What I Learned During the Great 2020 Quarantine

 

Thing Three: At hand

Religion considers itself a journey to come closer to God. In reality, it usually works to keep God far away. Or at least within the limitations of what we are willing to accept as God’s realm.

We desire to be close to God after this life is over, to reside in his heavenly city with its streets of gold. We would like God to be near us in times of need, to protect us from threats and dangers, to provide for us in times of need, to lend his healing power when we are sick, and to fill our hearts with hope and joy when we are down. When we look at the brokenness of the world, we blame atheists and secularists who have driven God from our homes and our schools and our public life. Let God back in, we say, and all will be well.

As long as it’s the God we worship.

We worship a God who reigns from on high, who keeps track of rights and wrongs and properly assigns rewards and punishments. We have built a system that we call religion to keep God in his proper place, doling out rewards and punishments as required by law, giving mercy and the occasional miracle just to keep the game interesting. We know that Jesus talks a lot about love and healing sick people and giving money to the poor, nice things to be sure, but we know deep in our hearts that God is ultimately concerned about spiritual and moral matters. In that way, religion remains a private, personal concern. A choice. You’d think Americans invented it.

We didn’t. This was the church of the Middle Ages. Religion permeated every aspect of medieval life, if sometimes with a heavy hand. For most of the population, life without the church was simply not conceivable. For people whose lives were filled with hardship and constantly overshadowed by death, church was not just another activity, it was a necessity for survival. Despite our modern skepticism about the medieval church, most people were truly devout, and practiced their faith fervently, even hopefully. Yet in all of this God remained distant, aloof, seated on his heavenly throne watching over his creation with righteousness and (occasionally) benevolence. Any relationship with such a God was by definition transactional, blessings received for true faith and good works, acts of penance made to compensate for sins great and small. There were lots of sins that demanded compensation.

Some, actually, could be paid for with cash. A dedicated mass, a gift given in adoration of an ancient relic, an offering made for a special occasion dedicated by the Pope that could resolve some, if not all, of a person or their loved one’s sin, erasing thousands upon thousands of year of purgatorial punishment. Until Luther came along. The church complained that Luther endangered the religious well-being of the laity by destroying practices that kept them close to God. Luther attacked Indulgences, and later the whole array of common religious acts, because in fact they distanced people from a real relationship with God. These religious acts turned believers back to themselves, to their sorrow, to their fear. God remained in heaven afar, bound by the same rules and procedures that governed the life of the faithful, no more free than they were.

Luther dreamed of a different life of faith, where penance was not resolved by praxis or ritual, but experienced deep in the heart of the believer who found solace in the mercy of God in Jesus Christ. He wrote longingly of faith that was profound, powerful enough to cast out actual demons that haunted consciences and not merely the cartoon devils conceived to motivate recalcitrant sinners. He yearned for faith that amended hearts and redirected lives and rebuilt worlds. His writings often reveal a deep emotion and passion in his own spirituality, his struggle to find peace in his anfectung, to fully experience a God of grace. What changed his life was the realization that God was not waiting for him to pass his religious test, but was actively transforming his very being and his every act through the power of the grace bestowed in baptism, the promise fulfilled in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

                For Luther, God was not seated on some distant heavenly throne, the keeper of law, waiting for him to accomplish his own salvation. God was hard at work in Luther and in the world creating a new Adam, bringing to life a new Kingdom. Right here. Right now.

                That is the other important part of this equation. Religion keeps God at bay by assigning religious fufillment to a distant event in the chronological future, at the end of life, at the end of time. For religion, in the middle ages and now, the work of faith is given as a downpayment on some (hopefully) heavenly tomorrow. The potential for a different ending, one filled with heat and pain and torment, is a powerful deterrent to sin. Supposedly. As the modern age comes to a close it seems that cynicism has got the best of the devil, until even the threat of the fires of hell have little or no impact on the choices of most humans. As attention spans shorten and immediate gratification becomes a defining lifestyle, a religion dependent on the appeal of investing in some mystical post-life scenario is less and less meaningful. And less faithful.

                How did we reach this point? This is not following the path of a Jesus who came spending grace like it was going out of style, like it was burning a hole in his pocket. He confronted the need that was immediately in front of him, feeding the hungry, healing the sick, touching the untouchable, crossing boundaries geographic and social. And he did it in real, hands-on physical acts. He spat into the eyes of the blind, hugged children, broke bread with friends and lifted drowning disciples from the lake. He told stories about farmers and fathers, shepherds and servants. Real people. And in the end he hurt and bled and died, as any of us might. His instructions to his disciples for their ministry was the same. “Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons.” (Matthew 10:8 NRSV) And those instructions were to be an enactment of their proclamation: “The kingdom of heaven has come near.” (Matthew 10:7 NRSV)

                To come near, to approach, to be in the vicinity, close by. It is a word that describes the historical turning point of Jesus arrival, the immanence of the destruction of Jerusalem, the hour of destiny that is Jesus’ true mission. Its best translation is “at hand,” a baton passed in relay, a help up from a deep pit, the touch of a beloved at bedside. It is anticipation in the moment of fulfillment, the bright flash on the horizon at dawn. This is Jesus’ schedule, not a distant and abstract someday, but an extant, if unrecognized, reality that can no longer be ignored.

                Jesus didn’t invent this idea, by the way. Jesus comes to announce what was always true for God’s people. The soul of the Torah is its immediacy, its pertinence. “The word is very near to you; it is in your mouth and in your heart for you to observe.” (Deuteronomy 30:14 NRSV) The prophets did not come to predict events beyond the veil of time, they spoke to the present brokenness of Israel and its immediate consequence. While we rummage through the pages of the prophets for the keys to unlock a mysterious future like a gambler perusing the daily racing form for a hot tip on a longshot, the truth stares us in the face and dares us to attend to it. Salvation is not waiting for us. It is here. Why are we still waiting?

                That is what we do in a quarantine of course. We wait. We sit in the safety of our homes and we wait for the plague to pass, for the demonstrators to go home and the streets to clear, for a vaccine to be developed and distributed, for leaders to lead, for a sign to come and show us the way. We yearn for the day when this all will be over and we will be free.

         We have forgotten: we are free right now.

And the world is waiting for us to do something with our God-given freedom.

The great failure of the church is its willful ignorance of the immediacy of its calling, its procrastination in Christ’s mission to the detriment of the neighbor. Perhaps we have watched the cycles of history for too long and so we assume that this day will just pass as well. The world has been through so much already and just kept on going without really changing. There is still a generation among us who has lived through world-wide financial depression and war. There has been social unrest before, there have been sickness and disease. We are comfortable in the assumption that this too will pass, won’t it?

The problem, of course, is that, for the most part time does pass, problems come and go and then things return to their previous undisturbed state. We think that a blessing. After all, change is frightening and difficult. Better the devil we know, a cliché that depends on our willful obliviousness to the devil in our midst. Privilege creates a myopathy that shelters us from suffering in the world and our neighbor behind the facade of our own real and imagined travails. Wrapped up in our own needs, our heart is closed off and our faith is defeated. And the mission of the Kingdom of God is denied.

In the misery of the Babylonian exile God gave a powerful vision of redemption to the Israelites. But the image is not a conquering hero who would overcome their enemies, it is a figure who suffers too. The Savior will be “despised and rejected by others; a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity; and as one from whom others hide their faces.” (Isaiah 53:3 NRSV) God would redeem their pain and grief by binding himself to the pain and grief of the world. Instead of the same old cycle of ignoring the brokenness of our lives and our world, God invites us to move into the deep experiences of all that hurts to find him. To find ourselves. To find truth. Facing up to who we are and what we have done is the beginning and the end of change, the start of what is new.

Isaiah introduced the figure of the Suffering Servant in the context of that great promise:    “Thus says God, the LORD, who created the heavens and stretched them out, see, the former things have come to pass, and new things I now declare; before they spring forth, I tell you of them.” (Isaiah 42:9 NRSV) The joining of the divine to the mortal, the coming of the Son into midst of injustice and peace is the new thing that creates new things. Breaking us away from our narcissistic self-involvements and opening us up to see the world around us is the moment when the Kingdom of God dawns in our eyes and in our hearts. Here, in the poverty and oppression of our neighbor is purpose and identity. Here, in the fear and helplessness of our neighbor is strength and healing. Here, in a lost and wandering world is the signpost of the day that is becoming in our midst.

                Now, more than two millennia later, these words reach out to us in the midst of the darkness of 2020. We have been exiled from everything we consider normal, usual, important. We are suffering. We are waiting for this moment to pass, we are looking for the calendar page to turn and take us to some other place, to any other place than this. But God is bringing in his Kingdom right here, right now, and dares us to stay where we are this time, to open our eyes and our hearts to this moment, to have courage and hope and faith, to discover that our salvation is bound to the salvation of our neighbor and the whole world. And our neighbor and the whole world can’t wait for us any longer. Martin Luther King Jr. said it this way:

 We are now faced with the fact that tomorrow is today. We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history, there ‘is’ such a thing as being too late. This is no time for apathy or complacency. This is a time for vigorous and positive action.[1] 

With all due deference to Dr. King, let’s not say this is a time. Let us instead embrace the promise: this is the time. This is God’s time, and so it must be our time too. We have been burdened for too long with bad theology and false leadership and horrible teaching and corrupted institutions and every other manner of human brokenness, but that need not stop us any longer. We have learned something during these months of quarantine, during this time of disorder and unrest. We have been opened to acts of faith long avoided and possibilities long unheeded. The Kingdom is here. The Kingdom is now. It has come for us. This is the day that the Lord has made, let us enter it with joy and thanksgiving!

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[1] 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom

What I Learned During the Great 2020 Quarantine

 

Thing two: stuff happens (yes, even in the Kingdom)

“God’s people should be the happiest people on earth. Maybe you came from a family like my dad’s, where they didn’t have much. Perhaps you hail from a long line of divorce, failure, depression or mediocrity. You need to say, “Enough is enough. I’m going to start believing God for bigger and better things.” Get up each day expecting God’s favor. Friend, no matter what you’ve been through, no matter whose fault it was, no matter how impossible your situation may look, the good news is that God wants to turn it around and restore what has been stolen from you. Start expecting things to change in your favor. It’s your faith that activates the power of God. Remember, if you obey God and are willing to trust Him, you will have the best this life has to offer — and more. You can start living your best life now.”

 These are the words of Joel Osteen, author and Pastor of Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas. They are typical of what is commonly known as the “Prosperity Gospel,” an uplifting and inspiring message that promises God’s rewards for those who believe and trust. Not merely the reward of an eternal life in paradise, but a fulfilled, prosperous and trouble-free life here and now. Material rewards for material acts of faith – church attendance, clean living and homage to other appointed marks of holy living. Happiness and serenity for those who choose the right side. Lakewood church has a membership counted in the tens of thousands, and a televised media following in the millions. And who would not want such a glorious, fortunate life?

If only it worked like that.

Years of ministry have shown me again and again that the opposite is true. The deeply faithful people I have encountered in my journeys have struggled with poverty and disease, strife and grief in the course of their lives, sometimes of their own making, sometimes not. There have been some who have enjoyed the fruits of their labors, there have been many who have been favored with the joys of family and friendship and community. Yet they have also had dark days and difficult times. Suffering is not the purpose of discipleship, not a requirement of faith, nor should it be. But faithfulness is not an inoculation against the vagaries of life and the hardship it brings.

What is constantly amazing is not the bad things that happen to God’s people, but how the light of their faith shines through even in dark times. And while I have never even toyed with the notion that following Jesus might bring me either wealth or health, I have coveted such grace that I might bear the same witness when my days are trying.

And now we come into the year of our Lord 2020. The perfect intersection of the long history of human brokenness and uncommon events, seemingly designed to ask the most of us, and for which we have proven ourselves least able to meet. This moment is laying bare the undeniable truth – we have not yet learned to live in both our brokenness and in the grace of our God. We expect the world to be what it is not, and so we are unprepared and unable to live within it when it simply is what it is. We are not walking where God expects us to walk, we are not living where God expects us to live.

When the disciples pestered Jesus to foretell his upcoming victory, they did so expecting promises of glory and joy, an end to the oppression and suffering they experienced on a daily basis. They spoke from generations of belief that the world, their story, was going somewhere, becoming something, and they longed for liberation from their troubles with every ounce of their faith. Jesus did not give them the answer they wanted: 

“Do you see these great buildings? Not one stone will be left here upon another; all will be thrown down … When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place … nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines. This is but the beginning of the birth pangs … they will hand you over to councils; and you will be beaten in synagogues … Brother will betray brother to death, and a father his child, and children will rise against parents and have them put to death; and you will be hated by all because of my name …Woe to those who are pregnant and to those who are nursing infants in those days! Pray that it may not be in winter. For in those days there will be suffering, such as has not been from the beginning of the creation that God created until now.” (Mark 13:2, 7-9, 12-13, 17-19).

 It is not a rosy picture, not an image consistent with our hoped-for escape from our drab, limited and often painful existence. Things like pandemics and social upheaval are painful in every way, even if they don’t touch us directly. They impair our carefully constructed expectation of how life should be, they are a veil over the hope we cling to so desperately. We suffer every day in the world we are seeking to escape, and that’s why it never changes. We cannot be instruments of Grace and Light in the world if we refuse to live in the world.

                Following Jesus means going where he went, being where he was. Discipleship is not all changing water into wine or joyful parades into Jerusalem. Discipleship is touching the untouchable, feeding the hungry, sitting with tax collectors and sinners. Discipleship is crossing boundaries, standing against power, freeing captives. And discipleship is enduring betrayal and denial, suffering and death. These are the places where we are needed, where we are led, where Jesus’ work is done.

This is where we must go so we can be who we were saved to be.

But we refuse to be who we were saved to be. We desire the same perfection in ourselves (and each other) as we do in the world around us. We fill our days with self-improvement programs and sanctimonious religious quests, all which end in disappointment because even if they are born in a true desire to be good people who do good things, they are driven by a need to be who we cannot be. We are re-enacting an age-old Christian heresy.

Luther’s life work spoke to that error. While the story of Luther pledging his life in service to the church during a lightning storm may be apocryphal, it was typical of his time. Surrounded by poverty, hardship and death, the church provided much needed protection from the adversities of this world and the key to paradise in the next one. Becoming a priest, monk or nun was an escape – not merely from the hardships of life, but from the personal brokenness that haunted the life of the faithful.

Not everyone followed that path. But the church had plenty of answers. For the laity there were practices and rituals that ensured God’s protective grace against the dangers and evil powers that ran through world. There were holy days to observe (lots of special holy days), special prayers to say, rituals that marked not merely the passage of time but provided safe escort through the perils and trials of life. And there was the mass itself, the supreme mystery of faith in which bread and wine became the very body and blood of Christ with all of its powers over sickness and death. It was not unheard of for a parishioner to sneak the host home to feed a sick animal. Spoken in Latin, the words “this is my body” (hoc es corpus meium) become the expression “hocus pocus.”

Of course it was the practice of Indulgences in particular that caught Luther’s attention and ignited his reformation. An indulgence was a special gift of grace, granted by the Pope himself, to speed the passage of a soul through the terrors of purgatory, a time of punishment and suffering for those who lacked the necessary credit to enter heaven directly. As if life itself wasn’t bad enough. Luther’s complaint went much deeper than the financial corruption driving the practice of indulgences. It was the lie they told, that the purpose of life was the achievement of spiritual perfection in whatever way it could be gained. Luther had come to realize through his own spiritual tribulations (which he called his anfechtung) that such a thing was a false hope, a barrier to true faith and the peace of Christ.

For Luther, the reformation began in the discovery in the Epistle to the Romans that Paul spoke of righteous as a property of God rather than a human achievement, given freely in faith as a free gift of God. But he might as well have taken the words directly from Jesus’ mouth. Mistrusted for his constant disgraceful association with tax collectors and other known sinners, Jesus rebuked his critics with these words: “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick do. Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.” (Matthew 9:12–13 NRSV). The harder we try to define ourselves and our works as righteous, good and worthy, the farther we are removed from the saving grace of God in Jesus.

Luther had a great way of describing the reality that we detest. Simul Iustis et Peccator. Simultaneously saved and sinful. Not loved because we are perfect or in spite of our imperfection but showered with grace and mercy because of it. Loved by God as the whole being we are, and called to discipleship with all of our gifts and our flaws. Rather than live in a prison of denial, Luther imagined living fully in the freedom of grace. Rather than tilt at the windmills of sanctity, we could be free to do the best we can as often as we can, and when we come short, to try again. Not religion, faith.

Faith teaches us this hard truth about our world: stuff happens. Sometimes we are that stuff. God is not deterred by that. The Bible is a never-ending string of stories of mostly well-meaning people with serious character flaws who work against God’s plan as often as they follow it. But somehow, miraculously, the Kingdom of God moves irresistibly forward, not merely in spite of humanity, but surely through it. It is the imperfections of the creation that make it the perfect instrument of grace.

Grace is in the stuff that happens.

There is both a material and a spiritual dimension to reality, and grace lives and flourishes where they cross. We flee the harsh realities of the world we inhabit, we despise the shortcomings of the person we see in the mirror every morning. But we are called to abide in the fullness of both, to fulfill our calling to discipleship as we follow Jesus into all of the places we would rather not go. We are not waiting for perfection – either in the world or in ourselves or in some later transition to glory. We are looking for the Kingdom of God as it lives and breathes, close at hand.

What I Learned in the Great 2020 Quarantine: Kingdom

 

Thing one: Pilgrims in a Strange Land

The word is fraught with meaning in America. Our origin story centers on a group of people that we fondly remember as our “pilgrim” forefathers. There were other European explorers who adventured their way to the North American continent in those days, but as school children we were taught that the landing on Plymouth Rock in 1642 is the genesis of the story of America. We know they came to escape religious persecution, we laud their search for freedom to practice their faith in the manner they chose. We remember them as the forefathers of our nation. However, that is not what made them “pilgrims.”

They came looking for a place that they could call home. They had been chased from country to country, never finding the welcome they desired, never having the opportunity to put down roots and build a world according to their designs. They had a particular vision of how the world should be, and in what they called “the New World” they saw an opportunity to realize that vision. They believed they were building the Kingdom of God on earth. That’s not what it means to be a pilgrim either.

The first community of disciples were pilgrims. The resurrection gave them a radical new vision of life and hope and faith and love, and now they had to make their way in a world that looked nothing like it. They were little more than another religious cult. They had no concrete power or status or institutional authority, no weapons or tools to bend the world to their will. That was not their mission anyway. Their purpose was to preach the good news of the resurrection so that God would transform hearts and minds and, in time, lives. And then the world.

In fact, they didn’t call themselves “the church” or even “a church.” They called themselves The Way. They were a movement, blown by the Spirit into and throughout the world. It seems to have worked. The book of Acts records the tremendous growth of the early church. The persecution of Christianity by the empire indicates that they became a force to be reckoned with. As Diana Butler-Bass notes:

 

They exercised an alternative power to that of empire – the power of neighborly love, the power of nonviolence. The more the Romans used imperial power against them, the more people noticed, listened to their message, and joined their communities.[1] 

They knew how the world saw them, how it feared them, how it fought against them. They knew  they didn’t belong to the world. They lived as pilgrims, temporary residents, aliens, exiles. They did not live as the world lived or believe as the world believed, and accordingly they were treated with neglect and persecution. They considered it a great blessing.

It took more than three centuries for things to change. But it did. In the fourth century, Rome decided that if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them. In 325 CE the emperor Constantine,  a new devotee of the Christian faith, gathered Christian leaders to a town called Nicaea and instructed them to produce a standardized statement of doctrine, a creed. From that foundation a church was built, an institution of the world. The Roman Empire became the Holy Roman Empire, keeper and enforcer of Christianity. Jesus was enthroned in the kingdom of the world, and the pilgrim identity of the faithful was lost.

Having gained power and status, the church has sought and fought to retain it ever since. That is what God wants for the church and for the world, right? That all of life should be an extension of religion, or vice versa. That’s how it was in the glory days of the kingdom, and that is the promise we are waiting to see fulfilled – that we should see the church vindicated while the unfaithful burn for their infidelity. The fact that it is not that way is a constant source of frustration and disappointment, especially in this country.

Lacking the status of a state-sanctioned religion, the American Christian Church fancies itself a constant victim of persecution, surrounded by a world full of threats. Christians, especially older white Christians, grieve for the loss of the status of the church and the significance of its traditions, feeling, for example, that their very livelihood could be taken from them if they “didn’t believe in homosexuality.” They deem social change as a personal threat against their religious freedom, and they extrapolate their own fears into a war against themselves and their faith. They are egged on by church leaders who feel their worldly power diminishing and will do anything, demand everything, make any alliance, to survive.

Doctrinal adherence as a primary proof of faithfulness is a sign of a body struggling to hold on to power. Defining freedom according to the ability to impose its doctrine on the world (or the fear that it will be imposed on you) is a sign of a body struggling to hold on to power. There is a widespread assumption among Christians that America was founded as a Christian nation, which is not true and mocks the experience of early colonists running from nations that sought to impose a singular doctrine and religion on its citizens.

This is not the life or the work of pilgrims.

Jesus came into the world preaching, “The Kingdom of God is at hand.” (Mark 1:15 NRSV) The word Kingdom has been the bane of the community of faith ever since. First we share an intentional misunderstanding and misinterpretation of the word itself. Properly heard, the word denotes activity rather than structure, as in “God’s reign,” or “God’s rule.” God’s mission. Moreover, our pursuit of a worldly Christian Kingdom displays our ignorance of the actual preaching, teaching and work of Jesus himself, who stood against worldly power and authorities and called his followers to lives in pursuit of justice, advocating for the powerless and oppressed, serving the neediest by standing with and for them. The empire we covet is the empire that crucified Jesus, at the behest of religious leaders who were powerless to act for themselves. As the Reverend Daniel D Brereton says, “Christianity was never supposed to be about dominating society, but uplifting it - and you can't lift if you're already on top.”[2]

The fullness of the Kingdom of God is revealed at the climactic moment of Jesus’ ministry. Facing imperial power in the person of Pontius Pilate, he was challenged to either show his power or submit willfully to the world’s power. He choose neither. “My kingdom is not from this world,” he replies to Pilate. And lest that statement be treated as mere spiritual metaphor, he clarified the point. “If my kingdom were from this world, my followers would be fighting to keep me from being handed over to the Jews. But as it is, my kingdom is not from here.” (John 18:36 NRSV) If faith was all about world dominance, about getting our way and imposing our doctrine, that would have been the moment to begin. Instead Jesus chose to go to his cross, signaling the upside-down reality of God’s rule: he is only a pilgrim in this world, and we should be too.

What is the draw of our grasping for worldly power? There are probably several answers to that question. But in these days of pandemic and social disorder, one seems particularly clear. We do not like to suffer, and we are living in days of great suffering. Power protects people from suffering, and because God probably does not want us to suffer, he must want us to seize power. The constant turn of history, the never-ending flow of chance and change is terrifying. Grasping for power is a classic symptom of fear, and we have empty, needy hands. The events of 2020 are merely the final straw breaking the back of generations of watching the powerful and seemingly indispensable church of our childhood die. What we miss in the turmoil of our grief is the hard truth: the church of our childhood – that dominant, permanent, comfortable edifice of the world - was never meant to be.

Jesus called his followers to be pilgrims in the world. “I am sending you out like lambs into the midst of wolves. Carry no purse, no bag, no sandals …” (Luke 10:3-4 NRSV) Our calling is not to build, to establish, to preserve. We are merely passing through this place and time, preaching an impending Kingdom that is not of this world but surely coming to be in it. We are signs of what God is building – why would we be invested in building things of our own? So we make our way now, travelers without roots, pilgrims all, living out our mission in a strange and hostile place because this is where and when we were sent to be. No matter what may happen.

Because things always happen.

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[1] Butler-Bass, Diana, The Price of Power. Christianity Will Have Power, But What Kind? The Cottage, August 2020. © 2020 Diana Butler Bass.

[2] Via Twitter, @RevDaniel, August 11, 2020.

What I Learned in the Great 2020 Quarantine: Welcome to the Upside Down (part three)

 

Thing three: What If We’re Wrong? (spoiler alert, we are)

The words loom like the dark clouds of a late summer thunderstorm. Essential. Matters. And what is more essential, and what matters more, than truth? Was the real product of the Information Age bad information? It is everywhere now, literally at our fingertips. Dishonesty and deception thrive in spaces like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and similar loci in their world. Propaganda is an ancient and effective weapon, aided in this day by powerful technology and an intentionally engineered devotion to ignorance. Mistruth polls better than truth. How do lies become reality? They get repeated again and again. Psychologists call it gaslighting. Politicians call it media strategy. Media magnates calls it profit. A rose by any other name.

Social media is an amplifier of mistruth but the foundation of the proliferation of dishonesty is our inability, our unwillingness, to accept something that we do not like. We prefer our own instinct. We pride ourselves on the illusion that we already know everything we need to know. Learning new things is hard, unlearning old things is harder. We wear our ignorance like a badge of honor. We patronize messengers who tell us what we want to hear. And we look down our nose at those who presume to inform or educate us. How dare they act as if they were our betters?

For faith, truth is a much greater challenge. It is a person, a pronouncement and a proclamation, a claim laid upon us by God and set before us as a life-long journey of discovery and growth. The world prefers an injudicious education system that churns out mindless cogs on the economic wheel. Spiritual gifts like curiosity or inquisitiveness are disparaged. New ideas are shunned. We burden future generations with nostalgic remembrances of our own childhood, oblivious to the fact that they live in an entirely different time and place. Why are we so surrounded by illiteracy and disingenuity? Because those in power know it works. Surely we are seeing now the cost of our self-serving myopathy in the suffering and death of our neighbors. Society cannot survive deprived of reason and intelligence, bound by common ignorance and immaturity. That is a freedom we cannot afford.

The world is a complicated place and faith is hard. And trying to navigate this world faithfully without wisdom – not merely doctrine or tradition, but the word of God that is Jesus Christ – is perilous and trying. Stupid is not a virtue. Dishonesty is not clever. The God-given gift of a mind is a terrible thing to waste. How do we expect to find our way to a better world if we cannot comprehend the damage we have done to this one?

That is what this moment is trying to tell us. We have been told lies. We have believed the lies. We have embraced the lies. We have followed the lies. All because the lies give comfort and solace, because they support our desire to avoid those very difficult words: I am wrong. And if we are going to find the courage to say those words and mean it, then we are going to have to turn our backs on one other religious idol: fundamentalism.

                Fundamentalism pretends to be about holding on to the truth, about stripping the Bible and church doctrine of the blight of modernism, but in fact the doctrine and practice of fundamentalism is a newcomer to religion, to Christianity and other religions as well. It is a 20^th Century reaction to the advent of historical and literary criticism of the Bible. It ignores the reality that the Bible has always been read as the complicated and multi-layered work. Moving through the word (small w) of the Bible and getting to the Word (with a capital W) requires an investment of time, energy, scholarship and faith. Marcus Borg puts it this way:

 

[Fundamentalists] also commonly see themselves as affirming “the old-time religion”—that is, Christianity as it was before the modern period. In fact … their approach is itself modern, largely the product of a particular form of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Protestant theology. Moreover, rather than allowing the Bible its full voice, their approach actually confines the Bible within a tight theological structure.[1]

 

Consider Rabbinical scholarship. There, the word of God comes to life in the back-and-forth dialogue of the Mishnah and not merely the dry reading of the Torah. Jesus himself did not read or teach the Scriptures literally, applying the words “but I say to you” to Scriptural texts six consecutive times in the sermon on the Mount (along with nine other uses of the word “but” in the same passages) to enhance, illustrate, challenge, and even contradict what was written and known. Fundamentalism is neither biblical nor faithful. It is a fear-based reaction of a church that cannot even allow the possibility of being wrong.

I am fascinated by the allure of fundamentalism in American Christianity. Given our death-grip on the doctrine of free-will, anything that demands strict adherence to or observance of a singular irreducible doctrine or practice seems absurd. We like our options, our choices. Fundamentalism is about taking options away, denying questions, abolishing individuality of any kind. Yet there is a clarity to fundamentalism, a focused choosing. This is how it is. Take it or leave it. There is one truth, and those who willingly embrace it will be properly rewarded. Faith becomes transactional, a win-lose proposition where the competitors are clearly identified and the rules are straightforward. And there is one other benefit.

Fundamentalism is static. It proclaims that things should and will always be as they have always been (and will always be?). Having whitewashed any grey area, there is a desirable and affirming clarity in fundamentalism that is often absent from the rest of life. But the effort it takes to hold such an untenable position! Fundamentalism, in whatever domain it is practiced, in constantly embattled with the dynamic world in which we actually live. Intolerance breeds enmity, hate and violence. It justifies conflict with a good dose of self-righteousness. Paul listed enmity as a “fruit of the flesh,” a product of worldly living that should be unnatural to spirit-filled people. Yet “strife, jealousy, anger, and quarrels,” (Galatians 5:20 NSV) are go-to rituals in fundamentalist Christianity, the public face of faith in this country. No wonder fewer and fewer want any part of it.

Fundamentalism will not, cannot, perceive wrongness. It does not know humility. It cannot confess its brokenness, it constrains the work of the Spirit within the limitations of human grasping. It is self-aggrandizing, power-seeking, undeservedly proud. It is not characteristic of followers of Jesus. It is a denial of the overwhelming, abundant, free-spirited gift of grace.

And it will never, ever, get us to the place we desire most: the Kingdom of God.

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[1] Borg, Marcus J.. Reading the Bible Again For the First Time . HarperOne. Kindle Edition.

 

What I Learned in the Great 2020 Quarantine - Welcome to the Upside Down

 

Thing two: Two Little Words 

The Black Lives Matter movement and the CoVid-19 Pandemic can be summed up in two important words: “essential” and “matters.” Two words that confront one truth: this world’s values are upside down. We do not know what is essential. We do not know what really matters. Or, put better – we do not know who is essential – we do not know who really matters.

There are right answers to the problem – not political, social or economic answers. Spiritual answers.

Workers matter. Not work, workers. Luther taught us that we exercise our faith in the daily vocations which serve the well-being of the community and the needs of our neighbor. Our world undervalues workers. While we have been busy living and dying by the rise and fall of Dow Jones Industrial Average the foundation of all that is real and important has crumbled beneath us. Professionals, people with high-paying white-collar jobs have been able to survive this crisis, officing from home, preserving their routines and well-being with minimal consequence to themselves or their income. It is the unemployment of waitresses and bartenders and retail clerks and custodians that has crashed the economy and driven millions to unemployment, food insecurity, homelessness. All of the investment bankers and stock traders together cannot save the world.

Teachers matter. Not merely because many parents are overwhelmed by trying to solve the work-at-home-and-school-the-children-at-the-same-time puzzle and discovering how hard teachers actually work. Teachers fill a great spiritual need in the community. Faith is nurtured in the sharing of our story from generation to generation. Passing on the deep values of the Kingdom and preparing children to live them out in an increasingly complicated world is a demanding exercise, a task that cannot be replaced by all of the self-serving home schooling in the world. No amount of rote memorization will bring back the “good old days.” No amount of ignorant anti-elitism will stop the future from coming. It is time to stop pretending that education is an evil thing, that thinking and questioning are bad things. Teaching children - all children - to use their God-given gifts of imagination and reason, helping them to reach and grow is a matter of life and death, and not just for the sake of the students but for all of us who have to live in the world they make.

Stuff does not matter. We just think it does, and crises like these heighten our self-indulgent anxiety about stuff. Hoarding is the go-to response. Hoarding of everything. Who truly imagined a world where finding toilet paper would require a significant personal quest? There are empty shelves in the grocery stores now. It’s unsettling, but we have and will survive. Maybe even more than survive? We have lived so long in a state of overabundance that we have completely lost track of the meaning of the word “enough.” Perhaps it’s time to get reacquainted. A little honest reflection will reveal that we actually can do without most of what we are actually doing without. Reflexively we complain about what we have no longer have, probably because we don’t feel like we had a vote in the matter. That does not erase the truth: we have more than we need, a more painful realization when we watch others lose what little they had to begin with and spiral into hunger and homelessness.

The social contract matters. Being disconnected to the needs of our neighbor is one thing. Being divorced from the structures and norms that sustain the very fabric of community is quite another. We mourn the decline of beloved institutions, the organizations and societies that the world used to care about, but we overlook our essential value on which they were built. Community requires structure, organization, ritual and tradition. Community requires governance. Richard Rohr reminds us that boundaries are …

“necessary in any spiritual system both to reveal and to limit our basic egocentricity. Such containers make at least some community, family, and marriage possible. Boundaries seem to be the only way that human beings can find a place to stand, a place to begin, a place from which to move out. Even those who think they don’t have any boundaries usually do. We discover them when we trespass against them. The human soul flourishes on solid ground.”[1] 

God ordains governance. Not the fiasco we call politics that keeps radio and cable TV news commentators in business, but the holy work of establishing peace and justice in the kingdom of this world. The Hebrew word for justice, mishpat, is rooted in the realities of courts, of judicial processes and procedures, the very real systems and structures that establish and maintain community. Just community is not a philosophical ideal, it is a tangible human practice, a commitment that we must all make and keep to each other. This can be a very painful revelation to creatures who think they should be allowed to live their lives unbound and unimpeded.

Community is lived out in offices and vocations, in orders that create and preserve justice and keep chaos at bay. It is the heart of how Luther taught the 4^th Commandment. Giving “honor” was not limited to biological parents, it was commanded for all authority figures. “Out of the authority of parents all other authority is derived and developed … The same may be said of obedience to the civil government.”[2] Authority belonged to those institutions and structures that enable and protect community. It’s not about power, either seizing it or succumbing to it. It’s about something much bigger.

Governance serves the greater good. We may at different times fill different roles, sometimes leading, sometimes following, but in all things we complement one another for the sake of something larger, something that mirrors the very nature of the Kingdom of God. In a world that worships individualism, being told what to do is the enemy. Faith leads us to strive after fulfilling God’s expectations. Monuments to the Ten Commandments stand guard over houses of worship to serve as guidelines to personal advancement rather than the measure of life well shared. We refuse to keep God’s precepts in daily life, to personify them by honoring, protecting, keeping, respecting, and preserving the well-being of our neighbor. And we really, really resent being told that we have to.

Luther believed in the importance of good government and respectful citizenship – not theocracy (which he fought against), but faithful people using their God-given gifts to establish a civil and equitable society. It is how the gospel is manifest in the world. Disciples serve the community; they do for others. Followers of Jesus reveal God’s love in their acts of love for others – not merely in words, and surely not in love for self. If only we could live in such a world! But we have replaced serving with idolizing, humility with self-importance, faith with religion. The pandemic and the Black Lives Matter movement are the light revealing that our neighbors have paid the price of our sin, sometimes with their lives.

Rather than embrace our shared responsibility to one another, we have created an adversarial relationship with Government. As Luther wrote 500 years ago, ““Why, do you think, is the world now so full of unfaithfulness, shame, misery, and murder? It is because everyone wishes to be his own master, be free from all authority, care nothing for anyone, and do whatever he pleases.”[3] Propagandized myths proclaim that Government is incompetent, corrupt, useless, expensive and so must be abolished, disregarded, bankrupted. Right analysis, wrong conclusion. Rather than address the problems of the individuals who corrupt their calling to governance or systems that empower them, we throw the proverbial baby out with the bath water. Anarchy functions at both ends of the political spectrum, and each accuses the other of being un-American. The cost? A world that does not function, peace and justice that go unserved, the powerful and rich profit while Rome burns.

The problem is systemic. Institutions that are meant to serve and protect the many have been recast as instruments of violence and oppression to guard the few. Poor people, migrants, people of color, all those who fit under Jesus’ designation “the least of these” are regularly decreed de facto criminals. The system of justice has devolved into a system of punishment, neighborhood patrols have become combat units, peace officers exchanged for storm troopers. The Black Lives Matter movement was precipitated by the intersection of the long historical arc of American racism and the rise of police militarization. The American community is burning because we set it on fire.

One more. One more important thing. Diversity matters. If sin is the force that constantly turns us back into ourselves, diversity is the work of the spirit to remind us that we are not in this alone. Our need to separate things (separate people!) rejects the creation’s defining quality in favor of its meanest attributes. Ethnicity. Race. Creed. Sexual orientation. Gender. Trivialities all. Ninety-nine percent of the genetic information in DNA is common to all human beings. The remaining fraction is, to borrow a word from Luther, adiaphora; i.e. “other stuff.” Unimportant. Indifferent. Things which cannot logically be differentiated. A great amount of hate built on nothing real or useful.

That is not the nature of the creation. God defines life by its abundance. We define it by false notions of supremacy - a meaningless activity that leads to soulless hatred and violence. We are desperate to compete, conquer, destroy, as if our esteem depended on it. Having divided the world into winners and losers, we will be winners, no matter the cost. Unable to live in peace, we have made war and violence normal, a readily available solution to protect the pretense of community while not giving up our place of privilege. And we will not give up our privilege, knowingly or not, at any price.

The old chestnut that we are “color-blind” when it comes to others is a comfort afforded only to people of privilege. Good intentions are not a solution to discrimination and divisiveness but a shield against its ugly truth. The experience of people of color in this society, the struggles of our black and brown neighbors is neither accidental nor deserved. And it is not the same as ours. We cannot love our neighbor while denying his/her truth. We cannot expect others to be more like us when we construct barriers to keep them separate. And we shouldn’t expect that anyway. God made unique creatures to inspire and challenge one another, to complement and teach one another, not to separate or subjugate or disregard one another. Learning to treasure and respect one another and use our differences to build community is the best and only path to the Kingdom of God.

We are being confronted by so many hard truths right now. The time of quarantine is opening our eyes to the inherent brokenness of our world. But the gospel is itching for us to turn it upside-down. Love our enemies. Turn our cheeks. Give without asking, pay the late-comer the same as the one who worked all day. Make the last first, and the first last. Jesus' words, his works, lead to one infallible conclusion: he has in mind a very different kind of world than the one in which we live. Can we follow where we have been led? Now that we have time to change things, will we? Only if we can find a way to accomplish the most essential act of humanity, and say the words that really matter: I am wrong.

---

[1] Richard Rohr's Daily Meditation from the Center for Action and Contemplation, August 10, 2020.

[2] Luther, Martin. Large Catechism

[3] Luther, Martin. Large Catechism

What I Learned During the Great 2020 Quarantine: Welcome to the Upside Down

 Thing one: The First and The Last 

When the impatient Israelites made a golden calf to worship, God set upon them a plague so that they could remember their wrong (and, I assume, stop doing it). I don’t think it worked. Golden calfs and false gods fill the world today. They are the corner offices won through backbiting workplace politics, the high school letters collecting dust in closets, the irreparable family rifts and long-forgotten friendships lost to rivalry and competition. They are all tributes to a truth we all worship: in this life there are winners and losers. Be a winner. At any cost.

We believe it is part of nature. For all of our ranting against Darwin we actually believe his theory of survival of the fittest. We have ordered our world accordingly. The toys we first played with as toddlers molded us to be hyper-focused on sorting and creating order. We learned well. Our society is founded on the need to grade everything, first by color and shape, and then by more esoteric qualities until everything in the world is classified into the best and the worst. The winners and the losers. Red M&M’s are better than blue ones, and blue ones are better than green ones, and so on and so on. Everything is better when we turn it into a competition. Otherwise how would we know what we like the most?

That this impulse is founded in an important human value does not make it better. Yes, it is a Godly thing to do our best at all times, to employ the fullness of our gifts and talents. We are not called to complacency. There is great work in front of us and it will require us to strive constantly to fulfill our calling. Grace is not merely our excuse when we fall short, it is there to put us back on our feet and brush us off and get us back in the game. There are great stakes in play now. Living out the promise of the Kingdom of God is a matter of life and death and we are called to play to win.

But the contest is not against each other, though we never get that right. Even the first disciples turned following Jesus into a competition, arguing over who was the greatest among them, grasping for the prize of sitting at Jesus’ right hand when he comes to collect his winnings. Jesus didn’t even have to hear them say it out loud to know what they were thinking. His response must have been really confusing: “The least among all of you is the greatest.” (Luke 9:48 NRSV) Isn’t that a contradiction? The world has enough losers. Why should we aspire to be one too? This is not how we have been raised. This is not what we have been taught.

But it is obviously what he wants.

You might notice if you read the gospels that Jesus did not spend a lot of time with wealthy people. It is, in fact, an indication of what and who he valued. Matthew does record one encounter with a wealthy young man who engaged Jesus in the most essential question of them all: what do we have to do to gain eternal life? Jesus stalls the man with a brief catechetical exercise before delivering the punch line. “Sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me.” (Matthew 19:21, NRSV) Jesus did not let him off with a few religious behavioral adjustments, he called him to a complete reversal of his fortune and his priorities. No wonder the man went away sad. He had just been told he did not really matter.

And in case the lesson not take for the disciples, Jesus punctuates this discourse with a well-known and generally disregarded parable: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the Kingdom of God.” (Matthew 19:24 NRSV) Like its counterpart “turn the other cheek,” we consider it a quaint idea with some spiritual potential but no real application in the real world. The disciples are aghast. Then no one would be able to win! But Jesus reminds them that this is not about human choice or human desire or human accomplishment. This is about the will and the work of God. And the way of God, consistently and openly revealed in his Word through all the ages, is very clear: winning is not what you think it is. The first will be last and the last will be first.

This upside-down ideal of the Kingdom of God dominates the gospels and the rest of the Bible too. It is wired into the Torah. It is ever on the lips of the prophets. And it is the New Testament. From Mary’s pre-natal hymn praising God because “He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty, (Luke 1:52–53 NRSV) to Jesus’ eschatological challenge to find him in those who are “hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or imprisoned” (Matthew 25:44 NRSV), the primary theme of Jesus’ teaching is the promise of a world turned upside-down. Like the disciples, our lust for places of power and status is a barrier to following Jesus. We are called to take a seat at the lowest table at the banquet, to be satisfied with table scraps, to stoop to the task of washing dirty feet.

We do not. That we have not learned the truth of the Word is not so much the fault of our Sunday School teachers as it is an indictment of a faith community sold out to the values of this world. Followers of Jesus take up crosses and deny themselves, hard things in a world that turns its nose up on poverty and suffering. Part of our failure surely is how we confine the Kingdom of God to some life-after-death paradise instead of embracing its truth in daily life. God’s reign has entered into this very world, and it is the life work of those who follow his Son to bring the values of the Kingdom to light in the here and now. That’s hard to do when our eyes are blinded by the starlight of fame and fortune in this life and in the next.

There are two questions here. The first is about motivation. Are we only willing and able to put forth our best effort if we are properly rewarded for our efforts? Many rage against pass-fail grading and participation trophies for that reason. Even in elementary school we strive to teach children the importance not just of competing but of winning. What we mostly imprint on them is the experience of losing. It is no wonder so many have given up by the time they reach middle school. Why even try? Only a few are going to emerge as winners. Only a few will be recognized and rewarded. When you know that your place in the world is at the end of the line, why not just accept that you will always be a loser?

The second is about sharing. As in shared work and shared reward. Some do acquire their wealth and fame through hard work, intelligence and ingenuity. Their rewards are deserved, and rightly enjoyed. But the constant refrain of “I built this” ignores the reality that no one builds anything all by themselves. The assembly line workers, the custodians, the store clerks and many others contributed too. Without their hard work every great idea would be nothing more than plans on a drawing board. And most did it for less than a living wage, without health insurance or hope of sending their children to college. It does in fact take a community to do pretty much everything, and when all of the accolades and all of the renumeration flows into the pockets of the very few, the world is out of balance.

Our souls are out of balance.

2020 should be remembered as the year of the sheep and the goats, the year we discovered that the world actually revolves around the least among us. The callous murder of an unknown black man in Minneapolis brought millions out into the streets (even when it is dangerous to do so) and emboldened them to face down armed troops. Thousands of unwanted and underpaid but essential migrant workers have exposed the unsanitary working conditions that are common to the system that produces our food. The unchecked spread of CoVid-19 in packing plants nearly shut down an entire industry and created panic in the meat-eating public. Ones who actually “matter,” ones who are truly “essential,” changed this world more profoundly in a few months than any movie superstar or NFL MVP did in their entire career. An upside-down perspective on how the world functions indeed.

And an invitation to take an upside down look in our own mirror.

What I Learned during the Great 2020 Quarantine

 

Thing three: There is no “i” in community. (ok there is, just shut up and read)

The pandemic and the protests have made this frightening clear: individualism is fatal. Individuality, the amazing diversity of God’s creation, is an amazing gift that makes the world alive. Individualism, the worship of me and the denial of my responsibility, my interconnectedness, to others, is sin. And, as Paul reminded us, the wage of sin is death. When the entire population of the planet was asked to alter their behavior for the sake of others, many people said “no.” No to masks, no to avoiding large crowds, even no to reporting symptoms or cooperating with contact tracers. Millions have and will get sick and hundreds of thousands have and will die because of that. People have done and continue to do what they want, despite the expert’s warnings, and consequently they have proved the experts right. Some ignored the warnings to take precautions, some rallied against it. Politicians denied the seriousness of the pandemic and refused to lead. People were and are more worried about their economic status than about their neighbor’s well-being. People are more grieved over the displacement of a character on a box of pancake mix than public lynching of a black man by a police officer.

This is our primary spiritual problem: we have an enormous capacity to harm ourselves and each other, and we just don’t care. We think that we are good beings who occasionally do wrong. We aren’t. We are lost and broken creatures whom God by his grace uses to do good. The math is not complicated. Imagine if we had to make a full accounting of the black men, women and children have been murdered for the color of their skin – even just in our own lifetimes. A herculean task. It is possible to count the number of people who have suffered and died from CoVid-19, assuming that honest and accurate information is available. Which it isn’t. What would happen to us if we were required to confront the outcome of our works? What if we were actually held accountable for what we have done? What would we come to think of ourselves? What would we say then?

Individualism is not a victimless crime.

How do we solve it? We commit to doing community. Not merely being community - by spreading niceness and civility or sharing pious memes on social media. “Show me your faith apart from your works,” says the Epistle to James, “and I by my works will show you my faith.” (James 2:18 NRSV.) These words are not intended that we should boast in our choices or seek refuge in pride as if this was somehow still about us. It is the clarion call to have faith beyond the time we are sitting in the pew on Sunday morning. The gospel calls us to embody Christ in the world, not that we might earn salvation, but that we might fulfill his calling to make grace genuine, tangible, true.

Jesus told his followers that their discipleship would be visible in the love they brought into the world, in acts that would be even greater than his own. Here is the heart of discipleship: following Jesus is a life and not merely a lifestyle, living out faith is a daily hope-filled struggle to serve others as we have been served ourselves. We fulfill our purpose by acts that create the shared moments and gifts that fully bind us together as community. Faith is our identity because it breaks the bondage of free will and relocates our life into the Kingdom of God, where we all do life together as one body of Christ in the world.

The challenge of discipleship is to find the place where that Kingdom impacts this world. Too much of religion is focused on anticipation of a world to come and in neglect of the world that actually exists. That is how religion kills faith. We are so invested in earning our place in the afterlife we that we make no investment in the life we have been given, in the neighbor who’s needs confront us daily, in the difference we could make with even the slightest effort. Some say the bible is an acronym for “Basic Instruction Before You Leave Earth.” God’s word is a lesson on how we should live while we are still here.

The selling out of the church to worldly powers is the mechanism of this failure, and it’s not the first time this has happened either. Throughout history the church has sought to align itself with worldly authorities in order to advance its own agenda, becoming a tool of the status quo, preaching a gospel of not causing too much trouble for those authorities even when (as especially when) trouble was needed. When the faithful are practicing a moralistic, self-serving piety they are not practicing the acts of Jesus, the works that enact justice in the way of the Kingdom of God. And the troubles of this day are a testament to the lack of discipleship in the world.

Luckily, God knows when to send his prophets. If only we could listen before we got so far down the wrong path. Jeremiah came to Judah on the eve of its collapse and conquest. Two-and-a-half millennia later those words still ring true:

For if you truly amend your ways and your doings, if you truly act justly one with another, if you do not oppress the alien, the orphan, and the widow, or shed innocent blood in this place, and if you do not go after other gods to your own hurt, then I will dwell with you in this place, in the land that I gave of old to your ancestors forever and ever. (Jeremiah 7:5-7 NRSV)

In the way that prophets speak, Jeremiah’s words challenge God’s people to surrender their comfortable piety and live out their faith in ways that impact the world in the lives of the people around them. The people whose lives needed to be impacted. God promises to be with us in this place, not the next.

Luther was a prophet. He came to help a world and a church that had lost its mission. Medieval religion was focused on behaviors that served life after it was over, on the threat of purgatory and the potential reward of the Kingdom of Heaven. Luther strove to re-focus the work of the faithful on the here-and-now, translating the Bible and the worship liturgy into the common vernacular, bringing the teaching of faith to the dining room table, freeing people from the terrors of eternal damnation that they might live every day in the freedom of grace. And Luther did not stop there. He challenged the princes and political leaders to do things that dramatically affected daily life – building public schools, regulating commerce, providing for the public welfare. Their voices call to us now across the ages.

The catastrophes of 2020 are an opportunity to recover the blessing of doing community.

Can we find the way?

Let us pray that we can. We must prioritize community in our world, we must keep it and honor it as the ultimate good by naming the sin of individualism wherever we find it and encouraging, exhorting, challenging, even demanding more from ourselves and our neighbors. Dare we hold such high expectations? Is it possible to require community? Can morality be legislated? Well, God seems to think so. And whether we call it commandment or instruction, covenant or law, its effect is the same. There is a right way to be, a better way to live, a brighter path to walk. We cannot take for ourselves the label “pro-life” until we demonstrate in word and deed that the “life” we are “for” is the life of those others with whom we share community. As our life was given to us by another, so we are made to give life back to others. We do not exist outside of community. This is the great lesson of faith. This is the great lesson we must embody in the world right now.