Breaking through the Barriers (John 20:19-31)
The most tempting thing to do is to hunker down, and wait for Jesus to show up and calm the storm, re-order our worlds, take the heat off, make everything all right.
Jesus asks us to throw open the doors and announce a new world not only absent violence and hatred, but filled with the goodness of God’s blessings—a world in which the poor have enough to eat, enough to care for the health of their children and their aged; a world in which those who’ve been turned out, sent away, shuffled off because they don’t look right, don’t love right, don’t have the right papers—so that everyone might finally find a place at the table, finally find the outstretched arms of embrace, finally find a home.
Back to work (John 20:1-18)
What does the resurrection mean?
If it means anything, it certainly means God’s cosmic “yes” to Jesus and the reign of peace and justice he fought and died for, and God’s “no” to the systems of domination and death that killed Jesus for challenging the powerful by seeking to center the needs of the vulnerable
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I Will Not Be Put to Shame (Isaiah 50:4-9a)
But please don’t misunderstand me; I’m not suggesting that the humiliated just bide their time until some day in a diaphanous and distant future. Because, if that were the case, there would be no need for resistance—since there would be no more shame. The Suffering Servant is, if anything, one whose denial of the power of the system to shame renders that system impotent right now.
The Suffering Servant in Isaiah is talking about setting our “face like flint” in ... the present, refusing to allow a system of honor and shame to continue to order our lives and confer our identities ... today, looking to the one who vindicates us ... in this moment.
When the Story Takes a Turn (Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32)
We need to think carefully about what Jesus is selling here. Since we’re the children of this parent who stands looking out the window—waiting for us to come home, waiting for us to come inside—we need to ask ourselves, 'Who are we looking for?'
Because here’s the thing, there are an awful lot of people who’re trying to find their way back home—but they’re scared that we who’ve been here for so long, we who’ve faithfully tended the fields for all these years—they’re scared we don’t want them here. They want to know if they’re just as welcome in this home as we are.
And if we’re ever going to be like the parent who waits for us, our job isn’t deciding who should be on the guest list. Our job is popping champagne corks when another one comes home.
The Commonwealth of the Reign of God (Philippians 3:17-4:1)
We serve a God who came among us, who refused to stand back from us in the comfort of heaven. We model our life together on the God who forsook security to become vulnerable by coming down among us, placing God’s life in our hands. God is able to “transform the body of our humiliation,” because God took on that body … felt the humiliation that comes from living in a commonwealth where the wealth is anything but common.
Headed in the Wrong Direction (Luke 13:31-35)
You see the thing that’s so amazing to me about this passage isn’t that the powerful want to kill a prophet, the one who’s sent to turn a stable world upside down—that’s what the powerful always seem to want to do.
No, what I find so amazing is that … knowing the danger ahead of him, Jesus goes to Jerusalem anyway to challenge the old kingdoms with a word about a new reign—all because he can’t keep quiet about the world God wants to create to replace the old one.
What's Your Story? (Deuteronomy 26:1-13)
Now if you begin your history with the exploits of the privileged and the powerful, it’s easy to justify organizing your political and economic life around the people born on third base—because those are the very people history is meant to recall, and their lives, therefore, are enshrined as the purpose and meaning of true life.
But if you begin the telling of your history by being reminded that you literally came from nowhere and that your ancestors were nobodies from nowhere ("A wandering Aramean was my ancestor"), that makes a difference in what and who you should value, doesn’t it?
Disciple Dazzle (Luke 9:28-36)
Rev. Chuck Lewis in the pulpit today, speaking on the importance of radiating the light of God in a world that sleeps.
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Today! Book-signing and reading of 'Outlandish: An Unlikely Messiah'
Derek's book is out! We're hosting a reading and book-signing this afternoon from 4-6pm and we'd love to see you there. Come get a book signed, have a snack, or just enjoy some warm company. See you there!
The Shape of the Kingdom (Luke 6:27-36)
Notice what Jesus doesn’t say as he unveils the vision statement of the reign of God. He doesn’t say, 'I’m announcing a kingdom where everybody who gets their theology right, who demonstrates a sufficient level of personal piety, and who manages to muster up the appropriate level of faith in me … will get a comfy split-level with walk-in closets and an in-ground pool in the hereafter.'
He says 'The word I’m envisioning, the shape of the kingdom I’m announcing is going to feel like bizarro world—a world where the hungry will finally be filled, where the poor will no longer be left to fight over the scraps left by those who want for nothing, where the dispirited and the broken-hearted will not have to languish on the margins. A world where the last shall be first and the first shall be last.'
Let Down Your Nets (Luke 5:1-11)
What if Jesus showed up around here and said, 'Let down your nets, things are fixin’ to get interesting?' Would we hear that as good news?
What if Jesus said, 'I’ve got something for you to do, but it’s not anything like you were expecting?'
Would we find ourselves rolling around on the bottom of the boat, telling Jesus to go someplace else?
Or would we look at who shows up as a gift? The people nobody else has any time and space for? Are those the people God wants to put in our path because they’re just the kind people Jesus was notorious for hanging out with?"”
When Grace Runs Headlong over the Cliff of Entitlement (Luke 4:21-30)
Coming to terms with our own privilege is a tricky thing. In my experience, most people resent the idea that they’ve somehow been given a leg up. But the problem with our privilege has less to do with what we’ve been given than with what we’re willing to sacrifice so that others can have the same advantages we do.
From God’s perspective, from the perspective of the new world Jesus is painting as he begins his ministry, the walls have been torn down so there’s no 'us' and 'them,' no 'insider' and no 'outsider,' no 'hometown folks' and no 'aliens.' There are only God’s children and the joy of the responsibility of announcing liberation from the tyranny of our own sense of entitlement.
I Will Not Keep Silent (Isaiah 62:1-7)
The need to cry out on behalf of people who feel like their world is about to chew them up didn’t die with Isaiah and the children of Israel. There are still people—many who live here among us—who urgently want someone to take their side, to refuse to remain silent in the face of despair and injustice—not so much as a white knight coming in to save the day, but often just as a reminder that they’re not the ones always left holding the bag by themselves.
Part of what it means to follow Jesus is to take our place upon the walls with Isaiah, refusing to remain silent, giving God no rest until God establishes the reign God promised and makes it renowned throughout the earth.
On the Way (Matt. 2:1-12)
The question for those of us committed to following in the steps of the magi, and ultimately in the steps of Jesus is: When we spot the old world trying to stamp out the new, the powerful trying to subdue the powerless, will we take the easy way and acquiesce to the whims of a tyrant, or will we resist?
Bethlehem—and the gospel toward which it points—is the focal point of the politics of empire. Don't kid yourself.
The Gift of Epiphany (Luke 3:15-17, 21-22)
We were important enough to God that God had it figured out from the beginning how to bring us home. We, therefore, if we are to be like God, must devote ourselves to the prospect of making a home for one another—both the kind we live in, as well as the kind that lives in us.
Embracing the Darkness (Psalm 88)
Merry Christmas! We’re blessed to have Rev. Teresa Pecinovsky sharing from the pulpit today about the importance of lament.
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The Redemption of the Humiliated (Luke 1:39-55)
The question posed by Advent is: How do we who live at the front of the line make Mary's song our song?
Ironic that we, whom most of the rest of the world envies, might have to sit at the feet of Mary and Elizabeth to learn how to sing the song God gave all of us to sing about the reign of the coming messiah, a song for the humiliated and disposable people sung in anticipation of Emmanuel—God with us.
Who Needs the Truth Anyway? (Luke 3:7-18)
Following Jesus isn’t about securing our own piece of the heavenly pie, it’s about living with and loving those about whom John the Baptist speaks, and those whom Jesus loved.
Living under the reign of God isn’t about escaping this world; it’s about offering God’s welcome to those whom the world has marginalized and forgotten. It’s about God pitching a tent in the muck and the mire of our sometimes godforsaken lives and living with us in the midst of the madness and horror.
Unsettling the World (Luke 3:1-6)
Luke’s quoting of Isaiah isn’t meant to help us visualize a flatter, smoother world, or to help us to feel better about the hilly, bumpy world we live in. In this context John the Baptist’s call to repentance isn’t about trying to be more sincere about our remorse. It’s about shaking up the world as it’s currently situated, so that something new can be born.
In Luke’s hands these words are about tearing things up, about unsettling the way things are currently arranged. But this time around, what’s going to be disrupted, what’s going to be toppled aren’t hills and valleys in the wilderness that stand between Israel and home, but the powers and principalities that stand between God’s people and the future God has planned—between the way things are and the reign of God, the way things ought to be.