The Spirit of Adoption (Romans 8:12-17)

At first glace we might wonder why these two different spirits are being compared, since they seem so obviously different. We "juxtapose" things because they have enough similarities that we need them side-by-side to see the differences. But a spirit of slavery or a spirit of fear does not seem at all close to a spirit of adoption.

Fear is an emotion and a response to a perceived threat. It may be that the threat proves to be something harmless, like the shadowy shape in the dark room that's actually a chair with a coat thrown on top of it. Or it may be a genuine threat and the fear is a good response for survival -- in spite of what Yoda says, sometimes fear is beneficial for us.

Adoption, on the other hand, is the way something or someone is brought into an already-existing group. The most common picture of it for us is the legal process that a family uses to bring in a child who was born to other parents, but we also use it to talk about how we might begin a new practice or accept a new idea.

I think Paul may be comparing them here in the context of obedience. Obedience out of fear of the consequences of disobedience is the most basic level, the one we learn as kids when we don't really understand the concepts. I'm told not to touch the stove because it's hot, I touch it, I get burned and now I obey when I'm told not to touch something hot.

But obedience from fear is not ideal. For one, there can come a point when the consequences of disobedience seem less of a burden than continuing to obey. This is the thought behind revolutions and rebellions: If we defy authority, bad things may happen. But we can no longer continue to live under this authority, whatever it is. And so the threat the authority makes no longer has power, and a man will stand in front of a column of tanks and make them stop.

And from the point of view of those kept in check by fear, there is no peace in that way of living. We may have a list of rules we have to follow in order to make sure we stay in line, but what happens when we run into something the rules don't cover? If we act, we may act the wrong way and suffer the consequences. A faith life based in fear offers no peace and no rest either. We worry that God is just waiting for us to take one step wrong so he can get his Zeus on and thunderbolt us to oblivion.

This way of thinking makes obedience the prerequisite for a relationship with God, and yet when we read the gospel and what Paul says about it we see pretty clearly spelled out that we can never "obey our way" into the kingdom of God.

A spirit of adoption, though, brings a whole new dimension to our understanding of obedience and even a whole new level of power to help us live as God asks us to live. With this spirit, the Godly life comes as a show of praise and thanksgiving to the one who saved and healed us of the consequences of our sin. Obedience itself is a consequence of God's actions in our lives and a desire to live according to our new family and community. In the same way that a child adopted when he or she is older has to unlearn old family systems and learn new ones, we now want to unlearn our old ways of life in exchange for God's ways.

We have become a part of a new family and we want to make sure that there is a strong family resemblance.

Amid the Thorns (Matthew 13:18-23)

One of the conventional lessons from this parable involves identifying what kind of people we are in response to the good news of the gospel. Are we the hard-packed path that ignores it, the stony soil with no depth to let it take root, the patch of thorny plants that never lets it fully grow or the good soil that receives and nurtures it?

Once we consider it a little more deeply, of course, we can realize that we match all those kinds of soil at different times in our lives. Even once a relationship with Jesus begins, we might still resist the full life-changing implications of the gospel in favor of familiar ways of seeing things and carrying on with our lives. And we realize that different areas of our lives might be different kinds of soil at the same time. Perhaps my heart has become fertile ground for the message of seeing everyone as a child of God, as my brother or sister. But I've yet to deepen it and clear it of hidden obstacles when it comes to how I view finances and money. I am not fully willing to trust my future to God and I insist on keeping the reins of this part of my life. In that area, any progress I make in following Jesus doesn't last long because am too ready to revert to old ways of doing and seeing things.

I don't know if you've thought of the parable in this way, but each of these kinds of soil can represent a stage of spiritual maturity or growth in our relationship with Jesus. The more we mature, the more the seed of the gospel can take root and grow in us. We exchange being the hard-packed path of ground shaped by the world's impact on us for the fertile soil that produces many times over. Our trust grows as our experience teaches us that following Jesus leads to the best life we can live in every area, and we are more and more open to receive the seed of the good news.

One of the reasons I think of the different soils as representing maturity is that each of them allows a greater growth of the seed once planted -- it gets closer to maturity. It doesn't even start to grow on the path and it doesn't do much beyond getting started in the stony soil. It does grow among the thorns, but it never produces fruit. Finally, the seed in the fertile soil completes its life cycle and brings forth grain. We sometimes overlook that part of that life cycle, since our goal for a plant is that it make grain or something else we can eat. We focus on the production, but the plant is actually designed for reproduction. The "yielding in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty." is the goal, but not, from the plant's point of view, so we can have more grain to make our bread. In fact, a farmer might sell the lower-yield grain or grind it for food but keep the high-yield to plant next year and increase his crop.

The goal of the good news is similar: to be reproduced in the lives of others when we share it with them as it was shared with us. We join the great Sower in his work. Not in the sense that we measure how many people come to Jesus because we share the gospel with them, counting a hundred, sixty or thirty or some other number. Rather, the flourishing and flowering of the good news in our hearts and lives can become the seed scattered to another, and we hope and pray that when it comes to them it meets the good fertile soil so it can take root and begin to transform them as well.

(We also might give some thought as to how the Holy Spirit might use us to till and soften the soil in the lives of those around us, but that's probably best left to another sermon).

Because our goal is maturing in the faith and allowing it to reproduce in and beyond our own lives, I personally think that the ground with the thorny plants presents the greatest problem for us. I noticed something the last time I read this passage. As Jesus explains what happens to the good news among the thorny plants he never says that the plants which grow up die. He just says they yield nothing. They never mature and complete their full cycle, but they aren't snatched away like the seed on the path and they don't wither like the seed in stony soil. They grow just enough to be there, and then they stop.

A similar circumstance in our faith is, I think, a recipe for a very hard life journey. We might say it's like facing in the right direction but never taking a step. Yes, we needed to turn from our previous path because it was leading us away from God and away from the lives to which God called us. Stopping was not enough -- we were headed the wrong way and facing the wrong way even though we stand still isn't going to get us on the right path.

But facing the right way and standing still is little better. The good news of the gospel never produces fruit in our lives. We say the words of Scripture but they are not planted in us. We bow our heads and close our eyes but we open neither our ears or our hearts. We praise and we give but we do not reach up to our Savior or down to those in need. We've let the gospel take root but we let the cares and concerns of the world have just as much of our soul's soil as they ever did and so that which grows up in us doesn't seem to matter to us any more than do they.

We may not be the thorny plants. But we look just like them, so who would ever notice?

Deeds of Power (Mark 6:1-13)

One of the most interesting sentences in this story happens just before halfway, after Mark describes the Nazarenes' dismissal of their former neighbor as being anything special. Apparently, had Nathanel asked them the question he asks Philip in John 1:46 -- "Can anything good come from Nazareth?" -- their answer would have been, "Nope, not really."

Because of this response, Mark tells us, Jesus "could do no deed of power there, other than he laid his hands on a few sick people and cured them." I've sometimes heard this explained as Jesus refusing to do any deeds of power or miracles in Nazareth, punishing the Nazarenes for their dismissal. Of course that's possible, but the text says "could do no deed," meaning to me that Jesus was not able to do such a deed of power or miracle.

That idea surprises us, given that we know Jesus is like his Father and all-powerful. What in the world could actually prevent him from doing deeds of power?

According to one viewpoint, the Nazarenes' unbelief itself limited Jesus' ability to work miracles. Their unbelief was somehow stronger than his power. I can understand why folks might approach it that way but it seems a little more like a comic book situation than a description of the power of God. Like Superman robbed of his powers by the rays of a red sun, we see Jesus -- who almost certainly had powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men -- robbed of his ability to work miracles.

And this way of thinking doesn't seem to hold anyplace else that Jesus encounters unbelief and does some deed of power anyway. Nobody at Lazarus' tomb thought he could do anything to help his late friend. Even the dead man's sister Martha, one of Jesus' friends, demurred at the idea of opening the tomb, suggesting it would be unpleasant -- as the King James version puts it, "Lord, by this time he stinketh." And yet Jesus called Lazarus forth from his tomb alive. Jesus' own resurrection happened in the face of unbelief. Not just from those who mocked him while he was on the cross, but from his own followers. For all of the times that he had told them he would die and be raised, for all of the metaphors he had used about the temple being destroyed and rebuilt in three days, for all of the times he had explained to them what being the Messiah meant, Easter morning still saw them hiding in the upper room instead of out among the people telling them, "Oh, get ready, he's coming! Today's the day! You all are gonna see something amazing!"

The only limits on Jesus' power come from Jesus' own choice. He could with the symbolic snap of his fingers convert each and every human being into a committed follower who would never sin again. But that would mean he had no followers who loved him, just puppets and robots who obeyed their programming, so he has limited his power. I just don't see how the unbelief of a group of Nazarenes could accomplish what no other force in the universe could manage.

As I reflect on the many places where we see Jesus heal people, which is something that he apparently was able to do in Nazareth, we see multiple methods, lessons, occasions and so on. But there is a common factor in almost all of them -- the people being healed either come to Jesus or are brought to him, or they ask for that healing. The woman with the issue of blood comes to him knowing that just touching his robe will be enough. The paralytic's friends chop a hole in a roof to lower him into Jesus' presence. The centurion sends messengers to ask for the healing of his servant. The blind beggar at Jericho calls out for the son of David to have mercy on him. The man at the pool of Bethesda finally agreed that yes, he would like to be made well. Whether on their own or with the help of friends, these people all come to Jesus.

What if Jesus only healed a few people at Nazareth because they were the only people who came to him seeking it? What if they were the only people faithful enough or desperate enough or otherwise moved to give him a shot? Why would they have been so? Why would they be the only ones who thought he might heal them?

Because everyone else already made up their minds that Jesus was nothing special and there was no point to seeking him out. They had already decided they knew everything that they needed to know about Jesus, like his family and his history among them and so forth, and there wasn't anything else to know worth knowing. Certainly nothing supernatural.

Now, you and I and other Christians of the 21st century don't know Jesus the way the first century Nazarenes did, but we can still be guilty of deciding we already know who Jesus is and thus limiting what he will do. Perhaps we key on the overwhelming love of others, the kindness and mercy Jesus shows throughout the gospels, especially for those the rest of the world seems prone to forget. But we ignore the clear promise of judgment and the call to repentance it demands. Or we hold those things up as the "real Jesus" and ignore the love, mercy and kindness. Either way we insist that Jesus is this way but not that way, so he won't do that. Turns out that often, he won't, but the limits aren't on his end, they're on ours.

And because the limits are on our end, Jesus will complete his whole work and accomplish his entire glorious purpose. He won't skip anything he intends to do or leave one bit of it out. It'll happen without us. And that doesn't sound like very good news at all.

Free for All (Romans 6:12-23)

Although we may not phrase it this way today, the question of sin in believers is one that we still wrestle with in the church. We may cast it in other terms, by pointing out how often the world looks at those of us who follow Jesus and maybe finds us wanting in displaying any characteristics of that. Their view of Christians -- people who say they're perfect and good and better than anyone else -- is wrong, but they'll still apply it to us and expect us to live up to it.

And there's still an important question buried under the simplistic misunderstanding the world has of us, one that we need to think about and try to find a path through: Why do we who follow Jesus, who orient our lives around his reality as the reality, still sin? If Paul's right that sin has no dominion over us, why do we find ourselves mixed up with it again and again?

Different views of our Christian reality influence how we talk about this. If we believe, for example, that salvation is something that matters to us only after we've died -- that Jesus' only purpose in coming to us and offering his life is to prevent us from spending eternity in hell -- then the only thing hurt by believers who sin is our witness. If I talk about a God of love, justice and righteousness but I practice none of those things then why should anyone who hears me talk care?But we can

But we can guard our witness pretty well and still "present our members to sin." John Wesley liked to use the example of people "reviling him." If he learned about that he might resent those people and become angry and hateful towards them. Aware of his responsibility to witness to his faith he wouldn't display that publicly. Inside, though, would still be feelings of hate. And as Jesus makes clear, while there's a difference between hating someone and harming them as far as they're concerned, there's none where we're concerned: "I tell you, those who hate another person have already committed murder against them in their heart."

Instead, in v. 19 Paul urges the Romans to "present their members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." Now when he says "righteousness" he means being right in relationship to God much more than he means the kind of legalistic self-righteousness we too often picture when we hear that word. He acknowledges that it's hard, because the tendency to sin remains in us.

This comes from seeing salvation as something that indeed happens after we die but also goes on right now. That eternal impact works its way backwards into our lives so that we start to change now, even if we won't finish in this lifetime. If that way of seeing salvation holds, we clearly need to "present our members as slaves to righteousness for sanctification." And we all know how easy that is, right?

Why is it hard for those who were slaves to sin to become slaves to righteousness? I suppose part of the problem comes from the different expectations righteousness presents us. We're expected to act and speak differently. Getting used to the change and a completely new set of actions and priorities is no picnic. But is that the only problem? Learned behavior is exactly that, learned. What can be learned can be unlearned. It takes work -- generally behavioral psychologists say we need a minimum of 21 days of intentional effort to make a new habit -- but it can be done. Except it very often isn't. I can't speak about your experience, but I'm working on about a half-century of more or less intentional effort and I have yet to lose the habits of sin.

I think the real stumbling block comes because slavery to sin rarely presents itself as such. It almost always characterizes itself instead as freedom. It's freedom from rules, freedom from restrictions, freedom from authority, the opportunity to do what you want and be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul. We don't necessarily rebel against the change in masters because we've been under the illusion we've never had a master and we rebel against the idea of having one now.

We have no experience with this kind of master so we reject him. A Master whose goal is our growth and flourishing? Gotta be a catch. A Master who will actually let us do what we want even when he knows better? Sure, right. A Master who is first a servant? A Master who will wash our feet? Yeah, pull the other one, buddy.  And yet it's true. That Master exists. But so does the other, and we will follow one or the other no matter what we think about the power of our own autonomy.

Even though my writerly character rebels against the idea of clichés I'm about to commit a big one by being a middle-aged dude who quotes Bob Dylan: "You're gonna serve somebody."

Division! (Matthew 10:34-39)

Every now and again we run across a word from Jesus that just clanks when we compare it to what the rest of what he says sounds like. It jars not because it runs counter to what the world tells us, but because it seems to run counter to what Jesus says and to what scripture tells us about Jesus. We have one of those here today.

"I have come not to bring peace, but a sword," Jesus says, outlining the way his words will divide household members from each other to the point of making those under the same roof actual foes of each other. Is this the man Isaiah prophesied as the "Prince of Peace?" Is this the man to whose body Paul will compare the church as a model for understanding its unity in the midst of difference? James will tell us that if we say we love God but we don't love each other we're liars, but here Jesus says his coming will produce enmity even in our own housholds!

When I try to suss this out I come up with a couple of possibilities. One is that Jesus comes with this kind of division as a goal of his ministry and mission. It's on the checklist: Feed the hungry, heal the sick, start fights between family members. In favor of that idea we have this passage from Matthew. It's not one of those where the Greek is wonky, either, and we have to be open to other possible translations.

But against it we have the things I mentioned earlier. And as well, we have the passages where both Jesus and Paul tell us to love our enemies. Not to mention a good-sized handful of other New Testament mentions of Jesus that emphasize his desire for unity among the believers. If Jesus intended to bring division instead of peace I'm left pretty confused.

Of course, it's also possible that this kind of division happens not because Jesus causes it, but because he's come here to do other things and opposition like he describes happens as a result of it. I can make some more sense of things by seeing them in this light. If there is one thing for certain about Jesus' mission it's that he comes to bring truth -- both by teaching it and embodying it. In John he will even say he is the truth, along with the way and the life. As for his teaching, how often does he begin one of his lessons or parables by saying, "Truly, truly I say unto you...?" Both bringing truth and being truth are essential elements of Jesus mission during his time on Earth.

And humans being what we are, claims of truth are one of the most certain ways to create division between people. In fact, most adult disagreements root in different understandings about what is true. Other disagreements, of course, root in whether or not she's touching me, he's sitting on my side, or she got the bigger cookie and so on. It's not that adults can't act that childishly, but we generally expect them not to.

We expect them to disagree about what is true. Let's take politics, since we can't apparently disagree about that without being ugly to each other. People who support President Trump think that, on balance, his term in office has benefited the country. They're not happy with everything he does or says and they may even dislike some of it pretty strongly. But on the whole they think he's a net positive.

Detractors, on the other hand, may like this or that policy goal or outcome but think that overall his term has been a net negative for the nation. This is what they hold to be true. As these things go, we could say that the supporters are wrong or the detractors are wrong or maybe even that both of them are wrong. But since they make oppositional claims about the truth, at least one of them has to be wrong.

The truth about Jesus creates the same kind of division. But at the same time, it creates the responsibility for disagreeing without disagreeability, which I do not know is a real word or not but is still a real responsibility. Jesus is clear that he will come with claims about truth, both in what he teaches and in who he is. That can't happen without disagreement. Jesus says he is the way, the truth and the life. There are people who believe otherwise, meaning our claims about the truth differ from theirs and can't be reconciled away without weakening the truth we claim to hold.

But do you and I, Christian, need to win an argument about the truth or do we need to open a door for Christ to win the person with whom we disagree? Do we need devastating comebacks and invulnerable logic, or do we need the heart of the Savior who washed Judas' feet? Will we speak the truth, or will we speak the truth in love?

Jesus said he came to bring a sword. He never said we had to pick it up and use it.

Go! (Matthew 28:16-20)

The lectionary does a funny thing with this incident in the life of the church. Even though Pentecost will come several days after the Ascension, we are reading this passage, which we call the Great Commission, after we've read the story of Pentecost.

We don't always see the U-turn because for us, both events are part of history. We know that Jesus' leaving opens the door for the presence and power of the Holy Spirit in the lives of the believers. We know that this outline of the mission of the church will be made possible by the coming of the Spirit. But they didn't know that. And from our perspective two millennia later, the events of those amazing days seem pretty much like they happened all at once -- but they didn't to the people living them. We last worshipped in person on March 15, 84 days ago. From the point of view of someone hearing this story in, say, 2040, that will seem like not much time. For those who hear it in 2120, the gap between the two will look almost as small as the gap between the Resurrection and Pentecost does to us. But for those of us who have lived it, it's 84 long days.

Even though the lectionary gives them to us out of order, when we reflect on these words of Jesus we see how necessary Pentecost is to understanding and fulfilling them. "You shall be my witnesses," Jesus says to a group of simple fishermen, peasant women and laborers. "In Judea, Samaria and the ends of the Earth!" he says to people who probably haven't been more than ten miles from their villages in their lives, except for a Passover now and again. "Baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit!" They know who the Father is and they've come to realize who's the Son, but Holy Spirit? "I am with you always, even to the end of the age!" Just how long will he be gone then? That sounds like a long way off.

In the calendar of the church year, we call today Trinity Sunday. It marks one of the greatest doctrines -- and greatest mysteries -- of Christianity, that of the Trinity. We say that God is Three in One, or sometimes Three and One. We mean that we worship one God, not three. But that one God is expressed in three persons, Father, Son and Holy Spirit.

Sometimes people will try to explain the three persons based on their spheres of activity. We do this when we label them Creator, Redeemer and Sustainer. God the Father is the Creator. Jesus, through his actions on the cross, redeemed fallen humanity. And the Holy Spirit sustains believers as they try to follow Jesus. But the gospel of John makes clear that the work of the Word, the second person of the Trinity we call the Son, is essential to creation. And during their time of exile and before that, in the wilderness, the Israelites were sustained by God as the person we call the Father. And so on.

What we know is that all three persons are present in any work called the work of God. It's why we say God is Three in One -- any work of one of the Trinity is the work of all of the Trinity.

Here in Galilee, the Son tells the disciples of the work they are called to do, saying he has the authority to do so because it has been given to him -- by the Father. Even though the disciples do not yet know about the Holy Spirit or what the Spirit's presence will mean to them, they can sense something is missing. Some of them have doubts about what they see and hear and about what it means.

Something is missing, and that something is the presence of the Holy Spirit. The coming of the Spirit at Pentecost empowers the disciples to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives them.

And the presence of the Holy Spirit empowers us to carry out the Great Commission Jesus gives us. Of course we have to carry it out with wisdom and common sense, with perception and awareness of our context -- but carry it out we are to do. The Commission worries a lot of us and we sometimes, as the joke goes, think the translation is wrong and the original Greek talked about a Great Suggestion. How could we share the gospel? We're not eloquent, knowledgeable, courageous, holy, whatever enough. But that's wrong. We're much less qualified than that. We think we'd do a mediocre job but the truth is we'd be lucky to get to mediocre.

Which is where the Holy Spirit comes in. Always, and forever. To the ends of the earth and the end of time, and beyond.

A New Way (Acts 1:6-14)

It's hard to blame the disciples for standing around looking up at the sky. They're being given their third completely different paradigm to guide them as followers of Jesus -- their second major worldview shift in under two months. I'd be standing around staring a little bit myself.

The first paradigm they knew -- they weren't the first group of people to follow a charismatic teacher to learn from him and listen to him speak. While this teacher, Jesus, was clearly different from many others in terms of what and how he taught, the general idea was the same. If we read histories of that place and time we learn that such leaders were common. The great teacher Gamaliel himself will point this out when he counsels the Sanhedrin in Acts 5.

But then came his arrest, crucifixion and resurrection and a whole new way of following their teacher, because that teacher was now known to them as savior and Lord. This, quite clearly, had not happened before and they did not exactly know how they should do it. Fortunately, Jesus' plan for his time following his resurrection seems primarily to be teaching them about what they are to do as his disciples. It's generally held that he remained with them about 40 days post-resurrection -- we don't know the exact figure because we don't know if the 40 days mentioned in the gospels starts on Easter Sunday or sometime later. But we know the main activity was him teaching and them learning.

And here we see the second major "paradigm shift" and the third completely different worldview the disciples needed to accept as a part of following Jesus of Nazareth -- how to follow him without him actually being around!

Although we don't have any actual accounts of what Jesus taught the disciples during his post-resurrection time with them, I imagine that whenever he touched on this part of the plan he got a lot of blank looks. Can you imagine Thomas being told about the Holy Spirit without asking a metric ton of questions? And can you imagine him being satisfied with being told, "Well, you'll know it when it happens" when he asked? This is not doubt as a lack of faith, it's a lack of understanding.

When we're living under one paradigm or worldview, it's really hard to understand the things that go on inside a different worldview. One of my favorite kinds of videos to watch on YouTube are called "reaction videos." People record themselves watching some show or another and we can see their reactions to major plot developments. Some of the best are kids watching The Empire Strikes Back Star Wars movie with their parents when they learn something very surprising about the relationship between Darth Vader, the main villain, and Luke Skywalker, the main hero. Empire is the second Star Wars movie, so the kids know who Luke is and who Darth Vader is, and you can see as they watch they know how things are between the good guy and the bad guy. Then comes the reveal, and the huge eyes, and the questions of their parents. The parents already know the new, paradigm-shifting information and as the kids learn it their whole understanding of the movie changes

For the disciples, the new paradigm doesn't mean they don't follow Jesus anymore. Now they follow him whether he is there with them or not and they have an omnipresent guide, comforter and encourager, the Holy Spirit. This new paradigm is the one which will spread the gospel to parts of the world the earliest church didn't even know existed, so even as uncomfortable and uncertain as it might prove to be it's the one they needed to get to.

We're about to enter our third paradigm of worship. There's the way we've worshiped for years, which ended on March 15. After that date we were asked not to meet in person but to try to "meet" with our community via streaming and watching the service. We were together in spirit but separate in body -- which is OK for awhile, but a faith that says God called his creation -- us -- "good" can't accept forever a path that feeds the spirit while neglecting the body.

In a couple of weeks we will return to in-person worship, but it will look different. Especially at first, as our new paradigm has to include steps to reduce as much as we can the risk of people getting sick. We've not usually had to consider that factor when we plan worship or set up for being together, but now we do. As we move forward and see how the disease progresses, we will decide how much closer we can get to our older way of worshiping.

But it would be a mistake to look at this third paradigm of worship as just a time to wait for things to get back to the way we want them. That would be like the disciples -- then or today -- treating the time in between the Ascension and the Second Coming as just a period of waiting around for Jesus to come back and not an opportunity to share their great good news with people who needed to hear it. And if they'd done that, where would we be today?

Unknown No Longer (Acts 17:22-31)

One of the things we sometimes misunderstand about the Greek people at the time when Paul meets them here is that not very many of them believe in that famous Olympian pantheon we learned about in school. The work of major philosophers like Plato, Aristotle and Socrates had influenced Greek theology as well as philosophy in more monotheistic -- or even atheistic -- directions. Especially among educated men like those talking with Paul, the whole list of deities was considered something that was for rubes. Even if it wasn't, those gods spent most of their time putting on disguises and chasing human women; they weren't exactly fit objects of worship.

That was the major reason behind the "unknown god" altar that Paul found. Although some people might have seen it as the catchall altar put up in order to make sure some god or another wasn't missed, for the big thinkers of the city it was the altar to what some called the "uncaused cause" or "prime mover." They believed in a divine force that had created the universe and set it into motion, but that force was completely unknowable and many philosophers also believed it was completely impersonal and uninterested in human affairs.

As you might imagine, that kind of god isn't a very useful tool in trying to figure out the questions people like to ask about life -- like what makes a good person, what gives life meaning, why are we here and so on. It's been a long time since I've read the history of first-century Greek philosophy so I don't know how exactly they were trying to grapple with this issue, but I imagine that there would have been several who would have liked a god that was a bit more interactive and open to conversation.

Does Paul know that? We can't be certain, but we do know his habit seems to be observing things a bit before he begins his work and if he has done that here in Athens he certainly knows what kinds of things the philosophers were talking about. Either way, he opens up with an idea that strikes at the root of the kinds of questions that would seem to worry people with an unknown and unknowable god.

First he tells them they're on the right track with such an idea, even if they haven't finished it out yet as it should be. If a god made the world, the idea that stone, metal or wood could in any way represent it can be ruled out. So can the idea that such a god would require the service of human efforts. Discarding the idols of the past is the right thing to do.

But if they go beyond those basic steps they will find their deeper questions answered as well. They won't just have to discard the inadequate gods -- they can find the real God. Just as they anticipated, the God who made the universe is completely other than creation, holy and almost unknowable. But unlike they believe, that God is not impersonal and has chosen to make himself known to us in his creation. Knowing we could not bridge the gap between human and divine, he chose to, in the person of his Son, a man named Jesus of Nazareth who was both fully human and fully divine.

Did Paul succeed? Well, some of the Athenians sniffed at him as a "proclaimer of foreign divinities," but some others wanted to talk with him some more later.

I think one of the messages that we can take from this when we go out into our world, right now filled with uncertainty, anxiety and a major league mess of monumental proportions, is that Jesus answers the questions people have. Yes, we joke about how the "Sunday school" answer is always "Jesus" no matter what the question is, but he's the answer to real questions of existence as well.

You and I, Christian, must learn how to answer those questions. Which means we have to listen to them and to the people asking them. I don't know that we do. I don't know that a lot of us, in Paul's place, wouldn't have mocked the multiple idols and the empty altar -- I'd like to hope I wouldn't but unless I was letting the Holy Spirit lead me I wouldn't bet on me.

And if we don't take their questions seriously, why should they take our answer seriously? I don't know what changes will happen in our nation and society as a result of all of this weirdness, but I know that people are going to come out of it with a lot of questions. Let's listen to them, let's listen to the Spirit tell us how to reach them and then let's share with them the answer we've already been given.

Cornerstone (1 Peter 2:2-10)

Usually when you and I think of a house today we think of a wood or wood frame building, but people in Jesus' part of the world who lived at the same time he did would have been much more likely to think of buildings made from stone. Woods -- especally the kinds of hard woods used to support buildings -- were scarce. Stone was plentiful.

The most basic kinds of homes were actually caves. Limestone caves are common in the region, and the limestone itself was soft enough it could be carved with the tools available at the time. Rooms could be enlarged and new rooms hewn into the caves relatively easily.

Some structures used what's sometimes called "rubble masonry." Stones would be piled together without necessarily being matched for size or shape. A more planned version might start with large stones placed together and then the gaps filled with smaller ones before some kind of mortar was added, but in a hurry rubble masonry walls might be made without mortar. If the city wall had been breached by invaders but they had been driven back, the gap might be filled with rubble before they could attack again.

As the Israelites knew from their own ancestral history, buildings could be made with bricks sized and cut for the work. The bricks could also be quarried and brought to the site.

A related but more elaborate kind of stone construction is sometimes called "ashlar masonry." Although ashlar may sound like an ancient Hebrew word, it's actually Middle English. Ashlar walls or buildings are made of stone cut and worked to match the size of the others. The rough ashlars are taken from a quarry and then "dressed" to have a regular surface and similar sizes. Ashlar walls and buildings could be joined with mortar but were also sometimes made without. A lot of ancient Inca architecture in South America is so-called "dry ashlar."

The dressing of the cornerstone in an ashlar structure was incredibly important. If the angle was just a small bit off, then the long walls that rested on it would not be at the right angles for the others. Construction would be much harder, if it was possible at all. A whole project might have to be knocked down and started over. So the cornerstone had to be as close to perfect as the stonemasons could make it, and unsuitable ones were rejected. They might later be used as ordinary stones in the wall, but they couldn't be cornerstones.

Peter, quoting Psalm 118, identifies Jesus with a rejected cornerstone. The religious leadership opposed him and judged that nothing worthwhile could be built from his words and actions. He didn't fit their design specifications. But, Peter says, though earthly authorities rejected him God selected him. In fact, God had long ago selected him and knew what he would build with his Son as the cornerstone: What we today call the church.

The work of the Holy Spirit in the lives of believers shapes them for their place in this great construction project. We come to Jesus rough-hewn at best and in our own minds completely unsuitable for any kind of work in his name. Surely he could build nothing worthwhile with me, we say. Ah, but I can, he replies. Allow me to shape you and use the circumstances of your life and world to form something more wonderful than you could have possibly imagined.

Or we might come feeling ourselves already prepared for a role in his project -- in fact, we know exactly what role we would like and we helpfully inform the Lord just how he should use us. More often than not, though, we find we do not fit the role we sought. Will we haughtily turn our backs, saying we will come to Jesus on our own terms or not at all, or will we humble ourselves and allow the Spirit to shape us according to his plans instead of our own?

Because the metaphor of the cornerstone has another layer. Jesus is the cornerstone of the church, which is built upon him and when it is what it is supposed to be it is completely shaped and directed by the way that cornerstone is laid. But he also desires to be the cornerstone of our lives, giving shape and purpose to who and what we do. Not only does he shape us for our place in the church he shapes our everyday characteristics with an eye towards what he will build us as.

A lifetime of following Jesus means a lifetime of being fitted out by him as he patiently smooths and shapes what is in us so that we match that image of God in which we were created. It means a lifetime of being fitted for our role in his greatest work, the salvation of humanity. Our role is to humble ourselves and allow him to work.

Learning His Voice

This illustration of Jesus as shepherd and also as a gate for the sheepfold is about the only time John emphasizes a parable from Jesus' teaching; he mostly focuses on how Jesus identifies himself as the Messiah and on his work for God.

Like the parables related in the other three gospels, this one turns on an idea that would have been pretty familiar to most of people listening. We tend to think of shepherds as having large flocks of dozens or even hundreds of animals, but most shepherds at the time would not have had so many. They would take their small flock out during the day to graze and drink, then bring it inside an enclosure for the night to protect it from predators and keep strays from wandering off. Often several would join to build the enclosure and use their greater numbers to offer greater protection. In the morning, each shepherd would call his own sheep to lead them out for the day's business and although they were not trained to respond to commands the way a dog is they usually did recognize the voice of their own particular shepherd. The ones who got confused could be sorted out by the shepherds.

Jesus' suggestion is that his own followers will continue to follow him because they know his voice like the sheep know the voice of their own particular shepherd.

A lot of interesting ideas grow from this image. One is that the sheep are not born knowing the voice of their shepherd. As lambs, they follow the adult sheep and only learn it as they get older. If we translate the image into our own modern context as a representation of the church, then we see the importance of teaching younger members about the voice of our shepherd, Jesus. The idea that we won't influence them and we'll let them decide for themselves when they're old enough doesn't make much sense if Jesus' image of the shepherd and his sheep relates to the modern church in any way.

This idea doesn't just apply to young church people -- we all have to learn the voice of the shepherd in order to know how to follow him. Remember, the image Jesus uses in John is of sheep called forth from the fold to follow the shepherd, who walks in front of him. But unlike sheep, we have the opportunity to not follow him. We can identify ourselves with some other shepherd-figure we'd like to follow. We might choose to follow a path of satisfying desires and enjoying ourselves. We might choose to follow one of wealth or political power, or something else entirely.

There are plenty of other shepherds who'd call us to be in their flocks. And unlike a sheep that won't answer a stranger's voice, we can and often do so. But experience will teach us that these other paths, no matter what they may promise, don't lead to the fulfilling life we really want. The promises of meaning, purpose, direction and satisfaction are false in the mouths of every shepherd but the good one -- our Savior.

Perhaps we begin following him by tagging along behind other sheep that are already with him. And since we're not talking about sheep but people, we can see this path opened for us by invitation. No sheep ever says to another, "Well, this guy's really good to us. Give it a try." But because our following Jesus is an act of will rather than mindless instinct, we're better led by invitation. I've mentioned to you before that a lot of studies show what draws people into a church and while studies can have a lot of variables in them they agree enough on this that I believe it. It's not music, programming, excitement or superstars behind the pulpit: It's an invitation from someone they know.

Then, once we tag along, we start to learn the voice of the shepherd. It's different from the other voices that call to us. It doesn't promise easy street or the best of everything or the satisfaction of every wish. But the more we hear it and the more we listen to it we begin to believe that what it does promise -- that this shepherd will always be with us and will never abandon us -- is a true promise. It has a weight the other promises claimed to have but couldn't match. This shepherd calls us and the more we tune our ears to what he says more meaningless the noise from the others becomes.

Listen for our shepherd. In the voices of others, in the quiet times of early morning or late night, in the word he gives us, in the testimonies of those who followed him before, in the acts he gave us to remember him and his work, in more ways than we can count he will speak to us. And the more we listen, the more we will hear him, the only one who calls us by name

Known in His Breaking (Luke 24:13-35)

A lot of Jesus' resurrection appearances have something in common: People don't seem to know who he is. Sometimes they do, but in several of them the people who see him don't recognize him. Christians through history have wondered why that is -- why would these people, who had been traveling with him and listening to him teach for the better part of three years, not know him when they saw him?

I don't know if there's one answer that fits all of them. Today's story, that of the walk to Emmaus Jesus takes with two of his disciples, offers what might be one of the stranger versions because the two disciples in question spend most of the day with Jesus but don't know him until the very end of their time together. When they later tell the rest of the disciples about it they say that he was made known to them "in the breaking of the bread." Why was that act the one that made the difference?

Let's look first at all the times they didn't recognize him during the day and see if something makes the breaking of the bread different from them.

They don't recognize him when he joins them on the road. We don't know if he caught up to them, they caught up to him, he joined them from a side road or what, but it's clear that just seeing him wasn't enough to truly know him for who he really was. And it also wasn't enough to just hear his voice once they started conversing. Here we see one answer people give as to why Jesus wasn't known to these disciples. Their eyes, it says, were kept from recognizing him. But really all that does is push the question back one layer. What's the point of keeping him from being recognized? We're still left with not knowing why they don't know him.

After the pair explain their situation to Jesus, he comments that they've missed the boat on things, and then begins to explain how the words of Moses -- the Law or Torah -- and the prophets point to him. If these two disciples had followed Jesus any length of time, they must have heard things they had heard before -- maybe even in the same exact words! But those aren't enough to clue them in on who they're talking with, even though both of them later note they were singularly affected by the experience. So far, neither the evidence of the senses, direct interaction through conversation or gaining wisdom and knowledge from Jesus' words and teaching have been enough to make it plain who Jesus is.

When they all get to Emmaus, Jesus makes as if he's heading on down the road but the two disciples invite him to stay with them. This may sound strange to us but would have been perfectly understandable to the people of the time. Even though Jesus was a stranger to the disciples -- or so they thought -- the hospitality culture of that part of the world made it clear that decent people would invite the stranger as a guest. In chapter 14, Luke records Jesus telling his listeners to invite the poor and the strangers to their table. The pair are obeying Jesus' own words and commands -- but this is not enough for them to identify him as Jesus. Seeing and hearing Jesus, listening to his teaching, even following his teaching have not been enough to help the disciples know who their roadside companion has been.

As the guest, Jesus is given the place of honor as the host of the meal, so he begins by blessing the bread and distributing it to those at the table. And then they know him. The breaking of the bread breaks the veil of perception and they know him, which they then run back to tell the others. Then they also learn that Jesus had appeared to some of them as well, including Simon Peter.

Why does the bread-breaking do it? We could say the familiarity of the act jogs their memory, but remember they've been walking and talking with him for a good chunk of the day. It stretches things to think this is the first familiar act or word Jesus does during that time.

Here's what I think. The bread-breaking is the first thing that Jesus has done all day that is completely and only him. When they see and hear them they're using their senses. When they listen to his teaching they're using their intellect to comprehend them. When they obey his teaching they've decided they will do so.

But when he breaks the bread Jesus does something that only he can do. He has been made the honored guest and the meal and it will not begin until he takes action. Only he can do this, and it is when the disciples no longer participate that Jesus can be seen for who he really is.

I really like thinking this way about this story. I like it because it shows us that while perceiving Jesus and learning about Jesus and even obeying Jesus are all important and vital parts of following him, we do not see the real Jesus until he performs the act only he can perform.

Methodist founder John Wesley called communion a "means of grace," or a way by which God communicates the grace of his love to human beings. That God communicates with us at all is an act of grace, because he's surely not required to do it. He chose to. Today we do not have the experience of seeing and hearing Jesus in the flesh the way the disciples of his time did. We can of course learn of him from the scriptures and we can obey what he teaches us to do, but just like then those things by themselves are not enough to know him for who he is. Only he can show us that, and he has chosen the breaking of the bread and sharing of the cup as special representations of his acts to help us truly see and know him. His messiah-ship was made real when he offered himself on the cross and in his own words the bread is his body, broken for us. He was made known in his breaking.

It's not automatic. We can go through these motions just as easily as we can any others with which we become familiar. But if we will let him, he will make himself known to us in his breaking.

Hard Times (1 Peter 1:3-9)

In line at the store this week I was talking with someone I know about the way he's doing his job very differently than he did before the COVID-19 virus shutdown. He mentioned how the huge amounts of time at home had made a difference for his family. "We were doing OK before," he said. "But this let us build some things together and do things we wouldn't have known to do otherwise." The viral shutdown and the widespread illness were not good things, but he believed that he and his family had let God bring some good things from them.

When we read Peter about how the "various trials" we undergo are a part of testing the genuineness of our faith, we're ready to ask right away if God causes the hard times we endure in order to build our faith or achieve some other purpose. That question, of course, is like a theological hand grenade with the pin pulled -- if you don't keep a tight and precise grip on it you will learn why Mr. Hand Grenade is no longer your friend. Some people have no real issue asserting that God brings hard times on people in order to teach them or strengthen them, or serve some other purpose. But some people -- who may have dealt with some serious hard times of their own or known people who did -- aren't willing to accept that. With a literal infinite list of ways he can bring things about, it seems to them very strange at best to say that God might bring cancer or disease or harm into people's lives.

Now one reason we ask this question about why did hard times come to us is because most of the time we don't have to deal with them. Most of us, especially in the nations of the developed world like the United States, live lives that have few hard times when we compare them to the way people have lived for most of human existence and the way many people around the world live today.

For most of human history and for developing nations today, the goal of the work people do is survival. They don't work to build a nest egg or save up for a new car. They work, sometimes pretty dadgum hard, in order to make sure that they can live through that day and maybe a little bit of the next. "Hard times" are the norm.

So they don't ask why hard times come. Hard times are how they live. Peter recognizes this -- remember he was a fisherman before Jesus called him, so he knows what earning your bread by the sweat of your brow means. The new perspective he brings is that the hard times can actually be redeemed by God into a stronger faith that will bring glory to God when Jesus comes and the world changed.

Many religions in Peter's time promised success and prosperity in return for devotion to a particular god or goddess. It's not an unknown idea in our time, either. But the gospel Peter heard, saw and later preached himself made no such promises. With his own eyes he had seen the arrest of his Teacher and he was probably among the crowds watching from a distance as Jesus died. But then came the glory of Easter and he saw Jesus transform the obvious defeat of his crucifixion into the tools God would use to redeem humanity.

Maybe one of the clearest examples of the difference is the way some people pray. This isn't a hard and fast rule, but comfortable people in pretty good circumstances tend to pray for protection from hard times, or that the hard times miraculously halt. Nothing wrong with that, but we often forget to add the part of the prayer that people in less comfortable circumstances fall back on more often: To ask for God's presence and for the strength to endure the hard times that have come. Peter's readers lived hard times most of their lives and the idea that they would end before death came to them would have been a little odd.

I like to think of it this way; I've used this example a lot in my preaching. Let's say it rains, because after all Jesus promised that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Yes, farmers and ranchers are glad of it, and we like it when it ends a drought. But I'm talking about when we get caught out in the rain ourselves. If you were certain that you could pray and God would immediately give you what you asked him for, how would you pray? Would you pray for an umbrella, for protection from the rain and a way to keep it from getting you wet and affecting your life?

Or would you pray for shampoo? If I've read Peter right, he was encouraging his readers to perform the lifestyle equivalent of praying for shampoo. Passages like this aren't much use to folks who want to say that following Jesus means blessings, benefits and bounty in this life. But they can lead us to be people who say along with the Christians who listened to and believed Peter, "Life is hard. But God is good."

And that has the distinct advantage of being true.

Hidden (Colossians 3:1-4)

On Easter I usually preach from what one of the gospels tells us happened on Easter morning. And although this Sunday is Easter Sunday by the calendar it will not seem much like it, as only a handful of people will hear this sermon in person in the church sanctuary. The health guidelines put in place to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus mean that most people will hear it online in some way or read this blog entry. I think I'll save an Easter morning story for the day we all get to worship together in person.

But the Lord has risen, and Easter is the day we mark that. It's the foundation event for Christian reality -- Paul says in fact says if the Lord hasn't risen we're not only wrong we're pitiful. And maybe this strange Easter will give us a chance to look at some things about it that don't always get the attention. In this passage from Colossians, we're told there is a difference between "things above" and "things that are on Earth."

We have to be careful when we consider Bible passages about the difference between this world and the life to come, because it is waaay too easy to talk ourselves into the idea that since the "things above" are the things that matter most, we don't have to pay attention to things going on around us. And that does not mesh with what Jesus tells us to do for each other and for the poor and powerless we may meet.

Usually passages that draw this distinction are trying to get us to see what we might call a universal reality or maybe a real reality that's underneath the world around us.

Here we see someone who has made a host of bad choices and gotten themselves stuck at the bottom of the ladder, but the real reality of God says, "This is my child, too." Here we see an innocent man falsely accused, convicted and executed -- as complete a defeat as could be imagined. But the real reality of God says, "This is my greatest victory."

Here we see empty sanctuaries across the country and across the world, trying to prevent the transmission of a virus that is particularly harmful to weaker, older and sicker people but can harm others as well. But the real reality of God says these sanctuaries are filled with a great cloud of witnesses, and that every place Christians seek his face and praise his name becomes a sanctuary.

Do they look like that to us? Maybe, maybe not. Sometimes people say that as we grow in our relationships with God we begin to see things as God wants us to see them, and so these mundane things in the world are transformed. There's probably something to that, but it seems to me it only goes so far. Even though it's filled with heavenly witnesses, this place still looks like a mostly empty sanctuary. Even though the guy who acted like a jerk at work is a child of God, he still acts like a jerk. It goes both ways, of course. If we're the jerk we may be children of God but we are still a class one pain in everybody's rear.

Differentiating between things above and things that are on Earth doesn't mean developing a kind of heavenly squint that lets us see things the way God sees them. It means seeing them as they appear to us and accepting the real reality of God anyway. Faith, as you recall, is evidence of things not seen. The wonder of the resurrection didn't erase the pain of the crucifixion -- the risen Jesus bears scars for a reason. But faith that God keeps his promise to never abandon us shows us that the worst the world can do can't touch what makes us who we are. The real reality of you and me is hidden with Christ in God, and it will be revealed in glory when Christ is himself revealed in truth.

The Christian faith doesn't try to pretend bad things aren't bad things or that hard things aren't hard. So I'll paraphrase Frederick Buechner to close. The worst thing may very well be the worst thing. But Jesus says it's never the last thing, and he invites us to say it with him.

Blessed Is the King! (Luke 19:28-44)

Generally the Pharisees who meet Jesus are irritated with him or maybe a little smug about how a Nazareth carpenter doesn't have their extensive education, no matter how many of the rabble show up to hear him teach. But in this passage, they give the impression of being a little scared, don't they?

Well, they probably were scared, but not of Jesus or his followers. They were scared of the Romans, who took a dim view of groups that went around proclaiming this or that random dude was a king. Some local yokel hot-shot in the back end of the Empire thinks he's king instead of Caesar? Eh, Romans don't care. But he might cause unrest, and unrest would disrupt business, and disrupted business stalls tax revenue. And now Romans care. So they tended to stamp those kinds of things out and they weren't careful who else might get stamped while they did so. That concerns the Pharisees, who worry they might get roped into the "who else" group.

Either way, they want Jesus to get his people to pipe down and maybe ix-nay on the ing-kay alk-tay. I can see Jesus laughing at the absurdity of their demands when he tells them, "If I shut these people up the rocks are going to proclaim I'm king!" The people aren't proclaiming what they wish to be true or what they hope to be true. Their words don't outline a reality they intend to bring about. They state a reality that already exists. Their praise just acknowledges an established truth: Jesus is Lord. So if the people quiet down, the rest of creation will pick up the slack, even parts of it not generally known to vocalize -- like rocks.

In a culture where we used to selecting our own leaders, even if the choices are often between Absolutely Awful and Even More Awful, the idea of someone who is Lord just because he shows up strikes us oddly. In fact, we may be working with the idea that Jesus is Lord because the people proclaim him a king, even though the reality is the other way around.

But those who follow him know Jesus is indeed Lord. At some point in our lives, circumstances prompted us to face his question to us: "Am I Lord?" In seminary, I learned this is called an "existential question" because the answer determines how we live our lives and shapes our existence. Unlike most of the lords and kings who ruled during Jesus' time and indeed still today, this Lord will not threaten or demand. He will let us say, "No." To do so is to deny reality just as surely as we would if we denied that gravity worked, but he will let us do it.

Of course, he will be back and ask again. He won't coerce us, but he will persist. And most of us who follow him have realized that leading a life that continues to answer, "No" to his question leaves us wanting something more even if we don't understand what that more might be. So we have answered, "Yes."

And once we've done so, we find we have yet a second chance to turn away from having Jesus as our Lord because he will ask a follow-up question. We answer "Am I Lord?" with "Yes," and now he asks, "Am I your Lord?" See, whether or not he's Lord is not really in question. The only uncertainty is how long we want to live in denial of that fact.

But is he your Lord? Is he my Lord? Those questions are still open. Our Lord knows that a relationship of obedience from fear is completely inferior to one of obedience from love. The Lord of love will not force himself into our lives -- if you remember that famous figure of speech from Revelation, you'll remember that he stands at the door and knocks. He doesn't kick the door down or pick the lock or deceive us that he's a candygram delivery or something. He waits on us to let him in, to acknowledge his rightful place and if we open the door, he will come in.

Joining the crowd on Palm Sunday, waving branches and shouting "Hosanna!" is a great acknowledgment of the lordship of Christ. Following him, though, only starts there and following as a willing disciple is what he truly desires us to do, for our own benefit and flourishing. As he makes clear to the Pharisees, if all he wanted was acknowledgment of his lordship, he could get that from rocks.

Give It Up! (Luke 18:18-30)

I guarantee the most common question every pastor hears after this passage gets read is, "So is Jesus telling me to sell everything I have and give the money to the poor?" In fairness, most of the time the question comes not from avarice and greed but from concern about how to survive without money for food or a home to stay in, but it does seem to the first thought in everyone's mind when they listen to Jesus say it to this young wealthy man.

Earlier in my career, I would often try to explain things in the passage like its context and listening with intent and stuff like that. Now I just say, "I don't know what Jesus is asking you to do. What do you think?"

Jesus met a lot of wealthy people during his ministry and some of those meetings are described in the gospels. He doesn't tell all of them to sell their goods and give the money to the poor, so we don't even know what he wanted all the rich people he met to do, let alone what he wants us to do. All we know is that he wants this young man, who has asked what he must do to have eternal life above and beyond full and faithful obedience to the commandments, to do.

That's not a cop out. You've probably heard people say, "Well, I'm not what you call rich so I don't really need to pay attention to this one." In 2015 people making minimum wage in the United States made twice the highest average wage of any nation on the entire continent of Africa. The average annual wage in the US ($29,930) is four times as high as that figure, $7,750 in Botswana. "I'm not really rich" is a cop out. "I don't know what Jesus would like you to give up" isn't.

We can see why Jesus selected wealth as the thing that this young man needed to consider giving away when we see his response. He is sad, because he has many possessions. Jesus perceives this about him and that's probably why he directs him to do what he does. He accepts the man at face value, as a sincere seeker of the truth and gives him what he needs to know.

When we sincerely seek Jesus, he does the same for us. Even though we may not be directed to divest ourselves of possessions and wealth, there is something -- probably a bunch of somethings -- we hold that come between us and full commitment to following Jesus. If we listen to him, we can learn what they are.

Because that's how we find them out. The wealthy young man didn't know what he lacked but the fact that he questioned Jesus meant that he knew he lacked something. When we rely on our own understanding to figure out what holds us back from the path of Jesus we can find ourselves in the middle of extravagantly detailed systems of legalisms that do everything but light our way to the Lord. We create joy-sapping jumbles of rules that produce worry and anxiety but absolutely no love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. 

And we do it because we think this is what makes Jesus happy, but we never ask Jesus if it's what we ought to do! "Lord, I've given up watching football on Sunday afternoon because I think my enjoyment of it gets in the way of following you. I really liked watching Patrick Mahomes bring his team back from three touchdowns down, but since I am sure this is what you want..."

And Jesus replies, "Actually, I'm kind of partial to big comebacks. When did I tell you to do that?"

"Um, you didn't. I just assumed..."

Our perspectives and understanding are limited. We, as Paul says, know in part and see in part. Our limitations keep us from seeing ourselves as God sees us, and it is only God's vision that can reveal to us what holds us back. From our point of view, the obstacle created by the young man's wealth seems clear -- but it didn't to him, and our own obstacles are not clear to us. The only way we can know what holds us back from answering Jesus' call and following him is to ask.

And then listen to him.

Son or Servant? (Luke 15:20-32)

Getting our heads around one of the features of the first century's patriarchal culture can help us clarify one of the key questions this part of the parable of the Prodigal asks us. They limited the idea of inheritance to sons, more specifically the eldest. We don't -- and as we read the parable we can see how Jesus didn't either. Both men and women are given this question to answer: Do we wish to live as servants, or do we wish to live as heirs of the Father?

Both of the sons in the story have to deal with this question, although they approach it from different directions. The youngest son, having first insulted his father by demanding his inheritance while the father was still living, further distances himself from his family and household literally as well as figuratively. He runs away to live in a far country, apparently because the partying is better there. There he busies himself in spending his inheritance as fast as he and his new friends can manage it, having the bad luck of running out of money at the same time his new homeland runs out of food. Though he gets work to survive, it's the ultimate humiliation of not only feeding pigs but realizing they eat better than he does.

Then, Jesus says, he "came to himself." He remembers who he's supposed to be, and even more importantly, he remembers who he's the son of. His father's servants do better than he's doing right now! Finally realizing what he's done to separate himself from his rightful place as an heir -- even if a junior one -- he resolves to return to his father and earn back that place he spurned so carelessly.

When he gets home, he doesn't even make it to the gate before dad sees him coming and runs to meet him. This might worry him at first -- patriarchs don't run to meet people, other people run to meet them and so he may figure he's fixin' to get beat. But his father welcomes him and cuts him off mid-speech. There'll be none of this servant nonsense, not for his son! He was dead and is alive, lost but now found!

The younger son realized that he deserved to be a servant rather than a son and confessed that to his father; his father rejoiced at his return and restored him to being an heir as he was before.

But the older son, when he heard the party and found out what it was about, refused to enter his father's house. Though his father also came out to welcome him, he rejected the welcome and reminder of his family inheritance. He insisted he deserved better than he was getting because of all his hard work and his slavish devotion to his duty. He deserved a party for never going astray and pulling a Van Halen throughout the ancient Near East, but his father had never given him anything.

No, the father says, you were always with me and so everything I have was already yours. It was yours before you did a single chore and would be yours if you never did another one. You are my child, not my slave!

You and I are confronted with that choice and we may have approached it from each way at different times in our lives. There are times when we recognize how we have separated ourselves from our Heavenly Father and insisted we could not be his children. The only proper thing we could do would be to earn our way back into his grace and his family. Nope, he says. You are fully welcome whenever you return; settling accounts doesn't apply between a father and his heirs.

But there are also times when we, considering all of our great and wondrous righteousness by which we have lived, believe we have earned what the Father has given us. Therefore we sometimes scoff at the way the wanderers are welcomed home, and sometimes it makes us angry. We earned our status! We deserve our position, and rejoicing at the return of those who don't deserve it makes a mockery of all our hard work.

There are a lot of differences between the two sons, but one that I'll single out is who they'll let define the relationship between themselves and their father. The younger son will come back to his father on whatever terms the father sets, although he believes he's not worthy of being considered a son. But the older son insists that his father receive him as he wishes, and his self-regard blinds him to the reality that his father has always considered him a beloved child and always will, no matter what he does.

So he stays outside, and won't come in. Will we?