The Shepherds and their Lamb

This sermon, part of a series on characters in Luke's nativity story, was preached at the weekly chapel service at Grand View University on November 29, 2016.

I have a soft spot in my heart for shepherds. This rough-and-tumble lot that the angels appeared to in the hills above Bethlehem are my kind of people. When my dad died a couple weeks ago out in western South Dakota, one thing I learned from relatives is that my Papa's first job when he was fourteen was as a sheep herder. He was so proud of that fact that they thought we'd have the Sheep Herders' National Anthem sung at the funeral. That didn't happen, but I hope you'll indulge me today by singing the first verse: “Mary had a little lamb, little lamb, little lamb. Mary had a little lamb. Its fleece was white as snow.”

So shepherds, we mostly think of them in this story because of all the Christmas pageants we've seen at church or at school. Little ones are dressed like donkeys and cows, as angels with halos and wise men in bathrobes and crowns, and of course a line of little replicas of Linus Van Pelt, like in A Charlie Brown Christmas, with a blanket on his head and a shepherd's crook in his hand, innocently reciting our scripture reading for today.

But the guys on the hillside weren't at all like the cuteness we're used to. Jesus called himself the good shepherd, but that implies that a good shepherd is an unusual thing and that most people in that vocation weren’t so good. Having been around sheep at my grandparents’ ranch on the Great Plains, I know that the job isn’t a clean one, much less an easy one. The shepherds were dealing with creatures prone to brucellosis that causes aborted lambs in ewes and lesions on the rams’ privates, frothy bloat and free gas bloat which do what they say, scabies that causes hair to fall out, and scours where the animals poop themselves to death. It might not be a good idea to shake hands with one of these men. The shepherds in the Christmas story in Luke had to wade through a lot of ick, and they didn’t have the luxury of doing quality craftsmanship like Joseph did. There was no precision or eye for beauty in sheep herding. In this story, these fellas were out in the meadows at night. They’d brought their flock up either to graze on new shoots or to chomp on the stubble from the spring harvest. By day they could see hyenas or jackals approaching and protect the sheep and could maybe spell each other for a nap. But under the stars they’d have had to stave off sleep, kind of like a college student pulling all-nighters to get things done at the end of the semester.

What’s more, shepherds didn’t have much reputation as reliable people. The bad reputation started with their affinity for sheep, which are the dirtiest, smelliest, dumbest, and most self-involved creatures human beings have ever domesticated. The kind of sheep they raised were the middle-Eastern broad-tailed variety, whose backside waggers were fat and meaty and regarded as a real dinnertime delicacy to set next to your figs and hummus. While the sheep tails were highly desired, it wasn’t so for the shepherds. They wore no clothes made of finely spun cloth. Instead they may have worn a rough tunic, and probably on these cool spring nights they had on some sheepskin with the wool turned in. And to stave off the cold, they might have been sampling some first-century warming liquid, if you know what I mean, while they stood near their fires. All of which makes the shepherds the most unlikely people to play the role the angels cast them in.

One of Luke’s big themes in the gospel is witnessing. The whole story of Jesus and his disciples is told to show what those chosen followers of Jesus witnessed. Usually what they witnessed was Jesus’ care for outsiders, for the disreputable, for the outcast, for people in society’s shadows. And the first witnesses in Luke’s story aren’t good guys like Peter, James, and John. No, Luke tells us the first witnesses were the last people you’d want testifying on your behalf. The first witnesses who heard the announcement that the infinite and almighty God has taken weak, human, and finite form were this bunch of half-snockered neck-beards, scratching their nether regions while telling tall tales around the fire to keep themselves entertained.

Suddenly they were surrounded by both angels and the glory of the Lord. And when we’re talking about that glory, we’re talking the presence of God, being wrapped up in God’s very being. Who woulda thunk it? It wasn’t kings and high priests who got the announcement. It was the shepherds. On the other hand, what better people could God have sent the heavenly messengers to? If you’re powerful and people jump at your command, you’ll only have ears for your own sweet voice. If you’ve got your act together, you don’t need a savior, who is Christ the Lord. If you’re perfectly snuggled in your warm bed with its 800-count Egyptian cotton sheets, you’re not going to run off to see anything born in a cold cattle stall. So God chose the ones most likely to hear and go and give witness. These guys were duly impressed and wanted to see the one whom the angel told them about and whom the heavenly host praised.

What they found when they went down into town to that stable out back of the inn’s “No Vacancy” sign was something they were perfectly familiar with. Mary had had a little lamb. Outside the sphere of good and upright people, the shepherds saw this woman and man, Mary and Joseph, with a baby who was the Lamb of God. When they stepped up next to the manger, the shepherds did the job they’d been chosen for. They became the first witnesses, handing on what they’d first been given. The angels had told them what God was up to here, and they passed on the news to this set of new parents. In their post-partum exhaustion, Mary and Joseph received the news that their baby, a far distant descendant of King David, was the messiah, the savior, the Lord.

And everyone who heard it either went “Whoa!” or pondered it in their hearts. But the shepherds did something utterly unexpected. They didn’t stand around gawking, trying to hold on to the magnificence of it all like we probably would have. Instead, they went back up the hill to work. They went back to their vocations. After all, there was a flock to pull together at the end of the night. Those shepherds were still the kind of people your mom and dad never wanted you to be friends with, but they were also changed. They’d seen the angels’ announcement come true. And as they walked, and watched, and worked, all they could say was, “Man, that was freakin’ cool.” They’d returned to the hillside pastures, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, as it had been told them.

During this Advent season, as we wait for Christmas and are steeped in all the work we need to do, we pray that God would come to us unlikely people, too. We pray that we’d also know this baby is for us and for salvation. And that we’d be moved to tell as well. If the shepherds can be witnesses, what’s preventing you? Amen.

People Get Ready

This sermon for the first Sunday in Advent was preached at Luther Memorial Church in Des Moines, Iowa. It's based on the apocalypse in Matthew 24.

Here we are with Thanksgiving gone past in a flash. There are three more days in November, including Cyber Monday tomorrow. I don’t do Black Friday and don’t have a single gift purchased because I usually have my mind elsewhere with only two weeks left in fall semester. That’s fifteen hundred minutes of class time until finals. It sounds like a lot, but it’s only six classes that are left. And I still have some month-old papers to get graded. And don’t get me started on the knitting projects I wanted done for Christmas. On second thought, maybe you should get me started, because I might be ready in 27 days. I don’t know if I’m scrambling my legs off like George Jetson on his treadmill or if I’m a deer blinking paralyzed in the headlights.

Whichever it is, I know you know the feeling. The world bears down on you with an accusing finger, saying you haven’t done enough. I tried to warn my beloved freshmen in my first-year seminar about this back in September. I told them there would come a day when they look at the list of course work and papers and test they would have come the end of the semester and wonder how they ever got to that place. Well, both those students and their professor have landed in that spot. Who in the world plans to fall behind? Who puts together a to-do list that will be completed two weeks after a deadline? And yet we all wind up there.

At times like that we’re not so sure we’re on board with the Psalmist who was glad when they said, “Let’s go up to the house of the Lord.” The Psalmist was ready and happy to climb the steps to pay the piper and face the Maker of all things. I can’t even get the light bulb over the sink changed, and sure as you’re born or the piling system in my office down the street remains disorganized. How am I ever going to get my act together to be ready for the coming of the Son of Man?

Today we begin a new church year with the season of Advent. While the consumer world entrenched in the economy of buying and selling has already begun its version of the Christmas season, in the church we’re a little better a delayed gratification. Christmas carols and gifts and dancing around the tree and stockings hung by the chimney with care, these things can wait, because we need to do Advent in a way that Christmas goes deeper and we’re actually ready to receive Immanuel, God With Us. So we dress things up in blue, the color of hope and expectation. Like the expecting Mary who’s always portrayed in that color, we wait for God to deliver himself to us.

He’s already come to us in the flesh once in the manger in Bethlehem. And after his crucifixion and death, he came back yet again in his resurrected body that first Easter. If Advent is about waiting and preparation and readiness, the people Matthew wrote his gospel for were right there with us. They’d been told about all Jesus had done, and they’d been promised that Jesus would come back for them. But it wasn’t happening. Where was the glorious victory over sin, death, and the devil? Where was the day when mourning and crying would be over? Where are the heavenly streets of gold and beryl and jasper and diamonds? All they had was the same-old same-old, the day-to-day plodding through life, the dirty feet in sandals, the hauling of water from a well, the milking of goats, the occupying Roman army. And they had to wade through it all without flush toilets, toothpaste, and deodorant. Some glory, eh?

So Matthew gives his people Jesus’ words about when the grand and golden end would come breaking into their world. Christ bids us to hang on, for the resolution of it all is on its way. Hang on. It’s coming. It’s going to break in like the sun creeping up over the horizon. Bit by bit. Ray by ray. For now it may be that it’s still too dark to tell what’s going on. That’s no surprise. Only God has night vision to see it. Before Noah’s flood, no one knew the deluge was coming.

Who knows what the future will hold in this day? When I got the call about my father’s death two weeks ago, it wasn’t something I’d planned for, and neither had he. A sudden hole opened up where he belonged. But I’m not broken up over it. As Paul says, I can’t grieve like those who have no hope. What’s more I’m not sorrowful about our relationship. We had all kinds of past hurts and heartaches between us, but they’d been resolved. Nothing was unspoken. Even though I’d decided not to visit him when I had a slender opening in my calendar ten days before, I knew that if he died our relationship stood on solid, loving ground. So while it was unexpected, it also wasn’t something devastating. We were ready.

Martin Luther in his “Sermon on Preparing to Die” talked about being ready. He says make sure your family is taken care of. It’s the equivalent of not making your heirs spend days amazed that your home has become an episode of “Hoarders” because you literally haven’t gotten your house in order. Being prepared means not burdening them because you’d never signed a medical power of attorney or a living will. That’s the worldly stuff you need to have in place to be ready to meet your Maker. But that’s not the ultimate readiness. Luther says you also need to have your spiritual eyeglasses prescription up-to-date so you can see exactly what kind of God you have.

In that sense, being ready to meet God when God comes means getting the basics down. It means listening carefully to Matthew’s gospel where Jesus says that hehas come to fulfill all righteousness, rather than you. It means hearing Paul declare that you’re saved not by your works but by trusting that Christ has taken care of it all on the cross. Being ready for the Son of Man’s arrival is to take seriously the early petitions of the Lord’s Prayer where you ask for God’s name to be hallowed, God’s kingdom to come, God’s will to be done, all the while prayer that God would take your name, kingdom, and will out of the mix. To be ready and prepared means to have the same certainty as Romans that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus.

So many preachers take this passage from Matthew as a dire warning to make a decision for Christ so that, when his unexpected arrival happens, you won’t be left behind in the rapture to spend time in tribulation. But that’s not the kind of Lord we find in Matthew’s gospel. Jesus doesn’t threaten you with the fear of being abandoned behind the plow or left grinding meal or emptying bed pans, cooking supper, or cooking the books. Instead, Jesus is the one who wants to give you confidence and faith. He wants to be so good and so true that you can’t help but trust him while you’re slogging through life waiting for him to come. And while Jesus says the hour of his arrival will be unknown, God is keen for you to know where he’s going to arrive. If Jesus is the Word Made Flesh, then God will come unexpectedly wherever Christ’s promise breaks in from the future on sinners’ lives today, including right now when the Last Day becomes This Day. You may not have expected it when you drove here this morning, but the Son of Man has driven up to the curb to pull you into his limo as he dies for you, makes you his own in your baptism, and gives you all his gifts. (And if you’re not yet baptized, let’s talk. It’s time that you had the certainty the sacrament gives that you are his.)

See? You haven’t been left behind. You’ve been chosen, elected, hand-picked. You’re as ready and prepared as you ever need to be, because Jesus has been prepared from the foundation of the world to take you on, sins and all. There’s no telling what’s coming around the bend for you. It might be falling in love and becoming a drooling, slobbering romantic. It might be the hard road of cancer or dementia or a stroke. It might be a Powerball win or merely a three-storm winter with less shoveling. It might be your lingering death or your sudden demise. It might be the same-old same-old of family fault-lines and workplace drudgery. It might be the hoped-for invention of a weight-loss pill that actually works. Who knows? You can never tell. But you can go up to the house of the Lord with confidence and hope, for you can tell who it is who has come before you could ever expect him. You can know who died for you while you were still a sinner. You can be confident that nothing can separate you from the love of God in Christ Jesus. Just think about what the passage in Romans 8 says: Neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation can separate you from your Lord. That means nothing at all that you can face can be the thing that leaves you in the lurch. Not even the vast powers of heavenly creatures like angels can slice you away or leave you hanging, for they cannot go against God’s will and God’s word.

You see, he’s already come for you. And that means that whatever you face in this life, in field work and grinding of meal, in season and out, in joy and in sorrow, he has already swooped you up, and your life is hid in him. You may not see it yet, but it’s done. You’ll be tempted to want some visible evidence, but it’s been there all along. You’ve been told, just like the shepherds who heard from the angels in the hills above Bethlehem. The heavenly messengers said, “Quit shaking in your boots. Here’s where you can find him. He’s in a manger down in town.” What’s unexpected is that he hasn’t come with a rule book, legal code, or accountant’s ledger. He doesn’t come with a measuring rod, balancing scales, or lap timer. This unexpected Lord comes instead with a word for you: It is finished. You’re in. Fear not. Come what may. Amen.

Eulogy for Papa

My father, Dale Jones, died at 79 on November 11, 2016. This is the eulogy I delivered at his funeral in Sturgis, South Dakota, today.

How impossible it is to sum up a life lived just short of eighty years. I’m a historian, scholar, and theologian by trade, and to do the summing up while standing at a far remove of centuries is already difficult. But when the person you’re describing is so newly gone and when you’ve shared three-fourths of those eight decades with him, all perspective is lost. It’s all just a bag of emotions, and almost any one of you would have better insight than this son today.

But there are some things I can say. The first is that my mom and dad have loved me every day of my life. And later, when Dee entered the picture, the love from her direction came not as a substitute but as a gracious addition. Whatever fault lines there were in my dad’s inner existence, whatever led him to hunger and yearn for something greater, for something beyond himself, for something universal and whole and creative rather destructive, both the push and pull of it came from love. It was both the source and the ultimate end that wrapped him and carried him.

Second, for lots of people in Sturgis, my dad was just that goofy guy on the scooter with a long grabber in his hand and a basket full of empties he’d picked up on the side of the road. But that was just his mild-mannered alter ego. He was really a superhero in your midst. And his superpower was the ability to grab what was cast-off, starting with those empties but expanding to dumpster treasures and to actual people. Most of his adult life was written with a pen containing Serenity Ink. It saw nothing and no one as trash. It saw hope in each encounter. And when a bit of self-doubt kryptonite landed in his lap, he went to the curing places that were those relationships: to Dee, of course, to me and my siblings, to his grandchildren, to those whom he and Dee called their adopted kids, to friends like Clay and Mary Ellen, to people ranging from Australia to France, to whatever fellow drunk working their program was nearby.

Finally, the relationship my dad and I had was fraught. And there was plenty of baggage. And old friend had a similar relationship with his father, and earlier this week we talked about the arc of that father-son relationship. The fraughtness of our first twenty years, when we didn’t understand each other, and we kept missing the real and true connection that was hurt by his alcoholism and lots of earlier hurts he’d faced — that was on him. The next twenty years as he realized he was powerless over alcohol and every other thing that life consists of, and as he made a fearless and searching moral inventory and took action to correct things where possible — these years are on me. I was angry, embarrassed, scornful, and dismissive while he kept moving forward, trying his damnedest to be alive and to figure out how to be a both a sober and a loving dad.

But the last twenty years, give or take a few, have been years of joy and wonder. And that’s not on either of us. That responsibility has had to come from outside us. He’d say it was the universe exuding love. I’d probably point to a Judean preacher from the first century who was crucified. Either way and whatever the source, it came sneaking in to our relationship through you all, surrounding us with your own love and care.

First and foremost, the burden of seeing my dad and me renewed has been born by Dee for him and by Mary and Sam for me. But it can’t be limited to them. My brother and sister (and his as well), his grandchildren, my mom, this vast web of relationships we crawl around in – you’ve all meant something to the tiny world that was me and my dad. But seeing you drawn together to share our mourning is a sign that there is more to life than what happens between a first breath in a maternity home and a last gasp on the floor of a bedroom.

It’s that inter-connectedness that my dad loved and relied on. It’s what he reveled in. It’s the mercy that he bathed in. In spite of his death, it’s what remains when all are ashes and dust. I learned that from my dad. And I yearn for that to live on in my relationship with my own son, Sam, who is going to read the prayer Saint Francis wrote back in the middle ages. This version is the translation included in AA’s Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions. Francis himself would have been seen by his contemporaries as the goofy guy in town, loving his animals, and searching for life from God. His faith moved him to extend himself. And the words of his prayer speak to the exact world my dad wanted to live in, and what he hoped would be bound within the covers of the book of his life.

Lord, make me a channel of thy peace —

That where there is hatred, I may bring love,

That where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness,

That where there is discord, I may bring harmony,

That where there is error, I may bring truth,

That where there is doubt, I may bring faith,

That where there are shadows, I may bring light,

That where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted,

To understand, than to be understood,

To love, than to be loved.

For it is by self-forgetting that one finds.

It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

It is by dying that one awakens to eternal life. Amen

The Beatitudes pretty much suck when you're driving a cheap 1972 Chevy Vega and think you're behind the wheel of something bigger

I was invited to be the speaker at the Reformation Festival at St. Dysmas Lutheran Church, an ELCA congregation behind the walls of the South Dakota State Penitentiary. It's a place where your vision of what the Body of Christ looks like will be exploded. And it's a place I regard as the highest honor to preach at. Today's sermon for a room full of incarcerated believers, seekers, and sinners, is based on the All Saints Sunday gospel reading in Matthew 5:12 — the Beatitudes, from Jesus' Sermon on the Mount.

Today’s gospel reading comes from a string of chapters in Matthew’s gospel that we call the Sermon on the Mount. It’s an account of what Jesus taught to the people who followed him one day at the top of a hill. We call the section we just heard The Beatitudes.

Speaking as an old sinner of long standing, I have to say that the Beatitudes are ridiculous. If Jesus thinks I’m gonna buy what he’s selling here, he’s wrong. It’s just not the way the world works. It’s a pitiful evangelism scheme, and it’s no way to get your fellow inmates out of their cells on a Thursday evening to make their trek up all those stairs to this prison chapel. Any smart person is going to turn away. No one wants to be poor inspirit. Who willingly asks to lose a loved one and grieve or mourn? Being reviled and persecuted? Fuggedaboudit. But these Beatitudes are just the beginning of the trouble in the Sermon on the Mount. Before Jesus is done with his work in this gospel, he’ll have us hoping to receive every single thing in this list of blessings.

The real problem, though, isn’t the list. It’s the person hearing Jesus’ words: me. Our rejection of what Jesus is up to has been the human story since the Garden of Eden when our first parents spurned God’s limits on them, mistrusting his word, and eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. The problem was present for their son Cain who regarded his offering to God as better than the one God liked that was given by Abel, whom Cain murdered. It’s right there in Jacob’s grabbing his twin brother’s heel whilst being born and cheating his way through life. It’s there in King David’s demand that the bathing Bathsheba be brought to his quarters. It’s right in the middle of Jesus’ disciples when James and John argued about who’s the greatest, when Peter denied his Lord, and when Judas sold Jesus down the pike for thirty pieces of silver. Every single one of them operated on the principle that their own way was the best way.

What’s God going to do with us? He simply can’t let us be our own gods. Although God is a loving God, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, God demands that our roles be clearly defined and strictly limited – at least on our part. God will be God, and we will be God’s people, and not the other way around. And yet we still want the whole relationship with God, the world, and our neighbors to be about us: our goodness, our, righteousness, our performance, our actions, our religion.

Here’s what Jesus does with it in the Sermon on the Mount: He starts by saying, “Lemme tell you the things that will make you blessed, happy, whole, full of peace, and joy and hope.” It’s an unlikely list. But it’s like he knows that we won’t have truck with any of it, so he turns things around with a bit of ethics that we’ll for sure go for. He talks justice. I can handle that. I keep good track of all rights and wrongs, especially when they concern me. Adultery? I’m married and I’m keeping my pants zipped and my eyes focused on the one I love. Retaliation? Well, you inmates know how that works. It might’ve been a problem in the past, right? But you’re good now. At least your intentions are aimed right. And loving others? We’re right there with Jesus, especially if your loved ones still want to be in contact with you.

We like that business. It’s a hidden, arbitrary God who insists on his own way, on choosing the better offerings, on judging us that we don’t like. So we think, “don’t just leave me be, God. Don’t hide behind your veil without revealing your plans for me. Just give me something to do.” But be careful what you ask of the Lord. Contrary to what lots of pious people say, God will always give you more than you can handle.

When Jesus talks about anger in the Sermon on the Mount, he says, “You’ve heard it said, ‘You shall not murder.’ But I say it’s bigger than that: One tiny bit of anger is equal to any murder in the first degree.” When Jesus reminds us of the command no to commit adultery, he says it’s more than about which body parts rub against each other and with whom. He says that lustful thoughts are just as bad, and you should cut off the body parts tempting you (church legends say that St. Origen obeyed Jesus and castrated himself to prevent those thoughts). Jesus recounts the old adage “an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth,” but he won’t stand for justice like that. He tells us to turn the other cheek and give your cloak when someone asks for your coat. Worst of all, he tells us loving our loved ones isn’t enough. We need to love our enemies, too.

Every step of the way in this gospel, Jesus pushes our buttons. He tells parables that don’t spare us. He makes demands beyond what we can do. Finally in chapter 19, the disciples have had it. And they ask, “Jesus Christ [literally], who can do this?” But they’ve forgotten Jesus first sermon in the gospel where he announces “I have come to fulfill all righteousness. You can’t git ‘er done, but I can.”

As God’s only-begotten Son, Jesus knows what he’s come for. And he knows how helpless our case is. If you want to spin your wheels trying to gain traction against the world bearing down on you, he’s okay with that. But he knows how it’ll end up.

That's my 1972 Vega. The red one. Sadly, 40 years later it sits rusting behind the windbreak in a pasture at my grandparents' ranch.

Imagine my friend Neil’s SUV four-wheel drive with the removable hard top. He’d take us out for a spin on Forest Service roads back in the late 1970s when we worked at Bible camp in the Black Hills. Then imagine my very special 1972 red Chevy Vega with a three-speed stick, aluminum engine, and about two inches of clearance. If I’d taken that cheap little car out on those trails I would have been toast. The axle or the oil pan or the u-joint or something else a non-gearhead like me knows nothing about would have gotten hung up on a boulder. And there I’d be, stuck on some Forest Service road until the cows come home. If I’d wanted to try that, Neil would have said, “Go ahead. See how far you get. If you don’t want to tool around in my truck with me driving, that’s fine by me.”

Back in 1518, Martin Luther understood what it is to get hung up, to get stranded on our own desires and plans, and, more important, why God relishes it. He said, “Unless we completely despair of ourselves, we cannot merit the grace of Christ.” What he meant was, “As long as we’re stuck on ourselves and on our potential, we’ll have no need of what Jesus has to give us. And that’s what our Lord is up to in the Beatitudes. He’s pointing to the places in our lives where we’ve lost power, bottomed out, and encountered the end of our rope. They’re the places where our desire to be limitless and in control comes to naught, and we find that we’re severely limited and have no control.

When we get to that point, then Jesus can do what he’s come to do for you: Be the righteous one for you, offering himself on your behalf. Imagine you’re on trial (not something difficult for anyone wearing tan inmate scrubs in this room). God is at the judge’s bench, and the prosecuting attorney is ripping you apart: “You’ve done wrong. You haven’t done enough. You’re an out-and-out sinner.” But you’ve got the best possible person at your defense: Spiritu Sanctu, Esquire, Attorney-at-Gospel. And your lawyer's counsel is that when you stand up to deliver your plea, plead guilty. But don’t stop there. Look the judge in the eye and pin your sin on Jesus, the divine judge’s son. You see, Jesus knows you can’t do it, so he trades places with you and pits himself against God’s righteous demands.

Now when we look at these Beatitudes, we have to say there’s nothing especially noble or saving about grief or persecution in and of themselves. And God certainly doesn’t want to inflict that on anyone. But when you land in these places, then you can see. You are already blessed but have never been able to see while spending the energy on maintaining the illusion of control or the façade of goodness. But in these moments when all else is stripped away, then we can turn and spot what God’s doing.

When things are right and good, God has been afoot, spinning a swift dance step around you, patiently waiting to take you out on the floor. And when things go bad, as they often do – when you lose your freedom, when you lose your good name, when you lose all choices, when you lose a life on the outside, for instance –  the blinders come off. Then you can see what Paul in Ephesians declares: Christ, God’s Son, has given you his inheritance, his good name, his freedom, his own life. Then he promises one more thing – to take you through all this loss, all this mess, all the grief and persecution and death to the other side where you find yourself made new.

If that’s what happens with the Beatitudes, then, in spite of what a lousy church marketing plan they are, every time we find ourselves in those places, we will count ourselves blessed and bid Jesus to just give us more of the loss so we can have the everything he’s ready to give. Amen.