Think And Let Think

As Christians we cannot ignore the condition of our condition, we cannot fool ourselves into believing that we are better than anyone else - we are sinners resting in the hands of a loving God. That we can call God a loving God is what makes all the difference. For, it is in the same moment that we can truly acknowledge our brokenness that we also begin to see God as the One who offers mercy to us even though we don’t deserve it. While we were sinners, Christ died for us. Not before we were sinners, or after we were sinners, but in the midst of our sin.

None is righteous, no, not one. That’s the point of the Law - on our own we can’t even fulfill a fraction of it. All that stuff that Moses brought down from the mountain, it is good only insofar as it shows us that we, all of us, are bad. We’re all bad no matter how good we think we are and no matter how good we think other people are. Because behind closed doors, when we think we’re alone, or that no one will ever find out - in the secret thoughts of our hearts and minds - each and every one of us are more like Donald Trump and Pete Buttigieg and Rush Limbaugh and Jean Vanier than we are like Jesus Christ.

We tend to think that we have to save ourselves, and we’ve forgotten that the cross stands to show us how Christ is already in the business of putting us back together, in ways we’d rather not if it were up to us. But thanks be to God that’s its not up to us, because if it were all we’d achieve is more of the same instead of the in-breaking of the Kingdom of God on earth. If it were up to us we’d only associate ourselves with the people who already think like us, and talk like us, and even look likes us instead of being surrounded by the great cloud of witnesses that only have one thing in common: Jesus Christ and him crucified.

The cross is where God meets us in our own lives. In all of our suffering, in all of our sins, in our shames and pains. And that is downright scandalous because it rubs against so much of what we’ve been taught to think and speak. If we’ve left church feeling guilty for all the things we should have done, or for all the things we left undone, then we’ve missed the scandal of the cross. The scandal is that we don’t have to do anything. Because Christ does the everything we could not and would not do for ourselves.

For as much as the cross is a sign to the world about the forgiveness of sins, it is equally a reminder that we have plenty of sins for which we all need forgiveness. Or, to put it another way, we cannot look at the cross without confronting the inconvenient truth that we are the sinners for whom Christ died. We confess, however, that we would much prefer to hear a different kind of message about the cross. Perhaps something a little more uplifting, or at the very least something optimistic. Ultimately, whether we like to admit it or not, what we really want is to be told that we are right and they, whoever they are, are wrong. But, again, the cross tells us something different - the cross tell us we’re all wrong.

The letters of Paul and the stories of Jesus show us that there is more to grace than simply being accepted for who we are. And, no doubt, we are accepted - after all, grace abounds. But we are now in a kingdom bound by that grace which means we have been changed. Can you imagine what Martin Luther King Jr.'s work would’ve have looked like without a call to change? What good is a dream of something new if only we stay committed to the past?

Here’s the kicker about tragic occurrences in the world - the best thing Christians can do (other than offering signs of help and support) is to just be quiet. The unyielding desire to discern some greater meaning, or meaninglessness, behind it all, is cruel and presumptuous. Any time we, and by we I mean Christians, offer pious platitudes or trite words of comfort it only results in our soothing our own guilty consciences and making God into a terrible monster.

How big is the "all" of "that all shall be saved"?

In Jesus’ kingdom trespasses are forgiven, grace is given, enemies are prayed for, peace is practiced, and all of our earthly differences are swallowed up because its more important for us to swallow the body and blood of Christ at this table together. In the end, our personal politics might not line up with what Jesus had to say and what Jesus had to do, but Jesus was political, and the church always will be.

Our world is constantly telling us to do more, to be better, and to get it all together. And even in the church, we fall prey to this temptation all the time by telling people about all the stuff we need to do. But all of that is self-defeating because the more we’re told about what we’re supposed to do the more guilty we feel for all we’re not doing. On Christmas Eve its different. Its different because the strange new world of God’s desire has become our world. The whole story is about how we can’t do all that we need to do and that’s okay.

Part of what makes us/Christians different is that we know that we no longer belong to ourselves and we haven’t been left to our own devices. We belong to Jesus Christ who came into the world to take us and our burdens upon his shoulders. We belong to Jesus Christ who sees and knows our sins and nails them to the cross anyway. We belong to Jesus Christ whose birth we mark in the manger, and whose return we anticipate with joy and wonder.

We are at our strangest when we confess the dissonance of two Biblical truths: All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God AND there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. In other words, all of us are sinners AND Jesus saves us anyway. That we confess “Jesus saves us anyway” is why we can call the Good News good. God does for us what we could not do for ourselves. There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.

Ultimately one of the strangest things about who we are and what we’re doing is that we’re not really called to do much of anything at all. If anything, the only thing we have to do is celebrate that we don’t have to do anything. That’s the message of Jesus and his cross. God came to do what we could not and would not do. No amount of belief, or money, or morals can give salvation to us nor take it away. It is simply a gift for those who want it. No catch and no fine print involved whatsoever. If you want to know what the gathering looks like, save for a bunch of people hanging out in a basement, its like an outdoor wedding reception that refuses to stop on account of rain.

Salvation is nearer to us now than when we became believers. For many of us, that moment of becoming believers came with a catch - if we believe this, then God will do this. Or if we lay aside our sins, then God will give us eternal life as our everlasting reward. Or if we promise to love God with our whole hearts, souls, minds, and strengths, then God will love us back. But there is no such thing as “if” in the kingdom of God.

I’ve noted a few times recently that it often doesn’t help the church to just spend time addressing what’s wrong in other churches. And I want to own that - I know that. But sometimes we have to know what’s wrong in order to know what is right. If the church tells us that we need to put America first, then it is not God’s church. If the church tells us that some people are in and some people are out, then it is not God’s church. If the church tells us that any politician or any leader or any celebrity is more important than the least of these, then it is not God’s church. We can only know what is good, right, and true because we know who Jesus is. Jesus, to use Paul’s language, makes the invisible God visible. Jesus is before all things and all things are held together in him, by him, and for him. Jesus is first. And that makes all the difference.

Sometimes it feels like the church is in the midst of a crisis. It should come as no surprise that less and less people come to church week after week, the world feels like is twirling down the drain faster than ever before, and that’s not even getting into the specifics of cultural and societal changes. But if the church really is in a crisis it is because we have foolishly convinced ourselves that we are a bunch of good people getting better. The truth of the church is quite the opposite: we are a bunch of bad people who are coping with our failure to be good.

Jesus changes everything. That is what I want to tell people when I hear them talk about their better half, or their lesser half. No one becomes less of a person when they get married! Or at least they shouldn’t. We are unique and beautiful and wondrous because that's exactly who God created us to be. And yet, of course, we were made to be in community, but that doesn’t mean we lose part of who we are by being connected with other people. If anything, the point of connection is to give us the freedom and the strength to flourish as God made us.

Whether its Rome, or America, or our bosses, or our spouses, or whoever - we are forever being told who we are. We define ourselves by the definitions given to us by others, and more often than not from the others with power. When we look in the mirror we see not what we see but we see what we’ve been told. But for Christians, none of us know who we really are until God tells us.

God cares not at all how much money we put in the offering plate or how much money we send to our favorite charity or how much money we make every two weeks or how much money we have saved away for a rainy day. God cares only that we see and know and taste and touch the wondrous gift already given to us in Jesus. What happens next is a matter of faith.

God sees potential in God’s creation in a frame of reference often beyond our ability to grasp. God believes in God’s people as a long term investment - it takes a lifetime of hearing about the goodness of grace before it really sticks. But God keeps saving anyway. Even when things in the present scream the contrary, God keeps pouring out the Holy Spirit on a bunch of investments that no one in their right mind would put their money on. God saves because that’s who God is.