The Upside-Down Will to Embrace: how does Jesus deal with suffering and sin ~ Mark 1:40-45

 

In the Gospel of Mark, a man with leprosy does something that isn’t just shocking, it's straight up illegal. He breaks quarantine and crosses every single social and religious line to get to Jesus. All for one last chance to be whole again. It can be challenging to understand the sheer desperation here. You see, being a leper in that time wasn't just about being sick. It was a public sentence of solitary confinement. It’s basically a targeted Covid shutdown for the rest of your life.  Take a deep breath and imagine for a moment: never being able to hug your spouse or your kids, never allowed to sit down with your friends for a meal, or to feel any kind of human touch at all as all your loved ones go on with their lives. It's a deep and terrible double pain. Your body is falling apart and your soul is just starving for connection. And this isolation, it wasn’t people being mean but reflected the religious system and laws that aimed to keep people safe. 

 

These six rules right out of Leviticus 13:45-46 turned a human being into a walking biohazard sign. You were legally required to perform your own exclusion, to shout your own shame wherever you went. No wonder this guy asks the question that he does. He never questions if Jesus has the power to heal him. He's sure he can. The real question, the one that hangs in the air is about Jesus's willingness. “I know you have the power,” he says, “but do you have the heart?” Do you actually want to help someone like me, particularly since I broke the law to get here? And Jesus' response challenges every social, legal, and religious rule, and introduces a new kind of logic through an upside-down reordering of how love and healing work. Jesus doesn't shout a healing from a safe six-foot distance. He doesn’t stand back and say, “First you must follow the law.” No, first, he closes the gap. He leans in and reaches out his hand and touches the untouchable man. And only then, after that physical connection is made, does he speak the words, “I am willing, be clean.” 

 

Did you see it? Did you see the law-breaking happen? And I’m not talking about the guy with leprosy. According to the law in Leviticus, chapter 5, by touching an unclean person, Jesus broke the law and voluntarily took on that man's status. He became legally unclean himself. He didn't just fix the man's problem. He stepped right into it with him and in doing so heals him twice – both from his isolation as well as his illness. A theologian named Miroslav Volf has this great phrase for what Jesus does, “the will to embrace.” It's this idea that Jesus and his kingdom movement affirm a person's worth, their dignity, their basic humanity as being worthy of love without conditions. Jesus didn't see a disease walking towards him or a law-breaker. He saw a person in need, which of course forces us to look in the mirror, doesn't it? If that's Jesus's order, embrace first without conditions, cleanse second, how does that stack up with our own response? Because, let's be honest, we so often do it completely opposite. I mean, just imagine for a second, what if Jesus had seen the man coming and yelled, "Whoa, whoa, stay back. Follow the law! Get yourself cleaned up. Wait a minute! You stay there. Hold on! Wait for it! Be clean! Okay – now you can come and I’ll give you knuckles.” It sounds awful and yet is how we often operate. So, here's the contrast, side by side. Jesus's order starts with leaning in, an embrace, an unconditional “yes.” He sees a human being first. He leads with acceptance before healing. Our common order, often starts with a “Wait a minute!” It starts with a label or an issue: Democrat, Republican, gay, straight, immigrant, whatever. And it demands that people change before we'll offer them a seat at the table. And the main way we often dangerously justify this approach in the church is by using one of the more damaging phrases: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” We mean well, it sounds balanced, righteous and loving, but in practice, it almost always creates distance and moves away from the will to embrace of Jesus.

It becomes a rationale for standing apart from someone, not for standing with them. Let's just be real about what it feels like to be on the receiving end of that phrase. What people hear isn't love and embrace. They hear the condition, the qualification. They hear, “We’ll love you BUT…” or “We’ll touch you WHEN…” or most explicitly, “We don’t love you as you are. We love our idea of who you should be.” “Welcome to our game. We love you! But no, you can’t play. We’ve identified the truly noxious sins and sorry, we love you!, just stay over there.” So really, the message we end up sending is this: our love isn't for the actual person standing in front of us. It's for some future cleaned up version of them that we have in our heads. “Love the sinner. Hate the sin” prioritizes our holiness over their humanity, our rule following over there inclusion. So what's the alternative? If that phrase is broken, what do we replace it with? Well, perhaps a much more direct way forward is to listen to Jesus’ own commands directly: love your neighbor, love your enemy, love your brother and sister, love yourself. You know, in short, love everyone. No sorting, no labeling, no conditions, just love and embrace. Period. And friends, one of the most important loves in that list is learning to love and embrace ourselves, our own inner leper. If we’re going to truly exercise the will to embrace we must be like Jesus to ourselves, attending to our own inner suffering, listening to it, and cradling it. And I imagine that you never answer to the word “sinner” for that is not all that you are and not your name. If we don’t attend to our own suffering and allow Jesus to transform it we will project that suffering on everyone else. If we cannot believe that we are embraceable we won’t embrace anyone else.

Okay. Okay. But what about that second part – the sin part? Are we just supposed to ignore stuff that's harmful and hurtful? Not at all. But maybe we need to reframe our whole posture toward it. When I’m fighting with my wife and I’m upset, she often reminds me of how my raised voice makes it hard to lean in and hurts our ability to have a conversation and express our love amidst disagreement. She’ll often gently ask me, “Can you say that a little softer?” Hatred doesn’t allow for softness and embrace. It doesn’t create a context for listening to someone and attending to their suffering. Hating sin, even if it’s at a person’s actions, is like trying to have a conversation with a radio that’s too loud. It only leads to shouting and misunderstanding which fuels more blame and more isolation. We must find a way to turn the volume down and say it softer, to address the harm without all the anger and the judgment. And here's the key shift: God doesn't hate sin in some abstract cosmic way. God hates sin because it hurts real people that God loves. The focus moves from judging the action to having compassion for the person being harmed by it. Tell me if you can hear a difference: God hates divorce. God loves divorced people. We hate addiction. We love addicts. We hate poverty. We seek to understand and help those who struggle with poverty. We love those who are poor.

The response to people struggling with sin, isolated by sin, harmed by sin, isn’t to hate sin but to listen to people, to forgive people, to embrace people. It isn’t to separate from sin but to lean into people with touchable compassion. When Jesus confronts sin and suffering he does so through embrace, forgiveness, and solidarity. He does so through the cross – suffering love and HE is the one who suffers not through some separate holiness but by fully identifying in love with all those who sin (2 Cor. 5:21). Think about it. Jesus didn't stand there on the street corner yelling about how much he hated leprosy. He leaned in and he loved the leper. And the story ends with this powerful ironic, upside-down twist. After the man is healed and gets to go back into society, Jesus can no longer enter towns openly. Mark tells us in 1:45, he's the one who has to stay outside in “lonely places.” 

 

In a very real sense, he switches places with the outcast. And that leaves us with a really challenging question. What if Jesus’ will to embrace isn't just a nice cozy sentiment? What if it actually costs us something? What if standing with people forced out on the margins means we might just end up on the margins with them – unclean ourselves with questionable reputations. Let me say it softer. What if it means transgressing the law and standing with the immigrant with the will to embrace in the lonely places? What if it means breaking the rules and standing with the trans-kid with the will to embrace in the lonely places? What if it means battling partisanship and standing with someone from the “other” political party with the will to embrace in the lonely places? What if it means venturing out into the lonely places in order to follow Jesus?  Are we willing to pay that price? Are we courageous enough to be like Jesus – to embrace whomever is in front of us and say, “I am willing”? Amen.

A Stomach-Churning Truth about God's Justice ~ Matthew 20:1-16

 

Today we're exploring a story that honestly makes me feel a little queasy. This is not your simple feel-good moral lesson. Nope. This is about an idea so radical it pretty much flips the table on our basic instincts about what's just and fair. And that's the whole point. Jesus's kingdom parables aren't these sweet little bedtime stories. They are meant to disrupt us, to shake things up. Think of it like one of those carnival rides that just spins you and turns your stomach upside down. It can be a thrill, but you often walk away with spiritual-motion-sickness. Jesus’ stories force us to rethink basic ideas about who God is and who we are and dismantle our usual ideas about what God does.

Okay, let's set the scene first. The story starts simple enough. “The kingdom of God is like,” Jesus says, a landowner who needs workers for his vineyard. He goes out at dawn, hires some guys, and agrees to pay them a denarius, which was the standard daily wage -enough to feed a family. But that's just the beginning. Because he keeps going back to the marketplace. He goes back at 9:00 a.m., noon, 3:00 p.m., and even at 5:00 p.m., basically an hour before sunset, and hires them all.

And here comes the punch line, the bit that really shakes things up. Evening comes, and he pays them all, starting with the 5:00 p.m. crew. And they get the full denarius, a whole day's wage, the same as the 6:00 am workers, which just sounds wrong. You feel it, don't you? That little knot in your stomach, that little voice saying, “Hey, that’s not fair.” Well, guess what? You're not wrong to feel that. In fact, that feeling is kind of the point.

So, let's unpack Jesus’ first stomach-churning shock: “God and grace ain't fair.” That phrase itself clashes with how we think the world should work. We are so attached to merit. We believe effort should lead to outcome: put in the work, get the reward, work harder, get more. It gives us a sense of control, predictability, and that hard work matters. We like to think that everything we get, we get because we earned it. And Jesus doesn’t just flip this logic. He dismantles it with this uncomfortable truth: In God's kingdom, the deciding factor isn’t merit but mercy.

But hang on, perhaps you want to push back a little on the story itself. I mean, if it's all about unearned generosity, why did Jesus even include that detail about the contract with the 6 a.m. workers at all? They agreed to a denarius. Doesn't that initial agreement kind of complicate things? Here’s how I see it.

Jesus is revealing our standard for human justice. The landowner is obligated legally, morally, to pay those first workers what he promised and he keeps his word. He fulfills the contract and pays them for their work. They got exactly what they were promised and yet it isn’t fair. And we can feel their sense of betrayal: “We bore the burden of the work and the heat of the day,” they complain. We identify with them and put ourselves in their dusty sandals, which demonstrates how deep our attachment to this idea of fairness runs and the anger we feel is the intended response. “Why should the 5:00 p.m. guy, who barely put up a sweat, get the same pay? It feels unjust.”

That feeling is what the story wants to reveal and disrupt. It shows that the kingdom runs on the landowner's boundless generosity and grace, not on some strict accounting of what we think we deserve which brings us to another stomach-churning idea: If fairness is getting what we deserve, God’s justice is receiving what we need. When the landowner hires the later workers, he doesn’t offer them a contract, but promises to pay them whatever is “right” or “just.” That Greek word is δίκαιον [dikaion]. It's the same word used all over the New Testament for righteousness and justice. So he's not promising standard market fairness. He's promising to be just. And this is where fairness and justice really split.

Human fairness says you get what you deserve. It's proportional based on effort, input, and achievement. Makes sense. And it’s so easy to imagine that God is the same. But, according to Jesus, God’s justice is not appropriately getting what you deserve but graciously getting what you need. Think about that denarius. For the 6 a.m. worker, sure, it's their earned wage. But for the 5:00 p.m. worker, the one standing idle all day, desperate for any work, maybe with kids to feed and rent due, that denarius isn't just pay, it's survival. It meets a fundamental need. The 6 a.m. workers get their full agreed upon pay. The latecomers receive way more than they technically earned or deserved but no one is being cheated. And this radical overflow, this scandalous generosity, is what the kingdom is like.  It’s a system where the supply, God's generosity, God's mercy, never runs out. So, there's no need to get anxious. There’s enough for everyone.

And this sense of God’s justice connects really well to a contemporary discussion about two important words we often mix up: equality and equity.

Equality means treating everyone exactly the same: same input, same treatment regardless of the situation.  It's blind to circumstance. But equity means giving everyone what they need to reach a similar outcome. The landowner isn't being equal in terms of pay per hour. But he is being profoundly equitable by meeting the need for a day's wage for everyone who showed up willing to work.

Think about it this way.  Imagine three people trying to watch a ball game over a big fence: a tall person, an average person, and a small child. If you practice equality, you give all three of them the exact same size box to stand on. Well, the tall person sees great. The average person maybe just peaks over, and the small child still can't see a thing - same treatment, unequal result.

But equity recognizes the different starting points, the different needs. So, you give the child maybe two boxes, the average person one box and the tall person doesn't need one. So everyone can see the game equally. That's the picture of kingdom generosity that the parable paints. It's about meeting needs so everyone can participate, can see the game.

And that links back to what the 5:00 p.m. workers actually say. Jesus doesn't say they’re lazy or unwilling to work. When the landowner asks, “Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?” They just say, “Because no one hired us,” which implies systemic issues or lack of opportunity, not necessarily personal failing. It suggests that a merit system isn’t enough to heal the world.

The story kind of holds up a mirror and asks, “Which worker are you?” Do you imagine you are you the 6 a.m. early bird maybe feeling resentful about God's generosity because you prefer a system where you earn your keep and things are transactional and fair? Or are you a latecomer humbled by getting mercy you know you didn't earn, acutely aware of your own need and just grateful to be included. And what happens to your understanding if that’s who you truly are – a 5 pm worker? It’s an upside-down invitation to stop keeping score, stop comparing, stop measuring, stop always assuming you're the 6 a.m. worker. Because let's be honest, some days we are the early risers putting in the long hours but other days, maybe more than we care to admit, we're the latecomers  - showing up at the last minute, just hoping for a break. And the miracle is that God meets us both - same coin, same claim, infinite love and unlimited mercy.  

Okay, let's pivot to one last character. One that's easy to overlook - the householder. The Greek word is oikodespotes. It’s a compound word formed by: oikos, meaning “house” and despotes, which means “master.” This word is only found in the Gospels and appears to be a word that Jesus liked to use. Now, I imagine that if I asked the question: “Who is the ‘master of the house’?” You would reply, “That’s easy. It’s God.” And that’s right, of course. But what if I told you that Jesus uses oikodespotes to describe his followers, as well, like in Matthew 13 and Matthew 24. And that unlocks the ultimate invitation, the real core of the application piece, which is this: The goal isn't just to experience the upside-mercy of the kingdom. It's to learn to become like God ourselves and model that same kind of radical, need-based generosity in our own lives, our own homes, our own workplaces, our own communities.

It means actively paying attention - looking around the marketplace of our world to see who is still waiting at 5:00 p.m., who's being overlooked, asking who needs what, not just who worked hardest. It’s about taking some responsibility for creating abundance and equity within your own vineyard, whatever that looks like, which means moving beyond personal effort and looking at the bigger picture of a generous God.

So, friends —
Let grace make you dizzy.
Let it unsettle your sense of fairness.
And let it make you generous and just — in spirit, in mercy, in love.

Because in the end, the kingdom of God isn’t about who worked the hardest — it’s about who’s willing to rejoice that everyone got paid. Amen.

Mary, Martha, and Kingdom Work ~ Luke 10:38-42 (An Upside-Down Meditation)

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“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a certain village, where a woman named Martha welcomed him into her home.”

We think we know this story — and that’s what makes it dangerous. So pay careful attention and let it upside down your life. Jesus and his disciples arrive — thirteen tired, hungry travelers — and Martha opens her home to them. What an amazing gift! Hospitality has always been a deeply spiritual act. In the Bible, it often brings people face-to-face with the divine — with angels, prophets, and even strangers who turn out to be God. Imagine the scene for a moment: the chaos of a surprise visit, the sounds of hungry, boisterous men, the pressure to prepare food, to make a space feel welcome and to meet every need. What an act of grace — and what a weight to carry.

🕊 Meditative Question:
Close your eyes and step into the story.
Where are you? Are you bustling in the kitchen beside Martha, sitting quietly at the feet of Jesus like Mary, or hungrily arguing at the table with the disciples? What stirs within you as you take that place — the joy of giving, the weariness of expectation, the longing to be seen, the desire to rest? Why do you think you chose that place?

2 minute silence

Song: Servant Song / By Our Love

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“She had a sister named Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to what he was saying.”

The men settle into the main room — the public room — the space for men.
You see in that world, spaces were divided: men in one space, women in another. But Mary does something unexpected. She crosses an invisible and physical boundary and sits down at Jesus’ feet to listen.

That’s not just a posture of devotion. That’s the posture of a disciple. In first-century language, “to sit at someone’s feet” meant to study under them — to be in training. It’s the same phrase Paul uses when he says, “I was brought up at the feet of Gamaliel.” So Mary isn’t just listening — she’s learning – she’s joining – she’s making the world upside down. She’s courageously stepping into a space no woman was supposed to enter.  She’s becoming what the culture said she could never be — a teacher, a leader, a voice for the kingdom. And Jesus welcomes her there.

In Mary, the promise of Galatians 3:28 was present: “There is no longer male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus.”
This is Jesus’ upside-down kingdom where learning is not limited by gender, status, or expectation — it’s open to all who draw near to him.

🕊 Meditative Question:
Who in your world is a “Mary” (maybe, it’s you). Someone longing to learn, to listen, to belong — yet who finds themself held back by barriers or unspoken rules? Can you imagine how it feels to stand at the edge, waiting for an invitation to draw near? How might you help open the space for them to be fully welcomed so that they fully belong? If you are a Mary, what is that invisible boundary that seeks to keep you from following Jesus?

2 minute silence

Song: Make Room

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“But Martha was distracted by her many tasks; so she came to him and asked, ‘Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to do all the work by myself? Tell her then to help me.’”

It’s easy to judge Martha, but think about it — she probably wanted to sit too.
She just couldn’t. Because in that world, and often in ours, the “hospitality work” always seems to fall on the same female shoulders.

The text says Martha was “distracted,” but the word really means “pulled away” or “pulled apart.” She’s pulled from presence by pressure. She’s doing what needs to be done — the work of care, the work of service — and yet she feels the sting of being alone in it, the burden of being required to do it. Many of us know that feeling. We start with love and end up with exhaustion. We serve faithfully but wonder if anyone notices, or if it even matters. Martha’s frustration isn’t faithlessness — it’s fatigue. She’s pulled away from Jesus by the weight of a gendered expectation and pulled apart by work that is too heavy to bear. Because someone had to make the meal, right? Someone had to serve.

🕊 Meditative Question:
When do you feel your yourself pulled away from Jesus or pulled apart from yourself — not by indifference, but by the weight of too much? What burdens or expectations press upon you, whispering that you must do more, be more, prove more? What would you like to set down so that you too might sit at Jesus’ feet?

2 minute silence

Song: Shattered Things

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“But the Lord answered her, ‘Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things; there is need of only one thing. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.’”

Notice how Jesus says her name — twice. “Martha, Martha.” It’s not a rebuke; it’s an embrace. He sees her. He sees the weight she carries and invites her to set it down. And in that moment, something shifts. Jesus redefines what matters most — not the endless doing, but being present, listening, and resting in him. And maybe, if we listen closely, we can almost hear the rest of the story —
“Judas, go buy the food.”

“Peter, go make dinner.”
“James and John, clean the house.
Because if women are to be free to sit at Jesus’ feet, someone else has to get up and serve. Friends, that’s the gospel of the upside-down kingdom. There is no men’s work or women’s work. There is only kingdom work. And that work is shared.

Brothers, if we want women — our sisters, our mothers, our daughters — to rise into their callings, then we must not only make space — we must take up the work that keeps them from freedom – burdens and boundaries that pull them away or pulls them apart. Because Jesus’ invitation is not just for women to join men’s spaces — it’s for everyone to share the labor of love, together. This is the kingdom that shatters old hierarchies and upside downs our relationships.
It’s not about who serves and who sits — it’s about who listens to Jesus and lives his love.

🕊 Meditative Question:
Where might God be calling you to take a new step — perhaps to serve so another can rest, or to rest so another may serve?

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Closing Reflection

Jesus’ invitation to Mary and Martha is an invitation to us all:
To stop long enough to listen.
To serve without being consumed.
To share the load so that everyone can find a place at his feet.

In his upside-down kingdom, no one is left in the kitchen while others learn,
and no one sits while others bear the burden alone. Men and women are called to the same table — to listen, to serve, to love, and to live the freedom of Christ  - better together.