On my ordination day in 1989 (and even before), I said and have said countless times since, “This is a great time to be the church.” Though my enthusiasm still burns brightly for the mission of the church in these times, I no longer am saying that. I do not want to be misunderstood. I am not a “Make the Church Great Again” guy. And secondly, when church leaders are engulfed in the constellation of challenges they face today in a culture marked by severe conflict, I do not hear any of those leaders in my circle speak of these days as being “great.”  

 At the end of July my wife and I will travel to the Dallas-Ft. Worth area to participate in the installation of a marvelously gifted authentic servant-leader as an associate pastor with another leader we also highly value. If you have ever witnessed the installation of a pastor, you know that the bishop asks the one being installed a series of mission and ministry questions, all having to do with the expectations of her role as a pastor. To each of these questions, she will respond, “I will, and I ask God to help me.” When the questions have concluded, the bishop will then say, “Almighty God, who has given you the will to do these things, graciously give you the strength and compassion to perform them.” The congregation will then say, “Amen!”

 As I anticipate experiencing again these familiar words, I know I will be thinking about the challenges of a world still divided and infected by COVID-19, our planet being on fire, unchecked gun violence, rampant racism, the desperate situation in Haiti, the vicious divisions over recent Supreme Court rulings, and the recurring reports that speak negatively about the church – a church that is not only becoming more irrelevant but is now hated by many. At the same time, I will be thinking and praying (yes, thoughts and prayers) how desperately we need authentic gospel-centered and gospel-driven servant leaders to do the arduous work that is before us – the work of healing and restoring a broken world through their own leadership and the ministry and reach of the congregations they serve. And I know I will stand with gratitude, humility, and hope for having the privilege of being in the company of the people at this service of installation. So grateful for good people who still believe in the church, I expect a tear or two to appear in my eye.  

But what do we do now, church? Given the enormous challenges the church faces and the cultural confusion about its identity and calling, and of course, the vitriol directed at much of the church, it would be tempting to want to do something bold and new. Recognizing that this blog is not meant to be a lengthy theological or ecclesiological treatise, I want to briefly suggest that instead of searching for something bold and new, we stay focused on God’s vision of a world restored, and, at the same, as we are drawn into God’s vision, we be the countercultural community the church was created to be. If we did those two things, it would actually be bold and new.

 A World Made Well, Whole, and Restored

 The prophet, Isaiah, paints this picture:

 On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples
   a feast of rich food, a feast of well-matured wines,
   of rich food filled with marrow, of well-matured wines strained clear.
And he will destroy on this mountain
   the shroud that is cast over all peoples,
   the sheet that is spread over all nations;
he will swallow up death for ever.
Then the Lord God will wipe away the tears from all faces,
   and the disgrace of his people he will take away from all the earth,
   for the Lord has spoken.
It will be said on that day,
   Lo, this is our God; we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
   This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
   let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

- Isaiah 25:6-8 

The Hebrew scriptures not only offer this all-inclusive vision; the New Testament, specifically Revelation 21, also offers a similarly restorative portrait. God makes a feast for all people. All means all. Suffering, conflict, division, hunger, tears, and shame are all swallowed up by God’s extravagant grace and mercy for all of creation. There is no condemnation. There is no tribalism. No red states and blue states. No global north and no global south. We and all of creation are God’s and participants in God’s promised future – all and everything, no exceptions. Period. The end.

 The above portrait is sufficient for what we hope when we claim that Jesus is the Messiah of God. As God’s Messiah, his life, death, and resurrection has already overcome everything that would cheapen us, fragment us, or crush us. This promise is that to which I cling when confronted with the turbulent world in which we live. This is what gets my focus when my heart breaks with gun violence, or with the fifty immigrants who died in a trailer while risking everything for a new life, or with the horrors of mass incarceration of the poor and persons of color in the south. This is what empowers me to deeply identify with Jesus and to rise each day with hope in light of the resurrection. This is what it means to say, “The tomb is empty.”

 Folks, if this is truly the destination and the outcome for all of creation and all of life – no exceptions – then we, if we are authentic as God’s people, will live our lives and make choices, individually and corporately, towards that end. And again, that would be bold and new.

 Being Countercultural.

Despite what anyone might try to assert, USAmerica is not a “Christian nation.” White Christian Nationalism is not Christian nor are other forms of malignant Christianity plaguing our culture. The USAmerican Christianity of today has nothing in common with the movement that began with a declaration, “The tomb is empty,” and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that first seized the followers of Jesus and enabled them to completely reimagine themselves and their future in light of what God has done. No way that a nation filled with “Christians” could be so full of hate for one another. No way that a nation filled with “Christians” could be so filled with judgment and cruelty for one another. No way that a nation filled with “Christians” could be so sure of their superiority, self-righteousness, and triumphalism.

 Listen to what Jesus says,

 Blessed are the poor in spirit…

Blessed are those who mourn…

Blessed are the meek…

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness (justice)…

Blessed are the merciful…

- Matthew 5:3-7

And the prophet, Micah

 … and what does the Lord require of you

but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?

- Micah 6:8

 And again, just one of many of a stubborn theme of Jesus:

 Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

- John 13:34

Ask yourselves. Does the nation in which I live look like the above? Does USAmerica and its idolatrous gun culture look like the above? Does USAmerica and its anti-immigration, anti-LGBTQIA+, anti-voting rights for non-whites, anti-climate and earth-saving initiatives, and hard-core anti-abortion stances, no matter who the impregnated mother might be or what her circumstances are, look like the above?

More importantly, does the church in which I participate look like the above? Does it think like the above? Does it live like the above? Does it love like the above?

 Hope for Us. Hope for the World

Of all that we and our world might need right now, the authentic church and the God to whom it points and follows is still our best hope. And that hope is not something that comes from us humans. It comes from God and what God still reveals to us as the way of following Jesus. And it is that hope that enables us to see what the world cannot see, dream what the world cannot dream, and be willing to do the tireless work for what the world is not willing to do. To which we reply, “We will and we ask God to help us.”

May God who has given you the will to do these things also give you the strength and the courage to do them.

 In the abiding hope of the empty tomb, 

Her name was Shannon. From the time that I first became her pastor and until now, I have found her to engage life with all her heart. She was among the nine high-school students I took on their first trip to Haiti in July of 2009, and she repeatedly returned. Haiti in July is hot, especially in Jacmel. The heat serves to add to the disorientation privileged young people experience when immersed in a setting of shocking poverty and primitive infrastructure.

In the late afternoon of a long sweltering day, we were making our way back to our guest house and trudging along a dusty unimproved road of stones and sharp rocks. The sun was beating down on us and the group was physically and emotionally exhausted. As we walked a young boy wearing just a dirty oversized T-shirt came up beside us and said, “Mwen pa gen soulye.” I have no shoes. “Èske ou ka ban mwen soulye?” Can you give me shoes? As I translated the boy’s words to the group, they had this telling look of helplessness. You could fry an egg on the stones in the road, and nobody was carrying around an extra pair of shoes.

We walked on feeling sad, guilty, indicted, and all the conundrum of feelings when you encounter such a terrible gap between what we have and the impoverished children of Haiti. We reached the guest house, entered the gate, and immediately went for water. I looked around, counted heads as I compulsively do on these trips, and discovered that Shannon was missing. I hollered for her, and nobody could say that they had seen her. I ran up to the roof to a place where we frequently gathered, and she was not there. I began to panic at the thought of a young teenage American girl on her own in a strange place. As I was imagining worst case scenarios, the guest house security guard opened the big iron gate. In walked Shannon. She was barefoot. She had given the boy her shoes and unbeknownst to us navigated up the scorching, rocky road to the guest house in her bare feet. Whenever I hear the words, “You shall love the Lord, your God, with all your heart,” and with it to “Love your neighbor as yourself,” I think of Shannon and her shoes.

Mary and Her Heart

In the first chapter of Luke (1:26-38), the angel Gabriel comes to visit a young, “lowly” (her words) teenage girl (14 years-old and maybe with no shoes) in a small unremarkable town called Nazareth. The news he gives her is astonishing. She will conceive a son not by lying with a man but by the power of the Holy Spirit. He will be called Jesus, Son of God. It will happen because “nothing will be impossible for God.” At the end of this conversation, Mary comes to the only response she knew to give, a response that was all heart. “Here am I, the servant of the Lord, let it be with me according to your word.” As the late Rachel Held Evans reminds us, years before Mary’s precious son, Jesus, would gather his disciples on the night in which he was betrayed, Mary herself would say to her God, “This is my body given for you.” It’s a matter of the heart.

This is Our Story

As we draw near to celebrate Christmas in this troubled, confused, and often dangerous world, we should remain aware that this long ago encounter of the angel Gabriel with Mary is our story too. That’s why we tell it! It is our story because the coming of Jesus is not just the birth of a baby; it is the manifestation of a decision. No matter who we are or what we might face, God has decided to incarnate among us – in, under, and with us – in solidarity with us and take on our stories and our lives as God’s own. And the real presence of God among us in Jesus the Christ is a God of whom it could be argued is all heart – showing us what it means to love the unlovable, forgive the unforgiveable, embrace those whom the world declares to be “other,” and on the cross give everything withholding nothing … for you.

 Jesus says to those who are confused by his unrelenting love for all people, “I am the light of the world” (see John 8). He also says to us, “You are the light of the world” (see Matthew 5). As the lyrics of my favorite Christmas carol goes, “Light and life to ALL he brings,” we manifest the light of Christ when we engage the world with “all our heart.”

 In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,

On our refrigerator is a handwritten note penned by my wife’s mother sometime around 1995. It is from Philippians 4:6-7. (If you happen to belong to a congregation that uses the common lectionary, it is one of the lessons for the coming 3rd Sunday in Advent, as well as Luke 3 with John ranting in the wilderness.) She wrote it down as a reminder as she fought lymphoma, a battle she would lose. In 2018, my wife found it in the dog-eared pages of her mother’s hand-me-down Bible and gave it to me when I was diagnosed with leukemia. Last year we would photocopy it and gave the original to our son when he was diagnosed with lymphoma.

Seriously?

Do not worry about anything. Seriously? Paul never had to live the life of a cancer patient, where your life falls into a rhythm of tests and waiting for results. You live knowing there is a terrorist in your body. Even when treatments send the terrorist into remission, there is always the possibility the terrorist can resurface. I know.

But beyond worries specific to cancer patients and their families, the admonition to “not worry about anything” is certainly easier said than done. Yet, Jesus often said those words, notably in his Sermon on the Mount (see Matthew 5:25-34) while also asking, “Why do you worry?” Is Jesus asking us not to worry about the implications of climate change? To not worry about gun violence and school shootings in this country? To not worry about losing our democracy, and voting rights, and the new COVID-19 Omicron Variant? To not be anxious when your teenager is beginning to make poor choices or when you get a new boss, and the company is making momentous changes? Seriously?

Why do we worry? When I was in the tenth grade, I was totally unprepared for a pop quiz in my English class. Thinking that the teacher would find it funny, I drew a picture of Alfred E. Neuman and wrote, “What me worry?” on my paper and turned it in. (Yea, I know, some of you don’t know about Mad Magazine.) The teacher was not amused. He sent me to the dean’s office. Then, I really began to worry. What if they tell my parents?

Do not Worry Does Not Mean Do Not Care 

That Paul writes from prison and Jesus repeatedly says, “Do not worry or be anxious about anything” is not the same as saying, “Do not care.” Followers of Jesus are called to deeply care about the things that bring an ache to God’s heart, even if it means doing what the late Congressman John Lewis said about getting into “good trouble.” And what John the Baptist ranting out in the wilderness, “You brood of vipers” (Luke 3:7), is saying is that you may be quite religious, but not caring about the poor and the marginalized will get you in hot water. You should know and act better. Little wonder that Jesus’ ire was often directed at religious folks, whom he called hypocrites.

 Standing Secure

But worry and anxiety? At the heart of the repeated admonishments to not worry is the call to trust. It is a call to faith not in a belief or religious system but in the One who created you and all that exists. Trust or faith is a stance. It is to stand tall and secure in the unshakeable hope that God’s got you, no matter what.

If you pay attention to that which most frustrates Jesus, it is not what folks imagine when they hear the religious term, sin. It is not acts of immorality or even some awful crimes. It is more fundamental. It is the failure to trust God with all that we are and all that we have. Jesus’ life and ministry and what it showed he deeply cared about, his humble journey to his cross and death by crucifixion, and his victory over death and the grave are all screaming at us with the fundamental God question, “Do you trust me? Will you please trust me?”

God’s got us. Because God has the last word on whatever we might face, instead of hanging onto anxiety, how about with prayer and supplication we let our requests be known to the God who loves us and has us? When something triggers worry or anxiety, will you hear God speaking to you, “Will you trust me?” Will you? Because God’s got you.

In the abiding hope of the empty tomb,