shells come from the sea.  

But even though it is not strictly true that the sound from inside a shell IS the ocean, it is true that the ocean does contain all those creatures, and that they have in fact come from the waters.  And when we speak of the ocean, surely we mean more than just the saltwater--we have in mind the fish and crustaceans, the kelp forests and octopus gardens, the thermal vents teeming with otherworldly life and the currents that flow where our eyes cannot see them.  We mean all of it--even down to the creatures with shells that eventually wash up on the shore.  They come from the sea, and so all seashells at least in some way take their name from that source.

I want to ask you think about that connection for a moment: that seashells are called what they are, even though they don't literally make the sound of the ocean, because their source is the sea.  They are creatures who come from the sea, no matter how well or how poorly you can hear a vaguely sea-like sound when you hold one up to your ear.  Their source still gives them their name.  And interestingly, these lines from Ephesians (which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship) make a similar connection between God and all families among all peoples on earth.  God, whom the writer describes like a "father," is the source from whom all of our families, our parents, our children, and all relationships of love come.  And of course, in some sense, that is true regardless of how functional or dysfunctional our families happen to be.  Our sense of family connects us to our Source--God--regardless of how "good" or "bad" our actual families are at loving each other well.  There's a sense, in other words, even when you look at an estranged or traumatized family, that there is a deeper, truer Love underneath it.  And that means that for whatever ways we have been let down by relatives or have come from dysfunctional family systems, as well as whatever ways we ourselves have let down our children, parents, spouses, and loved ones, we bear some mark of God's love that has given us life like our own parents.  The living God, who as Jesus says has birthed us into being like a mother and who cares for us like a father, is the Source from which all our familial love arises.  Our families, in all their diversity, take their name and bear some level of connection to the Source from which we have come, like seashells from the sea.

So what? Well, again, for whatever else the letter to the Ephesians is doing, at least here it is reminding us of the truly universal scope of God's love and care for the whole human family.  It is a reminder that God is concerned with all of us--people of every nation and land, of every language and culture, of every time and place, in all of our differences and diversity.  All of us, for all the ways our families differ from one another and all the ways we miss the mark of God's perfect parental love, are held within God's love like shells that retain their connection to the sea from which they came.  And that means, too, that there is never a point at which we can write anybody off as unimportant to God.  We never get to say, "Well, THOSE people don't matter--they have nothing to do with God!"  And we never get to dismiss people as entirely disconnected from God just because they aren't Christian or don't share our particular faith--the writer of Ephesians says that every family, every parent, every child (which includes every last one of us), bears the mark of God whose parental love is the source of our understandings of love and family, too.  I never get to say of anybody, no matter how different they are from my experience, "THOSE families aren't important because they aren't Christian!" because they are still connected to the universal human family whose source and progenitor is God.  Our connection to God is not dependent on our sameness, but comes from our common Source--the One whom Jesus calls "Abba--Father."

It is easy for us to think that God only cares about "my kind of people," or to assume that "my way of doing family" is the only kind that works.  And it is terribly tempting to think that people who differ from me are automatically wrong or unimportant because they don't fit my mold or my expectations.  The book of Ephesians doesn't let us make that move, but rather insists that all of us, from your closest cousins and next-door neighbors to strangers separated from us by an ocean or removed in time by millennia, are connected to the same God from whom our understandings of love first arise.  We are all seashells; we all share a connection to the sea.

In a time like ours when it is easy to retreat into our own little tribes and like-minded enclaves, the letter to the Ephesians insists we remember the universal sweep of God's love for the whole human family and all its branches.  Realizing that connection is there will make a difference in how we treat everyone we encounter today, even if it also means we are led into new directions we did not expect.

Lord Jesus, open our vision to see the breadth of your family in every branch of humanity.