 Now the Berean Jews were of more noble character than those in Thessalonica, for they received the message with great eagerness and examined the Scriptures every day to see if what Paul said was true.
-Acts 17:11 On Sunday I was teaching on a passage in the Gospel of Luke where Jesus is (again) seen as a threat to those in power. A Pharisee who is hosting him for dinner (Luke 7:39) is repulsed by a "sinful" woman who enters and washes the feet of Jesus with her tears. He has a monologue in his head, judging the woman and deciding that Jesus cannot be a true prophet because he's letting this woman touch him. Jesus reads Simon's thoughts and interrupts him. "Simon, I have something to tell you." And the monologue becomes a dialogue, and Jesus moves the pharisee away from harmful religious beliefs, and challenges him to confront the truth. There's more to it than that, but for now that's enough. The key takeaway? Jesus turns internal monologues into dialogues--freeing us from false or judgmental narratives. In our discussion time after the message, a great insight was mentioned. Someone said that the way God often helps them move out of problematic internal monologues is through literal dialogue with others. This deep truth is worth exploring further, and it got me thinking about the ancient Bereans--here's why. In the book of Acts, we get a small reference to the folks who lived in the town of Berea (in Greece) as Paul and Silas are bringing the story of Jesus across Turkey and into Europe. We aren't told much about them at all. We simply know that 1) they had noble character, and 2) that their noble character was linked to the fact that as truth seekers, they searched the scriptures to see if what these missionaries were sharing was actually true. Growing up, what that meant to me and everyone else in my generation seemed quite clear: if you want to have the right character and figure out if something is true, you go flip through the Bible until you can find the chapter and verse with a passage that can confirm it. There's only one problem with this understanding of the Bereans: those fine folks didn't have Bibles. First off, absolutely nobody had their own copy of the scriptures in the first century. It would be another 1400 years before that even became an option. What they did have was a synagogue-- a community-- that held the writings. But you couldn't just borrow a scroll. They had to be read together. In community. Want to discover what's true? Gather at the synagogue, explore the story and character of God, and hash it out. This isn't a "you-need-to-go-to-church-more" pitch. It's an invitation to rediscover truth-seeking through the lens of community. We have all but lost this important practice, and our world is suffering more because of it. Right now, the US is facing a crisis of truth. Competing narratives and repeated outlandish claims (provably false) have blurred all of our perceptions of reality. Some argue relentlessly, while others passively accept what aligns with their preferred source of information (rarely unbiased). These can lead us away from careful examination (truth-seeking), which, according to the author of Acts, makes for a less-than-noble character. If information is all you're looking for, of course you can google things and it will get you somewhere. But God created us to be in dialogue with each other in order to discern what is real and true. When we have others that we can ask truly good questions with (not just rant), explore what the way of Jesus looks like with, and dialogue about life's complexities with, then we can be noble truth seekers. And of course, the same process is needed to counter the false stories we believe about ourselves. When we join with other humble truth seekers, then we can together "search the scriptures." What is the deep heart of God that we see in Jesus? How might it impact what I believe and the posture I believe it with? Your story will help me understand. My story will help you understand. The stories from our neighbors and strangers will also illuminate our understandings. And the good questions we all ask will help us name the harmful and false monologues going on. And maybe we'll finally learn that consuming tweets, posts, and TikToks alone as we fall asleep is making us sick and really bad at discerning truth?! (Just kidding. We won't ever learn that, apparently.) Who can you practice humble exploration together with this week as you seek to follow the real Jesus in a time of immense untruth? It's a noble task-- too noble to do alone. We were made for community. Jesus, protect me from isolation and half-truths this week. Lead me into dialogue, into faith, and into community. Peace, Keith *artwork taken from the cover of Seeking Truth Together, a Quaker book by Jack Powelson.
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We are his servants because the same God who said that light should shine out of darkness has given us light. For that reason we bring to light the knowledge about God’s glory which shines from Christ’s face. -Apostle Paul, 2 Corinthians 4:6  The idea of light breaking into darkness isn't just a spiritual concept. This week I learned about the tiny industrial town of Rjukan, Norway. Because of where Norway sits on the globe, its winters have about 18 hours of darkness, and only 6 of daylight. But Rjukan is even more extreme than that. Hidden deep in a valley with steep mountains on both sides of the village, the town receives absolutely no sunlight for 5 months of the year. It's always shaded. Town residents can look high on the mountain walls and watch the sunlight creep down the mountain in the morning. But just as it gets near the town, the sunlight starts receding up the mountain again. So close, but always out of reach. In 1913, the founder of the small town dreamed of bringing sunlight down to the people, but it proved impossible. Yet, the dream never fully died. A century later, in 2013, it became reality. The town installed three giant mirrors on the mountain, using solar technology and small windmills to shift the mirrors every 10 minutes with the sun's movement. The mirrors reflect the sunlight onto the town square, giving the locals a place to escape the ever-present shadows during some of the darkest days of the year and bathe in the redirected sunlight. And it's available to anyone! Rjukan's creative solution carries a profound message, far beyond physical light.  The mirrors speak to me on multiple levels. I am reminded of the mystical way that even when the natural circumstances of our lives and our world feel like they shut out light, that God's goodness is always creative enough to find access to us. Even when we despair and think it impossible, God is gracious enough to bring love, hope, beauty, warmth, and even joy into our lives when the world feels cold and dark. There is truly no place and no person that is beyond the reach of God's light. Even during the dark valley moments, as Psalm 23 says, "Even though I walk through the darkest valleys, I will fear no evil, for you are with me."
But I also see this "reflection of light" as an image of what we can be for each other. I'm encountering many people feeling the long shadows of a winter without much light. I feel it myself too. Right now the world feels heavy-- with anger, hurt, and discouragement pressing in. It goes beyond big picture philosophies and politics. Many people I care about are going through difficult seasons related to health, personal loss, stress, and mental fatigue. Some have lost employment without a moment's notice or care. Some are dealing with serious depression. The valley is full of shade. We do not need to spend our energy attempting to manufacture some light. Most of the times when I do that, it feels forced or fake. I'm learning that I'm fairly powerless to create light on my own when I'm tired or discouraged myself. But what we can do is reflect. We can reflect the compassion that we know to be true from God. We can channel the deep forgiveness and mercy that we have received in our own lives, and let it bounce from us to those we interact with. The invitation for us is to both position ourselves in the light and angle ourselves toward others so that the goodness of God brings a bit of warmth and light into places dominated by chill and shade. The good news of Jesus, and the message of Rjukan for me today, is that the light is always available. We may need to just do a little climbing and think outside the box a bit. And in the hardest moments where we just don't feel any encouragement directly from God, we have the gift of looking to sisters and brothers around us who might be able to reflect a bit of God's light toward us. God's goodness comes in many ways. Seek the light, friends. And when you find it, pause. Sit in the square and receive it fully. Let it fill you before you step back into the world to reflect it. God's grace and God's love are always available. Today, live in the beauty of that truth. Jesus, may I be a light receiver and a light reflector today. Peace, Keith  When he saw her, the Lord was moved with compassion for her... -Luke 7:13 Have you ever been moved by something so deeply that you actually felt it in your gut? I don't mean because you had Taco Bell for the third night in a row (please, friends, never ever do that). I'm talking about a moment when you see something, hear something... and it just makes you feel, so deeply. In your gut. I'm continuing to reflect on one of the passages from the Gospel of Luke that we talked about this past Sunday. Jesus is walking along, heading into the city of Nain to teach. And a funeral procession is coming in the opposite direction toward him. It's a widow and mother, with her friends carrying the body of her only son. She's not looking for Jesus. She probably doesn't even know who he is. She's just grieving the loss of her loved one (and her only remaining means of support). And Jesus sees her. And in a moment, something happens in his intestines. Sorry, I know that sounds gross. In English we read something like, "he was moved with compassion." The Greek is literally closer to, "his gut was bursting." The imagery is intestines. I mean, you can even feel it in the word itself: splagchnizomai. Right? A beautiful healing is about to happen. But I'm still thinking about what happened in Jesus when he saw her. There's something interesting about how the gospels talk about the compassion of Jesus. The writers always use that same verb. A word for compassion existed, but never as a verb like this one. As far as we can tell, other contemporary Greek writers didn't use this word. It's only in the Gospels. So it's almost as if those telling the Jesus story couldn't find a word that adequately expressed the depths of his compassion, so they had no choice but to start using a new one. Charles Spurgeon, one of the greatest orators of the 19th Century, once preached: "If you would sum up the whole character of Christ in reference to ourselves, it might be gathered into this one sentence, 'He was moved with compassion.'" Sometimes the compassion was deeply planned, like when Jesus walked toward the cross, knowing he would be unjustly killed, and absorbing the world's sin and violence and hatred, destroying its ultimate power. But other times it was like this story. Unplanned, immediate, gut-level care that required action right away. I want to follow Jesus, so I want to have both types in my own life as well. And today, I'm thinking about the areas where my guts can lead me to simple acts of love. Christ-like compassion goes beyond thoughtful, planned compassionate action. That's important in our lives. But in the tradition of Jesus, so are those knee-jerk responses where we feel something deep and we just have to respond by "compassioning" toward another person. Right away. So say the kind word to someone instead of just thinking it. Send the text message checking in on someone when you wonder how they're doing. Give the money away when you see someone in need and feel that compassion in your gut. Acknowledge how hard someone's life situation is instead of just thinking about all the things they did that led up to it. Use your hands to help someone- don't make it complicated. When you feel for someone who is hurting or being mistreated, voice your care and support. Trust your gut. Be a healer. I love so much that we serve a God who is moved to unplanned compassion sometimes. A God who is capable of feeling something in his gut. So let's continue the tradition of making compassion a verb. And let's keep our hearts soft enough to keep feeling things in our gut. Today, may you receive Jesus as he compassions you, and may you each have hearts soft enough to compassion others as well. Peace, Keith I'm going off of my normal approach today and going a bit more technical and in-depth. I felt the need to reflect on how we think about people in regards to policies and platforms. This is a long essay. I'll get back to more typical stuff next week (maybe?). Thanks, friends.  But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”
-Luke 10:29 As a pastor, I am not a fan of chasing headlines. I'm as exhausted as the next person when it comes to keeping up with what's happening around our country and trying to understand which things are actually legal or not in a democracy. It's a lot, and I know people of various perspectives who are overwhelmed. I've encouraged people over and over again to keep their eyes very simply on the way of Jesus and not allow each new headline to steal our humanity in one way or another. But from time to time, our elected political leaders oddly seek to offer Christian insights (rarely mentioning Jesus when they do, though!). And this is where I'm often drawn in to wrestle. I've spent a lot of time swimming in theological waters, and when someone leading our country suggests that God thinks XYZ... well, words have power. Recently in an interview about putting "America First," one of our highest-ranking US officials said, "I think it's a very Christian concept, by the way, that you love your family and then you love your neighbor, and then you love your community, and then you love your fellow citizens, and then after that, prioritize the rest of the world." And to give our politician the benefit of the doubt here, he is indeed talking about something that early Christian writers like St. Augustine and Thomas Aquinas mention, known as ordo amoris, Latin for "order of affections." Although Augustine used it to say that we must learn love for God first and then order all things from that, it's often been used to prioritize what's most and least important, particularly as it relates to who we give time and care to. It's a fairly standard idea. In so many ways, this makes sense. After all, most of my current time and energy is spent on caring for my family on a day-to-day basis. I'm not going to go pick up some random kid and give them a ride home from track practice while I leave Judah and Kylan sitting there on the curb. But if that kid needs a ride, are these really my only options? There are a few problems with all this. The first is that the Christian concept mentioned didn't originate with those early Christian writers at all. It came from a Stoic concept hundreds of years earlier called oikeiosis. And oikeiosis is not advice about the way things should be, but a description about the way things grow as we develop! The concept is literally about how healthy human growth "brings others into one's household." As a young child, we are only focused on ourselves. Then as we grow up a bit, our circles of concern broaden to love and care for our family, our neighborhoods, and then the entire world. The ultimate goal of growth, then, is that we care about all of humanity as much as ourselves. The concentric circles show how we grow to include more and more as we mature, rather than tell us how to prioritize. That's significantly different than a ranked priority list, and very much worth consideration. The picture above is the "circle of concern" developed by a Stoic dude named Hierocles in the 2nd century, and was intended to illustrate healthy growing love- not who gets cared about if we have a little extra left over. So maybe the conversation isn't really about care for our family. Maybe the question is if we are prioritizing our center circles in such a way that it's at the expense of any obligation to the rest of humanity. And that brings us to our next challenge. As people centered on Jesus, before we accept something as a "Christian concept" (not always a helpful phrase, honestly), we must ask ourselves: Is this a concept we see reflected in the life and teachings of Jesus? When Jesus was asked what the greatest command was, he was given a chance to give God's ordo amoris. And he gave two commands: First, love God (honor, prioritize, serve), and then, love your neighbor. I find it interesting that Jesus didn't say, "love your family," to start that second command. Maybe he knew that would be a no-brainer? Or maybe it's more beautiful than that. In fact, at one point in the gospels Jesus is told to prioritize his family because they are waiting to take him home, and he suggests to the crowd that everyone in the room is his mother and brother and sister. I don't believe he didn't care about his family. Instead, he was helping people see that the family of God is wider than the categories we often choose. There are two more worthwhile details about Jesus' response to the most important priorities question. One is that in Matthew 25, Jesus suggests that when his disciples cared for those who were struggling the most on the edges of society-- the poor, the ones in prison, etc-- that they were actually caring for him. So the first priority to love God was actually fulfilled when one of them showed compassion to a poor, hungry, imprisoned outsider! Wouldn't that be in the "loving neighbor" category?! I guess they're more connected than we realize. That blurs our circles! Now back to the original Luke moment. When Jesus tells his interrogator the second command is to love one's neighbor, he follows it with the famous Good Samaritan story. His story highlighted that a foreigner who was despised by Jews was actually the one who exemplified "bigger circle" love better than the victim's own people who walked on by. The one who prioritized the outermost circle in a moment of need was the hero. This gets us back to our point. What can happen is that beneath a very rational comment about priorities, the intention can actually be to find a loophole which allows us to clarify who we can keep outside of our love. And that doesn't match the example of Jesus, friends. This is why ranking who is most deserving of love is not a Christian concept, especially if it leads us (in any way!) to then decide that some are "undeserving" of care. We have enough love and mercy in us to include the outermost circles. It comes from God! The reservoir is limitless! Now here's the thing (this may be unpopular): this does not automatically demand one single political view about something like immigration policy, for example. We can have various understandings of the role of government and what the best border or immigration approaches should be. BUT what this does demand is that those claiming to follow Jesus must think and speak about those inside and outside our country as "neighbors." We must never start seeing any other human as less deserving of mercy and dignity than another. There is no place for that kind of hierarchy. Therefore, there is no place in the kingdom of Jesus for sweeping labels, for dehumanizing someone by calling them "an illegal," for dismissing people as "getting what they deserve," or for delighting in the suffering and legitimate fear of children. I'm hearing hatred and dismissal coming out of far too many Christians who have been told that it's permissible, because certain people and other countries are simply outside of our responsibility or concern. Empires can believe that. But not you and I. There is no ordering of Christian love that requires us to exclude another person from care. As disciples of Jesus, we must always seek out humane, compassionate approaches to our neighbors. This is regardless of our ultimate political values. So go ahead and advocate, all Christians from diverse political backgrounds. You may disagree about the best way to approach things on the large scale. But, for the sake of the integrity of our faith, let's be certain that policies we support and call for include the actual Christian concept of concern for all people involved. Each one bears God's image, especially those on the edges of our circles. That's the point. Jesus, don't let us try to gain the whole world and lose our souls. Peace, Keith |
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