With God's Help

I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame. (Isaiah 50.6-7)

How did Christianity morph from a collection of oddballs and misfits into the communion of conformity we know today? As we read the Gospels and Acts, we must wonder if we’d be all that happy to see the Apostles in our sanctuaries, let alone trust them to lead us. Can we imagine Peter, the leather-skinned fisherman, stepping into our pulpits? What about Paul, whose infamous “thorn in the flesh” urges him to overcompensate by showing off how smart he is? Would we attend his Bible class? Let’s not forget the Early Church’s far-flung membership. When we survey the rolls peppered through the Epistles, we find slaves and masters, couples and singles, widows and kids, people of all shades and expressions, every social strata, and a spectrum of personal histories that would give today’s most progressive faith community pause.

Of course, we understand why early Christians prize diversity. They belong to Jesus, Who founded His ministry on the radically inclusive doctrine of God’s unconditional love. But we also have to factor in the prophetic tradition Jesus comes from, where eccentrics and outcasts excel. Start with Moses, a Jew raised as Egyptian royalty, a murderer on the lam who worries about his stammer and works all kinds of miracles with a stick. You’ve got David, an adulterer and terrible father, who uses poetry as a therapeutic tool. Elijah’s a manic-depressive, and his student, Elisha, wanders the land in a raggedy coat Elijah tossed to him while being flown into heaven on a celestial chariot. And we can’t forget Isaiah, who walks around naked and shoeless for three years to indicate Israel’s enemies will be stripped of power. Finally, there’s John the Baptist. He sets up shop in the wilderness, survives on honey and wild locusts, wears a hairy shirt, and spends most of his time splashing around in the Jordan River.

With roots dug deep in this wild and crazy tradition, it’s no surprise that Jesus pays no attention to His followers’ idiosyncrasies and sketchy pasts. He looks beyond their quirks and shortcomings to see their potential. Yes, He does this because, as God Incarnate, He loves them without reservation. But He’s also doing something that we, in an age of Christian homogeneity, miss. He’s assembling a prophetic community, a far different thing than starting a religion or organizing a congregation.

So how do the first Christians look and act? They’re all over the map, literally and figuratively. Unlike today, when many Christians gauge who’s in and who’s out by appearance and behavior, in the first century both criteria were useless. Indeed, judgments based on surface observations were highly suspect. The only way to identify a true Christian was by prophetic witness to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The Early Church’s connection to prophesy—i.e., the articulated mind and will of God—is so solid that first-century believers scour the Hebrew Bible to confirm Jesus’s legitimacy. His birth and death narratives are shaped to reflect Messianic clues strung across the texts. This is why Jesus’s statements from the cross echo Psalm 22 and the details of His torture and crucifixion mirror Isaiah. In the coming days, we’ll hear these passages and nod along, thinking, this is what the prophets said and this is how it went. But something gets lost when we limit the Hebrew texts’ meaning and import to Jesus alone. And that something is us.

The suffering and rejection the ancients describe are, in many ways, as universal to every believer as they are specific to Jesus. When we open Isaiah 50—which figures prominently in many Passion liturgies—and read, “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting,” we can’t forget the prophet isn’t just talking about Jesus. He’s talking about himself, and he’s also talking about us. Gratefully, neither Isaiah (as far as we know) nor we actually experience the physical pain and humiliation he poeticizes. Yet we all know what it’s like to feel powerless, as conveyed in the image of giving our backs to those who strike us. We know how it feels to be stripped of self-worth, which, for Jewish men like Isaiah and Jesus, occurs when their beards are ripped from their faces.

The violation in these images is so hideous we have to ask why someone would do such things. Those who go to such lengths clearly have big problems with whomever they assault. It’s obvious that fear stirs up their anger since they have to be more afraid of the person they attack than penalties for their abuse. So what gives rise to such fear and hatred? Well, let’s see. You have Jesus, the Gatherer of oddballs and misfits. Then there’s Isaiah, the naked wanderer. And how do we fit into this pattern? By not fitting into conformist patterns and disrupting norms. Whether in the world or the Church—which, over the centuries, has grown dangerously at ease with adopting the world’s ways—we represent something other than normal.

How dare LGBT Christians expect faith communities to welcome and embrace them. How dare women honor their callings to ministry and ask to be respected on par with their male counterparts. How dare the poor and undereducated and abused and politically radical enter our congregations and expect to be treated as equals. How dare anyone insist prophetic witness to Christ’s life, death, and resurrection qualifies her/him for acceptance. All Christians are supposed to look, talk, and behave alike. Anything that doesn’t meet acceptable standards is something to fear. And anything that makes people afraid must be eradicated and stripped of value.

That kind of logic may work for country clubs, social orders, and political parties. But it bears not one glimmer of resemblance to the Church’s beginnings and its prophetic roots. Christian communities that genuinely heed their prophetic calling should be visibly, culturally, and spiritually diverse. Their commitment to Christ’s gospel of radical inclusion should be tested. And we who’ve been relegated to the margins are ordained to challenge the Church’s faithfulness to God’s will.

Not even Jesus could accomplish this without divine help. Nor could Isaiah. And neither can we. That’s why Isaiah’s prophecy doesn’t end with the backlash against nonconformity. “The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like a flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame,” he writes. As we enter Holy Week and witness the agony Jesus endured to remain faithful to God’s will, we must accept the same calling for our lives. We will not be disgraced. We will set our faces like flints, looking at the challenge before us without a moment’s hesitation, knowing we will not be put to shame. We can’t do this great work we’ve been given on our own. But thanks be to God, we have God’s help.

This coming week, as we stand before the cross, let us not only weep for the horrific suffering our Savior endured. Let us weep for what’s been lost by reducing the Church purchased with His blood to an insiders-only club. Let us commit our lives to reviving the Early Church’s vision of what a truly prophetic, radically inclusive faith community can be.

Expect the Unexpected

Now when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near. (Luke 21.28)

Back Into Rehearsal

A friend and I were discussing Advent, and he summed it up splendidly as, “waiting and watching for the thing we most hope for.” He didn’t elaborate on what “the thing” was. The conviction in his tone made clear that he meant the Second Coming, which surprised me. He’s an alumnus of one of America’s most famously (or, if you will, infamously) liberal seminaries and forged his career not in the ivied traces of highbrow theology, but in the sciences. Therefore, I assumed he viewed Advent as the season when Christians gain entrance to the wonder of Christmas by revisiting Old Testament prophecies that shaped New Testament accounts of Jesus’s birth. As he talked on, however, it became obvious his Advent focus centered on what many dismiss as a far-fetched possibility, rather than the celebrated event that occurred 2000 years ago.

 “Advent has always felt peculiar to me,” he mused. “It’s like we’re cast in this mammoth production and we rehearse like mad to get ready for it. But nobody can say exactly what we’re preparing for—what it will look like, how it will go, or even when it will happen. Year after year, we go back into rehearsal, thinking, ‘Maybe this time.’ But isn’t that how it went with the first coming? They kept praying and watching and waiting. Then—pow!—there it was. Those who were ready saw it. The rest missed it completely. They couldn’t see God, because Jesus didn’t come the way they expected. That’s how it will be the second time around, too, making Advent all about expecting the unexpected. How do we manage that? That’s the question that falls in our laps every year. And if Advent doesn’t gin up all kinds of conflicted emotions, it seems to me we’re not doing it right.”

Uneasy

Somehow my friend’s uneasiness with Advent—his faith that Christ will come again tempered with uncertainty about how that promise will play out—comforted me. Advent should make us uneasy. If we’re “doing it right,” we should feel deeply conflicted about it, because it asks more of us than we can manage. Each year, we reach for prophets of old and renew acquaintances with those who experienced the Bethlehem miracle as prototypes to emulate. Questions that challenge our belief in the Second Coming are no different than the ones that perplexed them. Our discomfort with hoping in a cosmic event that will somehow alter our reality is no different than Mary’s. When the angel describes the pivotal role she will play in God’s redemptive plan, her first question is, “How will this be?” (Luke 1.34) We ask the same thing when pondering Christ’s return. Expecting the unexpected is no simple task.

It’s not entirely wrong to say that those who awaited and witnessed Christ’s birth had a slight advantage over us. Their prophets were first-rate poets whose vivid imagery transformed everyday objects into extraordinary augurs. This weekend we hear the Promised One described as “a righteous Branch to spring up for David” (Jeremiah 33.15)—tipping off the hopeful that His pedigree would derive from Israel’s most celebrated king. Isaiah’s pages overflow with symbols and metaphors that spell out Messianic events with breathtaking precision. Even the minor prophets arrest us with their clairvoyant eloquence.

By comparison, Jesus’s Second Coming prophecies seem decidedly mundane and vague. In Mark 13, He talks about wars and rumors of wars, earthquakes, and famines as “the beginning of birthpangs” indicating Christ’s imminent return. This week’s Gospel (Luke 21.25-36) predicts bad weather: “There will be signs in the sun, the moon, and the stars, and on the earth among nations confused by the roaring of the sea and the waves. People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world, for the powers of the heavens will be shaken.” (v25-26) What are we to make of this? History has never known a time when there weren’t wars and rumors of war. Every generation is dealt its share of earthquakes and famines. Hurricanes, tsunamis, and atmospheric disturbances are part of planetary life. Yet Jesus points to these inevitabilities—and the tragedies they bring—as signs of hope! “Now when these things begin to take place,” He says in verse 28, “stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near.” It’s here that the conflicted emotions my friend described rear up. How can we know what we’re waiting and watching for if we’re uneasy with what we’re looking at?

Biding Time

The great paradox of Jesus’s Second Coming prophecies is that their veiled randomness makes His message transparently direct. Because the signs He gives us are constant and inescapable, our longing for Christ’s return should also be constant and inescapable. Watching and waiting for the thing we most hope for should become as commonplace to us as turning on the nightly news. Expecting the unexpected should frame how we live out our days. We should believe something bigger is taking shape behind the violence of war, tremors and tragedies born of a groaning planet, disheartening rumors that fill the air, and turmoil roiling above our heads. “Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will not pass away,” Jesus assures us in verse 33. Troubles that confront us come and go. Yet we remain, constant in hope, steadfast in love, our joy and peace secured by unyielding faith that Christ will come again.

And so we approach Advent’s rehearsal as God’s great biding time. It's the season when we root out our deepest fears and uncertainties—when we realize there is more to this world than what we see, know, and understand. It is when we follow Jesus’s instructions to the letter: we stand up and raise our heads, because our redemption is drawing near. Maybe this time we’ll see the thing we most hope for. It’s possible we won’t. Either way, Advent’s rehearsal prepares us to move forward in faith that something miraculous is moving toward us. By doing the hard work this season asks of us, we’ll be ready and know it when we see it.

Watching and waiting.

Homecoming

This is the word of the LORD to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by my spirit, says the LORD of hosts. (Zechariah 4.6)

Pinnacle of Hope

An extraordinary passage of Scripture surfaces in today’s lectionary readings—no doubt chosen for its relevance in the run-up to this weekend’s Feast of Pentecost. It comes from Zechariah, a complex record of divine messages and visions given to the prophet as the Jews come home after 70 years in Babylonian exile. Much of Zechariah finds scholars scratching their heads, trying to sort out the historical, political, and theological layers tightly compressed in God’s promise to resurrect the nation after its long night of sorrow and loss. Yet ever so often a thrilling shaft of light breaks through, the most famous in Zechariah 4.6: “Not by might, nor by power, but my spirit, says the LORD of hosts.” The allusion to God’s Spirit—which operates in a way that transcends might and power—makes the text a timely precursor to Pentecost’s outpouring of the Holy Spirit. “Don’t look for this thing to happen like anything you’ve known or seen,” it says. Then, when we take a moment or two to discover what “this thing” is, it knocks our socks off.

The message is forwarded through Zechariah to Zerubbabel, a prince appointed to reestablish the Jewish nation and, most important, rebuild the Temple the Babylonians destroyed while sacking Jerusalem. The original Temple sat atop Mt. Zion, the city’s highest peak. Prior to the Babylonian conquest, it shone as the Jews’ pinnacle of hope—hard proof of God’s faithfulness to them. After centuries of looking to the Temple to inspire future hope, all that remains on Mt. Zion is the rubble of dashed dreams. So great is the people’s attachment to the Temple that Psalm 137 says the Babylonian exiles wept when they remembered Zion. Now that the Jews are returning home, reconstructing the Temple is the first order of business. More than that, refuting lost hope is of vital importance.

Ten Soft-Spoken Words

Perhaps the best way to tap into the epic emotions riding on this enormous project is comparing it to the devastation we felt on 9/11, as well as our urgency to replace the World Trade Center with something more magnificent and richer in meaning. Anything less would mean the terrorists won, we said. The same drive to surpass the glory of Solomon’s Temple weighs heavily on Zerubabbel and the Jews. And given their primitive circumstances, I don’t believe we can begin to comprehend how overwhelmed Zerubabbel and the people must feel. Their entire land has been decimated. Their financial means and skill sets are woefully inadequate. What’s more, the young people Zerubabbel must rely on to do the hard labor never saw the first Temple. To a one, they were born after its destruction and it’s very possible that the will to see its resurrection through isn’t there.

To give us an idea of how long 70 years is, consider this: seven decades ago we were in the throes of World War Two. Now imagine we’d lost that war and spent 70 years under Nazi oppression. Could we possibly marshal our energy to restore our former glory? That’s what Zerubbabel is up against—with the added challenge of rebuilding the demolished Temple by hand. He feels powerless, totally incapable of the job he’s been given. And God’s answer to his long list of questions comes in ten soft-spoken words: “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit.” If we were in Zerubabbel’s position, how would we respond? My best would be, “Okay… if You say so…”

Zechariah doesn’t chronicle Zerubabbel’s direct response to God’s message. But this we know. He and those working with him make astonishing progress in the Temple project. Although it takes many generations, glory returns to Mt. Zion. The second Temple becomes something far greater than the first: it’s a testament to God’s Spirit—not political might or human power. And it is this Temple where Jesus preaches, heals, and declares the New Order of God’s grace for all of humanity.

Our Life’s Work

To source timeless truth in biblical prophecy, we first liberate the text from its historical import so we can apply its principles to our lives and times. So we read Zechariah with eyes wide open for a word God would have us know today. To be sure, this text speaks broadly to all believers, promising eternal sustenance and restoration through God’s Spirit. But I would also encourage us to ponder it in the context of spiritual exile and reconstructing a Temple worthy of Isaiah 56—another post-Babylonian prophecy, which promises a place of welcome for outcasts and foreigners: “These I will bring to My holy mountain, and make them joyful in My house of prayer… for My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples.” (v7; emphasis added) Thus, this prophecy comes to everyone who’s been forced into exile by exclusionary doctrine, to those alienated by false doctrines of fear and condemnation, to every child of God who’s lost hope and weeps when recalling the towering promise of grace that once secured their trust in God’s Word. And it’s especially relevant to all of us who’ve heard God’s voice convene a great homecoming for every faith exile. The task of rebuilding a Church in ruins, a people ravaged by the deceit of sexism and homophobia and legalistic bullying, seems too enormous to undertake. Our first impulse leads us to assert power and amass force to complete the task. But God would say to us, “Not by might, nor by power, but by My Spirit.”

Reconstructing a Church that shines forth as hard proof of God’s faithfulness and the Spirit’s renewal will take a long, long time—in all probability, longer than any of us will live. Many of the returning exiles know nothing of the Church’s true significance as a homeland for their souls. To them, it’s just a fabled institution that’s fallen to corrupt powers. They look to Zion and all they see are crumbling reminders of broken ideals. We must speak this word to them—telling them that God’s Spirit transcends might and power, and God’s promises are eternally true. We are in the first stages of an historic homecoming that will triumph in the building of a House of Prayer for All Peoples. Every gender, orientation, ethnicity, class, and personal circumstance will be welcome. We who hear God’s voice and trust God’s Word must make this effort our life’s work. Progress will be slow, but providence will prevail. This is God’s promise to us. And it is true.

Though the task of rebuilding the Church into a House of Prayer for All Peoples is enormous, God promises we will succeed—not by might nor power, but by God’s Spirit.

Best Friends Forever

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband. (Jeremiah 31.31-32)

Friendship

It was one of those minor spats that flare up out of nowhere and sputter out quickly. Except this one didn’t. Evidently both Walt and I had been keeping close score of the other’s negligence, while ignoring our own. It began as typically silly tit-for-tat—“How hard can it be to rinse off a plate and put it in the dishwasher?” “About as hard as picking up your shoes and putting them back in the closet.” But it soon turned into scathing renditions of painful incidents left unaddressed. In no time, years of happiness shattered into a pile of resentment and reproach. We were finished. We took to opposite ends of the apartment, mulling over the realization that what we believed was true love had actually been a delusion. We hated ourselves for getting suckered by a decade of sweet talk and surface romance, when nothing of the sort was happening underneath.

An hour or so passed and Walt came out to the living room. “I don’t want to argue anymore,” he announced. “But I have to say this. If we break up, I’m going to need a best friend to help me get through it. And that’s gonna be a big problem for me, since you’re the best friend I’ve ever had.” That’s all it took. Crying and laughing, we fell into one another’s arms and promised we would remain best friends for life for the sake of our love, and we would remain lovers for life for the sake of our friendship. It was a new promise—one that we’d never have made early on, as we had no idea how important our friendship would be in holding us together. And it taught us a lesson we’ve never forgot: our relationship depends on trust in one another’s friendship. I need to be free to tell my best friend, “Walt’s out of line,” and Walt needs to be able to tell his best friend, “Tim’s not treating me right.”

More Than a Lover

Scripture initially frames God’s covenant with Abraham and his descendants as a family matter. The promise of nationhood is treated as a closely guarded secret, a hidden legacy that will come to fruition in due time. That changes once God ordains Moses to speak to Israel on God’s behalf. When Israel leaves Egypt as a people, the union between the nation and its Maker assumes the nature of a love affair. True, the desert experience is no honeymoon. Yet the interaction between God and Israel smacks of a young couple learning to live together. When times are good, they couldn’t be happier. But let something go wrong and the whining and recriminations and acting out start. There’s a whole lot of “Why won’t you do as I ask?” (God) and “What have You done for us lately?” (Israel) and “See what a mess you’ve made!” (both) in the desert.

Though God loves Israel supremely and Israel loves God more than anything, they’re not the best of friends. And that puts Moses in the awkward position of go-between. As Israel’s first national prophet, he’s the template for every prophet who follows. When God wants to confide in best-friend Israel about lover-Israel’s faults, God speaks through its prophets. The problem is Israel’s not very good at detecting when God is talking Friend-to-friend. It tends to dismiss God’s frustrations—as if God’s a cranky mate picking another fight. Then, when God does come down hard on Israel’s unfaithfulness, the people sink into helpless despair. They’re finished. God has abandoned them. It’s all turned into rubble.

This goes on for centuries, to the point that few offices in Israel are as thankless as the prophet’s. By the time Jeremiah takes the position around 626 BCE, the prophet’s role more closely resembles a couples’ counselor than divine oracle. In fact, we call Jeremiah “the weeping prophet” simply because most of his time is spent mourning Israel’s infidelity and the suffering it brings to God and God’s people. The relationship obviously isn’t working and Jeremiah doesn’t know how to persuade Israel that God is more than a Lover. God is its Best Friend for life.

Fortunately—and out of necessity—God comes to Jeremiah’s rescue in chapter 31 by offering to forge a new relationship with Israel. “The days are coming when I will make a new covenant,” God says, bitterly noting that Israel failed to honor the old one, “though I was their husband.” (v31-32) Under the new covenant, God will remove the hindrances that blocked Israel’s attentiveness to God’s wishes and desires. “I will put My law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people,” God promises. “No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest… for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.” Essentially, God vows to take it upon God’s Self to ensure that a mutual, enduring friendship evolves to stabilize and nourish what’s proven to be a tempestuous, often one-sided love affair.

A New and Right Spirit

While this is a radically new promise—coming from a law-obsessed God to a rebellious people, no less—it’s not a particularly novel idea. Indeed, the Old Testament runs rampant with repentant figures who plead with God to find a better way to make this relationship work. In Psalm 51, written in the wake of his disastrous decision to steal Bathsheba by having her husband killed, David confesses he’s a failure in God’s eyes. “For my transgressions, and my sin are ever before me. Against You, You alone, have I sinned, and done what is evil in Your sight,” he cries. As his poem goes on, however, we sense a tonal shift that suggests David has turned from talking to God as a guilty lover and he now beseeches God Friend-to-friend. “Teach me wisdom in my secret heart,” he prays in verse 6, slowly building up to verse 10: “Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.” In terms of David’s relationship with his Maker, it’s the ultimate cry for help. He seeks more than a lover’s forgiveness. He asks God to be his Friend. And God responds, not only to David, not only to Israel, but also to us, promising, “I will write My law on your heart. You won’t need anyone to tell you how to love and honor Me. You’ll want to do it because we will be lovers and friends.”

A new and right spirit is more than a longing for reconciliation that we rekindle when we fall short in our faithfulness. It is God’s promise to us, spoken from God’s own mouth and written in our hearts by God’s own hand. It’s the promise we reach for when rushes to judgment overtake us. It’s the pledge we rely on when unhealthy desires and tendencies catch us off-guard. It’s the covenant that cannot be broken when our brokenness threatens to break God and us apart. When we can’t find it in our hearts to forgive ourselves, we look to the promise of love and forgiveness God eternally etched in the wells of our beings. We stand on its assurance that this relationship will work and it will last. God and us: best friends forever and lovers for life.

God’s new covenant in Jeremiah salvages the broken relationship with our Maker by inscribing the terms of an enduring, mutual friendship in our hearts.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/25/best-friends-forever/.

What is True

Those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God. (John 3.21)

Darkness

Before I got to college, I had to sneak off to the movies. Our church’s by-laws strictly prohibited film-going. (Which gives you an idea how clubby its faith approach was. What kind of church has by-laws?) This, of course, made movies the greatest thing since sliced bread, and I saw everything the studios released. I often had to lie, “borrow” loose change from my mom’s purse, and cajole friends and neighbors to (unknowingly) help me dishonor my parents’ wishes. But the lure of a fairly benign off-limits activity blinded me to the fact that I was breaking God’s laws to defy an idiotic human rule.

While spending the summer with our grandmother, my brother and I convinced her to drop us off at the local cinema, where Young Frankenstein was playing. She made us promise not to tell anyone. “I don’t see anything wrong with it,” she said. “But the church teaches against it and people will pitch a fit if they find out I took you.” On the way home, she didn’t say much as we told her how funny the film was. When we walked into the house we realized why. Her twin sister, Pearl, had dropped by to see us and, on learning where we were, took it on herself to set us straight. “You boys ought to be ashamed—and you, too,” she said to our grandmother. “If Jesus had come while you were in the theater, you’d be bound for Hell.” Really?

I challenged her: “Where does the Bible say, ‘Thou shalt not go to the movies’?” Without a second’s pause, she fired off John 3.19 from the King James Bible: “Men love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil.” So sitting in the dark theater was the problem, not defying our parents’ teaching or being exposed to unhealthy material on the screen. Grandmother jumped in. “Pearl, that doesn’t even make sense.” Wanting so much to have the last word, I added, “Mom and Dad took us to Mammoth Cave last year. It was really dark. Was that a sin?” Aunt Pearl shot back, “The truth is the truth and you can’t change it. I’d fear God if I were you!” To put a final nail in my spiritual coffin, she whipped out 2 Thessalonians 2.11-12: “And for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie: That they all might be damned who believed not the truth, but had pleasure in unrighteousness.” Ergo, I was delusional to think it was okay to enjoy a silly comedy in the dark—and, worse than that, none other than God fed my delusion!

Living Truthfully Now

As absurd as this exchange was, I remain grateful for it to this day. Even at 14, I knew that God was too big to succumb to such small-mindedness. I knew the real truth of God and gravitated toward it, not allowing petty dogma and ignorance to sway my confidence in that God. I kept going to movies—in fact, I grew increasingly bolder about breaking the rules—because Aunt Pearl’s reproach, despite her sincere and loving intentions, convinced me I had nothing to fear. She taught me how easily being afraid of God causes us to cobble together a lot of loose scriptures to rationalize irrational fears. Looking at her anti-movie “evidence” in context (John 3.14-21; Sunday’s Gospel), it’s indubitable that Jesus teaches us not to be afraid of God. In fact, Aunt Pearl’s “be afraid, be very afraid” citation turns up no less than three verses after Jesus’s immortal promise of God’s boundless, perfect love: “For God so loved the world that God gave God’s only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (v16)

This is the Good News of the Gospel: believe God’s promise of love and life. And regardless how many times we’ve heard or quoted John 3.16, it’s beholden on us to comprehend what Jesus is saying, as His message is just as radical and earthshaking today as when He first spoke it to Nicodemus, the curious Pharisee who wanted to know what Jesus is all about. For starters, Jesus isn’t talking about Heaven or Hell. In fact, life after death doesn’t enter His conversation. He’s talking about living truthfully now and how trusting God’s promise of love brings about new life.

In the Looking

Rather soon, Jesus realizes Nicodemus is stuck on the erroneous idea that God’s love and acceptance must be earned before they can be trusted. It’s a misbegotten, Old Testament idea that has perpetually set Israel at odds with God—and Jesus wants Nicodemus to know that He’s come to uproot this rickety notion once and for all. So He takes Nicodemus back to Numbers 21.4-9 (Sunday’s Old Testament text, recently explored in the post, Snakebit), where God pledges to heal anyone stricken with snakebite if they simply look at a bronze serpent suspended on a pole. They don’t have to prove anything. God doesn’t even ask them to apologize for the grumbling that brought on the venomous scourge. They just have to look up from wherever they are and they’ll be cured. In the looking they’ll express their faith in God’s promise of healing and new life. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life,” Jesus explains in verses 14-15, going on in verse 16 to redefine the terms of God’s promise so that it includes everyone in the world. “God didn’t send the Son into the world to condemn it,” He stresses in verse 17, “but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” Jesus tells Nicodemus (and us) that God’s lavish love and new life aren’t rewards for righteous behavior. They’re promises we access by simple trust and belief.

So why doesn’t everybody in the world claim these promises as offered? Jesus answers this question with shocking candor. Many recoil from faith’s full light because they’ve grown to love the dark life, He says. They’re like cave dwellers; their adaptation to fearful darkness blinds them to God’s bright promises. It hurts their spiritual eyes to envision a world where God raises a life-giving, life-changing Christ Who welcomes and heals all who look to God in faith. They’ve developed finely tuned skills—many passed down over generations—that keep their radar on high alert. Anything that feels dangerous to them must be wrong for everyone else. As a result of feeling their way through darkness, they create evil that seeks to prevent those they love or fear from living in the light. In faith terms, they fabricate elaborate screens to block God’s light and condemn those who believe God’s promises. “But those who do what is true come to the light,” Jesus says in verse 21, “so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.”

Living as God Lives

God promises us eternal life—a new life that we live in God, as God lives, a life that cannot be comprehended because it has neither a beginning nor end. It is a life as limitless and enduring as God’s love, whose vastness reaches out to everyone who ever lived. What is true is that God loves us eternally. God loves us now. God has always loved us, and will never stop loving us. God’s love is perfect, which 1 John 4.16-19 stresses: “We have known and believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as God is, so are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. We love because God first loved us.” (Emphasis added.)

The unconditional, unconventionally fearless love and life Jesus promises in John 3.16 is ours for the taking—and the living. When we forsake dark doctrines and ideologies to live truthfully as believers in God’s eternal love, we come to the light so it may be clearly seen that our deeds have been done in God. Basically, this is just a fancy way of saying, “Let God love you for who you are, where you are right now.” As dangerously radical as some may think that is, it’s why Jesus came.

Confidence in God’s promises of love and life opens the door to live truthfully in the light.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/17/what-is-true/.

A Better Country

They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them. (Hebrews 11.16)

People of the Promise

I hadn’t counted on politics becoming a Lenten hazard. But it has. The US Republican primaries, European financial crisis, Iranian-Israeli saber rattling, Syrian tragedy, Afghani war, and ongoing human rights issues tied to industrialized Asia persistently intrude on Lent’s silence and contemplation. The world is in a bad way. We are in a bad way. Greed and power lust have poisoned the wells of compassion and empathy. Rarely do we hear officials put forth policy based on justice and righteousness. We seldom hear anyone equate political gain with moral equity and goodness. More and more, our journey across Lent’s wilderness resembles a hike through a minefield, a survey of scorched earth. Summoning the faith to find God in the midst of this is exceedingly difficult, since God adamantly resigns participation in human strife. God is there. But since this is our show, we’ve upstaged God. For me, at least, this Lenten experience could be called, “Looking for God in Hard-to-Find Places”.

Fortuitously, this year’s lectionary leads us back to our roots—to heroic Old Testament men and women whose faith hoisted them above human indifference. Their wildernesses were very real and the impact of social, economic, and political realities intruded on every aspect of their lives. Hebrews 11, one of the most glorious chapters in all of Scripture, collects their stories into an epic narrative of faith that speaks to us today in no uncertain terms. We might title it “People of the Promise”. It gives us a virtual roll call of individuals who believed God and transformed their belief into a way of seeing the world by seeing through it. As real as their hardships and dismay were, they focused on a higher reality—a new world of justice, righteousness, and peace that can, and will, result from pursuing lives of faith.

Looking Forward

The Hebrews writer refers to this new reality as a city, saying our hope in God’s promise of a better world goes back to Abraham, the founder of our faith. Verses 8-10 read, “By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to set out for a place that he was to receive as an inheritance; and he set out, not knowing where he was going. By faith he stayed for a time in the land he had been promised, as in a foreign land, living in tents, as did Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. For he looked forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.” The author resounds this note in verse 16: “They desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them.”

When we revisit the sagas of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and the other legends Hebrews celebrates, we’re struck by the tumultuousness of their times and yet how they seem to exist out of time. They deal with crises of conscience, family tragedies, natural and economic catastrophes, political oppression, regime change, devastating wars, enormous social shifts, and every kind of moral chaos. Through all of it, they keep looking forward, pressing their way with unyielding faith in God’s promises, desiring a better country—a heavenly one, Hebrews says, meaning a world reconciled to God’s principles and intentions. Their promised land was one of peace, justice, and equity where God could find a proper home. And their unshakable belief that this world could exist propelled them ahead. More than that, however, their faith compelled them live in the wicked world as though the promised one already existed. How did that work out for them? Verses 32-38 tell us they made tremendous strides at times; at others, they suffered great setbacks and many of them paid severely for their faith. They made “their way as best they could on the cruel edges of the world,” the writer says. Yet through all of it, they held fast to God’s promises, even though, as Hebrews takes care to point out, every one of them died without seeing God’s promises come to fruition.

Will Easter Find Us Resurrected?

Lent’s call to repentance and self-examination turns our thoughts inward. We avail ourselves to its solitude and silence as a nurturing environment for inner peace and direction. But surely God brings us into the desert for more than a spiritual retuning. Surely what comes out of our experience should surpass what we gain from it personally. And it’s incumbent on us to ask, “What are we doing out here in the wilderness? What are these wilderness-wrought changes we undergo really for? Is there not a greater purpose at work here?” If we embrace the Old Testament titans’ wanderings and Jesus’s wilderness temptation as precedents, we can’t possibly accept the notion that Lent is all about us. Indeed, what happens to us during our season of consecration is meant to reshape us so that we can reshape our world. Relearning how to survive on God’s promises should, and must, rekindle our desire for a better country, a city founded on its Architect and Maker’s principles—a promised land fit for God’s presence, a new world. And thus, while we’re in Lent’s desert, we must keep looking forward, gauging our personal progress in context with how it equips us to usher in a new reality. How will we transfer the love, peace, and harmony we find to other lives and hateful, contentious, and distraught situations we enter? Will Easter find us resurrected as people of promise, even though it’s probable we won’t see the promise fulfilled in our lifetimes?

On further reflection, perhaps it’s a godsend that this Lent asks us to grapple with tensions created by pursuing faithful lives in the midst of sociopolitical strife and moral decay. Perhaps seeing a world gone wrong at every turn will return our sights to God’s promise of a righteous world, a better country—a heavenly one. Perhaps the extreme wickedness and loss of direction that surround us will galvanize our commitment to disarm minefields and replenish scorched earth. We pray this will be so, just as we pray that what the Hebrews writer says of our heroic ancestors will be said of us: God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, God has prepared a city for them. Amen.

Traveling Lent’s desert makes vivid our awareness that our world has become a minefield of strife, a wasteland of scorched earth. And that begs us to ask how spiritual transformation we experience during this time will bring about a better world.

Podcast link: http://straightfriendly.podbean.com/2012/03/08/a-better-country/.

Postscript: Questions 12 & 13

When does Lent stop being about us and become something greater than us that leads to a better world?

How do we transpose our renewed faith in God’s love, peace, and acceptance into promises we bring to daily life and its struggle?