I am so tired of waiting.
Aren't you,
For the world to become good
And beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
And cut the world in two--
And see what worms are eating
At the rind.

The Artist Who Listened for Something More

There's a story my teacher John Flaherty used to tell about a large church event held in an arena.
It was a big event. More than 500 people.

A couple commissioners had ordered new custom communion ware for the event. They met with an artist and explained exactly what they wanted: cups, a chalice, everything needed for communion in this enormous arena setting. The artist listened to all of their requests. Listened. Nodded.

Then, as the date got closer, they kept contacting the artist. Are they ready yet? No. Not yet. Finally, in the eleventh hour, the artist said the pieces were ready, come and get them.

The commissioners went to pick them up and discovered that the cups and chalice were nothing like what they had requested.

Instead of a chalice, the artist had made a collection of small bowls. And when they used them for communion, they discovered that the bowls could not simply be passed from one person to another by the rim or handed over at a polite distance. Hands had to touch hands. People had to move closer to one another. The way those bowls were made transformed this huge arena into an intimate experience of Jesus at table, into hands remaining open for receiving (rather than grasping at the stem of a chalice, despite the enormity of the room.

The artist had listened to the commissioners. But apparently, the artist had also listened, and noticed the need for something more—like what mattered most for the greater field of people involved in this communion celebration. And those two things were not asking for the same thing. The artist noticed something the commissioners had missed. The commissioners knew what they wanted. The artist was paying attention to what was needed.

And the artist was willing to take on some disruption and conflict to do it. And the room was willing to be interrupted into a new experience. And in the end- well, people enjoyed being at table with Jesus.

So what did the artist notice that everyone else had missed?

What Forms Us
My area of study — Affect Theory — asks a deceptively simple question: *What forms us?* Not just ideas, but relationships, environments, habits, institutions, the spaces we inhabit and design, intentional or unintentional.

Everything is forming us in one way or another. And we are also forming all the things. This is not necessarily an equal playing field — but it *is* an ecological field, and we, and all of our systems and concepts and creation, are all players.

For example: I came across a thinker recently who said, "Capitalism turns autonomy into isolation, then tells us that consent is the only thing that matters."

And if we accept that as an accurate statement, that thinker is saying that capitalism is forming us. It does not just sell us things. It trains us to see our whole ecology, our entire relational field, as a market. It teaches us to ask: What works? What succeeds? What produces the best return? What can I choose? What can I control? What can I buy, once the relationships and support systems that might inhibit my autonomy have been stripped away?

This kind of affective setting, this market-shaped way of seeing and being, can take the story about the artist and turn it into a story of rugged individualism. *The artist heard the muse's call and responded!*

It can take Hughes' poem and turn it into the story of the bleeding-heart poet, continuously wounded by an inherently imperfect world full of pain, willing to wound the world further just to try to understand.
Poor chap.*

This kind of autonomous, isolated setting, where we prize individual choice and then purchase what markets tell us matters, forms us — making it nearly impossible to recognize the inner workings of stories like the one about the artist, or Hughes' poem, or Jesus' rather difficult parables.

Wrong Question, Wrong Gospel
So. This difficult, paradoxical story from Jesus in Matthew.

In a market-driven setting, we lean into the idea that obviously we just need to focus on what kind of soil we need to be, right? Because it's about optimal conditions. And that explanation is literally handed to us in scripture! (Gee thanks, Matthew—though many scholars think this explanation reflects Matthew's community more than Jesus' original telling.)

Or another take: what kind of soil we should cultivate, right? Another obvious recipe for a successful church. Again, optimal conditions.

Or-here's a creative take-skip the soil! What kind of gardener are we?! Again, recipe for a successful church or community. Lots of control and autonomy. Lots of concern about where our efforts will produce the greatest returns.

But here's the thing: Notice the concepts every one of those interpretations is quietly holding onto:
Who deserves?
Who is good?
Where will investment yield?
...They're all centering around an economy of scarcity.

There's not much participation in the ecological field of becoming together with the seemingly frivolous sower of seeds, when you're operating under a scarcity model where we quickly label things and try to predict outcomes. There isn't much attention given to sensing what that sower is actually up to in this economy. What we have, instead, is scarcity and pre-programmed labeling and categorizing as ways of living.

When was the last time you were in an environment where you were told there isn't enough to go around, and there was lots of labeling and categorizing of people, and it *really* helped everyone—you included— generously grow and explore?

...

Yeah. Same for me. That's about what I thought.
Not really productive for any of us. And since Jesus says he's here for abundant life for all, I say all those interpretations are (while historically very present, and apparently important at one point in time) keeping us in servitude to systems that won't set or keep us free, today.

We Are All of It
So then what is this about? Why the artist story and the Hughes poem and the Affect Theory concept on top of the Gospel text?

I think today, we're presented with a field of relationality situation.

Not relativism, mind you, but an issue of faithful, living discipleship that must be open to interruption. Or, in Hughes' words, curiously looking to "see what worms are eating at the rind" —and willingly opting to respond with unanticipated generous disruption, right along with that ridiculously generous Sower throwing seeds all over the place with no concern for potential returns.

Because if we're willing to be honest with ourselves:
We're all the different kinds of soils.
We're also all the birds and creatures picking away at those seeds sown.
And we're all the different seeds — even (maybe often) the ones who gave up when the going got rough.

None of these is a permanent identity. Yet, we have all played every role in this story, and all of it-- the roles we've been told about, the interpretations we carry, the ways we label ourselves-- this whole big interdependent relational field of us and everything else? All of it is forming us. All of it is shaping how we think and act and go about being in the world. We may not even be noticing. We may even be formed to not notice in more than a few cases.

In the face of that (overwhelming, honestly) reality, what is this environment doing to faithful discipleship? How might we be the faithful disciples we proclaim we intend to be?

It's a sticky situation. Just think again about that list of interpretations we looked at. Every one of them is rooted in an economy of scarcity. Winner/loser. Every one carries some variation of more life for some than others based on more correctness or less, more profitability, or less, more attractiveness, or less. All of which lines up beautifully with the logic of markets. But it does not line up with this wildly generous, even somewhat embarrassingly irresponsible seed-sower who disruptively, frankly, tosses their seeds all over the place and lets what happens happen.

The sower refuses to calculate who or what is deserving. The sower refuses to limit possibilities. The sower doesn't look for ideal market trends. The sower seems to know that simply scattering the seeds will have its effects on that relational field, and so the sower goes along, ridiculously tossing out plenty of seeds all over the place with abandon.

The point here isn't self-classification and a confirming pat on the back, or a needling until we can back-pat ourselves for following the ideal rules and achieving the ideal labels (like we could, anyway, in this context?).

The point is attention: "Let those who have ears hear"

Attention to what is actually happening in the relational field we're living in. Attention to what we are receiving. Attention to what we are choking out. Attention to what we are picking up and devouring before it even takes root. Attention to the wildly generous Sower's scattering, everywhere.

Everything is forming us. Faithfulness is choosing the kind of attention that allows us to join God's absurd, disruptive generosity—attention to what draws us out of isolation, attention to what deepens communion, attention until we notice all the little changes and interruptions and disruptions rippling throughout this relational field we live in, welcome and unwelcome. And then choosing to generously join in.

Generous Disruption, Rippling Outward
I think so often of that artist who defied all the requests made of them and changed a whole arena's worth of people's experience of Jesus in the process.

Attention to what was needed, what mattered, to the disruption the Sower was sowing resulted in generous disruption further down the line, right alongside the Holy Spirit, via simple bowls with (consecrated) liquid in them, passed between human hands.

That artist changed my teacher John (who was one of the commissioners, and told me the story), and me through John telling me the story. I can't even tell you how many more, considering how often John —and now I— have retold it.

The artist paid attention to the commissioners and the whole relational field they were situated in. They were attentive to the needs, and they noticed the opportunity for disruptive generosity, and were themselves willing to take on that chance of engaging in more generous disruption. And then that little generous disruption became an even more generous disruption, rippling outward—for the sake of deeper communion that changed people.

We need this. This world *needs* this.

I would say this world is even begging for this kind of faithful discipleship. Discipleship that is not only willingly interrupted by what matters, but then willingly responds with (admittedly costly) generous disruption right along with that ridiculously generous Sower who doesn't seem to give a damn about the rules of wisdom concerning where we will get the best returns, or where it would be most wise to plant the seeds. The sower who keeps tossing the seeds out there all over the place, refusing calculation because they seem to trust that generosity and relational fields are far more fertile than what a market can predict.

God is scattering possibilities throughout the whole entire field of relationality that we're living in. We can't even escape it if we want to.

So perhaps faithful discipleship begins with refusing to wait passively for the right soil and optimal conditions. And instead, faithful discipleship begins with embracing the disruptions God is already throwing our way — responding with generous disruption right along with that absurdly frivolous seed-Sower.

As for me? In the ever-wise, and truly inspired, words of Langston Hughes:

A Stranger Walks In
So, as those who were with us and using the worship aids noticed, we received our new printer this past Tuesday. This is huge. I am thrilled to be able to print better worship aids that allow everyone to see more clearly! 

The installation went pretty smoothly. I gave our old Ricoh a genuine goodbye gesture that made the folks doing the install awkwardly chuckle, and then I left them to their work as I handled some other things in the office.

Somewhere in there, someone came in—phone blaring some kind of talk radio—and headed straight for the bathroom. I didn't see the face. I assumed it must be someone who knows us somehow.

Eventually, this person came out of the restroom, and he asked whether the tech and I knew the story of Joseph. (Yes, Joseph as in, the amazing technicolor Dreamcoat Joseph.)  This person continued on, explaining to us how Joseph was "promoted" because he was a Strong Man who Refused Pharaoh's Wife's Advances (that evil whore, you know—God rewards manly strength, and punishes the wicked and all). I was nodding and listening.

Then, our new friend moves forward into talking about how Joseph is the ONLY person in the bible held captive, AND promoted. He continues on, making a connection between Joseph's dreams and the book of Daniel, and then makes some connections to the book of Revelation.

I was standing there listening. Nodding. He was regularly saying to me: "You know what I am talking about, right? I mean, this is very simple."

For a brief moment, as he was speaking, I wondered whether I should introduce myself and let him know I'm the pastor here. I had the sense that might bother him, so I just didn't do it. By this point, he was telling me about how he so wants the scrolls of Revelation to be broken open because he wants the world to be filled with good, righteous, Godly people. His desire was genuine. He clearly wanted to see the earth filled with goodness and was pained at the wickedness he's experienced all around him.

He asks me once again whether I'm getting what he's saying, and reminds me once again it's very simple, what he's saying. I take my opportunity here to interject: "You know — for many of us, Revelation isn't about predicting the end of the world. It's about helping us find strength in remaining faithful, even when the world feels like it's ending."

He responded, telling me that he knows what Revelation is about.

So I interjected one more time and said, "We may have some theological differences here. For many of us, the goal is not the end of the world — it's to help God's world flourish—"

He let me know that he could already tell by the "colored" flags outside that this is not a true house of worship, that we're clearly intentionally misleading people—we're part of the wicked problem, because you know what Jesus said about... And before he could finish, the anger in me finally bubbled over, and I spoke right over him, telling him we don't tolerate that kind of speech here, questions are okay, hateful statements are not, and I'm going to have to ask him to leave the property.

As I'm sure you can imagine, our friend did not appreciate what I had to say. He did however respect me enough to head out the door, doing so while telling me what "Jesus had to say about the gays." At that point I wasn't about to shut up, so I stubbornly said, "Uh, not according to anything we've currently got to look at, he didn't"—and then he told me I needed to read the book of Matthew.

I guess he doesn't know it's liturgical Year A, and Matthew is what we're reading almost every Sunday. :) 

Two Jobs At Once
You know, I have replayed that whole scenario over and over in my mind this week. It's been eating at me. Partially because I wanted to do two things at the same time. I wanted to love this guy, that's my job. And simultaneously, I wanted to love the other people in the room. That is ALSO my job.

The two don't play well together in this circumstance.

I was looking for a "third way" —one where this guy could be seen and heard while the other people in the room could still feel pretty secure, and maybe everyone could learn something or experience the Holy Spirit between us.

In the end, like Paul, I did what I do not want to do. I cut him off and asked him to leave.
Ever had that happen? 

That excerpt we heard from Romans today is an example of Paul noticing exactly this in his own experiences.

Paul at 2 am...
Paul has noticed something downright embarrassing. We don't always become the people we know we want to be, the people we're pretty sure we can be. Anyone who's ever replayed a conversation at two in the morning knows exactly what he's talking about.

The struggle, of course, as Paul points out (though brutally full of horrific mind-body dualism that is a product of his time and continues to do harm in some theological traditions to this day) is not that we are evil, nor is it that our bodies are evil, but at the core of things he's saying that we're unfinished. And thanks be to God that's the case, because it seems all of humanity has this significant problem between what we want to do and what actually happens.

Nobody Danced
Jesus, today, began with a critique not too far from what Paul's griping about: "We played the flute, no one danced. We sang the funeral song, no one mourned."

In other words, what he's saying in there is: John the Baptist arrives in his camel hair coat and locust-honey meals—everyone thinks that's gross. Ew. Then Jesus arrives, eating, drinking, chilling with all the people, polar opposite of John in behavior. Everyone thinks that's gross too. Ew. He eats and drinks with the bad people we don't like and don't support because they do bad things.

You see the pattern? John arrives at one end of the spectrum: rejected. Jesus arrives at another: also rejected. The children bring God into the scene —singing, flutes, dancing, mourning— also entirely rejected, no appropriate responses.

The issue at hand isn't that God is absent for us (oops — I mean, *them*). The issue is that many have already decided what God is "supposed" to sound like and act like and look like. Which means sometimes God could be singing right in front of us, and we wouldn't recognize the melody. Wouldn't even notice its effects.

Which brings me back to the scene during our printer installation.

What Songs Were Present
I didn't mention it super clearly earlier, but there were two other witnesses to the whole scene on Tuesday. I wasn't there by myself. Two techs were quietly watching and listening from the new printer. And while I was wondering how to love one person well, these two were probably wondering something totally different: would this church do what that line of progress pride flags outside seems to say it will do?

It wasn't until days later that I realized there were several melodies present in that situation: One tune was total certainty. Another was exclusion. One felt very secure in knowing exactly who and what God is and demands of us. And another insisted that vulnerable people—people historically ostracized by so many mainstream Christian groups—are also made in the image of God, entitled to safety and dignity, without question.

After I set the boundary, the atmosphere in the office changed. Two strangers who were just trying to do their jobs, while someone shows up with increasingly hateful rhetoric didn't experience theological brilliance, but they did experience brave space, and safety.

The room probably didn't need another argument or theological talking point. Maybe all that it needed was someone to amplify a particular melody. And that one went something like an assertive: No. Not here.

I did what I do not want to do, and in the aftermath I likely made us a bit of an enemy on Tuesday.* But two new friends were also made. Those techs exhaled audibly, and new camaraderie was found in the aftermath of the whole scene.

Not What They Mean by Freedom
Yesterday, the US celebrated 250 years of independence. And we've all heard the phrase: freedom isn't free. That's a true statement. Just, maybe not in the way we've sometimes been taught.

By the witness of our scripture, Jesus never once suggested that freedom can be purchased or claimed via armies and governments and empires. Rather, he seems clear: freedom costs. It costs us comfort. Freedom costs us certainty. Sometimes, freedom costs us relationships. I think Jesus and Paul were deeply aware of the pains of that cost and still committed their lives to freedom for all.

Which Song to Sing?
So real freedom, for us Christians—involves learning which song or melody shapes our lives, knowing it by heart, even when every other melody around us seems like it would be easier.

And this song can be a tricky thing to learn. It seems to skip beats and do all kinds of wild, unanticipated stuff. But at the core, we're asked to keep listening carefully for it in the midst of the noise, while we're simultaneously already singing, dancing, and playing along. Not an easy combination. And you know, that's the thing about "My yoke is easy, my burden is light" being placed right after Paul's "Wretched person that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ the One Who Frees!"

Sometimes our voices fail and our dancing falls out of rhythm. Sometimes we find only silence where the flutes should be. Sometimes all we have is grief, and we miss the lament completely. Sometimes we realize, with a jolt, that we've been singing the wrong song all along. And sometimes, others are carrying the melody for us until we can find our way back in.

Maybe that's what Jesus means. His yoke isn't easy because discipleship is easy. A yoke is a burden of its own. Perhaps the way he might say this today would be: *my* yoke is easier, and *my* burden lighter — because we're yoked together, never carrying it alone, always doing the costly work of more freedom for all together.

Learning this freedom song also means learning how the song asks to be sung.

Sometimes quietly — a lullaby.
Sometimes through tears, a lament.
Sometimes with joy, full celebration.
Sometimes with righteous anger, a protest.
Sometimes with simple, assertive strength: boundary-setting.

And sometimes at the top of our lungs, because the world is so noisy and cruel that anything softer simply disappears into the machinery of fear, and we are called to throw up heartfelt cries for the sake of the restoration of all, no exclusions based on categories we humans make up.

And, thanks be to God—even when we're getting it wrong, the song never dies. The Spirit never stops singing. The invitation is always there for us to pick that freedom song back up, once again.

with joy,
Rev. Sam

*A note of genuine gratitude to the unexpected visitor who stopped by on Tuesday. I hope the road is kind to you, and that you find not only what you're looking for, but what you need—even if we'd likely disagree about what those things may be.

Family Values, According to Whom?
Have you ever noticed that Jesus and American culture have very different ideas about family values? About what families are even for? About what Jesus himself is doing here on earth at all? Sit with that one for a second before you answer it.

Now sit with this one too: why is Jesus (seemingly) picking this fight? Why families, of all things? Why is the nonviolent guy claiming that he's here for division, with a sword in hand?

Take a guess before I tell you what I think. What would need to break open inside a household, a family, for the realm of God to get any closer to happening?


My guess circles back to the same place: hoarding. Resources kept. Power concentrated. Worth assigned arbitrarily and unevenly, generation after generation. And, here's the thing: if Jesus is for nonviolence, and if Jesus is for equity outside of the domineering, controlling systems that treat people like objects and assign their value from the outside, then of course he ends up here, at family, with something that looks like a sword in his hand. Where else would he go? This is the easiest place to start, it's the place closest to each and every one of us, that we most easily would overlook.

The Household Is Never Neutral
Even though the text says "sword" and "family division": Jesus isn't attacking families so much as exposing a pattern that's been sitting in plain view, right under our noses. Ancient households were systems of hierarchy, inheritance, loyalty, property, power. Resources flowed inward and stayed there. Worth and value are assigned (unevenly, arbitrarily based on things like birth order, gender...etc), generation to generation. Nothing like today, right?

And in Jesus' world, the household wasn't some private, sealed-off unit. A family household mirrored the larger systems of domination and accumulation running the whole show socially. Again: nothing like today, right? (I'll let you sit with that one too.)


But Jesus is here for the realm of God, come near. And in his telling, that realm arrives with a sword. Not to start a war, but to dismantle the violent, hoarding architecture built into both the household and the empire architecture it was modeled on. So, he starts by leveling the field (telling us it is enough for students to be like teachers, for slaves to be like lords/masters). And then he shows us exactly how unlevel that field already is— starting with the one place we'd expect to be safest: family. I imagine he starts with family because a significant chunk of his whole point is that you have been taught to measure your worth by systems that were never built to assign it in the first place, and those systems are...creepily sneaky and tough to pick out. Evils masquerading as good, as Bonhoeffer might say. And I don't mean that family is evil- but I do mean that some of the things family might attempt to do in the name of family can be real evil, and I think Jesus was saying the very same thing. Keep reading, you'll get what I mean with examples.

Slave Like Lord, Student Like Teacher
When Jesus says it's enough for the student to become like the teacher, the slave like the lord, he is not handing out a consolation prize. He's making an announcement: the way of Jesus, the way that opens the realm of God, doesn't assign worth by status, productivity, usefulness, or output. Whoever currently gets ranked "below" simply gets brought level with whoever's been ranked "above." And that's it. That's enough. Parallel. Equal footing. Everyone standing on the same ground, equally valuable, in the way of Jesus.

In modern terms, I like to think Jesus might put it like this: it's not a problem that billionaires and trillionaires exist! In fact, EVERYONE gets to be a billionaire and trillionaire!

Lutherans of old in the room might recognize what I'm saying here as something close to Luther's critique, called incurvatus in se — or being "curved in on onself." The problem being, the self, and the systems we build, curving inward on themselves keeping resources, status, and worth contained, protecting the status quo in the process. That's exactly the orientation Jesus is trying to get us to notice, and then move away from.

So, Jesus opens the circle way, way wider. Everyone is inherently worthy. Everyone has dignity. Everyone is valuable and that value holds even in the middle of conflict. In fact, in Jesus' telling, conflict can be (though not always, and not automatically) a sign that you're walking deep in the way of Jesus.

To refuse to be defined by family, by bad theology, or by any other system of control and dominance  is to walk in the way of Jesus. Or, to put it even more plainly: to refuse any system that denies the God-given dignity of yourself or of someone else is to walk in the way of Jesus.

What Happens When You Stop Being Afraid
So — guess what happens once you fully realize your own worth? Once you actually believe that your dignity has existed, and always has existed, entirely outside of all the fancy and mundane hierarchies we've built for measurement?

You start refusing those systems and their violence. Because you finally realize you have nothing left to fear.
When you discover that your dignity and worth are inherent, not assigned by cultural norms nor handed down by whoever's in charge in a given moment, the systems built on unequal worth begin to crack. They crack because those systems govern you by getting you to locate your worth inside them: good kid, good employee, good student, good whatever-they-need-you-to-be.

Think of the kid who leaves home because their family can't accept their queerness. Or the person who walks out of an abusive relationship because they have realized in some way finally, that they were never meant to be treated that way, under any circumstances. These are people walking in the way of Jesus.

And families, institutions, economies, and cultures organized around possession and ranking experience that kind of leveling as a threat. Of course they do. And what comes with the experience of threat?

Conflict. Suddenly parents are against children, children against parents, exactly like the text says.
"Wait — we can't ALL be billionaires and trillionaires!" ...Well. That's true, according to any system that needs us to keep competing and vying for value and status. But it's only true inside those kinds of systems. Because a machine that depends on keeping us hungry, afraid, and constantly competing for more cannot keep running once we realize we don't have to define ourselves by any of it. Because, in reality, that machine never could define us in the first place. There is in fact plenty for ALL of creation. The only place there isn't is inside a system built on violence and a scarcity it manufactured on purpose to keep itself alive and keep everyone in that system under-resourced and hurting for more.

Difficult to Manage
And here's where the next issue comes in: once you really believe you are beloved, that you are inherently worthy, that you were never meant to endure the abuses of systems that had you chasing someone else's version of your own soul or your own life, you are no longer finding so many reasons to be afraid and you become difficult to control.

Because you've discovered the only kind of freedom that's actually available: the freedom that comes from knowing, believing, and living in the truth of your own belovedness, and everyone else's, across all of existence.


People who've discovered they're free are very hard to manage inside violent systems (all those pernicious systems that exert control by assigning your value and treating you like a tool, or a product, built for extraction). You can probably see, now, why there's so much invested in making sure you never get here. Because people who know their worth stop needing to prop up those systems, stop being afraid of losing those systems, stop even participating in them. And it gets worse for the systems than that: once you know your own worth, and the worth of everyone and everything else in creation, you do a full 180 and start insisting that there is plenty to go around, and that none of us need to live this way.
Uh-oh....

Taking Up the Cross
I imagine you can guess this generates some waves.

When Jesus says " unless you take up your cross," he's naming exactly how hard it is to live this kind of life— partly because we are already complicit in these systems, and partly because the world responds to this kind of nonviolent insistence on dignity the way it always has: badly. With anger. With every stunt available to pressure you back into the role you were assigned, back into chasing the value and worth that was never yours to chase in the first place. He is also naming that, if you're not doing this work, you can't expect to be of equal worth to Jesus and Jesus' way. It's a simple equation, really (and no, it's not works righteousness, it's just the basics of following through and being a Christian): following in the way of Jesus means a different values system and that is going to generate conflict...and that sure is carrying your own cross.


It is genuinely hard to be in the middle of this kind of conflict. People take it personally. People will tell you that you're the one generating chaos, making problems. And fair enough, you are making problems. You are breaking every problematic ideal those systems rely on. But it's good trouble, in Jesus' own telling. It's actually what he came here to do.

Still, even when it's good trouble, even when we're told we're worth more than the sparrows, it hurts to be in this kind of conflict. It's frustrating to want out and discover you can't fully extract yourself, because the harsh reality is that we still have to eat, house ourselves, get ourselves from place to place. We can't wipe our hands clean of all our complicity, no matter how much we want to.


It is painful to see inherent worth clearly (really know it, in yourself and in everyone) and then watch so much of the world keep devaluing it, harming it, refusing to let creation have what it actually needs.


And yet. Following in the way of Jesus, heading toward the realm of God, means stepping away from the systems that keep inducing us to do violence in order to maintain violent control over one another. So, to stay close to Jesus, to remain among those who walk his way, we take up our cross, and we keep going.

Losing Your Soul to Find It
And when Jesus says "lose your soul/life to find it, for my sake," he means letting go of a life organized around possession, hoarding, extraction, ranking, and control of other people.

He does not mean losing your soul to uphold the very norms and dogmas that harm you or harm someone else. Remember where this whole text started: Jesus levels the field. Slaves like lords. Disciples like teachers. Everyone brought up into a dignified, abundant life—not flattened back down into someone else's hierarchy.

The promise here, tangled up in all of Jesus' hard wisdom about the conflict that different values systems and change will inevitably bring, is not that freedom is easy, or that the way of Jesus is easy. (You'll hear in a couple of weeks about Jesus' yoke being easy and his burden being light — LOLZ. We'll get there.)

Instead, the promise—the actual good news—is that abundant life is what you find on the other side of freeing yourself from systems of dominance and control. Jesus came to give you abundant life. And abundant life begins the moment you receive what has been true about you, since before you were born: that you are worthy. That you are loved. That you are of infinite value.

So the work, now, is to stop trying to fit ourselves into, or assign, or even possess, whatever this backwards world is trying to convince us could or should belong to us alone.

with joy,
Pr Sam

Next Sunday I'll be out of town, seeing a seminary friend get married. Max Del Bosque will be in the pulpit at UniLu in my place. Can't wait to hear Max's (invariably thoughtful, most often downright brilliant) perspectives.