Outlandish and Unreasonable--September 18, 2025

Outlandish and Unreasonable--September 18, 2025

The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written,

 “I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,

  and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”

Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. (1 Corinthians 1:18-24)

The one thing you can't say about Christianity is that it's reasonable.  And I say that as someone who is not only committed to the Gospel as my vocation but centered in the Christian faith 24/7 (that is, not just because it's my day job).  But precisely because I am convinced of the truth of the Gospel and compelled by the love and way of Jesus, I will be the first in line to say it: it all sounds preposterous.  

At least, to hear the Apostle Paul tell it, the Gospel should sound like nonsense if you're telling it right.  It should sound like something so out-there, so unpredictable and unconventional, that you'd never even dream it up. As these words that many of us heard on Sunday remind us, all our attempts to make Christianity fit inside our categories and expectations of what is "logical" or "practical" fall apart at the foot of the cross.  The notion of a Crucified God--which is precisely what the Gospel insists on--blows apart any attempt to make Christianity sound sensible.  We keep wanting to domesticate and tame the Gospel into something that is respectable, successful, well-thought-out, and meant for "winners," and the Gospel itself keeps slipping from our grasp. Every time we try to prod the Gospel into the center ring limelight and make it parade around according to our scripted routines of rationality and success, it shakes out of our leash like a wild animal, insisting on returning its own natural habitat among the "losers," the "weak," the and the "foolish."  In other words, the Gospel is not a synonym for "religious common sense" or "what we would expect a reasonable god to do." The Gospel is all about the extreme action that a very particular God has gone to for the sake of all of us, including people on the furthest edges of the mainstream, people far out of the centers of power, influence, importance, and smarts.  And it's about how that God deliberately chooses things that look weak, dumb, and crazy as the means of saving us, precisely to show us how futile it is to pin our hopes on what we usually call strength, wisdom, and success.  Like Robert Farrar Capon put it, "Grace cannot come to the world through respectability. Respectability regards only life, success, and winning; it will have no truck with the grace that works by death and losing--which is the only kind of grace there is."

Paul's point is that the world assumes certain things about how you get things done in life. You use force or coercion, like the Romans.  You use knowledge and philosophy, like the Greeks.  Or maybe you count on heavenly pyrotechnics like a burning bush or a parted Red Sea to prove the power behind your claims.  In other words, "Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom," but on the contrary, the Gospel isn't selling any of that. "We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles."  The conventional wisdom of both Paul's day and our own is that you show you are right by dominating someone else: either you defeat them on the battlefield with armies like Rome did, or you crush them on the debate stage by out-performing them with your rhetoric.  Either way, it's a contest of winners and losers, according to the conventional wisdom, and you prove that you are right by winning.  Paul, on the other hand, says that God has done precisely the opposite: at the cross, God not only didn't defeat the Romans or the Religious Leaders by crucifying them, but in fact God chooses to be crucified at their hands, all the way to a shameful death as a "loser," and for that to be the way of saving the whole world--including the belligerent ones holding the hammer and the nails.  God didn't leave a rational proof of why it makes sense to have a crucified messiah, either.  God just owns that it sounds nonsensical, and never once tries to make the Gospel sound reasonable on a debate stage.  

And I think in Paul's mind, that's actually part of the point.  A faith that has to be argued or proven in debate, much less fought for on a battlefield or coerced through law enforcement, misses the point of a God who gets nailed to a cross. That sort of theologizing is still trying to win by dominating somebody else, which is simply not how God operates.  That kind of religion requires "losers" who are wrong (and therefore, do not belong) and "winners" who are right (and who belong by virtue of their rightness), and Paul is instead convinced that God chose instead to save the world in a way that looks undeniably like defeat and foolishness, for the sake of redeeming all of us, including the arrogant and overconfident as well as the lowly nobodies.

Taking that seriously will change how we present ourselves to the world.  Instead of needing to cast Christians as glowing examples of success, prosperity, power, and influence, we can be honest about our ordinariness--and maybe even deliberately seek, as Jesus did, to go hang out especially with the folks who lack status, credentials, and leverage.  Instead of trying to prove the rightness and reasonableness of our religion, we will share the news that God has loved us precisely when we've got it all wrong and don't have any of the answers correct, because the Gospel is about God's seeking us rather than our finding out the right answers about God.  Basically, it means we will stop trying to hit people with Bible verses or theological propositions like they are weapons in order to get other people to submit to us (that's still the dominating language of winners and losers, of course), but we will offer the impossibly foolish sounding news of grace out there for the taking like it is a free gift for anybody--because that is exactly what it is.  Like Madeleine L'Engle said 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."

In other words, trying to argue another person into Christianity by pontificating about its logic and rightness is not just a bad idea; it is unfaithful to the Gospel itself.  Trying to debate someone into accepting the truth of the Gospel distorts the Gospel itself by turning it into a battle rather than an embrace. It is like screaming a lullaby and wondering why the baby won't settle down to sleep, or writing a love letter in blood and not understanding why you don't get a first date. The medium makes it impossible for the message to get through.  By contrast, Paul advises us to abandon the attempt to argue with someone into accepting how "reasonable" Christianity is, and instead to own, joyfully, at just how outlandish and unreasonable the claims of the Gospel really are.  Let's stop pretending that the notion of a Crucified Savior is the plan we would have come up with if we were in charge.  Let's surrender all pretense that we would have dared to allow a love so wide as to include enemies like persecutor Paul and a mercy so strong it can welcome back in denier Peter.  Let's instead be honest: the news about the cross sounds like utter fringe nonsense, a ridiculous-sounding claim about a God who goes to the margins, dies on the margins, rises when nobody is looking, and chooses all the people on the margins that no other respectable group would have accepted.

When we are at last ready to stop pretending that the gospel is like a geometric proof you can deduce with a matter of logical axioms and postulates, we can at last let the good news be as wild and free, as outlandish and unreasonable, as the New Testament actually says it is.  We would never have invented a story about a God who takes on fragile human flesh and bones, dies a criminal's death, and doesn't take out revenge on his executioners but prays for their forgiveness before rising to life again.  But that's the God we actually have--which, it turns out, is good news, since the outlandish and unreasonable God of the cross is precisely the One we need.

You don't have to yell that angrily at anyone or stage the message like it is a debate to share it.  In fact, it's better if it is just offered as a spoken invitation from one messy ordinary human to another.  That's how it came to each of us, after all.

Lord Jesus, free us from the need to look like winners over somebody else, so that we are freed as well to speak your impossible-sounding news of the cross.

We Are the Reason--September 17, 2025

We Are the Reason--September 17, 2025

"The saying is sure and worthy of full acceptance: that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners—of whom I am the foremost. But for that very reason I received mercy, so that in me, as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display the utmost patience as an example to those who would come to believe in him for eternal life. (1 Timothy 1:15-16)

I'm not usually one to glean deep theological insights from pop divas, but every so often the Spirit speaks through the Top 40 hit list. Today, hearing again these words from 1 Timothy that many would have heard in worship this past Sunday, it's happening again.

It wasn't that long ago that it seemed like every playlist, radio station, and department store background music speaker was playing the song "Antihero" by Taylor Swift, so even someone like me (who is perpetually reminded by my kids how old both I and my taste in music seem) was hearing the repeated words of the chorus:  "It's me--hi.  I'm the problem, it's me."  I remember the first time I paid attention to those words and thinking just how countercultural her sentiment is.  We are so quick to blame others, point fingers, and turn those people over there into scapegoats that it is almost shocking to hear someone flip the script and start with saying, "I'm part of the problem."  Acknowledging that we are complicit and entangled in the brokenness of the world around us, as hard as it is to do, has a way of changing our perspective and reframing the way we see other people in the world--who are also, honestly, part of the problem, too.  It has a way of humanizing the folks we are quickest to be frustrated with, as well as humbling ourselves to keep us from imagining we are perfect peaches.

These verses from the letter we call First Timothy do the same thing--just without the synth drums and catchy hooks of a pop song.  The apostle speaking here first quotes a saying that had already emerged as a catch phrase in the early church: "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners."  Just imagine: we are hearing a slogan so ancient that even the books of the New Testament themselves are quoting it like a well-known refrain!  And it really is a powerful claim--that the coming of Christ was not for the purpose of zapping the mess-ups, kicking out the undesirables, or damning the doers of iniquity.  It wasn't even to reward the well-behaved or bestow trophies and gold-stars on the holy.  The earliest Christian notion was that Jesus had come to rescue, to restore, and to redeem--to save sinners.  Like Robert Farrar Capon once put it, "Jesus came to raise the dead.  He did not come to teach the teachable; he did not come to improve the improvable; he did not come to reform the reformable. None of those things works."  Jesus' mission was and is rescuing us who are trapped in our own empty-handed deadness.

Ant that "us" is important.  It is a reminder that the category of "sinners" is not a set of people somewhere else, bounded by different neighborhoods, across state lines, or registered with the "other" political party.  It's us.  Hi.  We're the problem--it's us. We don't have permission to say that Jesus had to come because THOSE pathetic slobs OVER THERE were the problem, but rather we have to confess that we are among those slobs. We're the reason for Jesus' coming--the category of sinners includes us, as well as the whole human family.   There's nobody else we can pin the blame on or make into our scapegoats.

Even more powerful is hearing that admission coming from the perspective of Paul the apostle, since the verse here in First Timothy continues, with "to save sinners--of whom I am the foremost."  It's not that Paul is being melodramatic, but the memory that this same one we remember as the great missionary apostle and first theologian of the church got his start with blood on his hands trying to kill Christians and stamp out the early church.  Paul came to see in hindsight that it was the epitome of wickedness--making him "the foremost of sinners"--to have formerly resorted to violence against the Christian movement just because he disagreed with them.  An older, wiser Paul had come to understand that it was entirely wrong-headed to want to use the tools of coercion and intimidation to try to enforce his view of righteousness--the same way it is wrong-headed and dangerous to try and enforce it in our own day along the lines of "Christian nationalism".  Indeed, he realized that the One he had formerly vilified as a cursed blasphemer was actually the Messiah of God.  Paul eventually realized--and rebuilt his entirely theology around--the fact that he was one of those "sinners" that the Christ had come for, maybe at the top of the list.  Paul realized that his only hope was a God who was less interested in zapping wrongdoers than in rescuing us from ourselves and our own worst impulses.  And from there, he became an advocate for the Christian community always to reach out beyond itself to the folks beyond its own membership so that God's saving love could touch everyone.  Paul became committed to reaching out to the folks on the margins--not just the diamonds-in-the-rough or the smudged faces with hearts of gold underneath, but the hard-hearted, mean-spirited, wrong-headed, and stiff-necked jerks, too--because he had been one of those folks on the margins, too, and grace found him.  That changed everything for Paul.

It changes everything for us, too.  When we realize, like the apostle, that we were (and are) among that group called "sinners" who are usually selfish, frequently cruel, often driven by fear, and perpetually getting ourselves deeper in trouble, it gives us a certain humbled grace toward everybody else, even when they are at their worst, too. When we recognize that we were estranged outsiders on the margins whom Christ sought and brought back home, we can't help but be turned outward to offer that same extravagant love to the folks who get labeled "lost" or "least" or "last." Once we realize that Jesus came for sinners like us, we will recover empathy for everybody else who shares that designation with us... which is the whole lot of humanity.  Once we can confess, along with Taylor Swift and the Apostle Paul, "It's me--hi.  I'm the problem. It's me," we lose forever the right (which was an illusion all along) to decree that somebody is too far gone, too lost, or too much of a sinner for us to reach out to.  That bad news, which makes the Gospel's good news intelligible, prevents us from ever saying, "We just can't make it work with THOSE PEOPLE, because they are so wicked, so terrible, and so rotten that God has given up on them."  Seeing that we are the reason Jesus came to save sinners (in other words, seeing that we are sinners ourselves) will give us all the more reason to seek out the people we would have otherwise dismissed as unreachable, unlovable, or unworthy.

So today, hear both truths: you and I are among that universal label for humanity of "sinners." And because we are in that category, we had better act with the same grace toward others that we trust Jesus has shown to us. Our belonging and theirs are one and the same, just as truly as they and we alike are part of the problem.  How will it change the way we treat people, give second chances to people, and see the humanity of people, before we get the chance to climb up on a perch of holier-than-thou condemnation?  And how will it provoke us to speak up for other fellow sinners when someone else comes along and tries to dismiss them as beyond the reach of God's love? 

A great deal is put into new focus when we can tell the truth about ourselves--both our entanglement in sin and our belovedness in Christ.

Lord Jesus, help us to tell the truth about ourselves, so that we can also hear your gospel good news spoken to us.

Finding Ourselves Found--September 16, 2025

Finding Ourselves Found--September 16, 2025

[Jesus said:] "Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? And when she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents." (Luke 15:8-10)

Okay, let's be clear about something here. Coins can't move.  Coins can't make a sound if they are sitting still on a floor somewhere behind the couch or under the coffee table.  And in an era before technological gizmos like AirTags that you can stick on objects so that you can track them from your phone with GPS, coins couldn't give off a signal to reveal their locations.  In an era before flashlights, you couldn't even count on their shiny metal surfaces to reflect much light to help you find one.  Unlike a sheep, which might start bleating if it gets lost, pull itself free from the brambles if it gets stuck in some shrubbery, or even theoretically wander its way back toward the shepherd or the farm by sheer dumb luck, a coin is stuck where it is, as it is. All of this is to say that a lost coin contributes absolutely nothing to its own getting found.  Precisely zilch.  The coin doesn't even really know it's lost--it's just a stamped circle of metal, after all.

That means, at least within the bounds of Jesus' story, which many would have heard in worship this past Sunday (if you were observing the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, rather than Holy Cross Day, which is a little bit of liturgical inside baseball for church nerds), everything depends on the woman who is turning her house upside down in search of the lost coin.  It all hangs on her willingness to keep looking, to lift furniture and sweep every nook and cranny, and to risk looking like a fool when she invites her friends over for a party once the thing is found.  Jesus' tale is not at all one of a coin that strains and strives to squirm out from the shadows to be noticed by its owner. Neither can the coin do a thing to earn or achieve a spot back in the piggy bank where it was supposed to be.  All the coin brings to the situation is its lostness--and the fact that the woman who owns the coin deems it precious.  All the work of seeking, reclaiming, and celebrating is done by the woman who finds it in the end.  And to all of that, Jesus just says, "Yup. That's what it's like for God. God is the woman tearing her house apart to find one dinky little lost coin and throwing a party afterward once she has found it."

That just floors me.  Honestly, every time I read this passage wandering through Luke's gospel, I am gobsmacked. Jesus, after all, is the one who has invented this little story, a follow-up (or a build-up) that comes right after the parable of the shepherd who leaves ninety-nine sheep to fend for themselves to go after the one that was lost.  Had he chosen, he could have picked a case of lost-ness where the item in question has a little more agency, or has to do something first in order to warrant being reclaimed.  A story about a lost dog or homing pigeon could have featured a happy homecoming with the lost pet coming back by its own innate sense of direction, or a donkey that came untethered from the hitching post might at least bray and allow itself to be found from the noise.  But Jesus has chosen an inert, unaware, immobile coin as the lost thing in this story, almost as if to drive the point home--this is not about our efforts to get ourselves found, but about the God who relentlessly seeks us, no matter how far off to the edges or how far down into the cracks we have fallen.

All of that helps us to see where Jesus' emphasis is in this whole chapter of Luke's gospel, which begins with Jesus being criticized by the Respectable Religious Leaders for eating with "tax collectors and sinners" (and presumably for not shaming them, scolding them, or demanding some measurable life-improvement before he shared a table with them).  Jesus constantly emphasizes rejoicing on the part of the finder than on some prerequisite ritual of repentance on the part of the lost.  It's easy to hear Jesus' phrase at the end, about "joy in the presence of the angels over one sinner who repents" and to try to make that bear all the weight of this passage.  In other words, it's tempting to say, "Sure, Jesus will welcome you back--and is happy to do so--as long as you first do X, Y, and Z; you know, to repent." In some traditions, that is a prayer in an altar call. For others, a ritual with a priest and a certain number of recited prayers while rosary beads are counted.  Others insist on a properly worded expression of sorrow for sin and confession in the start of worship on Sundays to get the bad marks off the permanent record.  But none of those are in Jesus' story.  A coin can't say, "I'm sorry for getting lost." It doesn't even know it's slid off the tabletop and onto the floor. A coin can't make a promise not to get lost again, nor can it make a valiant effort to improve its behavior.  A coin can't stop being a coin or try to change from being a nickel to being a dime. It can just get found.  Maybe whatever it means to "repent" ultimately looks a lot more like letting yourself be found--or perhaps "finding yourself found by God"--rather than trying to earn our approval, put on a song and dance, or making ourselves look religious... and therefore acceptable.  Maybe God's not even waiting to see if we have truly turned our lives around first; maybe there's no six-month probationary period to test if we have become good little boys and girls first. Maybe repentance is simply the word for when it finally sinks in that God has been seeking us relentlessly all along, and discover that God never stopped loving us, but has been overturning chair, table, and desk necessary to get through to us.

All of that seems to be the thrust of Jesus' story, where the woman who stands in for the seeking God does all the work and the coin who stands in for all people who have slipped through the cracks is sought and found with tireless joy.  And if that's right, then Jesus doesn't go out to find folks at the margins and stand a few feet away, shouting, "If you will just take the first couple of steps on your own, then I'll welcome you into my embrace." But rather, Jesus goes all the way to the folks in the deep dark shadows where no lamplight would have found them and no broom would have reached them, and takes them by the hand and says, "I've found you.  You are reclaimed." And from there the celebration ensues.

I've always been kind of struck at the wonderful foolishness of that last moment of this story.  It's one thing to be diligent in searching out a lost coin if you keep the search quiet (it does have monetary value, after all).  But when you find your coin, would you seriously invite all your friends and neighbors over for a party to celebrate that you had found it?  The cost of the cocktail napkins alone would be worth more than the coin itself!  Who would do such a thing--and who would risk their own embarrassment by throwing a party over finding a lost coin?  Nobody--at least nobody respectable.  Only a God who is less interested in looking "strong" or "reputable."  Only a God who loves the ones who are found more than God's own ego or reputation.  Only then does such rejoicing make sense.  

And of course, that is precisely what Jesus says God is like.  God is the One reaching into every corner, getting down on hands and knees to look beside the dust bunnies under the cupboard, looking utterly foolish all the while, all for the sake of finding what was lost and then throwing a block party when it is restored.  There is never a point where God says, "It's too much effort to go to reach that person," or "Those folks are just too far gone for me to care about." There is never a point where God says, "I'm giving up on getting through to you," at least the way Jesus tells it.  If God is the woman turning her house upside down to find a lone coin that doesn't even know it's lost and cannot do a thing to make itself found, then God is never giving up on seeking out any of us--even the folks we think are "too far out there." And when all that is lost is found again, that same God intends to throw a party for the whole universe, no matter how reckless and foolish it sounds.

This is the sort of community we have been brought into as followers of Jesus--and that's the posture we are called to model for the world, too.  There is no one we can write off as being outside the bounds of God's reach.  There is no one so far beyond our experience that we do not share humanity--and thus the image of God--with. There is no one that God is willing to give up on.  What would happen if we treated every single person in the world--including the ones who frustrate us the most--in light of that truth?

Lord God, enable us to find ourselves found, and to join in your work of reaching out to everyone with your love.

Jesus Has Left the Front Porch--September 15, 2025

Jesus Has Left the Front Porch--September 15, 2025

"Now all the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, 'This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.' So he told them this parable: 'Which of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.'" [Luke 15:1-6]

Jesus never stays put.

This is a vital point if we are going to really understand what it means to be "with Jesus on the margins," which is our focus in these weeks. Jesus doesn't stay put in his comfortable chair, just twiddling his thumbs hoping we'll come to him, and he doesn't just stand in place and call our names, either. Jesus doesn't wait for the folks on the fringes of things to get the bright idea on their own to reach out to him first; he is actively seeking them (and us) from his side. When Jesus calls, he is on the move... to reach us.  

We need to be clear about this because I think a fair amount of classic Christian hymnody has given us at best an incomplete picture, and at worst a downright wrong picture. Countless Christians, for example, have sung the lovely hymn (and it is lovely in its own way), "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling," whose refrain famously goes, "Come home... come home, you who are weary come... Earnestly, tenderly, Jesus is calling, calling, 'O sinner, come home'." And for as far as that goes, that's all well and good. But if we are picturing Jesus just sitting on the front porch calling for the cat to come in for its saucer of milk, we are missing the thrust of Jesus' way of calling. Jesus isn't just "softly" speaking our names from the front door, unwilling or unable to go beyond the welcome mat, but actively leaves the ol' homestead to come out and find us when he calls. Elvis has left the building, and Jesus has left the front porch. He doesn't stay put, passively hoping we'll come to our senses first, or waiting for us to accept a good deal when it's offered, or assuming that we are well enough to get up from the ditch we're in and come to him. Jesus is on the move, coming out to find us while our names are on his lips.

So let me confess to you that there is another song that comes to mind when I hear these words from Luke's Gospel, and they aren't found in any hymnals... trust me. There's a song from the band the Foo Fighters (yes, a guitar-driven, loud-noise-making, post-grunge dad-rock band), which has the line, "If you walk out on me... I'm walking after you," over and over again.

If you walk out--on me, I'm walking after you.

If you walk out on me, I'm walking after you.

That's the way Jesus pictures himself calling after us. There may well be something soft and tender about it, but it is not anemic or passive. Jesus is neither timid nor unwilling to cross the threshold of the house to come out looking for us as he calls. Neither is there any sense that he is like you or me in a grudge-holding mood, indignantly crossing his messianic arms and grumbling that he might forgive us and take us back... if we'll come back first with remorsefully with our tails between our legs and do some groveling. No, that's the way we tend to "forgive" (although it can barely be called forgiveness in that case), in some kabuki theatre performance of exaggerated sorries and stern looks.

That's the way we talk so often, isn't it? "If HE would come back on his hands and knees and beg for another chance, maybe I'll forgive for the broken promise." "If SHE would admit she was wrong, I would consider inviting her to the family birthday party, but I won't be the first one to make amends... I'm waiting for her to show a little initiative." And of course, the reason we do things that way is that you get to hold onto a little more power, a little more prestige and respect if you are the one holding court and waiting for sorry and sad-faced penitents. It is far more dignified, far more respectable, isn't it, to stay put and wait for the guilty to come to you asking for another chance.

But that's not how Jesus describes himself. He doesn't stay put in a position of respectability. He decidedly does NOT say, "I will be holding office hours from a quarter past three til half past four, and if you want to make your apologies, or audition to get back on the team, or answer my call, you can come and see me then to show me you have what it takes. Rather, Jesus' kind of calling is always on the move. He, like the shepherd in his story, goes out to find the ones who are so lost, or caught in the ditch, or turned around, that they would never even know to come back to the shepherd, much less how to get there.  Jesus doesn't just invite the folks on the margins, who are so often deemed "lost," to get their act together and come to find him; he actively goes out to them (to us!) and seeks us out.  The rocking chair with the glass of lemonade beside it has been left empty on the front porch; Jesus is on the loose seeking... all of us.

I honestly don't know if any actual shepherds in Jesus' day would have done what Jesus describes. I have read some commentators attest that what Jesus describes was standard practice of the day, and I have read others who swear up and down that no shepherd in his right mind would risk 99% by leaving them unguarded for one wayward sheep. And to be honest, I find that there is great wisdom in not speaking on a subject when one doesn't know one way or the other. (I learned, years ago, from a wise lady who lamented about preachers telling farmers how sheep are supposed to be raised or fields are supposed to be planted, based on their "take" on a Bible story, when they have never gotten dirt under their fingernails from any actual farm labor.) So let's bracket out for a moment whether anybody in Jesus' day would have thought it a good idea to leave the ninety-nine sheep behind to go hunting after another. It's not about whether anybody else would have done it--it's about what Jesus would do... and does do... and has done.

And most assuredly, Jesus does get up off his seat and actually go searching while he calls us by name. Jesus leaves behind the decorum and dignity of sitting and waiting for us to come back to him, and instead, even when we walk out of him, there he is... walking after us. Walking after you. Walking after me.

That really changes the picture of how we relate to Jesus, doesn't it? So often, Christians have fallen for promoting (or maybe mis-promoting) the Gospel by painting this scene of approaching Jesus like the Giant Floating Head of the Wizard in the Emerald City, like Jesus from a distance calls us and we are the ones who come running, hoping that we have done enough to get our trip back to Kansas or a new heart by bringing the Witch's broomstick as proof we've done what he asked of us. So often, we present the Gospel as an "if-then" sort of deal: "If you come to Jesus, he will let you in...." or "If you can find your way in, he will open the door to you..." or "If you will realize that you were lost and get yourself back home, Jesus will leave the light on for you." But that just ain't how the real Jesus operates!

Instead of a dignified, or even awe-inspiring figure waiting for us to come to him, Jesus abandons all decorum and goes out looking for us. That means that Christianity is very little about "finding Jesus" and much more about "finding yourself found by Jesus." Despite the fact that plenty of religious voices over the years have insisted on asking people, "Have you found Jesus?" (although to be honest, most of them only in the last two hundred years--this isn't the way they talked back Jesus' day), Jesus insists that he was never lost. He was never the one missing. And for that matter, even if we lose track or lose interest in the so called "tax collector and sinner" crowd, Jesus never has.

So often, we take this scene from the gospels and assume that the "tax collectors and sinners" are other people--not us, of course!--and that at most, Jesus will allow THOSE people to come to him if they can work their way to find him, while WE (you know, we "good people") just stay off at a distance and watch them come to Jesus. And from there, we picture that as how church works, too--"outsiders" and "sinners" and "those people" are allowed in, we guess, as long as they come TO Jesus. And so we figure that THEY are supposed to come TO us in church buildings. "Invite a friend to church," we say, which is really code for, "because we sure aren't going out to bring Christ's love out there to where people actually ARE!" But that isn't how this story goes, is it? Jesus doesn't pick a central location and wait for people to come to him, and he doesn't insist that they have to be looking for him in order for him to be looking for them. In fact, just the opposite is true: even when we walk out on Jesus, he's walking after us.

The welcome is for you... and for everybody else you didn't think was worthy.

The seeking is for you... and for all the people who aren't even seeking for Jesus.

The walking is to find you... and Jesus is walking after every last one of us, too. Because Jesus just won't stay put.

Lord Jesus, come and meet us, come and find us, come and bring us to your side... and lead us to rejoice with you as you draw all people to yourself, too.

A Genuine Alternative--September 12, 2025

 A Genuine Alternative--September 12, 2025

"Live in harmony with one another; do not be arrogant, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to be wiser than you are. Do not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight of all. If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all." (Romans 12:16-18)

The eruption of violence in our country in the past forty-eight hours, along with the anniversary of horrific violence in our country twenty-four years ago, has brought these ancient words of the apostle back to the forefront of my mind today. On Wednesday, we reeled at the news of what appears to be political violence in the form of an assassination of a young speaker with many followers, as well as the news of a mass shooting at a school in Colorado, where two students were put in critical condition beyond the shooter who took his own life.  And on Thursday, we recalled the memory of terrorist attacks that brought down the World Trade Center towers using passenger jets as weapons, along with two others that crashed into the Pentagon and a field in Somerset, Pennsylvania.  The air is thick with the heaviness of both, like the black smoke of death.  We might as well name that reality today, rather than pretend we can move on unchanged. 

And yet, here is this other vision, this alternative way of being in the world, one which runs counter to the old repetitive scripts of violence that begets more violence and animosity that begets more animosity.  Here are these words from an open letter written twenty centuries ago by a man who knew what it was like to be driven by violence that thinks it is righteous; here is this passage from Paul's letter to the Romans, the same Paul who had hounded the early Christian church seeking to destroy it, who had blood on his hands and had been determined to round up disciples of Jesus for imprisonment, torture, or death, and yet who had been transformed through an encounter with the risen Christ to become one of the church's greatest missionaries and theologians.  Here is Paul, who knew what it was like to be convinced that killing and violence were tools to be used in God's service, and then who also learned that he had been wrong.  Here is the same man, now turned 180-degrees away from the myth of redemptive violence, giving us in the rest of the community an alternative to that mindset which had held him captive.

And interestingly enough, in the space of these few sentences from Romans, Paul calls us out to the margins in different directions--first, to direct us to associate with "the lowly," the people regarded as unimportant, of no influence, and with no status or prestige; and second, to direct us toward those who have shown evil to us and not to respond with evil in return.  Paul leads us outward from our comfort zones, both to the people regarded as "nobodies" and the people we would label our "enemies," and he instructs us to be decent, humble, and peaceable toward all of them.  And of course, this former enemy of the church who was often treated as a nobody as he went from town to town knew what he was talking about. He knows the transforming power of meeting evil with good, hatred with love, and violence with peace.  He is living proof that such strategies can change the world, as well as changing your enemy.

So here is Paul's counsel, spoken first to a fragile early Christian community living right under the nose of the very hostile Roman Empire in its capital, and also to us: "Go find the people who are being treated even worse than you and make friends with them, and then commit yourselves not to seek revenge when someone goes after you. Instead, look for ways to be at peace with everybody."  It is downright revolutionary, if you think about it, but just not the kind of violent revolution that folks usually think of when they hear that word.  Paul is advocating a refusal to play by the world's rules, whether by rejecting the world's categories of status and importance or rejecting the world's impulse to get even.  A church that actually sought to befriend the people who have been dismissed as nobodies and that refused to seek revenge against those who harmed them would get some attention, and it would change the world. Like Dr. King once put it, "Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem; it merely creates new and more complicated ones. Violence is impractical because it is a descending spiral ending in destruction for all. It is immoral because it seeks to humiliate the opponent rather than win his understanding: it seeks to annihilate rather than convert. Violence is immoral because it thrives on hatred rather than love. It destroys community and makes brotherhood impossible.... Violence ends up defeating itself. It creates bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers."  Here, in Romans, nearly two millennia before Dr. King's words, Paul was already charting out that course for the Christian community to bring a genuine alternative to the empire's (and the world at large's) seemingly endless cycles of violence and retribution.

So it's not that we have no clear voices pointing us to a different way of life. It is rather that we have often decided that such voices are not practical, not popular, or not easy for us to do in real life. As G.K. Chesterton observed, "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried."  All too often, when we have been wronged, we have given into the mindset that we need to hit back, to "show them" and make an example out of the ones who have wronged us, and that we need to recover the loss of our status and reputation by getting even.  All too often, we have decided that Paul's directions do not apply to us, because they are "unreasonable," "impractical," or make us look like we are "weak" in the eyes of the world.  All too often, we have said that the church cannot spend its resources befriending the folks dismissed as "nobodies" by the world, because that won't bring in more members, more money, or more prestige.  All too often, we have heard or read Paul's words and just decided they weren't really for us.  So we just fuel the monstrous machine created by hatred, rather than depriving it of power.  The last twenty centuries of history, replete with violence, war, revenge, and estrangement, reveals how much the world has been longing for something different.

I won't pretend that these verses offer us a magic spell to end all violence out there in the wide world. But I do think that these words--or rather, a community that dares to embody them--will have the capacity to stop feeding the beast, and at least offering the world the alternative we are desperate for. That, I believe, is the precipice on which we sit right now.  The violence reverberating through the past two days in our society can either fester, grow worse, and metastasize into more and more violence, justifying itself with each new cycle that "The other side did it first!" or "They do it more!", or the cycle can be broken.  We have the ability to choose in our own circles, our own spheres of influence, and our own relationships, to answer evil with good, hatred with love, and animosity with peace.  We can only be responsible for our own lives and the points at which our lives touch others, but we can at least do that.  "So far as it depends on you," Paul notes, "live at peace with all."  In other words, we aren't commanded to fix, scold, zap, or smite other people who do not share our commitment to Christ, to force them to follow our lead.  But we can offer them an alternative way of being in the world, one which genuinely feels like something different--something utterly new in contrast to the same old "They-hit-us-so-we-get-to-hit-them-back" thinking that we know doesn't work.

Today, you and I have the ability--and the responsibility--to embody the alternative to the world's inhumanity.  We can be the ones who remind our neighbors, friends, and social media acquaintances that we are not doomed to keep repeating the patterns of the past, because Jesus has made it possible to move in a new direction.  The One whom we follow is the One who refused to call angel armies to get revenge against his executioners, but instead prayed for their forgiveness and loved us all even "when we were enemies" of God (Romans 5).

What could that look like today, in your and my day... in the rest of this year... or in the rest of our lives?

Lord Jesus, enable us to break out of the old cycles of seeking status and revenge, to go in the new way you are charting for us.

Avoding Both-Sidesism--September 11, 2025

Avoding Both-Sidesism--September 11, 2025

"Formerly [Onesimus] was useless to you, but now he is indeed useful to you and to me. I am sending him, that is, my own heart, back to you. I wanted to keep him with me so that he might minister to me in your place during my imprisonment for the gospel, but I preferred to do nothing without your consent in order that your good deed might be voluntary and not something forced. Perhaps this is the reason he was separated from you for a while, so that you might have him back for the long term, no longer as a slave but more than a slave, a beloved brother—especially to me but how much more to you, both in the flesh and in the Lord. So if you consider me your partner, welcome him as you would welcome me. If he has wronged you in any way or owes you anything, charge that to me.  I, Paul, am writing this with my own hand: I will repay it. I say nothing about your owing me even your own self. Yes, brother, let me have this benefit from you in the Lord! Refresh my heart in Christ. Confident of your obedience, I am writing to you, knowing that you will do even more than I ask. One thing more: prepare a guest room for me, for I am hoping through your prayers to be restored to you." (Philemon v.11-22)

There is a dreadful rhetorical game played daily by a great many of the talking heads and pundits on television, and today I have caught myself noticing for the first time that the Apostle Paul doesn't play it, as tempting as it might have been.  

It's that sneaky little trick of oratorical sleight-of-hand sometimes referred to as "both-sides-ism," and it is a dandy little mechanism to take attention off the thing you don't want to deal with by making "the other side" seem worse than your own.  And it is typically used in order to avoid having to face clear-cut right and wrong determinations by insisting that everything is so utterly complicated, so muddy, and so messy that we can never actually change things for the better.  It's a way of basically saying, "You can't accuse me of doing something bad, because those people over there are doing their own bad thing, and therefore I am untouchable."

As a bit of verbal razzle-dazzle, it works something like this: let's say that Politician A is accused of something unsavory--maybe receiving money from someone who then benefits from a decision that Politician A makes, so it looks like there is a conflict of interest.  Well, when the news reporters come to ask Politician A (or the lucky press secretary who gets to play spin-doctor on their behalf) about the situation, Politician A just says, "Well, as we all know, Politician B--on the OTHER side of the aisle--had a similar scandal ten years ago, and they got re-elected, so you can't hold me accountable now."  Then they dust off their hands, hoping that the press will go to Politician B's office to get a statement.  The bottom line of the game is to say, "Both sides do this bad thing, so we can't take a side on the question at hand. This person right here did something bad, but to make it sound like we are being 'fair' we need to say that the person over there also did something comparable."  And all of it is a clever way of never having to actually come down on a side at all, or to say that there is a clear difference between A and B.  Sometimes we are so used to the rhythm of both-sides-ism that we expect that every situation has to have a volley of "On the one hand, this side did this thing badly, but on the other hand, that side must have also done something equally bad." And honestly, I suspect that actually suits us just fine sometimes, because it gives us a valid (in our eyes) reason to throw up our hands and say, "Well, I guess there's nothing to be done about this situation, because everyone's hands are a little dirty. So nobody can say anything definitive about anybody else." And then we go home so we can complain on social media about how nothing ever gets done to improve the world. We go back to "the way it was" because we can't saying anything clearly about who is in the wrong.

I have more than a hunch you have seen that game played before, and beyond that, I bet you've played it, too, maybe without even realizing it.  I know I have.  It's a hard habit to kick.

And that's why, for as many times as I have read the book of Philemon over the years, including this past Sunday when many of us heard it in worship, I find myself particularly struck this time around at how Paul doesn't succumb to playing "both-sides" between Philemon, who had owned Onesimus as a slave, on the one hand, and the escaped Onesimus on the other.  As we saw yesterday, Paul has ended up crossing paths with Onesimus, who apparently had run away from enslavement to Philemon and subsequently come to faith in Jesus.  Paul is now sending Onesimus back to Philemon, in the full expectation ("confident of your obedience," the apostle says to him) that he will set Onesimus free and receive him back as a brother in Christ rather than as human property.  And what astounds me here is that Paul doesn't try to set these two up as equally in the wrong, even though that might have been easier on Philemon's ears.  Paul doesn't say, "Ya know, Phil, it was wrong of you to own a slave, but on the other hand, it was wrong of Onesimus to run away, so how about those wrongs cancel each other out, and he can go back to being your slave (no changes there!) as long as you promise not to beat or whip him as punishment for running away?"  Paul doesn't say to Onesimus, "Now, we might be mad that Philemon deemed it acceptable to own another human being, but you did after all run away and now he's lost all he sunk into that investment (ahem, in you, that is), so maybe you should just go back to him as a slave because both sides have taken advantage of each other--whaddayasay?"  Paul doesn't try to equate Onesimus' act of going to freedom with the wrong of Philemon owning him as a slave--even though that surely would have been the conventional wisdom.  And if Paul were only concerned with smoothing over a source of division between Philemon and Onesimus, that kind of compromise would have been appealing in that culture.

Paul, in other words, isn't afraid to say that the right course of action leans in one direction rather than the other, and even rather than straight-down-the-middle in some sort of "not-taking-sides centrism."  Paul's response to the situation, as amazingly tactful as it is, clearly pushes in the particular direction of setting free those who had been enslaved, rather than blaming the victim who had been enslaved or suggesting that he was "part of the problem, too."  He doesn't resort to being a jerk to Philemon, and he doesn't threaten him with hellfire or damnation, but he does very clearly say to Philemon what the right--and more specifically, gospel-informed--course of action is. Paul is convinced that Philemon should release Onesimus from enslavement, hold no grudges, accept whatever financial losses came with it, and treat him as a brother in Christ.  Full stop.  There is no "other hand" of something that lets Philemon off the hook or casts aspersions on Onesimus.  Paul, in other words, has the clarity to say, "This is not really a matter of shades of gray, or both sides having a point.  This is a situation in which the person on the margins--the formerly enslaved Onesimus--needs to be lifted up, treated as an equal, and no longer regarded as property."

I find these verses both convicting and refreshing, to be honest.  In our time, we can sometimes feel so jaded by shortcomings all around, or so tired by the extreme partisanship around us, that we can feel as if there is never a time and never a circumstance where we can really and honestly say, "No--this is not a matter of mere opinion; this is the Christ-like course of action, and that is not."  We may be conditioned to assume that everyone who calls out bad action from one corner must have also done the same, and therefore has lost credibility to speak.  We may be so used to hearing ,"Well, both sides have done some wrong things, so nothing can be said now," that we end up always retreating to "the way things are" rather than changing things for the better.  And to see Paul here just cut through all those rhetorical hoops to get to a clear path forward is a bit jarring, but also freeing.  It is freeing to hear voices like Paul's from the New Testament saying clearly, "The way of Jesus has a certain trajectory to it--it looks like freedom, rather than keeping others in bondage.  It looks like compassion for the person who is most on the margins rather than erring on the side of the person with status who can do you favors."  It is a relief, honestly, to see that Paul had the moral clarity to say, "Onesimus should be set free, so that's what I'm telling you to do," rather than writing, "I don't want to offend any other slaveowners who might be members of my church, so I can't really speak up about this issue with Onesimus.  Gotta keep my job, after all."

Now, again, it is worth noting that Paul finds a way to speak with clarity without being a jerk, without punching down, and without backing Philemon into a corner that would make him get defensive.  Paul has offered Philemon a way of doing the right thing without losing face, without being shamed into it, and without being permanently branded a terrible person.  But he has done all those things without backing down on the claim that Onesimus needs to be freed, and that he is not in the wrong here.  This is not a matter of "both sides are at fault here," and yet there is hope for both the former oppressor and the formerly oppressed to begin again.  The fact that Paul threaded that needle and was able to speak a clear word of liberation for the formerly enslaved and a clear word of grace to start over for the former slaveholder is a wonder.  But that's the vision here in this passage.  It is possible to speak with clarity in a way that still makes it possible for all to be pulled along into the way of Jesus.  And it is possible to take a stand with the folks on the margins, unabashedly and unapologetically, without leaving anybody else behind.

That's what Jesus has made possible--a clarity to speak and act in ways that especially lift up the folks who have been stepped on or pushed out, while also making room for all of us who have been pretty settled in our comfort zones to go along with Jesus out to the margins.  Here in his letter to Philemon, Paul shows us what that might have looked like in one real-life scenario twenty centuries ago.  What could it look like for us today?

Lord Jesus, give us the clarity of your way in the world, the humility to be open to correction, and the grace to welcome along former adversaries for the journey you are taking us on.

Where Our Mouths Are--September 10, 2025

Where Our Mouths Are--September 10, 2025

"Paul, a prisoner of Christ Jesus, and Timothy our brother, To our beloved coworker Philemon, to our sister Apphia, to our fellow soldier Archippus, and to the church in your house:  Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I thank my God always when I mention you in my prayers, because I hear of your love for all the saints and your faith toward the Lord Jesus. I pray that the partnership of your faith may become effective as you comprehend all the good that we share in Christ. I have indeed received much joy and encouragement from your love, because the hearts of the saints have been refreshed through you, my brother. For this reason, though I am more than bold enough in Christ to command you to do the right thing, yet I would rather appeal to you on the basis of love—and I, Paul, do this as an old man and now also as a prisoner of Christ Jesus.  I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment." (Philemon v.1-10)

It is one thing to talk in the abstract about "standing with people on the margins;" it is quite another to actually do it with your actions.  It's one thing to preach about having "empathy" for those who are being stepped on or treated as less-than; it is something else entirely to put your body, your reputation, or your life on the line because you have chosen to stand with them.  And even though church folk have a mixed record when it comes to actually living out our good intentions, there are indeed times when the followers of Jesus step up and actually live what they talk about and practice what they preach.  Those moments--even if they seem like rare birds--are a big part of what keeps me a Christian and keeps me from giving up on the church; it seems Jesus hasn't given up on working through us, even for all the times we have blown it.  Sometimes, the followers of Jesus really do embody his own way of standing with the folks on the margins.

This is one of those stories.

The short book we call "Philemon" is one of those lesser-known, contextually-complicated letters of the New Testament, and it only comes around in our Revised Common Lectionary once every three years. So if you heard it read this past Sunday in worship as many of us did, it was likely the first time you had heard it in quite a while (and rarely does it get preached on, largely because of how much backstory goes into explaining the situation).

So here's the short version: near the end of Paul the Apostle's life, he found himself in prison (again) and likely awaiting a death sentence at the hands of the Empire (the Romans did not like folks who made subversive suggestions that anybody other than Caesar was Lord, and Christians would not compromise on that point, instead confessing that Jesus alone was Lord). While he was in prison, he met a runaway slave by the name of Onesimus (we don't know whether Onesimus sought Paul out, or just happened to cross paths with him, or came to faith in Jesus and then got connected with Paul, but somehow they found each other).  Onesimus, it turns out, had been enslaved by Philemon, the recipient of this letter (which is why the book bears his name), and Philemon was a Christian who had first come to faith through the ministry of--you guessed it--Paul the Apostle.  (Now, I know, that last sentence is likely to make us squirm, because it means recognizing that there were early Christians who still practiced slavery, which was very prevalent throughout the Roman Empire, and that the early church really did have to work through the question of how to address the wrongs of slavery.  That question probably requires a deeper dive in a conversation for another day).

Anyway, so now we've got Paul writing to Philemon and basically pleading on behalf of Onesimus to free him. Later in the letter, Paul will say he is sending Onesimus back to Philemon's household, with the understanding that he expects Philemon to receive him not as a slave, but as a brother now--especially since Onesimus has now come to share a common faith in Christ Jesus.  Before the letter is done, Paul will lay on the guilt trips pretty thick and do just about everything short of arm-twisting to make his case, but the goal is clear: he wants Onesimus to be both freed from slavery and received with love as a member of the family.

And this is where Paul's letter just gets me every time: he doesn't just preach or pontificate about "doing the right thing" or "the evils of slavery in the abstract," and he most certainly doesn't leave Onesimus to fend for himself by saying, "This isn't my problem--haven't you noticed I'm already on death row here?"  Instead, Paul sticks his neck out for Onesimus' sake, throwing his lot in with the enslaved man as he writes back to Philemon.  He says, "I am appealing to you for my child, Onesimus, whose father I have become during my imprisonment."  Those are pretty intimate, close terms!  He basically says, "How you treat this enslaved person is how I will take it that you are treating me!" Maybe even more forcefully, the sense is, "I will defend Onesimus like a mother bear, so don't you dare continuing to treat my child like he is property."  Paul metaphorically puts his own body between Philemon and the one whom he had enslaved.  Paul uses the only leverage that he has--his own life, his own reputation, and whatever authority he had in Philemon's eyes--in order to make a difference for one enslaved person.

Now, we could certainly lament that this one letter didn't immediately sweep across the Empire and bring about the end of the institution of slavery (the same as we can lament that the Emancipation Proclamation didn't bring an end to chattel slavery in the United States by itself, either). But we can at least see the thrust of what Paul does here: he risks all of his influence, persuasive power, and clout, for the sake of the person who is most endangered.  You might argue that President Lincoln did the same when he took actions that pinned his presidency (and the course of the Civil War) on the question of slavery beyond just the question of preserving the Union.  But for Paul certainly, the stakes were high, and he was willing to spend his "chips" so to speak on standing with Onesimus, even though it surely came with risk.  If Philemon had been offended or upset by this letter, he might have cut off whatever support he was offering Paul in prison, or he might have turned the house church that met in his home against Paul.  He might have even turned in more evidence again Paul to seal his fate, or added new charges for the Empire to prosecute by suggesting that Paul was trying to overturn the whole Empire by pushing for the end of slavery everywhere!  Paul risked quite a bit by standing in solidarity with Onesimus, even when this formerly enslaved person could do nothing in return for Paul or pay him back.

So, why would Paul do something like this, especially if he had his own problems to deal with?  Why would Paul risk his own already-precarious situation by taking his stand with this relative stranger that he had only recently met, whom everyone else in Roman society regarded as a nobody because he was enslaved?  Well, it seems this is one of those times where Paul took Jesus seriously--this is one way to follow Jesus to the folks on the margins, not just for a quick photo-op or a moment of pity, but to actually get to know the people who might have otherwise been overlooked or ignored.  It's true that Paul had never met the earthly Jesus--he only encountered the risen Christ years after the resurrection, so he never followed Jesus as his rabbi over the dusty roads of Galilee.  And Jesus never had to deal with the specific situation of meeting someone who had escaped from slavery, either. But Paul understood the trajectory of what Jesus' mission was all about.  Paul knew that the same love of Jesus that had healed lepers with a touch of his hand, welcomed outcast tax collectors to share his table, and spoke to those "the rules" forbade speaking to would take a different form in Paul's own life. But the motion was the same: moving toward the folks on the margins to see faces, get to know stories, and to listen to the stories of the people who have been treated as "less-than."  Paul knows, as Jesus surely did, the truth of that famous line of the late Gustavo Gutierrez, "So you say you love the poor? Name them."  Jesus would not settle for abstractly talking ABOUT the poor, or the sick, or the enslaved, but actually got to know faces, stories, and names.  So Paul does the same: he puts his money where his mouth is, so to speak--or puts his reputation where his rhetoric was, by staking everything on standing with Onesimus.  And for Paul, this wasn't a matter of doing enough good works to earn a gold star from Jesus or get into heaven--it was simply a matter of following Jesus where Jesus was already headed: to the people who were suffering right in front of him.

Paul's example gives us a glimpse of what we might be called to do in this day.  I presume we will not run into anyone in exactly Onesimus' predicament, but we may well be asked to put our well-being, our comfort, and our livelihoods on the line for the sake of someone God sends across our path.  We may well be challenged to speak up on the behalf of those who are being treated as less-than or as though they are invisible, and speaking up may lose us friends, cost us clout, or affect our bottom line.  We may well be called to look for the faces like Onesimus' in Paul's situation, to get to know stories and needs, and to take our stand with them, not because of what they can do for us in return, but because that is where Jesus is leading us.  They may be the victims of wars and bombings halfway around the world, or the people whose access to food has been cut off in the name of saving money, or people who have sought refuge here and now find fewer and fewer safe places and people for support.  They may be strangers you have walked past a dozen times without realizing it.  They might be closer than any of us realize.  But when we do take that next step, alongside Paul, to go with Jesus to the margins, the watching world will know that we are more than just talk.

Lord Jesus, lead us today to stand with others, not merely in words or ideas, but with our presence.