Getting It Right on the Inside (Mark 7:1-7, 14-15, 21-23)

But Jesus knows the dangers of sounding righteous and pure, while you’re secretly wallowing in cruelty and exclusion—of saying one thing in the breathy tones of piety or patriotism, while simultaneously doing what you need to in order to retain power and influence. In other words, you better get it right on the inside first … because the inside is where God is, and the inside is where God is calling you to throw open the doors and invite everyone, to embrace those who are different from you, to love those who look and talk in ways that are foreign to you, those who make you uncomfortable because you’re positive they don’t meet your exacting standards of propriety and decorum, those you’re sure God can’t possibly love the way they are.

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There Was No One (Ephesians 6:10-20)

In other words, according to Isaiah, there was a time when God alone was seeking justice for the weak and the powerless. The author of Ephesians says that the community of the faithful, because of the example of Jesus, needs to take its place alongside God, to put on the same armor God put on all those years before in Israel—not so that we can fight our individual demons, but so that justice will no longer stand at a distance and truth will no longer stumble in the public square.

Paul says that we’re part of the divine Justice League—because justice is precisely what God desires, but what is too often nowhere to be found.

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Actual Bread (John 6:1-21)

In the ancient Near East, the small number of the rich and the powerful, the rulers and their retainers benefitted from a political and economic system where a few lived well, while the rest of the population had to scratch out a living by the skin of their knees and fingertips. That is to say, the folks in charge had a vested interest in promoting the belief that religion is about holiness and spirituality, and should, at all costs, avoid such messy things as economics and politics—because once the peasants start wondering whether or not the system is giving them a raw deal, the whole thing starts unraveling.

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You Give Them Something to Eat (Mark 6:30-44)

In the new reign over which Jesus presides, the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, the outcast are welcomed, the forgotten are remembered, and sinners are forgiven—for the simple reason that that’s what God wants. That’s the way God is. Perhaps it doesn’t make good business sense to go to all that trouble for people who can’t offer you anything in return, but that’s God’s idea of a good time ... lavish, extravagant, unthinkable.

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How Will They Know? (John 13:31-35)

"I’ve seen people kicked off food stamps by Christian politicians who announce their 'love' with words like 'personal responsibility' and 'incentivizing the poor.'

"I’ve seen people who claim to follow Jesus 'love' immigrants by putting their children in cages.

"I’ve seen homeless LGBTQ kids who’ve been 'loved' out into the street by families with Jesus dripping from their lips.

"Love, at least the way it gets enacted in our world, appears to be a much more malleable concept than we like to believe."

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When Church Gets Interesting (Mark 6:1-13)

But maybe what Mark intends for his readers to understand is that, no matter how you slice it, this following Jesus stuff is really inconvenient. If you’re true to the gospel, then not everybody’s going to like what you have to say. Perhaps the point is in trying to negotiate the troubled middle ... between making Jesus so innocuous that he starts looking like the inoffensive neighbor on a Nickelodeon sitcom and identifying with him so closely that you start being insufferable in the way that ordinarily makes you cringe when you see it in others.

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The Other Side (Mark 4:35-41)

But for those people who’ve regularly found themselves oppressed and marginalized, for those whose history always seems to get erased when it challenges the systems that keep some people in power, the mega-storm of the reign of God must feel like the very breath of God. It feels like a peace that that finally establishes justice and equity for all God’s children, especially those who’ve spent their lives living on the other side—in the dark unforgiving environs that all the polite people have studiously tried to avoid.

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Walking the Margins (Mark 5:21-43)

What I find interesting about these two intertwined stories is the issue of how short-sighted they make Jesus appear on the front end. In both cases, Jesus participates in activity guaranteed to marginalize him in everyone’s eyes. In both cases, he risks the social and political costs of being unclean by touching those who are unclean. A true test of your convictions is what you’re prepared to look like a complete idiot for—what you’re willing to lose everything for.

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The Kingdom of God Isn't Always Good News (Mark 4:26-34)

When we say “reign of God” in church, it sounds like good news. But to Caesar, to the powerful, to the people who always come out smelling like roses, to the people who benefit from a nice, orderly system that they alone control and benefit from—it doesn’t sound like good news at all. It sounds like the end of everything that has consistently given them advantages that most people will never enjoy.

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When Your Faith Makes People Nervous (Mark 3:20-35)

"For too many people in our culture, being Christian means obsessing about what average people do with their genitals, while ignoring what wealthy people do with their checkbooks.

"It means embracing people who say 'Merry Christmas,' while ignoring babies born into squalor and poverty.

"Christianity, for too many people today, means 'saving souls for Jesus,' while often despising those same souls until they have the decency and good sense to become more like you."

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No Cheap Grace (Isaiah 6:1-13)

We live in a world where the deck has been historically and consistently stacked against those who haven’t had the power to protect themselves and their children. Racism, huge disparities in wealth and opportunity, xenophobia, misogyny, vast repositories of prejudice against LGBTQ people and the disabled. These are wrongs that can’t be fixed with well-intentioned expressions of regret. Sometimes, when things are bad enough, historically entrenched enough, systems need to be dismantled and rebuilt.

Jesus called such a dismantling and rebuilding “the reign of God.” According to Isaiah, according to the Gospels, when “sorry” isn’t enough to fix the old world, we need a new world.

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A New Unsettling Force (Acts 2:1-21)

The temptation is to believe that if you’re doing the right thing for all the right reasons that you should win everyone’s approval. How can anybody be mad at you? You’re just trying to do the right thing?

But that’s not how it works. Sometimes doing the right thing can get you fired. Ask Jesus, sometimes doing the right thing can get you killed. I want to say to folks who claim that Jesus makes everything better: 'Have you ever actually met this Jesus? I don’t know about you, but every time I bump into him he’s stomping around in steel-toed boots, busting up furniture and smashing the good dishes.'

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Re-drawing the Circle (Acts 8:26-40)

The circle of the beloved community isn’t wide enough until the poor and the powerless get to sit at the same table with the rich and the powerful.

It isn’t wide enough until that corner of the lunch room where they sit has been moved to the center, and the kids who’ve never had a voice get to sing like angels.

True Healing (Acts 4:1-12)

A new power has been unleashed against the powers and principalities—a new reign of justice and peace, a confrontation of the powers who, at worst, punish those who are broken and cast off, and at best, ignores them. And all it takes are a few ordinary people willing to stand up by the power and name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth to the rulers of this world and offer true healing. A few words can make a lot of noise.

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The Three Saddest Words (Luke 24:13-35)

Easter is God's unwillingness to abide a future defined by loss and grief.

Easter opens up a new horizon where oppression and exploitation no longer rule, where the machinery of the state no longer serves only the powerful and the wealthy, where hope is no longer mindless dreaming but the promise of a new world built on love and justice.

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What Happens When You Let the Holy Spirit Loose? (John 20:19-23)

In other words, when structures and organizations, when systems and laws, when policies and procedures are put in place to make sure the people in power stay in power while simultaneously making sure that the people who are 'supposed' to stay on the outside stay on the outside, the Holy Spirit shows up and starts making trouble.

Every time.

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On This Mountain (Isaiah 25:6-8)

Isaiah also seems to think there’s more to see. We’ve lived with a vision of reality that includes the clutching, grasping, irresistible pursuit of Death—not only the death of the body, but the threat of death that makes us hate and fight and fear. But Isaiah sees more.

Isaiah sees a world where God reigns on a holy mountain. And on this mountain Death no longer calls the shots.

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A Contrast Between Two Parades (Mark 11:1-11)

Pilate represents a king who rules the masses through fear and intimidation, a king who’s quick to unleash violence upon those who might question his reign. Surrounded by the engines of war, this king demonstrates his weak hold on power, knowing that if he lets down his guard for even a moment, if he lets any slight go unanswered, the oppressed will rise up against.

But Jesus, he’s a ruler 'who will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war-horse from Jerusalem.' Jesus, riding on the back of a donkey, promises a political alternative to the blood and cruelty of Caesar—a promise of peace to the nations—a release from governments that oppress and destroy the weak and the vulnerable.

Two different parades going on simultaneously—one that sought to maintain the power of the state to crush the powerless, and another that gathered the voices of the powerless to challenge the oppressive power of the state.

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The Weight of Glory (John 12:20-38)

There’s no room in the economy of God for self-promoters and glory hounds. It's easy to think that it's all about me, about what's in it for you-know-who.

So when I come looking for Jesus, what I see still surprises me. In Jesus, the powers and principalities behold God’s countering of this world’s glory with glory of God’s own. Because God doesn't always see glory in the things that we we value, in the people we hold up as 'winners.'

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Surely, Jesus Didn't Mean Everyone? (John 3:14-21)

The good news of the gospel is that Jesus announces that a party’s being thrown in the light, a party the whole world’s invited to—even those people the cool kids are convinced don’t have any business being there.

Are you sure he meant the 'whole' world? Surely, Jesus didn’t mean everyone. That seems unnecessarily generous, don’t you think?

Yep, the whole world. And no, I don’t think it’s unnecessarily generous. It sounds like good news to me.

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