Over time, I understood why. The church had suffered from pastoral misconduct. Consequently, there was little to no trust in the pastoral office. In its absence, they wanted transparency in the form of the monthly report. I didn’t take it personally. Any church would respond the same way.

Years later, at a Session meeting, the elders and I got into a conversation about the Pastor’s Report. I asked if it was sufficient, or if there might be other information they’d like to know.

“I don’t know why you even keep writing it,” one elder responded. “We trust you.”

I remembered that night recently, as I’ve been listening to a lot of talk in our little town about transparency. Some believe that it’s been lacking in our city government. Others argue that we’re doing fine. I’ll leave it to council members and the new Interim City Attorney to judge what was appropriate and when.

What’s struck me, though, is how all these calls for transparency spoke to a deeper desire for trust. There’s no question in my mind that, sadly and unintentionally, trust has been damaged. Leaders have some work to do to rebuild it.

The rebuilding of trust, though, requires a lot more than transparency. British philosopher Onora O’Neill, in her brilliant little book A Question of Trust, makes this point. Transparency, she says, is a poor substitute for trustworthiness. Sometimes, it’s the best we can do, but it’s limited and rarely suffices to rebuild trust. Besides, transparency isn’t always possible. We have employment law, HIPAA, FERPA, and all other manner of restrictions upon what we can and cannot say to protect privacy.

No, she argues, trust needs more than transparency. Trust needs trustworthiness. Broadly speaking, trust is the ability “to rely on others acting as they say that they will, and... to accept that we will act as we say we will.” Trustworthiness is the habit of deserving such trust.

We rebuild trust, over time, as we show up and do what we say we’re going to do. In this way, over time, we show ourselves to be trustworthy, and trust grows again. Simple, right?

Not really. The human capacity for self-delusion is infinite. Ask anyone, “Are you trustworthy?” and I have a hunch that 99%--maybe 100%--will say yes.

The decision to be trustworthy requires a whole lot of honest self-examination and occasionally some help from friends.

When the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthian church, he wrote to people who had not been trustworthy. They’d fought. They’d followed false leaders. They’d sued one another in public courts of law. They’re hired prostitutes. One guy was even sleeping with his stepmother. They had not been doing what they said they were going to do when they gave their lives to Christ. They had not lived up to their baptismal vows.

Of course, Paul scolded them for it. “Scold” is an understatement. He ranted and railed and called them to account. Even still, he knew he couldn’t always be there to watch over them. His solution? Self-examination.

Here are his instructions from 2 Corinthians 5:

Examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith. Test yourselves. Or do you not realize this about yourselves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you fail to meet the test! (2 Corinthians 13:5)

He’s hoping they’ll do the work themselves, prove themselves trustworthy, and follow Christ. He doesn’t want to have to hold them accountable himself.

What’s true for followers of Jesus is true for anyone who wants to have and keep the trust of others. It’s especially true for us leaders.

We’ve got to take a sober look at our commitments, spoken and unspoken. Have I told the truth? Have I broken a promise? Have I helped someone else break a promise? Have I kept my vow? Have I kept my oath? Have I fulfilled my job description? Have I followed through on commitments? Have I obeyed the law? Have I said what I said I was going to do? Have I shown up when I said I was going to show up?

If I haven’t, it’s on me to self-correct, because sometimes sooner, sometimes later, the rest of the world notices. And, if the answer to these questions is a consistent, “No,” the trust we’ve taken years to gain will slip through our hands faster than sand.

That’s why, even after my conversation with the Session all those years ago, I kept writing the monthly Pastor’s Report. It’s habit now, but the practice also helps me keep myself accountable. Have I been doing the visits? Meeting the people? Making the changes? Doing the work? Have I been trustworthy?

The answer, sometimes, is no. I fail sometimes. Marvelous people show up in my office to point out when I’m failing. It’s not fun in the moment of accountability. In fact, it’s rather excruciating, when all I want to do is deflect and defend. Still, I could not be more thankful for these beloved friends’ candor and care.

Transparency is fine when it’s possible and appropriate, but it’s a poor substitute for this hard, good work of proving ourselves trustworthy–as friends, as neighbors and, yes, as leaders, in our city and beyond.

I’m hopeful for us all.

At the time of our wedding, at the fragile age of 23, I loved him. And I liked him most of the time. But, just as much, I imagined a particular kind of life I was going to have with him. He was about to become a Ph.D. student in neurobiology, headed for a career as a university researcher. I knew the researchers he worked for. I had visited their homes, and they lived comfortable, middle class lives. I wanted what they had, and it came packaged with a man who inexplicably wanted me.

So, we pulled off a ceremony and reception with the last few dollars of our college Pell grants and drove to St. Louis where Washington University had offered him a spot in their program. Our first year of marriage was terrible. Neither of us was fit to try to make a life with anyone at that point. A few easier years followed. Then he dropped out of graduate school, and I could have been disappointed at the loss of my imagined life except that I was too busy starting my own career in the church and having babies. Parenthood stretched and stressed me in painful ways, and we fought. I overfunctioned. He withdrew. I grew tired of bearing the burdens. I screamed. He withdrew more. He’s sorry now, looking back, about how little he contributed to raising the kids and making a home. I’m embarrassed by how angry I was for so long and how I took it out on him and the kids. We should not be married anymore, but, by the grace of God and my husband’s tenacity, we are still together.

We hit a sweet spot about nine years ago. I can’t explain all that changed in and around us, but my anger ebbed. He stepped up around the house. Our daughter came into the family room one night from the kitchen and asked what was wrong with Dad. I looked up, concerned. “He’s loading the dishwasher,” she explained. I smiled back. Maybe we’d both just finally grown up.

More than anything, we began to enjoy each other. We started making each other happy in ways we hadn’t before. I have no idea why or how, but I’m not complaining. Maybe it’s all pālā.

I stumbled upon this funny Hebrew word pālā this month while preaching on Genesis 18. It’s the word God uses when he questions Sarah, “Is anything too pālā for the Lord?” (Genesis 18:14). It can mean hard, or it can mean wonderful. How fabulously wise of the Hebrew language to recognize that something hard can be wonderful and something wonderful can be hard? Like marriage?

Still curious, I pulled out the Septuagint to see how it translated pālā into the Greek and found adynateō, which happens to be the word the angel uses to announce to Mary that she’s about to give birth to the Messiah. “For nothing will be impossible with God” (Luke 1:37).

Wonderful. Hard. Impossible. All somehow the same idea. Hard things can be wonderful, and wonderful things can be hard. It seems impossible, yes, but nothing is too pālā for the Lord. Even 33 years of marriage.

I know couples in town and nearby–I’ve counseled some of them–who have ended their marriages and moved on. Some are still weighing their options now. So be it. I don’t stand in judgment. The three A’s (adultery, abuse, abandonment) certainly give cause to consider it.

But to those couples still shy of these thresholds, but for whom marriage is stale or tedious or angry or wearying, I give this humble, unsolicited advice: “Butt in chair.”

“Butt in chair” is the advice the writer Anne Lamott gives when fledgling writers ask her for guidance. “Butt in chair,” she responds. She means that they have to keep writing in order to be writers. Butt in chair, fingers on keyboard or pen in hand, do it. The writing will be awful at times, and it will need to be revised again and often again, but, without that butt in the chair, they can’t accomplish the work that nourishes their souls.

“Butt in chair” works about the same for husbands and wives. For us, “butt in chairs” looks like hands doing the work and hearts hanging on. It might look like counseling or canoodling or cutting the other some slack when mistakes are made. However it looks, we have to stay married in order to be each others’ spouses. Butt in chair.

I’ve heard the desperation, the husbands and wives pleading, “But what if I don’t want to be a spouse any more?” I’ve been there. Nobody wants to be an unhappy spouse, but to be a happy spouse–to be valued and cared for, loved and listened to–is a gift given over time. We can neither give it nor receive it if we’ve left the room. We have to stay together if we want to grow up into the people we want to be for ourselves and each other.

We’re not bored with our spouses because something is wrong with our spouses. We’re bored because sometimes marriage is boring. If it’s a struggle to keep communicating with our spouse, it’s not because one of us is necessarily at fault. It’s because communicating is just tough work.

“The reason marriage is ‘till death do us part’ is not because the initial flame of passion is so strong,” writes Tish Harrison Warren, “but because love requires so much time–a lifetime–to even sort of learn what it is to practice it” (Tish Harrison Warren in What Grows in Weary Lands).

In the depths of those angry years in our marriage, I could not even have pictured the life we have now. It would have seemed impossible. It was hard then and still hard now sometimes. And it is absolutely wonderful.

It’s all pālā.

Always eloquent, I said, “Huh?”

“We need someone with a masters degree to teach the class,” he continued.

I protested, “I only took one graduate level philosophy course in seminary.”

“That’s one more class than anybody else in town,” Jim laughed. “You’re hired.”

I’ve been teaching philosophy and ethics at the college ever since.

I’ve taught students from just about every state in the U.S., along with Canada, Mexico, Ecuador, Venezuela, Brazil, Trinidad & Tobago, Colombia, New Zealand, Australia, Japan, England, France, Scotland, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Malta, Russia, Nigeria, the Congo, Austria, Granada, Denmark, and Thailand. (I think I’m forgetting a Caribbean island, but this list suffices.) My oldest student was 57. My youngest student was 16.

In addition to teaching them how to spell Nietzsche and diagram a moral argument, I’ve counseled them through the deaths of family members, breakups, and a lot of homesickness. I limped with them through online courses during the pandemic. I’ve been to the funeral of one and officiated the wedding of two others. The students are a joy. The grading is not, but I love it.

And it’s too much.

I have two, arguably three, other jobs, and I’m exhausted. I had been praying to God for months. “Tell me which job to quit. Give me a sign.” God was being tight lipped. Finally, in early January, I was doing an early morning devotional in which I was prompted to describe my life missions. I wrote three things: formation of new church leaders, care for the church family and our community, and faith writing. I recognized quickly but begrudgingly that teaching at the college just didn’t really help me fulfill any of those life missions. And just as soon as the thought of no longer teaching at the college sunk in, an almost physical sense of relief washed over me. It was the sign I’d been waiting for. God had just been waiting to give me the sign until after I made the decision. Or, as one of my friends put it, “God wanted you to be a big girl first.”

I let the church and the college know that this would be my last semester. Of course, it’s been a lovely one, causing me to second guess my decision about a dozen times. But I keep holding onto that feeling, that wash of relief, from January. I’m clinging by my fingertips at this point, but still holding on.

We talk a lot in the church about how God calls us to certain roles and tasks. We hardly ever talk about how He calls us away from them.

The only place in all scripture I can find where God tells someone to leave one place with no idea where they’re headed is Genesis 12 when God calls Abram out of Canaan. “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you” (Genesis 12:1). The promised land is just that–a promise, not an address. Abram has no idea yet where he’s going. The beloved Brueggemann writes, “(T)he summons is not law or discipline, but promise. The narrative knows that such departure from securities is the only way out of barrenness” (Walter Brueggemann, Genesis, Interpretation [Louisville: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1986], 118). Translated? Letting go is the only way to stop feeling so tired that I feel like someone hit me in the face.

Will there be another blessing out there? A different adventure? Maybe? But, as hard as it is to say, that doesn’t matter. Faithfulness is what matters. Faithfulness and a shorter to-do list.

I have three classes left to teach, seven more class presentations to critique, about 70 more reflection papers and 28 final essays to grade, one more batch of brownies to bake, and one more class selfie to take. And then lots of goodbyes to a part of my life that has meant so very much to me.

Thank you, Jim Herrell, and thank You, God.

Every time I submit work to my editor, she finds mistakes. Every time. It annoys the living daylights out of me.

“Come on, seriously, can’t you just fix the capitalization yourself?” I mumble to my computer screen. “You could just insert the missing citation or invent a page number I left out? So what if the connection of ideas doesn’t actually make sense? Why are you bothering me with my mistakes?”

Of course, I already know why: It’s my work, not hers. I need to fix it, not her. Plus, there are those pesky copyright laws, so, all right. I take a deep breath, begrudgingly, and fix my mistakes.

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that nobody likes to be held accountable. Or almost no one. There are exceptions.

When John the Baptist arrives on the scene, as an adult, the people seem to want to fix their mistakes and start over. “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near,” he tells them (Mathew 3:2). And fixing our mistakes is what repent means, right: to change, to admit our sins and turn from them, to start over?

Then Jerusalem and all Judea and all the region around the Jordan were going out to him, and they were baptized by him in the River Jordan, confessing their sins. (Matthew 3:5-6)

It’s extraordinary, really, even if there is some scholarly debate about how much Matthew might have exaggerated the numbers. “All Judea and all the region” seems like a wee stretch. Still, it’s a crowd.

Social science predicts a crowd. Social scientists argue that most people like being held accountable. I find this hard to believe, but let’s give them a chance.

“An interesting statistic from the Harvard Business Review helps debunk this idea: 50% of managers avoid holding people accountable, yet 72% of employees say they would benefit from it. So, if people don’t dislike accountability, what’s really going on?” (Read the whole article here.)

Maybe? Maybe we want feedback. Maybe we even accept the punishment. But, do we make the changes needed so we don’t repeat those mistakes? Maybe.

Or, maybe we don’t really want to know when we’ve been wrong. We don’t want to hear that we’ll have to pay a price for our poor judgment. We, as a species, would maybe rather just pretend it didn’t happen.

Later in Matthew’s Gospel, just after the transfiguration, there’s a cryptic little conversation between Jesus and the disciples. It goes like this:

The disciples asked him, “Why then do the teachers of the law say that Elijah must come first?”

Jesus replied, “To be sure, Elijah comes and will restore all things. But I tell you, Elijah has already come, and they did not recognize him, but have done to him everything they wished. In the same way the Son of Man is going to suffer at their hands.” Then the disciples understood that he was talking to them about John the Baptist.

You see, the Jewish people had been told that the prophet Elijah would appear ahead of the coming Messiah. He was their sign of the Savior to come. John was this sign, and the leader and people–all of them–had failed to recognize him when it really mattered. They let him be executed, just as Jesus later would be.

So, did they really change? Did they really turn their lives and the life of their nation around? No.

It’s soon the season of Lent, a season when we’re called to do hard self-examination, to repent, to turn from sin and be made new.

The real proof of repentance, though, isn’t our words, or even our intentions. The real proof of repentance is change, lasting change, and it only comes by faith, courage, and the power of the Holy Spirit.

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It started just after that first Sunday in Advent. We’d celebrated my husband’s birthday. The kids were back in their respective homes. I was settling in for the slog that is the first few weeks of December.

I began to have this niggling feeling that something is up. God is up to something. Something is about to change. A new thing is going to happen.

I can’t imagine what it is. Truly, my life is settled, and I’m settled into it for now. So, what is it? What, God?

Is this a word of knowledge–a niggle of knowledge–or just the Advent readings getting under my skin?

I mean, Advent is all about waiting. The prophets who waited for the birth of the Savior. Us waiting for his return. And patience in the meantime. A sense of expectation comes with the season.

But, still, this niggling is different. I haven’t felt it before, and I’ve read and prayed and preached through plenty of Advent seasons. Is something new on the way? Whom do I ask for guidance?

Since I’m a little obsessed with the minor prophets, let’s start there.

I’m asking the prophet Habakkuk. If you’re also wondering this season what’s next, what’s up, or what’s God up to, come with me. There are three good words here for us in times of niggling expectancy.

Habakkuk is a funny guy. In fact, Habakkuk might not even be a guy. Habakkuk could be a group of guys. Or a gal. We don’t know. We know absolutely nothing about the person who wrote the short, eighth minor prophecy of the Old Testament. Habakkuk could be anyone. Habakkuk could be us.

First Habakkuk complains–

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help, and you will not listen? (1:1)

There is suffering and violence, and Habakkuk wants to know when the all-powerful God is going to do something about it.

God answers–

Look at the nations and see! Be astonished! Be astounded! For a work is being done in your days that you would not believe if you were told. (1:5)

A eloquent response that doesn’t quite answer the question. When? When is God going to act with justice? Habakkuk complains again–

Are you not from of old, O Lord my God, my Holy One? (2:12a)

It’s essentially the same question. God answers again–

Write the vision;

make it plain on tablets,

so that a runner may read it.

For there is still a vision for the appointed time;

it speaks of the end and does not lie.

If it seems to tarry, wait for it;

it will surely come; it will not delay. (2:2-3)

As Theodore Hiebert puts it, “There will always be a discrepancy between such a vision”–God’s vision–”and the real world. But the truly righteous place greater trust in the truth and the reliability of that vision than in the brute facts of existence” (“The Book of Habakkuk,” New Interpreter’s Bible 7 [Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1996], 643). It is God’s exhortation to steadfast patience.

Good word #1: God is reliable. God won’t fail to bring about his purposes. Time will tell.

Whatever this niggling is about, God will see it through. My job is to stay as faithful as I can and wait.

Still, what struck me too in studying the passage again was a strange scholarly argument about that little half-verse that the NRSVUE translates, “…so that a runner may read it” (2:b). The NIV translates it, “…so that a herald may run with it.” Eugene Peterson has fun with it in The Message, translating it “…so that it can be read on the run.”

The Hebrew isn’t clear. God could be telling Habakkuk to write down the vision in such a way that even someone running by could read it. Or it could be, as the NIV suggests, that the vision is intended to be announced widely by a herald. Some have even suggested that it could be that the people will run in terror when the vision is revealed. But, the best guess is that it’s intended to be understood in the context of Old Testament prophecy which is always to be announced to any and all listening ears. Hiebert again writes, “Taken in this way, v. 2 means that Habakkuk is commissioned to record the vision in order to carry it and announce it to the people.

Good word #2: The new thing happening–whatever it is–isn’t only personal. Any new thing God is doing is for His people, not a single person.

If indeed it is the Holy Spirit niggling me, then it’s not for nothing. The Holy Spirit niggles for a purpose, and the purpose could be, well, the world.

Habakkuk hears God’s answer to his second complaint and stops there. And then he prays. It’s a long prayer in which Habakkuk catalogs again problems of the world. It’s also a confession of faith–

Yet I will quietly wait for the day of trouble to come upon people who invade us. (3:16c)

Bad stuff is going to happen, but Habakkuk is ready to wait for God to work it out. And even more–

…yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will take joy in the God of my salvation. (3:18)

Good word #3: Keep praying.

That’s fair. Isn’t prayer what we’re all called to do all the time? There’s nothing I can do to hasten the vision anyway.

After all, Bonhoeffer wrote from prison in 1943, “A prison cell, in which one waits, hopes…and is completely dependent on the fact that the door of freedom has to be opened from the outside, is not a bad picture of Advent.”

Of course. It’s all up to God.

I became a parent 24 years ago under the misguided assumption that my children were going to do what I asked them to do with little to no resistance. Ha.

I eventually had to fall back on one of the oldest parental tricks. “Let’s try it,” I said again and again. “If it’s too much, we can stop. No worries. Let’s just try.”

It didn’t always work. Our kids were a unique and wonderful blend of anxiety and obstinacy. But sometimes it did. Sometimes, once they tried, they realized it wasn’t so hard after all, or that they even enjoyed it, or that the big bad job wasn’t really so big and bad after all.

I used the trick so often that I can’t remember now a single instance of using it. I called Elly to see if she remembered me using the trick. She didn’t, but admitted that I must have said it enough that it’s a running script in her head now. She told me that she often tells herself, “Just try.” Aw.

Funny thing was, once I started using the let’s-try-it trick with my kids, I started using it on myself. Maybe it was 5 o’clock in the morning, and I needed to go for a walk, but it was cold outside and I really didn’t want to. “Let’s just try,” I’d tell myself. So I’d try. Every now and then, my chin muscles would freeze in the wind by the time I made it halfway around the park, but most of the time I was fine once I got started. 

Holiness is a big, bad, intimidating idea. It’s old fashioned, even judgey. Holiness is only a hair’s breath away from holier than thou, after all. And yet, holiness is all over the Bible. From Genesis 2 to Revelation 22, the word “holy” shows up 551 times. Holiness adds another 24 instances. A lot of those times, in the New Testament, it’s describing the Holy Spirit, but, other times, it’s describing us. Us. I do not feel even a little bit holy on any given day, but that’s exactly what the scriptures are telling us to be.

Like it or not, we’re called to be holy. Let’s try.

The apostle Paul gives holiness a great deal of attention in his First letter to the Thessalonians. In a benediction of sorts, Paul asks the blessing of God the Father and Jesus the Son on the people–

May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father when our Lord Jesus comes with all his holy ones. (3:11-13)

That last word there, “holy ones,” is actually better translated “saints.” But if holiness makes us nervous, then being called saints calls us into a panic. Some of the translators are trying to soften the blow, but Paul just keeps batting.

The essence of Paul’s teaching on the matter was simple: You are holy; therefore, be holy. In other words, the Holy Spirit has done His part of the job; now do yours.

In the broadest sense, holiness is the product of the indwelling of the Holy Spirit in all who confess their faith in Jesus Christ. It begins in baptism and grows as we make those choices, which shape us more and more closely into the image of God, Who is Himself altogether holy.

In case they’re still unsure what holiness means, Paul tries hard to spell out the particulars in the rest of chapter 4: stay away from sexual immorality (4:3-8), treat each other with love (4:9-10), and mind your own business in society (4:11).

This whole problem of trying to understand what holiness means is the same problem Paul faced when he wrote the Thessalonians.  He knew what he meant by holiness, but he wasn’t altogether sure that it agreed with what the Thessalonians meant. 

These three issues, apparently, were of special concern in Thessalonika, as they were in most Greek cities. We know, for instance, that there existed the worst of double standards in marriage. A man could have as many sexual partners as he liked; women could lose everything if they were caught being unfaithful.  

Paul wants them to know that, even though everything that they had been taught told them that such behavior was okay, it was not. Marriage was to be held in highest honor, and sex belonged within its bounds. Wives were to be held in highest honor. To do otherwise was to conform to the world’s standards, rather than to God’s.

Holiness today has its own whole set of particulars, as our society presents its own set of challenges, its own set of temptations. 

While the particulars of holiness have changed over the centuries since Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, those three particulars still stand. Sex is still an issue; it always has been. Loving each other? In this age of divisiveness and rage? That’s still a ginormous challenge. And minding our own business, working hard, and letting God work out the future? That’s a task we will be working at until we see Jesus’ face.

These are big, bad, intimidating ideas that call for hard decisions about how we live our lives. 

So, let’s do this–let’s just try. With the power of the Holy Spirit within us, one day at a time, make marriage a gift we choose and cherish. See the image of God in each other and treat each other accordingly, even when we disagree. Do our work–whatever it is God’s calling us to accomplish–with diligence and joy for the whole world to see.

Sometimes, we’ll fail, yes. And sometimes, once we’ve tried, we’ll figure out it’s not so hard after all. We might even find joy in such holiness. It might just turn out that holiness isn’t so big and hard after all. 

God, grant me the Serenity

To accept the things I cannot change…

Courage to change the things I can,

And Wisdom to know the difference.

It’s the Serenity Prayer from Reinhold Niebuhr. It’s pinned to my bulletin board in my home office. I’ve got parts of it committed to memory. I think of it often. 

There are a whole lot of things I can’t change ever. But there are some things I can change–mostly in myself. And wow, I need to know the difference, so I’m not beating myself up and the people around me to boot.

But it’s the second half of the Serenity Prayer that I love even more.

Living one day at a time,

enjoying one moment at a time.

Accepting hardships as the pathway to peace.

Taking, as he did, the sinful world as it is,

not as I would have it.

Trusting that he will make all things right

if I surrender to His will;

that I may be reasonably happy in this life,

and supremely happy with Him forever.

“Reasonably happy.” Let’s call it contentment. It’s being satisfied, letting good enough be good enough, and resting in God’s love. Contentment is a choice. It’s something we can cultivate and make grow. It may look right now like a half dead houseplant in a dark corner of the family room, but it can and will grow stronger and flourish with gratitude and grace and finally our gifts.  

Remember the parable of the prodigal son. It’s a parable about two sons and their father, and it’s about contentment.

Remember the younger son who asks early for his inheritance. His father gives it to him inexplicably. This young man runs off, loses everything, and has to come groveling back home. 

The father tells him to leave and live the the consequences of those bad decisions–no.

The father welcomes him back.

But there’s more. There’s the older son, who’s ticked off at the dead for welcoming his brother home. This older brother is the man who believes he’s earned his blessings. 

And this is us, too, right? We’ve worked hard for what we have. We’ve obeyed the law and paid our taxes. We keep our lawns mowed. We go to church (at least usually). But grace doesn’t work like a paycheck. Grace is freely given. All we have left to do is give thanks.

The apostle Paul, in his letter to the Philippians wrote, 

I thank my God every time I remember you. In all my prayers for all of you, I always pray with joy because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now, being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. (Philippians 1:3-6)

The force of his thank you is lost in translation. You have to see it in the original Greek to appreciate how over the top this thank you is. Verses 3 & 4, literally, sound something like this:

“I thank my God, with all my remembrances, all the time, with all my prayers, in all of my praying, for all of you.”

Despite the imperfections and the weakness and the struggle we encounter day to day, we can join Paul in giving thanks all the time, in all our prayers, in all our praying, for each other and God’s gifts. 

And, in doing so, realize that we are–in fact–content. Reasonably happy. In peace.

It was a January in St. Louis, cold and icy, and our friend Al had lost one of his leather gloves. He exploded into the coffee room, using words a gentleman and a Christian don’t typically use in public, and we all stared, gape mouthed. 

We watched him storm some more, at the sink, across from the mailboxes, sitting down opposite me. Not pushing my chair away from him was an act of will.

“What’s wrong, Al?” someone finally asked softly.

He froze for just a moment and then hung his head. “I got some bad news,” he sighed. An old friend died that morning.

Bad news does strange things to us sometimes.

Last week was full of bad news for our community, our state, and our country. It felt like uncertainty. It felt like fear.

Uncertainty and fear are no friends of ours. They make us feel weak and helpless, so you know what we do with them? We make them into anger, exploding and storming and taking it out on whoever’s close at hand.

Years ago, Kathleen Norris wrote about anger, and I’ve carried her wisdom with me ever since. She wrote of God’s anger, “It is truly and more wholeheartedly righteous than human anger could ever be.” God gets angry about injustice or evil or pain.

Human anger is different. We get angry about a whole lot more, and it’s rarely so pure.

Norris went on, “Now that I appreciate God’s anger more, I find that I trust my own much less. I am increasingly aware of its inconsistencies, its tendency to serve primarily as a mask for my fears” (Amazing Grace: A Vocabulary of Faith [New York: Riverhead, 1998],  126). 

You see, anger is an easy make for all that unpleasant fear and sadness, uncertainty and grief. Anger feels a little closer to control when the world around us is going haywire.

Last week, when the news broke that our Safeway grocery store would be closing, a lot of us got mad. We got mad at the Albertsons Corporation first. That’s fair. They’re the ones actually closing the store. But then we got mad at the City Council, as if they had any control over what a company worth $28 billion does with one of its stores. I got pretty annoyed at all the people calling our community a “ghost town.”

Then, we watched students get shot again in Evergreen and Charlie Kirk die in Utah. More anger. One kid, one man, one gun each, with motives still unclear. We started taking it out on each other. What was that about anger feeling like control? It accomplished nothing.

What if we just let sadness be sadness?  What if we had a good cry or went for a walk or just stayed home and did nothing for a while until the sadness worked itself out? What if we listened closely to the people with lots of different ideas than our own, and just let those ideas be different rather than dangerous? What if we remember that God is in control anyway, so–by faith and hope–our lives and community will heal?

Kathleen Norris, quoting the monk Evagrius, wrote, “The remedy for all anger is prayer.”

You know how, sometimes, the answer is so simple that it’s hard to hear?  Yeah, that would be now. Pray. And pray more, and pray some more. Listen, talk, and pray even more.

I get it. There’s work to be done finding a new business for our empty store front, addressing violence in the schools (again), and building relationships with people who disagree with us politically. Yes, there’s work to be done, but it can’t be done while we’re angry. And it’s going to get done a whole lot better and faithfully if we start the work with prayer.

I went to Safeway yesterday for the first time since the announcement of its closure next month. Clearances tags on everything. Shelves beginning to empty. No more deli. A lot of good people about to lose their jobs. I didn’t cry in line. I figured the checkers had enough to worry about without having to console me. I cried in the car. I prayed for the employees on the way home.

Even Jesus wept (John 11:35). We can too.

I have a tree outside my living room window that likes to get ahead of itself. Every year, it tries to grow one or two or three new trees from its own branches. It’s an overachiever.

I listened yesterday on my long walk to a podcast about curtailing–the art of removing some things in our lives so that others can flourish.

In the Bible, it’s called pruning.

“I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me thatbears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2)

Friends, neighbors, fellow parents, despite whatever TikTok told you this weekend, we can’t do everything. We can’t even do most things well.  Jesus calls us to do what matters most and let God prune off the rest so that then–only then–we’ll be even more fruitful.

What one (or two or three) responsibilities will you let God prune from your to-do list this week?

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about stiff necks. And not because I have a stiff neck. No, I recently spent time in a room, facing some stiff-necked people. It was not fun.

This is a post about stiff-neckedness.

The dictionary defines stiff-necked as “haughty or stubborn.” But the Bible gives the word a lot more nuance. In fact, the word comes from the Old Testament. It’s qāšê, pronounced “kawsheh,” and it can mean hard, cruel, severe, obstinate, difficult, severe, or rough. 

We readers of the Old Testament most associate it with the Israelites who, having been released from slavery, followed Moses into the wilderness to the promised land. They’d been delivered out of Egypt and carried through the waters to safety from Pharaoh’s armies. You’d think they have been grateful and happy, but instead they only got impatient waiting for Moses to receive the tablets. Off came the jewelry to be molded into an idol shaped like a calf, and God saw it all unfold. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘I have seen this people, how kawsheh they are’” (Exodus 32:9).

Haughty, yes, because they thought they’d found a better solution than God. Stubborn, yes, but a blind kind of stubborn. 

But there was more.

They were hard. They couldn’t allow the possibility that they might have been wrong. Cruel. There was cruelty in the ways they treated each other and Moses, disrespectfully, meanly. And severe. They had judged both Moses and God without understanding. Obstinant, yes, of course. Difficult and severe and rough. They were all these things because they had forgotten God, failed to trust God, and flung themselves at the mercy of false gods that were going to let them down.

It’s easy now to look back in judgment of the Israelites at this moment. The problem is that the same word kawsheh is used again to describe some far more sympathetic people.

Take the woman Hannah in 1 Samuel 1. She was desperate for a child. She took her despair to the Lord, weeping and pouring out her petitions before Him with such passion that she lost her voice. Only her lips moved. Eli the priest took her for drunk. “But Hannah answered, ‘No, my lord, I am a woman deeply kawsheh; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I have been pouring out my soul before the Lord’” (1 Samuel 1:15). 

Here, in this verse, kawshew meant sorrowful. It turns out that there’s sadness lurking behind stiff-neckedness too.

Ain’t that the truth? Behind all that hardness, cruelty, severity, and obstinacy lurks sadness–

Things didn’t work out the way I wanted. I did my best. Things still fell apart. Maybe if I deny it. Maybe if I refuse to look, it will all go away. Just make it go away. 

Kawsheh shows up again in another unlikely place. A king Jeroboam fears losing his son. He sends his wife to a prophet Ahijah. She tiptoes to his room, afraid of what he will tell her. 

“But when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet as she came in at the door, he said, “Come in, wife of Jeroboam; why do you pretend to be another? For I am charged with kawsheh tidings for you” (1 Kings 14:6).

The message Ahijah delivers is kawsheh indeed. The boy would die. Jeroboam would father no more sons, because he had turned away from the same God who had granted him that throne in the first place. 

It turns out that there’s some fear behind stiff-neckedness too.

Don’t tell me I helped make it happen? Did my own decisions lead me to this place? Do I have the strength to admit what I did wrong? No, so make the truth tellers leave. Just make it go away.

But the only way out of stiff-neckedness is truth telling and repentance. It’s facing our sadness and fear, our pride and wrong actions, with strength and courage, compassion and love.

And all those stiff-necked people–the Israelites, Hannah, Jeroboam and his wife–God didn’t give up on them. He stayed faithful. In the fullness of time, He even sent His son for the stiff-necked people who came after them.

Stiff necks don’t have to stay stiff.

Truth: My husband and I had grown fond of our empty nest. 

Update: It’s not so empty anymore.

For the past three days and the next six weeks, both adult kids are back home in their childhood bedrooms. Our daughter’s bedroom had become my cozy office, and my son’s room had become my husband’s dedicated music cave. My office is now in the corner of the family room, and the music cave is a wall of the master bedroom. 

Oh, how I love my kids. I’m simply not accustomed to living with them as adults–adults with their own tastes and habits, their own schedules and priorities. I’ve made it my goal not to complain, but rather to enjoy these weeks as (likely) our last opportunity to live together as a family. Easier said than done.

What will it take to live together well? Communication, communication, and more communication, yes. Healthy boundaries, yes. Clearly articulated expectations, yes. 

And what might matter the most? Humility. 

My personal study found me this week in Philippians 2. The Christ hymn of Philippians 2:6-11 describes how Jesus made Himself nothing, having a mindset of humility in His becoming human for our sakes. The passage is often cited for its christological declarations, but Paul didn’t include it as teaching for teaching’s sake. The Christ hymn and its call for humility are included to inspire unity. 

Those first verses of the chapter lay it out:

…make my joy complete by being like-minded, having the same love, being one in spirit and of one mind. 3 Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit. Rather, in humility value others above yourselves, 4 not looking to your own interests but each of you to the interests of the others (Philippians 2:2-4).

Harmony is essential for Christian community, and humility is the basis for the harmony. Acting with humility (2:3) is the key to the health of the church in Philippi and my old farmhouse too. 

The Christ hymn is the source of seemingly endless academic debate about verb and verb forms (see commentary on verse 7 alone), but what everyone agrees upon is Jesus’ motivation. It was a choice. That’s what matters. Christ’s humility was not pre-programmed at his incarnation, nor compelled by the Father. It was a decision of love.

“But contrary to what one might expect, the true nature of God is not to grasp or get or selfishly to hold on to things for personal advantage but to give them up for the enrichment of all” (Robert H. Stein, Luke, New American Commentary 24 [Nashville, TN: B & H Publishing, 1992],132).

Humility is no idle virtue or end in itself. It’s the grease in the gears. It makes possible other virtues of joy, peace, and kindness “for the enrichment of all.”

What will I give up “for the enrichment of all” my family in these next six weeks? A little quiet? A little tidiness? A whole lot of groceries? Yes, but these are absolutely nothing that aren’t worth the gift of getting acquainted with the people they have become since leaving home.

Last night, with my husband staying late at school for an awards night, my daughter cooked our dinner. The three of us ate dinner outside and lingered, with long respites of silence as we just got accustomed to being together again. My son did the dishes, and we took the dog for a walk.  It was good.

The nest will be empty again before I know it. I might even miss these weeks when they’re finished. 

Speaking of the Catholics, the final service before Holy Week is always at their place, and it’s always the Stations of the Cross. For the last several years, it’s been Deacon Doug leading us. Every year I overcome my Protestant uncertainty–do I really have to kneel?–and follow along. On this Friday before Good Friday, it’s become my entry into Holy Week.

The Catholic Daughters handed out the prayer guides this year, while the bell ringers warmed up. They played “Near the Cross.” I whispered along.

“In the cross, in the cross; Be my glory ever. Till my raptured soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

I changed the lyrics in my head, though. (I am the person who sang, “Later on, we’ll perspire as we dream by the fire,” in the second verse of “Winter Wonderland” for years.)

So, “To the cross,” I whispered Friday night, “to the cross. Be my glory ever. Till my restless soul shall find, Rest beyond the river.”

We’re headed to the cross, after all. And my soul often feels restless. Someday I’ll be raptured, but not yet. First I’ve got a class to teach and three sermons to write, so the rapturing can wait for now. Restless fits me better.

We’re headed to the cross, and there I was headed to it with my Baptist and Nazarene and Methodist and Pentecostal brothers and sisters, as it should be.

I was reminded, sitting there, of reading I’d done recently in postliberal theology (big words, sorry) and a theologian by the name of George Lindbeck in particular, who believed that our best response to Christianity’s waning hold on the ethics and imagination of society is to dig into our unique identity.We’ve got to speak our language. We’ve got to love our rituals.

But it’s not enough to do this living and speaking and loving as Presbyterians apart from Baptists apart from Catholics apart from Pentecostals. We’ve got to speak as one, just as much as we can, or our witness to and in this society gets even weaker.* In other words, occasions like a small town Lenten soup supper is a chance to say well and proudly that we’re all in this together. All of us.

And that could not be more important than this week as we’re heading into when we tell the strangest of stories about a man who was God who gave up his human life and rose again to remain God-with-us forever. 

“Because by Your cross, you have redeemed the world,” we repeated fourteen times, once at each Station. 

Those are special words for a special week, and we’re not speaking them alone.

At the end of the service, we concluded with the 15th Station of the Cross: the resurrection. Deacon Doug acknowledged it was unusual but appropriate since the 15th Station includes the reciting of the Apostles Creed, or “the creed we all share,” as he put it. He’s right. Sure, I mumbled “small case ‘c’” to myself when I affirmed my faith in the holy catholic church, but the faith that unites us–minus that difference in capitalization–is far greater than anything that divides us.

The prayer books that my husband and I received on Friday night were photocopies of the printed prayer books that some others held. The problem with our photocopied prayerbooks was that the copy machine cut off about an inch of text on every right hand page.

But the great thing was–Catholics and Protestants alike–we all did a pretty good job filling in the blanks. We know Jesus, and we know His story. The words came easy. I think George Lindbeck would have been proud. And maybe Jesus too.

To the cross, friends, to the cross, with our restless souls. Let us go.

*”George Lindbeck: Theology and the Eclessial People of Witness,” in The Trial of the Witnesses: The Rise and Decline of Postliberal Theology [Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2006], 57-100.

Bookmans was a local phenomenon in Tucson. It was a bookstore/music store/news stand/hangout. The wildest cast of characters shopped there. I sold a Sunday edition of Le Monde to Faye Dunaway’s driver and a rare edition of some title I can’t remember to Larry McMurtry. Barbara Kingsolver shopped every now and then. She was a terrible customer, so we all ducked when she came in the door. 

I worked my way up from cashier to bookbuyer. I was promoted to assistant manager. Eventually I got a few shifts in the rare book room. I loved it. I mean, I really loved it. I made the dearest of friends, met the most amazing people, and read every book I could consume. Had my new husband not moved us to St. Louis, I suspect I would have worked there for years to come.

The last time I was in Tucson, I decided to drive by the store for old times’ sake. It wasn’t there. There was just an empty lot and a Starbucks. It fell victim to a street widening project in the late 2010s.

It turns out that jobs come and go, even the good ones.

Over the last few weeks, I have found myself in multiple conversations with men and women who have lost their jobs or fear such a loss. The loss of a job is a terrifying limbo for most of us, wondering if we’ll be able to pay our bills and support our families. More than that, there’s a sense of shock and a questioning. Why is this happening? Could I–should I–have acted differently? Why did God let this happen?

The parable of the laborers in the vineyard (Matthew 20:1-16) is just that: a parable. Jesus told parables to make a point. A single point. It was John Chrysostom who wrote of parables, “wherefore neither is it right to inquire curiously into all things in parables word by word but when we have learned the object for which it was composed, to reap this and not to busy one’s self about anything further” (quoted in Frederick Dale Bruner, The Church: Matthew 13-28, Rev. and Expanded Edition, 318). In other words, keep it simple when interpreting parables and stick to the point. 

The point of the parable of the laborers in the vineyard is the sovereignty of God in dispensing God’s grace upon His people. Still, along the way, this parable draws the contours of a Christian understanding of work that could serve us well when the security of our jobs is in question.

The basic narrative of the parable is straightforward. A landowner goes out early in the morning to hire day laborers. He hires the first crew of workers for a denarius, which is generous pay for a day’s work. He goes out four more times throughout the day to hire more laborers, promising a fair wage each time. When it comes time to pay them, he gives them all the same wage. 

Not a preacher past or present hasn’t commented on how seemingly unjust the wage is for the day laborer hired at 5 p.m. Of course, the workers who’d been there all day grumbled! And, of course, the landowner defends his freedom to pay whatever he wants to pay. “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ (Matthew 20:15).

Appropriately, the message is a simple one. God is free to lavish his grace–even salvation–on whomever he chooses. Comparing ourselves to the disciple down the pew does no good for anyone. Our only appropriate response is gratitude to the sovereign God who bestows it. John Chrysostom would be pleased.

Yet, the setting for this message too is significant. It’s about laborers who’ve come to the marketplace in search of work. We call it a job hunt for a reason. We are hunters, looking for the right work, the right pay, the right location, the right future. When we get the call back, when we pass the performance tests and hear, “You’re hired,” there’s relief and joy and hope. When the call doesn’t come back quickly or at all, though, when we’re waiting for the call, checking our email hourly, and wondering, there’s fear and worry and self-doubt. It was as true for those laborers as it is for us today.

The context of the parable speaks volumes about our relationship to our work. 

Work is a gift from God for the sake of His kingdom.

Work, paid and unpaid, like all of life, is a gift from God. The laborers in that vineyard worked the land, and the land provided for the community. The work that matters never ends with us. God gives us work to use our gifts, and the gifts bless others. “The Christian disciple is, by definition, called to be a Christian worker” (Bruner, 319). Even back when I was working the cash register at Bookmans, I used to say that the work I did that really mattered was work I’d do even if I wasn’t getting paid. Sure, I took the money and ran the credit cards because it was my job, but I would have helped the teenager find the book he needed for school or sold the auto repair manual to the single mom for free. I was serving them. That’s discipleship. 

We are called to work, not a job.

God provides work, but He doesn’t guarantee a particular job. Some of the laborers had a job for a day, others for an hour. There’s no mention of work the next day. Businesses, enterprises, and workplaces come and go. Some last longer than others, but none of them are permanent. “ And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God abide forever” (1 John 2:17). Jobs go away, even dream jobs. New jobs emerge. If we’re doing the will of God by loving both Him and neighbor, it matters little where and how it’s happening.

I suppose that’s easier to say than to endure when a job ends unexpectedly and the new job hasn’t been found. When we’re wondering how to pay the mortgage. When the bills are overdue. When our sense of identity is uncertain. Here’s when the simple point–God’s sovereign grace–matters.

Finally, God provides extravagantly.

This is the promise that makes the call to work and the uncertainty of our jobs bearable. We can trust that God will provide for us, somehow, some way. We trust and He gives so His name can be praised.

In my first church where I served as an associate pastor, money was often thin. Several Decembers in a row, when the elders sat down to make a budget, my salary was a topic of debate. Reduce it? Eliminate it? Keep it and hope for the best? I spent the weeks of Advent wondering if I’d have a job in January, and I hated it. One day I complained to a friend about the lousy timing of my job uncertainty during the season of shopping. She sympathized but then commented that maybe December was the most appropriate time for such uncertainty. After all, she said, isn’t Advent all about hope and God’s love?

Fair enough. I didn’t stop complaining, mind you, but I did it with humility.

My friend’s observation is as true in Lent as it is in Advent and all year round. Work is a gift. Jobs come and go. God provides always. And He makes it all possible for the sake of hope and His love.

They’re lyrics from an old They Might Be Giants song titled (appropriately), “No!” When our kids were toddlers and a little older, we sang it to them. A lot. That’s probably why they’re in therapy now. (Here’s the song.)

In the early 1860’s, John Brett proposed to the poet Christina Rossetti. Christina said no. John didn’t give up. Without a They Might Be Giants song to play for him, she wrote him a poem instead. It’s titled (also appropriately), “No, Thank You, John.” Here are a couple of its more memorable verses: 

I never said I loved you, John:

Why will you tease me, day by day,

And wax a weariness to think upon

With always “do” and “pray”?

Let bygones be bygones:

Don’t call me false, who owed not to be true:

I’d rather answer “No” to fifty Johns

Than answer “Yes” to you. 

Poor John. Maybe he needs therapy too.

Jesus had something to say about our yes’s and no’s. Early in his Sermon on the Mount, he’s teaching about swearing oaths. They’re not necessary, He said. Oaths, after all, are just a concession to the fact that we human beings like to tell fibs. We’re called to be different and better.

“All you need to say is simply ‘Yes’ or ‘No’,” Jesus taught, “anything beyond this comes from the evil one” (Matthew 5:37).

“When a Christian says, ‘I will be there,’ the Christian will be there,” wrote Frederick Dale Bruner in his commentary on Matthew. “When a Christian says no, the Christian means no. When a Christian joins a group or enrolls in a course or accepts an invitation, the Christian fully means what that act entails and is faithfully there.”  

In other words, a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ ought to suffice. Mistakes happen. We forget. But, we sincerely intend to do whatever we say we’re going to do. Yes. No.

Of course, many of us–maybe too many of us–have a hard time saying that no even when we know it’s necessary. There’s not enough time in the day or energy in one ol’ body to say yes to every little thing. 

I’ve gotten better about saying no in the past several years. Being an instructor at our college helps a lot. Students actually appreciate a simple yes or no. They might not like it, but they know where they stand and what they need to do. Church members, colleagues, community folks, they might not be as appreciative, but they get it. If someone judges me for saying no to one more thing, then the judgment is on them.

It occurs to me, too, that there’s a flip side of this teaching. Followers of Jesus, if our simple yes or no suffices to say to others, then a simple yes or no ought to suffice when other followers say it to us. 

This is hard too. Sometimes, I really need someone to say yes. Yes, I will usher this Sunday. Yes, I will help with youth group. Yes, I’ll organize the Rotary Easter Egg Hunt. Yes, I’ll cover your class for you when you’re out of town. Yes, I’ll send that email for you.

If the friend or colleague or church member I’m asking is honest and faithful enough to say no, when they know they don’t have the time or interest or capacity, then I’ve got to trust their answer and trust God that someone else will be available or maybe it (whatever it is) just doesn’t need to get done. I’m not above begging, granted, but I try to use it sparingly.

And, a final note, a final reading of Jesus’ simple instruction, is this. Sometimes God says no too. And we’ve got to take it for what it is, trusting again that His timing and His will are perfect.

1. Jesus will still be Lord after the election ends, after the vote is certified, and after Inauguration Day. Still. Always

2. Your neighbors will still be your neighbors, regardless of how they voted, who wins, and how they react, so the ties that bind us to one another in friendship and care matter more than the election results.

3. You are a follower of Jesus. That identity is more important than being a Republican, Democrat, Independent, or none of the above. 

4. Your vote counts: It matters to the outcome for elected office and ballot issues. It matters A LOT to your soul. Be at peace with how you voted. 

5. Our job is to love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, and love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The rest is God’s job. Trust Him to do it.

I’m not talking about enemies, i.e. people who have actually done harm to us or to people we love or to projects or work that matters to us. I’m talking about the PWDL. We just don’t like them. They don’t share our faith, or our politics, or our lifestyles, or our commitment to the Broncos. They’ve made decisions we don’t like: sending their kids out of district or consistently mowing their lawn on Saturday at 6 a.m. They innocently annoy us. They just are not our cup of tea.

“Not my cup of tea” is actually my favorite way to describe these folks. It goes light. It casts no judgment. It declares definitively that the “not liking” part of the situation is my responsibility only. The other cup of tea has done nothing wrong.

Instead of PWDL, perhaps I should call these folks about whom I’m writing today the NMCOTs. Or maybe not. Let’s stick to the PWDL.

The first thing worth noting about thy PWDL is that we can’t avoid them. Oh, we can try. The larger the community in which we live, the easier time we may have segregating ourselves. Here in our small town, though, it’s almost impossible. It’s tough to hide from someone when there are only two grocery stores in town and one post office. We work with them. We sit next to them in the bleachers during the JV volleyball game. We (gulp) go to church with them.

It’s not that we actively seek harm for the PWDL, but we’re loathe to help them. We hate to see them succeed. We even might (albeit silently) wish them unhappiness or enjoy their failures or blame them for their suffering.

Therein lies the rub.

You see, the second thing worth noting about the PWDL is that there is nothing wrong with simply not liking them, but it doesn’t get us off the hook of loving them. That’s the Jesus part of this life. Somewhere in between loving thy neighbor and loving thy enemy is loving thy PWDL. We must sincerely seek their welfare, not because we like them, not because we enjoy it, but because they are made in the image of God just like us.

It’s a lesson hard learned and even harder lived. Just ask Jonah.

Remember the Ninevites? We meet them in the Book of Jonah, when God calls the prophet Jonah to preach repentance to them. “Arise, go to Nineveh, that great city, and call out against it, for their evil has come up before me” (Jonah 1:2). Jonah famously says, “Heck no,” and sails in the other direction. 

Most commonly, we characterize the Ninevites as archenemies of God’s people. We preachers like to cast the Ninevites as Nazis or the Taliban, the most evil of the most evil, so (of course!) Jonah runs the other way. Is that a fair assessment of the Ninevites? Maybe. But not necessarily. And not uniformly. 

The scale of the real harm by the Ninevites of Assyria really depends upon when the Book of Jonah was written, which is a matter of serious scholarly debate. I’ve found learned opinions that put the writing of the Book of Jonah anywhere from 786 to 187 BCE. A lot can change in 600 years, and the Assyrians were of wildly varying military capacity over the span of those centuries.

Add to that, there’s more serious scholarly debate about the actual severity of the Assyrians’ military attacks on Israel. Yes, they sacked Samaria and Judah (2 Kings 18:9-10, 13), and the Assyrian king Sennacherib threatened the Israelites like crazy (19:11-13), but Jerusalem was ultimately left untouched. 1 Kings 19:35-36 remembers the Assyrians turning back from the city after 185,0

00 of their soldiers died; the corresponding Assyrian history names no such losses (here) but the result is the same. Damage? Yes, a lot, but this was all around 700 BCE, so, if the date of Jonah’s prophecy is hundreds of years later, would hatred still have burned so bright? Maybe, but maybe not. 

The Japanese did a number on Pearl Harbor. That was only 80 years ago, but I still made cheesecake bars for a Japanese student’s birthday last week. 

So, maybe, just maybe, these Ninevites are less “member of the Taliban”-level evil and more “that girl who got me kicked off the volleyball team in eleventh grade”-level annoying. Maybe the Ninevites were closer to PWDL.

And God still sent Jonah to call them to repentance. Jonah didn’t want to help them. He found a bush and sat pouting under it, because he didn’t want the Ninevites to succeed. He wanted them to suffer the consequences of their own sins with no hope of escape. 

When we’re silently enjoying the spectacle of our spouse’s ex-whatever’s new relationship falling apart, are we any better than Jonah pouting under the bush?

That’s a whole lot more convicting, at least for me, because I don’t often run across Nazis or Taliban at a Friday night football game, but I guarantee you I regularly see the clergy colleague who shared my confidential prayer request all over town.

Love the PWDL in your life, Jesus commands. No, we don’t have to like them or spend time with them, but we must sincerely hope for, pray for, and act in their best interests. Jesus is calling us to really want what is best for them. 

All of them.

Donald Trump’s name is easy enough to pronounce. I’ve been watching Donald Duck cartoons since I was a kid, and who hasn’t wanted to play the trump card? 

But Kamala Harris? Well, her name is a little tougher. Fair enough if we stumble, but too often I’m hearing people (a) not even try or (b) mispronounce her name intentionally in ways that are unintentionally racist. Friends, “I just call her ‘Caramel’ since she’s brown” is not okay. 

Making a joke of someone’s racial and ethnic background or skin color is not okay in the community, and it’s really not okay in the body of Christ where we know ourselves–all of ourselves–made precious in the image of God.

Besides, names matter. Names mean something.

All throughout our scriptures, God gets particular about names.

Abram became Abraham, meaning “father of many” (Genesis 17:5). Pharaoh’s daughter gave Moses his name, meaning “draw out,” after drawing him out of the water (Exodus 2:10). Poor Naomi, whose name means “pleasant,” changes her name to “Mara,” meaning “bitter” (Ruth 1:20). 

Jesus, name above all names, means “God saves” (Luke 1:31). 

Behind every name is a story, and every story is of people who love and care about the child they are naming. I don’t know Kamala Harris’ mom, but I suspect she and her husband chose the name with all the excitement and joy of all expectant parents.

So, I get it. Names are hard to remember sometimes and even harder to pronounce and spell. I’m a pastor, and I struggle all the time with names. Do you know how many ways there are to spell Hailey, Hayley, Haylee, Hayleigh…you get the idea?

And I get that there are really valid reasons not to vote for Ms. Harris, but there’s no excuse for mockery. As an American, I want to respect the Office of the Presidency. As a citizen of the Kingdom, I want to respect the image of God in her.

Here’s the easiest way I’ve found to remember how to pronounce Ms. Harris’ first name: 

“Comma-la.” It’s the punctuation mark, plus a la. Or, as Fraulein Maria would say, the punctuation mark plus “a note to follow so.” 

Kamala. Comma-la. It’s her name, and it’s not that hard. For the sake of God-Saves, we can try.

“Love Anyway, Love Because”

There’s an old story of a preacher who was finishing an impassioned sermon on today’s passage (Matthew 5:43-48), “Love your enemies.”

He looked out at the congregation and asked, “Will you go out into the world and love your enemies?”

Roused by the Holy Spirit, every hand in the congregation went up except for one. She was an elderly woman in the front row.

The pastor paused and looked at her. “Why can’t you love your enemies?” he asked.

She shrugged, “Pastor, I can honestly say I have no enemies.”

The pastor didn’t buy it. “Remind me again how old you are?” he asked.

“Pastor,” she replied, “you know I’m 96.”

He nodded. “Yes! 96 years old and no enemies? That’s impossible. How could you have lived that long without having any enemies?” 

The little lady stood, turned to the congregation with a smile and answered, “I outlived them all.”

It would be hard to live our lives–even a life shorter than 96 years–without having or making any enemies. 

A lot of us use the word enemy pretty loosely, so let’s be clear: A person who annoys you is not your enemy. A person you dislike is not your enemy. An enemy, strictly and biblically speaking, is someone who rises to the level of hatred. An enemy is someone you would gladly see hurt. Enemies, thankfully, are rare but seemingly unavoidable.

When I think of enemies, I remember a teacher years ago who was mean, really mean, to my daughter, to the point that other teachers at the school described stepping in to try to protect her. I think of a boss who’d get me alone in his office to cuss me out. I had to pray–a lot–to not let my anger become hatred. It was personal.

When Jesus spoke to those crowds on the hillside that day, preaching what we now call the Sermon on the Mount, the word “enemy” was personal, of course.

Every person there could have thought of someone they might have wanted to see in pain. We all could. A neighbor, a family member, a former friend, a co-worker, someone. 

But the word “enemy”was also used then to describe a kind of group hatred. Culturally, the ancient Jews were very loyal to their tribe. They had a sort of insider-outsider mentality that was completely normal at that time in the ancient Middle East.

Those Jews on the hillside, as a group, would have been taught to hate the Roman authorities, Samaritans (we have a whole parable about hating them), and others.  

Jews in that time took their identity as God’s chosen people seriously, after all, and they did everything they could to protect it. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, for instance, as the number of Jesus’ followers continued to grow, the Jewish liturgy included a prayer, “For persecutors let there be no hope, and the dominion of arrogance do Thou speedily root out in our days; and let Christians and minim perish in a moment, let them be blotted out of the book of the living and let them not be written with the righteous” (Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew, a commentary, volume 1, 268).  There were many who wanted followers of Jesus to just disappear.

I fear that this is the point that many Americans have reached.  Many Americans sincerely wish that that other candidate and the people who support that other candidate would just disappear.  And they’re willing to go to great lengths, even violence, to make it happen.  Yesterday’s assassination attempt is sufficient evidence.

We don’t know why that 20-year old man took a rifle to the rally yesterday and shot at former President Trump. The motives will emerge over time, even as conspiracy theories swirl.  Let’s not jump to conclusions. John Hinckley Jr shot President Reagan to impress Jodie Foster.  People do bad things for really bizarre reasons.

Here’s what must matter most to us:  We as Christians in the United States must not participate in the hatred.  Not in words, not in actions, not even in thought.  If there was even a moment when the thought crossed our minds–”I wish the bullet hadn’t missed”–we’ve got work to do.  If there was even a moment when we wished that another bullet might be pointed at President Biden, we have work to do.

Our political parties are affiliations, not tribes, and our first allegiance, always, must be to our Savior Jesus Christ who transcends every tribe or tongue.

Love your neighbors, and that includes your enemies. All your neighbors and all your enemies.

And that’s really the bottom line here. By teaching us to love our enemies, Jesus is teaching us to love everybody. Everybody. 

This command lifts all qualifications on who you should love. 

We don’t have to wonder–

• Well, do I have to love the boss who fired me? The answer is yes. 

• Do I need to love the people in that other political party? Yes. 

• Do I need to love the coach who made my kid doubt himself? Yes. 

• Do I need to love Cowboys fans? Yes. (That’s a joke.)

We don’t have to feel warm fuzzies toward them. We don’t need to agree with them. We don’t have to even spend time with them if we don’t want to. But, we are being called to sincerely hope for, pray for, and act in the best interests of all of them. Jesus is calling us to really want what is best for them. All of them. Love everybody. 

Jesus is not being naive. He’s not saying that the things people have done to us are okay. Bad people are still bad. Mean people are still mean. 

In the words of Travis Kelce’s girlfriend–

Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate; Players gonna play play play play play; Fakers gonna fake, fake, fake, fake, fake.

Love them anyway. Because God loves them anyway. Jesus is not asking us to do anything God is not doing daily.

After all, God loves us anyway. God wants us, provides for us, leads us, at every moment to what is truly best for us–

Even when we’re mean, when we turn away from Him, when we hate, and when we’re the enemy we so despise in someone else.

Love anyway, because God first loved us.

I know this is an absurdly hard teaching. I know what some of you have faced. I know what some of you have had to forgive or are still trying to forgive. I get it. 

Jesus, of all people, understood what it felt like to have hatred turned on him. Those Pharisees and Sadducees and the temple leadership hated him so much that they did make him hurt. 

They beat him, stuck thorns in a crown around his skull, dragged him through the streets carrying the cross on which they’d execute him, drove those nails into his hands and feet and left him to die where everyone could watch.

Yeah, Jesus knew about hatred. And still he loved. Do the same, he told us. Love anyway.

Like everything else he taught, he didn’t expect perfection overnight. 

Now, if you’ve read through to Matthew 5:48, you know that Jesus later tells the people, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48) Here’s where a little knowledge of the original Greek language helps.

Perfect is the word teleios. The word typically means complete or finished. When Jesus was on the cross, for instance, and said, “It is finished,” he used a form of this word. It’s a word that describes the finished product while assuming the process that precedes it. It assumes the transformation that leads to completeness. “Be perfect,” says Jesus as a command. “Work at it. It’s a process. Work at becoming more and more like your Father God, who is already complete, Who is All in All.”  (Bruner, 276).

Growing up into the likeness of our Father God is a process. It’s a process, for each and every one of us. Choosing to love our enemies, that’s a big part of it. 

It’s worth noting that, when Jesus gives this command to love our enemies, he commands it in the plural. It’s not “you,” “you,” and “you,” love your enemies. It’s “y’all, love your enemies,” so that–together–we’ll be children (again plural) of our Father in heaven.

When we live this counter-cultural way of sincerely hoping for, praying for, and acting in the best interests of every person, we’re going to know God as our Father, and it will be that warm, fuzzy kind of love we have with the people in our families who really love us. By loving our enemies, we get to know the love of God better and better.

It’s no small thing. Knowing God’s love, knowing His approval and his affection, is like gasoline in our heart’s engines. When I get worked up about something, or anxious, or tired, or annoyed, I try to stop and take a deep breath and say to myself, “God loves me.” God loves me, in this moment, in this place and situation, without qualification, so it’s all going to be all right.

And, ironically, that’s what loving our enemies–together–moves us closer to knowing–each one of us.

I have an idea that it’s part of why God calls us into churches like ours. Here we are, sitting and praying together, despite all our differences. Maybe we can’t stand someone who is here. Maybe we’re really mad. Maybe we just don’t understand why they do the things they do and believe the things they believe, but here we are, paying attention to God together for this hour a week. It’s one of the ways we practice loving our enemies. 

I remember a Sunday, years ago, watching a woman praising Jesus not 15 feet away from the man who had fired her four days earlier.  Love anyway.  

If that’s not counter-cultural, if that’s not what our nation needs right now, I don’t know what is.

“For the last fourteen days,” their prisoner Paul told them, “you have been in constant suspense and have gone without food—you haven’t eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not one of you will lose a single hair from his head” (Acts 27:33-34).

Not bad advice, especially coming from one of the criminals they were transporting back to Rome. 

But that promise? Not losing a single hair? Not even a scratch or a scrape or a bruise? After enduring fourteen days of the perfect storm, they had to have been dubious. 

What Paul did next, though, was about way more than providing a few calories to sustain them.

“After he said this,” Luke continued, “he took some bread and gave thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat” (27:35).

It was no simple dinner he was serving. It was the eucharist, the thanksgiving, the breaking of the bread Jesus had celebrated with his disciples that last night of his earthly life.

The sailors were “encouraged” (27:36). That’s what Jesus does. He gives courage.

When the ship finally runs aground, the soldiers’ first impulse was to contain the damage. “At least let’s not let the prisoners escape “, they say to themselves (27:42). The commander Julius had other ideas. He wanted to save Paul, but he couldn’t save Paul without saving the others. He had to let them all live. So be it.

Julius gave orders. If the men could swim, they could jump overboard. If they couldn’t, they’d jump anyway and grab one of the planks of wood from the busted up hull. They all made it to shore.

It’s been a long week. What I had chalked up to a little stress and lack of sleep turned out to be an infection that I let go too long before getting help. Even as I write, I’m drooping and looking forward to bedtime.

But, dinner is soon and prayer at the table. Jesus encourages. And as I picture a bunch of prisoners, maybe sailors and soldiers too, clinging to pieces of wood as the storm pushed them closer to the beach, I’m assured. I’ll make it to the shore. The infection will pass. 

Everything–even me, even you–will be all right. 

Last Thursday, it was a little after 6 a.m. I had a coffee cup in my left hand, a very large dog to my right side, and the Bible open on my lap, as I read from 1 John:

“As for you, see that what you have heard from the beginning remains in you. If it does, you also will remain in the Son and in the Father. And this is what he promised us—eternal life” (2:24-25).

Whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa.  “If”?  What do you mean, “if”?  There’s no “if” about eternal life.  Once in, always in. Otherwise, it’s up to us. Otherwise, my good Calvinist doctrine of the perseverance of the saints is…exaggerated?  Or wrong?  Oh dear.

After all, the perseverance of the saints is right there in Chapter 18 of the Westminster Confession:

“They whom God hath accepted in his Beloved, effectually called and sanctified by his Spirit, can neither totally nor finally fall away from the state of grace; but shall certainly persevere therein to the end, and be eternally saved” (“Of the Perseverance of the Saints,” The Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter 18).

I have friends who disagree with every fiber of their Baptist beings, so I know it’s not settled in the minds of all Christians. Still, I’ve always figured that, if my salvation were up to me, I was in trouble. I rely on God and God alone. 

My devotional guide wasn’t trying to trick me. Its editors had pulled out verses 18-25 for me that morning, in no way intending to shake my faith, but, after only half a cup of coffee, I was shook.  

Sitting in my office that afternoon, I turned to my commentaries.  The verses come in the context of refuting false teaching.  John, the son of Zebedee (or maybe one of his inner circle) was writing to these Christians because some teachers among them were leading them to separate Jesus from Christ. That separation denied the full humanity of Christ. Later, it was a heresy that would get the name docetism. 

More to the point, this separation of Jesus from Christ had separated believers from each other. “Behind the pained rhetoric of 1 John 2:18-25 is a harrowing reality: for the first time in the NT record, a church has fallen apart over a matter of critical importance, a division that must surely have been experienced with shock by those whose tradition accentuated the church’s unity in Christ” [Clifton Black 405 NIB]

I’ve been through a church split. It wasn’t fun. In one of the earliest schisms, it seems that John was trying to get the people to remain in right teaching. Remaining in Christ was still up to God.  Cue the sigh of relief. The perseverance of the saints was not being thrown into question, only my judgment at letting isolated verses so confuse me.

And, really, I didn’t even need the commentaries to straighten me out. All I would have had to do was let my eyes skim a little higher in the same chapter.

“I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one” (2:14b).

“Lives in you” translates from the Greek meno, the very same word used in 2:24 where it’s translated “remain.”  The New Revised Standard conveniently translates it to the same word in English throughout the chapter.

The Word of God “remains in you” (2:14b), so “remain” in it (2:24).  

This seemingly nonsensical marriage of the indicative and the imperative is all over scripture.  It was there in Genesis 12, when Abraham was told he was blessed to be a blessing.  The apostle Paul tells the people in his churches, over and over, “You’re holy, so be holy.”  Jesus joins them.  “You are the light,” he says, “so shine.”  Because of who you are, this is what you’ll do.

“The Christian life is not passive or solitary; it is a life lived before others and before the face of God. Our goodworks never merit a right standing before God, but they inevitably and necessarily demonstrate that this right standing has been imputed to us” (here).

John isn’t making salvation contingent upon anything.  He’s just trying to wrench the people back to right doctrine in hopes it will hold that church together.

So, no, our salvation isn’t up to us “if” we believe the right things. What is up to us is to try our best to take those beliefs seriously and not be led astray by the newest, hippest teacher on TV or TikTok or anywhere else.

And you know what else is up to us? To remember and commit to not taking isolated scripture verses out of context. Even on half a cup of coffee.