Think And Let Think

The shut door is an image that us well-meaning Christians don’t particularly enjoy, but it is God’s answer to the foolish wisdom of the world. For, in the death of Jesus, God closed forever the ways of winning and rightness. But the wise bridesmaids, those who are foolish in the eyes of the world, who were willing to trust God more than themselves, were found in their lastness, leastness, lostness, and even deadness to rejoice and celebrate at the party. And all of the do-gooders who were so sure they could save themselves when it really came down to it, they’re stuck out in the dark with an unusable invitation.

Perhaps we’d like to blame our politicians for our current tumultuous season. But the problem goes far deeper than those running, and selected, for office. The problem is us. Rather than seeing one another as brothers and sisters in Christ, we’ve viewed each other through the names on our bumper stickers. Rather than listening to and praying for those of different opinions, we’ve just shouted louder into the fray. Rather than confessing Jesus as Lord and living accordingly, we’ve fallen prey to believing that what happens on Tuesday is more important than what happens on Sunday.

Jesus is Lord and we are not. Lord, importantly, is not a democratic title. We confess Jesus as Lord because he is the One to whom we owe our fullest and truest allegiance. And this, the lordship of Christ, is a fundamental challenge to the status-quo. It means that our assumptions about power and prestige are all messed up. It forces us to reckon with a world of our own design rather than the Kingdom wrought on earth in the incarnation. It compels us to open our eyes and ears to the people we would otherwise ignore.

Love, at least according to the strange new world of the Bible, doesn’t look like what happens on Valentine’s Day, or even suggestions from a local civic organization. Instead, love looks like the cross.

We Christians might believe that we’ve got everything all sorted out in our lives and in our culture but, as Christians, we know we have a problem when we do not have a problem.

In the end, there is no good in us. In spite of our attempts to be gentle, we mostly rest contented to do nothing or we take it too far and use our faith as a bludgeon against others. But the gentleness Paul writes of does not begin or come from us alone - It’s from Jesus.

No mistake, no sin, no disappointment, no failure, and no rebellion can hold a candle to the love of God in Jesus Christ that draws us home and refuses to let us go.

Grace works for losers and only losers, and no one wants to hang out with losers. No one, that is, except for Jesus. The world of winners, people like us, will invest in myriads of moral absolutes, and truck loads of self-improvement seminars, and heaping baskets of do-goodery. But the world of winners, people like us, refuses to opt-in for free forgiveness because that threatens to bring in all of the disreputable types. Thankfully, however, the Holy Spirit has a knack of reminding us, all of us, that we’re all unworthy, that we’re all up the creek without a paddle, that we’re all in need of some saving. And we can’t save ourselves.

God in the flesh, Jesus of Nazareth, forgives those who haven’t a clue in the world and those who know exactly what they’re doing. God eats and drinks and cavorts with the very people we wouldn’t be caught dead with. Which is kind of the whole point. God chose to die, even death on a cross, out of love for the sinners we are.

“Look, I know the empire seems powerful and that there’s no way you can get away from it. But as disciples of Jesus, if there is a conflict between your politics and your faith, your loyalty is to Christ and your heavenly citizenship is what’s most important.” - Paul, paraphrased

The Lord dabbles in unexpected deliverances, in surprising turns of events, in providential happenstances. All of them are echoes of the great reversal that began that first Easter morning. They are foretaste of the world yet to come. They are the bread and the wine at the table, the undeserved invitation, the unmerited forgiveness. They don’t always fit and fall when we want them to, but when God’s up to something, the best thing we can do is get out of the way and say “thanks.”

The world says, “do this and do that.” Grace says, “It’s already done.” The cross of Christ, hanging empty in the sky, is a stark declaration and reminder that God stands against sin, evil, and death. It is, problematic language not withstanding, God’s war on our behalf. Grace invades into existence not because we believed in God just enough, or because we said the right prayers, but simply because God is merciful. And grace never stops coming.

The world is forever telling us to do more to be better to earn and produce and reform and things largely stay the same. Jesus, on the other hand, is forever telling us that the most important thing has already been finished, the only thing we have to do is trust him. Peter, like us, wants so desperately to be the master of his own fate, he wants to be in control of what happens and to whom. His imagination of the Kingdom of God is limited by his imagination of earthly kingdoms. But Jesus didn’t come to bring us more of the same. He came to raise the dead. And the dead can’t raise themselves.

Paul might have something to say about women being silent in church, but many of us would simply not be Christians unless women were brave enough to stand and speak in churches. The Bible might have more than 200 verses in support of slavery, but we recognize that slavery is incompatible with God’s kingdom here on earth. We might read about doing our business outside the boundary of God’s holiness, but we don’t build churches without bathrooms. Being a Christian is about more than saying things like, “God said it, I believe it, that settles it.”

It is my sincere hope and prayer that, in the midst of a moment of pain or fear or grief, no one has ever dismissively said to you, “God won’t give you more than you can handle.” But chances are, someone has. It is near the top of the list of Christian expressions used when we don’t know what else to say and, spoiler warning, it’s NOT in the Bible.

I don’t know what you've got going on in your life right now. But maybe, you feel like you’re down in a pit - life just won’t let up and you feel overwhelmed and suffocated by worry, fear, and anxiety. Or perhaps you’ve lost someone you love and every single day is a biting and ringing reminder that you will never get them back. Or maybe you’re struggling with an addiction that, no matter how hard you try, you just can’t kick it. We can claw at the walls all we want. We can fashion ladders of self-improvement. We can even make promises to ourselves that tomorrow we will finally become the best versions of ourselves. But sometimes, the only way out of the hole comes when someone else is willing to jump in and show us the way out. And that's exactly what Jesus does for us.

Life is hard and all sorts of things happen without explanation. I know that might not sound very pastoral, but it’s true. Can you imagine how you would feel if you came to the church one morning in your grief or suffering or pain, and you got down on your knees to pray to God when all of the sudden you heard a voice booming from the heavens declaring, “I”M DOING THIS TO YOU ON PURPOSE! THIS IS PART OF MY PLAN!” If that’s who God is, then God isn’t worthy of our worship. Thankfully, that’s not who God is. God is whoever raised Jesus from the dead having first raised Israel out of Egypt. God is the author of salvation and not the dictator of death. God is the one who would do everything, and already did, to make sure that nothing, truly nothing, could ever separate us from the his divine love.

Counter to many of our church ramblings throughout the centuries, and even today, we are not judged by the Lord in the light of our previous proclivities. If we were, none of us would go anywhere but hell. Instead we are judged by what Jesus does for us on the cross. He announces a forever and all encompassing forgiveness that transfigures us into his kingdom in ways that are hidden and right here among us. Let me put it this way: Everybody, even the worst of the worst, is someone for whom Christ died. Whenever the church goes around kicking people out for missed and poor choices, we fail to live into the netted-ness of Christ’s salvific work.

If the miracle of miracles occurs and people stumble into the church (or online during a streamed service) looking for something, what does the church offer in turn? Hey, um, here’s the mystery of Jesus Christ all wrapped up nice and neat for you, the in-dwelling or his kingdom, but… if you want any part of it, you’re gonna need to shape up. So, uh, write this down, you need to work on your racism, sexism, classism, ageism, ethnocentrism, STOP USING STYROFOAM, go vegan, gluten free, eat locally, think globally, fight against gentrification, DON’T DRINK SO MUCH, practice civility, mindfulness, inclusiveness, take precautions on dates, keep sabbath, live simply, practice diversity, do a good deed daily, love your neighbors, give more, complain less, make the world a better place, YOU DRINK TOO MUCH. If people have ever been evangelized by fear mongering or higher ethical stands, they might be converted from something, but not to the Gospel. I mean, who the hell would sell everything to buy all of that?