uncomforTABLE

Jesus is in the business of making people uncomfortable. We see this from the very beginning of his public ministry.

• He eats with people that others excluded and risks bringing their own uncleanness and stigma upon himself. (Luke 15)
• He heals people with illnesses and infirmities when healing and work are uncalled for. (Mark 1: 21-28)
• And most of all, the way he reads ancient Scriptures and the meaning in his interpretations and expositions make people feel downright itchy and uncomfortable. He is almost launched off a hill after his first sermon in his own hometown. (Luke 4: 16-30)

There's a point in Jesus making people so darn uncomfortable and anxious all the time. Without uncomfort, we don't experience the kingdom of heaven. We share nothing of the presence of God that Jesus lives in constantly. We miss the kingdom boat and wade on the shores of boring reality as it is.

Peter learned this through one of his many arguments with Jesus. Jesus, kneeling at Peter's feet like a no-good slave with a towel around his waist, hears how Peter thinks there is a better way. "You shall not wash my feet!"

Jesus responds, "If I don't wash your feet, you will have no part with me." (John 13 )

Peter hears that he will receive nothing of the coming kingdom. He will be left outside. He will receive no share, no part of the inheritance. When he hears that his uncomfort is attached to his share, he flips his script.

"Not just my feet, then! Wash also my hands and my head!" In other words, give me more!

We see in Jesus that we have an uncomfortable-making God. God shows us through Jesus how uncomfortable he is with--poverty, racism, sexism, violence, unjust suffering, injustice, a lazy people, lack of connections among his own people, poor stewardship, and on and on. In our lives and even in our churches, we exhibit day after day how comfortable we have grown to all those scenarios. When Jesus comes to wash our feet, we put out the same words of Peter, "Not my feet. I'm fine the way I am, and you ought to be as well."

But God isn't fine with dirty feet and comfortable people. God is concerned about making us uncomfortable SO THAT we too may experience the living presence of shalom, peace, justice, and everything that is a part of God's rule in our lives.

We may not have Jesus bowing at our feet these days, but we do have Jesus imparting his very life to us through his meal at the TABLE. This table is a table of discomfort, a table that witnesses to the very presence of God's discomfort with all that is sin. The table reminds us of how we too must become uncomforTABLE to experience the presence of God's rule in our lives. God works through the table to take down everything that makes us comfortable with dirty feet, and sets us free to be an UNCOMFORTABLE people in this world--a people who tie towels around our waists, scoot from knee to knee on dirty, dusty floors, and take the grimy feet of an comfortable world into our own hands. It's in that connection where God's kingdom comes rushing in like a football defense on a blitz.

How is Jesus making you uncomfortable today?

I am the Good Shepherd...
...so says Jesus in John 10. Today was the "Good Shepherd Day" in much of the church. It's a day to remember the great image of the shepherd that Jesus gave us to describe his relationship with us.

Over the years, I've tossed this image around and have learned different nuances that are available within it. This morning, as I heard the passage read within the church, my mind discovered one more that I'd like to share to you.

In the movie, "Waking Ned Devine," you learn a little about what it means to work with animals. A central character in the movie is a pig farmer deeply in love with a woman adverse to his profession. She often comments that he smells way too much like the animals for whom he cares. To win her over, he uses "fruity soaps". It's a great movie about more than a love story, and I recommend it to all.

The pig farmer takes on the smell of the pigs. I've heard the same said about shepherds--they take on the smell of the sheep. Shepherds, in a more pre-modern world, stayed with their sheep constantly. They were always found in the midst of the sheep. They provided for them, encouraged them to follow and move along to different pastures, and protected them. They'd often corral them into some cleft where they could keep them all in one place over night, and place themselves in any natural exit point to prevent the sheep from escaping and from wolves and thieves from snatching one of them.

All of this is a dirty job. Shepherds were covered in earth and all the smells and fluids that come from sheep. They showed ultimate devotion to their job, and they had to for success as a shepherd. Sheep are good for slaughter and their coats. If you don't have any sheep leftover, you wouldn't have much of an income.

But there's something to this taking on of the smells and character of the sheep that lends richness to Jesus' metaphor of his relationship to us. Jesus is the Good Shepherd, the one covered in the stink of the sheep. We are the sheep who lend him that stink.

This taking on the stink works in two ways: 1) it highlights how Jesus takes on human nature. He's not some divine agent in a human shell. He is human, and his commitment to being human is stinky. 2) He takes on the stink of sin that we as sheep give to him. The Good Shepherd is not the remote person who shepherds from afar for fear of getting dirty. Jesus is down in the midst of his sheep, stepping in their crap, lifting them from danger, leading them to green pastures and water, and protecting them from outside danger. He is committed fully to his role as the Shepherd who takes on the stink of the sheep.

On the cross, we proclaim that Jesus takes on the sin of the cosmos and puts it to death in his own death. On this Good Shepherd Sunday, we see that he was stinky with the smells of his sheep on that cross.

Who's taking on your stink these days? Jesus is the Good Shepherd.

SCRIPTURE THAT I'M WRESTLING WITH TODAY...

"So we do not lose heart. Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed day by day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal." (2 Corinthians 4: 16-18, ESV)

How is the outer nature of the church (the BODY of Christ) wasting away today? We look to signs of loss in our tribe of Lutherans---500,000 members lost in 15 years. No significant growth. Flat, stagnant financial giving. Arguments over minor things that split families, congregations, and synods. We are tempted to believe that our destruction is our inevitable future. To some degree it is our future, but is this all we pay attention to? This slight momentary affliction is preparing us for something greater ... and it always has.

"Our inner nature is being renewed day by day." Do we stop to look and appreciate how God is renewing our inner nature? A five year old realizes God's love greater than a 50 year old, a congregation makes the hard decision to move from maintenance to mission, a dying church gives away its property to a new mission start, new leaders are filled with energy about God's future for the world. Renewal happens, and it's not of anything that we do. God renews, restores, and replenishes.

How do we embrace renewal when the pain of the wasting away of our outer nature can be so great at times? How do we look forward to the eternal weight of glory when the slight momentary affliction sends searing pain that shuts down vision? How does our renewal embrace our wasting away instead of creating an escapist compartment where we experience neither renewal or affliction? How does renewal help us not to lose heart?