praise and cursing

I’ve heard some pretty vicious things said over coffee after church. I’ve heard nasty gossip, disgust about rivals, anger toward people on the opposite side of the church building question, and hatred directed at politicians. Oh, that’s not most of what I hear, but I think I hear something mean most Sundays.

Sometimes at work when someone says something horrible, someone else will say, “And you kiss your mother with that mouth?” James challenges us in pretty much the same way in James 3:9-11: “With the tongue we praise our Lord and Father, and with it we curse human beings, who have been made in God’s likeness. Out of the same mouth come praise and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this should not be. Can both fresh water and salt water flow from the same spring?”

How do I reconcile these dual uses for my mouth, the vile things I say with the same organs that I use to praise God? How do I make sense of the mean-spirited things I post and tweet with my attempts to use those same platforms for these devotional blogs? How do my praises not disgust God?

What Paul wrote is so true: there are two men inside me, the sinful man who wants to indulge my worst instincts, and the saved saint who lives for better things. But in this matter of how I use my voice, there aren’t two options. To mix the metaphor, I can be the fresh-water spring that brings life, or a flood of salt water that kills what it touches.

My choice. But it seems like passing on those chances to say the mean thing is a small price to pay to be able to bring true praise to God.

mercy triumphs

This is a rough political climate. We can debate the factors, but the outcome is that in our churches and communities, we’re more willing to fight over the upcoming election than at any time I can recall. We have a heightened willingness to get in each others’ faces over what we see as mistaken, even dangerous, views on national policy and polity. And on social media, look out.

It gets easier every day to discern who the good guys and bad guys are. At least, if we listen to the talking heads and more strident voices on our side.

There seems to me to be little of Godliness in all of this. James 2:12-13 says: “Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment.”

Aren’t we all about judgment? Am I not all about judgment? As an converted independent (formerly Republican) I’m appalled at the scheming and intransigence of the progressives. I’m equally disgusted with the callousness and tribalism of the far right. As far as I’m concerned, none of them are good for our country.

But that’s my judgmental side at work. James doesn’t encourage that, because Jesus wouldn’t either. James reminds me that the old law of judgment has been replaced by the Jesus-era law of gratitude. He points out that instead of legalism, I’m supposed to be moved by the mercy I received. Jesus didn’t judge me, he loved me. That’s the standard.

Christians are not called to judgment, not even when it comes to politics. We’re called to mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment, especially in the cosmic sense. 

Can I do it? Can I suspend my judgment and show loving mercy to all those people who are so obviously wrong? I don’t know, but if I believe James I have to try.

beards and mirrors

For the last few years, I’ve had a beard. If I say so myself, it’s a pretty good one. Oh, not everyone thinks so. My wife has used the word “scruffy,” and certain brothers gleefully point out the amount of gray. Even so, I like it and even better, my grandkids love it. They especially like it when I grow it out for Christmas and then, sometimes, I comb it backwards so it sticks straight out. Makes their grandma crazy.

There’s one thing I don’t like about it though: after decades of a no-maintenance look, I’m now dependent on mirrors. You see, a problem with facial hair is it can get stuff stuck in it, or it can stick out funny. So periodically throughout the day, and always after meals, I go look. When I see something unsightly, I fix it.

That’s an everyday experience for most that James uses to promote understanding in James 1:22-25: “Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. Anyone who listens to the word but does not do what it says is like someone who looks at his face in a mirror and, after looking at himself, goes away and immediately forgets what he looks like. But whoever looks intently into the perfect law that gives freedom, and continues in it—not forgetting what they have heard, but doing it—they will be blessed in what they do.”

James explains that the law is like a mirror: it shows us what’s wrong with us. It shows us what God – and many close to us – already see. It shows our selfishness and anger and self-indulgence. It shows our lusts and perverted appetites. It shows all the things we think we’re hiding. 

And if we see all that and choose not to change, it’s just a stupid as me leaving soup in my beard. 

We have a love-hate relationship with the law. We forget that it was given to us by God, and we forget why. We forget that without it we wouldn’t know what obedience looks like. We also forget that, by the grace of God, this mirror does something else. While it shows us what’s wrong with us, it also shows us at our best. It shows us what a perfect life would look like. 

When Jesus came, he obeyed the law perfectly. Then he paid the price of disobedience not for himself, but for us. So that, when we look into that mirror and see ourselves as we are, we also know that we can become that image of our perfect selves.

This mirror called the law is a critical tool for obedient living. I should look into it at least as ofte as I check my beard. 

perspective

Did you ever see one of those holographic pictures that changes according to the angle you look at it? Stand here, and it’s a sleeping lion; stand over there and the lion is awake and roaring.

Life can be like that. Viewed through the lens of our humanity and earthbound experience, it can look bleak and hopeless. Given God’s perspective, though, and you see a fantastic world.

Mary had that. Look at this vignette from the resurrection story, as given to us in John 20:14-17: 

“At this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she did not realize that it was Jesus.

“He asked her, ‘Woman, why are you crying? Who is it you are looking for?’

“Thinking he was the gardener, she said, ‘Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him, and I will get him.’

“Jesus said to her, ‘Mary.’

“She turned toward him and cried out in Aramaic, ‘Rabboni!’ (which means “Teacher”).

“Jesus said, ‘Do not hold on to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father. Go instead to my brothers and tell them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.”’”

All of Mary’s human experience told her that Jesus was dead and gone. With that perspective, the empty tomb was just one more cruel trick played by the Jewish leaders. One more thing to make a bad morning even worse. Through her dim vision, even Jesus just looked like a gardener.

Then, her perspective shifted. Jesus spoke. Jesus proved he was alive, and told her his plans. And suddenly, defeat and despair and hopelessness were gone. That gloomy garden must have seemed like the most beautiful place on earth.

Do I see it? When I look around, I often see us losing. I see morality decaying, civility pretty much gone, kindness only situational and tarnished by selfish motives. I see predators and abusers of all kinds, and countless victims broken in their path. I see Christianity labeled as superstition, and Christians responding by compromising their values. Satan seems to be on the march, effortlessly rolling over goodness. This doesn’t look like victory to me.

But then Jesus puts his hand on my shoulder and turns my head. Then I see the cross towering over it all, casting an unmistakable shadow across the world. I see faithful Christians moving about the battlefield, tending to the wounded and fighting to maintain safe places for the refugees. I see the desperation in the enemy as he realizes that this is his last, best effort and it’s not going to be enough. And I realize that Jesus has him whipped, and is waiting just long enough for the last of his people to be gathered in. Jesus is a no-person-left-behind kind of leader, and his people are spending themselves completely on that mission. I’m on the winning side, and I get to help save the remainder.

It’s a compelling, inspiring vision of the world, and I can see it as long as I stay by Jesus. 

flogged

John 19:1: “Then Pilate took Jesus and had him flogged.”

I read the story of Jesus’ torture and execution this morning with a chill. For whatever reason, this verse, which I’ve read often before, shocked me this morning.

Imagine the reckless, unknowing disregard of danger. There’s a phrase we use sometimes when people provoke someone they shouldn’t, or pick a fight they can’t win: poking the bear. But think of what it means to whip God. To beat the creator of the world. To flog the one who would rise to become Lord of the universe. With one little flare of his temper, Jesus could have flattened the whole building, or the whole city. Only his determined self-control save the men who tormented him.

Imagine the indignity. Imagine being God, existing outside of time but everywhere in the world, constrained by nothing or no one. Imagine voluntarily accepting the ball and chain of a human body and the limitations of a human existence. Imagine living the only perfect life ever lived by a man or woman. And then, imagine being bound and flogged. In addition to the physical pain, the emotional shock of the debasement and dehumanization must have been immense.

Imagine both of those things, and then feel guilt. The reason Jesus had to go through this is because we can’t get it together. Despite our love of God we continually serve our sins. Far from fleeing temptation, we stand rooted in place as it draws near, or even step closer out of curiosity. Our broken relationship with God breaks more every day, so that only the life and death of Jesus could have any positive effect on it.

Imagine flogging God. 

Imagine being the reason God was flogged.

truth

Occasionally, scripture sounds so contemporary you could almost imagine seeing it unfold on Fox or CNN. Here’s an from Jesus’ hearing before the Roman governor Pilate as found in John 18:37-38: 

“Jesus answered, ‘You say that I am a king. In fact, the reason I was born and came into the world is to testify to the truth. Everyone on the side of truth listens to me.’

“‘What is truth?’ retorted Pilate.”

What is truth? That’s really hard to tell these days, isn’t it. Truth is what we want to hear. Bad news is fake news; news that supports the ideas and positions we already have is truth. And in this weird way, we become the thing that makes something true. Truth is what we want to believe, therefore what we believe is true.

There’s something supremely ironic about Pilate, face to face with the divine God become man who revealed himself as the Truth, asking, “What is truth?” He should have asked, “Who is truth?” and the answer would have been right there in front of him.

Had Pilate been on the side of truth, as Jesus says here, he would have listened to Jesus. Instead, he never sees Jesus for what he is.

Pilate is what we too often are: a cynic. He’s skeptical about what he’s told, and trusts his own judgment above what he hears from others. So he too becomes a person who defines his own truth by what he believes.

Further irony: we are the worst people in the world to judge truth as it pertains to us. Our feelings are unreliable. Our feelings make mountains out of molehills all the time; we let our fears make cowards of us, jumping at shadows and guarding against things that not only aren’t there but never come to pass. In anyone else we call this crying wolf; in ourselves we trust it as a superior knowledge of the truth.

What is truth? It’s the reality of God and his work in our lives. As such, it’s incomprehensible to anyone who doesn’t listen to Jesus.

given

Some things in scripture become richer the more I think about them. I ran across one of those passages again this morning, in this part of Jesus’ prayer at the Last Supper as recorded in John 17:6-12: 

“‘I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled.’”

There’s something really reassuring in the idea that God, to whom belongs every single one of his image bearers, gave some of them to Jesus. I understand this passage to refer to the men and women who recognized Jesus for what he was, who believed his revelation, and who followed him. And at the very end Jesus prayed this prayer for that group. It’s a touching demonstration of his love and concern for them, and also an intriguing glimpse into the doctrine of election.

When I read this, I like to imagine God deciding to give me to Jesus. I think about what that transfer looked like. Was I one of a group? Did God point me out to Jesus by name? I know this is fanciful thinking, but it helps me to see my election as a personal thing.

When I think of it like this, I soon begin to think of the kind of love involved, and the very personal relationship I have with God. And I realize that, because my salvation is founded not on my fickle behavior but on his immutable character, that relationship will never be at risk. I can damage myself with my bad choices. I can make a wreck of my earthly life. But as long as I cling to the cross of Jesus as my only hope, that hope will be sufficient.

So I like to think about it. God probably didn’t wrap me up in a gift box and pass me to Jesus at a party or ceremony, but I like to think something as significant was involved. I like to think I was given in love to a Lord who loves me.