You Are Chosen--July 17, 2024

You Are Chosen--July 17, 2024

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, just as he chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love. He destined us for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace that he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved." [Ephesians 1:3-6]

You are chosen.  

By God.  

Just as you are, and apart from what you can "do" for God.

That's what it means to belong to the people of Jesus.  Letting it sink in takes some getting used to, because it means recognizing that we belong apart from our earning or achieving or God's need to get a "return" on God's investment, but simply because God loves us.  We belong, in other words, because God's love says we belong.

These words come from a passage that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and which I'm sure I've heard or read myself more times than I can count over the years.  And yet, every time I stop and actually consider what these words are saying, I am brought up speechless--both profoundly honored and deeply humbled at the same time.

I mean, on the one hand, the writer to the Ephesians here has just made the audacious claim that the Creator of the universe chose us--you and me, and all the members of Jesus' Beloved community--to belong.  We aren't just nameless faces in a crowd. We aren't just statistics on Heaven's annual report.  We aren't just paying customers or club members in God's eyes.  We are chosen.

And part of what that means is the assurance that you and I belong to God regardless of what anybody else says or thinks of us.  If you aren't the tallest, or the fastest, or the richest, or the most up-to-date with technology, it doesn't matter.  If you don't measure up to somebody else's cookie cutter expectations of piety or respectability, you don't have to worry.  If your list of failures and flaws seems like it's a mile long, you have not lost your place in the household--because your belonging never depended on what you do or what you've done in the first place.  It has always been a matter of the living God saying, "I call you precious.  I deem you beloved.  I claim you and choose you to belong.

The humbling part of that same truth is realizing that God didn't choose you or me because of our talent, our grade, our accomplishments, or our usefulness.  God doesn't say up in heaven somewhere, "I need winners for my team--now, who can I pick that would be an all-star?" Rather, God loves us even if we've been the last-picked losers all our lives long.  God doesn't think, "I need someone with power and influence to further my agenda!" and then start recruiting Important Up-And-Comers to run for governor or senator; rather, God chooses the anybodies who change the world from their ordinary routines simply by letting their belovedness make them stand out.  In other words, God didn't choose me because of something God needed--there's not some skill or influence or power or wealth that made me appealing in God's sight. God chose me... and you... and the whole lot of us, just because God loves us. And love is its own logic.

The other thing we will have to accept, once we realize how we have been chosen by God apart from our skill sets and resumes, is that we don't get to tell someone else they don't belong just because we don't think they fit.  God has a way of gathering unexpected people, and they will not always be on my personal list of pre-approved acceptable applicants.  I'm not going to be on somebody else's list of "worthy" people, either.  But, good news: God isn't running a country club, and Jesus isn't looking for pledges for a fraternity.  Nobody else gets to vote me out of the Beloved Community, and I don't get to vote anybody else out.  It's about God who has chosen us and who adopts us into the family.

In a culture like ours that tends to reduce people to their achievements or prestige, it's pretty surprising to hear that God doesn't choose people because they are "strong" or "influential" or "important."  But that's the good news: we are Jesus' people simply because God has chosen to love us--not for what we can "do" for God.

How will it affect your day today to know you don't have to try to impress or posture, but simply to let your belovedness flow through you to the people around you?

Gracious God, let us simply hear your claim that we are your beloved, and live as though it is true.

Without An Escape Hatch--July 16, 2024

Without An Escape Hatch--July 16, 2024

"We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see--we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything." [2 Corinthians 6:8b-10]

I'm going to warn you now: following Jesus is going to mess with your head (if you didn't know that already).  Belonging to the people of Jesus has a way of taking your old assumptions about how the world works--what we usually call "conventional wisdom"--and turns it upside down.  Any one of us might think themselves crazy to wrap their brains around that new Christ-shaped perspective, except that we share it together, and we remind ourselves that we haven't lost our minds.  But still, it can be hard as a follower of Jesus to see our old ways of understanding the world getting turned inside out, and our former assumptions about how God works evaporate like morning fog.  In the end, though, Jesus helps us to see clearly--even if it means our old familiar illusions are finally gone.

One of the particular ways that following Jesus messes with our old thinking is the way we read God's presence in the world.  Respectable Religion teaches us a simplistic plotline: when good things happen to you, it must mean God favors you, and when bad things happen to you, it must mean that God is punishing you. "The man who is saved from the oncoming truck must be endorsed by heaven, but the woman who went into cardiac arrest across town and couldn't be resuscitated must not have been important enough for God to help."  Or, "The people in Country A whose stock markets are at all-time highs must be divinely blessed, but the people in Country B who are starving through war and famine must be under divine judgment."  It's an alluring and easy way to make sense of the world--the only problem is that it's not at all the way Jesus teaches us to see the world.

After all, we confess that the One who really is "chosen by God"--Jesus himself--was strung up by an angry mob of religious leaders who handed him over to the empire for execution on a Roman death stake.  Nobody stops the flogging from happening. Nobody prevents the crucifixion of the Messiah.  Nobody swoops in at the last minute to save Jesus from having to die.  He dies.  The resurrection doesn't erase that death; it only tells us that he was God's chosen even though he was utterly scorned and despised all the way to death without an escape hatch.  

For that matter, Jesus himself is constantly undoing our bad theology that assumes good fortune translates to divine approval and that bad fortune is a sign of God's rejection. Jesus himself rules out any claim that being safe and comfortable is proof of God's favor or that suffering is evidence of divine disfavor. The Crucified One himself refutes that sloppy thinking. He tells his disciples that the man born blind isn't being punished, even though that's what they assumed (John 9).  He tells his disciples that if they are faithful, they'll be persecuted, and that if all speak well of them, they should be more worried (Luke 6).  He announces that the really "blessed" are the hungry, the poor, the grieving, and the ones denied justice, while he calls out "woe" over the well-fed and well-heeled with their saccharin smiles.  And he insists repeatedly that if you want to be first, you'll need to put yourself in last place, and that if you lose your life you'll find it.  All of that just completely pulls down the old thinking of Respectable Religion down to the ground.

And then, if that weren't enough, the first generation of Christians found the same in their own lives.  The apostle Paul--someone clearly chosen by Jesus himself for his work--found that in his own life and ministry, he was regularly regarded as a loser, a failure, a recipient of God's punishment, and a glutton for suffering. But Paul doesn't see those as evidence that God is mad at him; he sees them as signs he is walking the path of Jesus.  By the time Paul writes to the Corinthians in these verses above, he has learned that sunshine and safety are not signs of God's approval, and that suffering and sorrow are not proof of God's disapproval.  He has learned that the old theology of Respectable Religion was all a sham. Sometimes the true prophets get run out of town or have stones thrown at them (this happens a lot actually). And sometimes the worst villains get away smiling and smirking. The cross of Jesus makes all of our oversimplification of God into a cosmic vending machine of prizes and punishments unravel.  And instead we see that God can bless and care for us in our sufferings... that God's love for us may not always translate to the world's definition of success... and that sometimes crooks lick their lips in triumph while sometimes the righteous are written off as failures.  Paul didn't just hear stories or teachings of Jesus to learn that--he saw it in his own life as well.  "We are treated as impostors, and yet are true.. as punished, and yet not killed... as poor, yet making many rich."  Paul had learned that the old assumptions of a moral universe of karmic clockwork, doling out divine protection for the "chosen" and heaven-sent suffering for the "rejected," were all bunk.  God's ways can't be reduced to a formula like that, especially not when the Anointed and Chosen One, Jesus, goes all the way to a cross rather than getting whisked away from the custody of the centurions or the crowd shouting, "Crucify him!"  Paul can no longer bear bad theology like that--because of Jesus.

And honestly, it's still hard for us to let go of the old reductionistic thinking.  Some part of us wants to be able to identify who is God's favored because they got rescued by the lifeguard (and therefore must have special purpose) and who must be unimportant in God's eyes because they drowned.  But Jesus and Paul both remind us that's not how God works, and if anything, God is especially present with the broken, with the hurting, and with the ones who have lost it all.  It takes a lifetime to learn to see things rightly again, after all the haze of bad theology burns off with the sunrise.  

But we do it together.  Paul keeps saying "we" about these experiences of finding God in the midst of suffering and defeat--he knows he's not alone as he finds Jesus there in the places of loss and hardship.  And because we face those struggles together, we can keep reminding each other of the unexpected, unconventional wisdom of a God whose victory comes through the magnificent defeat of a cross, and who brings life through death rather than a saved-in-the-nick-of-time close call.  

That's what allows us to offer comfort to one another when we are sitting in an ICU waiting room, wondering if we just didn't pray hard enough that our loved one ended up there ("That's not how this works!" we can remind each other).  That's what allows us to pick our feet up and start again when it seems like the cheaters and the crooks have won the day again ("It doesn't mean that they're blessed and we're cursed!" we can say).  That's what allows us still to recognize God's presence with us even when the chemo isn't working, even when the loved one falls off the wagon and hits the bottle again, even when the company says your job is being "relocated" without out in it.  Because we know that God's love isn't the same as getting the lucky break or avoiding the deer in the highway, we can trust that God's presence for good in our lives will be enough--even if it feels like we're losing. 

I don't know when you'll need that reminder, or where it will show up in your life's journey, but you will.  And on the day you do, know: we face it together, and God, we trust, will be there, too--even if it takes our eyes and hearts a bit to recognize God's presence there.

Lord Jesus, help us to see you and your presence in all things and all circumstances, and to face whatever challenges are ahead today together.

Alternative Community--July 15, 2024

Alternative Community--July 15, 2024

"Now during those days [Jesus] went out to the mountain to pray; and he spent the night in prayer to God. And when day came, he called his disciples and chose twelve of them, whom he also named apostles: Simon, whom he named Peter, and his brother Andrew, and James, and John, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James son of Alphaeus, and Simon, who was called the Zealot, and Judas son of James, and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor." [Luke 6:12-16]

Jesus' chosen inner circle of apprentices--the ones we call today the "twelve apostles" and sometimes name churches after--was a surprisingly broad mix of people.  And given that Jesus didn't merely just have a random drawing to accept the first twelve ticket-holders or names drawn out of a hat, that's saying something.  Jesus chose these people from among the larger cloud of followers who were interested in what Jesus had to say.  And so it is worth considering what it means that among the dozen disciples Jesus deliberately picked, Jesus gathered people from opposite ends of the social and political spectrum--and offered them an alternative to both.

Sure, you know the names and call stories of Simon Peter, and his fellow fishermen Andrew, James, and John.  You know the great catch of fish and the drama at the shore where Jesus says, "Follow me, and I'll make you fish for people."  We know that Philip gets a few speaking lines and Thomas gets least gets fifteen minutes of fame at Easter-time for his need to touch Jesus' wounds in order to believe the resurrection.  But two lesser-known names are worth thinking about for a moment today.  

Matthew, for one, is almost certainly the same man remembered as the tax collector, also known as Levi in some of the gospel stories.  And while tax collectors are never the most popular professionals in any society, in Jesus' time and place, they were especially vilified for selling out to the oppressive Roman Empire.  Matthew the tax collector isn't just working to fund the local roads and bridges. The money you paid to Matthew wasn't to fund your local library or school district--these were taxes that the Empire extracted from conquered subjects in order to fuel the Roman war machine and enrich Caesar.  If you collaborated with Rome as a tax collector, you were seen as a traitor to your own people, bilking them out of their meager subsistence and redirecting the money to the same armies that were harassing your neighbors, abusing your relatives, and beating up or crucifying whoever they thought might be troublemakers.  Of course nobody else wants to associate with Matthew or any other tax collector in first century Galilee!  And yet--Jesus calls him, not just giving him permission to lurk at the edges of his entourage, but making him his representative to the world, an apostle!

Now, maybe if you're Matthew the tax collector, you're tired of being estranged from your own kinfolks and looked down on by the Empire, but you don't know a way out.  Maybe getting out of being a tax collector is like trying to get out of a street gang or the mafia--and you don't even know how to extricate from a bad situation.  No matter what, Jesus has to know the scandal he is causing by including a tax collector like Matthew in his movement--he's not stupid.  Having Matthew as a public face of Jesus' movement would have made Jesus unpopular with anybody who hated the Romans (a lot of people) as well as with anybody concerned with looking pious and righteous (a lot of Respectable Religious people).  Jesus does it anyway, because his movement is big enough to include people trapped in a dead-end situation like Matthew's.

On the other hand, notice that this listing of apostles includes someone named Simon who was called "the Zealot." That's not just a euphemism for someone who is enthusiastic-it's the name of a partisan guerilla group in first-century Palestine. These are the brigands who have formed their own militias and are picking off targets they think are loyal to the Empire.  These are the people trying to violently overthrow the Romans, maybe with a dream of setting up their own independent kingdom and hearkening back to the "glory days" of ancient Israel's past greatness.  Some of them are the ones convinced that God wants them to fight a holy war against the pagan powers of the Empire.  And they would have seen not only the Romans as the enemy, but anybody who conspired with them as the enemy, too.  That would have included--you guessed it--tax collectors like Matthew. Calling a Zealot (or even a former Zealot) would have been unpopular with anybody who didn't want to incur the wrath of the Romans (a lot of people) as well as with anybody who saw the empire as at least a force for law and order (the Sadducee party, for example, seems to have had made peace with Roman occupation).  So having Simon the Zealot as one of Jesus' lieutenants would have cost Jesus' reputation from a different angle... and yet, he does it anyway.

This is the surprising, provocative, befuddling way Jesus operates: he gathers people who likely saw themselves as enemies and offers an alternative to the dead-end systems of violence and oppression they had been stuck in. People at opposite ends of the spectrum were not just permitted into Jesus' movement--he made leaders out of them! To Matthew the tax collector, Jesus offered friendship when everyone treated him as a pariah, and a way to live with himself without having to be Rome's errand-boy or patsy.  And to Simon the Zealot, Jesus offered a vision of God's Reign that didn't require a bloodbath of everyone deemed to have "sold out" to Rome.  Jesus offered a compelling and different way of life that freed people from the no-win choices they felt they could not get out of.  Maybe that's why the likes of Simon the Zealot and Matthew the Tax Collector were both drawn to Jesus, even though they should have hated each other: he welcomed them as they were, but also pulled them into something different than the oppressive systems they had each bought into.  That's Jesus' kind of alternative community.

Maybe that's what Jesus is doing among us, too--pulling us from the rotten systems and dead-ends we've been stuck in, setting us free the ways we've been taught to see each other as enemies, and giving us a new belonging that doesn't depend on having someone else to hate.

Maybe that's just what we've needed.

Lord Jesus, call us away from our old idolatrous allegiances that so easily lead us to hatred and hostility, and pull us into the movement you have begun.

A Playbook for Answering Hate--July 12, 2024

A Playbook for Answering Hate--July 12, 2024

"Then [Jesus] went about among the villages teaching. He called the twelve and began to send them out two by two, and gave them authority over the unclean spirits. He ordered them to take nothing for their journey except a staff; no bread, no bag, no money in their belts; but to wear sandals and not to put on two tunics. He said to them, “Wherever you enter a house, stay there until you leave the place. If any place will not welcome you and they refuse to hear you, as you leave, shake off the dust that is on your feet as a testimony against them.” So they went out and proclaimed that all should repent. They cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them. [Mark 6:6b-13]

Ok, let's just be clear about this from the very beginning: Jesus does not call people merely to learn the same set of facts about God that he knows. He is not recruiting students to memorize rules or propositions in a creed and then "graduate" from faith-school, only to forget it all over summer break.  Jesus is not interested in just pouring head-knowledge into our brains; he is gathering apprentices to live as he lives and to do what he does.

That's the key to understanding what happens in this turn from the Scripture passage many of us heard this past Sunday.  Jesus has just made his appearance at his hometown synagogue, during which he was met with a shrug of indifference, and after which a lot of his old former friends and neighbors walked out on him offended and upset. (As a side note, if you read the parallel story in Luke 4, it's especially clear that they are scandalized by Jesus' suggestion that God loves outcasts, foreigners, and enemies as much as God loved them.  But that's still the sort of thing that earns a person scorn from Respectable Religious people...) Anyway, having endured that rejection, he now sends his followers out to do the same thing they've seen him do.  They will announce the Reign of God like Jesus has; they'll cure the sick, and they'll cast out the powers of evil.  But significantly, Jesus has made it possible for them to attempt all this, because he's given them permission to fail.  After all, they've seen him fail first.  And I don't think that's a random detail or a sheer coincidence.  I think this is part of how Jesus equips his followers to find the courage to be vulnerable.

Imagine if all the disciples had ever seen before from Jesus was one utter success after another.  Imagine if every time Jesus spoke, he was met with nothing but fawning praise and a heavenly chorus in the background.  And then, imagine you're one of the disciples being sent out into the Real World to carry Jesus' message and heal others!  You'd be petrified!  You'd be scared out of your mind of either letting Jesus down, or not being good enough, or failing where Jesus had only ever shown you success.  It would make it intimidating to even try. So Jesus takes the hit first--he has not only shown his disciples the amazing things he can do, but he also models for them how to deal with situations that feel like failure.  He has gone into a situation he knew was likely to end with being rejected (notice how Jesus replied casually in the preceding verses with, "Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown..." like he knew what was coming), and he has thereby given his disciples a playbook for answering hate without resorting to hatred themselves.

That's precisely what this whole scene is: preparing his disciples for a particular way of being in the world--being like Jesus.  And crucially, Jesus' way is a non-threatening, non-confrontational, and decidedly non-colonizing way of being in the world.  Jesus doesn't send his disciples out to "conquer the world" or "take back the country for God" in his name. He doesn't even send them out equipped with lots of money or possessions to win over converts with promises of prosperity.  Instead, just like Jesus, his apprentices are sent out essentially empty-handed, daring to trust that God will provide for them through generous people who welcome them, and to trust that even with empty hands, God's power can work through them to help others.  They will bring only the power and message that comes from Jesus--no weapons to defend themselves, no cash to "persuade" people to listen, and no merchandise to peddle.  And that will turn out to be enough.  Whether the people in any given town or village welcome the disciples or not, their vulnerable presence by itself will be a witness to what Jesus is all about and what kind of kingdom he is bringing.  And in advance, Jesus has given them an example for how to respond to hostility without resorting to becoming hostile themselves.  They will know how to answer rejection without becoming bitter or vengeful, because they've seen that model in Jesus.  And that way, even if people reject Jesus' disciples when they come to town, the way they leave without resorting to violence or spite will be a witness to Jesus' kind of love.  

In other words, the disciples can be witnesses to the Reign of God either way: if people welcome them, the visiting disciples will show them the healing power of God at work through them.  And if people reject them, the departing disciples will show them Jesus' willingness not to respond to evil with more evil or hatred with more hatred.  Either way, they will be a witness to how God operates in the world.  Either way, their actions become a testimony to the vulnerable love of God.

And of course, this becomes the model for each of us as well.  Jesus didn't just send out those first disciples and then give up on the idea of his movement rippling outward.  Nor has Jesus changed his modus operandi, his strategy for being in the world.  We are sent out, too, as the people of Jesus, with the same approach of vulnerable love.  We aren't sent out to conquer anybody, and Jesus still has no interest in "taking our country back" (because Jesus' movement isn't confined to any nation, state, ethnicity, or government).  We aren't commissioned to colonize the world so that Jesus can build an empire. Rather, we are sent out as a small but potent presence--like yeast in the dough, like light from a lamp, like salt for the earth.

So we go out into the world--not only on faraway mission trips (which can feel like baptized tourism), but right in our own neighborhoods.  We go as a distinctive presence, showing love when people expect hatred or indifference... showing welcome when others would exclude or ostracize... showing gentleness when the conventional wisdom thinks it looks "weak" or "foolish."  And that's because Jesus has called us not merely to know the things Jesus knows, but to live and act in ways that reflect the character of Jesus, all the way down to his willingness to be gentle, gracious, and vulnerable in a world full of mean.  Being a disciple--an apprentice, so to speak--of Jesus isn't a matter of memorizing a textbook of correct answers for a test, but rather learning how to practice a playbook to answer the hate and indifference of the world with a love that catches everybody by surprise.  And to live out those practices, we need nothing but open and empty hands.

What will it look like for us today?

Lord Jesus, send us out into the routines of this day in the places where we find ourselves, embodying your kind of vulnerable love.

A Graceful Exit--July 11, 2024

A Graceful Exit--July 11, 2024

"[Jesus] left that place and came to his hometown, and his disciples followed him. On the sabbath he began to teach in the synagogue, and many who heard him were astounded. They said, 'Where did this man get all this? What is this wisdom that has been given to him? What deeds of power are being done by his hands! Is not this the builder, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon, and are not his sisters here with us?' And they took offense at him. Then Jesus said, 'Prophets are not without honor, except in their hometown, and among their own kin, and in their own house.' And he could do not need of power there, except that he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them. And he was amazed at their unbelief." [Mark 6:1-6a]

Jesus doesn't slam the door behind him or burn the bridges as he leaves.  He leaves open the possibility of connection, even when he's been met with rejection, offense, and disappointment.  In other words, even when Jesus has been shown disrespect and disdain, he still knows how to make a graceful exit.

Both halves of that are important. Jesus does leave his hometown when his old neighbors and friends "take offense" at him, rather than insisting that they all become his disciples or accept his teaching. They have shrugged at his invitation, and Jesus is not selling anything or recruiting members for a club. But he leaves without bitterness--and ultimately, it's the people's "unbelief" that prevents him from healing and helping them, not Jesus' unwillingness or grudge-holding.  We don't know much about whether any of those former neighbors from Nazareth ever changed their minds about Jesus and became disciples, or eventually joined the Christian community, but it does seem clear that Jesus left the door open as he went on his way.

You might well recall that there's a story in the gospels of another occasion when Jesus meets with rejection in a town of foreigners (Jesus happens to have taken his disciples through Samaria on his way to Jerusalem). In response, some of his disciples ask Jesus if he wants them to call down fire from heaven to destroy their town--something of a "That'll teach 'em!" sort of a kiss-off dripped in spite. And Jesus immediately scolds, not the townspeople who rejected him, but the disciples who proposed this violent retaliation.  Jesus just goes on his way, without a curse on his lips or a threatening gesture from his hands.  He makes the graceful exit, even when the folks who have rejected him are even less connected to him than his hometown audience here in Mark 6.

And while we're on the subject, we should probably recall the gigantic plot twist in the life of Saul of Tarsus, who was one of the first and most ferocious persecutors of the early Christian movement (back when we were just called "The Way").  Saul was on the way to Damascus, clutching arrest warrants and official permission to round up Christians and bring them, bound, back to Jerusalem for likely torture, beating, or stoning (Paul had been the same one who happily held everyone's coats when the lynch mob killed Stephen the first martyr in Acts 7).  And even though Saul had not only actively rejected Jesus but also was in the act of hunting Jesus' followers, Jesus did not give up on Saul.  The risen Christ appeared to Saul on the road, knocked him off his high horse, and called to him.  And of course, the zealous persecutor ends up becoming the most fervent apostle and evangelist for Jesus the early church knew--going by the name of Paul, and eventually writing about half of the New Testament. Even Jesus' clear enemies are not zapped with spite by Jesus; rather, his vulnerability gives him the ability to get through to those enemies and turn them into friends.

Jesus might have made a convincing case that any or all of these were people he had a "right" to hate and to exclude forever.  But he doesn't give up on any of them--not his old neighbors in Nazareth, not the strangers in Samaria, and not even his declared enemy on the way to Damascus.  And that seems to be, not because he is too timid to be spiteful, not because he isn't clever enough to get in some I-told-you-sos against the people who have wronged him, but because Jesus knows that leaving the door open just might be the thing that lets people change their minds and take up the offer of grace that they had once rejected.

That's important for us to be clear about, because sadly, I see and hear all too many loud voices, brandishing the name of "Christian," who want to turn Jesus into their mascot for pettiness and vindictiveness and claim his blessing on it.  Recently, I heard a nationally-known celebri-pastor give a speech (I can't call it a sermon) where he chided his audience, "We cannot afford to be beautiful losers... I want to win. I want to reward my friends and crush my enemies." And it just hit me how that whole way of thinking fits completely with what the world calls "conventional wisdom," and yet how it runs completely opposite of the actual way of Jesus, who models for us a graceful alternative. Jesus doesn't crush his enemies.  He doesn't give perks just to his "friends." Even when they're running him out of town, he leaves the door open for them.

Sometimes, by refusing to be spiteful, even when folks are rejecting you, you give enough breathing room for an enemy to turn into a friend.  You never know...

Lord Jesus, enable us to leave doors open with others where you have first shown the way.

The Beauty of Being Rejectable--July 10, 2024

The Beauty of Being Rejectable--July 10, 2024

[God said to Ezekiel:] "Whether they hear or refuse to hear (for they are a rebellious house), they shall know that there has been a prophet among them." [Ezekiel 2:5]

For the people of God, vulnerability isn't a bug--it's a feature. It's not a flaw to be fixed, but a gift to be honored. The risk of being rejected--and putting ourselves out there in the world anyway--isn't something to be ashamed of or to blush at; it's the way we model God's own kind of love.  And God, as the storytelling keeps reminding us, risks loving us despite our repeated rejections, rebellion, and rottenness.  So of course, the people God raises up to speak a word on God's behalf are going to model that same kind of vulnerability.  That way, no matter how the people respond ("whether they hear or refuse to hear"), it will be obvious and "they shall know that there has been a prophet among them."  The capacity to be rejected actually reveals something about who God is and how God operates.

I want to sit with that for a moment here, because it really is surprising--and most definitely counter-cultural compared to the ways we typically act God or God's spokespersons to act.  We live in a time and place in which an awful lot of Respectable Religious Folks think it's our job to force our faith onto other people.  If others won't listen when we gently offer, then we'll have to mandate our message and require people by law to accept it!  It's terribly tempting to believe that God needs us to legislate that everyone listen to us and then enforce compliance to our religious agenda.  The only trouble is... that's the exact opposite of God's way to reach people.

It's worth remembering that in ancient Israel, the prophets had absolutely zero political power.  Being a prophet wasn't a government office or royal position, and it wasn't even connected with being a priest at the Temple. Ezekiel doesn't have some kind of "Project 605BC" agenda to enforce, and he isn't trying to pull the strings in the palace to codify his message into law. The prophets didn't issue legislative decrees or official proclamations--they were voices from the margins who couldn't "make" anybody do anything.  That's not how God operates.

Instead, Ezekiel is sent to only to speak, only to offer a minority report. The prophet's calling is to tell a different story from the official party line, a counter-narrative to the propaganda coming from the palace and the marketplace... and even from the temple.  But all the prophet is given to do that is a voice, not a cudgel.  The people may listen, or the people may reject--the prophet cannot and will not enforce God's message with threats or prosecute the ones who won't listen.  And if the people reject the prophet, even then the willingness to bear that rejection points to the character of God.  

That's how our witness is supposed to work.  It's not just the words we say, but the way we say them, that speaks of God.  It's not just the message we preach, but whether the lives we live convey the love we think we are talking about.  It's not merely having "the right answers" that makes us messengers for God--it's whether we can offer ourselves vulnerably to the world, the way God is vulnerable to the world first.  God constantly risks that humans will reject and rebel--and God's persistent refusal to give up on us nevertheless is part of how we come to see the depths of God's love.  In the same way, prophets like Ezekiel, as well as the people of God today, are called, not to use force or legislative mandates to get our way, but to speak what God has laid on our hearts to speak and to risk the possibility of rejection.  Either way, as the prophet says, "the people will know that there has been a prophet among them." 

Today, our calling is not to intimidate our neighbors into believing what we believe, attending our church, or accepting our morality.  Our calling as the people of Jesus is to embody the way God loves the world with compelling vulnerability--and God loves the world risking rejection.  As Madeleine L'Engle put it so beautifully, “We draw people to Christ not by loudly discrediting what they believe, by telling them how wrong they are and how right we are, but by showing them a light that is so lovely that they want with all their hearts to know the source of it.”  That's how prophets get others' attention.  That's how we show people what God is like--and how God gets through to us even at our most stubborn.

Who today might be waiting for you to speak a word from God into their lives with surprising, even captivating, gentleness?  And if we are freed from the fear of being rejected, what's stopping us?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to be vulnerable in our witness, as you have shown us the heart of God in your own vulnerability.

A Thing for Rebels--July 9, 2024

A Thing for Rebels--July 9, 2024

[The voice of God] "said to me, Mortal, I am sending you to the people of Israel, to a nation of rebels who have belled against me; they and their ancestors have transgressed against me to this very day. The descendants are impudent and stubborn. I am sending you to them, and you shall say to them, 'Thus says the Lord GOD'." [Ezekiel 2:3-4]

It turns out that God has a thing for rebels.  Or maybe, more accurately, God has a soft spot for the covenant people of God, and it means that God will stick with them and keep bearing with them even though they have a track record of rebellion, stubbornness, and being just plain ornery.

I need to make that clarification, because I don't mean to say that God likes it when we rebel or turn away.  This is nothing like the "Good Girl in the poodle skirt falls in love with Bad Boy in the leather jacket" trope of movies from the 50s. It's not that God gets infatuated with rulebreakers because they are cool or mysterious or provocative. And it's not like the Star Wars movies where being part of the "rebellion" is actually being on the side of goodness, justice, and freedom from the Evil Empire. It's more that God loves us as we are, and that means God has made the choice to love us even when we are in the act of rebellion, even when we have covered our ears, and even when we have turned away from God.  God has a thing for us... even when we've been heart-hearted and hateful in response.

That's one of things I really love about the way our friend Ezekiel tells the story of his calling as a prophet, here in these words many of us heard this past Sunday.  Ezekiel knows he's being set up for rejection, and that by most accounts he will look like a failure.  Ezekiel is one in a long line of prophets and truth-tellers God had raised up to call the people back to faithfulness, to justice and mercy, and to loving God and neighbor.  And ol' Zeke knows that the message of prophets had never gone over very well with the people.  Most prophets were ignored and shunned at best, or run out of town or killed at worst.  

And most of the time, people didn't listen to what God had to say through the prophets. Going back to their earliest memories in the collective storytelling of Israel's history, the people of God remembered their own story as one of repeated stubbornness, constant defiance of God's good will, and repeatedly turning away to other, lesser loves--the gods and idols of the nations, their own wealth or military power, or the lure of a powerful nearby empire as their protector, and usually all of the above.  In other words, God didn't keep bearing with the people of Israel because their track record was typically good, except for a few occasional lapses in judgment; God kept bearing with them in spite of the fact that they kept blowing it and repeatedly dishonored and disrespected God.  So neither God, nor the prophet Ezekiel, is under any illusions that the people will be eager to obey this time around.  Past experience tells both God and the prophet to be prepared to meet with rejection yet again.

And yet... God doesn't give up.  And so neither does Ezekiel.  

There is something deeply beautiful about the way God keeps loving us, despite the fact that we keep rejecting God's love and rebelling against God's good ways.  It's an unrequited love story, but it's a love story all the same.  And for whatever else we might say about "the people of God," we have to at least admit that God's people are not known for their faithfulness to God.  Just the other way around, actually: it's God's faithfulness to the people that makes them God's people, not our reputation of good behavior.

In a way, then, it shouldn't surprise us at all that Jesus makes such a point of surrounding himself with notorious "sinners," sellouts, mess-ups, and scandalous outcasts.  Jesus doubles down on God's approach from centuries before, deliberately seeking after the people who have consistently rejected God's ways and run away from God's goodness.  Jesus' kind of people are sinners, because that's the only kind of people there are.  And our belonging doesn't depend on our track record of faithfulness, but on Jesus' consistent love.

To be sure, there's a place for us to have a conversation about why and how that kind of love does change us.  And certainly, God's desire is NOT for the people to keep rebelling and ignoring God's good directions for their lives.  God wants the people to choose wisely and well, and God wants them to say "Yes" to mercy and justice and goodness and neighborly love.  But it's worth noting that Ezekiel goes out to his people with that message, knowing full well that it's likely to be answer with a door slammed in his face or a bunch of angry rock-throwers.  And yet he goes anyway, because that's the way God loves: vulnerably, persistently, and faithfully risking that the people will be rebels once again.

Before we worry about what we're supposed to do or how we are supposed to act and look like "holy" people, this is where we begin: as people who are relentlessly loved even when we are repeatedly rebellious.  And our belonging as God's people has everything to do with God's choice to claim us, rather than our attempts to earn a spot on the team.

That's just the way God's love works--God has a thing for rebels.

Lord God, let your love find us where we are and as we are, and let it turn us back to you away from our rotten rebellions.