Think And Let Think

If you ain’t first, you’re last - so says the world. From the time we’re young adults until the day we die its always this break-neck competition for firstness, greatness, foundness. But in the Kingdom of God Jesus does his best work, his only work really, with the last, least, lost, little, and dead. People like us.

God in Christ has this knack for making outsiders into insiders, for reaching beyond beyond the boundaries of propriety, for meeting people where they are and not where they ought to be. God meets us in our mistakes, not in our triumphs. God meets us in our sins, not in our successes.

Contrary to how we often talk about it, and even how we live it out, Christianity isn’t a religion - if it is anything it is the declaration of the end of religion. Religion consists of all the things human beings have ever thought we have to do to get right with God. Christianity tells us that God in Christ does what we could never do in order to reconcile the world to himself. Or, as Martin Luther memorably put it, “The law says, ‘do this.’ And it is never done. Grace says, ‘believe in this,’ and everything is already done.” We, the church, don’t exist to wag our fingers at every little sin and indiscretion, we are not here to proclaim the Bad News that God will only think kindly upon us after we have fixed all of our mistakes. Instead, the church exists to announce the Good News, the very best news, that “while we were yet sinners, Christ died for the ungodly.”

The joy of the church is realizing how God delights in gathering people together who otherwise have nothing in common save for the fact that Jesus calls them his friends.

It’s outrageous stuff, forgiveness. It just also happens to be the way Jesus runs the kingdom.

In Christ, we encounter the incomparable new reality of God which both humbles us and exalts us, which knocks us down and builds us up, and that is our peace. You see, peace, at least peace as defined by the Gospel, comes when we recognize our universal incompetence and our total need for someone to do for us that which we cannot do on our own. God has claimed us. And, as Karl Barth put it, unity is the consequence of belonging to God. However, there is a difference between the now and the not yet. Our sin-sick souls are stuck in this terrifying cycle of division and antipathy. But, as Christians, we are called to look beyond and, in so doing, reframe the now.

Being a Christian isn’t natural. It runs counter to the ways of the world. Turn the other cheek? Love your enemies? Pray for those who persecute you? We are different. However, we have often tried to avoid the differences that make us different. We don’t want to appear strange, or evangelical, or like those other kinds of Christians (whoever they may be). We’ve been content to let our faith be something that happens on Sundays and only on Sundays. But because we have tried so hard to not seem different, it’s been unclear why anyone would want to be like us. Jesus is the difference who makes us different.

Again and again in the strange new world of the Bible, God meets the people of God in the midst of their sins, down in the muck of life, and offers grace. And grace, as Robert Farrar Capon so wonderfully puts it, isn’t cheap or even expensive, its free.

Jesus does not work according to the ways of the world. He does not say, “Bring to me your perfect lives and your perfect jobs and your perfect families.” Instead, he says, “Bring to me your burdens and I will give you rest.” Jesus does not look at our choices and our actions in order to weigh out whether or not we’ve done enough to make it through the pearly gates. Instead, he says, “I have come to save sinners and only sinners!” Jesus does not write us off for our faults and our failures. Instead, he says, “You are mine and I am thine!”

We might rejoice in viewing one another through our mistakes and our shortcomings, but in the kingdom of God we are viewed only through what Christ did and does for us. We might enjoy holding our judgments and prejudices against one another, but in the kingdom of God Jesus knows none of deserve anything, and yet we receive everything. We might love propping up all of our good works for everyone else to see, but in the kingdom of God there is a judgment that comes for each and every single one of us.

God, unlike us, delights in impossible possibilities. The insanity of the Gospel is that, over time, God actually changes us. We are not what we once were because God will not let us stay that way. God, through bread and wine, through water and Spirit, is making all things new. Including us!

It’s one thing to sing “What A Friend We Have In Jesus” but it’s another thing entirely to think “what a friend Jesus has in us.”

Hear the Good News: God in Christ arrives in a world, in a vineyard, that cannot bear any fruit on it’s own. It has given itself over to disease, and abuse, and pestilence, and all sorts of other failures. But the (di)vinegrower tills the ground, enriches the soil, and plants the seeds that are the Word to bear fruit.

We truly are sheep without a hope in the world unless we have a shepherd who is willing to do for us that which we cannot do on our own. Thankfully, that’s exactly what we get in Christ Jesus.

Resurrection, believe it or not, is forever inextricably tied up with our food and love of it. It is quite literally by the death of corn, cabbage, and collards that we have lived until today.

The world is going down the drain, but we’ve got a Savior who works at the bottom of the drain and he’s the only one who can do anything about it. And what is the anything our savior does? He forgives!

In just about every other part of our lives, there are expectations. And yet, Jesus is all about the unexpected. Jesus doesn’t wait on the cross until we right all of our wrongs. Jesus doesn’t hide behind the stone in the tomb until there’s enough do-goodery in the world. Instead, the proclamation of Easter is we don’t have to do anything, because the everything we’ve always needed is already done.

Consider the strange new world of the Bible - God looked upon us and our sin and what did God do? God did not remain above and far removed from our struggle. Instead, God chose to come right down into the muck and mire of our existence. God looked upon us and our sins and God entered into our very condition, birthed as a baby to a virgin in a manger. That baby grew to proclaim the Good News for a world drowning in bad news. He healed the sick. He fed the hungry. He befriended the lonely. And when he entered the Holy City we nailed him to a cross...

The foot washing has always been a little strange and a little weird to the people called church. For one, only John includes it and, for another, it reveals the heart of God in a way that feels uncomfortable. Not only does Jesus, God in the flesh, get down on his knees to wash the dirty feet of the disciples, one of whom will shortly betray him, another will deny him, and the rest will leave him hanging to die on a cross, but then Jesus has the gall to command us to do the same for one another. And yet, in a way, more than being told what we are supposed to do, the whole message of this final moment is, again, about what Jesus does *for us*.

The Good News of Jesus Christ is that we have already been forgiven, and we’ve been set free. What was done to us does not define us. What we’ve done, and failed to do, is no longer kept in a ledger of God’s design.