What to do in a time of uncertainty? (6.15.25)

John 16:12-15

A week ago, I had a conversation with one of the dads in the congregation. I followed up to make sure I could share. The conversation went something like this: “My kids asked me,” he said, “if both the Cubs and White Sox believe in God and they’re playing each other, who does God root for?”

“What’d you tell them? I asked, “the janitors?”

“The janitors!” he said, “and the ticket takers and the staff that have to put up with all the crazy people.  Then,” he went on “they asked me who Jesus would root for in the NBA finals.”

“And—?"

He shook his head and laughed. “In our house,” I offered, “the kids don’t ask who he would root for in the NBA finals, they just know.”  

“Man,” he said, “these are the easy questions: the ones about God and baseball. It’s the other ones that undo me.  I didn’t ask my dad the tough stuff until much later in my teens, but I feel like our kids are well ahead of that these days: national politics, geo-politics, Gaza and the hostages, bullies, Epstein and P. Diddy, vaccination boards, protests. All the questions. And, they want to know what I think.”

What do you tell them?” I asked him and he exhaled.  

“I tell them what I can--I try to tell them about right and wrong, and good and evil. I can’t say everything.  I don’t know—I’m trying to figure it all out myself.

*************

I’ve been thinking about what to do with this four verse gospel this last week and I thought of this conversation with this dad.  As I thought about it, something stuck out: In this story, Jesus comes to a point where it seems he doesn’t quite know what to say to his disciples gathered in the upper room that Passover night. Or at the very least, he stops himself. He holds back.

Up until this point, they’ve been eating together and he’s trying to explain everything, elaborating and talking and showing them by washing feet. Were they asking question of him? Maybe.  I think of him trying to answer when finally, he lands (or stumbles) at: “I still—I still have so many things to say to you--but you cannot bear them now,” and he pauses.

Apparently, we cannot bear them either because the stock image our software offered as a bulletin cover for us this weekend only says the part “I still have so many things to say to you…” They left off the part where Jesus said “--but you can’t bear it.” Apparently, they thought we couldn’t bear it either.  I guess, we have enough uncertainty in the world right now. Why leave us hanging with these obtuse references to all the things Jesus didn’t say to us? 

********

Uncertainty is unpleasant.  We prefer decisiveness. Plans.  Clarity. Knowledge. Facts.  Our brains are wired for predictability and patterns. It’s probably some safety thing.  All the advertising that comes at us capitalizes on our need for certainty: “if we buy this thing or make this choice, we will surely be:  secure, handsome, safe, successful, or ______fill-in-the-blank.”

Uncertainty doesn’t sell well. Everyone wants their doctor to say, “you’ve got a 91% chance of a good outcome on this path instead of, “Hmm. we’ve looked at your diagnosis and situation and, well, we’re not really sure what to do with your case, but we’ll give it our best shot.”

The fact is, life has a lot of uncertainty. We never know what will happen. Your kid transitions into a new life phase—9th grade or college, or maybe kindergarten—will they be okay? Or: you can’t get a handle on what’s going on with the market and your job is in limbo, or your IRA is in limbo...  How is this going to shake out? Or: maybe your life isn’t rolling out quite like you hoped, and there are really a lot of unknowns.  And it’s hard.  

Life is uncertain. No one knew that evening in the upper room with Jesus how the disciples would respond to everything he was telling them. There were a lot of unknowns. You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

One of the last times things got really uncertain for the disciples when they were all out in the boat and there was that storm on the water. Everyone lost their minds and started freaking out and blaming Jesus who finally had the wherewithal to wake up and calm the storm, thank heavens!   We’re not always our best selves in moments of uncertainty.  

Sometimes, when we’re not sure of what’s coming down the pike and things are unsteady we blame people:

This wouldn’t be happening if so-and-so just stayed in their lane or followed through on their commitments or did what they’re supposed to!! And now we’re lost and confused and messed up because of this person or that group of people in society that we blame for everything—(like perhaps, a religious minority, a powerless workforce picking food in CA…)

In the book of Genesis, when Adam and Eve mess up and eat the apple, they both freeze when the Lord finds out:  How’s He going to react!? 

And when God asks, “What happened?,” Adam can’t stand it and immediately points the finger: 

“Eve made me do it!”

And then, Eve points the finger: “the snake made me do it!”

The world gets unsteady and just like that, blame starts flying. Classic. Human. Behavior.

Sometimes when things are uncertain, we catastrophize. I love the story from 1 Kings when the prophet Elijah gets a death threat from Queen Jezebel.  He completely loses it, and when he realizes he has no idea what going to happen, he spirals, runs to the desert, lays face down under a broom tree and wails, “it’s all over! This is the end! Take my life Lord!!”  God essentially sends him a plate of cookies and a mug of juice and an angel that will sit there next to him patting his leg as he gets a hold of himself.

You never quite know what people are going to do when faced with uncertainty.

Jesus lived in highly uncertain times:  Across the sea in Rome during Jesus’ time, the emperor Tiberius was erratic and tyrannical. He relied heavily on his corrupt advisor, Sejanus who purged political rivals and used false charges of treason to get rid of senators and other powerful people.  Back in the region where Jesus lived—Judea and Galilee—it was a political and religious pressure cooker with deep social tension and inequality.  Galilee was a poor region.  In it, there were a few wealthy elite who had a whole lot of power while ordinary folks like fishermen, widows, and farmers struggled with debt, taxes and poverty—remember the story about the wee little tax collector, Zacchaeus and the suggestion that the system was rigged to benefit the powerful?

Ancient people’s trust in institutions like even the temple and certainly the Roman government was fraying. They were highly uncertain times. And into that reality, Jesus continually cried out for all--but particularly poor folks--with a message of mercy, grace, compassion, forgiveness, humility and generosity.

************

People have had a history of turning to prophetic voices that speak out from the margins in uncertain times. Generations before Christ, it was Jeremiah who also spoke in a time of national crisis, corruption and collapse in ancient Israel. Whether Jeremiah or Jesus’ time, the issues are the same and they seem to resonate, no?

Theologian Walter Bruggeman put it this way: “the world we have trusted in is vanishing before our eyes and the world that is coming at us feels like a threat to us and we can’t quite see the shape of it.” ⁠

“There is so much I want to say,” Jesus said, “but you cannot bear it.” 

People listen for prophetic voices now, too: pundits, commentators, even public theologians, wise sages that will speak truth, anyone! I get it. We like that certain, assured voice.  Some of those voices that speak with moral clarity have a role. 

While these prophetic voices are powerful, Jesus offered another word of hope and guidance in this moment in our scripture passage today.

But to get there, let me remind you quickly about Thor.  I assisted as a backpacking guide in the Rockies one of the summers when I worked as a camp counselor.  The week I was scheduled to lead a group of highschoolers out on the trail, I was very nervous. My co-leader was a big guy named Thor, who carried what seemed like 50 extra pounds of group gear on his back.  Not only did Thor look the part of mountain-man, he was very smart about trail guiding.  I was nervous and uncertain, our camp director, Dave, pulled me aside and said something like, “Lindsay, Thor is a very experienced guide and you are in excellent hands. Just follow him and do what he says.” Dave was right.

Jesus tells his disciples in this uncertain moment that “the Spirit will guide you into the truth.”  In essence: “The Spirit is wise and good and trustworthy. Just follow her and do what she says. Let her guide you and form you.”

If Jesus is the truth, our pattern, our way that we walk in, then the Spirit—God’s mysterious living presence--will form us, shape us and guide us through the uncertainty around us.

This way of Jesus, that the Spirit mysteriously moves as, is our home base.  When in doubt, we live by her fruits: Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control (and more). When we live by these guideposts or bass notes, our inner lives are reshaped, even in the most uncertain and trepidatious situations. 

This subtle kind of change that is generated through how we live might not be as loud as a prophetic voice, but it’s just as powerful.  That has been a theme the last few weeks: God does these awesome things, and then we follow with our ordinary human effort.

Maybe it wasn’t the disciples’ capacity to handle all the things that Jesus couldn’t bear to tell them.  Maybe it is that Jesus knows that there is so much more to living this way than the disciples can make sense of at that moment.  There’s so much more to embodying God’s love on earth than they can wrap their arms around. Some things must be lived to be understood. 

Like the dad trying to field impossible questions from his kids—Jesus doesn’t dump all the answers at once. He walks alongside us. He gives us a Holy Spirit: a guide to find our way through.  

The truth that Jesus promises is not a download of certainty. It’s a Way, a presence, a pattern of living. It’s a mysterious Holy Spirit who walks with us. Who reminds us when we’re overwhelmed, that we’re not alone.  

It’s a practice of grace in the face of meanness and judgement; 
generosity instead of selfishness; 
peace in a culture that seems to be addicted to conflict; 
non-violence in a world bent on retribution; 
compassion when turning away towards comfort is easier.

That grace is still the center.  (Well, that grace and the truth that God is still rooting for the janitors.) 

The Spirit doesn’t just cushion us in the uncertain moments, She shapes us in them.  We don’t just survive the uncertainty—we can be formed in it. Even when we hate it and push against it and resent it and want to dominate it, God works on us in that mysterious space and it’s there that we imagine what is possible. It’s there that we become people of hope. It’s there that we muster the courage to step out (to step through) as loving people and as emissaries of transformation.

Arresting beauty and its' wake (4.6.25)

John 12:1-8

My mom’s family is from beautiful farm in northeastern Nebraska.  As a teenager, my mom and her sister, my Aunt Willa, worked the nightshift at a factory in a nearby at a plant that processed eggs. The yokes and whites were dehydrated into powder that could be used in cake mixes.  As a kid, I heard many stories about “the egg-plant.” Workers wore big plastic aprons, stood at an assembly line, and cracked the eggs that came down the belt.  If an egg were rotten, the worker dumped it (and there were many a rotten egg).  This was not exactly a dream summer job for a teenager…

My aunt now lives on the farm where she and my mom grew up and a few years ago she pointed to the top of the south hill and told me, that on their way home after the night shift at the egg-plant, tired as they were, they would park the car at the highest point with a view of the rolling farms hills where they would pause and enjoy the sunrise. Then, they’d head home to sleep. 

In 1910, a labor activist Helen Todd said in a speech, that we need “bread for all, and roses too.”  

On one hand, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.  (I, personally, think a lilac bush in bloom smells beautiful. I also find beauty in an inspiring speech, a line of music, a familiar voice, and kids laughing.)  Beauty often seems to stir something in us.  Many times it makes us feel good. But is beauty actually a need? 

Our Lenten series is on different things we need: We need change and rest. We need people to be vulnerable and to advocate for one another.  But beauty…is that really something we need?  Here in the US, beauty is equated with luxury.  Money buys access to museums, concerts and nature—they’re a luxury.  In the city, wealthier neighborhoods have more green space and more trees.  When cash gets tight in school districts, one of the first things to be cut is music or art. They are seen as extras. In that vein, it seems that beauty isn’t a need after all.

While our culture says that beauty is a luxury, our faith heritage disagrees.  Our sacred spaces are beautiful, the acoustics are striking in our sanctuary.  Scripture speaks of beauty: descendants that will outnumber the stars of the Milky Way, hospitality shared with strangers, loaves and fish in the hands of a child, thunder on the mountain, the first light of resurrection morning.   Our reading from Isaiah tells of streams in the desert and a way in the wilderness.  And then, there is the jar of nard in today’s gospel story.  

In the story, Mary pours the ointment all over Jesus’ feet and as the perfume envelopes the room, beauty floods the space. Then, she bends over Jesus feet, and as she wipes them with her long hair, everyone falls quiet watching. That is, except Judas who takes this moment to get up on his high and mighty moral horse.  “Why,” he asks, “was this perfume not sold for 300 denarii and the money given to the poor?”  Who knows what was behind his question—Judas is not exactly our most noble character in the bible, but at face value, I admit, his question resonates:  Why waste money on this beautiful thing when there are so many people in need? 

********

In 1836, Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote about simple visit to a beautiful forest. 

in the woods...

Standing on the bare ground,
--my head bathed by the blithe air 
and uplifted into infinite space, 
all mean egotism vanishes…

Egotism. It’s that thing where we talk and think and focus constantly on ourselves.  Egotism, (along with self-absorption and selfishenss) is a social ill that plagues us. There are a lot of reasons for it, but over the years, we’ve exaggerated the individual self. Do I have enough money? Does my body look the right way? Is my life right? We’ve become more narcissistic. (They can measure it.(1)) There’s a heightened sense of superiority, arrogance, and even entitlement. It’s a kind of sinfulness that causes us to curve in on ourselves while others’ concerns or pains or worries fade on the sidelines. There in the woods, Emerson realized, his self-absorption and "mean egoism" fades with the beauty around him.

Have you ever seen something beautiful—a big, wide open blue sky, or perhaps you’ve heard a beautiful speech or an extraordinary piece of music?  And, with this, you’re transported out of your head and your problems and issues fade a little in importance. There was a philosopher named Iris Murdoch who once explained that when you see something beautiful, such as a bird lifting off, it pulls you out of yourself.  Beauty, she said, “unselfs us.” (2)

A lot of our problems in our world might be connected to the sinfulness of too much self. Beauty is a way of, as she put it, non-selfing or getting out of ourselves: A little less “I” and a little more “we.” (It’s wild--neuroscientists have measured how this happens in our brains(3)). 

Part of me doubts that the disciples were as self-obsessed as we are today.  Martha, who was serving dinner that night (God bless her) wasn’t fine-tuning her personal brand of “Servant-Hearted Martha.”  The brothers, Peter and Andrew, were not subtly checking their phones to see how many likes they were getting on those updates about Jesus the raising Lazarus from the dead.  The disciple Peter, who I sometimes imagine as the impulsive resident stress ball of the group, wasn’t over in the corner biting his nails and trying to get a handle on his anxiety.  

While Mary’s gift of the lavish ointment that anointed Jesus was generous and admirable, I’m not sure that her act of moral beauty needed to pull them out of an individualized world-view the way beauty needs to pull us out of ours in this day and age.  

And, beauty can shake us out of our egoism. Beauty, art, nature, music, a sunset at the top of the hill—all of it--can pull us out of ourselves.  So, do we need beauty? Yes. We do.

But why? Let’s take one more turn with this idea because I wonder if beauty does something more in this bible reading and if it can do something more for us today. But I’m going to have to tell you another story first, to show you what I mean:

*******

In 1931, a young man named Charles Black Junior was headed to a dance in Austin, Texas, his hometown. He was 16 years old.  Charles was from an easy side of the city and attended the great school of Austin High.  As he walked down the street with his buddy, he was struck still by the sound of a trumpet player.  (I first heard this story in an interview with Sarah Lewis (4). Lewis is an art historian and professor. She’s Black. Charles, in this story, is White. Later, I searched for Lewis’ written version of the story.)

So Charles hears this musician there on the street. Lewis writes that, “The trumpet player, a jazz musician, performed largely with his eyes closed, sounding out notes, ideas, laments, sonnets that had never before existed…His music sounded like an utter transcendence.” Charles is listening there on the street with his buddy who was a “good ole’ boy” from Austin High. His friend also senses the power of this music and the way it “rumbled the ground underneath him,” as Lewis put it. His friend finally shakes his head, Lewis writes, “as if clearing it and as if prying himself out of a trance.”  The friend mutters a racial epithet and walks away.  Charles, meanwhile, continues listening and becomes certain that he was in the presence of a genius.  Indeed he was: The trumpet player was 30 year old Louis Armstrong. 

In that moment, the music cracks something in Charles’ mind or heart: As Lewis explained it, here you’ve got this teenage White kid who, up until this point, thinks the whole segregated world around him is set up correctly and he sees genius in this Black man on the street.  It is beyond words.  Sarah Lewis calls the music, and this beauty, an “asthetic force.” It completely blew Charles’ mind. It turned him upside down and changed his life trajectory. Some years later, after law school, he went on to work with Thurgood Marshall (the first Black supreme court justice) to write the winning brief in Brown vs. the Board of Education (which led to desegregation of schools.)  And, apparently, every year until he died, he hosted a Louis Armstrong listening night.

I don’t want to get too far away from our bible story, but, I can’t help but wonder if Mary pouring that nard out was as arresting of a moment as this one on the street corner in Austin.  

It turns out that beauty not only gets us out of ourselves, it can blow our minds and change us.  Sarah Lewis said that beauty “slips in the back door of our rational thought and gets us to see the world differently.” Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, Beauty can zoom us out. We see a bigger world than our small minds. We see systems and connections. Beauty unselfs us.

In her book, The Unseen Truth (5),” Lewis wrote about the way James Baldwin had said that artistic photographs could change people.  People didn’t understand at the time.  But, it proved true: the “asthetic force” of photos changed people.  There were pictures of the civil rights movement, or of the war in Vietnam—often with their jarring, painful beauty--that were transformative. There was that gorgeous photo, “The Blue Green Marble” taken in 1972 of our planet earth hanging there in the darkness of space.  The beauty of that photo astonished, dazzled and shocked us. It blew our minds. It catalyzed movements.  

It is not so much what beauty is, but what it does to us. 

That evening, long ago in ancient Galilee, What did the beauty of the scent of nard, and the moral beauty of Mary’s gift of service, do to the people gathered there? What does it do to us?  

That moment there mattered—Jesus told Judas as much.  Did it crystalize the truth that Jesus’ message and life was bigger than the individual moment? That God’s goodness would liberate people—all people—from bondage? That even in the midst of selfish, horrific, greedy and sinful systems, that love would prevail? Did beauty convict them? Give them courage? As the events of the terrible next week would unfolded starting with Jesus magnificent ride through the waving palms and then, in the terror of his arrest and crucifixion, the scent of that gift of nard would linger on Jesus body and in Mary’s hair. Would the beauty continue to remind them all of God’s goodness, dream and aliveness even when all seemed lost?  Did beauty change them? give them courage? Commitment? Connection? I wonder.

“Give the people bread, but give them roses.”  Seek beauty out, let it soften your spirits and inspire your actions.  Fight for it. Open yourselves to it. Slow down for it. Search for it in the biggest and smallest places: in the sunsets, and the speeches, and the paintings, and the spring season that is coming back to life.  For beauty leads us to see ourselves and the world differently. More than that—it leads us to—live differently.

1. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

2. I read about Iris Murdoch in Naomi Klein's book, Doppleganger, 2023.

3. Awe, 2023, Dacher Keltner

4. Sarah Lewis interviewed by Anna Deavere Smith. March 26, 2014. LIVE from the New York Public Library.

5. The Unseen Truth, 2024, Sarah Lewis, and https://timesensitive.fm/episode/sarah-lewis-on-aesthetic-force-as-a-path-toward-justice/ 

A shelter of grace (2.23.25)

Luke 6:27-38

Deep in Central Mexico in a mountainous state called Tlaxcala, there is a small Roman Catholic Parish called the Sagrada Familia. Sacred Heart.  The church is white stucco and situated right in the middle of an average neighborhood surrounded by white stucco homes with their walled in yards.  Behind the church is a giant paved courtyard. Part of the yard is covered by a corrugated tin roof as a shelter from the sun. (At that high altitude, with those bright blue skies, the sun can be fierce.)  There’s a chicken coop in the corner with rabbits and hens and a small office nearby with mostly things like acetaminophen, aloe vera, and Band-Aids.  There’s humble bunk room next to the kitchen with a few dozen bunks.  Though some nights there are far more people in the shelter than beds. On the bright orange wall of the courtyard, near the small soccer court, there is a painted phrase that reads,

“nada te turbe, 
nada te pase. 
Todo le pasa-- 
Dios no se muda. 
la paciencia todo lo alcanza, 
quiene a dios tiene, 
nada le falta. 
Solo dios basta.”

St. Theresa of Avila wrote these words in the 16th century, and later, the Taize community in Eastern France later made them into a song: 

Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten, 
those who seek God shall never go wanting. 
Nothing can trouble, 
nothing can frighten. 
God alone fills us.

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This short little verse gives some context for how Jesus is speaking in our gospel reading today.  Last week we heard the words that came right before this where Jesus says “blessed are you who are hungry for you will be filled.” “Blessed are you who weep for you will laugh.”  Jesus offered all the folks there listening to him blessings. He wanted them to live lives of contentment, wholeness and even joy.  And in the case of his bedraggled followers, there with him, he taught them how they can hold onto peace and even joy, while the world around them is swirling with judgement, animosity, contempt and violence. 

When someone is cruel to you, oh, how it can feel good to be cruel back. When someone is judgmental, it can feel so good to put them in their place. When someone is hateful, compassion and mercy can be the farthest things from our minds. But Jesus is teaching those listening of a different path. 

This is not the first time Jesus has taught a way of living that goes against the grain.  A few weeks ago, we heard the story where he rooted back into the books of Isaiah and Leviticus to remind us that just when the world is quick to rank some people as worth more than others, we remember that is not true. All people are beloved to God, no one is more important than the other. Full stop.

This week, Jesus lays out another challenge to his followers: “if you love those who love you,” he says “what grace is that?”  It’s almost like he said, “Come on now, it’s easy to love people who love you back! It’s easy to lend money to someone you know will pay you back!”  You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours!  Quid pro quo.

That kind of love and lending is a transaction. It means that what you’re going to do is going dictate how I’m going to act.  Your behavior is going to have an outsized influence on mine: If you’re hateful, I’ll be hateful. If you’re judgmental, I’ll be judgmental. Now, if you’re grateful and humble, lovely! I’ll be kind to you. But if you are my enemy? …I’ll be yours.

The challenge is to love people who we don’t like. To love, even, our enemies.

*******

The cement courtyard in that church shelter butts right up against the train tracks where a freight train barrels through the Mexican countryside, it’s dozens of cars long. As it approaches at full speed, 
the ground trembles. It slows a little in this small town of Apizaco where the tracks turn and people hop off to spend a night in this shelter. The people who cling to the top of this train hitching a ride call it la bestia.  They ride that train up from Chiapas and come from many places: Tegucigalpa, San Pedro Sula, Caracas, Managua.  Once, I met a man and his son there who were from Iran.  But one thing holds true: 
they all need shelter and a safe place to spend the night.  

I’ve never been in need of that kind of physical shelter. My life has been uniquely easy, even profoundly easy in many ways. Yes, I’ve needed shelter from a rainstorm, but I’ve not experienced that kind of desperation where I’ve not been sure where I’ll sleep. 

That said, I have had moments in life where I’ve needed other types of shelter. I think we’ve all have.  Think of the shelter of a parent that nurtures his child, like a hen gathering you under her wings. Or, the the shelter of a friendship that protects you and listens to you when you feel misunderstood or lost or the shelter and relief of companionship when you’re alone. Think of the shelter of someone who helped you when things went off the rails in your lives or the shelter of forgiveness when we’ve made a mistake. 

Sometimes we need spiritual shelter.  Maybe you’ve read headlines that shout that pieces of your identity and who you love are unlovable. Maybe you’ve heard that how you were made was a mistake. Maybe you’ve heard a few too many messages that that the amount of melanin in your skin determines the amount of love and honor you deserve.  Maybe the barrage of hatred makes you feel like you’re not wanted in this country—or your own country--or anywhere; and you find a spiritual shelter in knowing that all of who you is fearfully and wonderfully made, wanted, honored and loved by God. 

We all need a shelter of grace.

But what about a shelter for someone you don’t like? Or that you despise?

When I zoom out, I can see that, our best shelter is the radical, steadfast, healing love, that Jesus speaks of here.  It is a forgiving love. It is a love that acknowledges one another’s humanity. It is a shelter of grace.
This kind of shelter is easiest to offer to someone we love or even like.  Offering this kind of gracious shelter to our enemies is very hard.

Shockingly, Jesus says, "God is kind to the ungrateful and the wicked." That's a tall order if we’re supposed to emulate that. This kind of love is a little maddening. It might even seem dumb or foolish because the world doesn’t exactly run on grace.  Returning hatred with vengeance or contempt is a lot more common and mainstream.   But as Theresa of Avila wrote, don’t let this hate trouble you, don’t let it frighten you, (don’t respond to it, let it shape your behavior), find your fullness in God.  

A shelter of grace. 

But a shelter of grace for our enemy?  Is that wise? 

There’s a lot of talk of ideological enemies these days or foes.  I’m not suggesting that we simply shrug and roll with an opinion that challenges your convictions.  I am not saying that you shouldn’t feel upset or angry about other’s differences or offer this forgiving shelter to someone who has shown exceptional personal evil to you, (in that case, someone else needs to take that baton instead of you).

Instead, I am saying, that we aren’t to participate in this conventional pattern of contempt and tit-for-tat. We’re to step out of the ring. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, once wrote that we are to be “to be God’s question mark against the conventional wisdom of the age.”  The large scale problems that we face as humanity will not be solved in isolation. We have to find a shelter of forgiveness where we find our fullness in God that pulls us out of this pattern where we slug each other.

Michael Curry, former national bishop of the Episcopal church once said that “trying to make meaningful progress when contempt controls the discussion…is like trying to grow a plant in radioactive soil.” 
In this shelter, we grow in our relationships and understanding. With hope, we will even grow towards solutions. So, the very act of refusing to return violence with violence or judgement with judgement is a method of resisting a world bent on vengeance, judgement and self-righteousness. 

******

Today, we will celebrate the baptism of little M. Baptism is many things: it is freedom and forgiveness in God. It is this physical expression of God’s grace, it is this sacrament where we learn and know that we are so beloved to God and sheltered in God’s keeping.  Baptism is also an on-ramp to a certain kind of lifestyle that is characterized by love, compassion, nonviolence, generosity and forgiveness.  As Christians, we do not anchor ourselves to vengeance, contempt or judgement, but to love. 

(Honestly, anyone who thinks that following Christ is an easy, tame project needs to read these words of Jesus again.)  Jesus commands us to love our enemies, this is not a friendly suggestion of his. This is our obligation as disciples. 

We do this, not so that God blesses us.  God doesn’t work that way. Of course God blesses us, but God blesses us because that’s who God is, not because we did the right thing and got a prize. 

To that end, when Jesus says, at the end of our reading that, “A good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap; for the measure you give will be the measure you get back.”  This is the promise: that just when we’ve run dry, that just when the life will be drained out of us, just when we’ve been consumed by contempt God will find us, fill us, shelter us, heal us.

When Jesus had died on the cross, God could have destroyed everyone with vengeance. But God doesn’t respond that way. God responds with love. God responds and resists, and raises Jesus from the dead. 
And this is the pattern: grace upon grace a pattern, a movement, a way of God that draws us to shelter, that mends that which has ruptured that fills those who are emptied, that bring life from places we were convinced were dead. And we’re called to participate.

Little M., we are here to live this call with you, what a time to be baptized, what a gift to all of us to participate today.  God bless you on this occasion of your baptism and may God hold you close today and always.

Dial up the Light, Jesus' inaugural message (1.26.25)

Luke 4:14-20

1 Corinthians 12:12-31

 This season of Epiphany is the time of our church year that takes us from the birth of Jesus all the up to Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent.  Epiphany starts with the Magi who follow the star and then into the very early days of Jesus ministry where he changes water to wine, calls his disciples on the shores of the beach, and shares his very first words with his followers. 

Something about this season always seems to be in step  with lengthening of the winter days: Every day is just a little longer and there’s just a little more light.   Each gospel passage we hear dials up the light just a little brighter.  

Today, we hear these very first recorded words of Jesus in his ministry. This is his inaugural speech.  With these words, he sets a vision, clarifies his priorities, and explains the scope of what he has set out to do. 

We had a presidential inauguration last week.  Inaugural addresses are important.  Words matter because they have the power to shape the world around us. In the case of a presidential inauguration, the words that are shared set a vision for our country clarify our priorities. they influence action.

 160 years ago President Abraham Lincoln spoke in his second inauguration speech about the need to resolve both the civil war and it’s evil cause of slavery.  He spoke about how both sides of the North and South were to blame for that sin of slavery. He spoke to two sides that had been enmeshed in brutal violence and called for peace, self-reflection and forgiveness.  His speech was short--not more than seven minutes--but it set the tone for the direction the country would take. Inaugural speeches always set the tone and inspire action. But regardless of who the leader is, we as people of faith stay close to God’s word, God’s story and lock into the values born out of God’s goodness. 

In the case of Jesus’ inaugural words, he roots down into scripture and into his tradition to explain his extraordinary mission.  He reads from Isaiah which harkened back to the law from Leviticus 25 where God will look to bring about the well-being of the community, specifically economic well-being. These words that Jesus read from Isaiah click right into one of the overarching themes of the bible: That folks who aren’t highly esteemed that those folks who don’t have access to the levers of the economy, that the people who face social obstacles that prevent them from getting a leg up, that all of these folks (the poor, the oppressed, the brokenhearted) are given special status in the heart of God.  (1)

Often, very often, scripture refers to these folks as a trinity: Look after the widows, the orphans, and the foreigners the bible reminds us.(2) In the ancient world, these were the folks—widows, orphans and foreigners (or immigrants) who happened to face tremendous challenges to survive and much less get ahead. These were the folks on the very bottom rung. And, for some reason, these are the people that God holds especially close to the divine heart.  

In his inaugural address, Jesus starts here.  But this is not an easy place to start. 

300 years before Christ, Plato taught in Athens that people were inherently unequal.  Some people were just more valuable than others, he explained.  Some are good at leading, thinking, math, philosophizing, and, some are not. If you’re good at it, you should get your just due. If, Plato would have said, you’re taking care of children, or laboring in the field, or doing something else, then you should also get your just due.  

His philosophy went deeper: Some people, he explained, are more important than others: Some people, are men, some are…not.  Some are free, some are enslaved.  What was important, he taught, was to make sure that everyone got their just due. In fact, that was justice.

This view held for millennia. Google it. It undergirded feudalism (peasants were, of course, less important than lords and ladies.) It justified the slave trade and expansion into the Americas. This way of categorizing and ranking people held for generations. It worked its’ way into our psyche as humanity. Around 1700, when western thinkers began to question this, they appealed to an unexpected source: the bible.  (3) Turns out, some of the earliest critiques of Plato’s philosophy come from scripture.   In our reading from 1 Corinthians, St. Paul writes of the care and honor all the parts of the body merit. In Galatians, he writes that writes that there is neither "Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, all are one in Christ Jesus." 

Jesus challenges this view many places in scripture  saying that all those that are broken, heavy laden, burdened and oppressed are particularly held close in the heart of God. These barriers that categorized people and assigned different rank and value to folks, are vanquished in Christ. But that doesn’t mean the categories are gone. Some ways of thinking are hard to root out.  For some reason, we still hang onto this idea that some people are more valuable than others. It is our faith that pulls us back like a magnet to the truth that all people, and even and particularly the vulnerable and forgotten, are beloved to God.

This is our charge from Jesus inaugural words: We are to pour love into siblings in need.  We are to build what Jesus called the Kingdom of God or as MLK put it, “the beloved community.” We are to witness to the light of Jesus.   Sadly though, this call to radical love doesn’t always find room in our hearts. It can be crowded other things:

1. By selfishness—an unwillingness to share, or a hyper focus on ourselves and my success, my problems, my worries.  This blocks us from loving. Jesus read verses about economic justice which cut deep enough for some folks, that in the next bible scene, we read that some of the listeners were deeply offended and even furious. Sometimes, we convince ourselves that sharing will set us back.

2. Sometimes the barrier to following this call to radical love is cynicism:  we think that nothing we do is ever going to make a difference, so why bother?

3. Another thing  that can keep us from radical love is if we don’t like the people we’re supposed to love.  What if the people who suffer and are close to God’s heart voted for someone different that I did?  What if it’s a family member who is vulnerable, down on their luck, impoverished,  but is also just plain old mean and so hard to love?  Loving people even when they infuriate us and disappoint us and offend us—that is so hard. And there is no other answer than to disciple ourselves just do it. Thankfully, Jesus also announces in this reading that he is the fulfillment of this scripture. And we are not.

As I close I want to tell you a story from civil rights leader, Vincent Harding.  At some point Harding told a story about a conversation he had in a hard neighborhood in Boston with a young man named Darryl.  Darryl told Vincent that he felt like he was operating in a situation that, as he put it, was just “very, very dark.” He mentioned to Vincent that what he and his friends needed were, as he put it, some “sign posts to show them the way.” Some “lights shining out from other people’s lives” that would help them. Vincent was struck by the conversation and called these “live human signposts.” 

He said that these human signposts would actually, stand there in the darkness and not run away from those who were hurting. In these shadowy times, he said, “we have to open up lights in the darkness.   We have to be candles and signposts in the shadows” for each other, for those around us. 

Earlier this week, I was talking with some church leaders  about this moment in our society.  I have to admit that there have been moments in the last week when I have felt heartsick about the news.  

These church leaders and I talked about how it feels like things are breaking and that there are real human beings sitting there on the sharp edges of things as they splinter.  And those folks  are the vulnerable people that Jesus called us to: there are migrants. There are queer youth. 

God cares about the folks on the sharp edges. 

As I was talking with these LMC leaders, one ventured: “Maybe we could make a statement as a church about where we stand.” Maybe.  Maybe we will make a statement. But, in the meantime, the truth is that you all are the church’s greatest statement.  You are this statement through the way you interact with people, through the grace you show in your daily lives, through your insistence in getting out of yourselves to serve. The spirit of God moves among us and by God’s mysterious grace and prodding. You are the living signposts that go out into the world. You are the ones, with humility and integrity, to dial up the light. You are the ones to take Jesus  inaugural words to heart, to match his tone, to follow his lead, to act on his words that call us to bind up the brokenhearted, to free the captives, to bring Good news to the poor, to comfort the mourning. By the grace of God,  as it has been for ages with the church: you are the ones who are called to do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with God.

Jesus ministry was that of radical, inclusive, restorative love for all people and that kind of love doesn’t mess around. it is hard. This same holy love is alive around us today calling us to be the body of Christ and extend our hands into the world.  I know that these are unusual times that we are living in but take heart and heed the call to reflect God’s light into the world and dial up the light. For love—love will show us the way.

(1) "Isaiah Westminster Bible Companion 44-66" Walter Bruggeman

(2) (A couple examples: Duet 10:14-19: Zech 17:10; Ex 22:21:24: Deut 26:12; Deut 27:19)

(3)  leaned on analysis by Scott Black