The Waking Dreamer: Gospel of Matthew

Showing posts with label Gospel of Matthew. Show all posts

Tuesday, August 18, 2026

Unworthy?

Matthew 15:21-28[1]

We have all kinds of ways of drawing lines between “us” and “them.” It’s tempting to add “these days” to that statement, but I think in fact the human family has always had plenty of ways to draw lines between “us” and “them.” I’m sure there was a time when that was purely a matter of survival. But that time has long passed for most of us. Yet we persist in seeing those who are “too” different from us as “others” and perhaps even “enemies.” It seems to me that we do that most in uncertain times. Especially when influential people use their voices to stoke our fears and anxieties and to convince us that they’re the only ones we should trust with power. This happens at all levels and on all sides of the lines we draw between “us” and “them.”

Part of the problem with this mindset is that when we label someone as “other” or as an “enemy,” it opens the door for us to devalue their humanity. That’s true in times of war. It’s almost impossible to put someone into battle and expect them to actually kill other human beings without convincing them that their “enemies” don’t deserve to live. But it’s also true in other aspects of life. I find it troubling that our political discourse takes this approach. The attitude these days seems to be “If you disagree with me, you’re not worth my time.” At least that’s the tone of what I see and hear on social media, and again, it’s on all sides. But even more troubling to me is the fact that we bring this mindset into our religion as well. If someone’s religion makes them too “different” from us, we tend to dismiss not only their faith but their humanity as well. That means they’re not even worthy of our friendship, let alone our love!

Unfortunately, this attitude toward people who hold different faiths has infected people of all religious persuasions throughout history. “We,” whoever we may be, are most worthy of God’s love because we worship “the right way.” “They,” whoever they may be, may be loved by God, but they don’t really deserve it because they don’t worship “the right way.” This attitude may show up as a preference, or as a sense of superiority, or even as stated doctrine! Unfortunately, the various declarations of God’s love in the Hebrew Bible convinced many Jewish people that they were “special” in this way. They missed the fact that what made them special was that they were “chosen” to extend God’s love to “all the families of the earth” (Gen 12:3). Like many people through the ages, because they believed they were “special,” they concluded that those who were different were not only “beneath” them but not even worthy of God’s love.

This is important background for our gospel lesson for today. When you read it as a straightforward story and assume that Jesus meant what he said to be taken literally, it’s disturbing if not downright offensive. We’re shocked when this woman, who was a “foreigner” from “Tyre and Sidon” in gentile territory, came begging Jesus for mercy and he ignored her request. Or at least so it would seem. When she fell on her face and “worshipped” him, he responded, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Mt 15:24). And when she persisted in her faith, and continued to ask for his mercy, instead of helping her he said, “It is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs” (Mt 15:26)!

We overlook this disturbing story because, if we take what Jesus said here literally, it would mean that he responded to a mother who was desperate to save her child and who came to him in faith with some of the harshest words he ever said to anyone! That makes this story stand out like a sore thumb. How could Jesus have been so uncaring, so unkind, so downright mean as to respond to her heartfelt and faith-filled request for mercy by saying she didn’t “deserve” it because she was a “dog”? That just doesn’t fit with what we know of Jesus elsewhere. He’s the one who looks at the crowds who were “like sheep without a shepherd” and has compassion on them. He’s the one who forgives the thief on the cross and invites him, even as he was dying, to join him in paradise!

So what’s going on with this story? Some think perhaps that Jesus was “testing” this woman to make sure she had “enough” faith. But I’ve never believed that fits this story. Everything about it demonstrates her faith. She approaches him from the very beginning by calling him “Lord.” She also falls on her face and worships him when she asks for his mercy. And in the end, Jesus declares that she has “great faith”! We should remember that last week we heard Jesus calling Peter, who would become the leader of the Apostles, “you of little faith” (Mt 14:31). By contrast, he said to this woman, “you have great faith!” I think the woman in this story had plenty of faith!

I think that the ones who were being “tested” here were Jesus’ disciples. You can tell by the way they reacted to her that they didn’t think she deserved Jesus’ help. As she was crying out it didn’t take long for them to get fed up and ask Jesus to “Send her away, for she keeps shouting after us” (Mt 10:23). I think we would be right to assume that the ministry apprentices Jesus had handpicked to carry on his work also carried all the entitlement that so many religious people had in that day, and have claimed for themselves throughout the ages. I think it’s pretty clear that they looked down on this “Canaanite” woman as someone who was not only beneath Jesus’ help, but also beneath even being in their presence! “Send her away!,” they said. The point of this encounter was to confront Jesus’ disciples for their prejudice. That means that the seemingly harsh words Jesus said were not meant to be taken literally, but rather he was speaking somewhat ironically in order to teach his disciples that their notions of God’s mercy were too limited. I’m sure there were plenty of other people in their world besides this mother whom they deemed “unworthy” to even be in Jesus’ presence, let alone to receive his mercy and compassion. They needed to learn better![2]

One of the lessons I’ve learned from studying the world of the Bible is that we humans haven’t changed much. We may have technology that changes our lives, but our fundamental nature hasn’t changed over the millennia. We still draw lines that divide those of “us” who are “worthy” of God’s love from the “others” who are “unworthy” not only of God’s love but even of our attention. This Scripture lesson confronts us by reminding us that God’s mercy cannot be limited by the lines we draw to exclude people we consider to be “unworthy.” Right after this episode, while he was still in that “foreign” territory, Matthew tells us that Jesus healed everyone who came to him. I can’t imagine that he first checked to make sure they had the “right” to God’s mercy. He simply healed them all (Mt 15:30). Jesus knew in the depth of his very being that God’s mercy has no limits. In God’s sight we’re all worthy of God’s love simply because God loves us!

[2] Some take a very different approach. Interpreting Jesus’ words literally, they believe that this encounter was actually a test for Jesus to “free” him from limited notions of his mission and from patriarchal attitudes toward women. Cf. Sharon Ringe, “A Gentile Woman’s Story,” in Letty M. Russell, ed., Feminist Interpretation of the Bible, 67-68. However, Gene Boring, “Gospel of Matthew,” New Interpreters Bible IX: 337-38 rightly criticizes her for reading too much of an ideological agenda into the situation. As he observes, the story is about the sexism and racism of the Gospel readers (and I would say the disciples).

Tuesday, August 11, 2026

Good All The Time

Matthew 14:22-33; Romans 10:10-13[1]

There’s a tradition in Presbyterian gatherings where the leader says, “God is good!” when it’s time for the group to settle down. The response is supposed to be “All the Time!” Then the leader announces, “All the Time!” and the group responds, “God is good!” On the surface of things, I think it’s a pretty great thing that we start gatherings with a reminder that God loves us so much that he’s good to us all the time. But being a student of language, I think not only about what it says or what the words mean but also how it works. So you probably won’t be surprised that I’m not entirely comfortable with this practice. Because when we say together, “God is good, all the time!” in that setting, the point of it is that it’s time to hush and listen to what the speaker has to say. I’ve mentioned before that instead of settling down and being quiet, if we really meant what we’re saying, we would burst into spontaneous celebration!

One of the reasons why we don’t do that, in my opinion, is we’re not sure we believe “God is good, all the time!” Life can be wonderful at times, like when you’re holding your newborn child or grandchild. But life can be hard and painful at times as well. It’s in those times I think we wonder most whether God really is good. It doesn’t help that the Hebrew Bible is full of statements about how “angry” God is. Especially for those of us who may have grown up with abusive parents. For us, “anger” doesn’t mean that God loves us so much that he’s upset with us when we do things that could hurt us or endanger us, like any good parent would. “Anger” means that God is just looking for an excuse to take his self-hatred out on us by “striking” us in some way. There’s really nothing good about that! Many of us have grown up with a keen sense that somehow, we never lived up to all the expectations of our parents. Most of us carry that burden in some way, and we tend to project it onto God and assume that God is disappointed with us as well. I think we’re not really sure we believe that “God is good, all the time.”

But the Scriptures insist over and over, especially in the Hebrew Bible, that God is indeed good, and that God is good all the time. We have a word for it: we call it “grace.” But “grace” is one of those words we use all the time without actually knowing what it means. In the Bible, “grace” means that God’s love for us never fails. “Grace” means God truly is “good all the time.” And “grace” means that’s true simply because that’s who God is, not because of anything we might do to “deserve” it as a “reward.” The truth of the matter is that we can never have enough faith, we can never be good enough, we can never do enough to deserve God’s love and goodness. God gives them to us anyway because that’s who God is! That’s what “grace” means. And that’s the testimony of Scripture, over and over again. It’s the point of the verse from our Psalm reading for today says God’s unfailing love combines with the fact that he is always true to his nature: “Loyal love and faithfulness meet; deliverance and peace greet each other with a kiss” (Ps 85:10, NET). Those things come together in God’s character and assure us that yes, God really is good all the time!

I think we see something of God’s goodness reflected in the way Jesus interacts with Peter in our Gospel lesson. At the outset, we should note that in Matthew, discipleship is always practiced by people who are called “you of little faith.” That’s what Jesus called the ones who were going to be called “the Apostles” and have statues built in their honor all over the world! We see it in this story when they become afraid in a boat that’s being “battered” by a storm “at the very dead of night” (Mt 14:25, NTE)! One of the ways that Matthew calls attention to the original disciples’ “little faith” is by telling the story of Peter asking to walk on the water. Only Matthew tells this story. It’s been commonly observed that Peter’s “faith” was demonstrated by being willing to get out of the boat in the midst of a storm, and that his “doubt” came when he shifted his attention from Jesus to the wind and the waves and began to sink. The idea is that if he had had enough faith, he would have been able to walk on the water just like Jesus did.

But I’m not so sure about all that. I don’t think getting out of a boat in the middle of a storm is such a good idea. I would say Peter demonstrates his “doubt” by asking to walk to Jesus on the water in the first place. When Jesus called out to them, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid” (Mt 14:27), he was trying to reassure the disciples. But Peter didn’t trust Jesus’ word. Instead, he wanted “proof.” So Peter said, “Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water” (Mt 14:28)! Peter sounds doubtful! I tend to agree with those who, like John Calvin, think that a response of faith on Peter’s part would have been to take to heart the assurance Jesus gave him and stay in the boat![2] That’s where he was supposed to be. That’s where he was needed. And Peter needed that boat to keep from sinking into the waves during a raging storm! But when Peter plunged out onto the waters and began to sink, Matthew’s Gospel says that Jesus “immediately reached out his hand and caught him” (Mt 14:31). I think one of the lessons we’re meant to come away with is that God shows us his goodness by always “catching” us, even when we’re still waist-deep in the water with the storm raging all around us! God always “catches” us.

Paul makes a similar point in our lesson from Romans. I particularly like the part that says: “‘Anyone who trusts in him will never be disappointed,’” and “The same Lord is the Lord of all and gives many blessings to all who trust in him” (Rom 10:11-12, NCV). I like it even better in Gene Peterson’s The Message translation: “Scripture reassures us, ‘No one who trusts God like this—heart and soul—will ever regret it.’ It’s exactly the same no matter what a person’s … background may be: the same God for all of us, acting the same incredibly generous way to everyone who calls out for help.”

“Incredibly generous.” I think that has to be one of the best phrases to describe God’s grace I’ve ever heard. “Incredibly generous.” I think the heart of Paul’s message in this passage is that God is incredibly generous all the time, and to everyone. And as Paul insists, that’s a thoroughly biblical concept. He’s quoting Scripture passages here. He’s quoting from the Hebrew Bible! God loves us all unconditionally. God offers new life to us all, without any exceptions or exclusions. And God does this simply because that’s who God is.[3] We can ever do enough to deserve or earn God’s love or God’s goodness, but that means we don’t have to do anything to earn it! From the standpoint of biblical faith, from Moses to the the Psalms to the prophets to Jesus to the Apostles, the fundamental message of the Bible is that “God is good, all the time,” simply because that’s who God is!

[2] John Calvin, Commentary on a Harmony of the Evangelists Matthew, Mark, and Luke, vol. 2, 240–241. Cf. also Gene Boring, “Gospel of Matthew” New Interpreters Bible IX:329-30: “Faith is not being able to walk on the water—only God can do that—but daring to believe, in the face of all evidence, that God is with us in the boat, … as it makes its way through the storm, battered by the waves.”

[3] Karl Barth, Epistle to the Romans, 1933, 102-103: “Grace is the generous and free will of God, His will to accept us; its necessity proceeds from Him and from Him only. … the necessity that God shall maintain and show forth His faithfulness, without any provision by us of an occasion for its display—but simply because He is God; … .”

Saturday, August 08, 2026

Let It Begin With Me

Matthew 14:13-21[1]

Another slogan from the Twelve Step movement is “Let It Begin With Me.” In fact, it comes from what is known as the “Al-Anon Declaration”: “Let it begin with me. When anyone, anywhere, reaches out for help, let the hand of Al-Anon and Al-Ateen always be there, and let it begin with me.” Many Al-Anon and Al-Ateen meetings either open or close with this declaration. It’s a constant reminder that Al-Anon and Al-Ateen exist to help the families and friends of people who misuse alcohol and other substances. Their sole purpose is to provide a helping hand to those who suffer because a friend or a loved one is an alcoholic. I can tell you from personal experience that many people come to their first meeting and spend the whole hour sobbing because they are hurting so badly, their lives feel completely out of control, and they are terrified of what tomorrow will bring.

“Let it begin with me” is a call to action. It’s a reminder that we each bear responsibility for our choices and actions. If we want to see changes, we have to be the ones to make changes in our lives. That doesn’t guarantee we’ll get the outcomes we want. Most people come to Al-Anon hoping that the changes they make will change their friend or loved one so that they no longer misuse alcohol or drugs. Sometimes that happens, but mostly it doesn’t. What taking responsibility for our own choices and actions does guarantee is that we’ll learn to face life in a healthier way. This mindset applies not only to families and friends of alcoholics and those who struggle with other addictions. We all share in the brokenness of the human family. And when we find ourselves at the point of feeling overwhelmed, perhaps feeling like our lives are completely out of control and fearing what tomorrow will bring, we are right in the middle of the brokenness that everyone in this world shares.

Unfortunately, most of us don’t respond to being in that place very positively. Our first instinct is to blame someone else. If I’m hurting, someone else must be at fault. That approach might be characterized by the slogan, “it has to begin with you.” We look at our pain, we find someone to blame for it, and we put the responsibility for our happiness in their hands. If we’re going to get better, they have to change. Of course, that places all the power for our wellbeing in the hands of someone else. “Let it begin with me” takes the opposite approach. If I’m hurting, it’s my pain. I’m responsible for my feelings and what I do about them. I’m the only one who holds the key to my happiness in life. Nobody can “make” me happy by what they do or don’t do. If I want things to change in my life, I’m the one who has to make the changes.

I think there’s a part of our Gospel lesson for today that relates to this line of thinking. I didn’t really plan these sermons on the Al-Anon slogans. As I read the Scriptures each week, it just developed that way. And that applies to our Gospel lesson for this week. When it comes to our Christian lives, we’re wise to recognize that there’s much about this world that is bigger than we can control. Only God can handle those things. But we can control our choices. In our Gospel lesson, Jesus has been teaching a huge crowd: 5000 men, not counting women and children. And at the end of the day, when it was time to eat, they were all a long way from any place where they could find food. The disciples’ suggestion that Jesus dismiss the crowd so they could find food in the surrounding towns and villages wasn’t very practical. It’s doubtful there was enough food in the surrounding area to feed such a crowd. They were just trying to “pass the buck” and get rid of the problem!

Jesus ignores their suggestion. Instead, he tells them, “You give them something to eat” (Matt. 14:16)! The disciples responded as you might think: they asked how they could possibly feed such a huge crowd with the little food they had with them. But I think Jesus may have been trying to teach them something. They had seen him work miracles that amazed them. But in one sense they’d become spectators, watching what Jesus was going to do instead of taking an active role in God’s Kingdom, as he called them to. I think Jesus used this setting to challenge them to step out of their spectator role and to take a more active stance with their commitment to follow him.

The story that follows is intriguing, because although it’s the only miracle of Jesus recounted by all four Gospels, there’s no mention how Jesus was able to feed such a massive crowd with five loaves and two fish! Some have suggested that the example of generosity inspired those in the crowd to share their food with others. We don’t know that. Popular movies have depicted it as an instantaneous miracle—Jesus lifts the food in a basket to bless it, and when he brings it down the basket is overflowing with loaves and fishes. But we don’t know that either. We really don’t know and may never be able to explain how Jesus multiplied the loaves and fish. At the end of the day, all that we really know about this miracle is that Jesus gave the loaves to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds, and everyone had enough to eat and more!

It leaves me wondering if it could be that it was in the act of the disciples being willing to step out of the relative comfort of a spectator role and taking a more active role in the work of the Kingdom that the miracle occurred. We still don’t know that for sure, but it does seem significant that Jesus instructed the disciples who wanted to send everybody away to serve their food to the hungry crowds. And perhaps the miracle happened somehow in the giving. By moving from spectators to taking an active role, the disciples became channels for God to do his miraculous work. Perhaps one of the lessons is that true miracles happen in ways we may never be able to explain.

We’ll probably never know for sure exactly what happened that day by the Sea of Galilee. But I think we can know that when we stay comfortably on the sidelines, adopting the role of a spectator, not much is ever going to happen. When we get stuck in our fears that there’s not enough or perhaps what we have to give isn’t good enough, all there will ever be is a bunch of hungry people. We have to take an active role in serving others if we want to follow Jesus. I think this is where the wisdom of the Twelve-Step slogan, “Let It Begin With Me,” can help us. Instead of looking at all that’s wrong in the world and trying to find whom we can blame, when we “let it begin with me,” we step up and do what we can do. As the Scriptures illustrate, when do so, even the little that we have to give can become more than enough. There is much about God’s work in this world that’s bigger than us. But there are things we can all do right where we are. I think that’s part of what Jesus wants us to learn from this miracle: when we step up and do what we can do, God takes what we have to offer and uses it to do more than we can imagine!

Thursday, July 23, 2026

Keep It Simple

Matthew 13:10-17[1]

Most of you know that I’ve been talking about some of the slogans of the “Twelve Step” movement lately. They’re not necessarily biblically based, but they represent the wisdom of those who’ve faced and overcome debilitating hardships in their lives. Their experiences of making the journey from trauma through healing to serenity provide lessons for us all. That’s true of today’s slogan as well: “Keep It Simple.” Of course, these days, that’s a slogan that’s not confined to the Twelve Step movement. But it is one of the Twelve Step slogans. And in that context, it refers to focusing on what you can actually do about the people, circumstances, and events in your life. And that means letting go the things you can’t do anything about. “Keeping it simple” this way helps us keep our heads on straight when we feel overwhelmed by the parts of our lives that we cannot control.

That’s not something we do naturally. At least I don’t. When life feels like it’s spiraling out of control, we pull out all the stops to try to make things run the way we want them to. It’s a normal response to stress and anxiety. But the problem is that the “normal” ways we respond to stress and anxiety usually make things worse. We misuse substances to numb our feelings. We take those feelings out on the people closest to us. We ramp up our efforts to control our lives to get the outcomes we want, which only increases our stress and anxiety, especially when there really is nothing we can do about whatever may be causing the problem in the first place. The only real solution is to accept that the problem is out of our control and focus on maintaining healthy attitudes and life choices. Usually that means “keeping it simple” by sticking to our daily routines. In the Twelve-Step movement, they speak of doing the “next right thing.” When that’s our focus, it helps us to keep things “simple.”

I think our strange lesson from the Gospel of Matthew reflects this in a way. It’s a strange lesson because it sounds like Jesus was saying that he was trying to prevent people from turning to God. I would say that in reality, he was trying to get people to acknowledge that all their efforts to control their own sense of self-righteousness was getting in the way of the simplicity of how God actually wanted them to live their lives! It was their own obsession with measuring their piety by external means that was preventing them from examining their hearts and responding to Jesus and his message. In a very real sense, they had “shut” their own eyes and “stopped” their own ears from hearing Jesus.

Even that perspective sounds pretty edgy. Part of the problem is that the Gospel of Matthew came out of a time of extreme crisis. The early Christians for whom Matthew was writing his Gospel were likely Jewish converts. But because of their faith in Jesus, they had not only been expelled from their synagogues, but also likely had been shunned by their families. They were treated like heretics and blasphemers. When we have to live with that kind of hostility, it can affect the way we treat people. We tend to react to hostility by becoming defensive and even angry toward those who are attacking us. We tend to “circle the wagons,” so to speak, and we may attack everyone outside the circle. When we do, we not only only harm others, including those who just happen be “in the way,” we also harm ourselves. When we adopt that kind of attitude, we see “enemies” everywhere.

Unfortunately, that seems to be the context in which Matthew’s Gospel was written. The problem comes up when we internalize the attitude that everyone who is not “with us” is “against us” (contrast Mk 9:40!). When we do that, our religion becomes a convenient outlet for the stress and anxiety we may feel about the normal conflicts we face in life. Those conflicts come about simply because we live in a world full of other people who differ from us in all kinds of ways. When we view “difference” as a threat, it turns us into people who are closed-minded and hard-hearted, wielding our faith like a club, so focused on defending ourselves that we attack everyone who is “outside” what we perceive to be “our circle.”

But Jesus cut through all of that toxic religion and taught that our faith is about what God is doing in this world to bring peace, justice, freedom, and love to all people everywhere. Jesus called that the “kingdom of God.” He knew that his vision for the world was very different from the way things work. The Romans were still in power, and they wielded that power with cruelty and brutality. The wealthy oppressed the poor with no accountability. Religious leaders used their position not to serve the people but to gain wealth and power for themselves. Suffering, violence, injustice, and just plain meanness were overwhelming the world when Jesus was teaching about the “kingdom of God.” I can understand why some of his followers withdrew from the world in fear and hostility. And of course, we still face those challenges to this day. And it still leads many good people to retreat behind their faith like it’s a castle wall.

That’s why he told the disciples that there were some who wouldn’t get the point of his parables. He used parables to teach them about the “mystery” or the “secret” of the kingdom of God. And that secret is this: despite appearances to the contrary, God’s kingdom is working now to change all things and all people. God really is working to bring peace, justice, freedom, and love to all people everywhere. We see it in the “Parable of the Sower,” where the “fruit” produced by the good soil far exceeds all expectations. We see it in the “Parable of the Mustard Seed,” where a tiny seed becomes a “large tree.” We see it in the “Parable of the Leaven” where the yeast inevitably works its way through a large batch of dough. The idea is that the change the kingdom of God is bringing will inevitably work its way through this whole world.

One of the lessons I think Jesus wanted believers to come away with is an attitude toward others that differed from the religious people of his day. Despite all that remains wrong with this world, I think Jesus wanted those who followed him to fully embrace the hope that one day the kingdom of God will right all the wrongs. One day, God will restore all people and all creation to the way God intended when he made it “very good.” When we embrace this vision of what God is doing in the world, it makes it possible for us to extend the same generous welcome that God has given us to those we may see as “outsiders.” When we embrace Jesus’ vision of what God is doing in the world, we don’t have to worry about who’s “with us” and who’s “against us.” Because God’s plan is to bring us all together in his love. That means we can “Keep It Simple” when it comes to how we live our Christian lives. We can set aside our fears and hostilities and do our best to love God with all our hearts and to love our neighbors as ourselves. We “Keep It Simple” by keeping love as the focus of our faith.

Saturday, July 18, 2026

One Day at a Time

Romans 8:1-11; Matthew 13:1-9[1]

Last week we talked about the Twelve-Step slogan, “Let Go and let God.” Another familiar slogan from the Twelve-Step movement is “One Day at a Time.” It’s one of the tools that people who are trying to live in a healthy way use to deal with “bad” days. Because the truth is whether you’ve been practicing “recovery” for decades or for days, everybody has “bad” days. The idea behind the slogan “One Day at a Time” is that, even on the worst of your “bad” days, you can handle whatever comes your way for one day. To be sure, there are days when it all seems too much to handle. But usually, that’s because we’re viewing our problems from the perspective that they’ll never change. It’ll always be this way. When you think you’re going to have to deal with your problems for the rest of your life, it can become overwhelming. But when you frame it as something you just have to handle today, it usually gets more manageable.

There’s another point to the slogan “One Day at a Time.” It’s related to the fact that we’ll never perfectly fulfill our goals in this lifetime. But if we keep our focus on doing the best we can today, we may wind up pleasantly surprised with how well we do. And after a while of doing our best “One Day at a Time,” we usually realize we’ve made a whole lot more progress than we could have imagined when we first started out. I think those of us who take living the Christian life seriously have a similar experience. There are wonderful times when we know the joy and peace and freedom we have from God through Jesus Christ. And then there are other days when the way we practice the Christian life can best be summed up by the phrase, “three steps forward, two steps back”!

I think we see some of this reflected in our lesson from Paul’s letter to the Romans for today. There, Paul emphasizes that the Holy Spirit poured out on us is the one who makes it possible for us to experience this new life of joy and peace and freedom right now. And when you pay close attention to what Paul says, it sounds very much like he is promising that we already have the fullness of salvation, right now. That’s because everything necessary for us to experience the fullness of joy and peace and freedom in this life has already been done for us by God in Jesus Christ. And it’s also because of what God is doing in our lives through the Spirit right now, to this very day. Paul puts it this way: because the Spirit of the one “who raised Jesus from the dead” lives in us, that means God is also working to give us a new life like the one Jesus has now in the presence of God (Rom 8:10-11, NIRV).

That’s quite a promise. We can have a life like the one Jesus has in the presence of God right now because of what God is doing in our lives through the Spirit. And I would absolutely affirm that’s a true statement: we can have a life like the one Jesus has in the presence of God right now because of what God is doing in our lives through the Spirit! But the other side of the truth is the fact that we never experience the fullness of the life of the risen Lord Christ in this life. We do experience joy and peace and freedom as a gift from God in Jesus Christ through the Holy Spirit. Theologically speaking, we already have everything we need to know this new life now. But practically speaking, our experience (and the teachings of Scripture) remind us that we will not know that new life fully until we are standing face to face with him. In the meantime, we live our Christian lives in the tension between the promise of new life now and the full experience of it when we stand face-to-face with Jesus.[2]

I would say that our Gospel lesson for today also addresses this question, but from a different perspective. The parable is a familiar one. A farmer goes out to plant seeds in a field. In those days, planting seeds was much less precise and involved perhaps even more risk (if that’s possible!). Farmers would just scatter seeds, hoping some of them would take root and grow and bear fruit. Of course, Jesus wasn’t really talking about agriculture in this parable. Among other things, he was trying to warn those who want to follow him that not all the seeds they planted would bear fruit. Faithfulness doesn’t always guarantee results. Sometimes we find ourselves sowing and not reaping.

But there’s a deeper issue here, one that goes beyond the typical observation that the seeds need the right “kind” of soil in which to bear fruit. That kind of thinking leads many Christians to wonder which kind of “soil” they belong to and even to doubt whether they’ve “done enough” to bear fruit in their lives. Or it leads to a too easy assumption that because we’re in church we’re automatically in the “good soil” category. But something that the famous Swiss Reformed Theologian Karl Barth pointed out is that in this parable, the farmer isn’t planting four fields. The farmer is planting seeds in one field.[3] Therefore, he suggests that we must reckon with the truth that we all—including those who are within the Christian community and those who are not—are among “those who hear” the “Word” of the gospel. That means there is always a mixture of “ignoring” the “Word” that fails to put it into action on the one hand, and on the other hand responding to the “Word” with “understanding” that leads to fruitful Christian living.[4] And that mixture of “ignoring” and “responding” to the “Word” is in all of us.[5] We all respond to the gospel in all these ways outlined in the parable in differing measures.

That brings us back to where we started. We all have good days and bad days when it comes to the Christian life. There are times when our experience of can best be summarized as “three steps forward, two steps back.” That brings us back to “One Day at a Time.” I think the slogan applies to our Christian living as much as it does to the recovery movement. We do our best “One Day at a Time” to respond faithfully to the promises of God’s word and the demands that go along with them. We do our best “One Day at a Time” to live fruitful lives as followers of Jesus Christ. That doesn’t mean that we have to wonder every day whether we’re doing it “good enough.” But it also means that a faithful response to Jesus Christ can never be something that we do once and then we sit back and think we’ve done all we have to do.

We live our Christian lives “One day at a time.” Sometimes we respond to the Word of the Lord like the hard path: it just “bounces off.” Sometimes we respond like the rocky soil: initially, we’re enthusiastic, but the Word never really takes root. Sometimes we respond like the thorny ground: we respond to the Gospel but the other things in our lives that distract us choke it out. Sometimes we respond to the Word of the Lord in a way that bears fruit in our lives and in the lives of those around us. This is true for all of us. That doesn’t mean that we get discouraged because we don’t always get it right. We live our Christian lives in hope: the hope that the light that shines in this world through the love of God in Jesus Christ will always be more powerful than the darkness in this world that we all participate in and at times may even contribute to![6] Despite any apparent success or failure, we keep on following Jesus “One Day at a Time,” not because we put our confidence in ourselves, but because we trust in God to fulfill his promises to us. And somehow, someway, God always turns our imperfect faith into fruit that benefits not only the Christian community but also all those with whom we share God’s love.

[2] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 105, calls the hope of new life that Paul holds out in Romans as the “impossible possibility of our redemption.” Later in Romans 8:23 Paul talks about “groaning” for the full experience of new life.

[3] Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.3.1:189. I realize that the “interpretation” of the parable of the Sower in Matthew 13:18-23 encourages the idea that the different “types” of soil represent different “types” of people who hear the Gospel and respond in different ways. I would agree with the view that this so-called “interpretation” reflects the views of the early Church as much as and perhaps even more than they represent the views of Jesus. It is perhaps a very early understanding of Jesus’ parable, but not necessarily the only “authoritative” one. I think Barth’s interpretation, which is based more on the primary parable itself, reflects insights into how the early Church transformed into “Christendom” and how the original parable challenges the sense of entitlement and exceptionalism that arose from that transformation.

[4] Barth summarizes this dilemma well when he says that we all alike “both those who know and those who do not know” (ibid., 192).

[5] Cf. Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics, 4.3.1:188-93, where he interprets the parable of the sower through the perspective that it describes the “antithesis” in which we all live out the Christian life: “the light of life shines in the darkness.” That is always true whenever the light of the gospel shines: it shines in darkness. And we are still a part of that darkness.

[6] Cf. Henri Nouwen, The Wounded Healer, 76, where he says that this hope is the true motivation for Christian leadership. I would say it is also the true motivation for Christian living in general. It is the hope that enables us to “keep pointing to new life even in the face of corruption and death” and that what God has done for us through Jesus Christ, especially in raising him from the dead, is a definitive affirmation that there is “light on the other side of darkness.” I would say it also points us to the hope that this “light” in the world will always and inevitably overcome the “darkness.”

Thursday, July 09, 2026

Letting Go and Letting God

Romans 7:7-25, Matthew 11:16-30[1]

Many of you may know that “Let go and let God” is one of the slogans of the Twelve-Step movement. It’s based on the principle that many have learned to be true: when we try to control circumstances and people we wind up with a life that’s too much for us to handle. We feel overwhelmed, we feel frustrated or anxious or both at the same time, and we may feel defeated. All that comes from the “insanity” of thinking we can get the outcomes we want in life with enough effort. Some of us don’t think that’s “insane” at all; it’s simply stepping up and taking on our responsibilities. But even if we don’t feel the frustration and helplessness of trying to control other people, they most certainly do.

Last week we talked about how making our religion a matter of following rigid rules leads us to a way of life defined by whom we exclude. But the other side is what we do to ourselves when we take that path of religious perfectionism. When we think we can “do it all by ourselves” when it comes to following Jesus and honoring God, it’s a lot like thinking we can control our lives and the people in it. We wind up frustrating ourselves, or those around us, or both. More than that, we tend to express our religion by condemning people. On one side we see people who are more conservative than we are and we think that they’re too strict. On the other side we see people who are more progressive and we think they’re too lax. It seems like what we really want is to be in control of everyone around us.

That’s what’s going on in our Gospel lesson with the strange comment Jesus makes about people being like children who whine, “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn” (Mt 11:17). John the Baptist lived simply and practiced a rigorous form of discipline. And because he wouldn’t “dance to the tune” they were playing, they wrote him off as demon-possessed (Mt 11:18).[2] On the other hand, Jesus came and lived life and laughed and welcomed all kinds of people, and, perhaps worst of all, shared meals with so-called “sinners.” Because of that, they wrote him off as a “glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners” (Mt 11:19).

Here’s the problem with making religion about following the rules: we always wind up making ourselves the measure of all things spiritual. Like the crowds responding to John and Jesus, we condemn those who are too conservative in our eyes, and then we turn around and condemn those who are too liberal. But the hard truth is that making yourself the measure of all things spiritual boils down to appointing ourselves as the official rule-makers. And in the process, we make religion into something oppressive. For ourselves, and for others. In contrast to all that, Jesus announced that he had come to set people free from their burdens. He came to free people who, no matter how hard they tried, could never live up to the religious rule-makers’ demands. But he also came to free the rule-makers, because what gets hidden beneath the façade of a “holier than thou” attitude is the lingering doubt about whether you can ever fulfill all the rules perfectly.

I think we see some of that burden in St. Paul’s anguish over his inability to keep the law. In our lesson from Romans for today, he talks about the freedom that comes from letting go the effort to control all things spiritual and letting those things rest in God’s hands, which is where they belong. I’ll be the first to say that Paul’s teaching about sin and the law in this chapter is another example of the challenge we face when we try to read Paul’s letters: it gets really confusing really fast! But I think the main point of what he’s trying to say is that any means we can come up with by which we try to attain a “righteousness” of our own making is doomed to fail!

The logic of Paul’s argument here is complicated, and it’s difficult to sort out. But I think it points to the truth that all our efforts to serve God in our own strength are flawed. All of it comes under the heading of “religion”, and religion can only remind us of how far we fall short.[3] It’s no wonder Paul is torn—not just about the fact that his own conscience is guilty, but because he recognizes that anything he could possibly do to gain eternal life by his own effort is ultimately futile. The only way to find freedom is to turn to Jesus Christ. That’s where Paul winds up: “I’ve tried everything and nothing helps. I’m at the end of my rope. Is there no one who can do anything for me? Isn’t that the real question? The answer, thank God, is that Jesus Christ can and does. He acted to set things right in this life of contradictions where I want to serve God with all my heart and mind, but am pulled by the influence of sin to do something totally different” (Rom 7:24-25, MSG). I think that sums it up pretty well.

The truth is that we will always struggle with “this life of contradictions” as Gene Peterson puts it in The Message translation. And all too often, we respond to the frustration of trying to practice our religion on our own by simply trying harder. When we do, it all becomes a burden that’s too heavy for any of us to bear. More than that, this approach to religion brings with it other burdens. There’s the fear that what we do may never be good enough. Sometimes we convert our frustration and fear into anger. And we take it out on those we think are a “threat” to us. The final burden is pride. When you put it all together, it’s all too heavy for any of us to bear.

At the end of the day, as Paul recognized, the only path to freedom from these burdens is through God’s love for us in Jesus Christ. That’s where the wisdom of “Let go and let God” comes in. When we try to control our lives, we take on a burden that will crush anyone who tries to carry it. The wisdom of the ages has taught us that the burdens that we carry only trap us in prisons of our own making. Jesus said come to me, lay down your burdens, and I will give you rest. Of course, that’s not something we do once, and call it good. Sometimes, it’s something we have to do every day: come to Jesus, lay down our burdens, and accept the rest he offers. Sometimes we may have do that multiple times a day. When we let go our own efforts to please God by ourselves, to make our lives turn out the way we want, we can lay down the frustration and fear and anger and pride that burden us. When we let God be the one on whom we depend for everything, not only salvation and eternity but also today and tomorrow, we can open our hearts to receive the joy, and love, and life, and rest that Jesus promises.

[2] Douglas Hare, Matthew 123-24.

[3] Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 252: when we undertake this effort on our own, “we do but display the catastrophe of human impotence in the things of God.”

Wednesday, July 01, 2026

Living in Freedom

Romans 6:12-23; Matthew 10:34-42[1]

Sometimes I think organized religion may be more of a hindrance to people who are looking for God’s love than a help. You may find that strange for someone who’s spent his whole career working in organized religion to say! Nevertheless, after spending almost five decades working in the church, I would say that religious organizations tend to get in the way. We create structures and rules to ensure that everyone winds up at the same place in their spiritual journey. But structures and rules always have to be tweaked. It might be tempting for us to point the finger at those “other” religions out there, for “straining a gnat and swallowing a camel” (Matt 23:24), as Jesus put it. But the reality is that all religions are human attempts to understand ultimate things like God and eternity. And because they’re created by flawed and fallible people like you and me, they all in one way or another tend to get in the way of those who are looking for God in this life.[2]

In the Hebrew Bible, we see an approach to God that essentially defines the spiritual quest in terms of carefully conducted rituals and equally careful observance of rules about staying “pure.” Holiness is defined by eating the right foods and having the “right kind” of relationship the “right kind” of person. That may have been a good place to start, but I would say that many very deeply religious people no longer believe that we please God by observing the right rituals, or eating only the right foods, or having the “right kind” of relationships with the “right kind” of people. And yet, even in our day there are still some who cling to those old rules. As if Jesus endorsed all of that! They may not believe that having a plate of oysters somehow makes us unclean in God’s sight. But there are still many Christians these days who believe that the essence of sin is having the “wrong kind” of relationship with the “wrong kind” of person. Many still believe that marrying a person outside your faith, or person of another race, or anyone who is somehow “tainted” by our human standards makes you “sinful” in God’s sight.

As Jesus pointed out in many ways, the main problem with this approach to religion is that it becomes about what we avoid and whom we exclude. Last week I talked about one aspect of what makes it difficult to read Paul’s letters. I think another challenge we face is that Paul’s letters still reflect some of this kind of thinking. I see it when we read our lesson from Romans for today. While we are clearly indebted to the great Apostle for many of the building blocks of our faith, I think his views on sin may have some problems. In a very real sense, I would say Paul has a very “First-Century Jewish” notion of sin. Of course we don’t want to be “slaves of sin” but “servants of righteousness,” as Paul urges us to be in our lesson for today. But the problem comes when you ask how Paul defines “sin.” It sounds very much like it’s about what we avoid and whom we exclude.

But I would say that while Paul may have hung on to some of those notions, he was a follower of Jesus. And that meant ultimately he was much more concerned with putting faith into practice by treating other people as Jesus did. I think that should give us some sense of focus when we talk about how “the wages of sin is death” (Rom 6:23). I want to ask where you see sin leading to death in our world. Well, I see power-hungry dictators unleashing drones and missiles against innocent people. And the result of that sin is death. I see impoverished people living in ramshackle slums that are swept away completely—men, women, and children—whenever an earthquake or a flood or a hurricane comes through. And the result is death. I see the death that results from the sin of the wealthy hoarding all the resources so that the weakest and poorest of their people literally starve. I realize that Paul was talking about a “spiritual” kind of death. But I think it would do us well to ask ourselves where we see sin leading to death in this world. I would have to say, in all honesty, that I don’t much “death” resulting from failing to exclude the “wrong kind” of person.

I’d have to say that this is one area where some of the most “religious” people of our day still “miss the point.” I would go further and say that whenever we make the essence of our relationship with God a matter of following religious rules, not about the love we have received from God through Jesus Christ, we continue to miss the point. But more importantly, our manmade and rigid religious rules always become obstacles to loving other people. Jesus called them “burdens too heavy to lift” (Mt 23:4) and points the finger at religious perfectionists of all stripes for ignoring their own sins and focusing on the mistakes of others (Mt 7:3-5). It all becomes just an elaborate way of justifying oneself by condemning others. But at the end of the day, even religious perfectionists can’t bear the burdens they create for others. And so, as Jesus said, they condemn themselves when they condemn others! That’s not only because they fail to live up to the expectations they demand of others. It’s also because making our devotion to God about what we avoid and whom we exclude inevitably turns into hostility toward them, whoever “they” may be. You can’t love your neighbor if you really hate them down deep inside!

Jesus had a way of cutting through all this religious hypocrisy. He said that true holiness is about loving God and loving others (Mt 22:37-40). He said that true spirituality is about embracing a child (Mt 18:1-5). True religion is about not only having empathy for the weak and outcast, but also about taking steps to care for them (Mt 25:34-40).[3] It’s about feeding a hungry person, visiting the sick, and being a companion to those who are in prison. For Jesus, a truly spiritual way of living is about being willing to give someone a cup of cold water on a hot day (Mt 10:42). It’s really no more complicated than that. No elaborate systems, no obsessions with keeping tedious rules. At the end of the day, it’s not about what we avoid or whom we exclude, but rather it’s about having a heart that’s willing to give to others the same mercy that we have received.

That doesn’t mean it’s “easy.” In our Gospel lesson for today, Jesus describes this kind of life as “losing your life for my sake” (Mt 10:39). But he also said that was the way to truly “find” your life. I think that’s the lesson we can take away from Paul talking the freedom to live for God. Through the love we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that bring “death” not only to ourselves but also to those around us. Through the love from God that we encounter in Jesus Christ, we’re set free from all the habits and attitudes that harm not only others but also ourselves. That’s how I would define “freedom from sin.” It’s the freedom to stop draining the life out of ourselves and others by our actions and attitudes. And in the process, we’re set free to live for God, to live a life of love and mercy, which is the life we were always meant to live.

[2] Cf. Karl Barth, The Epistle to the Romans, 1933, 242: “Religion compels us to the perception that God is not to be found in religion.”

[3] Cf. Jürgen Moltmann, The Church in the Power of the Spirit, 126-9, where he says in effect that those who truly follow Christ are to be serving where Christ awaits us, “amid the downtrodden, the sick, and the captives.”

Tuesday, June 16, 2026

Loving Mercy

Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:9-13[1]

I can’t say that I see much mercy in the way our society works these days. It hasn’t always been this way. There was a time when mercy was a common, everyday practice. Especially in the hardest of times, people regularly gave food to those who came to their door. There are different ways we do that now, especially through the food pantry. But I think there’s something that happens when we look a person in the eyes and extend mercy to them. Something happens to us and something happens to them. But it seems that’s something we’re less comfortable with. As we insulate ourselves behind the relative comfort and safety of some kind of “screen” or other in our homes, we distance ourselves from people who genuinely need our help. And I wonder whether the quality of mercy becomes strained in us. I wonder whether mercy no longer “drops as the gentle rain from heaven,” blessing both the giver and the receiver, as William Shakespeare put it so long ago.[2]

And I would say we’re the poorer for it. Mercy has a way of enriching life. As I mentioned last week, “mercy” has always been a core aspect of who God is. The heart of what the Bible teaches about God is consistent with the revelation to Moses: “The Lord! The Lord! The God of compassion and mercy! I am slow to anger and filled with unfailing love and faithfulness” (Ex 34:6, NLT). And as I mentioned last week, I like the way the Contemporary English Version puts it: “I am the Lord God. I am merciful and very patient with my people. I show great love, and I can be trusted” (Exodus 34:6, CEV). It’s no wonder that, at the end of Luke’s version of the sermon on the Mount, instead of saying “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” as Matthew’s Gospel puts it (Mt 5:48), Jesus says, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful” (Lk 6:38).

More than that, the Bible makes it clear that mercy is what God wants from his people. God wants us to show the same generous and unfailing mercy to others that he has shown to us. I’ve mentioned before that one of my favorite Bible verses is Micah 6:8: “O people, the Lord has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God” (Mic 6:8, NLT). Again, I like the way the Contemporary English Version renders it: “The Lord God has told us what is right and what he demands: ‘See that justice is done, let mercy be your first concern, and humbly obey your God’” (Mic. 6:8, CEV). Mercy is not only the heart of who God is, mercy is also the heart of what God wants from us. That’s the point of our lesson from the prophet Hosea for today. If we truly want to “repent” of our wayward lives and return to loving God with all our hearts, the way to do that is by practicing mercy! According to the prophet Hosea, showing mercy to others demonstrates our love for God above anything else we might do.

Ironically, mercy seems to flourish among those who are living on the margins, even among those who sometimes may be barely getting by. On the other hand, prosperity and wealth are like poison to mercy. It seems the more we have to lose, the less we’re willing to give. We may give “token” gifts to “support” the ministry of the church or to “serve” the needs of the community, but our prosperity breeds in us a way of living that is primarily focused on our own comfort and wellbeing. So we withdraw from being personally involved in extending mercy to those who are genuinely in need. In fact, I daresay that many of us may actually be afraid of putting ourselves in that situation because it feels risky. I can understand that.

The other irony about mercy is that religion has a way of stifling it. We become so involved in “doing good things” around the church that we cut ourselves off from the people who are in genuine need. As a person who’s spent my career working in and around the church, I’ve often felt that. That’s the point of our lesson from the Gospel of Matthew for today. Jesus caused a scandal among the “religious people” by extending mercy to all who came to him without checking their “religious credentials” first. In our lesson for today, Jesus called “Matthew,” a tax collector, to be one of his hand-picked apprentices. Tax collectors in Jewish society were hated and despised as traitors. In fact, the phrase, “tax collectors and sinners” pretty much included everyone who was viewed as immoral, dishonest, tainted, or in any way “undesirable.” That’s who Jesus called to help him carry out the ministry of the kingdom of God: Matthew, a “tax collector.” I’m not sure he could have made a more dramatic demonstration of the kind of mercy he believed is at the heart of what it means to love God.

The “religious people” of the day were deeply offended by this. That’s the backdrop for Jesus’ shocking statement, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Mt 9:13)! Jesus didn’t just pull that out of thin air. He was quoting Scripture. Specifically, Hosea 6:6. But Jesus told them that despite their efforts to study Scripture they had missed the point: putting the mercy they had received from God into practice in the way they treated everyone. Unfortunately, they had convinced themselves that they only “had” to put that mercy into practice with their Jewish neighbors. And in fact, they only “had” to put that mercy into practice with some of their Jewish neighbors. But in the Bible, “mercy” is a fundamental life orientation toward treating all people with kindness, compassion, and dignity.

All of this makes me wonder what it says about the church in this day and time that a growing number of young people are leaving, and one of the main reasons is because they look at different churches and ask themselves, “I wonder whom they exclude.” They see the different churches in our society as defined by whom they exclude. The sad truth is that when we demonstrate our religion by excluding people, we’ve fallen into same trap as the people of Jesus’ day. Our “religion” has stifled our ability to practice mercy. If we want to renew this church, if we want to renew our faith, if we want to reinvigorate the Christian faith in this society, if we want younger people to come back to church, it seems to me the way to do that is to get back to what Moses, the Prophets, and Jesus taught is the heart of what it means to truly love God. That means learning to “make mercy our first concern,” and sharing it with everyone.

[2] I’m alluding to the famous line in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” Act IV, Scene 1: “The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes.”

Thursday, June 11, 2026

The Power of God's Love

The Power of God’s Love

Psalm 8, Matthew 28:16-20[1]

We have a complicated relationship with power. On the one hand, we seem to be fascinated with those whom we consider to be the most “powerful” people. Even to the point that our admiration can at times approach a kind of “worship.” There are many powerful people in this world who have an almost “cult” like following among their fans. On the other hand, we seem to be inherently distrusting of power. Especially when we believe someone is abusing their power. Anytime someone in power “bullies” those who are more vulnerable, we think of it as an abuse of power. And in our world we may see that kind of thing so often that we become distrusting of all power, regardless of how it’s used.

Our Scripture lessons for today speak to us about God’s power. The creation story in Genesis portrays God’s power to simply “speak” all things into existence. That’s a kind of power that most of us may want, but I dare say none of us would use well. But God most certainly used it well. That’s the point of the refrain that occurs throughout the creation story: “and God saw that it was good.” God used his extraordinary power to create a world and all the living things in it that was not only “good,” but indeed “very good,” as God observes at the end of the process (Gen 1:31). It may be hard for some people to imagine even God using that magnitude of power for good, but that’s precisely what the Bible teaches us! God always uses his power for good!

In our reading from the Psalms, we find this perspective on God’s power confirmed. Like many of us, the Psalmsinger found himself confronted by the majestic power of the God who created all the heavens and the earth simply with a word. I would say that the more we understand about how vast this cosmos really is, the more we are confronted by God’s majesty and power in creation. Even in ancient times, a simple glance at the night sky led the Psalmsinger to wonder, “what are human beings that you are mindful of them, mortals that you care for them?” (Psalm 8:4). And yet, despite the fact that he frames his faith in the form of a question, we shouldn’t overlook the affirmation that lies behind it: God is mindful of us all; God does care for us, both deeply and continually. That is also the nature of God’s power!

The Psalmsinger had good reason to believe this. It’s the heart of what Hebrew Bible affirms about God: “I am the Lord God. I am merciful and very patient with my people. I show great love, and I can be trusted” (Exodus 34:6, CEV). It is the revelation God gave to Moses in the “cleft of the rock” when he asked to see God’s glory. And it echoes like a refrain throughout the Hebrew Scriptures, because it is the truth that serves as the foundation for biblical faith. The message of the Scriptures is that God’s power points us to the fact that God loves us with a love that will never let us go. It may be difficult for us to grasp, but the truth of our Scripture lesson is that we are constantly surrounded by the love of the God who is powerful enough to create all things simply by speaking the word. As one of our affirmations of faith puts it, the Bible leads us to believe in a God whose love for us is “powerful beyond measure.”

We see this theme of power reflected a little differently in our Gospel reading for today. It’s the story of Jesus’ final appearance to his disciples according to Matthew. When he appeared to them on a mountain in Galilee, he said something that would have been startling for them. And it should still catch our attention today: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Mt 28:18). We’re used to hearing that language because it’s part of the “Great Commission.” But in that day, “all authority” belonged to God. Any human being claiming “all authority in heaven and on earth” would have been viewed as directly contradicting God’s authority. In fact, there are many in our world to this day who struggle with the image Jesus as having “all authority in heaven and on earth.”

I think what made the difference is that it was the risen and living Jesus who made this startling claim. They had seen him die, and they had seen him alive more than once after he rose from the dead. It was the resurrection that confirmed that this authority had come from God. I think we could say that Jesus received this authority in response to the fact that he had “fulfilled all righteousness” as Matthew’s Gospel puts it (Mt 3:15), or in other words that he had carried out God’s plan to “set right” all things and all people by his death and resurrection. Because of that, God himself gave this authority to Jesus. So it is that, in the New Testament, there is no contradiction whatsoever between the affirmation that all authority belongs to God, and that God has given that authority to Jesus Christ.

One reason for that is because Jesus uses that authority to carry out God’s purpose in the world. That’s not something we expect these days. It goes against the norm in our day. In our world, “power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”[2] That’s the way we view power. Many of those who have the most power in our day use it to benefit themselves. But Jesus used the authority given to him by God not for his own benefit, but to extend the peace, justice, and freedom of God’s kingdom to all people. And he continues to use that authority to fulfill God’s work of “making all things new” (Rev 21:5). And at the end of it all, Paul said that Jesus would surrender all authority back to God, so that God “will be utterly supreme over everything everywhere” (1 Cor 15:28, NLT), bringing the new life of God’s kingdom to everyone and everything!

I think the point of all this was to inspire confidence in those of us who follow Jesus in a world that is set against God’s authority and power, in a world that remains set against the peace, justice, and freedom of God’s kingdom to this day. We see that opposition almost daily. Part of the assurance that God’s love triumphs in this world through Jesus lies in the promise that “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Mt 28:20). Yes, we live in a world where the work of God’s kingdom isn’t complete. Yes, we live in a world where people continue to abuse power for their own benefit, and they hurt innocent people in the process. But rather than letting that cause us to doubt God’s purpose, or cause us to question Jesus’ power and authority, we can be confident because Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord is the one to whom God has entrusted “authority, honor, and sovereignty over all the nations of the world” (Dan 7:13, NLT). And with that authority, Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord rules right now over “everything in heaven and on earth, everything seen and unseen” (Col 1:16, NLT). And the promise is that “His rule is eternal—it will never end” (Dan 7:14, NLT).

When we get caught up in what’s happening around us in this world, we can easily lose sight of all this. We can wonder where God’s rule, God’s power, and God’s authority are in this world. It’s still there! Jesus the Christ and our Savior and Lord is reigning with “all authority” at the right hand of God, right now! And he promised that he would be with us until the end of the age, continuing to fulfill the promise of God’s kingdom with the authority and power that God has given him. And part of the promise is that the power of God’s love will never fade. The promise is that the rule of love that Jesus carries out in our lives now will never end. One day, the power of God’s love, the rule of love that Jesus carries out in our lives now will extend to all people and encompass everything. On that day, then the whole creation will return to where it was in the beginning, when God “spoke” it into being, and everything was “very good.”

[2] Famously penned by Lord John Dalberg-Acton, Letter to Mandell Creighton (5 April 1887), referring to the declaration by Pope Pius IX of the Roman Catholic dogma of papal infallibility. He said, “I cannot accept your canon that we are to judge Pope and King unlike other men, with a favorable presumption that they did no wrong. If there is any presumption it is the other way against holders of power, increasing as the power increases. … Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely. … There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of it. That is the point at which … the end learns to justify the means.” Cf. Historical Essays and Studies, by John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton (1907), edited by John Neville Figgis and Reginald Vere Laurence, Appendix, p. 504. Accessed at http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Lord_Acton.

Monday, April 27, 2026

Listening

Matthew 17:1-13; 2 Peter 1:12-21[1]

I had an experience growing up that I think some of you might be familiar with. I would be engaged in something, completely immersed in what I was doing. My mother would be talking to me about finishing my homework or doing chores, and she would ask me, “Are you listening?” I would answer yes, but the truth of the matter was that while I may have been “hearing” her speak, I wasn’t “listening” to what she was saying at all. I wasn’t trying to be rude; I was just so immersed in what I was doing that I simply couldn’t hear her. As a parent, like many of you, I’ve had the joy of experiencing the other side of that conversation. With my children I learned that it worked best for me to actually touch them on the shoulder to get their attention before trying to communicate something important. That seemed to work for them. I would imagine a lot of us have been on both sides of that conversation.

When you read the stories from the Gospels about Jesus teaching his disciples, it can feel like something similar was going on. While they were paying attention to him, they really didn’t understand what he was telling them. They were distracted by their own concerns, their own expectations, and their own preconceived ideas. One of the classic examples of this is when he told them (not once but several times) that his path of obeying God was going to lead to his dying on a cross. That just didn’t make any sense to them. They heard the words he was saying, but they didn’t have the ability to actually “listen.”

We see something like this in the story of the Transfiguration of Jesus. In Matthew’s version of the story, Peter is overwhelmed by what he’s witnessing and wants to stay there on the mountain. He even offers to build three tents for them. That might seem like a strange request. But it might not have been that strange to Peter. One of the great festivals in Judaism still today is called Sukkot, or the “festival of booths.” In Scripture it was related to the idea that the people lived in tents when they came out of Egypt (Lev 23:42-43). It’s not much of a stretch to think that when Peter and the others saw Jesus transformed, and when they saw Moses and Elijah him, they believed that God was fulfilling their hopes and dreams for a new Exodus to liberate the people from the Roman Empire. It’s not surprising that Peter wanted to set up tents and stay on that mountain!

But in Matthew’s Gospel, Peter’s request was answered by the voice of God himself: “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Mt 17:5). I would say that this voice responds to Peter with a (gentle) rebuke. He wanted to stay on the mountain, where he believed he was witnessing the beginning of his hopes and dreams coming true. But the voice from the cloud instructed Peter and the others to direct their attention to Jesus. More than that they were to “listen to him.” And the implication here is that they were not only to listen to him but also follow his instructions. Afterwards, Jesus took them down the mountain where they were to engage with people he called a “faithless generation” (Mt 17:17). It’s no wonder they had difficulty hearing and understanding what he was trying to teach them about how they were to live and serve in that setting.

When I think of that situation of hearing but not really listening, it reminds me also of our reading from 2 Peter for today. Apparently, 2 Peter was written long enough after Jesus’ resurrection that many were beginning to deny that there would be a “second coming” at all (2 Pet 3:4). In response, our reading for today reminded them that Jesus’ transfiguration on that mountain was a kind of a foreshadowing of his “second coming.” What those who were there saw and heard left them with no doubt that Jesus would indeed return in the full majesty of his glory as Savior and Lord.

Unfortunately, some have approached this passage as if it advocates that Scripture is to be accepted at face value, simply embracing the “literal meaning” of the words. The truth is any written document has to be interpreted. That’s especially true for a document written as long ago and in such a different setting from ours as the Bible. More than that, the Bible itself raises some questions that we cannot readily answer. That makes it difficult if not impossible to simply embrace the “literal meaning.” I think what all this means is if we’re going follow the advice to “pay close attention” to Scripture we’re going to have to put forth some effort (2 Pet. 1:19, NLT). We’re going to have to be intentional about it. I think that means more than a casual reading of select verses. It means serious and sustained study of the Bible!

Listening closely to Scripture has never been easy. There have always been those who raised objections that seem to call into question the validity of the Bible as a source for faith. And there will always be a wide range of voices claiming to speak on behalf of the Bible. It takes some effort to sort through the tangle of conflicting messages out there. But it seems to me that our lesson for today points us in the right direction. As those who have gone before us have framed it, “the clear teaching of Scripture” has always been there to guide us. There are some things that are clear. There are some things we can say confidently that “the Bible teaches this.” Those who have gone before us have called that “the clear teaching of Scripture.” That doesn’t mean we’re going to automatically find the answer to our questions simply by flipping through our Bible. It’s going to take intentional study of the Bible if we’re going to do a better job of “paying attention” to Scripture.

I guess the place to start is making time to listen to the Scriptures. Most people would just try to “read through” the Bible. But if you start with Genesis chapter 1, the likelihood that you’ll make it all the way through to Revelation chapter 22 is fairly small. Most people don’t succeed at reading through the Bible in that way. That’s where Bible reading plans can help us. We do hear the Scripture in worship on Sunday morning, but I dare say that we may not always be “listening,” even in this place. Sacred music, whether traditional or contemporary, can contain scripture. But musicians aren’t always the best Bible teachers. Let’s face it, sometimes Pastors aren’t always the best Bible teachers! I’ve found the Bible itself to be the best teacher. And the way we “let” the Bible teach us is by reading it. Over and over again. And preferably in different versions. We do that until what is the “clear teaching” in the Scriptures begins to stand out in contrast to some things that aren’t so clear. Our faith can focus on those clear, foundational teachings, and we don’t get so bothered by what may be not so clear. That’s how the Bible teaches us to read the Bible. Paying close attention to the voice of the Bible is a bit like actually listening to someone who’s talking to us. We have to “tune in” rather than “tuning out.” As it turns out, really listening always takes effort on our part. If we believe the Bible is the basis for our faith, then we’d better get with it when it comes to “paying closer attention.” Our lessons for today challenge us to start being much more intentional about listening for the “word of the Lord” through Scripture!

The Waking Dreamer