A God Who Is Willing to Wait--February 15, 2023

A God Who Is Willing to Wait--February 15, 2023

[Jesus said:] "So when you are offering your gift at the altar, if you remember that your brother or sister has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother or sister, and then come and offer your gift." [Matthew 5:23-24]

In my ever-growing list of reasons I love Jesus, here’s a new one… or maybe, one I had never thought about until now: Jesus takes the usual rules of the day and turns them inside out.

Like passing the buck. Jesus takes our conventional wisdom that it is smart to pass blame off to somebody else and just keep your head down hoping nobody will notice when you mess up, and he turns it on its head. Jesus would have us go even beyond Harry Truman’s famous, “The buck stops here,” to something even more radical… something like intentionally reaching for the “buck” and going out of our way to make things right with people, even when it means admitting we are the ones at fault.  That's the opposite of boasting--that's racing to own up to our failures and flaws, rather than bragging about our strengths and successes.  Because Jesus' kind of love is like that.

How radical is that? Seriously, it’s a hard enough thing to go to reconcile with someone else when you are the one who was wronged, often because we don’t want to give the other person the satisfaction of feeling let off the hook. Come on, admit it—sometimes you just want to leave the other person to twist in the wind a little bit, and to make them hold their breath before you consider forgiving them. Or maybe we decide, “I’ll think about putting this behind us… if they come to me first asking for forgiveness. But I need to see them with their tails between their legs first.” We have a hard time getting up the nerve to seek reconciliation when we are the ones in the more powerful position of being forgivers.

It’s even harder to imagine going out of our way to call attention to the fact that I am the one who messed up. Isn’t it? That means taking the risk of going to ask for forgiveness—and the risk of hearing the other person say, “no.” It means owning responsibility for things we would rather try and pass off on someone else or pretend aren’t wrong. It means the possibility that others will see me going to seek forgiveness and that I might lose face in their eyes, too.  Again, in a culture like ours where conventional wisdom says to attack your opponents and highlight their failures but never to admit when you were wrong, it is utterly upside-down that Jesus calls us to love people well by doing the opposite: to be the first to admit our wrongdoing and to seek to make things right.

But that is just what Jesus does. Jesus dares us to be the kind of people who break the cycle of passing the buck, and simply to go make amends, rather than playing the "what-about-ism" game where we lash out at the ones we don't like with, "Well, what about when YOU did that? What about when THEY said this?" Of course, Jesus knows us well enough to see that we do that as a tactic for avoiding having to face up to our failures. So he calls us out on it, and says, in effect, "You be the one to take the first step. You be the one to take the risk. You be the one who stops running away from responsibility and the reality of the past, and you be the one to face it."  That’s tough. Beautiful to imagine, if we could be such people of such honest love, but tough.

And then Jesus pushes further. Or at least he ups the ante. Jesus doesn’t just dare his followers to “be reconciled to your brother or sister” when you are the one who has something to apologize for. He tells us to do it before we even go to offer our gifts to God. Ooooh. That’s tougher still.

Think of what it means: we cannot separate our “vertical” relationship to God from our “horizontal” relationships with other people. Jesus will not let us. He has welded them together (or nailed them, if you like) into a cross, such that there is no way I can delude myself into thinking God can be bought off with offerings while I am a jerk to my neighbor. Love of God goes hand-in-glove with love of neighbor, and so if I have wronged my neighbor, I had better not pretend that I can fool God with an extra zero on my offering check while I continue to treat one of God’s children (whomever I have wronged) badly. If I remember—or realize—that someone else has a grudge against me, I should be the one to act, rather than waiting for an engraved invitation.  That's hard because at least when we give to God, we can tell ourselves we are being heroic--we think we have something to brag about.  When we have to postpone our acts of devotion to God in order to first reconcile with the people we have wronged, our over-inflated egos get punctured, and we see that we've got nothing to brag about, no matter how big the check in the offering plate is.

It's hard to hear Jesus himself say to us, "Hey, before you think of spending millions thinking you're helping God out or start a non-stop praise-and-worship-marathon, go and make things right with the people you've wronged and make those reparations first," because it's so easy to make our shows of piety about feeding our own ego, when Jesus wants to make us into embodiments of his love.  And to hear Jesus tell it, ours is a God who is willing to wait for us to do that--justice first, religious displays second.

Of course, Jesus also teaches us to be peacemakers from both sides of the equation. He tells Peter to forgive not just seven times, but seventy-seven times—and Jesus seems to be saying, too, that Peter had better be the one to go seek out the wronged party and offer the forgiveness, too. But now today, Jesus also tells us that when we are the ones who have wronged someone else, we had better set down whatever we are doing and go seek out the other person so that things can be put right. In Jesus’ divine genius, he sends both parties, the wronged and the perpetrator, running to each other, each seeking to get to the other to reconcile as quickly as possible. In your own life, whether you feel you are the victim or the guilty, you cannot control whether the other person will come running to you to make up, but from Jesus’ perspective, it doesn’t matter: wherever you are, you can be the one to make a peace offering. You can be the one to change the relationship.

I suppose it says something about God, too, that Jesus thinks God is patient and forgiving enough to wait while we go reconcile with someone else before we come back and give our offerings. God is not impatiently tapping a divine foot on the floor in frustration while we take the time to reconcile with the people we have wronged—in fact, Jesus says, God is perfectly willing to wait while we get things right with our neighbors, coworkers, family, and friends. God is big enough to let us attend to the other broken relationships in our lives before we bring our offerings. Why? Not because God is not important—but because Jesus knows that God isn’t impressed with our offerings in the first place. There’s no earning or buying or deserving with right relationship with God. Even on our best-behavior we are still saved by grace alone every day of the week. Delaying your offerings for a half-hour while you take the time to make things right with a friend will not make a difference in that.

So there it is. Jesus has flipped our old mental pictures of us and God upside down. Instead of “Hide your faults and failures from the people you have wronged, and maybe they won’t notice” alongside of “You have to go get right with God before you talk to anybody else,” Jesus says, “You be the one to take the first step to set things right with someone you have wronged—and go ahead even if your offering to God has to hit the pause button.” What a change. What a savior and Lord.

Kinda can’t help but love him for it, can you?

Lord Jesus, as you turn the tables on our old ways of thinking, give us the confidence in your grace and your love to risk seeking forgiveness from people we have wronged, and help us to be restored where we have let relationships become estranged.

Contributing a Verse--February 14, 2023

Contributing a Verse--February 14, 2023

"What then is Apollos? What is Paul? Servants through whom you came to believe, as the Lord assigned to each. I planted, Apollos watered, but God gave the growth. So neither the one who plants nor the one who waters is anything, but only God who gives the growth. The one who plants and the one who waters have a common purpose, and each will receive wages according to the labor of each." [1 Corinthians 3:5-8]

An awful lot of growing in Jesus' kind of love is actually learning to get over ourselves--or at least getting over our impulse to get more time alone in the limelight.  That's especially difficult for us in twenty-first century America, because we live in a culture that idolizes celebrity solo acts, but needs more symphony ensembles.

I don't mean that we only need more orchestras to play classical music (although I'm all for that), but more that our culture teaches us to long for the spotlight ourselves when we could really use more people willing to contribute their small part to a larger whole that brings a bigger beauty than any individual could have done alone. Our TVs run a seemingly endless parade of reality singing competitions where solo voices compete for one prize, but there's no primetime programming that shows the hard work and dedication of people working together to let each person's gifts improve the others. We teach our kids to want to be rock stars, TikTok sensations, or internet celebrities, when there is something so much more powerful, so much richer, that happens when my abilities can be directed to enhance yours, and yours can bring out the best of someone else's, in a great chain of collaboration. In short, we need an orchestra's worth of love, where violins are supported by violas, where flutes and clarinets each get their moments with the melody, and where cellos, basses, trombones, and timpani are glad to add their low notes underneath as well.

I say this with the recollection of years spent in the string bass section of the high school and college orchestra, and with the awareness that a lot of the time, my part didn't sound very good on its own, until it was combined with the rest of the orchestra. There was something almost miraculous about rehearsals where we would put things together for the first time, and I would discover how my little runs of low notes fit into the larger piece. I might have practiced my own part to play it as well as I could, but only when it was put together with all the other instruments could I experience the true beauty of the music.

If you ask a symphony musician what the point of their practicing is, they will gladly tell you that it's to create something bigger than any one musician can do alone. The best orchestra members aren't trying to grab the limelight for themselves, but see their work as contributing to something more than the sum of their parts. They find a joy and a purpose apart from how much attention they get for their own part, but for how the whole thing comes together. It's the same with the audience--nobody goes to the symphony and says, "Wait til you hear how the bassoon player plays a B-flat!" or "I only come for the third trumpet player on the right--he's gonna be a rock star!" You go to listen to the way each individual contribution becomes gathered up in real time to create something more moving and more powerful than one lone musician can create by him or herself. The music itself, and the opportunity to create something beautiful, is the reason to play--not the chance to become a diva or a star.

And if we can understand that same sense of the fullness that comes from each person contributing to the beauty of the whole without needing to make themselves the prima donna, we can understand Paul's sense of why we each offer our abilities and labor to the community called church.  And more importantly, we can understand how love works--because Jesus' kind of love isn't threatened or jealous of acknowledging what someone else contributes, or so insecure as to need to brag about its own importance, rather than just to play its own part. None of us is here to become a celebrity solo act. We are here for the sake of something we may each add that makes the whole more beautiful. Our individual abilities, talents, time, and work mean something, but the goal isn't to leverage them into status and to become a "star," but so that they can make something more beautiful that is worth creating, regardless of getting credit for it.

There's something truly freeing about that perspective, too--it means we aren't trying to do something big or important for the sake of getting noticed, or to earn someone else's approval. It's simply that we see the work of the Reign of God is so compellingly beautiful that it's worth each of us giving our lives to, without needing to be in the limelight for doing it. When you live your life aiming to get the credit, attention, or approval of others, you're bound to be forever unsatisfied, and every bit of effort has to be thought of in terms of what it "gets" you. But when you see yourself as a musician in an ensemble, you get a sense that it's a gift just to be allowed to participate and make your music. You get a sense that you are blessed to be able to get to give what you have to offer, and to see how your pieces make the whole better, while others' additions enrich what you bring. Rather like Walt Whitman offers in his poem, "O Me! O Life!" when he lays out the question, essentially, of why he (or anyone) should bother continuing on with life in the world despite its sorrows, toils, and weariness, the answer comes like this: "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

To be a Christian means learning to let go of the celebrity solo-act mentality, and instead to see that it is worth spending our lives building others up, strengthening one another's gifts, and playing our parts of the sheet music, regardless of getting credit or becoming a sensation. Each of us gets to contribute a verse, to be sure, and then we each get to share in listening to the verses that everyone else will contribute as well. That's how genuine love--the Christ-like kind--works. The music we create together is worth giving our energy and time for. Or, in Paul's gardening imagery, it's worth it, whether you're the one planting or watering, to spend yourself in growing something good and worthy and beautiful, even if you don't get to be the hero at harvest time. The goal isn't to point to ourselves, but to contribute a verse to the great play, to add our harmonies to the symphony God is conducting. And when we can ditch the tired culture of celebrity for that kind of life, we are not only free--we are more fully alive in Jesus' love.

Lord God, enable us to offer what we have and what we are to the new song you are bringing about while the watching world listens.

Jesus and the Excluded--February 13, 2023

Jesus and the Excluded--February 13, 2023

For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not of the flesh, and behaving according to human inclinations? For when one says, 'I belong to Paul,' and another, 'I belong to Apollos,' are you not merely human?" [1 Corinthians 3:3-4]

It is deeply immature--and at the same time disappointingly common--how frequently we human beings only know how to define ourselves in terms of who doesn't belong in our little group. We fracture so easily along different fault lines--family, tribes, and clans; language groups and ethnicities; political ideologies and party affiliations; and denominational or theological sub-groups. And quite often, we define those group identities in the negative--who we aren't, or who we don't want even to be associated with.

Spend any time at all in the institutional church and you'll see it with terrible speed and clarity. There was a time, for example (and for some it hasn't changed), when Lutherans would tell you their Lutheran-ness basically meant, "Well, we're NOT Catholic!" Not a positive statement of what DOES matter about the Lutheran way of being Christian, but only a negative--a line making it clear who DOESN'T belong. And to be perfectly honest, Lutherans today are just as likely to do the same now, but against other Lutheran groups. You'll hear things like, "Oh, we're Lutheran--but not THAT kind of Lutheran, don't worry!" and then you'll hear some straw-man criticism of whatever Lutheran group you don't like. "THOSE Lutherans over there are too liberal," or "THAT group of Lutherans isn't welcoming at all," or "THESE Lutherans won't let you take communion if you come there," or "YOU can't be a REAL Lutheran if you don't also have some German or Scandinavian heritage in your family tree."

It's not just my tradition, of course--although Lutherans have been playing this "us-versus-them" game for five hundred years, so we're quite good at it. An awful lot of Christian groups, denominations, and labels owe their existence to one group deciding they didn't want to associate with THOSE people anymore, and then starting their own little club. The Southern Baptist Convention as a denomination was formed when white Baptists in the American South wanted to preserve the institution of slavery in their states and would not hold fellowship with those who insisted on abolition. The African Methodist Church (AME) was formed because white Methodists wouldn't let Black Methodists sit with the rest of the congregation, and so they were forced to start their own congregation where their dignity could be upheld. In the 20th century, you had denominations split over whether it was permissible to consider the scientific data about evolution, whether it was permissible to use the study tools of biblical criticism when reading and interpreting the Scriptures, as well as whether women were allowed to serve as pastors and leaders. We are still splitting and fracturing today, with new issues threatening to fragment Christian groups even further--whether it's about the question of inclusion of gay or lesbian Christians, the political leanings of a denomination, how churches responded to the COVID pandemic, or what style of music will be offered in their worship. And so much of it, regardless of what the presenting issue is, ends up becoming an "us" versus" them sort of thing. So many times, one group leaves (or is forced out) because one group doesn't want to be associated with the other anymore... or even doesn't want to be associated with people who can tolerate being around "those people," however they are defining it at the moment.

One group breaks away from another and then basically defines themselves in terms of who or what they are NOT, and to read Paul here, it sounds like we've all been doing it since the beginning. These words from what we call First Corinthians, which many of us heard this past Sunday in worship, remind us that genuine love doesn't do that kind of thing.  And when we find religious-sounding ways to brag about who can't belong or who we are proud to leave out, we reveal just how far off the mark from Christ's kind of love we really are. 

Now, to be clear, it's not that Paul doesn't care about theological precision or that there are no boundaries at all for what constitutes Christian community. But Paul is really disappointed when we let our core identity be rooted in a prideful, boastful sort of division--when we draw lines of "us" and "them" and define "our" group solely in the negative terms of who we are NOT, or who CAN'T come to our club house. In the first century at First Church of Corinth, they were drawing lines based on which pastor they aligned with: "I'm a Paul-kind of Christian," or "I'm Team Apollos," or what-have-you. We're still doing the same twenty centuries later, but we've just made the names or rationales sound more sophisticated. "We can't be in fellowship with people who are like THAT," you'll hear. Or "If you're going to include THOSE people, or if you're going to include people who are willing to include THOSE people in their own congregations, well I'm going to take my offering check elsewhere." We all insist that OUR splitting is for good acceptable reasons, but so often they all just sound like the old "HE-MAN Woman Haters Club" from the Little Rascals--a group only defined by who can't come.

Of course, in the old comedy bits of Spanky, Alfalfa, and the rest of the "Our Gang" kids, it was meant to be ridiculous. We were supposed to understand that defining your group solely in terms of who doesn't belong is childish, immature, and embarrassingly foolish. The tragedy is that we don't seem to have learned to see how immature--or to use Paul's language, "fleshly"--that kind of thinking is. If you keep trimming away all the people you see as "them," before long there's nobody left to belong to your "us."  And it is the nature of genuine love to add more people into the embrace, not to repel.

I know these are days when it is so terribly easy to be polarized, or to talk about getting along in only naive and empty kinds of ways. I don't think Paul wants to gloss over disagreements or pretend it's easy for us to find ways to get along. But I also think Paul would warn us very strongly about the dangerous road we have already set ourselves on once we accept the terms of defining "my" group in terms of who doesn't fit in.  If we think we're being pious when we proudly refuse to associate with THOSE PEOPLE, Jesus would like to have a word. Jesus, after all, has a way of going and standing on the other side of the line any time we draw lines between "us" and "them." Jesus' love is never too proud to stand with the excluded. Or maybe, to Paul's point, Jesus has a way of showing us that "they" are a part of "us," too, whether we realize it, acknowledge it, or like it. It's Jesus claim that makes us belong, not whether anybody else says so.

Maybe today's a day to do some honest reflection on how each of us understands our identity--what is it that makes you you, or us us? What positive traits, commitments, or traditions do we hold onto, and why? How can we honor and hold onto the things that are good in our traditions, congregations, and communities, without becoming boastful about them--or envious about someone else's? And how can we move beyond the immature thinking that defines in terms of division and creates an identity based on who doesn't belong? Those are questions worth thinking about, and then maybe today is a day to reach across the lines we had accepted for too long as permanent.

Lord Jesus, ground us in your love, your way, and the identity we find in you.

A Case Study in Bad Theology--February 10, 2023

A Case Study in Bad Theology--February 10, 2023

"'Why do we fast, but you do not see? Why humble ourselves, but you do not notice?' Look, you serve your own interests on your fast day, and oppress all your workers. Look, you fast, only to quarrel and to fight and to strike with a wicked fist. Such fasting as you do today will not make your voice heard on high.  Is such the fast that I choose, a day to humble oneself? Is it to bow down the head like a bulrush, and to lie in sackcloth and ashes? Will you call this a fast, a day acceptable to the LORD?  Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of injustice, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?  Is it not to share your bread with the hungry, and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide yourself from your own kin?" [Isaiah 58:3-7]

Maybe it's the church nerd in me, but I really do think that an awful lot of the rottenness around us comes from our inability to really think through what we believe about God.  I don't mean to be a theology snob, but honestly, it seems like we human beings can be just utter jerks to each other while we are equally certain we've got the divine stamp of approval on our jerkiness, all because we haven't really thought through the things we say we believe about God.

And, boy oh boy, does this passage from the book of Isaiah have that on display in spades here.  These words, which many of us heard this past Sunday as our first reading, are one of those times when God speaks directly to the Respectable Religious Crowd and lovingly smacks them upside the head to get their attention with a message.  The people are intent on getting God's attention--they want help in rebuilding after the exile, they want prosperity for their businesses and their nation, they want security from their enemies, and they want to know they have divine favor in all their pursuits.  

And so they do what Respectable Religion always does: they put on a show... for God.  They pull out all the stops and play all the greatest hits: a ritual fast, signs of humbling themselves, covering themselves in ashes and rough sackcloth, and they bow down low as they cry to the heavens.  They put on a whole National Day of Prayer and Fasting, convinced that's what will get God's attention. And when they don't get the response they were hoping for, the Respectable Religious Crowd lobs up another petition to God: "How come you're not noticing us?  Why don't you see us doing all these things to get you attention, God?" 

Well, of course, that's Bad Theology Move Number One--of course, God sees it all.  It's just that God isn't impressed with any of that theatricality.  God knows and sees everything--but not just their performed piety.  God also sees the way these same folks who insist they are devoutly dedicated to godliness also ignore the needs of their neighbors, fight with each other, and take advantage of the most vulnerable in their community.  God sees all of that, too, and God is more upset with the ways the people are mistreating each other to make a buck, ignoring each other because helping would be inconvenient, and fighting with each other because meanness is easy.

That brings us to Bad Theology Move Number Two: it's not that God doesn't see us when we are trying to get God's attention, but rather that God DOES see everything, including all the things we thought nobody noticed or paid attention to... and including the times we aren't putting on a religious performance.  The people have sort of accepted that there's some kind divide between "sacred" things that God is supposed to care about [you know, prayers and rituals and fasting and the like], and then "secular" things that are outside of God's purview [things like business and everyday life and the Dow Jones Industrial Average].  And that just ain't so.  God sees it all, and you can't buy God off over here on one side with well-produced religious pageantry while you're cheating your neighbors or letting them starve without so much as recognizing they're even there over on the other side.  This should be obvious, but sometimes we human beings just don't think it through... and we end up trying to get God's attention with religion while we're also trying to get the same God to look the other way when it comes to our cruelty and indifference to the people around us.

Underneath all of this nonsense with a pious veneer is another vital truth that the people in Isaiah 58 had forgotten--or ignored--and that we are easily tempted to forget, too.  We don't have to "do" anything to get God's attention--EVER.  That's just not how it works.  Trying to get God's attention through public displays of religiosity is like thinking you have to buy access to the air you are already breathing, or trying to bribe your parents into loving you, when they already do.  There's NO way to "make" God pay attention to you, because there's no NEED--God is already completely aware and totally attentive to all of us, all the time. 

And once we're clear on that, then we can finally get around to a final corrective God offers here to the bad theology of the Respectable Religious Folks: since God doesn't need us to "do" anything to get the attention of the divine, what WILL we do with our time, energy, and effort?  To borrow the old question of the late Gerhard Forde, "What will you do--now that you don't HAVE to 'do' anything?"  

So God speaks through the prophet to answer that question.  Since you can't [and don't need to] get God's attention with all your holy hoopla, what things DOES God actually care about?  Well, how about taking that food you weren't eating [since you were fasting, right?] and giving it to your neighbor so they can eat?  How about, since you're going around dressed in all that pious-looking [and itchy] sackcloth, what if you gave some of your extra clothes to the neighbor whose closet is bare?  How about, if you're so interested in shouting up to the skies with a loud voice, you use that voice to speak up for the neighbors who are being taken advantage of at work?  How about, instead of bowing your head down on the ground to look devout, you unclenched your fists and quit threatening each other?  In other words, when you don't have to put on a production to draw attention to your supposed piety, maybe you could actually listen to the kinds of things God cares about and realign your focus on those?  Once you've thought through your theology and realize that you didn't need to do anything "religious" to get God's attention, you're amazingly free to spend your strength on the things that actually matter to God--and it turns out that looks like love. God never wanted or needed a National Day of Prayer or a pious pageant of self-denial, but God's heart has always been centered on love for the most vulnerable without fanfare or applause.

Today, then, what if we were done with all the things we tell ourselves will show our devotion to God, and instead just practiced love that looks like God's love--care for the hungry ones, the ones without housing, and the ones being taken advantage of?  What if we were finally done with religiously-dressed boastfulness, and instead trusted that we already have God's eye and God's ear?  What if we were less interested in putting on a public show of Respectable Religion, and more committed to choices that simply made life better for the people around us, whether or not anybody else notices?

Once we get our theology straightened out, we really do get clarity for what's worth spending our energy on, and what matters to God.  So if we are a little bit more on track with our thinking, now let's get our actions in line, too.

Lord God, remind us who you are and where your heart is, so that we can spend our energy and time in ways that reflect your love.

Good News for Losers--February 9, 2023

Good News for Losers--February 9, 2023

"And I came to you in weakness and in fear and in much trembling. My speech and my proclamation were not with plausible words of wisdom, but with a demonstration of the Spirit and of power, so that your faith might rest on human wisdom but on the power of God." [1 Corinthians 2:3-5]

I think for a lot of us, we like the idea of love as long as it's an abstract concept, but we start to squirm when we realize that Jesus' kind of love isn't compatible with the ego-driven need to make ourselves look "great" or "successful" all the time.  Real love has to be more interested in the well-being of the beloved than in getting a chance to boast about ourselves.  And honestly, that's hard to let go of.  We are so ingrained with our culture's lessons about how we need to "sell ourselves" and make ourselves "more marketable" that it can be hard to know what to do with a Savior who just isn't interested in being seen as a "winner," but who does care about loving people.

This is where so many of us get hung up with Jesus: we don't want to let people see Jesus as "weak," because we are afraid it will make US look weak. We don't want to recognize that Jesus' way is the way of suffering love, because it looks like weakness, or because it makes Jesus look like a "loser," or because we think we need to project being tough and powerful ourselves. Or at most, we'll treat the cross of Jesus like a special exception--that it was OK for Jesus to die on a cross, but that we are not meant to look weak, or foolish, or like "losers" ourselves. No, no no--we can't have people thinking we are anything but successful, strong, and sure of ourselves... right?  We need to boast about our greatness, so that we'll be acceptable.... right?

And, to be sure, sometimes that is exactly how the watching world looks at the Gospel. Ted Turner, famous media mogul and billionaire, once famously remarked that in his opinion, "Christianity is a religion for losers." And what gets me is that sometimes Respectable Religious Folk think it's the job of the church to prove that he's wrong, when I'm convinced, listening to Paul the apostle and Jesus himself, that he didn't know how right he was.  The gospel is about God's fierce and relentless love for losers, not a self-help scheme to make yourself look like a "winner." The problem is that so often we think it's our job to make ourselves look like powerful and strong "winners" to refute the Ted Turners of the world, when maybe the good news is that Turner was exactly right: the gospel claims that losers like us are beloved and claimed as we are, because God has taken the side of losers by becoming one just like us and saving the world through death rather than through killing.

The world's logic just can't process that--it can only imagine "winning" (however we define that) as the key to being important in life. And so, the world says, we have to show that we have bested someone else, dominated someone else, or have more than someone else in order to, you know, "win." Once we accept the world's logic, the crucified Jesus will be a scandal or something we want to sweep under the rug. We're afraid that if our Lord is recognized as a loser who died on a cross instead of the one doing the crucifying of his enemies, we'll be seen as losers, too. It's just as Robert Farrar Capon said about our secret wish for Jesus to really be an invincible superhero like Superman:

“We crucified Jesus, not because he was God, but because he blasphemed: He claimed to be God then failed to come up to our standards for assessing the claim. It’s not that we weren’t looking for the Messiah; it’s just that he wasn’t what we were looking for. Our kind of Messiah would come down from a cross. He would carry a folding phone booth in his back pocket. He wouldn’t do a stupid thing like rising from the dead. He would do a smart thing like never dying.”

And part of what makes it so hard for us to admit that Jesus' way looks like defeat is that we know we are called to follow that way. We know that if Jesus' presence in the world looks like weakness to the bullies and big deals of the world, then we'll risk looking weak, too, for following Jesus' footsteps. And so often, we are so terribly insecure that we really do care what other people think about us rather than about what Jesus has already said about us.  And when I'm more worried about whether other people envy me or admire me than I am about how I can love them, I'm already off course from the way of Jesus.  Like we've said earlier in this series, Jesus is so grounded in knowing he is beloved of God that he doesn't need to brag or boast or puff himself up to fight off his insecurities.  Knowing he is beloved frees him from the need for ego-stroking so he is able to love others even if they think he looks "weak" for doing it.

The apostle Paul gets it, too. Because Jesus' way is not the bombastic shouting, obnoxious boasting, or angry threatening of the ones who think they are "great", Paul doesn't do those things, either. He didn't blow into town in Corinth pointing at his own impressive status, or listing his advanced degrees, or talking about how much money he had. He came, in his own words, "in weakness"--the opposite of the smooth-talking snake-oil salesman, the podium-pounding politician, or the arrogant emperor. He came, not trying to intimidate or impress, but simply offering the news of Jesus, and letting the authentic Spirit of God show up in the Spirit's own ways. Like they say, good evangelism is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread--and that means acknowledging your own empty hands rather than pretending you are self-sufficient. It means letting our own weakness become a bridge to connect us with other people, rather than thinking we have to hide it from them.

That was Paul's approach to sharing the good news of Jesus with other people.  He didn't shy away from admitting his own weakness, fragility, and foibles. And that can become our model for loving other people, too--the honest and open sharing of the places that seem "weak" or broken, so that others know they are safe to share their own hurts, weak places, and wounds, and they won't be ridiculed, belittled, or kicked out because of them.  In fact, those very things we are least likely to boast about can become our connecting points--so that others can know that if Jesus loves us exactly at all the places we feel like screw-ups and losers, then Jesus' love will meet others there, too. It's another way of saying, "I've been a beggar, and Jesus welcomed me at his table and has shared his bread with me--and there's a place at the table for you, too." Jesus has never been ashamed to say, "I was hungry and you gave me food," too, for that matter. So we're in good company if we are at his table for beggars, which turns out to be his feast of victory.

Maybe there's someone you will cross paths with on this day who is waiting for you to tell them the same.  

And maybe today, we can be so grounded in the certainty that we are already beloved of God that we don't need to waste a moment trying to make ourselves look or sound more impressive to anybody else.  Rather, we can show our scars and talk about our weak places as a gesture of love so that others will know they are welcomed and beloved as they are, too.  Maybe that's what it really means to be the church--we are the place where Jesus' love is taken seriously enough that we don't have to try and prove we're "winners," so that others who have been told they are "losers" will know his love is for them, too.

Lord Jesus, let us own our weakness unashamed and unafraid, so that we can point to your way of meeting us in weakness, loss, and death at the cross.

An End to Spin--February 8, 2023

An End to Spin--February 8, 2023

"When I came to you, brothers and sisters, I did not come proclaiming the mystery of God to you in lofty words or wisdom. For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ, and him crucified." [1 Corinthians 2:1-2]

On the days when my faith is at its most wobbly and I ask myself why I continue to do my best to keep following the way of Jesus, one thing that grounds me again is the simple realization that the New Testament writers just do NOT sound like politicians angling for a bump in the polls. That's part of how I know there's something to the Gospel: it ain't a stump speech full of empty campaign promises or a televised spectacle of bluster meant to rile up someone's base.  

I say this with the awareness that as I write, we are hours away from another State of the Union speech and its younger sibling in our era, the official response from the opposition party.  And even before the teleprompters are fired up, the speeches are given, the facts given their most favorable spin, and their sound-bytes fired off for their intended audiences' most sympathetic news channels, you and I already know how the pageant goes.  This is as close to a national liturgy as we get.  We declare the "state of the union" is "strong"--and then we take different measures of either why it's already so strong [incumbents like to stress this] or what would make it even stronger than it is now [opposition parties take this tactic].  But either way, the So-and-Sos of both of our parties believe their job is to project "strength" and to cast themselves [and their respective ideologies] as the most capable, most intelligent, and most skilled ones to maintain that strength.  And so they compete in a game of who can use the loftiest words, or the catchiest slogan, or deliver the most punch with a one-liner, all so that the cable news networks can spend the rest of the week debating who "won" the night's messaging.  Forgive my cynicism in advance [I think that may be the gift and curse of my generation], but if that's not how the whole rest of this evening's crossfire of pontificating goes, I'll eat my hat.

And more to the point for us as people striving to love like Jesus, it just strikes me how different that whole bit of annual political theater is from the witness of the New Testament. In these few verses from what we call First Corinthians, which many of us heard read this past Sunday, the apostle Paul makes a point not to peddle empty promises or schmaltzy rhetoric about God or about this new religion he's come to tell you about. All he talks about is Jesus--and there is no Jesus other than the Crucified one, as far as Paul is concerned.  There is no sloganeering, no partisan angling, and no attempt to make himself look smarter, wiser, tougher, or more successful than he actually is.  

In other words, Paul knew that it sounds empty, shallow, and fake to try to persuade people on big promises or cheap appeals to being "strong" or "successful" or "great," if only you'll support his candidate Jesus for Lord in the next election. And instead, Paul focuses on the very thing that makes Jesus look, to the watching world, like he is a weak failure of a nobody. He centers on the cross. And he does not, not as some fine print he'd like to skip over or sweep under the rug, but as the very heart of the Christian message. God's way of reigning and rescuing the world is not through conquest or domination, not through PR victories or polling numbers, and not through the usual means of military might, economic power, or overwhelming coercive force. God's way of reigning the world is the preposterous notion of dying for it at the hands of the rulers of the day, absorbing the empire's violence into himself, and breaking its power in death and resurrection. It is decidedly NOT through the means of what we usually recognize as "success," "strength," or "greatness." And so Paul doesn't try to sell the gospel in those terms, because he knows they are just so much hot air.  That's because where spin ends, genuine love can begin.

It is easy to lose sight of this in our day, when so many voices confuse Christianity with the usual modes of getting things done in our culture. We are so used to Big Speeches making grand (and vague) promises of success, or loud angry bluster stoking hostility aimed at "those people" who will take away our strength or our power or our greatness, that we can easily miss how that whole way of thinking runs counter to the way of Jesus. And here the contrast could hardly be any clearer: rather than attempt to gin up support for a party's agenda with glittering generalities and vapid appeals to "strength," Paul zeroes in on Jesus the Crucified, the One whose way of saving the whole world (not just America, mind you) is the self-giving love and rejection of violence that looks like failure and weakness to the watching world.  Paul knows that the way God loves--revealed in Jesus--doesn't dwell in boasting about greatness or envious posturing to vie for power.  God's love is shown precisely through what looks like weakness, what looks like foolishness, what looks like... a cross.  That is precisely the opposite of the contest of spin-filled pageantry and politics that will consume the airwaves before long.

After hearing so many religious hucksters in my day who peddle a version of Christianity that sounds just like a stump speech, a State of the Union address, or a partisan rebuttal, sometimes I forget--the real gospel sounds nothing like those diatribes. The real gospel sounds like Jesus, the Crucified One, and it is exactly because of that difference that I find myself drawn back again to it and to Jesus himself, over against a world full of pompous pundits and campaign noise.  The real gospel sounds like love that doesn't have to brag.

What I need is exactly what Paul has given us: the word that God has saved the world in love by dying for it already. That doesn't sound like a campaign promise or a pitch for reelection--that sounds like news of something already accomplished.

What if today we spent our energy trying to sound more like Paul's uninflated genuine love than the talking heads behind podiums?

Lord Jesus, keep me centered on you today, especially over against all the noise and bluster around.

 

The Reason for the Light--February 7, 2023

The Reason for the Light--February 7, 2023

[Jesus said:] "You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light so shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven." [Matthew 5:14-16]

At the risk of saying the obvious, the point of turning a light on is to illuminate something.  

You settle down into your living room couch after it's dark out and turn on a table lamp so you can read your book, maybe.  Or you are driving down the road and want to see what's in front of you, so you turn your headlights on.  Or you are out walking your dog through the neighborhood and take along the flashlight on an evening, because you need to be able to see if there are any pet-related "deposits" you need to pick up along your way.  You can think of a hundred other scenarios, too, I'm sure.  But what they all will have in common is that the light is there to illuminate something else, not to be stared at directly--at least not for too long.

The reason for the light, in other words, is not merely to draw attention to itself.  You don't point the flashlight in your eyes and turn it on so you can bask in the brilliance of the beam--you point it into the darkness so you can see what's there.  And if it's too much, too bright, or too severe, it can actually make it harder to see--that's why you turn your high-beams off when another car is coming in the opposite direction, and why you avoid staring at the sun directly.  The light's purpose is to point beyond itself.

It can be easy to forget that in the age of light-pollution, blazing LED billboards that flash messages along the highway, and novelty "light-up" products from kids' sneakers to wheel rims to glow-bracelets.  We do live in a time where we use neon lights to advertise or attract, and where the glow of city streetlights makes it hard to see the stars unless you can get far enough away from the orange urban haze.  But in Jesus' examples, light is there to give itself away for the sake of what is not illuminated.  Light is there to serve a purpose beyond dazzling, distracting, or deal-making. The light is at its most glorious, you could say, when it is giving itself away.

I can't help but think of that beautiful fragment from the Persian poet Hafez, which goes, "Even after all this time, the sun never says to the earth, 'You owe me.' Look what happens with a love like that--it lights the whole sky." I think he's on to something there.  Even the sun, which dominates the daytime sky, isn't there to demand more praise or attention, but just gives its light away--illuminating everything else.  And I think Hafez is right to recognize that self-giving is "love."  The way light gives itself away might be the closest visualization we have of how love actually works.

That's what Jesus has in mind, too. To be "light for the world" isn't about making ourselves into celebrities--not even celebrities for God--but about offering our presence into the world to brighten places that are dim. It is about something beyond ourselves, something that doesn't need to draw attention to itself, but which makes other things visible that might have been hidden or overlooked.

Honestly, I wonder if that's not a piece of what it needs to look like in our time and place to be light for the world.  Rather than hearing Jesus' words as a call to aspire to stardom or "influencer" status that will make us well-known and popular, what if our purpose as "light" is to help others to be seen who are too easily forgotten, ignored, or pushed aside?  What if being "light for the world" doesn't mean getting more social media followers or airing our personal petty grievances in the comments section, but helping to lift up and amplify other voices that would be otherwise unheard and lost in the noise? What if the point of whatever platforms we have is to help lift up others, rather than to draw attention to ourselves?

Because here's the thing: the world doesn't need one more angrily entitled post about whatever culture-war talking-point I want to pontificate on, or one more self-absorbed video showing off that I follow the latest trend.  But maybe I can help call attention to the victims of a disaster who need more support from around the world, or to amplify others' good work that is going unrecognized around me, or to help shine a light on some injustice being done that everybody else has collectively decided not to notice.  Maybe in this day, shining my light will look like spending my energy, influence, and attention for the sake of others.  

Maybe being light for the world is really just another way of saying "learning to give love away in every direction."

Lord Jesus, let us shine in the ways you have taught us to--giving ourselves away in love.