Friday, November 29, 2024

Satisfied

This week marks one of the most beloved traditions in American history. Every year on this week, we come together to celebrate what has become so special to us. Families make plans for weeks, sometimes months, to be able to engage this day together, to share some space and make some memories and celebrate. 

Yes, it's Black Friday. 

As astute observer once noted, and many good-natured cynics have since repeated via social media, that Black Friday is so strange because it's a day in which we get up early and stand in line for hours just to trample each other save money on things we don't need exactly one sunrise after we spent the day being thankful for all that we already have. 

Humans are so silly sometimes. 

But...the astute observer is right about us. This is who we are - broadly. Not everyone fits that mold, of course, but culturally, this is where we're at - turning into absolute monsters to get a good deal right after being content with what we already have. 

And...it's true about us as Christians, too. 

How many times have we sat at this Table? How many pieces of bread have we broken off? How many cups of juice have we poured? How many times have we come and feasted, remembered, celebrated the sacrifice of Jesus and His invitation to us to share this intimate space with Him...only to walk out the door of our churches and live like we don't love Jesus...or like He doesn't love us? 

Another astute observer (it's probably not the same guy; it might have been, but it's probably not) once said, and it has been passed through Christian circles for generations now, that the mark of a Christian is not what you do on Sunday, but how you live the other six days of the week. 

And we, like cultural Americans, are just so good at walking out the doors of the church and living like we didn't just spend an hour of our lives confessing our love and our belovedness and celebrating mercy and grace and committing ourselves to the kind of life that God always imagined for us, from the very moment that He knit us together in our mothers' wombs. 

We come and we break the bread and we drink the juice and we walk out of the church and into the world like we're ravenously hungry, like we didn't just have a meal that fills us up to the depths of our bones. 

Christians are so silly sometimes. 

What would it take for us to live differently? What would it take for us to settle into that Sunday morning feeling and carry it throughout the rest of the week? What would it take for us to let that be the real testament of who we are and not lose ourselves just one sunrise later to a mass frenzy of cultural demand? 

What would it mean for us if we were a people who were just as thankful on Friday as we were on Thursday? 

Who were just as loving on Monday as we were on Sunday? 

Who were just as beloved tomorrow as we are today? 

What if we were a people who eat this bread and drink this juice and go out into the world satisfied and sanctified? 

It would change our witness to the world.  

Thursday, November 28, 2024

God is Great

When I was working in the school a few years ago, I had a student who came up to me one day and said he wrote a song, and would I like to hear it? He started by singing, "God is good; God is great," then proceeded into some kind of young teenager weirdness that made little actual sense, then busted up laughing. For the next two years while we shared a building, every time this young man saw me, he would break out in a chorus of, "God is good; God is great," then bust up laughing all over again. 

I delighted in him. That laugh was contagious, even if I never made sense of whatever came next, which he never repeated. 

And...he was right. God is great. 

This has been a refrain of many a song and prayer for thousands of years. We say it almost without thinking about it. But to be in the presence of God is to know His greatness. 

Psalm 90 tells us that God shows His greatness to all of His servants; His children see His majesty.

For me, this seems like being in the presence of a great leader. 

When you were a servant in the house, you saw things that maybe you wouldn't have seen if you weren't just busying yourself in your work. You hear things. You're trusted to be in the presence of the master of the house because you're faithful in what you're doing and you're genuine in your being. So you get these glimpses of the private nature of the master. 

And in God's case, that private nature is greatness. (Just as is His public nature.) 

There's something about seeing someone who is the same in private as they are in public. Who is just as full of grace and love in the living room as in the board room. Who engages every situation with grace and tenderness, but also strength and confidence. Who is just as good today as He was yesterday and the day before that and the day before that. 

There's something about hearing the whispers and realizing that the voice is the same in private as it is in public. That there's no pretense or posturing. That the Master is just through-and-through an example of greatness, fully Himself all the time. Without changing. 

It's when you're privy to these private moments that you realize that everything God has said about Himself is true. It's as true in the kitchen as it is in the bedroom as it is in the bathroom as it is in the backyard as it is in the grocery store and the cubicle and the parking lot. He just is exactly as He says that He is. And you witness it over and over and over again. 

And you witness it as a servant and as a child. As a faithful attendant to the things of God and as an heir to heaven itself. You witness it from your proper place, doing your proper duty, permitted to experience it as a member of the household, a trusted member of the household, a beloved member of the household of God. 

So serve, child, and delight in your Father, for He is truly great. And everything you see, hear, taste, smell, and come to know will confirm that, for He is gracious to show you again and again and again. 

Wednesday, November 27, 2024

God of Slow Anger

Rage is the thing. Isn't it? 

We live in a world that loves to be angry. That loves to call others out on every perceived infraction. That relishes every opportunity to point out someone else's stupidity. We are quick to lose ourselves into the mindless anger of whatever the media has given us, on limited details and even more limited understanding. Many folks, especially the younger generations that have not been taught discernment, are ready to be angry about whatever they're told to be angry about. Anger, it seems, is a virtue. 

And yet, I would be remiss if I didn't say that there's starting to be a bit of a pushback to this. We have coined the term "Karen" for someone who is ridiculously angry, over-the-top self-righteous and outrageous. We see folks starting to push back on social media, calling out the angry for being angry over, well, silly little things that no one should be angry about. We are ready, in some cases, to say, just give it up already - the anger isn't worth it. 

More than that, we're starting to see that the anger isn't helping. 

Not that that always stops us. 

It's interesting that a world that is so invested in its anger has also been upset with the church for its fire and brimstone. At the very same moment that we're blasting someone on social media for taking up two parking spaces or for failing to put their trash firmly in the trash can, we're also blasting the church for preaching a God who has a concept of a place called Hell and has standards for the way that we live our lives on earth. 

So it seems that everyone is allowed to be angry but God. God, who is supposed to be loving, is not permitted to be angry or else, what kind of God do we have? 

What's even more interesting is that God...isn't really angry. He's real about Hell and He's sincere about the ways He wants us to live, but He's not really angry. His Word shows us that over and over again, as He continues to be patient with a wayward people and forgiving to a sinful creation. And it tells us that plainly in Psalm 86 - But Lord, You are a God full of compassion, generous in grace, slow to anger, and boundless in loyal love and truth

And any one of us who has ever been on the receiving end of God's grace or mercy knows this to be true. If God were not so slow to anger with us, we wouldn't have the opportunities that we have today. We wouldn't have our second chances...and our thirds...and our fifteenths. If God were not boundless in His love and generous in His grace and full of compassion for us, if He were not slow to anger, this whole thing falls completely apart. 

The world doesn't love the idea of God's anger, but God is, historically, far less angry than most of us have ever been. He's never, not once, ever blown His stack over getting the wrong order at a fast food restaurant. 

But more importantly than that, in a world that is trending toward grace (finally), God is exactly the example and guidepost we need - not quick to anger, but tempered by love.

May we be more like Him. 

Tuesday, November 26, 2024

God of Freedom

They are some of the most famous words in all of Scripture, immortalized in Hollywood and known even to those outside of the faith - Let My people go

These are the words Moses spoke to Pharaoh when trying to secure freedom from slavery for the Israelites and a journey into the Promised Land. They are words he repeated more than once. They are words that were ignored, even mocked, by the Egyptian leader. 

But Moses had to say them. At the time, Israel was captive to Egypt. Pharaoh had a powerful say over what the people did or did not do. If they wanted to leave Goshen, if they wanted to journey toward Canaan, if they wanted to travel and not worry about being pursued and killed, if they wanted to leave their lowly position under Pharaoh's heavy thumb, they had to have his permission. He was the boss. 

So it is, we think, with God. 

He is the boss. He's the one in charge. He's got us where He wants us, and if we want to leave without being smitten (smited?), we have to have His permission. We have to get Him to let us go. 

Often, we think we'll just stomp out in obstinance. We'll just throw a finger (a certain finger) in His face and walk out. He can't stop us, right? I mean, He can, but who cares? We're done with this God thing. We're tired of being under His rules. We're ready to go our own way, so come Hell or high water (and God, ironically, has been responsible for both), we're out of here. 

But it doesn't take obstinance. 

God will let us go. 

Unlike Pharaoh, God doesn't have a stake in keeping us here. He'd like us to stay, sure, but His empire doesn't collapse if we walk away. His reputation isn't really on the line here. He's got nothing to lose except, well, us, and as much as He doesn't want to lose us, He doesn't want to keep us by force. That's not the relationship that He wants with us. 

Love, He knows, requires freedom, and freedom means that sometimes, we walk away. And as much as that hurts His heart, He lets us. 

Psalm 81:12 tells us this truth in God's own voice: So I freed them to follow their hard hearts, to do what they thought was best. 

In other words, I let them go. They wanted to go, and I let them go. Because God knows that the only way to truly have us is to have our hearts, and the only way to have our hearts is to let them come back to Him. 

The only way we come back is if we are truly free to walk away. So...He gives us that freedom. 

But He never stops scanning the horizon, like the prodigal's father, for our return. 

Monday, November 25, 2024

God Holds Back

For as long as we have known our God in a fallen world (so as far back as Genesis 3), we have all been asking the same question - why doesn't He act more quickly?

Why do the wicked prosper? Why does evil seem to win? How do we reconcile the bad things of this world with a God who says He is 1) good and 2) in control? Why do we get cancer? Why do children die? Why do the good struggle? Why, as the psalmist often wonders, do we spend our lives running from those who chase us only to destroy us? 

It is the psalmist who gives us the most passionate exclamation of this troubled soul, as well, when he cries out, Why do You stand by and do nothing? Unleash Your power and finish them off! (Psalm 74:11).

Yes, Lord. Amen! Come and put them in their place. Show Yourself

But...

But I confess that for as often as I have expressed this same sentiment, for as often as these words have been my own prayer, for as often as my own broken heart has longed for God to unleash His power already, my more humble heart is thankful that He hasn't. 

My more humble heart recognizes that there have been times in my life when I have fallen short and others have been praying the same thing to God toward me - they have wanted Him to unleash His power on my fallen and sinful self. On my self that has wounded someone else. On my self that has been short-tempered. On my self that has not been deserving of success but somehow found it anyway (through blessing and mercy, if we're being honest). On myself that has seemed to be, in my weaker moments, all that is wrong with the world and a standing testimony to the failure of God to set things right. 

My more humble heart recognizes that I am so very thankful that God holds back His judgment and His wrath and His power in the hopes that maybe, just maybe, His person will turn their heart back toward Him, repent, atone, weep, and make a new path through the world with righteous steps. 

Because if He didn't hold back, I would already be toast. 

And this is the rub. We weep and mourn and cry and tear our clothes and beg for the Lord to come in His mighty power and fix all the things that are wrong in this broken world...and yet, if we're being honest with ourselves, we have to confess that sometimes, we are the things that are wrong in this broken world. 

And what goodness it is that He has not answered the prayers of those we have wounded and unleashed His power and finished us off. 

What grace that He is patient with us, standing by and not doing nothing, but waiting.... 

Friday, November 22, 2024

Bread and Wine

Sometimes, I think about this Table and the meal that is set upon it. 

We know that at the Passover meal, the seder, there was much more on the spread than bread and wine. We know that there would have been lamb and all of the accoutrement that went with the remembrance. Jesus could have chosen anything on that table to represent His body and His blood. 

But He didn't. 

And here's why I think He didn't: because the bread and the wine were the most universal of all foods that day. Every culture from every place and every time has had some form of bread and some form of fermented drink. We've been talking this week about culture, and the bread and the wine...it isn't cultural. 

It's cross-cultural. 

Think about all of the foods that you've read about in the Bible. There's a lot of talk about pomegranates. Raisin cakes. Lamb. Manna. Quail. Mandrakes. Honey. Figs. Any or all of these things, Jesus could have chosen. But these things, they are local. They are specialized. They are cultural. For example, lamb was common and perhaps if Jesus had made lamb the thing, it would still be common for us, but most Americans aren't eating lamb on any kind of regular basis. We certainly aren't eating raisin cakes. I'm not even sure I know what a raisin cake is.

And I certainly don't want any figs. (If you've been around this blog for awhile, you know that I believe the fruit that Eve ate from the tree was a fig. There's a very fun theological thread to follow to support that idea, but I've already done that in other places.)

But no. We have a God who chose bread and wine. And if we look across time and around the world, every civilization has had some form of these foods. Bread, pan, naan, crackers, ciabatta, focaccia, baguette...everyone is grinding grain and making bread. 

And all kinds of fermented drinks. Wine, of course, is quite popular, and even in places like maximum security prisons, persons are finding things to ferment - saving the scraps of their fruit from their meal trays and tucking them away in socks to make a fermented drink. There's something in the human spirit that likes to ferment. Native tribes all around the world have their own drinks. We just keep doing it. 

So Jesus looked at this table that was spread with the very cultural meal of the Israelites - the Passover - and He took the things that were least cultural among them, the things that every man and woman would know across all times and all places, and He said, This is it. This is My body; this is My blood. Do this in remembrance of me. 

As we think about culture wars, then, about the Bible and postmodernism and maybe even post-Christiandom or whatever other era we think we want to be in, and as we try to read back through His Word with whatever cultural lens we've gathered, this Table puts us back in our right place - reclining with Him, enjoying the meal, breaking the bread, pouring the wine, and doing this thing that every man and woman would always know. 

Bread and wine. 

Broken and poured out for you and me. 

Thank you, Jesus. 

Thursday, November 21, 2024

Uncultured

It's easy for us to make the argument that our culture is giving us the opportunity to interpret God's Word, finally, the way that He always wanted us to - against the culture of the day it was written. We see the women and the weak and the powerless and the outcast, and we think, yes, this is what we're doing and this is what God is doing; we're on the same page. 

But what if we're not?

This is, I think, where we can really see our cultural lens most dominantly, if we're willing to really look at it. 

We see God using women, and we think that He was doing it to be countercultural. We see Jesus eating with the outcasts, and we think He was doing it to be countercultural. We see healers in the New Testament touching the unclean, and we think they were doing it to be countercultural, to turn things on their head. 

What if God just doesn't care about culture?

What if God cares about hearts? 

This is, I think, the rub. I think that God uses the men and women He uses in the Bible, that He chooses them, based on the characteristics of their heart, not to make a point about the world that we live in and the culture we've created. 

Remember, this is the same God who had to give His people a culture to even start with. Left on their own, they would be wholly barbaric and not even do the most basic things to care for one another. We call this "the Law." He had to tell them things like that they ought to return things they borrow, build safety walls around their roofs, not take things that don't belong to them, stay committed to one another. God created the kind of culture that He wanted His people to live in. 

And while we can get hung up, if you want to, I guess, on the fact that masculine pronouns are used most often in this, I think that's missing the point. I think that's getting caught up in what our own culture is trying to tell us about gender and identity and not really catching the heart of the message, which is that God Himself created for us the kind of culture that He wanted us to have. Not as patriarchal or gender concrete or cis or whatever other buzzword you want to put on it, but as friends, brothers and sisters, neighbors, and...all the way back in Genesis when togetherness even started...helpmeets. If you read the very first accounts of male and female, there is no patriarchy; there is equality. That was God's design. 

The rest is the curse. Which, by the way, we're still living under, no matter how "enlightened" we think we're becoming. 

I think God looks at a person's heart and at a person's relationships and at a person's positions and uses them in exactly the way that He wants to. I think He groans when we read our Bible and try to make a social hierarchy out of it, create some kind of dynamic that was never intended. I think when He watches us raise the woman and the outcast and the gender fluid and all that other stuff, what He sees is the way we lower others to trod them under the same feet we regret having tread former ground on. I think He looks at the way that we're trying to twist the Bible through our postmodern cultural lens, and He mourns because we're just not getting it. 

The Bible is about erasing lines, not redrawing them. And no matter how right we think we are, every time we simply shift them, we are still getting it wrong. 

I read this little word, "women," in the psalms and saw God using them in His army to bring the good news, and I wondered if this was one of those things I was supposed to be paying attention to as a signal that God actually prefers our culture over Israel's. It immediately jumped out to me. 

But it didn't take long before I realized that was my culture speaking and not my Lord

The message God wants us to hear is not that women are running...but that the faithful are running. Running to share the Good News. 

Lord, in the words of the mighty warrior, let me run.  

Wednesday, November 20, 2024

Bygone Eras

The problem we get into when we start looking through our own cultural lens at the text of the Bible is that we end up in a place where we can completely dismiss the Word of God as authoritative, then attempt to change it to suit our own tastes. 

 You've seen this; I know you have. 

So we start with a group of postmodern Christians who are upset that the Bible is so "patriarchal" - by this, they mean that men feature prominently in the Scriptures, that male pronouns are used to describe God and much of the narration of His story, that women are subjugated, that the whole male dominance thing is clearly a product of the time that the characters lived in and not part of God's design. 

Once they've made this argument, they can throw out much of the Bible as "cultural," and not only as cultural, but as outdated or backward. Then, we start getting Christians who try to expand the Bible into the age of feminism by using more inclusive pronouns, by taking out "cultural" rules about things like marriage and sex, and so on. And if God isn't really "He" and the Bible isn't really "he" and "she," well, then, we make room for the gender fluidity that we're fighting about in our own age. 

At the same time, these very same folks will emphasize the roles of women in the Bible, prominent women, to claim that God isn't as patriarchal as the culture was, that God wants us to be feminists, and so on, etc., ad nauseum. 

This is the same group of folks that uses our postmodern understandings of homosexuality to claim that the Bible doesn't actually make any claims against homosexuality. The Bible in its own culture, they say, is talking about the servant-boy type of homosexuality often practiced in Rome, which was about power and not about love, whereas today, our homosexual relationships are about love and therefore, they are more like the lifetime union that God was talking about all the way back in Genesis than they are about the homosexual "acts" that appear to be condemned, by some arguments from the text.

Thus, once again, our culture trumps the authoritativeness of God's Word as we spin things to make sense according to what we think we've already made sense of. 

And we say that God would want it this way because He would not want the culture in which His people lived in a bygone era to cause offense to a new generation of Christians who are just looking for His love. 

So in the very same breath, they are throwing out the Bible while clinging to some versions of its teachings, trying to claim that culture - not God - is everything and that what we need is a Word that speaks to the age that we're in. 

Of course, we know that Bible is already speaking to our age; many are just refusing to listen because the message isn't an easy one...or popular. 

On one hand, it's an easy argument to make. After all, we see God using women in a time when women were appreciated differently than they are today. We see God using the small shepherd to defeat the giant. We see God using the powerless to shame the powerful. We see God using the weak to subdue the strong. We see God making the last first. We see God turning culture on its head, and so it's only natural that as we live in a culture that turns many things on its head, we assume we are doing the work of the Lord and that He approves of our new readings of His Word. It's easy to make the argument that our understanding is the one He wanted all along. 

Unless that's not at all what's going on.... 

Tuesday, November 19, 2024

Cultural Lens

We are living in a time of textual criticism - an academic sort of approach (or what passes as one) to the Bible and its stories. We have invested quite a bit of our time and energies into determining the actual cultural and social setting of the words that were written and talking about how those truths affect the perspective that is presented through what is supposed to be God's Word. 

We have spent our time digging and uncovering shards of pottery and slivers of parchment and piecing things back together so that we can get a glimpse of what it looked like to be living in biblical times and how that day-to-day life might affect the way we understand what was written for us. 

We have made excuses for the things that we find distasteful in the Scriptures - things like slavery or this so-called "patriarchy" that is so popular to condemn these days. We have confessed that they are there, but have called them cultural and tried to sweep them away as uneducated, ignorant realities of a bygone era, whereas we are now so civilized as to have moved past them. 

Yes, our criticism seems to have given us a way to approach the Bible more soberly...or so we think. 

And when we have come to conclusions through our criticisms, we have decided that the appropriate response is to update our interpretation according to our higher sophistication so that we can get to the heart of what God really said (and meant) and throw out all that messy, barbaric stuff that has no place in a "progressive" society like ours. 

You know, that kind of Christianity that doesn't "gel" with the "real world" that we live in now. 

Less time has been spent on discovering the biases that we bring from our present culture back into the ancient words of the Bible. 

We think, and we have convinced ourselves, that since we are an ever-evolving species (thanks, Darwin) and since our thinking is more "progressive" today than it was even a generation ago and since we are more civilized and more sophisticated and overall better human beings now than our ancestors were, bound as they were by broken cultures with misplaced priorities, that what we have today is a truth that is worth rewriting history for. 

We've seen it in the ways that we rewrite our secular history to match our modern sentiments, but it's happening at the biblical level, too. 

It's essentially self-righteousness. It's the belief that we are finally in a place where we are right and where we have the truth and where our understanding gives us the right to reframe everything into our lens because our lens is finally correct. Like a world struggling with blurred vision, we, finally, have developed the glasses that bring everything into focus and now, it is not only possible, but it is required of us that we invest ourselves in putting all things into that focus. 

Even biblical, holy, scared things that the Lord our God has told us Himself are eternal. We are now in such a place of cultural superiority that we are starting to think it's time we "improve" upon these things, too. 

So this word - women - struck me as I had a very cultural response to it. But should I have? How much of my reaction was our current culture self-righteously trying to speak backward into history and make the inerrant word of God "better?" 

How do we even begin to reconcile this?

Monday, November 18, 2024

Culture Wars

As I was writing one of last week's blogs, the one about the messengers in the army of the Lord being ready to run with good news, there's a little detail that I left out: 

The Scriptures actually identify that it was women in the army of the Lord who were ready to run. 

When I was going back through my notes for that particular reflection, that little word - "women" - struck me, but I didn't want to jump on it right away. It was one of those things that I needed to sit with for awhile longer, to let roll around in my heart, to prayerfully consider what it is that I wanted to say about this. 

There has been, as most of us are well aware, an outpouring of...let's call it "anti-patriarchy" in Christian circles in recent years. "Patriarchy" has become a buzz word in all the worst ways. Sects of Christians are coming out against what they perceive as an overemphasis on maleness in the Scriptures and in historical Christianity, and they are ready to jump on any mention of a female in the Bible as evidence that we are completely backward and getting God's social economy all wrong. They are ready to use a verse like this to condemn everything, to throw it all out and to claim that we need to start over and build a more...equal? equitable? Christianity, one that isn't male-dominated and in fact, is actually gender-blind. 

I confess that as I read my notes, a similar sort of spark went off in my head, put there by the very kind of culture wars that I'm talking about. I read that word - women - and something inside of me leaped to "Aha! Women fighting in the army of the Lord. Now that will preach." 

But...should it?

In an age of advanced feminism and moving into and through gender fluidity, self-identified sexuality, and blurring lines, a message like that will preach to those inclined to hear such a thing, but would it capture the heart of God in a meaningful way? 

I'm not so sure. 

This draws us back into a discussion about contextual reading, about how we approach the Bible, about what we bring to it and what it offers us and the barriers that exist and the ones that are being torn down, what we can take and what we must ignore, what it says and what we hear. 

Sects of Christianity have come out against the Bible as too "patriarchal," but is it really, or is that just the way that we are reading it through our own cultural lens? 

This is important. So let's talk about it for a few days.  

Friday, November 15, 2024

On the Edge of Empty

As the disciples gathered in the Upper Room with Jesus to share the Passover meal, they didn't know what was about to happen. They had no idea that all this talk He'd been sharing about going to Jerusalem to die was about to come true. They couldn't fathom that He was talking about a physical death. It wasn't in their most bizarre imagination that in just a matter of hours, they would lose their Rabbi and Friend. 

But Jesus knew. 

Jesus knew, and He tried to tell them. They didn't understand, and He knew they didn't understand. So He did the only thing He knew to do - He gave them the fullness of the Passover meal. 

This wasn't just about satisfying a physical appetite, although the Passover meal would have been the one that every faithful Jew looked forward to every year - all the best food, all the best flavors, the aromas wafting through the air. But this meal, this night, was also about building a fullness into the spaces that Jesus knew were about to become empty. 

The spaces He knew were about to fill the ache. 

It's why He made a point to explain to them that this was symbolic of what they were about to experience, of what they were all about to go through. It's why He told them this was His body and His blood. It's why He made sure that around that Table, they shared stories and laughed over memories and remembered all of the times they'd had together. He was telling them about tomorrow, sure, but He was making sure they were so full of today that when the bottom fell out - which again, only He truly understood was coming - there would be somewhere sort of soft for them to land. Something for them not to fall back on, but to fall into; something that would catch them. 

This Table catches us. 

None of us knows what tomorrow brings. None of us can imagine what might happen when the sun rises again. If it rises for us at all. None of us can plan on the things that we don't know, on what we don't see. Today could go on forever or tomorrow could bring it all crashing down. We simply don't know. And even if there are signs, sometimes, we don't understand. It doesn't register in our brains. 

But we have this: we have the fullness of God present in us. We have the physical gift of His body and His blood, all the best flavors in all of the world, and we have the spiritual gift of this moment - this time shared with Jesus and with brothers and sisters, laughing and remembering and relishing our time together. This Table fills us up so that if the world should crumble, if the world should fall, there's something there to catch us. 

And it's this: Jesus Christ came and dwelt among us in flesh and prepared a Table for us that we might come and eat with Him in the fullness of all things, even - even - on the very edge of empty, whether we know it or not. 

Be full in Christ, friends. For it is the only thing we can truly ever trust in.  

Thursday, November 14, 2024

God of Help

Every once in awhile, all of us need help. 

Sometimes, we're fortunate enough to get it. 

We see stories on the news all the time of humans helping humans, of persons who end up down on their luck or caught in disaster and their story gets out and all of a sudden, that debt is paid off, that roof is repaired, that heirloom restored, that body healed...whatever it is. We see persons coming out of the woodwork to do good deeds...and we hear whispers of things that we never see, actors in the background who wish to remain nameless. 

Yes, look for the good in the world, and you will find it. There's plenty of good to go around. 

And yet, there are also many of us who wonder why that's never our story. Why no one comes out of the woodwork to help us. Why we can keep telling our story and nothing ever changes about it, no one is moved by it, no one comes to help move us. We look at our debt, our brokenness, our lostness, our disease, and we wonder when our help is coming. 

If it ever is. 

It's enough to make a person bitter. It really is. It's easy to start wondering what's wrong with you, that no one seems to want to help you with anything. If you need to see this in action, look at any local facebook group. Watch the folks ask for help. Watch as the usual suspects jump in and volunteer themselves...and then don't...and then no one does...but on another request, they're back again like nothing happened. Watch folks pick and choose who they respond to and who they offer to help. Watch those who get no offers wonder what happened to the 47 persons who commented on the similar post the week before. 

Watch them ache and wonder what's so wrong with them that nobody wants to help. 

Thankfully, we always have a Helper. He is the Lord, our God, and He's been helping us since He knit us together in our mother's womb. We would not even be here if it were not for the force of His assistance in our lives, to do something so simple as to birth us into the physical world. 

Listen to the psalmist - I have leaned upon you since I came into this world; I have relied on you since you took me safely from my mother's body, so I will ever praise you

The very first thing You ever did for me, Lord, was help me - help me be born into this world, help me form and develop and push out and breathe. And because my soul remembers that help, because I know that without Your aid, I wouldn't even be here, I lean solely upon You. You, I know, will help me. You, I know, are helping me. 

You're the only one I know for sure I've got. 

And you know what, friends? That's enough. He's enough. 

Wednesday, November 13, 2024

God of Good News

There are a great many stories in the Bible about the army of God and about the army of Israel and about, well, armies in general. About men willing to fight for what they believe in. About marksmen on the battlefield. About a single stone in a small sling. About chariots of fire and mountains covered in unseen warriors. About a messenger running to bring report to a commander far away. 

Remember that story? David is hanging out on the rooftop and sees a man running from the battlefield and determines, by the way the man is running, what kind of news he is bringing from the war. Then, he sees a second man running, and he knows by the way the man is running exactly who the man is. 

When we think about armies, we don't think often about the messengers, but maybe we should. 

They are, after all, a very important part of God's army. 

Psalm 68 talks about the army of the Lord, and it says that when He commands them, when He gives the word, there are very many ready to tell the good news. 

This is important, especially for a Christianity that has had a reputation in the not-too-distant past for being about fighting God's battles for Him, with violence if necessary. It's important for those of us who think the behavior modification of the rest of the world is God's mission for us. It's important for those of us who believe that the best way to be in God's army is to carry a sword, light a fire, thump a Bible. 

No, friends. The army of the Lord is an army of messengers.

It's an army of runners, folks from the front lines who are carrying a message back. Sinners who have been redeemed. Broken who have been healed. Lost who have been found. 

The world should be standing on its rooftop and see us come running and not be afraid of whatever weapons we might be carrying, but know that we come with a message from the battle - the very same battle that they are fighting. The same troubles they're facing. Only, we know how the fight is going. 

We know how the war ends. 

We know Who wins. 

The world ought to be watching and see us running and say to themselves, "Now, there. There is someone who's running like they have good news to share." 

Good news, indeed.

Tuesday, November 12, 2024

God of Hope

I've had a lot of wishes in my life. I have wished for better jobs, for good friends, for healing, for financial assistance, for peace. I have wished my cares away...and sometimes, it has worked. But more often than not, I end up lying around wondering how much harder I have to wish for things to change before they will. 

My hope, however, is firm. 

A lot of folks think that wishing is the same as hoping, or at least a close enough equivalent that the difference doesn't really matter. They used the words interchangeably - I hope it doesn't rain today; I wish the price would go down; I hope the results are good; I wish they'd just call already. 

But let me tell you this: there is a huge difference between hoping and wishing. And that's probably why as much as I sit around wishing, things never really change the way I dream for them to. 

In short, hoping is believing and wishing is wanting. 

To truly hope, you have to have more than a wish. You have to have trust in something, an expectation, a firm belief in the power of something not only to change things, but to be good enough to change things. You have to believe a promise made by something (or Someone) worth hoping in. 

You can want all day for your life to change, but until you believe it really can, it never will. 

That's the difference between wishing and hoping. 

Thankfully for us, we have God. We have a God of promises who has been true to His Word from the formless and void. We have a God who has done what He said He would do and still has a few things He's working on. We have a God who is trustworthy and dependable, powerful, and good. We have a God who not only can change our lives, but will...if only we believe in Him. 

The Psalmist says it very well - My soul waits quietly for the True God alone because I hope only in Him. (Psalm 62:5)

In other words, I want a lot of things in this world and I could spend a lot of my time wishing, and I probably do, but at the end of the day, my soul waits in stillness for God because that's the only real place I have more than a wish; that's the only place I have hope. 

Are you wishing today? Is there something heavy on your heart that you're longing to see happen in your life, for you or for someone you love? 

How would it change things if your wish became a hope?

Monday, November 11, 2024

God of Healing

We have seen by now that God shakes the earth; the very foundations of it tremble at His voice. And of course, if you happen to live along a fault line or have passed third grade science, you know that when the earth trembles, it also cracks. 

Have you ever been cracked? 

I tell you, there have been times in my life when my whole world was shaken so hard that I have felt like I was falling apart. Falling absolutely apart, into a million little pieces. One little piece of me falls over here, another little piece over there, until the gaps in my being are so big and so wide that it feels like all the king's horses and all the king's men will never be able to put me back together again. 

But God can. 

In Psalm 60, the psalmist is having one of these moments. The whole earth has shaken, he feels disrupted, everything is splitting wide open, and it seems like it took nothing at all for God to make this all happen. He knows the Lord is the only one with this kind of power. 

But he also knows that the Lord is the only one with the power to fix it. 

So he cries out - You have made the earth shake; You have cracked it open effortlessly. Heal the fissures in the earth, for it is unsteady

In other words, only Your power does this, Lord. Only You are so strong and awe-inspiring. Only for You does the earth tremble this way. Only because of the way You move does everything feel like it's falling apart. But only You can put it back together. 

And, Lord, we need You to put it back together because everything was shaken and now, it feels a little shaky. It's unsteady. It feels like any second, whatever is left standing on whatever feeble legs we have is going to come crashing down, too. 

Heal the fissures, Lord. Like only You can. 

Do you feel this? Have you felt this? Are you feeling this right now? 

If your world is shaken, if you're falling apart, if little pieces seem to be hitting the ground all around you and everything feels unsteady, cry out to the One who shakes the earth. For He shakes it, yes, but He also heals it. He heals its fissures and puts things back together. 

Including you.

Cry out to Him. 

Friday, November 8, 2024

A Bigger Table

If you are like many Americans, your table has recently gotten much smaller. Politics and elections tend to do that to us, especially as our world seems to get more and more partisan. Families and friendships tend to break up the deeper we get into the reds and the blues and even one simple comment can send someone stomping out the door. 

Kind of like Judas. 

(But I digress.)

When we think about the Upper Room, we think about Jesus and twelve other guys, which becomes eleven other guys when Judas takes off to betray Him to the religious elite. It is, we think, an intimate gathering of a small group of men who have spent most of the past three years together, know each other well, and basically get along decently. 

But we know from other stories in the Bible that 1) there were often more than just twelve men with Jesus and 2) that doesn't even count the crowds that followed Him everywhere He went. 

Now, picture it: Jesus is entering into Jerusalem. The crowds are putting palm leaves down on the road. Everyone knows He's coming into the city. It's a big deal. How do you suppose, then, that Jesus manages to slip away to a quiet space with just His twelve closest friends? And no women. And no stragglers. And no beggars. And no crowds. 

Either everyone gives up on Jesus all at once and walks away...or Jesus turns them away in what would be a completely uncharacteristic action on His part...or maybe everyone goes to spend the Passover with their own family, as would have been ritual. 

But that would still leave some widows, some orphans, some outcasts, some rejects...some folks who wouldn't have had anywhere else to go. Do you think Jesus turned them away?

I think the Table was bigger than we imagine it. I think there were more than thirteen men in that room. I think there were women and children and non-disciples and followers and servants and a whole host of other persons. I think Peter's wife was there. Children, too, if he had them. (Remember when Jesus healed Peter's mother-in-law? Peter was married, friends. Do you honestly believe he's not spending the Passover with his wife?) 

And the twelve may have gotten along fairly decently, but there's a certain law of numbers that says that the more factors you involve, the greater the risk for conflict. I'm telling you - not everyone in that room was a friend to everyone else. 

There were whispers. And rumors. And sideways glances. And comments made under the breath. And this one won't associate with that one and neither will that one associate with that other one. There were stories from the past and comments that ruffled feathers. There were human beings in that room. How many? More than thirteen, but who can say for sure? 

The thing is, the Table is bigger than we think it is. And that's the way that Jesus wants it. He doesn't have a problem getting a bunch of folks together in an intimate, small space. He's not afraid of the human issues that will arise there. It doesn't deter Him to think that they might...*gasp*...disagree with one another. 

He sees folks who want to come, who want to be part of things, who are earnest in heart, and He makes the Table big enough for all of them. 

We could learn a lot from Him. 

In this season in which so many of our tables have gotten smaller, what would it mean if we took this moment, this Table...and made them just a little bit bigger? 

It's a good place to start, with the blood and the bread that brings life.  

Thursday, November 7, 2024

God of the Grave

Our God is a God of resurrection. We celebrate this every Easter in the empty tomb (and every other day of the year, as well, for if He lives, He lives every day). We have read in the Gospels the stories of the dead brought back to life. We have even seen it in the Old Testament, generations before Jesus, when the prophet raised the gracious woman's son back to life. 

Yes, our God is the God of resurrection and the empty tomb. 

But He is also the God of the grave. 

Our God is the God who executes justice, who determines what is good and right and does something about what is wicked and wrong. When evil people were after David, when he was running for his life, when he couldn't fathom a way out of the caves he was hiding in, when he nothing but Goliath's sword and a little bit of bread his men took from the altar, he confidently proclaimed: 

But You, O God, You will drive them into the lowest pit - violent, lying people won't live beyond their middle years. (Psalm 55:23)

David knew that God is a God of life, and he knew that the Lord could restore him fully to the calling that He had placed on the young shepherd boy, the fledgling king. But in the very same breath that David knows that God is a God of life for the faithful, he also knows that God is a God of death for the unrighteous. For the unrepentant. For the wicked. 

Again, this is a theology that we don't particularly like; it's one we wrestle with. How can we say that God is a God of love if He is also a God who brings humans down to the grave, to the lowest pit? Those two things don't seem to gel. 

But let's take an example from our current culture. I see a lot of posts from friends on social media about how if someone wants to be in your life, they'll make the effort to be in your life. Even if they are family by blood, you don't owe them anything if they aren't interested in the investment. And indeed, I know many who have cut ties with family for one reason or another and who have kept their kids from knowing someone who is related by blood. 

The perspective behind this is simple: you love yourself and your child so much that you'll do anything to protect them from someone who is toxic and dangerous to them, even if that means there can be no relationship at all. 

The same is true with God. There are children of His who have chosen not to be involved, not to be invested, not to be part of the family, not to make the effort. They sow discord and destruction; they spread lies and wreak havoc. So God has simply said, for the sake of His children who do love Him and have chosen to be part of His family, He's okay cutting these others off. He's okay making sure His wayward children do not get to be toxic and dangerous to His faithful ones. He's willing to let those who have said they don't want to make the effort not reap the rewards that the effort would have given them...because it's toxic and dangerous to everyone else. 

They're still His children. Always will be. But they've chosen to cut themselves off, so God is content to let them go. This God of life is willing to let them die if that's what they so choose because to do anything else would be to contaminate the very good thing He's got going in love. So He will bring them down to the grave, the way a Father lays down an over-tired, feisty young child - tenderly, but firmly, fighting all the way. But He'll do it. 

He is the God of resurrection and the empty tomb. But He's also the God of the grave, if that's what you so choose. 

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

God of Joy

For much of human history, it was common for human beings to establish their civilizations along the rivers. Even hunters used to follow the rivers because we have always innately understood one thing - rivers mean water and water means life. Without water, even the plants wither and die. 

So in the absence of the sophisticated systems we have today that can transport and manage water just about anywhere, early folks just set themselves up along the river so that the water was free-flowing and abundant. 

The Bible also speaks liberally about rivers. There were rives in the Garden. Rivers in the Exodus. Rivers in Jerusalem. Rivers in the Promised Land. The Psalmist talks about being like a tree planted by a river, whose roots go down into an earth that never dries up, so that you're constantly being fed by the goodness of God. 

But the river of God doesn't just bring water. 

It also brings joy. 

A pure stream flows - never to be cut off - bringing joy to the city where God makes His home. (Psalm 46:4)

God built His house in Jerusalem, and Jerusalem was a city nourished by a river. But God's house doesn't run on regular water; it runs on living water. And within the living water, there is more than two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. 

In the living water of God, there is joy. 

This comes as a shock to many who grew up in the fire-and-brimstone church of not-too-many generations ago, where Hell was preached frequently and Bibles were thumped and the "fear of God" was spoken right into you week after week after week after week. It's a shock to those who read the Old Testament and get stuck on a God who looks like He's all about violence and judgment. It's a shock to those who have never known God as anything more than a strict rulemaster, someone always ready to smack your knuckles with a ruler for stepping out of line but whose standards are so impossibly high that no one could ever possibly attain them. 

I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this is the God you've been told about. I'm sorry that this is the God you were told that you have to love...the kind of God you were told loves you (even though it's hard to believe with all of that other judgment and stuff in there). I'm sorry that someone so misrepresented the Lord to you. 

Our God is a God of rivers, and the rivers of God are not judgments; they are blessings. They are gifts. They are glorious. 

And when the rivers are treacherous, when they aren't life-giving, God parts them. 

Just ask Moses.

It's not so hard to believe that God's joy runs like a river right through the heart of His city, His home, His creation. This is, after all, our God. He has promised us living water, and here it is, rushing joy into the very places where He dwells with us. 

Tuesday, November 5, 2024

God's Plans

If you've been around church folk at all, you've probably heard this a time or two: "God has a plan for your life." 

We say this usually to those who are lost in some way, to those who are depressed or addicted or wandering or hopeless or simply lost. Those who are alone. Those who have been abandoned. Those who have given up on themselves. "God has a plan for your life."

We say it also to those who are miracles - to those who have survived the unthinkable, who have fought the hard fights and won, who have somehow come through when so many others in their situation have not. The woman who has beaten cancer; the man who survived the scary car crash; the addict who has been sober for five years; the infertile couple now expecting their first miracle baby. "God has a plan for your life." 

It's true...but it's also not true. 

It's true that God has an idea of where your life is going, of what He wants to do with it, of how it all shakes out. But it's also true that this is not just one thing. 

I think when we keep telling folks that God has a plan for their life, we convince them that it's up to them to find that one thing that God is doing, to latch onto it, and to let that be their thing forever. 

This sets up two problematic scenarios: first, they severely stress over whether what they're finding is "the" plan or not, whether they're somehow missing it or maybe they already missed it. Second, we do not allow them to grow. If this thing that we've identified is "the" thing that God is doing with their life, then it becomes the brand they have to carry with them forever. And I'm telling you - after awhile, that kind of stuff gets heavy. 

I mean, do you really always have to be the addict? Do you always have to be the infertile? Do you always have to be the lost, the lonely, the depressed, the forgotten for God to have glory through your life? Man, what a burden to carry. 

The thing is, even the Bible tells us we're wrong about this. Even one of our most-quoted verses tells us we're wrong: For I know the plans I have for you, declares the Lord. The plans. With an S. Multiple. Not one plan, but many. (*I always like to emphasize that this verse was written not with a singular 'you,' but a plural one. We often misuse it to talk about ourselves, but it is meant to speak about all of God's people collectively.) 

Psalms further confirms this, as the psalmist cries out, You have done so many wonderful things, had so many tender thoughts toward us, Eternal my God, that go on and on, ever increasing

In other words, God is doing more than one wonderful thing. He has more than one tender thought. His intentions toward you are ever increasing. The things He wants to do with your life are always growing. 

God doesn't intend for you to do one thing forever, except to glorify Him. But that glorification takes many forms in many seasons, and you are not bound to the last thing God did for you forever. You are not tied to what the world says is your biggest story - victory or defeat. God has never decided that your life is one thing; it is a testimony with many chapters. 

Yes, God has a desire for your life, but within that desire are many plans. For you. For me. For us. 

Monday, November 4, 2024

God Sees All

Have you ever watched "American's Funniest Home Videos"...or a show like it? The premise is fairly simple - it's humans or animals caught on video in some wild situations, often of their own making, with hilarious consequences. (Sometimes.) 

I love someone who loves this show, and I love to hear her laugh, so I end up watching more than I would on my own. One of the things that I wrestle with when watching these home videos is that I can often see what's coming before the person in the video apparently does. 

You can only put a ladder so precariously against a table before you're certain it will slide out from under you. You can only slam a door so hard in the snow before the whole powdery white contents of the roof come crashing down on you. You can only forget to put the car in park so many times. 

Know what I mean? 

And yet, I laugh. I laugh when it happens. I do. I see it coming, I know what's about to happen, I mumble a "you idiot" under my breath, I offer much-needed advice from my living room just before the moment of disaster, and then I laugh anyway. I just can't help myself. 

Neither can God. 

Psalm 37 tells us that God laughs at the wicked because He sees what's coming. He knows what's going to happen to the wicked man, and the wicked man hasn't even dreamt it in his wildest imagination (or his worst nightmare) yet. 

God watches the wicked man set his ladder up against the table. God watches the ill-tempered woman slam the door. God watches the unfaithful neglect to set their parking brake. God watches us in the silly mistakes we make, too confident in our own ability, too self-righteous, too self-confident....wicked...and He laughs. 

He sees it coming. He knows what's about to happen. He's shouting from his couch, "Don't do that! Think this through!" He might even mumble a few "you fool"s under His breath from time to time (or often...I don't know. This seems like a common phrase in the Gospels). And then, He laughs. 

He laughs because it's so obvious, so foolish, so plain to any eye that's watching and yet, we, the wicked, are so oblivious, so over-confident, so certain that it can't happen to us...and God laughs. 

There are those who think this sounds cruel, that God would laugh. I admit that sometimes, when I'm watching the home videos, I feel a little cruel. I mean, how could I not? And yet, there's nothing too cruel about it, honestly, because I know that everyone in the video that I'm watching is okay. Nobody was seriously hurt. They don't show videos like that. 

And I think that's why God can laugh. He knows how things work out. He knows what's coming next. He knows how it all comes together. So He can laugh at our foolishness and folly, knowing we're getting what we deserve but also knowing that in the end, it's okay. It's gonna be okay. 

He already promised that much. 

Friday, November 1, 2024

Dip

If the only experience you've ever had of the Table is a little bit of cracker and a little bit of juice, then you're missing something of the Upper Room. You're missing something of what this moment really was. 

The cracker and juice are so universal that in the spaces in which I have worked as a chaplain, there's always a stash of it around and everyone understands what it means. Catholic, Protestant, traditional, charismatic, whatever - everyone "gets" the cracker and juice. 

Not all bodies us this in their regular celebration of the sacrament - I have heard many variations on a theme over the years. Hawaiian bread in one congregation, fresh-made crisp from the local Jewish bakery, oyster crackers, simple wafers, loaves prepared by the women of the church. There is no shortage in variation when it comes to the way we set the Table. 

But one thing always seems to be missing: 

The dip. 

When we read the Gospel accounts of the Upper Room, when we hear the story of how Jesus broke bread with His disciples, there's a moment at which Jesus is "dipping the bread" while talking about what is about to happen. In fact, it is this dipped bread that He hands to Judas Iscariot when He identifies the disciple as His betrayer. 

Dipped bread. 

Whenever I remember this, I always think first about some kind of olive oil. I love a good bread dipped in oil. But I also recognize that the breads that dip best in oil are leavened breads - breads risen by yeast with enough space inside of them to really soak it up. Crackers just don't dip as well. 

Unless we're talking about a real dip. Artichoke, ranch, French onion, hummus. Think about the possibilities! Oh, what a rich palate of flavors we're introducing to the Table! 

The Bible doesn't tell us exactly what the dip is; the closest translation of the words is simply "the dish." Jesus dipped the bread into "the dish," whatever the dish contained. And that's probably a good thing because I think we would easily become legalistic about whatever was really in the dish, and that's not the point. 

The point is that Jesus flavored the bread. He spiced it up. He made it more than the simple little cracker that we've grown accustomed to. 

And I think...it's still flavored today. 

I think today, the flavor of the bread is the flavor of whatever season we're in. Whatever of our life that we bring to the Table with us. I think today, the bread is flavored with our joy, with our sorrow, with our longing, with our hope, with our grief, with our failure, with our triumph, with our love. The bread is flavored with His grace, whatever we need of it in the moment that we come. 

This is no plain little cracker. And contrary to the whimsy of generations of mischievous church teens, neither is it a little cracker dipped in a little juice. 

No, friends. This is a cracker dipped in life. In the flavors of our existence. In the palate of our faith. 

Jesus dipped the bread in the dish and handed it to Judas. And to Peter. And to James. And to John. And to Thomas. And to you. And to me. 

Put a little dip on that thing and eat. This is My body, broken for you.