The Poverty of God--November 12, 2019

The Poverty of God--November 12, 2019

"For you know the generous act of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that by his poverty you might become rich." [2 Corinthians 8:9]

Jesus has a way of redefining our categories by crashing right into our ordinary lives and turning them upside down.  He has a way of taking our usual expectations about what is "good," what is "successful," or what is "worthwhile" and pulling them inside out... and then helping us to see that we were really the ones who had things backward all along until he came along to set us right.  My goodness, as Paul notes here, with Jesus, even seemingly obvious categories like "rich" and "poor" get inverted, blown apart, and reassembled in the light of Christ.

It reminds me of an anecdote told about Bob Dylan, the legendary folk-rock music hero and poet of his generation.  After he had achieved some commercial success and fame, he was interviewed by Rolling Stone magazine and asked if, with his achievements by that point, "Are you happy?"  And Dylan's supposed response gets me every time.  The troubadour answered, "Happy... unhappy, these are yuppie words.  The question is blessed or not blessed."  And just like that, our old categories of how to measure the good life explode and need to be reassembled.  How about that--happy and unhappy are yuppie words... and the right category for thinking is about being "blessed."

Dylan is right, of course.  And in a way, he was making a roughly similar point to Paul here in Second Corinthians.  Paul is in the midst of asking (well, it's a lot closer to guilt-tripping) his readers in Corinth to support the church in need in Jerusalem and Judea, which was dealing with a famine at the time and needed help with food.  And in the course of making his argument, he makes an appeal to Jesus himself.  Jesus' coming among us--his willingness to enter human life as one of us, here among us now in all of our messiness and need--becomes the example for our calling to be generous to others, too.  Paul says that Christ Jesus "was rich," presumably meaning that in divine eternal glory, he had no wants or needs at all.  And by coming into humanity, by entering the brokenness of this world, Jesus gave it all up--for the sake of us needy humans... so that we might have the abundant life he offers.  In other words, Jesus didn't think of his own needs, comfort, or even, to echo Dylan's point, "happiness," for the sake of humanity.  He gave all of that away, so that we could all share in the joy--the "blessedness," if you like--of being with him.

And just like that, our old categories are broken open and made anew.  The Christian faith, at its core, then, is about a God who is less interested in preserving his own insulated comfort and bliss than God is in giving us the good things we need for life.  And, as Paul has it, if Jesus has to choose between staying sequestered in self-centered happiness and "riches" on the one hand and giving it all away in order to be with us in our lowliness, Jesus is going to choose us every time.  Jesus seems to think that happy is a yuppie word, too.

Of course, the idea isn't that by Jesus "coming down" from heaven, we all get bonuses in our bank accounts or a windfall wad of twenty dollar bills falling from the sky.  And by the same token, now that Jesus has come and "become poor," it doesn't mean they had to sell the pearly gates and replace them with old rusty chain-link fencing.  It's about taking the old categories of "rich" and "poor" and turning them inside out.  The Gospel's promise is not that if we are good and faithful we'll get a bigger paycheck, but rather that Jesus fills our lives where they are empty and pulls us out of the dead-end way of life that is focused just on our own self-interest.  We are pulled out of the tail-spin and brought into a new way of living that begins now and lasts beyond the grip of death.  But it all happens because, like the start of a chain reaction, God in Christ chose to let go of comfort and "riches" to take on our poverty, our fundamental human empty-handedness.

You don't have to pity Christ for having done that--he clearly thinks he made the right move by refusing to stay up in the insulated blissfully rich "happiness" of heaven if it came at the cost of our being lost and in need.  And you don't have to pity the followers of Jesus who make the same move in their own lives, too.  When Paul dared his readers in Corinth to give up some of their abundance and their creature comforts (and you might even say, the day to day things that made them "happy"), he did it because he was convinced the life that is oriented outward at caring for others is ultimately where joy flourishes.  There's no thought of "you have to do this to earn God's love" here, but rather, "if you're only living to chase after your own wealth or pleasure or happiness, you're wasting your life--the real thing is here as a free gift for the taking!"  

It all starts, though, with Christ coming among us--here among us now, right in the unvarnished, unglamorous choice to live a human life that knew hunger, that was familiar with oppression, that was spent on the margins, and that had no investments to count on.  The gift we have been given in Christ--the life that really is life--begins because ours is a God who chooses poverty with us rather than riches without us, a God who chooses the share pain with us rather than to dwell in blissful ignorance.  

Ours is a God, then, who renounces the privileges of being God, for the sake of being good to beggars like us and makings us part of the family. What other word is there for than "blessed"?  

Ol' Bob was right: happy is a yuppie word, and it's a waste of an existence to chase after.  But to give yourself away in love?  That's blessed... indeed, it's downright divine.

Lord Jesus, thank you for all you gave up, so that we can be share in your abundance.

The World That Aches--November 11, 2019

"The World that Aches"--November 10, 2019

"But when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, in order to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as children." [Gal. 4:4-5]
To pay attention at all to the violence, the hatred, and the tragedy in the world every evening on the news means we cannot let ourselves--or the words of faith--settle for trite or easy explanations. We cannot simply cover over the evil in our world with a slogan announcing that "God loves us" and ignore the fact that so often we feel as though our world has been abandoned. And we cannot chirp back easy defenses for God to resolve the tension that comes from believing in a God who is both good and almighty in a world where goodness sometimes seems so utterly impotent. (The book of Job will teach us that, too--Job's friends all offer explanations and defenses for God in the face of evil, and in the end God seems to affirm Job's angry questioning of the silent heavens. So let us not pretend that the Bible forbids us from bringing the hard questions right in God's face.) So, determined to be utterly honest about the tragedies of our world and our lives, we still come to this Word from Galatians looking for God to speak good news--and not just generically nice news, but genuinely good news that can meet us in the pain of real life in a world that aches.

Paul here sketches out God's way of dealing with the ever-present tragedy in our world, and it has two edges to it. First, God's way of engaging the evil of the world (evil which is made all the more palpable because the Law points it out to us) is to come into the world among us--"when the fullness of time had come, God sent his Son." It has been the claim of Christians from the beginning that this Son is no less than God, too, so God's way of dealing with evil is not simply to wave a wand from outside the evil, Deus ex machina style, nor is it to simply send a heavenly employee to represent God in the world. None other than God-in-the-flesh enters into the same world in which we live and suffer and weep with those who weep. We may become impatient as we wait for the "fullness of time," but the Christian story hinges on a God who enters into the story, into the world, into the face of evil--not just in Jesus (although most definitively in Jesus), but all along.

Now at the same time, the Christian story insists that God meets us in the pit, so to speak, in order to do something. Jesus comes as one "born of a woman, born under the law" in order to redeem those who are under the power and curse of the law--that is, all of us--in order to make us children of God. This is an important point--God doesn't just impotently sit with us crying in the pit, sorry that nothing more can be done. (Sometimes, it is all we can do, as believers in community, to sit with someone who is suffering and weep with them, and that is perhaps enough for us to do. But God has more in mind.) The story of the Christian faith announces that God is not afraid of being in the pit with us, but that God is then determined to bring this world out of the pit, to heal it, not just to weep over its sickness. The God of our story is more than a big gooey ball of feeling. Our story is of a God who acts, who really and truly acts in history, and in our presents. Paul dares to say that the central point at which God's suffering and God's acting meet to heal this whole world is in the human flesh of Jesus. But Paul yet affirms that this God is still suffering and acting in and with and under this world.

So today, it can feel like each new day is just a matter of waiting for another shoe to drop, and today as new tragedies erupt, all we can do is to call on God to be who God has always been for us--the God who suffers and acts. And so we will call on the living God to do both for us--perhaps it seem audacious to call on God both to act and to suffer, but it seems that it is precisely what God would have us do.

Lord Jesus, We give this day into your hands because it is all we know to do. We trust that they will be strong enough to bear us up and carry us through present trouble, even as we know they still bear the scars of weakness and of troubles past, taken on for us. Hold us, and all who grieve this day, always close in your strong embrace, with those same arms ever outstretched to us in love. We pray to be held there, even in the life-worn arms of those people through whom you love us, too. We ask it, Lord, in your own strong-and-weak name.

The God who Grieves--November 8, 2019

The God Who Grieves--November 8, 2019

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? 

 Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning?

 O my God, I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest.

 Yet you are holy, enthroned on the praises of Israel.

 In you our ancestors trusted;

 they trusted you, and you delivered them." [Psalm 22:1-4]

Even a prayer of abandonment and accusation presumes God is there listening.

Consider that for a moment; let it just sink in.  God is there--here, right wherever you are--even at the points we accuse God of abandoning us.  God is here even when we blame God for our feeling godforsaken.  And God bears not only the accusations we bring, but also bears the grief that leads us to accuse God of abandoning us in the first place.  

I was reminded recently of an insight of Henri Nouwen, who wrote in his Return of the Prodigal Son, "I am beginning to see that much of praying is grieving."  I think he is on to something there.  I don't think Nouwen means to criticize our prayer life, but to say that a great deal of life is about dealing with loss, and therefore a great deal of honest prayer is about lifting that loss up to God, and calling on God to hurt with us.  Sometimes we ask (and sometimes we outright demand) that God "do something" about our hurts and losses, and sometimes honestly all we can do is ask for God to be present with us... and maybe even then, we realize that God has been there all along, but that we were not able to see or sense or perceive God's presence in that suffering.

We are, all of us, constantly grieving over the loss of different things.  We grieve when someone we love dies. And we grieve when someone we love doesn't die at all, but goes on living without us somewhere far away.  We grieve when someone gets a diagnosis that looks grim, and we grieve when the thing we had hoped for for so long doesn't turn out the way we want.  When children are stricken with some life-altering condition, we grieve the loss of what we expected to be the "normal" course of life, and when children grow up, move out, get married, and become adults, we grieve the end of childhood and the loss of the familiar, even though that is exactly what we call the "normal" course of life. You grieve when a voice you had truly respected falls silent, and you grieve when a voice you had respected disappoints you and won't be quiet.  We grieve the loss of "how things used to be," and more often we grieve the loss of our nostalgia-tinged memory of "how things used to be," when they were never really as great as we recalled. Some of those hurts we feel more acutely, and some are more of a constant dull ache in the background.  Some may be true losses, and some may be only the loss of an illusion that was never really there.  But we are all constantly grieving... and so it only makes sense that we would bring those griefs to God.

The amazing thing to me is that the Scriptures--like these well-known verses from Psalm 22--give us permission to bring even the grief that feels like being abandoned by God, and to put them right in God's face.  The Psalms, of course, are prayers--and yet because these prayers have been held onto as part of what we profess to be God's Word to us, that also suggests that God invites completely honest, raw and emotional, even accusatory prayer when that is what we are actually feeling.  God can bear it when we grieve--even when the grief comes out as, "God, why did you let this happen?"

All of this drives home for me that there is simply no place or time where God isn't already, completely and fully, here among us.  God is present in our times of feeling godforsaken, just as God is there when we are chasing after a million other lesser things and trying to get them to fill the God-shaped vacuum in our lives (that, of course, being the lesson of the book of Ecclesiastes, in which the author describes how ultimately empty it was to seek after money, reputation, romance, sex, power, and book-learning, and in the end, after grieving over all the wasted years chasing those things, that God gave him purpose when none of those things  did).  Even when we blame God for the hurt we are feeling, God doesn't run away.  And even when things don't go the way we wanted, or when we don't see what "good" comes out of how things go, the Scriptures dare us to bring all of that grief right to God, presuming that God is there to hear it... and to bear it.

And then, in the broad sweep of its story, the Scriptures dare us to consider something yet more amazing: that the God who bears all of our accusations of abandoning us actually takes those same words onto the lips of Jesus, in whom, we confess, both God and humanity take flesh.  Not only can God bear our accusations of abandonment, but God bears it when Christ himself calls out from the cross, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"  And in some sense, that means that God knows what it is to be abandoned and utterly alone, too.

Even in our times of deepest loneliness, God shares the loneliness with us.  Even in our times of most severe heartbreak, God's heart is broken, too.  Even when our lives feel like an unending litany of our many kinds of grieving, God grieves with us.  Yes, even when the shape of our grief is the lament that accuses God of being missing-in-action.

I don't know what particular things you are grieving on this day, but I think Henri Nouwen is right--that much of praying is grieving.  For whatever hurts and losses you are carrying today, know the promise of this ancient praying poet: we can bring it all to the God who grieves with us

My God, my God, come sit a spell with the world you so love, and grieve with us.

Bread and Angels--November 7, 2019

Bread and Angels--November 7, 2019

"But Elijah himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a solitary broom tree. He asked that he might die: ‘It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life, for I am no better than my ancestors.’ Then he lay down under the broom tree and fell asleep. Suddenly an angel touched him and said to him, ‘Get up and eat.’ He looked, and there at his head was a cake baked on hot stones, and a jar of water. He ate and drank, and lay down again. The angel of the Lord came a second time, touched him, and said, ‘Get up and eat, otherwise the journey will be too much for you.’ He got up, and ate and drank; then he went in the strength of that food for forty days and forty nights to Horeb the mount of God." [1 Kings 19:4-8] 

When you are on a quest to find God face to face, God is already there on the journey.  In fact, God is often the One behind the scenes making it possible for you to keep going on your way to see God.  

The issue, it would seem, then, is not how we get to some particular location or liturgical date in order to get where God is... but rather the question is whether our eyes will recognize the God who is present there already on the journey.

This is one of the things I find so comforting--and also challenging--about these stories from Elijah's life.  This is one of those scenes after Elijah has had a big confrontation with the king and queen and all their official government-endorsed religious-spokespersons (they are usually called "the 400 prophets of Ba'al", who were all employed by the Office of Public Liaison as Spiritual Advisors for King Ahab and Queen Jezebel.  After getting himself into big trouble by exposing those official court prophets as frauds who were just there to prop up public support for the king and queen, Elijah became a fugitive.  The royal family was furious at him, and they made Elijah into Public Enemy Number One (of course they did--the emperor always despises the one who is brave enough to say he's not wearing any clothes).  So Elijah runs... and runs... and runs... to go find God.

That's an important detail in the story.  Elijah isn't just running "away," but he is looking for a face to face conversation with God.  He needs someone to comfort him, to defend him, to explain to him why he's not running for his life after having been the good guy speaking up for the one true God against the powers of the day.  So he heads due south, until he can get to Mount Horeb--the other name for the mountain sometimes called "Sinai" in the Bible, the same mountain where Moses had met God face to face and been given the commandments.  Elijah feels like he's all alone in the world--he says a bit later in the story that he thinks he's the only one left who is faithful to God and hasn't sold out to the king for a cushy position endorsing the government and the government's gods.  So Elijah goes to the place he figured you could go if you wanted to meet God.  He goes to Mount Horeb hoping for his own one-on-one conference with God.

But here's the thing: God is already with him on the journey.  And God not only sees his desperation, but helps him along the way.  God sends angels to feed him, messengers to speak to him, and directions to get him to the end of his journey.  Could God have just spoken to him right there in the wilderness on the way, instead of waiting for Elijah to make it to the mountain?  Of course.  The living God isn't tethered to shrines or steeples, and you don't have to go to the right mountain or hillside or valley to meet God.  Everywhere is a "thin place," for the God of the Scriptures--you don't have to go find a certain spot where the boundary between heaven and earth is a little easier to breach.  That's just not how it works.

It's Elijah who has the need to meet God in a certain spot.  It's Elijah who has some expectation that he has to go to "the mountain of God" to hear from the divine.  It's Elijah who isn't ready to hear what God will have to say.  God goes with Elijah--sending angels all along the way--but God knows Elijah isn't ready to talk yet. So God just walks along the way with Elijah on the journey, making sure he gets to the place Elijah thinks he needs to go.  

But it was never God who needed the conversation to happen on a particular mountaintop.  It was Elijah.

That's us, too, of course.  So often, we have these expectations of when or where we'll have "access" to God, when in reality, God's already been with us all the journey long so far.  We assume that we'll have time for God later--you know, "once the kids' fall sports are over." Or we figure we can best communicate with God "in the quiet of a nature walk," or "once I get to church on Sunday," or "when the house is tidy and everything else is quiet." Or we say, "I'm feeling really stressed right now, but once I get all the things I'm worrying over resolved, then I'll be able to reconnect with God and make some time to work on my faith." And indeed, it may feel like any of those distractions keep us from connecting with God--but that's not because God isn't right there in the midst of the mess with us now.  It's because we, like Elijah, have told ourselves we can't connect with God here--we have to wait until we get "there," wherever "there" might be.

That's our hang-up, not God's.  But the thing about the God we see in this story is that God is willing to both go with us silently, even invisibly, on the journey now, and also to make sure we get to that spot in the future where we are finally ready for reconnecting with God.  We may think it's only once the kids' schedule calms down, or once your social life is in order, or once you get past the third-quarter earnings report, that you can get back in touch with God... but God is there sending angels and bread along the way to make sure our souls don't starve in the mean time.

That might just mean that you and I can glimpse the presence of Christ with us today--even if all the other "stuff" of life isn't resolved yet, or still feels like a mess, or has lots of loose ends--if we will simply dare to  open our eyes and ask honestly how we've been getting by so far.  Where have there been messengers from God sent our way already--even if, at the time, maybe we didn't recognize the people who showed up in our lives as people God had put there?  Where have we been given just the thing we needed to get along for a little while, to keep us going for a season until we reached a clearing and we could speak with God again?  Where have we been helped along the way without seeing it in the moment--and might we recognize that today, even if we feel like we are in the middle of a crisis, or alone and brokenhearted like Elijah, or busy with a million things on the to-do list, or just unsure of what to do next, even in the midst of all that, the living God is there among us right now, and right here?

And even if we still feel we need to get to some future space or time where, like Mount Horeb, we can see God more clearly, maybe we'll spot Christ with us on the way too.

It was never God who needed to wait for an appointment at a special time and place.  It was Elijah.  But we can open our eyes to see Christ's presence among us right now, like a flash of light out of the corner of your eye.

Lord Jesus in the midst of our messes, let us glimpse your presence and know you are with us, making us able to keep going on the journey.

Through the Dark--November 6, 2019

"Through the Dark"--November 6, 2019

"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil;

 for you are with me; your rod and your staff--they comfort me.

 You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies;

 you anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows." [Psalm 23:4-5]

Don't confuse God for the light at the end of the tunnel.  No, to hear the psalmist tell it, God isn't waiting on the far side of the dark valley, but is going through it with you right now.

That change to the picture means everything.  The promise of the Bible is not that if we endure through the dark night of the soul, God will show up in the morning--but rather that God is there at midnight with us as well.  The promise is not that if we work hard enough to persevere and finish the race, that God will be there waiting by the checkered flag to congratulate us.  The promise is that God is there--here--now, while we are going through the slogging.

That means at least two very important things for the life of faith.  First off, it means that God's presence is not conditional on our proving how tough or persistent we are.  God doesn't wait to show up only for those who have come through the dark valley, as if God were simply handing out awards.  And God isn't afraid of going through the dark valley, either--it's not that God is too busy or too holy or too divine to bother with going through the dark valley with us.  The whole of the Christian faith centers on a God who is present with us now, not just in the afterlife, or when we get to heaven, or after the tough stuff of life.  So the psalmist doesn't find hope that one day he'll be out of the dark valley and then he'll see God, but rather that even when he can't see his hand in front of his face while he's feeling his way through the dark, God is there on the journey.  Rather than saying, "One day I won't have to deal with my enemies, because God will smite them for me!" the psalmist says, "Here I am, with my enemies at the table, and as you pour the wine, somehow I am ok, even in this uncomfortable situation."  It's not merely a hope for a future day when everything is rainbows and unicorns--it's an assurance that God can be present in the dark, or when you are surrounded by folks you don't like.

And that brings us to the second realization we can't avoid if we take these familiar verses seriously: namely, that God's way is not to prevent us from going into the dark valley, but rather to go through it with us.  God's way is not so much to prevent pain, so much as it is to bear pain with us as we endure it.  If we live our lives just trying to leap from happy time to happy time, like a kid stepping on the tops of stones poking up out of the water as he crosses the creek, we are going to miss the deeply good news that God is there in the water with us. And if we live our lives trying to avoid unpleasantness, or just trying to cling onto the distractions that make us happy for a moment, we will find ourselves stuck for a lot of the time.  God has not promised us that if we are faithful, we'll be rewarded with smooth sailing or warm fuzzy feelings or easy days.  We are not promised that we'll be beamed out of the troubles of life, a la Star Trek, and plopped down on the far side of the Valley of the Shadow of Death.  Instead, God steps into the dark with us, for as long as it goes, and promises not to let go of our hand until we are through to the light.  God promises to stay at the dinner party with our enemies and to keep at our side until they aren't our enemies any longer.  God makes it bearable for us to be in those unbearable places.

Realizing that will make a difference in big and little ways in our lives.  For one, it will likely change the way we pray, so that we ask less and less, "Don't make me have to face this difficult thing!" and more and more, "Get me through the difficult thing I don't know how to deal with."  It will do something to our courage, too, to know that we don't face any situation alone--but also then, it will mean we don't have the option of just running away from the things that seem scary to us.  We will face them, because God's way is to go through things rather than to avoid them.  And in maybe the biggest picture sense, we will be done with the bad theology that suggests that Jesus will secretly "rapture" away true believers so they don't have to endure a seven-year-long "tribulation" period before Jesus' triumphant return.  That kind of baptized-escapism is not only a recent idea (it's only been around for about 175 years) but it's bad Bible reading and terrible theology--it just doesn't fit with the God described here in the psalms, who goes through the valley of the shadow of death with us, rather than beaming us up to the skies in order to avoid it.

Today, it may sometimes seem like we are feeling our way through the dark, but we do it with God along the way.  Sometimes we'll get ourselves even more lost and even more work up--but God won't let go of us, not while we're in the dark, and not even when we make it to the light on the other side.  May that realization give us courage to go where the day takes us, wherever the road leads.

Go with us today, Jesus, through the valley and whatever else.

"Where Christ Is"--November 5, 2019

"Where Christ Is"—November 5, 2019

“But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus…” [Ephesians 2:6]

This is a lot of discussion about seating arrangements… but that’s a good thing.

Sunday after Sunday, Christians echo the ancient words of the Creed by saying that Jesus is now alive, risen from the dead, and "seated at the right hand of the Father." That's a pretty standard way of talking about Jesus now, after two thousand years.  Earlier in the first chapter of this same book of Ephesians, Paul said that Christ was seated at the right hand of the Father. And now, we hear him say that the Father has seated us with Christ. 

So... all right, Paul, I’ll bite: why should I care where I am seated?

Or maybe to back up just a step, what does it mean to say that we are already seated with Christ “in the heavenly places” if you and I still have our feet planted very much on the earth, and all its messiness, weariness, heartache, and trouble? Come on now, Paul, it sure doesn’t feel like I am in “the heavenly places,” not even on my best days. And the rest of the time, well, on those days, saying I’m already seated with Jesus sounds like a bad joke.

But before I get too short with Paul, maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt here. Maybe in saying that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, it’s not so much about a location I am currently occupying right now, but rather that there is a place saved for me, for us. That’s not just wishful thinking. It’s not the generic “somewhere” of the song from West Side Story, “There’s a place for us… somewhere a place for us…” which is sung between doomed lovers who don’t really get their wish for very long. It’s real. It’s specific. It’s assured. We are seated where Christ is, and “where Christ is” is home for us.

You know what it’s like to walk into a room and hear a friend say, “Over here—I’ve saved a place for you.” There’s a sense in which it doesn’t really matter where the seats are; it’s just the fact that they thought of you, and that they have now invited you to be wherever they will be. Nobody says, “I’ve saved a place for you…” and then points halfway across the room to a lone empty chair away from them. To be seated with Christ is a way of saying, “Whatever it is you are enduring right now in this life, you can rest assured that Christ himself is saving you a seat with him.” As Jesus says it in John’s Gospel, “If I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also.”

What an amazing thing to hear Jesus himself say, “I don’t want to be seated anywhere else without you, so I’m saving a place for you.” What an amazing love that says to us, no matter how much other people, other voices, let us down or leave us hanging, I have reserved a place for you. I want you to be with me. That’s what Paul is getting at here—even on the days where it feels like there is no one looking out for us, the living God is looking out for us, and has given us a place at Jesus’ side that cannot be taken away.

You will sit down in a lot of places today, I imagine, before the day is over. But as those seats change, know that you have a place set apart for you where Christ is, because he will not be satisfied until you are by his side.

Lord God, let us hear your promise of a place with you, so that we can face whatever places we do go in this day.

The Scope of 'Us'--November 4, 2019

The Scope of "Us"--November 4, 2019

"Now the eleven disciples went to Galilee, to the mountain to which Jesus had directed them. When they saw hi, they worshiped hi; but some doubted. And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am with you always, to the end of the age." [Matthew 28:16-20]

So... in the end... where is Jesus?

Well, in his own words, the risen Jesus says, "with you."  And of course, he adds the vitally important adverb, "always." That is to say, he doesn't just pop in for a minute, make his appearance for the photo op, and then beam up to heaven.  But presumably, with Jesus at least, always is always.  And that means Jesus has made the promise to all of these disciples to be with them all... always.

Now, before we even get to the billion or so followers of Jesus who span the globe today, let's just start with those eleven up on the mountain. Where is Jesus promising to be?  Who is he riding along with?  Which one of them is Jesus going to be with first as they head down the mountain... and then where does he go after that?

I bet you can see where this is going: the disciples are headed in different directions from here, right?  I mean, sure we know the Pentecost story from Acts that they all hung around in Jerusalem for a while until the Spirit was given to them (although, interestingly, Matthew doesn't tell us that story).  But basically, it wasn't going to be long before each of those disciples was headed exactly where Jesus had sent them: "to all nations."  Some stayed in Judea, and others went out to Samaria, or further across other boundaries.  Tradition says that Thomas eventually headed east to India, and eventually, other traditions put Simon Peter in the heart of the Empire in Rome itself.  In other words, even when it was just a relatively small group of eleven, Jesus had just promised to be present in places on opposite sides of the map... at the same time... always.

And yes, that really is the promise Jesus intends to make.  It is one of the upshots of the resurrection that Jesus is no longer bound to being in one place at one time.  Me, I've got to decide how to divide my time like you do.  I can be in Place A or in Place B at once, but not both at the same time.  I can give my attention to Situation X or Y, but if I try to give myself to both at the same time, I'll be giving everybody short shrift.  I can only be in one place at on time, and I can only spend my time one way, but Jesus can be present here and there, all at the same time.  He really means it.  He really can be with us, even going to "all nations," at the same time.  Always, in fact.

That is both a source of encouragement, and also a challenge we are going to have to wrestle with.  On the one hand, I hope the encouragement is clear.  We aren't in this alone.  We never have been, and we never will be.  We are sent out into whatever corner of the world we are in with the living and risen Christ at all times.  And that means, further, that there is no spot in creation that is so disreputable, so messy, so dirty, so broken, or so unexpected that Jesus isn't already there with us.  You can't go anywhere that Jesus will be afraid to enter.  And that also means we don't get to have the excuse, "But Jesus wouldn't want me to talk to those people..." or "But Jesus doesn't want to be associated with the likes of them..."  Jesus, it turns out, made a habit of hanging out with all sorts of people the Respectable Religious Crowd didn't like, and that never stopped him before.  

So, we're not in this alone, and we never will be.  Whatever is on your agenda today, you go with the living Jesus who makes "always" kind of promises, and who can back up those promises with the actual ability to be with you where you are, with me where I am, and with countless other people in countless other places.  That is good news everyday of the week.

But here's the additional challenge we can't escape.  If Jesus is with each of those followers, both the eleven from Matthew 28 and the billion or so today, then none of us gets to turn Jesus into our private possession or corporate mascot.  I don't get to say that Jesus is only with me, or only with my town, or my county, or my state or country.  He's not. He's with all of us... always. He said so. Jesus deliberately made appoint of saying he's not just "mine" or "ours" here where I am, however I draw the lines. Jesus insists that he is with Simon Peter in Rome while he's with James in Jerusalem and with the eunuch down in Ethiopia and with Paul in Athens... and he's with you as well as disciples half a world away.  He is with "us all"--it's just we don't often consider just how wide the scope of "us" really is.

If we take that seriously, that will mean we don't get to assume that Jesus is cheering for my land or my territory or my little world just because it is mine--Jesus is with me, but he isn't only with me.  And I don't get to assume that Jesus is only rooting for my immediate interests--even if I pray hard, even if I wish upon a star, even if I really, really want something.  Jesus doesn't just root for my home team--it turns out there are people on the other team who are asking for his help, too.  Jesus doesn't only want my town to get the new factory, either--it's not that Jesus rewards the towns that pray the hardest with the new job openings, or that Jesus only cares about the place where I live.  From the beginning, Jesus has insisted that he is with me, sure, and yet also that he is with all of his people, scattered all over God's green earth, into, as Jesus himself puts it, "all nations."

And that means then end of trying to baptize the tired old "Me and My Group First!" thinking we often try to wrap up with Jesus.  It is awfully tempting to say, "My side/my group/my team/my country should be put first, because we have Jesus on our side!" as though Jesus had not also promised to be with those on other sides/groups/teams/countries, too.  It is diabolically easy to try and prop up "My Group First!" by assuming Jesus is our exclusive possession--as though the risen Jesus is here with me, but NOT with you over there.

That's just the thing: we keep drawing new dividing lines and assuming Jesus is exclusively within "my" side of them. (And of course, we assume Jesus would never step a toe over the line, right?)  You hear it as "My country first..." because we assume, I guess, that Jesus isn't as fully "with" people from some other nation.  Or when that seems too wide, we make it my state first, my county first, my town first, my skin color first, my immediate family first, and on and on, unless it's just me on an iceberg alone, convinced that Jesus is mine and mine alone.  

But that was never the promise.  When Jesus promises, "I will be with you always," it is spoken not just to me, or just to the folks around me, or just to the people who look like me, or just the people in the same tax bracket or demographic group.  Jesus is with me, while at the same time, Jesus insists on being with "us all" even in to "all nations."  That was always the promise, and that was always how Jesus envisioned it.  

So today, go into the world, wherever Jesus has placed you, knowing that his promise still holds and Christ himself is indeed still with you.  But at the same time, we go knowing that Jesus is not any of our exclusive possession, and that he insists on being with us all at the same time... always.  For Jesus and the people who follow him, there is no more "Me and My Group First"--there is only the promise, "I will be with you--all of you--always, to the ends of the earth."

Lord Jesus, be with us, and let us see today just how wide that "us" really is.