What we believe shapes how we behave. And if we believe that God in Christ really reveals the fullness of love, then we need not look further than that love to see how we are to be.

Therefore, in the great and somewhat adapted words of John Wesley, though we may not think alike, though our differences of opinion and religious understanding may vary considerably, though we may not agree even on what it means to believe, may we not love alike?

Without all doubt we may.

How Can We Know The Way?

The great joy of Christmas is that we do nothing to make it happen - Christmas happens to us. Even the biblical characters that we read and sing about, they are all so wildly passive in the story. They are recipients of God’s grace made manifest in the manger - just like us.

The Reason For The Season

The Lamb of God brings a kingdom the world doesn’t want - the blood of the Lamb makes a difference and that difference means we are now different. 

God does not accept the current realities of the world. God is still contending against the powers and the principalities. God will get us to the Promised Land. 

It’s like God is saying to us today: “Come and see what I can do - come and see what we can do together! It’s going to be messy, but change always is.”

The Beautiful Mess

The Gospel does not promise the possible - it deliver the impossible. 

The Gospel gives what the law demands.

That’s why the love of God is strong enough to change things, even us.

Or, as Luther put it: God accepts none except the abandoned, makes no one healthy but the sick, gives sight to none but the blind, brings life to none but the dead, and makes no one righteous except sinners.

A Theory of Change

For some reason, we (that is preachers) like to take this miracle, and instead of focusing on it, we focus on Peter. We make our theology into anthropology. Focusing on Peter makes this extraordinary story ordinary, which undermines the miracle that is the Transfiguration!

The Gospel isn’t found in Peter cowering on the mountain, and it’s certainly not in the idea of doing good works (which we all know we’re supposed to do whether or not we know the Christ on the mountaintop).

The Gospel is Jesus Christ and him Transfigured.

A Better Hope

We’ve said the Lord’s Prayer so many times in so many places with so many people that we often no longer think about what we say when we pray. And I think a similar sentiment is true of the Lord’s Supper. How many times have we come forward with our hands outstretched? How many times have we received the grace of God through food and drink? 

Enough that we know what we’re doing when we do so?

The truth of the matter is that we do not know what we are doing. Not even the most theologically sophisticated among us knows what we’re doing. And that’s actually Good News. The disciples surely had no idea what they were getting into, and what was getting into them, when Jesus said, "This is my body and this is my blood."

In the Eucharist we are confronted with a reality that confounds our speech. These things are more real than real. They cannot be contained by our words because they are the grace of God.

Which is another way of saying: our most important business as a church happens at the table.

We Are What We Eat

Paul is begging us to see that the key to our salvation isn’t positive thinking or more morality or healthier habits. The key to our salvation is Jesus! Our salvation is God’s grace made manifest in the One who frees us from the delusion that we have to save ourselves.

The church isn’t in the religion business. Instead, the church is in the Gospel-proclaiming business. All of this, the scriptures, prayers, songs, preaching, it’s not about bringing the bad news that God will only look kindly upon us when we finally get our acts together. 

Instead, everything we do here is about bringing the great Good News that while we were sinners, Christ died for the ungodly. In the midst of our faults and failures, Jesus rescues us.

I Am My Own Worst Enemy

Luke 1.46-55

The incarnation is not God’s last minute hail Mary (pun intended) to fix the world. It is, was, and always will be God’s decision to dwell with us. In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God. God was always going to dwell with us because God always dwells with us and God will always dwell with us.

And yet, Mary's song threatens those in the positions and places of power because it calls into question their power. Long before the cross stands on the horizon, Mary’s song reminds those with ears to hear that her Son’s kingdom is not of this world. Things are getting flipped upside down. Which sounds like Good News when you’re on the bottom, but bad news when you’re on the top...

A Song To Sing

Mark 1.1 & Mark 16.1-8

“When the church stops talking about Jesus, it has nothing left to say.” - Sam Wells

Jesus, Jesus, Jesus

Matthew 21.12-17

Contrary to the witness of John Mayer, we don’t have to wait on the world to change. We can pray for it. But we shouldn’t be surprised if, while praying for the world to change, God starts the work by changing us.

Anger

If you don’t have one already, Holy Week will give you a low anthropology. It shows us at our worst. It’s not just the story of good vs. evil. It’s also the result of such human sentiments. Disagreements, jealousy, moral posturing, denial, betrayal.

It’s not an easy thing to reckon with, that when God in the flesh comes to spend time among us, we nail God to the cross. 

Hence the great Lenten prayer of confession: Lord, we have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those thing which we ought not to have done; there is no health in us. Have mercy upon us, miserable offenders. 

Perhaps that’s why Martin Luther said, “If I were God, I’d kick the world to pieces.” But, thankfully, Luther wasn’t God. God is God, and God doesn’t kick the world to pieces. No, God so loves the world! God keeps entering into the world, marching into our little fickle Jerusalems. God keeps showing up, by grace, and keeps blessing our broken lives.

Or, as the musician Kevin Morby puts it: “Everything we do is a mess, but, oh honey, may this mess be blessed.”


The Liturgy of Love

Elijah climbs the mountain on a hope and a prayer, looking for a theophany. He comes looking for fire, wind, smoke, and earthquake, a decisive declaration of the divine. But he discovers the truth is a cave. Elijah is met by God in the silence.

Elijah delivers more fireworks than all of the other prophets put together, but maybe God speaks in silence to Elijah because Elijah needs to know, needs to learn, that God’s always speaking and always with him.

Even when God seems silent.

Perhaps that’s the reminder for us today as well...

The Truth Is A Cave

When healing comes, its usually quiet and unexpected and surprising. Sometimes it requires a crack in the sidewalk before the root of healing can take hold. But when it does, it is the difference that makes all the difference in the world. 

The Surprise of Salvation

It’s not too late to change your mind
It’s not too late for the truth this time
It’s not too late to fall on your knees
It’s not to late for apologies

It’s not too late to come clean
To face all the fallout that there might be
And it’s not too late to understand
Grace is more than a concept to believe in
It’s something more real than your beating heart
And it runs to the depths of where you are
It follows you there retracing your steps
Whispering over and over again

That it’s not too late, it’s not too late, it’s not too late.

- Andy Gullahorn

The Story of Starting Over

Hosea’s life becomes the parable of his preaching.

Gomer, Hosea’s wife, mother of his three oddly named children, whom he loves and cherishes, is not faithful to him. Her adultery is not something hidden away, it’s a known element among the whole community. And so Hosea does as the law commands, he sends her away. 

The prophet Hosea thus meditates on what it’s like to lose a partner, to have a promise broken. He begins to enter into God’s own pain and suffering and anguish. 

Hosea is what we call a minor prophet, but his book is major among the minors. Its the longest, the most detailed, and the most vivid.

He speaks of bitterness, anguish, and even wrath. Not just God’s, but his own!

But then, wonder of wonders, the humiliated husband, the pathetic prophet, goes out in search of the lost love of his life. And he goes not to bring retribution, but instead he brings redemption. 

He finds Gomer among the last, least, lost, little, and dead, he saves her from destitution, brings her back to his own home (in violation of the law by the way), and recommits to the marriage. 

The one who names his children for the community to bear witness, now bears witness himself to the power of God’s grace. Hosea’s home becomes a place of grace.

Like any good gossip it spreads fast, and the message is there for everyone to see: God’s love is invincible and unconquerable. God’s faithfulness to God’s people is stronger than unfaithfulness. God’s grace goes after and redeems the beloved.

Hosea, on behalf of God, says, “I will woo her, I will find the her in the wilderness and bring her comfort.” The her in question is both Gomer and Israel. It's a parabolic prophetic proclamation.


The Place of Grace

The prodigal perfectly proclaims the paradox of the gospel: Jesus dies and is resurrected for us whether we deserve it or not. Like the younger brother, we don’t even have to apologize before our heavenly Father is tackling us in the streets of life with love. And like the older brother, we don’t have to do anything to earn an invitation to the party, save for leaving our judgments and self-righteousness behind. 

Contrary to how we might imagine it, or even experience it, the whole ministry of Jesus isn’t dependent on our deservings, or our abilities, or our morality, or our faithfulness. Instead, it’s all about the God of the good time who is just dying, literally, to share it with us.


The Relief From Deserving

All of us have some moment we would redo if given the chance, some past decision or action or utterance that we would take back if we could. 

Our pasts exert pressure on us in the present. Sure, we can become very good at moving on or pretending we’ve moved on, but the truth of us, what we’ve done or left undone, never really leaves us. Regret is real. Which is why forgiveness is so important. 

Forgiveness is the only thing that frees us and relieves us from the burden of not just who were were, but also who we are.

The Relief From Regret

Salvation has personal, domestic, social, economic, and theological dimensions. Salvation, in the New Testament, is the same word for health and well-being. There’s more than just heaven at stake here. Or, perhaps better but, heaven is at stake here and now. 

Jesus says salvation has come to Zacchaeus’ house because he, himself, is salvation in the flesh. He is wholeness and saving and everything else. He has a resurrecting effect on the bodies of those who just happen to be near by. Jesus raises Zacchaeus up from his dead life into a completely new existence. He moves him from reject to elect.

And, again, Jesus loves to hang out with the rejects. Jesus loves dead ends, dead beats, and people we wouldn’t be caught dead with because Jesus is the one who makes a way where there is no way.

Which is why Jesus can be so irritating at times. Shouldn’t he know better than to hang out with a dirty rotten tax collector? Who’s next? Lawyers? Politicians? Preachers?

The story of Jesus and Zacchaeus is a reminder that, as John Wesley put it, “There are few matters more repugnant to reasonable people than the grace of God.”

The Relief From Rejection

We're all obsessed with control and we tend to mask it under the guise of efficiency. We adopt and adapt new behaviors and practices that promise order in a world out of control. But it is precisely from the burden of control that we need relief. We don’t need better ways to control because, as Dave Zahl notes, “the problem with control as the be-all and end-all of existence is that [all the things] we use to control our lives often end up controlling us.”

And it is into the midst of all of this that Jesus embodies a life out of control. His time management is terrible, often letting interruptions interrupt the work of the kingdom. His evaluation of potential disciples is indefensible, calling fishermen and tax collectors to evangelism and community organization. 

If Jesus is trying to control people, he’s not doing a very good job. The movement he inaugurates dwindles the closer he get to Jerusalem, and by the end all the disciples abandon him. 

Jesus, to quote Zahl again, is clearly not a type-A personality. 

Jesus isn’t in the business of controlling people, if anything he’s in the business of relieving people, of freeing people, of giving them rest. In short, the way, the truth, and the life offers a different way...

The Relief From Control

When Jesus commands the disciples to be like children, he’s telling us to recognize how much we’re like children no matter how old we actually are. Because the truth, the inconvenient truth, is that we don’t have it all together. Most of us are just barely scraping by and we need all the help we can get. 

If our standing in the world is based entirely on what we can do and achieve, then the status anxiety will always remain as an anxiety.

But if our standing in the kingdom of God is based on what God can do, then we’ve been set free from the shackles that bind you and me...


The Relief from Status Anxiety

Dave Zahl writes, “The very notion of a weekly Sabbath breaks the twenty-four-seven cycle of more and reminds us that we are God’s treasured children, not slaves to the ever-mounting demands of the pharaohs in our lives.” 

To anyone who feels like they can’t keep up, slowing down is a relief.

Notably, according to Genesis, to be made in God’s image is to be a person who needs rest. 

And, according to Exodus, lest we forget the gift that is rest, we’re literally commanded to do it. In fact, the command to sabbath receives more detail and explanation than any other commandment except for idolatry.

Rest is all over the Old Testament from psalms that describe the comfort of laying down at night, to prophets who find relief under the shade of trees, to further commandments about letting the land rest.

And then Jesus takes it to a whole new level because he talks the talk and walks the walk. Have you ever noticed how tired Jesus gets in the gospels? He rests at the well, he rests from casting out demons, he rests after a long night of prayer, and, most notably, he rests the belly of a boat during a storm...

The Relief from Keeping Up

One of the most compelling and evergreen reasons to follow Jesus is that discipleship is playful. There’s a dance to the life of faith and it’s fun, or at least, its supposed to be. 

I know a pastor’s whose church’s motto is: We take Jesus seriously, but not ourselves.

Even Karl Barth noted that one of the truest tests of faith isn’t whether or not we can laugh, but whether or not we can laugh at ourselves. I also love that. 

But faith is often seen as a very serious endeavor. And for good reason. We’re talking about salvation here. But, if the only thing we ever heart about, or think about, or talk about is the law, all the things we should and shouldn’t be doing, then we will always find ourselves sitting under the shadow of failure, judgement, and seriousness.

And yet Luther, Paul, and Jesus remind us that God always speaks two words: Law and Gospel. Dave Zahl writes, “The law tells us what we ought to do; the Gospel tells us what God has done. The law shows us we need to be forgiven; the gospel announces we have been forgiven.”

There’s nothing more serious than Jesus mounting the hard wood of the cross on our behalf, but the result of that seriousness is the silliness of salvation... 

The Relief from Productivity

From his very first sermon Jesus identifies the work of the Lord with rescue, release, and relief. 

And the rest of the New Testament is ripe with such stories! Jesus delivers people from their captivity to demons, illness, loneliness, death, and isolation. The Holy Spirit delivers the disciples from captivity to preconceived notions and literal prisons. And, as we say in the liturgy, God delivers us from from slavery to sin and death and makes with us a new covenant by water and the Spirit. 

Yes, Jesus is a teacher and a healer and a preacher, but above all Jesus is a savior. 

Jesus saves...


The Relief from Captivity

It’s by grace, and only by grace that Jacob makes it to the well and to the banks of the Jabbok river. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that the conniving, heel-grabbing, con-artist extraordinaire receives the name that names the nation: Israel. It’s by grace, and only by grace, that this flawed and fantastic figure fathers the twelve tribes of Israel and is the many-times great-grandfather of Jesus.

The church is like a well - it is the nexus where everything happens. 

We gather, like Jacob, in order to come to grips with what we’ve done and left undone. We are given the promise, like Jacob, that there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any more, and there’s nothing we can do to make God love us any less.

The church also gives us the space, imagination, and wonder to wrestle with the Word. One of the surest signs of the Spirit at work is contention. There’s a reason Jacob is given the name Israel.

Lastly, as Stanley Hauerwas notes, whatever the church is, it is at least the discovery of friends we did not know we had. The church is where strangers become sisters, and others become brothers. God gathers us here together not just to hear a message, but to be God’s message to the world.

The Church Is God's Message For the World

Baptism is the gift of God’s living water that never runs dry. And it’s not just a sign of God’s love. It’s a sign of God’s love for the ungodly. Like the Samaritan woman at the well, Jesus knows every little thing about us, the good and the not so good. Jesus knows us better than we know ourselves and Jesus still goes to the cross for us anyway. The living water seals us in the Spirit and nothing can ever take it away for, as Paul reminds us, there is nothing that can ever separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Thanks be to God. 


The Story Behind The Story

God uses music to help us enter the mysteries of life, death, and life after death. 

We sing our faith. The words and melodies of our music transcend space and time; they tunes us in to God’s frequencies in the world. Music gives us the space to experience what we believe and how we pray when we don’t know how to put those things into words - music gives us the opportunity to feel whatever it is we are feeling without feeling like we’re not allowed to feel what we feel.

When Robert Jenson said the End is music, he went on to add how that particular music does not end, and so is always our beginning.

One day we, with all of creation, will be transfigured into God’s music. That’s the promise of the story of the Gospel.

The End is Music

A saint is simply someone whose life manages to be a crack through which God’s grace peaks through.

At The Same Time

I’ve joked before, though its not really a joke, about how despite the beauty of the wedding liturgy, it would be far more appropriate if the couple made this public affirmation together: 

“We are both broken. We have been idiots and we will be idiots again. We are both difficult to live with. We sulk and get angry and hold grudges. We both blame other people for our own mistakes, we’re not very good at compromise, and we are definitely not as nice as we think we are. And yet, we are here together hoping against hope to fight against the loneliness our failings tend to create.”

Marriage isn’t easy, but it might become easier if we realize that our partners are fallible creatures just like us. 

Jesus says “Marriage isn’t heaven nor will there be marriage in heaven.” Not because marriage isn’t a good thing, but simply because the goodness of heaven transcends the goodness of everything we can know in our earthly lives. 


One Bride For Seven Brothers

“Jesus always comes to us in the brokenness of our health, in the shipwreck of our family lives, in the loss of all possible peace of mind, even in the very thick of our sins. Jesus saves us in our disasters, not from them.” - Robert Farrar Capon


The End Of The World (As We Know It)

Let there be no mistake, we, all of us, stand on the threshold of God’s kingdom. We never really know from moment to moment when an opportunity will come our way. It’s a mystery, but that’s where the real power lays. The Lord is always out in front of us. God’s futures approaches us, God’s future in which we will all be made new. 

We wait with hope by lighting whatever little lights we can, for no light is too small in this ever darkening world.

Things Without Mystery Have No Power

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

Taylor Mertins

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