king

Since this Sunday is Christ the King Sunday, I've been turning to my annual contemplation of kings. This year, that certainly includes King Corn. A documentary about our food economy, the film is both amusing and sobering, as we learn more about how entrenched we are in an agricultural economy that is far from the just, life-giving system we might hope for. Our economy has been shaped and trained to maintain the current structure. Too often, it means profit for the most powerful (King Corn), at the expense of many others.
What a good image to hold in mind as we celebrate Christ the King.

This year, as always, we need reminders that, as followers of Jesus, we need to be vigilant in making sure nothing else--no other person or power--is "king" in our lives.

Instead, we celebrate the unlikely King Jesus, whose reign was secured with self-sacrifice. Crazy, and beautiful.

This King, Christ the King, is all about justice, and life-giving grace.

So, as we gather to worship God this week, we'll celebrate this unconventional reign. We'll read stories of God's promised river of life, from Revelation 22. There, we're given an image of God's grace, which comes like a river in the very midst of the city. It brings life and healing to the city.

All of which is good cause for Thanksgiving, I'd say. And a good reason to again ask for God's vision to be our vision. Imagine what would be possible if it were to guide our everyday living.

I hope to see you there!

wide open space

The Psalm for this week opens up a space between the dangerous and life-giving qualities of nature. Disaster and storm shake our world up. Somehow, in the midst of all that, God brings us out to a broad place, a hopeful place.

In a similar way, Matthew's gospel moves Jesus very quickly--from the glorious affirmation of God at his baptism to a time of deep testing the wilderness.

In both of these lessons, danger and grace are held together, smashed up against each other, and make us feel a little motion sick on account of the quick switch-up.

But isn't that how it happens in our lives, too? Tremendous uncertainty and anxiety come to us alongside moments of absolute confidence. A child is born as we grieve the death of a loved one. I celebrate my husband's return from war even as I grieve that someone else's spouse is sent to replace him. Inexcusable suffering somehow makes way for unimaginable grace as a victim of violence chooses a path of forgiveness and reconciliation.

These things are all tangled together. And, often, I find myself most able to find the beautiful bits when I give myself a little space. Sometimes I need to just take a moment, breathe, and ponder.

Which brings me to a Wendell Berry poem that's been on my mind for the past week:

The Peace of Wild Things

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free

making choices

Election day seems like as good a day as any to consider this week's Old Testament lesson: Joshua (who, in last week's scripture, assumed leadership in the generation after Moses) delivers his farewell address. In it, he sets a clear choice before the people: follow God (the God who brought them out of slavery in Egypt) or serve other would-be gods.

"As for me and my household, we will serve the LORD," he says, in an inspiring call to a better way of living.

My challenge is that, even having proudly cast my ballot in our elections this week, I know that I'm called to something more difficult: casting my life in with God's work in the world.

Joshua dares to make it clear, telling the people exactly what they're going to have to give up. I wonder, if he were to speak to me today, what he would ask me to surrender. I suspect it would be a challenge.

Talitha Arnold, writing in Christian Century nailed me when she wrote: "Had Joshua presided at my ordination, I doubt he would have let me get by with a simple vow to study, pray, teach and preach. He probably would have demanded, 'Will you give up your personal gods of procrastination, perfectionism and the pursuit of trivia?'"

I'm guessing we still have a lot to give up. Greed, selfish individualism, hatred, fear, self-doubt, the belief that we can secure our own futures by accumulating things or building fences, and more.

---

As we continue to celebrate the season of creation, Joshua's words seem to have new implications. "As for me and my household," he says. As members of the household of God, we're called to be a part of making choices as a society that reflect Jesus' values. Choices that turn away from sin, injustice and oppression and turn us toward one another and God.

We know that this also requires us to make changes in the ways our habits and systems treat creation. Besides the reality that we are harming God's creation, we're also aware that our pollution and destruction of resources harms others in our household. Environmental damage hurts those who have least in our world first--the developing world suffers before we in San Diego suffer.

I wonder what it will mean for us to, again and anew, turn from the gods that have tempted us to destruction, and toward the God who is salvation. What new, big household habits will we need?

deeply rooted

This photo from National Geographic caught my imagination today, as I pondered this week's scripture and themes. There's a lot going on:

We celebrate All Saints' Sunday, as we remember and honor those who have gone before us, and who surround us as a cloud of witnesses. We stand on their shoulders, as is they were a part of the root system on which we bear fruit and grow today.

We begin our celebration of a Season of Creation, a time to honor and remember our belonging in a household of God that counts this earth as its home. Belonging in creation requires humility, repentance and attentiveness to God's grace. This week, we honor the land in our observance.

And, we finish this crazy journey we've been on for many weeks, moving with the people of Israel out of slavery in Egypt, to the promised land. Last week, we read of Moses' death, and this week, Joshua shows that God is continuing to lead the people, now through him. As they step foot into the Jordan River, on their final crossing into the promised land, they know they're a part of something much bigger than themselves.


We're on a journey much bigger than any of us can see, too.

As we remember that first step into the river, as the waters of the Jordan River became dry ground, I'm feeling called to ponder my own steps as I try to walk in God's ways.

Rivers aren't the boundary I feel most called to cross these days, but I have been feeling the pull of God as I ponder how to live more responsibly in this world.

As our world economic systems' collapse reveals that they are not the source of our truest security, I wonder if I'm called to rethink where I most put my trust. And, as we ponder the gift of the land, on this precious sphere we call earth, perhaps we need better ways of sharing its blessing with all God's children.

images of God

The gospel story this week is yet another reminder of how God's ways are not our ways: met again with an attempt at cornering him into answers that would get him into trouble, Jesus busts the argument wide open.

Asking a question about whether it's "lawful" to pay taxes, some Pharisees want to trap Jesus in a polarized political battle of their time. They know that this is not a campaign rally, where most people present want to hear the same thing, but a debate in which people who were eager to hear opposing answers were all present.

Jesus refuses their answer. Asking whose image is on the coin they'd use to pay taxes, he offers that it's fine to give it to that person. Caesar's image is on the coin, so go ahead and give it to Caesar.

But then it gets crazy: he says to give to God what is God's. And we know that each of us is made in the image of God. Suddenly, argument over some coins seems trivial. We're called to give our whole selves.

I love that this call comes because God's image is all over us. It's a beautiful reminder to remember that all that we are and all that we have is, really, God's. We are blessed, known, named and marked by God's love.

Which, really, is what Moses was worried about in this week's Exodus passage. Negotiating with God for evidence that God would continue to be with the people of Israel, Moses's story reminds us that God is, even when we disobey, still with us. God's image is all over us and deep within us.

giving up

Lately, I've been occupied with the sense that we ought to spend more time talking about what the church is not. Or, better, what being a Christian means you ought to give up.

In this week's scripture passages, folks have a hard time giving up old ways of being. While Moses is up on Mount Sinai hanging out with God, Aaron and the rest of the folks get restless and anxious and decide to make a god on their own--not God's preferred activity, to say the least. Then, in the New Testament, Jesus tells a story about some folks who go to a wedding party the King is throwing, but don't bother to put on their party clothes; it's clear that they should have.

Maybe it's a bit of a stretch, but it seems to me both are stories of people unwilling to give up their old ways of being. In the first, their anxiety prompts them to try to find their own gods. In the second, not even a wedding invitation from the King is enough to make people change their clothes.

In baptism, since the early church, we are asked to take on vows that speak both of what we take on (belonging in the saving grace of God through Jesus Christ) and what we give up (our ties to sin, evil, injustice, the powers of this world, and more). Becoming a part of God's people requires both: we let go of who we were to become someone new.

Some things are hard to let go of. Mostly, though, it feels really good.

The fact that the seemingly all-powerful economic systems of our time are collapsing around me certainly makes it a relief to lay down my own false belief that I could secure my future with good financial investments, anyhow.

How good it is to know that our salvation is to be found in something altogether different, better, and more life-giving.

whose world? whose vineyard?

If you're not wanting church to have political implications, this is not the season for following our lectionary's Gospel texts! Jesus just keeps telling these stories that are loaded with politics and economics.

Again this week, for our third week in a row, Jesus has a story about workers and vineyard. This one's about real estate ownership, though--it features an absent landlord, who leaves slaves in charge of things, and sends back to collect income off his property.

The funny thing about this story, though, is that Jesus is playing with our assumptions about the cast of characters. Like in our own times, the regular people in Jesus' audience were likely resentful of the rich, powerful and greedy folks who seemed to be in charge of things. As the wealthy, absent owner of the vineyard appears, I bet they're already starting to boo and hiss.

But he messes with them--because this vineyard owner also reminds them of God. If God is the vineyard owner, then the people who seem to be in power become the tenants. And suddenly, the playing field they'd imagine shifts: the people who seemed so powerful are really nothing, in comparison to God who is God of everything and everyone. The tenants are punished for their attempts at greed, and the land is to be given into someone else's care.

How quickly perspectives can shift when we remember God! What seemed powerful suddenly looks pretty weak.

This Sunday, we celebrate World Communion Sunday. I pray that our sharing in communion, especially this week, will remind us of the perspective shifts God keeps asking us to make, over and over, as we remember how big God is, and how big God's grace is.

The communion table is one place where we're already working out the arrangement that will come to fullness in God's kingdom: everyone welcome and included as a part of one family and fellowship.


This Sunday afternoon, I'm going to share in communion worship at the US/Mexico border. Along with others in our worldwide Christian family, we'll pass the body of Christ through a fence that keeps our nations separate. And, I suspect, we'll taste a power that cannot be contained or constricted by any kind of border fence.

In invite you to join me--we'll meet in Friendship Park, inside the Border Field State Park at 2:30. All are welcome. (To get there from San Diego, take the 5 south, nearly to the border. Exit at Dairy Mart Road, and go west until you enter Border Field State Park. There is a $5 entrance fee for each car, and you'll need some valid US ID to get out of the park afterwards.)

water, greed, word

Here's a bit of what has caught my attention this week:

Our text from Exodus is about the thirst of the people in the wilderness--and, as gracious relief, the goodness of the water God provides out of a rock. I wonder what this story has to say to our present time, as we struggle to figure out how we will distribute, care for, and regulate our water supply. I've been reading about struggles in the developing world, where World Bank policies have encouraged water supplies to be held by private corporations. In South Africa, for example, recent court rulings are seeking to determine the appropriateness of selling water only through pre-paid allotments in a number of poor areas.

Just like last week's passage, which emphasized the greed-proof qualities of un-hoard-able manna, our scriptures seem charged with the energies of our current economic climate.

God's work seems, again and again, to be on the side of making sure everyone has access to daily bread and adequate water.

God also seems to be less interested in creating a global structure than God is passionate about giving life in the places where there is hunger and thirst.

As our nation makes decisions about how to move forward in a time where the economic systems we've relied on are collapsing, I hope we will not forget to feed real people, and meet the thirst of people with refreshing water.

I also give thanks that our biblical stories seem increasingly relevant in times of struggle and change--our faith is not one meant for people who have it all together. Our Bible tells the stories of people trying to hang on through incredibly trying times.

One of the many reasons I love the stories of the people of Israel who went through the wilderness with Moses is that they're so, well, human. Like me. This week's text talks about the complaints of the people, over and over. Seven times, the text uses the word for complain, complaining, or complaint.

There are things in the world worth complaint. Hunger for one: the people had been walking for a month and half since they left Egypt. I can't blame them for having a few items on their list of things to grumble about. That's a long time to be hungry.

Heck, I can get grouchy from hunger in WAY less time.

So, they complain. And God hears their complaining. And God loves them and provides graciously for them.

Manna, a mysterious, flaky substance, rains down on them each day, providing sustenance for that day. And, on the day before the Sabbath, they can get what they'll need for two days.

I wonder how this gift of nourishment was received. I wonder if they were just glad for the food, or if they were a little ticked off that they had to let go of their complaints? If they quickly shifted their attitudes because of the gift, or if they wanted to hold on to their old ways of doing things?

through deep water

As we continue to follow Moses' journey in leadership this week, we get another dramatic story: he leads the people to the sea, God parts the waters, and the people of God walk across on dry land. Then, Pharaoh's army pursue them into the sea bed, get stuck in the mud, and are drowned by the sea.

Water, in the imagination of those who first told this story, often symbolized danger, chaos and potential destruction. It was the home of sea monsters and all other manner of mysteries of the deep. And here, for just long enough so the people of God could escape slavery, that mysterious deep becomes safe passage toward a future that's being revealed.

Sounds awfully good to me. A clear path forward and some dry ground to stand on, opened up in the very midst of the uncertainly and chaos of the deep--what grace.

And, that the forces of evil that followed--here, Pharaoh's army--were consumed in their pursuit sounds even better. Would that the things that threaten to keep us enslaved today could be so destroyed: our fears, addictions, greed, isolation, arrogance, hatred.

reconciliation, remembrance, repeating

I like good wordplay, which begins to explain why I'm caught on all these "re-" words this week.

First, I was struck by the clear instructions--almost like the kind of ground rules you might make in covenant on the first day of church camp--Jesus gives to those who seek to follow him.  Clearly, he knows that we're going to have trouble with each other.  He gives us a way to work toward reconciliation with each other.  A high road, which opens a way for conflict to be transformed into right relationship.  Reconciliation in the best sense, as those involved come to a place where they can become part of the same team again.

 Then, I pondered how the story of the first Passover, as its woven into the plagues that God (through Moses) would unleash on Pharaoh and the Egyptians, from the very beginning is known as a way that the people of God will remember what God has done.  The last verses of the passage clarify how it will be repeated and shared through the generations to come.

Reconciliation, remembrance and repetition.  All these "re-" words make me think that time is at least as circular as it is linear; what we do in the present connects us back to what has been before.  

Which is, I suppose, one of the things I treasure about worship.  We're not gathering to create something new, but to authentically and meaningfully claim a story of salvation that's way older than any of us.  I love the challenge of imagining new ways to share the story.  (And I admit to pondering how we might use text messaging to share prayer concerns.)  What we don't have to invent, though, is the stuff that matters most.  It's already there.  As are the signs of God's ongoing presence--those reminders are all around us and all through our history.

Hmmm.  Reminders.  As if we're coming back to mindfulness.  Perhaps worship is a trick to help us turn our attention to the hope that's already been deep within each one of us.

join us this fall

Through this fall, we'll be reading a piece of the story of Moses and the people of Israel each week.  As we follow them on their journey through the wilderness, we just might find hope in the midst of our own times.  Please join us.

Every Sunday, we'll be in the Cove, on the first floor of the United Methodist Center at 9:30 a.m. for about and hour of worship together.  

Bring your friends and enemies.

instructions

I just got a new camera, and confess to being totally overwhelmed with its instruction book. Plus, there are so many settings to watch for, little changes in dials and symbols that make a big difference in how it all works, whether my pictures are in focus, or if the timer is on.

Usually, I figure I can navigate electronic devices with good intuition, a spirit of adventure, and a little trial and error. All of this is infinitely preferable, in my world, to sitting to read the instructions.

I like to read good stories, juicy poems, or anything with layers of meaning to sift through. Instruction books seek to dispel any possibility of confusing layers, presenting clear information in a systematic way. And, they are chock full of more information that I could possibly absorb.

All of which makes it feel a little peculiar that I have such fondness for this week's scripture passage from Romans. Of all the lessons we've read lately, this is the most like an instruction book:

^{101112131415161718}Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with mutual affection; outdo one another in showing honor. Do not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. Rejoice in hope, be patient in suffering, persevere in prayer. Contribute to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers. Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. ...

Paul lists a set of commands--invitations to a different way of living.

But, I think, they're far better than an instruction book, and here's why:
They're not particularly systematic, they don't need to go in any particular order, you can begin anywhere, and they leave a lot about the specifics up to us, the readers. Paul's list helps us imagine a different reality--one that looks more like God's kingdom--and sets a standard for us to reach towards.

Plus, I love Paul's acknowledgment of our own limitations:
If it is possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.


Now and then, I hear people claim that the Bible is an instruction book for life. I thank God that it's so much more!

Rather than telling us what button to push or which dial to spin to give us the result we want, scripture invites us into a new way of being. A messy, complicated, often confusing and frustrating way of being in a relationship with a loving God, who also happens to be complicated, confusing and far beyond anything that could ever have an easy-reference index.

Not that the Bible doesn't offer help: it's just not as simple as turning the flash on. It's an inspiring process of figuring out what loving God and neighbor (including enemies) looks like when you're moving through the strange circumstance of your life.

picturing jesus, ourselves

As I read this week's gospel passage, from Matthew, a Ben Harper song found its way into my head. See, Jesus asks the disciples about who they see when they look at him. Simon Peter answers well: that he is the Messiah, the Son of God. Through God's help, he's able to see Jesus as he is. He gets a picture of what this guy he's been following really means.

I suspect we all have images of who Jesus is, and what he might look like in our own time. I have a long list of things he'd confront, people he'd help heal, and ways he'd share grace. (I even have a few ideas about things he might challenge us religious leaders on, but sometimes that gets a little scary, so I won't say too much...)

As the passage continues, Jesus also gives Simon Peter a new picture of his identity: that he's a rock on which the Jesus' church will be built.

Now, when I read this alongside the lesson from Paul's letter to the Romans, a question came to mind. I'm not sure it'll make sure in anyone's mind but mine, but, just in case you find in provocative, I share it here:
If Peter is the rock on which the church is built and which we are a part of giving form to, how do we keep resisting mere conformity to the world, and push for transformation? Rocks and transformation don't often fit together in my imagination. Either you're rock solid, or your poised for change, but how do you be both?

liking this text

This week's gospel passages are favorites of mine. (And, the passage from Romans is pretty darn fabulous, too, but that's for another time...)

I love Jesus' attempts to describe the kingdom of God. He reminds us that it's fresh, new, wild, and hard to explain.

"It's like a mustard seed," he says, reminding us how tenacious, wild and powerful in a grassroots-kinda-way it is. Like beautiful flowers growing up through sidewalk cracks. My friend, Stephanie, took this picture when she came across these daring flowers on a tour of the community gardens she's helped build in Omaha.
But before you get too stuck on this image, he continues:

"It's like some yeast," giving life to everything around it.

"It's like a find so spectacular you'd sell everything you had to buy it."

This week, when we gather at the Water's Edge for worship, it'll be our chance to help name and describe the kingdom. We give thanks for signs of it all around us, and for how what each of us has seen of it can help others understand more.

We also get to celebrate the baptism of two young sisters, which is pretty darn exciting. See you there.

guiding light

This summer, our worship is becoming a bit of a workshop, as we look at the "stuff" of our worship and put our hands to making it, together. This week, we're looking at scripture.

And, our Psalm is a great introduction.

I like the idea of God's word being a guide for us. Scripture collects stories and poetry and contains God's very word. From it, we're able to get light to see our way.

Trouble is, it's not as simple as a guide that tells us exactly what to do on any day and time (except in general terms, like that we should love God and neighbor in all that we do). It doesn't tell me, for example, whether or not I should be doing something more important than writing this blog entry.

So, read and pray with it on our own, and we get together as a church community to do the same. This week, we'll gather to read some great stories from the Bible. A story from Genesis of our ancestors (who, as it turns out, had as crazy of family stories as we do now), and a story that Jesus tells to try to tell us all something about God.

I take these stories seriously, believing that doing so requires that we do our best to really engage and seek understanding of the complex and mysterious truth they tell.

I hope you'll join me as we enter these texts, and help me uncover the life and meaning they're offering us today, as we continue their story. We do so with great hope.

See you Sunday!

a day off

I suppose I'm especially attentive to the idea of "rest" because I'm looking forward to tomorrow's holiday; I'm looking forward to spending the day poolside, with good food and friends.  

So, I'm drawn to the last verses in this week's reading from Matthew: 

“Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”

I'm struck by how oxymoronic (is that a proper word?) this sounds: take my yoke and find rest.  Pick up my work and be refreshed.

I think it's not by chance that Jesus uses the language of hard, physical labor in his invitation.  This is not a message for the elite, but for the laborers in our midst.  (Or, at least, its an invitation for all of us to become laborers.)

An invitation to take up a new way of living and working and naming what's important to us--a way that is, somehow, life giving even as it requires we give our whole selves.

What an incredible sort of work to be involved in: one that gives life. 

Perhaps that's one reason we gather in church--to help each other keep our lives focused on that work.

holy hospitality

The scripture passages we've been reading for the past few weeks, in Matthew, are intense. This week seems to be, well, like a tall drink of water. (Pun intended.) The disciples have just heard from Jesus about how they're to be sent out like lambs among wolves, to set families against themselves, to persecution and rejection and more. Then, he reminds them of his deep and knowing care for each one of them (really, for each of the hairs on each of their heads). Finally, he clarifies that the welcome others give to them will be welcome given to Jesus the Christ.

This is pretty intense: the disciples become Jesus' presence in the world. They are to be so filled with his Spirit that even a glass of water given to them will be like a glass of water given to Jesus.

They belong together, in their inmost being.

Pretty wild: as we're disciples, we get to be the physical body of Christ in the world.

And, then, we're reminded of how precious hospitality can be. How much we depend on it.

I read this text knowing that there are times when I'm able to feel like one of those disciples. And there are times when I feel like the one doing the welcoming. Or not, as the case may be.

Welcoming everyone who comes is a difficult thing; some people are hard to embrace. Yet, we're called to live into this beautiful and old tradition of providing hospitality to one another.

As we prepare for worship this week, I invite you to imagine who would be the most challenging person to welcome. And, begin praying that you could warmly welcome that person, and that they would be drawn to our church.

May it be so.

b team

It's a big Sunday this week: we're celebrating everyone who's graduated this year, giving thanks for volunteers in our church's tutoring programs, and honoring fathers day.

Plus, we'll celebrate resurrection grace (as always).

And, we get this fabulous scripture passage to share, from Matthew, about Jesus sending the disciples out in ministry.  Like a yearbook photo, he gives the list of names.  And one bit I love is that some of them get extra comments--about who their father is, or what they used to do, or what they're going to do.  Crazy thing is, the extra notes don't exactly give great honors to them.  In fact, they bring out the precariousness of the whole thing, reminding us that Matthew was a tax collector (and tax collectors then were a bad scene), and that Judas is going to betray Jesus. 

I'm always heartened to know that Jesus chose and empowered folks besides the shining stars.  He picks the B Team.

All of which is helping me remember and know that God doesn't send some other, got-it-all-together group of people to do the work of the church.  He sends us.

The church is just us. 

And, then, we have the power (through the Holy Spirit, of course) to make change in the church.  

If we're called to be the church, and we've got the ability to help "church" preach what matters most, what would you most want us to say in our words and actions?

drawing lines

As I re-read our Gospel text for this week, from Matthew, I started to feel some sympathy for the Pharisees. I know, I know. They're always the ones getting it most wrong. But, like them, I feel responsibility for drawing the lines about what Christian behavior should look like.

Trouble is, as we noticed last week, the most important stuff is impossible to see. And Christ is inviting us into a whole new way of living, full of mercy and emptied of rigid adherence to things that we think make us righteous. That's tricky to do. I mean: the last thing I want to say is that following Christ is easy. It should take sacrifice. There's a lot of stuff in this world that we need to be careful about resisting, and a lot of virtues we're called to in God that are less than convenient.

So, these Pharisees are worried about the kind of people Jesus is hanging out with. Sometimes, I worry about the kind of people I hang out with. There are reasons to surround ourselves with people whose lives seem to be good role models for our own.

I suspect Jesus was noticing that there's also a danger in this: that we'll surround ourselves with people who we think are good role models, as if we're all righteous, and isolate ourselves from others. This is dangerous for a bunch of reasons: it cheapens the power of God's grace when we assume that our religious communities are already for people who've gotten their act together (as if you need to be perfected before you're welcome in the church), and because it makes us blind to the sin we hold. Like thinking that we've got it all together, and that we're so much better than those "sinners" over there. And thinking that we know how to draw the lines of who is a righteous person and who is a sinner. Or what is on the list of sins that would qualify a person to be known by that sin.

So, recognizing that I've got some sympathy for the Pharisees, I wonder who Jesus was talking about when he said, "I came to call not the righteous but the sinners." Maybe all those bits that are like a Pharisee in me are just what he meant.