The Question We've Yet to Answer

Never waste a good crisis. 

This past week I participated in an event in which over four hundred clergy from the Central Texas Conference and the North Texas Conference met together. It was the first, but not the last, gathering of clergy from a new episcopal area served by our newly appointed bishop, Bishop Rueben Saenz, Jr. The gathering had a spiritual, relational focus rather than the institutional-business focus of most conference meetings. We reaffirmed our call by celebrating our baptism. We celebrated our oneness with table conversations and the celebration of holy communion. We focused on the future, moving beyond the conflict and division of the past. The spirit of the gathering was uplifting, hopeful. I was grateful to be a part of this initial gathering of the two conferences.

As we move forward into the future God has for us, a question is lodged in the back of my mind, haunting me: What have we learned from the conflict and splintering over the LGBTQ+ issues?

It seems to me we as United Methodists haven’t answered this question.

Perhaps we haven’t answered the question because we don’t know who needs to answer it – the Council of Bishops, General Conference, our conferences, conference leadership, our churches, our clergy, our laity?

I fear we haven’t answered the question because we want to put all of this behind us as quickly as possible and go back to the way things were. Of course, we can never go back to the way things were. Like the pandemic, the conflict and splintering have created a new normal. We don’t yet know what that new normal will look like. How we deal with this crisis, what we learn from the conflict and splintering will determine, at least in part, what the new normal looks like.

Perhaps we haven’t answered the question because our human inclination is to blame. It is easy to blame this conflict and division on those churches and pastors who left The UMC. Blaming the other is what generally happens in most divorces. Blaming the other blinds us to our contribution to the situation.

Perhaps we haven’t answered the question because we don’t know how to answer it. Answering it requires too much work. It raises difficult questions. It calls us to think differently, from a different perspective, on a deeper level.

Every crisis is an opportunity for self-evaluation, learning, adjustment, and change.

Thankfully, based on what I heard at the joint clergy meeting this past week, some of us are using the crisis to reclaim our identity as United Methodist Christians. We are revisiting and reaffirming our grace-based theology with its life-transforming power along with the Wesleyan heritage from which it comes. In addition, we are clarifying and reaffirming our purpose of making disciples of Jesus Christ for the transformation of the world. The conflict distracted us from this work Christ gave us to do. Identifying and reclaiming our identity and our purpose are essential if we are to move forward into the future God wants for us.

In my mind, the crisis calls us to address other unrecognized issues that contributed to the conflict and splintering:

·       how to read, interpret, understand, and use the Bible;

·       how to think theologically, with the mind of Christ;

·       how to discern the will of God and guidance of the Spirit;

·       knowing the nature of the kingdom of God as found in the teachings of Jesus and its implications for our church;

·       understanding our grace-based theology and how to live out its implications;

·       clarifying what the nature of the Christian life is, that is, how is our Christian faith expressed (hint: love, the fruit of the Spirit);

·       how spiritual growth transforms our hearts and minds (an interior focus), resulting in a change in how we relate to others (the external focus, behavior);

·       how to view and deal with diversity – the other;

·       how to deal with, manage, and resolve conflict.

These issues are the ones I see. I know there are others. We need resources to address these issues and strategies to do so.

Beyond these theological issues, the crisis offers us the opportunity to address structural issues in our church:

·       the hierarchal nature of our church with its top-heavy administrative structure;

·       the costs of that administrative structure;

·       the life-long role of bishops and its implications;

·       the lack of accountability for how a bishop uses the power of the office;

·       the role of the conference in empowering local congregations to do ministry;

·       the way we deal with conflict in congregations; (In my opinion, our default “move the pastor” approach leaves the problem unaddressed and unresolved and to be repeated, resulting in unhealthy, toxic congregations.)

·       the itineracy, especially addressing the (unintended) career-advancement mentality it fosters and the frequency of pastoral changes.

Addressing these issues calls for thinking that sees beyond the default company-maintenance, company-survival, the-way-we-have-always-done-it thinking of institutional life. It calls for thinking that is future-oriented, not tradition bound. It calls for purpose-shaped thinking and functioning.

Every crisis is an opportunity for self-evaluation, learning, adjustment, and change. Sadly, many of us (most of us?) don’t take advantage of the opportunities crises bring. As a result, we don’t learn. We don’t change. In the end, we repeat the crisis.

No wonder the question “what have we learned?” haunts my mind. I don’t want to go through this kind of thing again.

Never waste a good crisis.

I pray we are not wasting this crisis and missing the opportunities it offers.

It was a part of Jesus’s central message. “From that time Jesus began to proclaim, ‘Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,’” Matthew 4:17 NRSV. 

The kingdom of God (Matthew’s gospel uses the term “kingdom of heaven”) was the central focus of Jesus’s teaching and preaching - at least, that’s what the gospel writers said. (Which raises the question: why isn’t the kingdom the central focus of our churches? Why do we, his followers today, know so little about the kingdom or talk so little about it? But I digress.)

The good news Jesus proclaimed was that the kingdom “has come near.” The language he used means “here, now.” Jesus said the kingdom was a present reality, not something in a far-off future. It was here, now, in their midst. It was something those who were listening to him could experience in their own lives. They could be a part of it. He called people – and he calls us - to be a part of the kingdom.

Jesus’s invitation to be a part of the kingdom was contained in the word “repent.”

What did Jesus mean by the term? How does repentance help us experience the kingdom and be a part of it?

The common, popular understanding of repentance focuses on behavior. Repentance is described as “turning around,” an about face. According to this understanding, to repent is to change the way we live. This changing of our behavior is generally accompanied by a sense of sorrow or regret, i.e., the acknowledgement of wrong. In this understanding, repentance involves recognizing our wrong and resolving to change. This understanding of the word repent is based upon the word in the Hebrew Scriptures that is translated as “repent.” That Hebrew word is the word “turn.” Thus, to repent is to turn around or do an about face.

The word Jesus used in his invitation to be a part of the kingdom was a different word, not this Hebrew word meaning “turn.” The Greek word used by the gospel writers, also translated as “repent,” is a word that refers to thinking, not behavior. The word literally means “with the mind.” The word suggests that repentance is about thinking with a different mind.

This difference – repentance as a matter of the mind rather than behavior - is significant. How we think and what we think determines what we see and what we do. For example, how and what we think about another person determines how we treat them. When we think of someone as a friend, we joyfully welcome them and open our hearts to them. When we view someone as a stranger, we are reserved and distant in how we treat them. When we think of someone as an enemy, we avoid them. Our thinking determines our behavior. Changing our behavior requires a change in our thinking.

In calling people to be a part of the kingdom, Jesus called them to think with a different mind. A change in how they thought was the key to their being able to experience the kingdom and be a part of it.

This call to change how we think is rooted in a truth proclaimed about the ways of God by an unnamed prophet associated with the exile. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts," Isaiah 55:8-9.

Our default way of thinking is at odds with the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 2:6-10). Consequently, our ways are at odds with the ways of God that Jesus taught – the ways of the kingdom. (Notice how the prophet links thinking – “my thoughts” - with behavior – “my ways.”)

Our thinking is a factor in our experience of the kingdom. As long as we think the way the world trained us to think, we will not recognize the kingdom even though it is here, now. More than not recognizing the kingdom, as long as we live out of our default way thinking, we will resist the kingdom.

We see this reality in the criticism of Jesus by the Pharisees. On more than one occasion, Jesus healed people on the Sabbath – a man with a withered hand (Matthew 12:9-14), a woman who was crippled (Luke 13:10-17). The reaction of the Pharisees to these healings was to criticize Jesus for violating the Sabbath. They attacked him for breaking the laws governing the Sabbath. The Pharisees reacted out of the way they had been taught to think by their religious training. That training focused on rules, laws, and religious norms. It emphasized conformity to those rules and laws and religious expectations. Their thinking blocked their ability to feel compassion for the individuals Jesus healed. It prevented them from recognizing the presence of the kingdom in the work of Jesus.   

The way the world has trained us to think is merit-based thinking. This kind of thinking, like that of the scribes and Pharisees, focuses upon behavior as prescribed in rules, laws, and social norms. It judges people based upon their conformity to or violation of those rules, laws, and social norms. It uses the language of “should, need to, ought to, must” along with “deserves” and “doesn’t deserve.” Merit-based thinking produces us-them thinking which, in turn, leads to better than-less than thinking. It results in hierarchal relationships in which some enjoy greater standing, value, significance, and power than others. It produces transactional, if . . . then relationships.

This merit-based way of thinking blocks our ability to recognize the kingdom that is here, now. It blocks our ability to experience the kingdom and be a part of it.

Experiencing the kingdom and being a part of it requires us to repent, that is, to think with a different mind. It calls us to learn from the Spirit the wisdom of God (1 Corinthians 2:7-16) and the ways of God that Jesus taught (John 14:25-26; 16:12-15). It calls us to take on the mind of Christ (1 Corinthians 2:16). Experiencing and being a part of the kingdom involves learning a different way of thinking – the way of grace and forgiveness, the way of viewing and valuing, accepting and embracing every person (without exception) as a beloved child of God, the way of using power the way God uses power – in life-giving, life-nurturing ways that address the needs of others (to serve), the way that focuses on the transformation of the heart and mind rather than the conformity of our behavior to rules, laws, and social norms. 

The apostle Paul spoke of learning to think differently as the heart of being a follower of Jesus. “Stop letting the world press you into its mold. Rather, be transformed by the renewing of your mind,” (Romans 12:2, personal translation). The world, Paul said, has already shaped our thinking. It trained us to think in terms of merit, of earning and deserving, of us-them, of better than-less than. The good news is the Spirit is at work in us, teaching us the ways of God that Jesus taught. Learning to think differently is the key to a transformed life and to being a part of the kingdom.

The kingdom is a present reality We can be a part of it today by living as the followers of Jesus, learning and living the ways of God he taught. 

Repentance – learning to think differently - opens the door to the kingdom.

Thinking Outside of the Box: Reflecting on Jesus's Baptism

 “This is my Son, the Beloved, with whom I am well pleased,” Matthew 3:17.

All three synoptic gospels record what Jesus experienced at his baptism. He had a vision and he heard of a voice. Both confirmed his thinking and his self-understanding.

We are not told what prompted his thinking in the direction it took or how he arrived at his conclusions. Some believe he knew all along, but Luke tells us Jesus grew like any normal human being (Luke 2:52). Luke’s statement means Jesus came to his conclusions the same way any of us do – learning, thinking, reflecting, studying, meditating, listening, questioning, even doubting.

While we don’t know how Jesus came to his conclusion, we do know what that thinking was. It is reflected in his experience at his baptism. Jesus came to be baptized with this thinking in the back of his mind . . . or maybe in the forefront. His experience at his baptism reveals his thinking. In addition, his experience of the vision and the voice confirmed for him the validity of his thinking.

Jesus’s thinking was what we today call “outside of the box” thinking. It was not in line with the common understandings or teachings of his religious heritage. It was unique and unusual even though it was rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Scriptures. It was so outside of the box that people thought it ludicrous and outright rejected it. In spite of the reactions of others, Jesus’s thinking captured the heart of God . . . which is why we are wise to pay attention to it.

Jesus’s thinking was about his sense of identity, i.e., who he was. His self-understanding, reflected in the vision and the voice, was that he was the long-awaited messiah. To think of himself as the messiah would have been outside the box thinking. His understanding of what that meant – reflected in what the voice said – was even more outside the box.

His self-understanding was confirmed in the vision. The vision was of the Spirit descending from heaven and landing on him in the form of a dove. Thus, the vision proclaimed he was being anointed with the Spirit just as other individuals in Hebrew history had been: prophets, priests, kings. The Spirit was given to these individuals, empowering them to do the work God called them to do. The vision affirmed for Jesus that he was being called of God to do God’s work. He was anointed with the Spirit – and thus empowered by the Spirit – for this work. He was “the anointed one,” i.e., the messiah (which means “the anointed one.”) The vision confirmed Jesus’s self-understanding. He was the long-awaited messiah.

Jesus’s self-understanding was also confirmed in the voice he heard.

What the voice said came from the Hebrew Scriptures. The first phrase came from Psalm 2, the coronation psalm that was sung when a new king was crowned – “This is my Son, the Beloved.” The psalm proclaimed the unique relationship the king had with God as the adopted son of God. This phrase affirmed for Jesus that he was the promised messianic king. Coupled with this phrase from Psalm 2 was a line from the first servant song of Isaiah, Isaiah 42:1-9. (Scholars have identified four poems in Isaiah 40-55 that they refer to as servant songs. These poems speak of one who is called the servant of the LORD. In the fourth and final servant song, this servant suffers and dies. Thus, he is called the suffering servant of the LORD.) This second line from Isaiah 42:1 identifies Jesus as the suffering servant.

These two lines indicate that Jesus had come to understand that the messiah was also the suffering servant. No one in their history had ever put these two figures together. It was outside of the box thinking. The Hebrew people thought of the messiah as one like David, a warrior king who would defeat their enemies and reestablish the dominance of their nation. No one thought of the messiah as one who would suffer and die on behalf of the nation. Jesus’s disciples, believing he was the messiah, followed him to Jerusalem expecting him to defeat the hated Romans, restoring the Hebrew kingdom. They could not embrace Jesus’s outside of the box thinking until after his death and resurrection.

Putting these two figures together indicated that Jesus understood the heart of God.

The defining characteristic of the heart of God is steadfast, faithful love (Exodus 34:6-7). God never gives up on or abandons God’s people. This faithful love leads God to suffer with God’s people and for them. Identifying God as the creator proclaims that God uses power in life-giving, life-enhancing ways. God does not use power the way we humans commonly do – over, down against others, for our own benefit, at their expense (Mark 10:41-45). God does not use power to destroy. (The story of the flood in Genesis 6-9 equates the violent use of power against others as evil.)

Jesus’s experience at his baptism calls us once again to remember the nature of God. It calls us to recognize the self-giving, self-sacrificing servant love that is the essence of who God is. It calls us, as God’s beloved children and the followers of Jesus today, to think outside of the box of our default human thinking, embracing once again the grace-based ways of God’s self-giving, servant love. To embrace the ways of God that Jesus taught and lived is to reject the default thinking of power over, down against others, for our own personal benefit, at their expense. It is to think outside of the box. 

Baptism of the Lord Sunday, 2023 - Remember Your Baptism

Righteousness. It’s an old fashion religious word not used much anymore. Back in the day, it was used in a negative way, i.e., self-righteous. My guess, most people today don’t know what the word means. In the gospel of Matthew, however, it was a key word – central to the gospel’s unique message.

We find the word in the gospel’s account of Jesus’s baptism – the liturgical focus of this second Sunday of 2023 (the first Sunday after Epiphany on the liturgical calendar). According to the gospel of Matthew, John balked at baptizing Jesus, arguing that he (John) needed to be baptized by Jesus. John’s resistance reflected his view that Jesus was greater than he was. In spite of John’s resistance, Jesus insisted on being baptized. His reasoning was “for it is proper for us in this way to fulfill all righteousness,” Matthew 3:15.

The gospel of Matthew is the only gospel to record this detail of Jesus’s baptism. This fact is evidence that the word “righteousness” is a key word and concept in the gospel. Which raises the question: what is the meaning of “righteousness?” How does Jesus’s baptism fulfill it?

A clue to our questions lies in the backdrop of the gospel.

The gospel was written to Jewish Christians following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. That event - the destruction of the Temple – drastically changed the religious life of the Jewish people in Judea. It robbed them of the central focus of their worship (the Temple), leaving only their local synagogues as a place of worship. It also broke the power of one of the key religious groups in the nation – the priestly families known as the Sadducees. By default, the dominant power fell to the scribes and Pharisees who controlled the local synagogues.

The scribes and Pharisees interpreted the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE in the same way their ancestors – the founding members of their two groups – interpreted the destruction of the Temple and the nation by the Babylonians in 587 BCE. They viewed it as God’s judgment on the nation for their failure to keep the law. Acting on this understanding, they resolved to do a better job of keeping the law. They would “try harder” as so many church members through the years have resolved to do. In addition, they targeted those whom they viewed as not keeping the law, blaming them for God’s judgment on the nation.

Among those they targeted were Jewish Christians who followed the teachings of Jesus rather than the teachings of Moses. The Pharisaic Jews who controlled the synagogues pressured the Jewish Christians to abandon their identity as the disciples of Jesus, returning to being the disciples of Moses who lived by the law. Their pressure included the threat of excommunication from the synagogue, a form of shunning that involved the refusal to do business with the ones who were excommunicated. The excommunication was a guarantee of economic failure for the individual and his family.

Underlying this conflict was the question “What does it mean to be righteous?” Another way of asking the question is “What does authentic spirituality look like?”

Among the Jewish people, and especially for the scribes and Pharisees, righteousness was a term associated with the Law. One could not be righteous without living by the Law. For the Pharisaic Jews, righteousness meant keeping the law, i.e., doing what the law said. Righteousness was conforming to the demands of the law and the religious expectations of their tradition. The righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees was a law-based righteousness that focused on behavior, i.e., what one did. BTW: this kind of righteousness is generally what people back in the day understood the word to mean.

Jesus taught a different kind of righteousness. Jesus taught a righteousness of the heart. His kind of righteousness focused on the spirit and attitudes of the heart, not on a person’s behavior or their conformity to religious expectations and norms. It was expressed in how we view and treat others, i.e., in our relationships.

Jesus’s kind of righteousness did not discount the law. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill (the law),” Matthew 5:17. He also spoke of a righteousness that “exceeds that of the scribes and Pharisees,” Matthew 5:20. Jesus’s kind of righteousness – i.e., what righteousness really is – went beyond the behavior-focused conformity of the Pharisees. His kind of righteousness fulfilled the law, that is, did what the law intended.

In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus gave six examples of what it meant to fulfill the law. In his examples, he pushed beyond the behavior the law described to the principle underlying the law. The law is fulfilled by living by the principle, not by conforming our behavior to its demands. We can do what the law says (behavior) yet violate the principle upon which it is built. For example, Jesus said our anger and devaluing of another is the same as murder even though we do not physically take the other’s life. These attitudes violate the intent of the command “Do not murder” (Matthew 5:21-26).

Jesus’s understanding of righteousness was ground in the Hebrew Scriptures, particularly the prophets. Righteousness is a key term in the Hebrew Scriptures. In the writings of the prophets, it was commonly paired with the term justice. Both are covenant terms (as opposed to a moral or legal term). Righteousness meant to live in right relationship with those in the covenant community. Justice was to use one’s power to advocate for, provide for, and empower the powerless – the orphan, the widow, the oppressed, the alien (see Isaiah 1:17) – within the covenant community. To be righteous was to live rightly in relationship with the powerless in the covenant community. Righteousness was to use power on behalf of “the least of these” – Jesus’s term for the powerless in his parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew 25:31 – 46.  

Which brings us back to the baptism of Jesus. How did Jesus’s baptism fulfill all righteousness? In his baptism, Jesus identified with those being baptized. He chose to live in relationship with those who were the powerless, fringe people in their society. He aligned himself with those who desired to live a life pleasing to God.

Righteousness is about relationships, specifically how we live in relationship with those who are devalued and powerless in our society. It is more than moral piety based on keeping the demands of the law. It is about responding with compassion and mercy to others. (See Matthew 12:7 where Jesus quoted Hosea, “I desire mercy not sacrifice.”)

Righteousness is a matter of the heart – the spirit and attitudes out of which we live – rather than an issue of behavior.

On this Baptism of the Lord Sunday, we are told “Remember your baptism and be grateful.” We remember our need for the cleansing, transforming work of the Spirit in our lives – symbolized by our baptism - by which we too can respond with compassion and mercy to others, thereby fulfilling all righteousness.

The 8th Day of Christmas - Giving Up on New Year's Resolutions

 It is a recurring theme each year at this time of year. It is the time of New Year’s resolutions. We view the New Year as an opportunity for a new beginning. Taking advantage of this opportunity, we make some kind of resolution. Our resolution is to do something we believe we need to do or ought to do but don’t do. We resolve to change something we do or don’t do.

Our resolutions grow out of something deep inside us – something of which we are generally unaware. That “something” is our struggle with being human.

Being human comes with some default settings that are nonnegotiable. We can’t change them. They just are.

What are these default settings?

To be human is to be in process, not yet full grown. Consequently, we have to learn and grow, moving from where we are to a more mature place on the journey. The learning is foundational to the growing. For example, a young child who crawls has to learn to balance and stand on her feet. She does this by using a chair to pull herself up onto her feet and holding onto it as she “gets the feel” of standing. Once the child has learned the skill of balancing, she can take a step. She can move from crawling to toddling – walking but not too steadily or with much assurance. Toddling gives way to walking which gives way to running. What is true on the physical level (learning to walk) is also true on the emotional-relational-spiritual level. Once we stop learning, we stop growing emotionally-relationally-spiritually. We become stagnant. We get stuck in how we think and how we live. Our growth - emotionally-relationally-spiritually - is stunted.

To be human is to fail. Not being full grown means there are dimensions of our lives that are not yet developed. It translates into things we do not understand, areas where we are weak, aspects of life in which we are inexperienced and inadequate. As a result, we make mistakes. We fail. We don’t always get a perfect score or make a 100.

To be human is to be limited. We do not have unlimited energy or stamina or strength or knowledge or patience or forgiveness or ability to love another. We do not have unlimited anything. Our energies get drained. We get tired. When we do, we have to renew our depleted energies. We have to refuel. We are not all-powerful or all-knowing.

Our limitations translate into needs – the need to rest, to eat, to sleep. Thus, to be human is to live with needs. Our needs extend beyond the physical realm. We have the need for relationship, for connection, for touch – which means a need for others. We have the need for stimulation, for pleasure, for challenge. We have the need to be creative and productive, to develop and use our unique abilities, to contribute to the world around us in some significant way. Our needs mean we are not self-sufficient. They require us to receive from others.

As humans, we cannot escape these default settings. Thus, the issue is how do we deal with the reality of our default settings.

Many of us try to ignore these default settings. We live as though these settings do not apply to us. This inclination is reflected in our tendency to idolize athletes who push beyond physical limitations to “greatness.” It is evident in how we push ourselves and our bodies, ignoring all the indications that our energies are depleted. This inclination produces perfectionists, workaholics, control freaks who fight to make everything “right,” people who don’t know how to say “no” or set boundaries, people who give but can’t receive, burnout, self-neglect and self-abuse, broken bodies – all because we expect more of ourselves “than is humanly possible.” This inclination is reflected in the garden story. The serpent said to Eve, “You will be like God” (Genesis 3:4). To be like God is to escape being human. It is to be all-powerful and all-knowing – always adequate, always capable – not in process, with experiences of failure, with limitations, with needs.  

(BTW: perfection is only a word in the dictionary. The New Testament word translated as “perfect” carries the idea of maturity, not being flawless.)

Another way we deal with these realities of being human is with resolve to do better, i.e., New Year’s resolutions. Through self-effort, we determine to move beyond what we view as unacceptable. For example, seeing our body as unacceptable (that is, not conforming to social expectations), we resolve to diet or to give up sweets or to change what we eat or to go to the gym or to be more active in order to get our body back in shape. Success in these resolutions is dependent upon the strength of our resolve, the degree of our self-discipline, and the consistency of our self-effort. The reality is, most of these resolutions fail. A key factor in these failures is our refusal to deal realistically with what it means to be human.

Beneath our resolutions is generally some form of self-loathing and self-condemnation. We judge ourselves harshly for failing to do what we know we need to do or should do. That self-condemnation is compounded when our resolve fails. The failure accompanied by the self-condemnation fuels a deep-seated sense of shame. Shame is about being – our sense of who we are. It is the sense that we are no good, that we are flawed, that we are inadequate, that we are incapable of measuring up, that we are not loveable. It spawns old messages that say we will never be enough, that we will never get it right, that we will never amount to anything, that no one will ever love us. Shame tells us that we are unlovable, that we are a hopeless failure. Interestingly, shame pushes us to ignore our limitations (as described above). We view any hint of a limitation or inadequacy or failure as evidence that we are no good. Thus, we strive to eliminate any hint of imperfection.

Another way to deal with the default settings of our human condition is to recognize them and accept them. In other words, it is to make peace with being human – including its default settings. We make peace with being in process, with failure, with our limitations, with our needs.

Making peace with being human calls for self-awareness as we listen to our bodies, our emotions, our inner spirit, and the Spirit who lives in us. It calls for balance – giving and receiving, doing and being, producing and renewing. It calls for learning and growing.

Making peace with being human involves living out of grace rather than expectations and demand. It involves forgiving our failures when we don’t measure up, allowing those experiences to become opportunities to learn. As we learn, we grow. As we grow, we are able to do what we could not do before.

Making peace with being human calls us to live by faith, with the quiet assurance of hope. Hope is the forward look of faith. It sees beyond what is to what will be as we learn and grow under the guidance of the Spirit. It embraces the present reality as just another stage of the journey on the way to the ultimate destination of emotional-relational-spiritual maturity.

Making peace with being human involves living in glad dependency upon God as beloved children of God. It is to trust God’s steadfast, faithful love, God’s abundant grace, God’s forgiveness so freely and extravagantly given, God’s limitless generosity.

In this New Year, let’s resolve to give up resolutions. Instead, let’s make peace with being human as we trust God’s grace and the Spirit’s guidance. As the apostle Paul said, let’s keep in step with the Spirit (Galatians 5:25 NIV), knowing the Spirit is leading us into Christ-like maturity.

 

The 7th Day of Christmas, 2022-23 - The Not-So-Good-News of the Christmas Story

It’s a seemingly minor detail in the story of the magi, but it a significant part in the story. It also foreshadows the ending of the gospel and communicates a spiritual truth we tend to ignore.

“When Herod heard this (news about a newborn king), he was frightened and all Jerusalem with him,” Matthew 2:3.

The magi – probably astrologers who studied the movements of the stars – had come to Jerusalem looking for a newborn king of the Jews. Their study of the stars indicated that a royal child had been born in the land of the Jews. Naturally, they went to the capital city and to the palace to find the child. They assumed the child belonged to the royal family of Herod.

What the magi viewed as good news was received as bad news to Herod the king. A newborn king would be a rival who could displace him. He was a threat to Herod and his world – his throne, his power, his prestige, his wealth. The news the magi brought was disturbing and disruptive . . . and not just for Herod. All of Jerusalem was anxious. Fear flowed like electricity throughout the city, leaping from one to another as they repeated the news.

Herod’s fear-driven response was predictable. He began to scheme about how to locate this child so he could be eliminated. His scheme caused Joseph – warned in a dream – to flee to Egypt to protect the child and his mother from Herod’s attempt to kill him. When Herod’s scheme didn’t work – the magi didn’t play along – his fear turned to paranoia. He killed every boy in the area who was below the age of two. (BTW: this detail about the age of the victims indicates the magi were not at the manger scene in Bethlehem as our Christmas pageants normally portray. Luke’s story and Matthew’s story are two separate stories with two separate messages. But I digress.)

The story foreshadows the end of the gospel. In the end, this one whom the magi sought would be pursued by the religious authorities of Jerusalem with the intent to kill him. Before the gospel ends, he would be arrested by members of the religious establishment (the Sanhedrin) and handed over to the Romans to be crucified as an insurrectionist – as one who rebelled against and disrupted the Roman world.

The story also presents a spiritual truth we tend to gloss over – if we don’t outright miss it – in our recounting of the Christmas story. The coming of this one sent by God – Emmanuel, God with us – disturbs and disrupts our carefully constructed world. He undermines the very premises upon which we build our lives and which we use to establish our sense of identity. The world he sought (seeks) to build was built on grace, not merit and deserving. He rejected the hierarchy of merit-based relating, viewing and valuing, accepting and embracing everyone as a beloved child of God. How he treated others was not based upon the position they held in social hierarchies. He rejected the us-them, better than-less than attitudes that merit-based thinking produces. He dealt with human imperfection, including what was labeled as sin, with forgiveness, not condemnation, judgment, and rejection. He used power to address the needs of others, not to protect his own position and the advantages it provided. He used power to serve others, not down against others for his own benefit. He valued people over material wealth. In short, what he taught and the way he lived disturbed and disrupted the social-relational world as we know it.

Perhaps Herod and all Jerusalem with him were more perceptive than we are. They recognized that this one whom the magi sought would disrupt and disturb their world. In fact, he would turn their world upside down. No wonder they were afraid.  

On the other hand, perhaps we are more like Herod than I thought. Maybe we, like Herod, do perceive what this newborn king came to do to our status-oriented world. Maybe that’s why we ignore this part of the story. This one who was born as the king of the Jews disrupts and disturbs the world we have created with our merit-based thinking. He turns it on its head.

In this new year, may we be like the magi, seeking the one who has come into our world as Emmanuel, God with us. May we joyfully embrace, not fear, the ways of God he taught and lived.

Have a blessed New Year!