Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?--August 26, 2024

Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?--August 26, 2024

"[Jesus] entered Jericho and was passing through it. A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’" [Luke 19:1-7]

You know, it's funny--well, in that sad sense of "funny": in the Gospels, people don't typically get upset with Jesus for keeping too many people out.  Rather, they usually get upset--enough to want to kill him sometimes--because Jesus is scandalously inclusive when it comes to sharing a table with him.  He is constantly upsetting people, from the Respectable Religious Leaders to the everyday folks who hate paying taxes to the Romans, because he shows up at dinner parties with notorious "sinners and tax collectors." They want to silence or get rid of Jesus, not because he is too strict, but because he is so loose with his lunch companions.

Now, to be sure, part of the outrage that leads to whispers and gossip about the traveling rabbi who "has gone to be the guest of a sinner" is that in the ancient Mediterranean world, especially in Jesus' Jewish context, you are making a statement when you eat with someone.  Sharing table fellowship is a sign of acceptance, of equality, and of relationship.  That's different from our culture, where you might have to share the office break room or lunch area with fellow co-workers you don't really like, or where all the kids in the school have to find any seat they can in the cafeteria in those long lines of tables with attached benches.  In our society, we don't necessarily mean to imply acceptance just because we happen to be at adjoining tables at McDonald's.  But in Jesus' social world, sharing a meal with someone said, "I accept you."  And when Jesus did that with sellouts and sinners (like Zacchaeus), well everybody got upset at the notion that Jesus seemed "soft on sin."

You understand that's what going on here, right?  The people around Jericho who are murmuring about Jesus' going to Zacchaeus' house are outraged because Jesus has just said to everybody in town that he accepts Zacchaeus by inviting himself over to Zacchaeus' house for dinner.  They are upset that there is no scolding, no finger-wagging, no insistence on repentance first as a prerequisite of the pleasure of Jesus' company.  They are mad that Jesus' presence at the table with Zacchaeus makes it look like Jesus is endorsing Zacchaeus' reputation as an imperially-subcontracted tax collector.  They start getting antsy and nervous because they think Jesus' choice of companions means he doesn't care about righteousness or holiness or goodness.  And they think he's signaling that God's love includes Zacchaeus as he is, rather than demanding some show of moral improvement from him first.

And, of course, they aren't wrong on that part.  Jesus' presence at the table with Zacchaeus is absolutely a statement of acceptance.  Jesus' bold move to invite himself over to the tax collector's house is provocative exactly because he is extending the love of God to Zacchaeus as he is, without requiring a probationary period of good behavior first. Jesus' meal fellowship with the ones labeled "sinners" and "sellouts" is a deliberate shot across the bow for all the self-appointed (and hypocritical) Gatekeepers and Guardians of Godliness who are scandalized by a God who meets us where we are and loves us as we are, even when "the way we are" comes with some pretty rough edges.

Now, it's worth considering at this moment that Jesus is no fool.  He knows precisely what kind of reaction his dinner with Zacchaeus will elicit, and yet he makes no effort to walk back his choice or call a press conference for some spin-doctoring.  There is no official statement from a podium where Jesus declares, "I didn't intend to communicate that I actually accept that no-good sinner Zacchaeus, and now I want to go on record repudiating him and his bad behavior!"  There's no apology to the Respectable Religious People saying, "If only I had known that this might offend or upset you, I never would have gone to Zacchaeus' house!"  Jesus knows he is being provocative, but he doesn't back away from publicly showing love to Zacchaeus and embodying God's acceptance.  To be sure, being met by this kind of love will do something transformative to Zacchaeus, and you probably know that at the end of the story (we'll get there tomorrow) he'll pay back anyone he has cheated and give away half of his possessions to the poor.  But Jesus doesn't make any of those into prerequisites for his acceptance.  He doesn't demand receipts before sharing a table with ol' Zach.  Jesus meets him with acceptance, and lets the act of accepting him do its own work on Zacchaeus.  Love has a way of doing that to us--like the old hymn says it, "Love to the loveless shown, that they might lovely be."  We are indeed changed by the love that meets us where we are--that's the wonder and the paradox of grace, I suppose.  Jesus meets us at the table just the way we are, and his choice to accept us as we are has a way of making us into new creations.

But don't miss the scandal of the story here: Jesus doesn't seem to care that he will get a reputation for being "soft on sin" or "too accepting" because of his choice to break bread with Zacchaeus.  He is less interested in what interpretations others will put on his actions and more interested in making sure that Zacchaeus hears, "You are beloved," loud and clear.  And I have to think that says something to us, who name the name of Jesus and claim to follow him, too.  All too often, Christians are known for who they won't associate with or who they won't share a table with, because they're worried it will send "the wrong message" to somebody else who might be watching... without giving a thought to what it sends to the folks we refuse to be seen with.  All too often, we ignore Jesus' example of inviting himself over to Zacchaeus' house without any strings, conditions, or disclaimers, and we end up making it sound like God's love is a reward for fitting into our cookie cutter molds.

What if we actually followed the pattern of Jesus and decided to be more interested in showing love to the people who have been told too many times that they are unlovable, rather than fussing nervously about what the Respectable Religious People will say?  What if we stopped casting ourselves as gatekeepers to God and saw ourselves, like Jesus, as people sent to bring God's presence everywhere, lavishly and loosely, into every place and to every person?  What if we dared to be enough like Jesus that the news around town about us Christians was not, "They are bigots and hypocrites," but "They keep hanging out with all the people who feel like they don't belong"?  

How might it change the life of someone who has been waiting to hear that God's love is for them, too, without having to measure up to anybody else's expectations as a prerequisite?  How might it change us to take seriously that Jesus has met us at the table in just the same way?

Lord Jesus, as you have met us at the table just as we are, send us out today to meet others and embody your surprising love right where they are, too.

A Courageous Companion--August 23, 2024

A Courageous Companion--August 23, 2024

"When James and Cephas and John, who were acknowledged pillars, recognized the grace that had been given to me, they gave to Barnabas and me the right hand of fellowship, agreeing that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They only asked one thing, that we remember the poor, which was actually what I was eager to do. But when Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face, because he stood self-condemned; for until certain people came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But after they came, he drew back and kept himself separate for fear of the circumcision faction. And the other Jews joined him in this hypocrisy, so that even Barnabas was led astray by their hypocrisy. But when I saw that they were not acting consistently with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas before them all, 'If you, though a Jew, live like a Gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the Gentiles to live like Jews?'" [Galatians 2:9-14]

It takes courage to love.  More to the point, it takes courage to move beyond "love" as an empty platitude or abstract concept and to live it out when it could be costly.  Maybe hardest of all is to practice love as Jesus did, choosing to sit at tables with people others deem as "unacceptable" and risking that we'll upset people or offend them by breaking bread with them.

I think it took me a long time to learn that--longer, perhaps, than it should have. It takes a great deal of courage, and not simply warm, fuzzy feelings, to love people genuinely.  Honestly, I am still learning it, and I am still in need of people who can give me the courage to sit at the tables Jesus sat at, rather than safely scoffing at a distance.

Because I am among the chicken-hearts so often.

I don't just mean that the people you love can let you down or break your heart, although that is true. (And in those cases, yes, one has to find the courage to keep on loving even when one has been wounded, rejected, or betrayed.) I mean that, beyond the arena of romance, genuine love means taking the risk of being judged or condemned by others who are provoked by your daring to love. Genuine love calls for standing with those we love, in solidarity with them, sharing joys and tears with them, and that means being vulnerable. And it always takes courage to be knowingly vulnerable. Like James Baldwin writes, "One can give nothing whatever without giving oneself--that is to say, risking oneself. If one cannot risk oneself, then one is simply incapable of giving."

That is a lesson that even the pillars of Christian history have had to learn--and they usually learned it by seeing how they failed at it first. And it is a lesson that we will have to face, too. And, coward that I so often am, I do not want to have to come face to face with all the ways I have failed to love because I failed to have the courage enough to risk myself... the courage to be vulnerable. Somewhere along the way we confused "love" with "niceness," and so we have a hard time grasping that there are times when genuine love must be provocative to those who see it.

I know that today's verses from the letter Paul wrote to the Galatians hardly seem heart-warming, but they are, in truth, all about learning to have the courage to love in this kind of provocative, vulnerable way. This is Paul's version of the story of the time he had to chew out none other than Peter (here called by his nickname in Aramaic, "Cephas," which, just like the Greek name "Petros" is basically like being called "Rocky"). That's right--the Simon Peter, the one who was the de facto leader of the early church, the first to confess Jesus as the Messiah, the one who, tradition says, was willing to be crucified upside down because of his humble adoration of Jesus. That same Simon Peter... Paul had the chutzpah to tell him off to his face, because Peter had shown a failure of courage to love.

Here's the short version of the backstory: of course, historically, the first followers of Jesus--during his actual ministry before the cross--were all Jewish. There was diversity from the beginning, to be sure: men and women, ex-Zealots and former tax collectors side by side, rich and poor, educated and illiterate, with whom Jesus shared a table, but basically folks of Jewish background. As the early movement of Jesus-followers spread, they began to reach out to non-Jewish people, too (the shorthand for that was "Gentiles"). And for a while, there was uncertainty about whether this was OK or not with God. Were these outsiders from different nationalities, languages, and ethnicities acceptable? Were they going to affect the community of disciples negatively by bringing in different cultural practices, different attitudes, and different histories? Were they really coming to faith in Jesus... or were they coming to the church in hopes of getting free handouts from this community of people who shared their bread with one another freely? (You know how quick we are to assume such things about people we don't know...) Could they become followers of Jesus as they were, or did they have to adopt the cultural, and ritual laws of Judaism? Did they have to eat kosher? Did they have to be circumcised or keep the festivals? In other words, the early church wrestled with the question of whether you had to leave behind all of your old cultural attachments and take up all the ritual practices of the "in-group" people in order to really "belong" as a Christian?

Well, Simon Peter himself had been one of the early voices that had seen God's Spirit draw some of those Gentiles to faith in Jesus. And Peter himself would have admitted that he only got to that point kicking and screaming by having the Spirit smack him upside the head with a vision and a knock on the door from a Roman centurion's messenger. But Peter finally "got" it that the living God was drawing people from other nationalities, other cultures, other languages, and other skin complexion, to become followers of Jesus--and that God was doing it with or without the official permission or OK of the church leadership. The Spirit's gonna do what the Spirit's gonna do, after all.

Well, at some point, the church got around to making a decision that, yes, they were going to include Gentiles as Gentiles, and that they didn't have to convert to Judaism before they could become followers of Jesus, and they didn't have to follow the Jewish dietary laws or keep the old festivals or any of the rest. Nobody would have to "pray the Gentile away," and nobody would be told, "I don't mind Gentiles doing Gentile things in their own home, but I don't want to have to see it!" Inclusion of Gentile people, without making them stop being Gentile, became the official church policy in Acts 15, and the leaders of the early church all at least tacitly gave their OK.

So when Peter would be hanging out with Gentiles, he got used to eating with them, probably even eating food like they did (I mean, after all, bacon cheeseburgers are hard to resist--I'm just saying...). And Peter could do this, whenever he would travel away from the central church in Jerusalem on trips out to Gentile territory, because he had the official church policy to back him up, and because he really did seem to believe that God was welcoming anybody and everybody into the beloved community of Christ-followers. As long as nobody else from the main office was nearby watching him, that is.

This became the trouble... see, it's easy to do the right thing when you aren't afraid of having it upset anybody. It's easy to be friendly to someone deemed "questionable" or "other" if no one else knows about it. But it takes courage to love the ones labeled "unacceptable" all the time... because at some point, someone else will see. And someone else will be upset, or provoked, or stirred up, or decide that YOU are "unacceptable" too, for associating with "those people" as they are.

And in that moment, it is easy to be a chicken-heart. I know. I often am one.

So was Peter. The same Peter who had argued in Jerusalem (see Acts 15) that he had seen evidence that God's Spirit was drawing Gentiles-as-Gentiles to follow Jesus, alongside Jewish disciples, this same Peter who argued that Gentiles should NOT be treated as second-class Christians... the same Peter who knew it was hogwash to insist that Gentile believers should somehow "try not being Gentile" or that they could just adopt the cultural practices and language of the in-group, that same Peter got intimidated when some other Jerusalem-crowd folks caught him sharing a table with Gentile Christians... and they bullied him. They bullied him into separating from the Gentiles, and they even got some of Paul's other associates like Barnabas to do the same. It had been easy to be friends with these other nationalities of Christians and to break bread with them when no one else was upset about it... but it became hard to keep at it when they saw that it was rankling the Respectable Religious Crowd from Jerusalem.

And so, Peter folded. He wimped out. He was a coward and a chicken-heart.

There is another line of James Baldwin's that has been haunting me lately--he writes in The Fire Next Time that "a civilization is not destroyed by wicked people; it is not necessary that people by wicked but only that they be spineless." That was where Simon Peter faltered. Not that he had suddenly become a mustache-twirling, black-hat-wearing cartoon villain... not that he had even suddenly become a hateful, racist or anti-Gentile xenophobic bigot himself... but that he had let himself stay quiet when other people provoked about his genuine acceptance of Gentile Christians as Gentiles. He had not been wicked, in Baldwin's words--he had only been spineless.

And when Paul saw this, he recognized that this wasn't just a faux pas, or a slip of social graces, and this wasn't just about Head-of-the-Church Peter needing to shore up support with his base of support from back in Jerusalem. This was about the heart of the gospel. Because at the center of the Good News is the radical claim that we are accepted by God, not on the basis of what we have done or not done, the rules we have followed or not followed, or even the categories of our demographics--but everything hangs on the free gift of God's grace through Christ. And if Peter was suddenly going to act like the Gentile Christians around him were second-class members of the kingdom of God, he was making a mockery of the gospel of grace. Paul saw that this wasn't just about alienating potential Gentile church members or a bit of bad PR. This was about whether the Gospel really is the Gospel. And if the message of God's mercy for all really were true, it would mean a whole new way of seeing people, a whole new set of eyes. It would mean being able to risk upsetting people... and provoking people... and even angering the people who were "like" Peter, in order to offer genuine love to those who were not "like" Peter.

Well, there is good news in this story. Even after Paul calls Peter out, there is change. Peter sees what he has done, and he changes. There is hope for cowards like Peter and me, that once we have had some faithful voice, some gracious saint, help us see that we have been acting like hypocrites and doing damage to the gospel by being quiet while others are pushed to the side, we can begin again, too. And there is the unshakable promise of God in Jesus that even when I am at my most cowardly, nothing can separate me from the love of Christ (the same Saint Paul told us that much, too). Once I know that, I can face the ways I have been a coward, and I can dare to change. I can dare to nurture the courage to love even when it is provocative. I can dare to let God give me the gift of bravery enough to be vulnerable. And I can dare to speak up when it would be easy to be quiet. These things are gifts of grace, given even to scaredy-cats like me.

I don't know how you see your own story, and I don't know how you have made choices in your own life. But I'm willing to bet there's at least a decent chance that you have been in moments like Peter, too--where you let silence win the day rather than courageously speaking love to people who were told they were unacceptable or unloved. I'm willing to bet there have been times when we have been shooed away from sharing the table with another because we were afraid of what someone else might think. I'm willing to bet that there have been moments when we were so afraid of ruffling someone's feathers that we were willing to keep quiet when someone else bad-mouthed another group of people who were not like you. I'm willing to bet we have all had times of spinelessness, figuring it was no big deal and at least didn't alienate people.  All in the name of "keeping the peace," you know...

And if you have ever been in any of those spots in your life, then here is grace for you and me. Here is mercy for chicken-hearts (though hopefully recovering chicken-hearts) like us. God raised up a Paul to get Peter back on track, and God kept on loving and forgiving and using Peter to reach others with the love of Jesus.  God used Paul's words and example (it surely was scary and costly for Jewish Paul to eat with Gentiles, too!) to help Peter to become a courageous companion--in the literal sense of that word, "someone who shares bread with you"--for the previously outcast.

Maybe this is a day to think about whose voices we have not wanted to listen to because they make us squirm, and to let them give us the courage to be vulnerable... the courage to be provocative if need be... the courage to open our tables... the courage to love.

Lord Jesus, put the people in our lives and awareness today that we need to wake us up out of complacency and to love others genuinely.

God's Extra Chairs--August 22, 2024

God's Extra Chairs--August 22, 2024

One of the dinner guests, on hearing this, said to him, "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" Then Jesus said to him, "Someone gave a great dinner and invited many. At the time for the dinner he sent his slave to say to those who had been invited, 'Come; for everything is ready now.' But they all alike began to make excuses. The first said to him, 'I have bought a piece of land, and I must go out and see it; please accept my apologies.' Another said, 'I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I am going to try them out; please accept my apologies.' Another said, 'I have just been married, and therefore I cannot come.' So the slave returned and reported this to his master. Then the owner of the house became angry and said to his slave, 'Go out at once into the streets and lanes of the town and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame.' And the slave said, 'Sir, what you ordered has been done, and there is still room.' Then the master said to the slave, 'Go out into the roads and lanes, and compel people to come in, so that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those who were invited will taste my dinner'." [Luke 14:15-24]

It always seems to go this way: just when you think you're gonna score some easy points with Jesus (a slow pitch right over the plate), he turns out to hurl a wicked curve ball you weren't expecting, and your head is left spinning.  This is an important reminder: Jesus always reserves the right to up-end our expectations, especially when we want to put ourselves in charge of limiting the guest list at God's table.

Here's a case in point.  Jesus is already sitting at someone's dinner party, continuing on from the passage we looked at yesterday about inviting the "nobodies" and the "anybodies" to our tables rather than the Big Deals and the So-and-Sos.  That probably had broken the rules of etiquette, since Jesus (a guest) basically shamed his host and all the other Respectable People seated at the party.  So some well-intentioned guest seated around the table decides to offer a change of subject, something easy for everyone to nod their heads in agreement to, and something that sounds vaguely pious without a hint of controversy.  "Blessed is anyone who will eat bread in the kingdom of God!" this guest blurts out, and you can picture him nervously raising his glass, looking around the table to see if his proposed toast has smoothed things over with any egos Jesus has bruised.  The gist of his sentiment is something like, "Boy, won't the people who get to dine in God's great banquet be lucky!  Who wouldn't want to be them?  Must be a pretty exclusive group of the holy, the refined, and the well-respected, you know?"  Who can imagine anybody disagreeing with that notion, right?

Well, Jesus is always something of an outlier.  And so instead of just vacuously nodding along at this guest's suggestion of God holding an exclusive dinner party for the well-heeled and well-connected (which all the other guests at the table with Jesus would like to picture themselves as being!), Jesus throws a spiritual hand grenade into the conversation.  He responds with an upside-down sort of a story (aren't they all, when it's Jesus who's telling them?) about a banquet whose original guests decide not to bother coming, and whose host decides still to carry on with the festivities anyway.  Even though the excuses from the first guests range from pathetic to awful (test-driving new oxen?  Come on!), the party is unpoopable, and the host determines to welcome in all the people the first guest list would have deemed unacceptable and unworthy.  "Go and bring in the poor, the crippled, the blind, and the lame," the host tells his wait-staff.  In other words, these are the ones who can't possibly repay the host with a party of their own, and cannot ever return the favor. These are the ones who don't have status, don't have wealth, don't have name-recognition, and don't have prestige--and yet, there is a place set for them all, and welcome extended far and wide.  In fact, when it turns out that all of the folks from the margins of society have already been welcomed in, the host now gets his caterers to grab people off the street and lead them into his party: "Compel the people to come in!"  The party will go on, and the house will be full, no matter what!

Jesus, of course, is not giving a lesson in party planning, but describing the economy of God.  When we start picturing God's big party as an exclusive soiree for "our kind of people" [nudge nudge, you know, OUR kind of people...], Jesus says that God insists on welcoming all the ones we have deemed unworthy and unimportant to the party.  To the guest beside Jesus at the party who blurts out with self-congratulation in his voice, "Blessed is the one who eats in the kingdom of God!" Jesus offers a different sort of picture--not a gathering of the Respectable and the Religious, but of the ones disregarded and disinherited by everybody else.

That had to have been something of a wake-up call for everybody seated at the fancy dinner with Jesus.  They all saw themselves, comfortably, as the ones who had earned  a right to be seated beside the respected rabbi from Nazareth.  They saw themselves as worthy of being there, and they didn't like the idea that other people might be welcomed to the table beside them, much less the ones without status, significance, or sophistication. It was an outrage to suggest that they might have to make room for people who hadn't "earned" their spots, or <gasp!> to hear Jesus suggest that maybe none of them, even the Respectable Religious people and the Big Deals, had "earned" their places at all, but were all welcomed to the table by grace.

It's funny how often we act like this, we humans.  We like to imagine that we personally deserve OUR place at the table because of our own innate excellence or status markers, but the moment someone suggests that other people (different from us, or without our credentials) also can have a seat there, we start complaining about how "entitled" THEY are, or how "unfair" it is to let more people have access to the things that were first given to us by grace, apart from our achieving them. Yet Jesus says God is the One adding extra chairs.

I know how easy it is to focus only on Me-and-My-Group getting the good things in life.  I know it's tempting to say, "I have to look out for the interests of MY children, MY stock portfolio, MY industry, or MY collection of like-minded folks," and then to use that to justify all sorts of selfish choices.  But Jesus reminds us that my children's well-being is caught up with the well-being of my neighbor's children--and that's not just the people literally next door to me, but the folks who have been pushed off to the margins and on the streets that I didn't want to recognize were there.  To hear Jesus tell it, that's just where God finds more guests for the party, anyway--the roads and the streets and margins.  They are welcomed by the host, too, and they are not turned away. Jesus tells me that I can't live my life under the illusion that I "deserve" my place at his table while I scoff and sneer when other people are gathered to the feast, because we are all invited only by the grace of the Host, not our earning a spot there.  If I care about me-and-my-group being able to eat at God's banquet, then I need to allow God to bring other people to the table, too, because it is God's table and God's prerogative to invite whomever God chooses to set a place for there.

I'll bet the folks who heard Jesus first tell this story were more than a little scandalized when he was finished.  And I bet they were more than a little humbled.  If you and I aren't at least a little bit uncomfortable after listening to this story, I doubt we've been paying attention.  But there is the possibility, once we've heard it, that we can be led out of bitterness and resentment to joy and gratitude for the way Jesus expands the table.  When we realize that we don't have an exclusive claim to a place at God's banquet, but that we've been invited by grace, then we can rejoice that God cares about other people, too, and that God will include the people we've overlooked.  And maybe we'll move beyond our narrow and short-sighted concern only for "Me-and-My-Group-First" to see that our well-being is inseparable from the well-being of ALL of our neighbors... across the street, across the country, and across the world.  

That will make for a mighty full banquet hall, I know.  But don't worry--God's got extra chairs.

Lord God, help us to see our place as recipients of your grace, so that we can welcome others to whom you extend your invitation, too.

A Table of Grace--August 21, 2024

A Table of Grace--August 21, 2024

"Jesus also said to the one who had invited him, 'When you give a luncheon or a dinner, do not invite your friends or your brothers or your relatives or rich neighbors, in case they may invite you in return, and you would be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, and the blind. And you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you, for your will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous." [Luke 14:12-14]

You reward--you encourage--the kind of behavior that you approve of. And generally speaking, you approve of the kind of behavior you see in yourself. That may run the risk of sounding obvious, but preachers are notorious for repeatedly stating the obvious. And it seems pretty straightforward on its face that people typically encourage others to do what they already see as "good" in themselves.

When I try to teach my kids to help out with setting the table before dinner, it is because I want them to learn the importance of everyone in a family pitching in to do what needs to be done. When I want to encourage them to take on responsibility in the family, sometimes there is compensation, too--money paid for mowing the lawn, or the promise of an ice cream treat if everyone gets their laundry put away, or whatever. The goal of the reward is not just to get the table set or the lawn mowed, but to teach a whole way of thinking and acting--a whole mindset--that we all pitch in to help take care of the family. And that is an important lesson I want my kids to learn, one which I hope they can already see in me.  In other words, I only ask them to do things I am also willing to take my turn doing as well.

Or, when I catch my kids sharing with each other, or sitting next to the kid who seems left out, and then I go out of my way to praise them for their small acts of compassion, it's because (obviously) that is the kind of behavior I want to promote. I want my kids to be the kind of people who share what they have, and who look out to include the people who have been left out. And so it makes perfect sense, too, that I try myself to be the kind of person who shares and looks out for people who are feeling left out. It's all pretty straightforward, right? The values that I hold at my own core are values I want to pass along to my kids... and because I want to instill those values and practices in my kids, I look for ways to encourage them to do things that fit with my values.

If we think sharing is important, we will not only model sharing ourselves, but we will encourage it in our kids. If we think honesty is important, we will not only be honest ourselves but will promote truth-telling in our families. If we think hard work is important, we will not only work hard ourselves but we will reward hard work in our children so that it can become ingrained in them, and ultimately, so that they will do what we are encouraging them to do even without a dollar or a cookie or a prize. In other words, the real goal of the rewards and encouragements that come with parenting (or classroom management for teachers) is ultimately to shape the kind of people that our children become; and one hopes that we are encouraging them to follow the examples we set ourselves.  And part of being an example is that we make the commitment to do good in certain ways even if those we are trying to teach haven't caught on yet.

If all of that is obvious, good. I was hoping so. Because that connection between what we encourage in others and what sort of people we are ourselves is at the core of Jesus' teaching here about radical hospitality. When Jesus encourages his listeners to invite the outcast, the powerless, the ones lacking influence or wealth, and the disinherited, it is because Jesus is convinced this is God's character, too.

Let's be clear about this. Jesus isn't just making a harmless suggestion for how to win etiquette points, and he isn't offering party advice to make us more popular or well-connected. Jesus is encouraging a particular way of acting because he is convinced that God acts the same way. We are supposed to welcome and include people who cannot pay us back, regardless of their social standing or status, or even whether we like them or not... because Jesus is convinced that this is how God acts toward all of us... all the time.

In other words, according to Jesus, when God throws a party, it is for everybody. When God makes out a guest list, it is not about God collecting favors or getting something in return. When God spreads out a table, there are places set for the people on the margins and people who are against the ropes. In a world that seems more and more obsessed with getting something back in return for a favor done or an invitation given, God messes all of that thinking up by throwing parties for the anybodies and nobodies who can never pay God back.

And it is only because that kind of reckless hospitality is at the heart of God's character that Jesus then calls us to practice it as well. The talk about being "repaid at the resurrection of the righteous" is not to say that only the gracious hosts of the world will go to heaven. It is to say that God is teaching us and shaping us much the same way we teach and shape our kids. I want my kids to learn to set the table without being asked and without complaining, and so part of training them is to encourage and reward that behavior now when I see it, as well as to model it in myself.

The bottom line today, then, is that God's kind of party is one that has a place for everybody--including a special focus on including the people who will never be able to pay God back (all of us). We aren't good at that--maybe that's why we need to listen to Jesus' words again and let them kick us in the pants. We keep getting sucked into the old quid-pro-quo, deal-making, I'll-scratch-your-back-if-you-scratch mine kind of thinking that only asks, "What will I get out of it?" And God continues to try to reshape our hearts to become people who can be generous without wanting something in return, who love without expecting attention or rewards, and who include the least, the last, and the left-behind. That matters to God because it is how God loves us and welcomes us to the table--recklessly, unconditionally, and without getting something in return. In a word, it is a table of grace. And Jesus is set on shaping us to be people of such grace, too.

Lord Jesus, encourage us and shape us to become more and more fully like you--and like the living God whom you have shown us. Make us to be generous, gracious, and daring in our welcome.

Groceries Without Price--August 20, 2024

Groceries Without Price--August 20, 2024

"Ho, everyone who thirsts,
     come to the waters;
and you that have no money,
     come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
     without money and without price.
Why do you spend your money for
     that which is not bread,
and your labor for
     that which does not satisfy?
Listen carefully to me, and eat what is good,
     and delight yourselves in rich good.
Incline your ear, and come to me;
     listen, so that you may live.
I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
     my steadfast, sure love for David." [Isaiah 55:1-3]

Sometimes I am surprised God doesn't give up on this grace thing. It's got to be frustrating to be giving away good things for free, only to have everybody lining up for junk food and being willing to pay top dollar for the chance to get it somewhere else.

This, I suppose, is the tragedy of unrequited love that makes up the first act in the great love story of the Gospel's divine comedy: God keeps holding out the gifts that bring us to life, and offers them like a free meal, but we keep chasing after lesser things and lesser loves thinking they will fill the empty places in these fragile hearts of ours. And for whatever things God can think of to get our attention, we keep spending our lives, our energy, and our love for "that which does not satisfy."

What gives me hope on a day like today, though, is that despite the ways we surely break God's heart in the quest for an ever-elusive Something Else or Someone Better, God doesn't back down on the free part of the offer of groceries without price, and God doesn't give up on the invitation to life in the fullest. I surely would have given up, if I were God. I would have long ago decided with a look of smug self-righteousness, "Well, I gave them all their chance to receive the good I have to give, and they ran off in another direction, so now I'm just done with them." I would have bailed out, cut my losses, and stopped trying--I'm like that sometimes. My willingness to love would have gotten gun-shy along time ago, after one too many times of holding out my hands and being ignored. Maybe all of us are like that, too--we just feel we come to limits of how much we can keep risking love after being hurt, dismissed, or thrown away before.

But God does not. God keeps holding out the gift of grace, even to ungrateful stinkers like me who have convinced themselves that what will really make us happy is found in job titles, bigger salaries, larger houses, political power, candlelight and romance, or having our names carved in stone on a building to leave behind as a legacy. We've been chasing all those dead-end rabbit trails forever, while God has been standing in the center of town offering a gift that sounds too good to be true.

That's an especially powerful message knowing when this word was spoken. The words we call Isaiah 55 are most likely spoken to people on the other side of exile--in other words, people who had been chasing after other things, other gods, and other loves for so long they got themselves carried away into Babylon. The prophet speaks this offer to people who had broken their relationship with God so badly they all swore it was beyond repair--it was a like a marriage ended with divorce, a child who had run away from home, or a friendship in shambles (in fact, those are all ways the prophets talked about the broken covenant between God and Israel from time to time). And yet, despite the ways the people have blown a good thing that was right in front of them, God offers again: come, receive water... bread... wine... milk... life... for free. God offers that the people will be given life again, despite all the ways they have sold themselves out to lesser things before.

It reminds me of a lyric from a song of Mumford and Sons, called, "Roll Away Your Stone," that goes like this:

"It seems that all my bridges have been burned,

But you say that's exactly how this grace thing works.

It's not the long walk home that will change this heart,

But the welcome I receive with the re-start."

That's the offer. When we've burned the bridges, God builds a new one. When we've spent our last buck on fool's gold and junk food, God gives away the good stuff for free. When we've turned in the wrong direction again and again and gotten ourselves lost in the valley of the shadow of death, God brings us back to life. As a gift. Without price.

And if that's how God's offer meets each of us today, maybe we can let some burned bridges be rebuilt today, too. Maybe we can extend grace to someone who has been waiting for forgiveness, knowing we've already been given a restart from God. Maybe there's someone you can share abundance with today, knowing that God keeps giving good things to us beyond our deserving. Maybe... well, maybe today is just the day you and I decide not to give up on someone else, because we know God hasn't given up on us, either.

That's what makes that tragic first act of unrequited love into a divine comedy: grace keeps on offering, insistent on outwaiting and outlasting our misguided quests to fill the God-shaped empty spot in our lives with anything or anyone else.

Here's the offer again--grace is yours already. An honest to goodness free lunch in a world full of hucksters.  And what's more, the offer from God isn't a limited-time promotion to inflate sales numbers; it is persistently, perpetually, free of charge.

Lord God, outlast our waywardness with your enduring love.

At Wisdom's Table--August 19, 2024

At Wisdom's Table--August 19, 2024

 Wisdom has built her house,
  she has hewn her seven pillars.
 She has slaughtered her animals, she has mixed her wine,
  she has also set her table.
 She has sent out her servant-girls, she calls
  from the highest places in the town,
 “You that are simple, turn in here!”
  To those without sense she says,
 “Come, eat of my bread
  and drink of the wine I have mixed.
 Lay aside immaturity, and live,
  and walk in the way of insight.” [Proverbs 9:1-6]

God is not running a club for members who meet strict membership requirements. Nope--just the opposite: God is running a free meal service for people who wouldn't get past the gatekeeper of the clubhouse.

These words from the book of Proverbs, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, are a case in point.  Here in this passage, the Wisdom of God is personified like a woman throwing a dinner party, but there's a surprise to it.  Wisdom doesn't have a fixed guest list of the Who's-Who or the elite Big Names in town.  She has gone to all the work of putting on a huge feast, but her invitation goes out to the least-expected and least-impressive.  Wisdom invites, not the CEOs, the Medal of Freedom winners, or the university Board of Trustees, but the drop-outs, the uneducated, the mess-ups, and the unschooled to her banquet.  Her feast isn't a reward for being the brightest or the most prestigious, but a gift for those who hunger for what she has to give. Wisdom's table is a gift of grace, through and through.

The plot twist here is utterly divine comedy.  After listing all the lengths Lady Wisdom has gone to for the sake of throwing this dinner party (butchering the meat, preparing the wine, setting her tables, and getting her servers ready), the invitation goes out, not to an exclusive set of worthy socialites, but to anybody and everybody.  In particular, the invitation is for "the simple" and those "without sense."  That's a polite way of saying that Wisdom is inviting the folks without a lick of common sense.  This is a meal for the ones who have been told they "aren't the sharpest tool in the shed" and are "not the brightest bulb." The meal at Wisdom's table isn't a prize given out to folks who have earned it or shown their worthiness; it's a free gift for people who are in need of what she has to offer.

And to be clear, this is the way God operates.  The figure of Wisdom here is a sort of stand-in for God's ordering of the universe.  She appears in the book of Proverbs almost like the imagery of "the Word" in John's Gospel--the "Logos" of God's Self-Expression through whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together.  In other words, in the Bible, what "Wisdom" does is a glimpse into how God operates.  And therefore, this passage is a glimpse to God's own economy of mercy. God gives good things to the empty-handed because of their need, not as prizes for the perfect peaches.

For a whole world full of us who consistently miss the point, make bad choices, reveal our ignorance, and get stuck in foolish ruts, the Wisdom of God specifically invites us to her table.  She is giving away exactly what we need, precisely what we have been hungering for.  She brings no conditions or prerequisites, because that's not how her meal works.  All we bring are empty hands and hungry bellies, and she will feed us with what we need.  That's how God runs the universe.

All too often we make the assumption that God is running the world like the prize-counter guy at Chuck E. Cheese, doling out cheap plastic trinkets in exchange for however many tickets we have earned playing the games.  We imagine that the Christian life is a matter of racking up points (whether for good behavior, or knowing the right religious facts, or public displays of piety, or voting with the party that has co-opted our faith), and that we get the prizes we want as a reward for getting enough points.  But that's precisely the opposite of what the way of Wisdom does here: she sends her wait-staff out in every direction to the people who don't have it together, who have messed up and made mistakes, and who weren't on any guest list, and these are the ones who are called in to receive a free meal.

Maybe today it's time to stop treating God like a prize-counter and instead to receive the gifts that can only be received by grace.  Maybe it's time to stop treating our faith like a country club and more like an open table.  That's what Wisdom says it always has been.

Lord God, draw us to your table to be filled with wisdom where we are lacking sense.

Beyond Carrots and Sticks--August 16, 2024

Beyond Carrots and Sticks--August 16, 2024

"Thieves must give up stealing; rather let them labor and work honestly with their own hands, so as to have something to share with the needy." [Ephesians 4:28]

If we actually pay attention to it, the New Testament really is wonderfully strange.  It can take even the most seemingly obvious, self-evident ideas and turn them on their head.  

This is one of my favorites. In these words that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday, we get a sketch of the life of the Christian community: how we are to live together, speak to one another, and care for one another.  And in the midst of a larger conversation about not using hurtful or mean-spirited speech, the writer takes a surprising turn here.  He says, "Thieves must give up stealing." I say that's surprising, not because it's unusual to have a moral prohibition on stealing, but (1) because the writer seems to think that there might actually be thieves or bandits in the Christian community who need this reminder, and even more importantly (2) because of the rest of the train of thought.

We might expect a warning against stealing to threaten punishment or damnation as a consequence, or an invocation of the commandments.  We might expect the argument to go, "Thieves must give up stealing, or else they will be disqualified from inheriting the kingdom!" or "Don't steal from anyone, or else you won't get into heaven!" or even just a simple, "Don't steal--that's one of the Ten Commandments, after all, and we all have to follow The Rules!" Rather, the writer of Ephesians makes a turn toward love and generosity.  Thieves need to give up stealing so that instead, they can find honest work "so as to have something to share with the needy." In other words, in this passage, the reason to stop stealing isn't so much fear of punishment as the opportunity to share with a hungry neighbor. Stealing just takes away from someone else, but working a legitimate job allows everybody to get to eat.  It's not at all about the threat of a lightning bolt or a ticket to hell, but about the chance to show love to someone else who is in need.  I've got to be honest with you: that's not where I expected this verse to be going the first time I read it.  

But this is the whole key to the freedom and beauty of the Christian life according to the New Testament.  We no longer have to be driven to avoid bad behavior through the threat of punishment or to pursue good behavior in order to get some kind of self-interested reward.   We are past carrots and sticks.  Instead, it is all about love that feeds the hungry neighbor.  The writer to the Ephesians says we are called to honest labor rather than theft as a way of making sure we have enough abundance to share with someone else.  It is a completely neighbor-centered train of thought, rather than about me personally avoiding punishment.  It's about saying, "There are other members of the community who are going hungry--how can I be a part of the solution to the problem, rather than ignoring their need?"  It's about taking seriously the idea that everyone in the household of God gets to eat, and then making the choices in our own lives that help to feed everybody.  And to be very honest, that kind of thinking is radical. 

I say that because the conventional wisdom about religion is often pretty self-centered.  For a lot of folks, religion self-centeredly boils down to saying, "I should be good so that I get into heaven, or at least avoid being bad and getting sent to hell."  Sometimes it is phrased a little more elegantly or with theological window dressing, but yeah, sometimes it is put just that crudely (and wrongly).  Ultimately, that's a pretty selfish view of the universe, in which faith is just a means for me to get what I want or avoid the pain I don't want.  But of course that's not really how the New Testament sees things, especially not this passage from Ephesians. The New Testament reframes the whole conversation to say, "What if you weren't earning anything or avoiding punishments? What if you were so grounded in the love of Christ that you were free to do good for others simply out of love for them and concern for their needs?"  The Gospel pulls us out of the old self-centered carrot-and-stick scheme to see that because God has provided us what we need for life, we are free to care for the needs of the hungry neighbor next to us.  Doing God's will, then, isn't so much about how I earn a ticket to heaven or avoid a trip to hell, but about the freedom to love the people whom God loves.  As our older brother in the faith Martin Luther put it, "What is it to serve God and do God's will? Nothing else than to show mercy to our neighbor."  That's a very different answer from what we've heard from other voices of Respectable Religion.  

All of this is to say that our perspective changes when we find ourselves welcomed to the table of Jesus.  Instead of being solely concerned with our own self-interest, we discover that we are free to attend to the needs of the folks around us, including the willingness to do honest work--not to avoid jail time for stealing, but in order to make enough income to be generous for the hungry neighbors around us.  That is downright revolutionary... and it is lurking there right in the New Testament, waiting to be found and to change our lives forever.

What else might be reframed or turned upside-down in light of this kind of love? What lengths might you and I be led to because we have been changed by the love of Jesus, who attends to our needs generously?

Let's see where this takes us...

Lord Jesus, change our perspective today so that we use our time and resources for the good of others around us in need.