Pilate, Barabbas, Jesus--April 15, 2025

Pilate, Barabbas, Jesus--April 15, 2025

"Pilate, wanting to release Jesus, addressed them again; but they kept shouting, ‘Crucify, crucify him!’ A third time he said to them, ‘Why, what evil has he done? I have found in him no ground for the sentence of death; I will therefore have him flogged and then release him.’ But they kept urgently demanding with loud shouts that he should be crucified; and their voices prevailed. So Pilate gave his verdict that their demand should be granted. He released the man they asked for, the one who had been put in prison for insurrection and murder, and he handed Jesus over as they wished." (Luke 23:20-25)

The contrast could not be any clearer. Empires are always ultimately willing to sacrifice truth, justice, and even the lives of the unjustly detained and wrongly accused for the sake of clutching at the appearance of greatness, but the Reign of God, as we see it in Jesus, will simply never sell out.

I keep hearing this scene from the Passion Gospel that many of us heard read in worship this past Sunday, and the difference between Rome's way (as shown by Pontius Pilate) and Jesus' way keeps reverberating in my head and my heart.  There is a stark difference between Pilate's craven tactics and the quiet courage of Jesus, just as there is between Jesus and the murderous insurrectionist Barabbas, whom the crowds have been goaded into asking for.  And so, Luke our narrator here holds up these three options in front of us, as if to say, "Which will you choose: the weak, cowardly way of Pilate, the violent, unhinged way of Barabbas, or the way of Jesus?" And here as the three options meet in the Roman detention center where both Jesus and Barabbas are being held by Pilate, the Gospel seems to add, "You can't have Jesus AND the other options; they are mutually exclusive." Or, like the band They Might Be Giants sang it thirty-five years ago, "You can't shake the devil's hand and say you're only kidding." 

While it is true that Christians believe that by God's power and design, the unfathomable evil of the cross has been somehow transformed into unconquerable good, it is also true that what is done to Jesus is unquestionably awful.  It's not merely a matter of physical pain or graphic gore (even though that's often what we might remember from movies about the crucifixion).  It's a matter of horrific injustice, and part of what Luke the Gospel-writer is doing in giving us this account is to highlight just how wicked the Empire is in refusing to release Jesus, even though its representative Pilate ostensibly admits that Jesus has not committed a crime.  Pilate, we are told, repeatedly says he knows that Jesus does not deserve this punishment, but he is ultimately more interested in keeping his grip on power--and the Empire's hold on Judea--than in doing justice.  Even if Pilate had insisted on releasing Jesus (something he could have done if he had any spine), Pilate was still prepared to have Jesus flogged before letting him go.  In other words, at no point is Pilate or the government he represents interested in seeing justice done or innocent people vindicated.  He is only interested in what makes the empire look "great."  Luke the Gospel-writer wants us to see that is a damn shame, in order that we might also see the way of Jesus as an alternative to the way of empire.

I don't want us to miss this choice as the Gospel lays it before us and compels us to choose, rather like the crowd.  We are so used to barreling through this part of the story to get to the climactic moments from the cross--the temple curtain being torn in two, the soldiers gambling for Jesus' clothes, the plea for forgiveness, the promise of Paradise, and the resounding declaration, "It is finished"--that we rarely stop to consider what is going on in the trial scene that leads up to Jesus' crucifixion.  And at least for many church folks, since we are quite used to hearing that Jesus' death makes our salvation possible, we are not as accustomed to reflecting on the utter injustice and rottenness of Jesus' trials, both before the Respectable Religious Leaders and the political puppets like Pilate and Herod.  But before we get to Golgotha's skull-shaped hill, it's worth asking, "Why does Luke the Gospel writer linger here and give us this tense scene, rather than skipping ahead to the Seven Last Words?"  Why, in other words, do we need to hear about the Empire's crass power-grabbing that would rather see an innocent man disappear than do justice by having him released?  Why do we need to hear about the crowds clamoring for Barabbas to be set free?  And why do we need to hear the flip-flopping press-conference spin-doctoring of Pilate who brags one moment about how important and powerful and influential he is and then insists he is powerless to stop the will of the ones who want Jesus crucified?

We need to face this three-way choice--between Pilate, Barabbas, and Jesus--because every day we make choices as well, about whose way of life will become our own. And all too often, we have either been pitiful cowards like Pilate, afraid to speak up for an innocent detainee, or we have given into monstrous violence like Barabbas as a means to power.  All too often, we who confess the name of Jesus on Sundays and wear cross necklaces to our workplaces in the rest of the week have sold out the way of Jesus for one of the other two terrible choices.  Luke compels us to see in this moment that we do not have to choose Pilate's bluster or Barabbas' brutality.  We who have been claimed by our Lord Jesus are set free for an alternative.  We are called to be the voices who speak up for the wrongly accused, just as we are called to reject returning evil for evil, just as we are called to insist on justice to be done rather than expediency or control. You and I will not find ourselves in front of a Roman praetorium, perhaps, but we do have the choice every day whose footsteps we will walk in--whether Pilate, Barabbas, or Jesus.  But we can't follow anybody else's path if we are following Jesus'.  

Every day the news reminds us that the choices of following the imperial mindset or the insurrectionist mindset are still very much live options, and it is terribly easy to be swept up into either of them.  It is easy to ignore when others disappear or suffer without hope because "it doesn't affect me directly," or because we tell ourselves they are unavoidable collateral damage.  It is very easy to justify hatred, violence, and brutality as "just the way the world works if you want to get things done" like Barabbas, too.  Jesus charts his own course, and his road parts company with the alternatives.  Every day, then, is a choice for us as to whose path we will take, and whose way of life we will make our own.

For too many times in my life, I have been a chicken-heart like Pilate, afraid to speak up to stop terrible wrongs because I was scared of the costs. And too many times, I have given into the raw hatred of Barabbas as well, only to find that empty, too.  The Gospel insists that there is an alternative--the way of Jesus--and that even if I have made rotten choices before, today brings the chance to take my place beside Jesus, and to leave behind the other options.

Today, what could that look like, or sound like, for you and me?

Lord Jesus, give us the courage to walk in your way, especially when it is tempting and easy to follow other paths.

Relentless--April 14, 2025

Relentless--April 14, 2025

"The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher,
 that I may know how to sustain
  the weary with a word.
 Morning by morning he wakens—
  wakens my ear
  to listen as those who are taught.
  The Lord God has opened my ear,
  and I was not rebellious,
  I did not turn backward.
 I gave my back to those who struck me,
  and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
 I did not hide my face
  from insult and spitting." (Isaiah 50:4-6)

Jesus knows the costs of being faithful to God's way of mercy and justice in the world--and he doesn't flinch.  Jesus knows the opposition he will run into because his way of being God's anointed (Messiah) doesn't look like anybody else's expectations--and he persists nevertheless.  Jesus knows that his way of saving doesn't look like an armed assault on the empire or a bloody coup to overthrow Herod, but rather looks like a cross--and yet he goes to that cross anyway.

All of this is to say that Jesus doesn't simply embody the way of God when it is easy; he endures precisely when it is difficult, and when the voices that had been shouting "Hosanna!" have curdled into cries of "Crucify him!" That's one more line Jesus crosses, one more boundary that Jesus' love overflows beyond as we have been exploring all this past Lenten season: Jesus doesn't only prove faithful when it is convenient or carries no cost.  He is committed to the way of God even when others bail out or abandon him, and even when his dedication brings him into direct conflict with the Respectable Religious Leaders and the Politically Powerful.  And in the face of that confrontation, Jesus endures their evil and cruelty without returning it.

That's part of why many of us heard these words from Isaiah 50 read in worship this past Sunday.  This poem, written centuries before Jesus' life and teaching, fits with the character of Jesus as someone who doesn't return evil for evil or give up on his mission, even in the face of hostility. Jesus would have surely heard these words read in the synagogue repeatedly over the course of his lifetime from childhood onward, and they would have shaped his own understanding of his identity and calling.  Jesus knew that being God's Anointed wasn't about merely showing up for photo ops or being a dictator. He knew that he had come to embody the presence of God's Reign, even when his message was rejected and his presence was scorned.  And he knew that it would mean the choice not to answer cruelty with more cruelty, violence with violence, or hatred with hatred.  He knew that God was calling him to endure the worst we human beings doing to one another rather than turning it back on us.  And he knew it because it has always been God's way to endure human rejection, hostility, and cruelty and to respond with steadfast love and fierce faithfulness.  Jesus takes that character trait of God as his own calling card, even when he knows it will mean a cross.

As this Holy Week unfolds, I want to ask you to keep that in mind. We'll hear again all the twists and turns of the saga, and how both the crowds and Jesus' own inner circle of friends flake out on him, and how in the face of it all, Jesus doesn't give out on any of them.  Jesus doesn't give up on his calling, not even when the throngs have left their palm branches behind to be collected with the trash, not even when his disciples betray or abandon him.  And when the powers of the day abuse and mock Jesus, we'll see once again that Jesus doesn't abandon his own teaching of not retaliating against evil with more evil, even when it might seem really tempting.  Throughout all of this week's storytelling, pay close attention to how Jesus endures, not merely when it is easy, but when it is difficult, too.  And then know that this is what our hope hangs on--the reliable, courageous, and faithful love of Jesus that doesn't vanish into thin air when the going gets tough.  That is how Jesus faces those who oppose him, and that is how we are loved, too--without fail.

And then as people who are shaped by this same love, we'll be called to ask how we will respond to the rottenness and cruelty of the world with the same relentless and courageous love.  Where might that lead us in the week ahead?

Lord Jesus, we thank you for the unfailing persistence of your love; let your kind of love become our own in this day.

Small Acts of Defiant Goodness--April 11, 2025

 

Small Acts of Defiant Goodness--April 11, 2025

Six days before the Passover Jesus came to Bethany, the home of Lazarus, whom he had raised from the dead. There they gave a dinner for him. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those at the table with him. Mary took a pound of costly perfume made of pure nard, anointed Jesus’ feet, and wiped them with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (the one who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this perfume not sold for three hundred denarii and the money given to the poor?” (He said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it.) Jesus said, “Leave her alone. She bought it so that she might keep it for the day of my burial. You always have the poor with you, but you do not always have me.” (John 12:1-8)

It was a small gesture, in hindsight.

Mary's act of kindness for Rabbi Jesus, that is. It didn't change or prevent Jesus from dying. At this point in the Gospel's story (which many of us heard in worship this past Sunday), it is no longer a question of "if" but rather of "when" the tension between Jesus and the political and religious authorities will ignite. (In fact, the scene immediately before this one makes it clear that the Respectable Religious folks are actively looking for a moment to snare Jesus, whom they see as nothing but a dangerous troublemaker.) And yet, even though this woman's act of tenderness will not stop Jesus from being executed by the state, it is worth her doing it anyway.

In fact, you could say that it is exactly because it will not stop Jesus from dying that her action is particularly beautiful. She is not trying to stop him from making the sacrifice he is headed toward making; she only recognizes--even if only in part--that he is worthy of honoring, and she does this small kindness to offer her thanks. And in a curiously beautiful bit of paradox, Jesus says she is preparing his body for his burial in advance. Jesus appreciates her gesture, enough to make sure her story and her kindness are remembered now forever. (And isn't that an equally beautiful bit of divine reversal? We don't remember the individual roles of the religious authorities who conspired against Jesus, but we remember this woman's small gesture even after twenty centuries!)

What I want to ask you to focus on for just a moment is that her action matters--it means something--even if it does not stop the terrible thing unfolding around her. Even if her action is offered precisely because she cannot stop the terrible thing that is about to happen to Jesus. She does not cast herself as some kind of action-movie hero, taking matters into her own hands to fix what is beyond her ability to fix. She doesn't take up a sword and spear to go on a killing spree against the religious leaders or the Romans to save him, and she doesn't try to make some sort of deal to smuggle Jesus' out of the region, either. But she does do something to bless and honor the life of Jesus, as he heads into the gaping maw of hatred that is intent on swallowing him whole on Good Friday. She takes the time, she expends the effort, she offers up the most precious thing she has, and she places herself in this position of unashamed, unblushing tenderness. And Jesus realizes what she has done--and appreciates it. He lets her act of kindness comfort him in this moment, and he receives what she intends as compassion.

Dear ones, most of the time in this life, all we get are moments for small kindnesses like that. Rarely can any of us singlehandedly prevent the terrible thing of the day that happens to be unfolding from erupting around us. And in those moments, it can feel like anything we do is futile against it. It can feel like there's no point, no use, in doing small things--small acts of compassion, small gestures of love, small words of honesty and truthfulness, small works of beauty. I know it often feels that way in the midst of turmoil in the world, unrest in the markets, unending wars in the background of our awareness, and the plight of displaced people near and far.  And against so many rotten things happening around us that seem beyond our power, it can feel like it isn't worth it to even offer whatever little acts of goodness are, in fact, in our hands.

But the story of Mary and her perfume bottle stops me from giving up. Jesus' response to her action gives me hope--or at least, a prelude to hope. He says that her actions do matter, that they are worthy of remembering, and that indeed, they are a small act of life-giving compassion that Jesus needs exactly at this moment. Her act of pouring out her perfume, Jesus says, is the only funeral anointing his body will ever get--because on Easter Sunday when the other women come to do the burial rite properly, he is already risen from the dead and missing from the tomb! In other words, her action here doesn't exactly set Easter into motion, but it is something of a foretaste of resurrection. It is a prelude to hope, even if she doesn't know it.

These small acts of defiant goodness we can each take each day in our respective worlds--they matter. They do mean something. They are, to borrow Saint Paul's way of describing it, not in vain. The time you take to encourage someone else in their endurance these days... it is worth it. The energy you put into being patient with a person or situation that is wearing you down... is worth it. The love you put into writing a note or making a phone call or reaching out to someone who might feel left out or left behind... is worth it. The dedication you put into speaking up for those whose voices are not heard or who have been silenced from speaking for themselves... is worth it. Not a one of these actions will "fix" all that is broken around us, or magically stop the rottenness around.  But each of them is worth the doing just because they are moments we can choose to bring others to life rather than to give into the power of despair and apathy. We don't get to save the world or die for anybody's sins--only Jesus gets to be Jesus. But Mary knows she has something to contribute because of what Jesus is about to do and to go through--and she dares to believe that her contribution matters, even in the midst of all that is terrible.

I pray you are given the eyes to see the same about the day that is in front of you. I pray you will be able to see moments where you can expend love, energy, effort, time, and caring for someone else and to bring them--even if for just a moment--a little more fully to life. It won't be a full-length, final production Easter pageant--but it will be a little resurrection you can bring to the world, against the tidal wave we sense is breaking on the shore. It isn't time to sing our Easter "alleluias" yet--but maybe, today is a prelude to hope.

Lord Jesus, call to our minds the remembrances of those who used small actions to do good because of your infinite goodness, and let us see moments for such kindness and goodness today, too.

Blazing A New Trail--April 10, 2025

Blazing A New Trail--April 10, 2025

"Do not remember the former things,
  or consider the things of old.
  I am about to do a new thing;
  now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
 I will make a way in the wilderness
  and rivers in the desert.
  The wild animals will honor me,
  the jackals and the ostriches;
 for I give water in the wilderness,
  rivers in the desert,
 to give drink to my chosen people,
   the people whom I formed for myself
 so that they might declare my praise." (Isaiah 43:18-21)

Call it the "Back to the Future Gospel."  There's this line at the very end of the original 1985 sci-fi comedy where Michael J. Fox's character asks time traveler Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) if they'll need to back up down the road in the time-traveling DeLorean he has built in order to get enough speed for the technology to work.  And Doc Brown's immediate deadpan reply is this: "Roads?  Where we're going, we don't need roads," at which point, the steel gray car morphs into a flying vehicle that takes off like a rocket into the sky, and then disappears with a flash to set up the sequel.  But I've always loved that line: where we're going, we don't need roads.  It always lands on my ear with a note of hopeful defiance of imposed limits, like he is utterly confident that the physical limitations of the world or the map cannot hold him back.  It is, as I say, very much like the word of good news from the prophet we hear in these words from Isaiah 43, as well.

Many of us heard this passage back on Sunday, and maybe again in worship this past Wednesday. And what I want to ask us to hear in them right now is that same Doc-Brown-like sense of boundary-breaking.  This is very much a "Where we're going, we don't need roads..." word from God, and it is spoken to people who have just about lost their hope.  What the prophet does in Isaiah 43 is to speak a new possibility that God can make when the circumstances seem impossible.  He says that dead-end of exile isn't really the end, after all, because God is powerful enough... and free enough... and good enough... to create a way back home even when there are no roads to take them there.

This passage comes from a section of the collection of oracles and poems we call Isaiah that is addressed to the people who had lived through exile in Babylon.  The invading Babylonians had destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, leveled the city's walls, fortifications, and important buildings, and then carried away the best and the brightest of Judean society to become displaced subjects of the Empire. The generation that went through the exile had seen a hostile empire kidnap and detain whole groups of people on the whim of its egomaniacal king, without any reason or justification other than that he could. They felt hopeless, because it seemed impossible to get back to their families and lives. That's when the prophet dared to imagine a new way home.

The prophet here in this passage speaks for God and says, "The same God who brought our ancestors out of slavery in Egypt is going to move again in history--God is going to do a new thing!"  And that "new thing" is a whole new exodus, except instead of crossing the Sea out of Egypt and heading north and east to get to the Promised Land, God would now make a way through the barren wilderness between Babylon and their homeland.  The fact that there weren't highways or railway lines to get there, and the fact that the bully king of Babylon had not given permission to let them go would not stop God.  After all, it had not stopped God before when there was a Sea in the way as the people left Egypt, or the fact that Pharaoh had not given permission for the Hebrews to leave their enslavement. God created a way out of no way back then, and here Isaiah 43 is saying that God will do a new thing in just the same creative freedom.  You can almost hear Doc Brown's line, can't you? "What you do mean, we don't have enough road to get there?  Where we're going, we don't need roads!"

This is the God to whom the Scriptures bear witness: ours is the God who breaks through dead-ends and reaches the end of the line with a smile, because it's right there that the car becomes a flying time machine, or the wilderness becomes a thoroughfare, or the Sea becomes dry land for the freed children of Israel to walk on.  That creative freedom, that trail-blazing talent of our God, is what allows us to look at the cross with new eyes, too.  Instead of seeing the death of Jesus as the end of the story and the defeat of a noble (but mortal) prophet, we have come to see the cross as the defeat of death itself, the subjugation of sin, and the evisceration of evil.  Like our Orthodox sisters and brothers often put it in their worship and prayers, "Jesus trampled down death by death."  And what seemed like a dead-end in the garden tomb turns out to be a new way home after all.  The same God who brought home the exiles by means of a way in the wilderness that didn't exist before is the same God who takes the grave and makes it, as our funeral liturgy says, "the gateway to eternal life."  God isn't stopped by the limits of what we think is physically possible, and God doesn't stay confined within the bounds of what seems reasonable or achievable in our eyes.  

And of course, it is worth remembering, too, that this same God still reserves the right to do impossible-seeming things, even when it flies in the face of the next Nebuchadnezzar who wants to make people disappear into interminable exile or push around the peoples he wants to pick on.  Ours is a God who keeps blazing new trails, just like God did at the Sea out of Egypt, in the wilderness out of Babylon, and at the cross of Christ.

What will this God do among us in the world today?

Lord God, blaze a new trail today for all those who are cornered in dead-ends and need a new way forward.

God's Reputation--April 9, 2025

God's Reputation--April 9, 2025

"Thus says the LORD,
   who makes a way in the sea,
  a path in the mighty waters,
 who brings out chariot and horse,
  army and warrior;
 they lie down, they cannot rise,
  they are extinguished, quenched like a wick..." (Isaiah 43:16-17)

In the Bible, God has a curious reputation.  Of all the things you can say about YHWH, the God of Israel, it appears that this God chooses to be known for stopping armies in their tracks, defeating military superpowers, thwarting empires, freeing slaves, and keeping promises.  The God of Israel, in other words, doesn't merely maintain the status quo or keep the powerful in their places, and neither does YHWH stand off at a distance merely watching human events unfold with a policy of non-intervention like some kind of celestial Switzerland.  The God revealed in the Hebrew Scriptures (what we sometimes call in the Old Testament) crosses the boundary lines to take a side against the powers of the day in order to keep ancient promises and show faithful love to the covenant people.  The God we meet in these Scriptures refuses to stay neutral, but rather steps into action to thwart empires who oppressed and enslaved God's people.

You get that sense here in these few verses from the larger reading in Isaiah 43 that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday.  The thing God is known for--the thing God has a reputation for--is defeating Pharaoh's armies and advanced (for the time) military technology in the epic story of the Parting of the Sea.  That's what the prophet is referring to here in these two verses; it's a callback to the Exodus story. And the more you read through the Hebrew Scriptures, the more you notice that memory woven into ancient Israel's memory. The recollection of the Exodus from slavery in Egypt and the journey to the Promised Land stands in the background of Israel's laws and commandments (like when God tells them to care for foreigners and immigrants because they knew what it was like to be mistreated as foreigners in Egypt), and it comes back in ancient Israel's prayers, songs, and poems like a refrain.  It was a story they told every year at big festivals like Passover, and it was the core memory of their national identity, as central as Americans think of the signing of the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776.

Now, to be sure, plenty of cultures talked about their gods and goddesses in terms of their famous actions or epic shows of strength. The Babylonians told stories about their god, Marduk, fighting the chaos monster Tiamat, and fashioning human beings from the carcass of defeated deities.  The Egyptians talked about their God Ra who rode through the underworld to bring the sun to the people.  Even Disney fans will recognize that the demigod Maui is introduced in the movie Moana with a song about all of Maui's fabled exploited (pulling up the islands from the sea and lassoing the sun, and such).  In other words, it's pretty standard that any given culture will sing songs, tells stories, and write epic poems about their gods and goddesses to lay the foundation for their deities' reputations.

What stands out here from Isaiah 43 and the wider memory of ancient Israel about their God, YHWH, is that this God is known for defeating the ancient military superpower of Egypt and its tyrant, Pharaoh.  This God takes a stand to lift up the threatened and enslaved covenant people, not against mythical monsters, but against an actual empire.  This God crosses into the realm of the physical world of international politics and real suffering.  This God stands up for the ones regarded as nobodies and is willing to thwart the military might and awesome arsenal at Pharaoh's command, in order to set the children of Israel free from enslavement and to keep a promise made to their ancestors.  This is what God's love looks like--it takes the shape of God's reputation for saying NO to the bullies, the tyrants, and the empires in order to say YES to the enslaved, the harassed, and the troubled covenant people.  God's love is never merely a sentimental feeling or intangible emotion confined to the heavenly mind of God.  It takes a clear stand and real action to lift up those who are bowed down, and it thwarts the attempts of Pharaohs, kings, and emperors who want to keep them down.

As we near the central stories of the Christian faith next week in Holy Week, it is worth remembering that we believe this same God is the One who acts in Christ Jesus.  That is to say, we believe that the living God actually breaks into history, into the real lives of actual people and the real forces of evil and brutality in the world, and acts to save, rescue, and redeem.  The same God who would not stay as a neutral observer while cruel Pharaoh mistreated, exploited, and murdered enslaved Israelites does not keep a disinterested posture in the face of evil, sin, and death, either, but takes the side of us pitiable sinners and goes to a cross on our behalf. God chooses to be known for taking our side--the whole lot of humanity--against all the powers of death and evil, in order to make us free.

Remember, then, that the God on whom we call is no mere fable or cosmic referee watching the world at a distance, but has a reputation for getting involved to save and set free.  Remember it, too, as we go on the Holy Week journey, to know that these are the lengths God is willing to go to for our sake.

Ours is the God who crosses into our real lives and real world. Ours is the God of the Exodus and the cross.

Lord God, come into our lives and into our world to save, to set free, and to defeat the powers of death and sin.

Claimed Already--April 8, 2025

Claimed Already--April 8, 2025

"Not that I have already obtained this [the resurrection from the dead] or have already reached the goal; but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me his own."  (Philippians 3:12)

The Christian faith turns the tables on our usual way of seeing the world.  It's not about our pursuit of some prized commodity called "salvation" so we can claim a spot in heaven for ourselves; rather, it's about God's pursuit of us in Christ, seeking us and claiming us for his own.

That flips the script on our culture's mentality, where everything is a matter of earning the prize, reaching the benchmark, or fulfilling the requirement in order to "get" some reward at the end.  We even talk about the "pursuit" of happiness or "achieving" enlightenment, and the loud talking heads of our day seem to shout incessantly about whether we look like "winners."  So it should come as no surprise that popular religion often thinks in those same terms:  folks will ask how many "souls we have won," or how many "stars" we have racked up in our "crown," or how we can get all the blessings of God if only we will reach out and claim them.  I don't know about you, but I've heard every one of those expressions on the lips of Respectable Religious People who had all been caught up in seeing salvation and eternal life as objects to be grasped, rather than seeing salvation as what happens when God grasps a hold of us.

That mindset pictures God as merely a referee who watches the game from the sidelines or some cosmic Olympic judge deciding whom to award the gold medal to based on our performance.  But as the apostle Paul tells it, God does things differently.  God crosses the line from the sidelines onto the playing field.  God is the One who pursues us.  God is the One who has sought us out. God is the One who claims us, even through the grip of death and beyond it into resurrection.  And once we know we have been claimed by this God, we continue on the path God has set us on to arrive at the destination toward which God with walking with us.

That's what's going on in this verse that many of us heard this past Sunday in worship.  After talking about his hope for resurrection, Paul stops his train of thought and says, "Not that I've already attained it."  Well, of course not--you can't arrive at resurrection until you have come through death, just as you can't get to Easter without first going through Good Friday.  But that said, Paul insists, he finds the strength to keep going and reach the destination of life beyond the grip of death--indeed, to "make it my own," for one reason, and this is the kicker: "because Christ Jesus has made me his own."  We have reason to keep going in this life of faith, even when it means the way of the cross, because Christ has already claimed us to belong to God forever. Christianity isn't about us auditioning or trying out to claim a spot on a team with precious few openings; it is about the life we live with daring and courage when we realize God has already claimed us as beloved.

As long as we are stuck in our culture's way of seeing Christianity my pursuit of some prized called salvation (whether you win it with good deeds done or prayers prayed or having passed your theology exam or whatever else you might imagine), we'll always see ourselves in competition with everyone else for a spot on the team or a prize that is a scarce commodity.  We'll end up trying to push others down to put ourselves ahead out of some misguided notion that there's only so much of the heavenly prize to go around.  Or we'll be constantly dogged by the fear that if we're deemed not good enough, we won't achieve salvation or earn eternal life.

But once we realize, with Paul, that the Good News means God has claimed us already, we can confidently take each next step toward our destination without fear of not making the team and without the need to slow anybody else down.  In a world that sees everything as a competition for scarce resources or limited prizes, that will make us stand out.  We'll be the ones who have nothing to prove to anybody else, and therefore can spend our lives simply walking in the way of Jesus because we know we are his.  

What a difference it makes to see ourselves rightly in the light of the Gospel--to know that we are not sprinting in order to earn God's stamp of approval if we are good enough (or at least better than someone else), but rather that we are running the marathon because we know we have already been claimed for the team and belong to God already.  We're not chasing after salvation like a prize to be clutched from God's hands; salvation is God having sought us out already as we realize we are the ones in God's hands.

Lord God, let us see ourselves rightly as beloved ones claimed as your own through Christ.

On Knowing Jesus--April 7, 2025

On Knowing Jesus--April 7, 2025

"I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from the dead." [Philippians 3:10-11]

There is a difference between knowing a person and knowing about a person. And in truth, it is relatively easy (and less scary) merely to know facts about a person, but to actually know the person, as in relational terms, that crosses into risky territory.  We will be changed by knowing a person.

Here's a quick case study. I might know several biographical facts about George Washington. We could even sift out the mythic bits about chopping down cherry trees or not being able to tell a lie. But even if I commit all the available facts about George Washington to memory, I still will not know the man himself. The difference between knowing the actual person and just knowing facts about them is the difference between seeing pawprints in the dirt and spotting the actual tiger herself right in front of you with your own eyes.

Or, you could say, it is much the same difference between singing a song and just owning the printed sheet music, or between tasting fresh summer cherries and being able to identify one in a photograph or give its Latin name for scientific classification. The printed page of black lines and dots and the photograph of the red fruit are all well and good, but they were never meant to be the end of the line. Music is meant to be played, sung, and heard. Cherries are just begging to be tasted. Well, humans are more than collections of random facts, too. The facts of our personal stories, our likes and dislikes, our backgrounds and hopes, these are a part of who we are—but they are meant to be known in relationship, not merely memorized for a test.

It is true whether you are talking about your children, your parents, or your best friend. And it is true if we are talking about Christ. To be a Christian is not merely to know facts about Jesus—it is to know Jesus himself. Not fully, not completely, maybe, but truly. Knowing Jesus may well involve learning things about him along the way. And like a relationship with any other person, we keep learning new things about Jesus because life keeps giving us more experience to learn about. But a friend is not a subject to be “mastered.” And simply memorizing a statement of Jesus-related trivia is not the ultimate goal. Knowing Jesus himself—opening our lives up to his, and vice versa—is.

Note that when Paul talks about all of this, he has the same desire in this passage that many of us heard in worship this past Sunday. “I want to know Christ,” he says—not “I want to know about Christ.” If Paul would have been satisfied with knowing facts about Jesus, he just could have sat good old Simon Peter down for a talk and gotten biographical data from his brother James. If it were just a matter of head knowledge on the topic of Jesus, Paul would have been happy enough with just reading a handful of third-person accounts in the Gospels.

But he isn’t. When Paul says he wants to “know Christ and the power of his resurrection,” he isn’t saying that he just needs to brush up on the facts of the Easter story. He is talking about an experiential knowledge—Paul is saying he wants to experience the same kind of power that holds on beyond the grip of death, the way Christ himself came through. Paul is saying he wants to continue in relationship with Jesus more and more fully so that he actually shares life with Christ himself.

Sometimes we treat Jesus like a subject to be mastered, akin to geometry or grammar or American history, rather than a person with whom we relate. And that messes up our whole picture. The goal of study an academic subject is to become an expert in it. If you are a particle physicist, your job is to discover tinier and tinier pieces of the universe so that you can explain and diagram and chart how the whole thing works—in other words, so you can predict and dissect and even control it. But when it comes to knowing people (not just knowing about people), the “goal”, if we can even talk that way, is the relationship itself. It is about opening our lives to one another and going through common experiences. (And that is why, to be truthful, the list of people you or I truly know is surely a lot shorter than the list of people we know about.) That cannot be reduced to a list of facts.  Knowing Jesus cannot be separated from sharing in the self-giving love that looks like a towel and basin, a Roman cross, and a borrowed tomb that are part of Jesus' identity.  Knowing Jesus will change us that way to be made in his likeness.

In other words, if you ask, “What is the point of knowing biographical information about George Washington?” the answer has to be something like, “To be an expert in history,” or “To be able to understand how he shaped world events,” or “So I can be a civics teacher.” But if you ask, “What is the point of knowing… your best friend?” well, now things change. There isn’t a “point,” not exactly—at least not something separable from the relationship itself. The point of knowing him or her is to know that person. Knowing about a person may be a stepping stone to get you somewhere else. Actually knowing a person is its own goal, because the relationship itself has worth.

I wonder how it would change us if we really treated Jesus the same way—not as a subject to be mastered or a frog to be dissected as a means to an end, but as a person with whom we relate and interact now. I wonder how it might humble us and embolden us at the same time to give up on trying to master Jesus, and instead simply to know him, more and more fully, just because he is worth knowing. What if we spent today intentionally inviting conversation with Jesus (you know, actually treating him as though he is alive!), rather than thinking we learned all we needed to know about Jesus back in Sunday School or catechism classes or in last week’s sermon? What would you do with your day, your free moments, your running inner thought life today, to deepen that relationship? Maybe it’s worth a try today. The relationship itself has worth.

Jesus, help us to know you more fully today, and to open our lives to yours. And let that be enough.