Robert Jenson once said, “It is a great achievement to know yourself a sinner.” It sounds paradoxical, but to know you’re a sinner puts you (and me) in a place to really listen to what Jesus is saying. Hence the parable of the publican and the pharisee. The dirty rotten scoundrel of a tax collector leaves worship justified, rather than the do-gooding religious adherent, because only he is able to confess that he is a sinner. 
	
It’s not easy to receive this sermon from Jesus (particularly the woes) but somebody has to say such things. One must really know the people to which these words are delivered lest we leave thinking the preacher is talking about other people. 
	
Bashing people with the law achieves nothing unless the one preaching is the One who comes to fulfill the Law. 
	
Martin Luther reminds us that “God receives none but those who are forsaken, restores health to none but those who are sick, gives sight to none but the blind, and life to none but the dead. God does not give saintliness to any but sinners, nor wisdom to any but fools. In short: God has mercy on none but the wretched and gives grace to none but those who are in disgrace.”

The Teaching

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)

thirty something pastor, podcast host, and fan of parables

The Teaching

Taylor Mertins