Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 13: Black/Darkness

October 22, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Moses approached the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:21 NLT)

Symbols carry memory and meaning far beyond words. The Church has always leaned on them—sometimes hidden in plain sight, sometimes dismissed or distorted. Yet the most powerful symbols are those that subvert the world’s expectations and draw us back to the radical heart of the Gospel. In this series, we’ll look closer at the sacred signs that shock, unsettle, and ultimately call us deeper into Christ.

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Black / Darkness” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 13: Black / Darkness. From the first page of Scripture, darkness gets a bad reputation. We read that God speaks light into being—and assume darkness was evil. But Genesis doesn’t say that. It says darkness covered the deep, and God called light into existence. Darkness came first, not as sin or failure, but as the fertile soil of creation. The cosmos was conceived in shadow. Before there was form or breath or blessing, there was black. The light was not God’s escape from the dark—it was God’s revelation through it.

Still, we’ve long feared what we can’t see. We’ve turned darkness into a synonym for sin, ignorance, and danger. “Light equals good,” we were told; “dark equals bad.” That language shaped centuries of theology—and violence. Women were accused of signing Satan’s “Black Book,” while the Bible condemning them was bound in black leather.

Colonizers called Africa the “Dark Continent,” as if God had never walked its soil. Even our stories and art absorbed the bias: bad guys in black hats, good guys in white hats; villains cloaked in shadow, heroes clothed in radiance. In Renaissance paintings, Jews were rendered in dusky tones, caricatured with shadowed faces and exaggerated noses/features and shadowed, while Christians were depicted as fair, radiant, and pure. Skin, soil, and soul alike were graded on a false scale of brightness. Racism, misogyny, and empire baptized metaphor as truth—and the Body of Christ learned to fear its own shadow.

Our suspicion of darkness didn’t stop at color. It crept into the mind. We label people with depression or anxiety as “in the dark,” as though despair is a sin instead of a symptom. We tell them to “look on the bright side,” when Scripture tells us even the darkness is light to God. We shame those whose minds move through midnight, when in truth, many prophets did too. Elijah begged to die beneath a broom tree; Jeremiah cursed the day of his birth; Jesus sweated blood under a moonless sky. To call these experiences “unholy” is to forget how holy shadows can be.

We’ve also turned on artists who dwell in shadow—the ones who name what others hide. Goth culture, heavy music, black clothing, and the haunting beauty of lament get written off as “darkness” and, consquently evil, as if Christ doesn’t speak fluent minor key. Yet those who linger there often see what polite piety refuses: the ache beneath our veneers, the longing in our loss. When the Church fears them, it only betrays its fear of truth. The Gospel was never meant to be sanitized—it was meant to shine in the dark.

Science and Scripture tell the same story: apart from God, all is night. The cosmos is mostly black—endless silence between small burning stars. Light is the rare thing; darkness is the default. Earth itself drifts through that night eternal, kept alive only because one star still burns. So it is with us. Without the Son, our souls freeze in their own shadow. But when Christ enters the darkness, we see what light really is.

Darkness, then, is both tomb and womb. It buries, but it also births. The tomb of Jesus was no less dark than the womb of Mary—yet both held the miracle of life. Faith does not demand we flee the dark; it invites us to trust God there. “Children of light” are not people who refuse to touch the night—they are those who enter it carrying flame. We are called into the world’s pain, prejudice, and mystery, to bear witness that God is not absent in the shadowed places. God is already there, waiting to be seen.

We are not meant to fear or curse the dark, but to step into it—bringing warmth, justice, compassion, and truth. The task is not to make the world brighter by our own brilliance, but to reflect the One whose light no darkness can overcome.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The dark mind, the dark room, the dark season—these are not proofs of God’s absence but invitations to find God’s hidden fire there.

PRAYER
Light of the world, enter our darkness. Teach us not to fear what we do not understand. Expose the lies that have shamed your shadowed children. Kindle mercy where fear once burned, and help us carry your light with humility into every night we meet. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 12: Fire

October 19, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Exodus 3:1-6

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“For our God is a devouring fire.” (Hebrews 12:29 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Fire” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 12: Fire. Fire has always drawn us close and frightened us away. It gives warmth and light but devours whatever it touches. From the beginning, fire meant awe. It danced through the wilderness as a pillar of flame. It blazed in the bush that burned but was not consumed. It fell from heaven at Elijah’s prayer and flared again at Pentecost in tongues of light. When Scripture speaks of fire, it’s not talking about destruction—it’s talking about presence. God’s fire refines. It burns away falsehood but never life.

But humanity has always been quick to claim the flames for itself. If God’s fire reveals truth, ours often hides cruelty. The same Church that sang “Come, Holy Spirit” once lit pyres in God’s name. Crusaders burned villages, inquisitors burned heretics, colonizers burned cultures. Even now, Christians still burn bridges and books, ideas and identities. We’ve mistaken zeal for love, wrath for holiness, and torches for testimony. The world smells the smoke and wonders why we call it worship.

We have baptized arson. We’ve turned the language of fire into slogans for vengeance and purity, using the flames of judgment to scorch those who think, love, or live differently. When we use “holy fire” to destroy, we mirror Cain, not Christ. We forget that the fire of God’s presence is the same fire that stood between enslaved Israelites and their pursuers, the same light that filled a frightened upper room with courage. Divine fire liberates—it doesn’t lynch.

Scripture’s fire is not that kind of fire. When Moses met God in the desert, the flames blazed yet left the bush whole. When the Spirit came at Pentecost, the disciples were set alight but not destroyed. That’s the pattern of divine fire: it consumes what poisons but preserves what’s pure. It doesn’t burn to punish; it burns to reveal. It’s the fire of covenant, of purification, of presence.

Human flames are never so merciful. Nebuchadnezzar built a furnace to destroy faith, but the fire bowed before the fourth figure who walked among the exiles untouched. Elijah mocked Baal’s prophets as they begged for their god to answer with fire, but only the Lord’s flame fell—and it didn’t just consume the offering, it consumed the stones, the water, and the pride of the people who’d forgotten who they were. Again and again, the fires we build to destroy are conquered by the fire that saves.

“Our God is a devouring fire,” the writer of Hebrews says—but devouring only what does not belong to love.

There is also the fire we fear to face—the one that burns within. The anger, grief, and longing that threaten to undo us are not always enemies. Sometimes they are the sparks of transformation, begging to be tended. God’s refining flame is not distant; it works in the marrow of our being. It burns away self-deception and pride, purges our need to control, and leaves behind only what can survive in love’s heat. The saints called it purgation; we might just call it growing up. Either way, it’s holy fire.

We’ve all felt both sides of the flame. There’s the heat that sanctifies, and the heat that scorches. The Church must ask which one it carries. Do our words kindle life or ash? Do our hearts burn with compassion or contempt? Because every time we ignite hatred and call it holy, we commit arson against grace.

The subversive truth is that God’s fire cannot be managed or weaponized. It isn’t ours to control. It is the fire of the bush that refuses to go out, the fire that melts our golden calves, the fire that burns in the eyes of prophets and poets who refuse to let the world grow cold. To stand near that flame is dangerous—but not because it destroys. It’s dangerous because it changes us. It burns away the false self until only love remains.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The only fire God blesses is the kind that burns without destroying.

PRAYER
Consuming Fire, burn within us, not against us. Kindle what is holy and burn away what is cruel. Melt our hardness into compassion, our fear into courage, our pride into light. Make us flames that warm rather than wound and let your holy fire be known again in love. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 11: The Serpent

October 15, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Genesis 3:1–7

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“And as Moses lifted up the bronze snake on a pole in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up.” (John 3:14 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Serpent” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 11: The Serpent. The serpent has always slithered uneasily through our faith. For most Christians, it’s the villain of Eden—the voice of deception, the cause of the fall, the hiss of sin itself. But in the story of Genesis, the serpent is never called Satan, never named the devil, never cast out of heaven. The text simply says, “Now the serpent was more crafty than any other wild animal the Lord God had made.” Crafty, not cursed. Created, not fallen. It’s one of the creatures of the field—clever, observant, and alive. Whatever power it has comes not from rebellion against God, but from within the goodness of creation itself.

Centuries later, when Jewish and Christian writers began wrestling with evil and injustice, they started to read the serpent through apocalyptic eyes. Books like 1 Enoch and Wisdom of Solomon introduced fallen angels and cosmic adversaries. By the time Revelation was written, the serpent had been recast as “that ancient dragon…the devil, or Satan, who deceives the whole world.” The serpent of the garden became the scapegoat for everything broken. It made emotional sense—a tidy way to personify evil—but it flattened a complex story into a single villain.

Because in the beginning, the serpent wasn’t promising hellfire. It was offering knowledge. “Your eyes will be opened,” it said. Wisdom, not worship. That’s what frightened us most. The Church inherited that fear and learned to demonize the serpent, the body, the woman, and wisdom itself. Eve became the scapegoat for curiosity, and curiosity became suspect. When faith fears questions, it loses its soul.

And yet, in one of Scripture’s strangest reversals, God later commands Moses to make a serpent—out of bronze, no less—and lift it high on a pole. Those bitten by venom look up and live. The image of death becomes the sign of healing. Centuries after that, Jesus will recall the moment and say, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” What once represented sin and curse becomes the emblem of salvation. The serpent turns out to be a Christ-shaped symbol all along.

Somewhere along the way, empire took that power and warped it again. Medieval art cast serpents as devils and dragons, symbols of paganism, women, and Indigenous wisdom—all things empire wanted to conquer. But Scripture never said the serpent was evil; it said we were sinful. We listened to a serpent instead of God. We sought after knowledge and then feared what we learned. We sought knowledge to control and lost control to knowledge.

Today, the serpent still makes us uneasy. It winds through medicine’s symbol of healing, through myths of rebirth, through stories of knowledge and temptation. It lives in the tension between danger and discovery, fear and faith. Maybe that’s why we need it. Because real transformation always feels a little dangerous.

In the wilderness, God didn’t remove the serpents. God redeemed the symbol. The cross, like the serpent, became the means of our healing. And maybe that’s the Gospel’s subversive heart: we don’t conquer evil by destroying what frightens us; we find redemption by facing it. The serpent still whispers—not deceit, but discernment. Can we listen this time?

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Faith doesn’t fear what slithers in the garden. It learns what God might still redeem there.

PRAYER
Holy One, you made every creature that creeps and crawls. Teach us to see wisdom where we once saw threat, and healing where we once saw harm. Help us face the serpents within and around us, trusting you to turn what wounds into what saves. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 10: The Skull

October 10, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Mark 15:22–39

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Better to spend your time at funerals than at parties. After all, everyone dies—so the living should take this to heart.” (Ecclesiastes 7:2 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Skull” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 10: The Skull. October is full of skulls—on shelves, shirts, and front lawns. Some wear them as rebellion; others treat them as decoration. But long before they became Halloween props, the Church used the skull as a reminder: memento mori—“remember you will die.” For centuries, believers looked at the skull not to glorify death but to confront denial. Yet there’s another truth here. Death may be the great leveller, but it’s also the great thief—robbing the world of breath, joy, and love. And yet, in Christ, even that thief meets its match.

I write poetry, and much of it is dark—haunted by death, decay, and the ache of being human. Some have judged that darkness as morbid, even un-Christian. But I’ve always believed art should speak the truth we’re taught to avoid. We treat death like a taboo, pretending it’s impolite to mention or too heavy to hold—as if silence could protect us from it. But denying death doesn’t sanctify life; it cheapens it. Faith, like poetry, must face what’s real if it’s to mean anything at all.

Golgotha—“the place of the skull”—stood just outside Jerusalem’s walls, a place of spectacle and shame. Rome staged executions there to remind everyone who ruled life and death. The hill itself became a billboard for fear. But in God’s strange reversal, that place of horror became the stage of salvation. The skull, symbol of mortality and defeat, became the site where Death itself was unmasked. What empire used for terror, God turned into triumph.

Early Christians didn’t shy away from this imagery. In the catacombs, they carved skulls and bones beneath the sign of the cross—art that confessed resurrection in the midst of decay. The skull became both confession and comfort: we die, yes, but Christ has been here first.

Memento mori was never meant to breed despair but to strip illusion. Power, wealth, fame—all return to dust. To remember death is to remember our limits, to live humbly before the God who alone gives breath. But Christ goes further: He doesn’t just remind us of death; He redeems it. The cross planted on the skull of Golgotha declares that the grave has lost its grip.

Death once ruled as thief and tyrant—robbing equally, yes, but still robbing. Jesus entered its house, broke its locks, and walked out carrying life itself. Death is no longer the end. It’s the beginning of something eternally beautiful.

We live in a culture that denies death. We hide it in hospitals, numb it with distraction, and disguise it with filters and slogans of “forever young.” But memento mori still whispers truth: you will die—and because of Christ, you will live again.

To remember death is not to surrender to fear but to wake up to grace. Every breath is borrowed; every heartbeat is holy. The skull that once marked loss now preaches resurrection: the grave has been plundered, and love has the last word.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
Death may be the great thief, but Christ has broken its hold and turned the tomb into a doorway of glory.

PRAYER
God of life and victory, remind me that death does not define me—you do. Teach me to live awake to every sacred breath, unafraid of the shadows, certain of the dawn. Through Christ who conquered the grave, I give you thanks. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 9: The Star of David

October 8, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Genesis 32:22–30

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“I am the Lord, and I do not change. That is why you descendants of Jacob are not already destroyed.” (Malachi 3:6 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Star of David” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 9: The Star of David. It’s one of the most recognized shapes on earth—two triangles interlocked into a single star. To many it names a people, a faith, a nation. Yet this six-pointed figure carries a story far older and more complex than flags or politics.

Long before anyone called it the Star of David, geometric versions of it appeared in the ancient Near East and Mediterranean world—on seals, mosaics, and pottery—signs of symmetry, of heaven and earth in dialogue. In those early cultures, creation was not described through four “classical” elements the way Greek philosophers later would, but through layers of cosmos: heavens above, waters below, the fertile earth between. When the Hellenistic world eventually met Hebrew imagination, the upward triangle came to stand for fire rising toward heaven, the downward for water descending to nourish the world. Their union pictured wholeness—the marriage of divine transcendence and divine nearness.

By the Middle Ages, Jewish artists and scholars had begun calling it the Shield or Seal of David, linking it to Solomon’s legendary ring and to God’s protection. Mystics saw in its mirrored triangles the movement of divine life itself: mercy and justice, male and female, creation and redemption. Later, teachers of Kabbalah—a stream of Jewish mysticism that searched the Hebrew Scriptures for the hidden patterns of God’s presence—used the star to reflect that sacred balance. For them, it wasn’t a charm for control, but a diagram of relationship: the world below echoing the world above, both held in divine unity.

In the centuries that followed, the star continued to travel. During the Renaissance and the rise of esoteric study in Europe, Christian alchemists and philosophers borrowed it as a bridge between science and spirit. Secret societies and mystical orders, from the Rosicrucians to the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, adopted it as a way of visualizing the harmony between the material and the divine. Each tradition layered its own meaning upon it—some noble, some misguided—but the geometry of faith remained. The two triangles still spoke of heaven and earth meeting, of divine and human co-laboring in the act of creation.

For the Jewish people, the star’s meaning deepened through the centuries. It appeared on synagogues and manuscripts, a sign of belonging and blessing. Yet in the twentieth century, this same symbol was twisted into something unspeakable. The Nazis forced Jews to wear the yellow Star of David as a mark of shame and isolation. What had long represented covenant was turned into a curse.

Yet even when the Nazis turned that same shape into a badge of shame, its meaning refused to die. When it later appeared on the flag of Israel, it stood as testimony: a people refusing to let hatred erase them. But that return was not without cost. The land was already home to others—Palestinians, both Muslim and Christian, and Jewish families who had lived there for generations. In the struggle for safety came displacement, division, war, and death. The star that once marked covenant now also bears the ache of exile and loss. It reminds us that divine promises are never meant to justify human harm, and that God’s heart holds the tears of all who suffer.

Still, the star’s meaning remains contested. In some corners of Christianity, it has been co-opted again—not out of hatred, but out of hubris. Some use it to press political or prophetic agendas, wielding it as a tool to hasten apocalypse or justify allegiance to empire. But the star is not a weapon. It is a witness. Its very shape tells us that creation’s balance is not ours to manipulate; it is God’s to maintain. When faith reaches for control, it tips the scales toward chaos.

The true subversion of the Star of David is not found in its mystique or in its misuse—it’s found in what it remembers. This is the symbol of a people who have wrestled with God and survived, who have clung to promise through centuries of exile and return. It tells the story of a covenant that outlasts kings and crusades. For Christians, it stands as a humbling reminder that we are grafted into a story not our own. The Star of David belongs first to those who bore the burden of God’s faithfulness long before we spoke the name of Christ.

To look upon this star with reverence is to remember that divine strength is found in struggle, not supremacy. Fire and water, heaven and earth—each moves toward the other until creation is made whole again. The same God who called Jacob to wrestle calls the Church to relent—to stop grasping at power and start bearing witness to grace.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God’s covenant isn’t a competition—it’s an invitation to wrestle, to remember, and to be made whole.

PRAYER
Faithful God, who binds heaven and earth together in mercy, thank You for the symbol that still shines through centuries of struggle. Teach us to honor its meaning, to respect its people, and to seek balance in our own hearts. May every sign of faith we bear point not to conquest but to covenant. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series, Special Devotion

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Special Devotion: Collars, Robes, and Stoles

October 7, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Matthew 23:1–12

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience.” (Colossians 3:12 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL·E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Collar, the Robe, and the Stole” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Special Edition: Collars, Robes, and Stoles. The collar, the robe, and the stole. In some churches, these garments can feel like litmus tests. Robe up, collar up, stole up—or even dress up—because that’s how it’s always been done. For many, they hold deep reverence, reminders of a time when sanctuaries were full and traditions were shared across generations. There’s nothing wrong with that nostalgia; it’s part of our story. But reverence can quietly turn to rigidity. When clothing becomes a credential for faithfulness, we risk mistaking habit for holiness.

The clerical collar began as a symbol of service—a visible sign that the one who wore it was yoked to Christ and bound to serve. It was never meant as a badge of rank. Over time, though, collars began to carry other meanings: authority, professionalism, even fear. For some, the collar has come to represent not safety but suspicion. The sins of the church have stained the fabric; the collar that once marked servanthood has too often been used to hide control. Yet its truest meaning remains: a quiet reminder that ministry is not ownership but obedience, not privilege but burden.

The robe began as a simple covering—worn by scholars and clergy alike to erase distinction. It was meant to conceal individuality, to say, “Before God, we are all the same.” Over time, robes became ornate, hierarchical, sometimes theatrical. They came to separate rather than unite. Still, the robe can remind us that when we stand before God, titles and talents fade. The robe isn’t meant to elevate the wearer but to lower the ego. It’s not costume—it’s supposed to be camouflage.

The stole traces back to the towel a servant would drape over their arm. Early Christians linked it to Jesus’ act of washing his disciples’ feet. It symbolized the weight of ministry—the responsibility to serve, to stoop, to bear one another’s burdens. In time, it also came to represent the yoke of Christ, reminding the one who wears it that ministry is never self-driven but shared with the Savior who said, “My yoke is easy, and my burden is light.” Over the centuries, the stole has become ornate and color-coded, a mark of office or season. But the truest stole is still the towel of service, the fabric of humility. If we wear it rightly, it should remind us that authority in Christ is always exercised from our knees—and that all Christians, not just clergy, are called to carry the same towel and yoke of humble service.

We remember the days when these symbols were everywhere—collars in the community, robes in every chancel, stoles changing colors with the calendar. But those years were not as innocent as we remember. Behind the beauty of tradition, harm sometimes hid in plain sight. Titles and vestments that once promised safety were sometimes used to silence, to cover, to control. That’s a hard truth to name, but it must be named if the Church is to heal and be a healing presence in the world.

These garments can still mean something sacred, but only if they’re worn with repentance and transparency. And as Ecclesiastes 3 says, there is a time and season for everything. If anything might stand as a stumbling block between God and another person, it should not be done just for tradition’s sake.

For some these are signs of the sacred—for others, signs of sin and evil committed in the name of God. That is why I choose to robe during Communion Sundays, high holy days, and special occasions—and remain more “me” and approachable the rest of the time. There is no one right way, but that has become my practice.

The question isn’t whether we wear them. The question is whether we live what they mean. The collar, the robe, and the stole can still witness to humility and grace—but only when they point beyond the wearer to Christ. When they become ends in themselves, they’re idols. When they become tools for service, they’re sacraments. Maybe the most subversive act of all is to remember that the truest vestment isn’t on our shoulders—it’s in our spirit. Compassion. Kindness. Humility. Gentleness. Patience. These are the garments the world still needs to see.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
[Enter Thought of the Day]

PRAYER
Christ our Servant, strip us of vanity and clothe us in truth. Whether we robe or not, let our lives reflect your humility. Make every symbol we wear a sign of grace, not power. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 8: The Lamb

October 3, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read John 1:29-42

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“Worthy is the Lamb who was slaughtered—to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing.” (Revelation 5:12 NLT)

Image: AI-generated by DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Lamb” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 8: The Lamb. Today, “sheep” is an insult. We’re told not to be sheep but to be lions, wolves, or at least sheepdogs. I have military in my family and friends who are vets, including one who fought in the Battle of Fallujah. If you remember that battle, you know it was a hellstorm. As such, in military culture, citizens are often seen as the sheep—naïve, soft, and in need of protection from predators. The sheepdogs are the ones with the grit to face the wolves.

But Scripture flips that whole logic. God doesn’t identify with the wolf, or the sheepdog, or even the lion. God identifies with the lamb. And not just any lamb, but the lamb who was slain.

In the ancient world, lambs were synonymous with weakness, vulnerability, and sacrifice. They were common temple offerings, easy prey, and symbols of innocence. At Passover, lambs were slaughtered so Israel could remember God’s deliverance from Egypt. To call someone a lamb was not a compliment. Yet when John the Baptist sees Jesus, he doesn’t hail him as a lion, a king, or a warrior. He cries out, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”

And the shock doesn’t stop there. In Revelation, when the scroll of history cannot be opened, the elder tells John to look for the Lion of Judah. But when John turns, he does not see a lion. He sees a lamb, standing as if slain. The universe is ruled not by claws and teeth, but by wounds. Power is redefined in the blood of the Lamb.

The same brilliance runs through the Gospel of John. The author shifts the timeline of Holy Week so that Jesus is crucified not after Passover, but on the very day the lambs are being slaughtered in the temple. To the historian, that looks like a contradiction with the other gospels. But to the theologian, it is perfect symmetry. The author wants us to see that Christ’s sacrifice is not accidental or delayed. He is the Passover Lamb, slain as the lambs are slain, once for all. Not historically tidy—ah, but theologically, brilliant.

That’s why the lamb is such a scandalous symbol. In Rome, strength meant domination. The empire exalted the eagle, the lion, the wolf. Christians exalted the lamb. To Roman ears, it sounded ridiculous. Paul even said so: “The message of the cross is foolish to those who are headed for destruction. But we who are being saved know it is the very power of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18). Who worships a lamb—much less one crucified as a traitor? But that was the point: what the world despised, God exalted. What the empire crushed, God enthroned. To my politically motivated friends, heed this message: God and empire don’t mix.

We’ve tamed the lamb into Easter pageants and Sunday School décor. We imagine fluffy sheep, safe pastures, and gentle bedtime prayers. But in Scripture, the lamb is not cute. The lamb is slaughtered. In Revelation, John sees a lamb “looking as if it had been slain” (Rev. 5:6). It still bears the marks of violence—throat slit, blood spilled—yet it is standing. This lamb has seven horns and seven eyes, imagery meant to startle: ultimate power and ultimate vision embodied in what looks powerless and mutilated. The lamb is grotesque, unsettling, hard to look at—and that is the point. God’s power comes clothed in weakness, God’s victory comes through wounds, and the world’s violence is absorbed, not returned.

And that still cuts against the grain today. We live in a culture that worships strength. Leaders win votes by promising to be lions. Nations stockpile weapons to prove they’re not sheep. Even the church sometimes admires the “sheepdog” more than the lamb. Yet Christ calls us not to despise sheep but to be one and to follow the Lamb. To trust that true power is not in the one who can kill, but in the one who is willing to be killed and still rise.

The question for us is whether we dare to embody the way of the lamb. Do we choose mercy over vengeance? Do we entrust ourselves to vulnerability rather than domination? Do we follow the slaughtered lamb who reigns from the throne—or the wolves and lions who claw for it?

The lamb is not weakness. The lamb is God’s power redefined.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The world crowns lions. Heaven crowns the lamb.

PRAYER
Lamb of God, you took away the sin of the world not by clawing for power but by laying your life down in love. Teach us to follow your way. Give us courage to choose mercy over violence, to trust vulnerability over control, and to live as people marked by your sacrifice. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 7: Rainbow

October 1, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Genesis 9:12–17

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“The one sitting on the throne was as brilliant as gemstones—like jasper and carnelian. And the glow of an emerald circled his throne like a rainbow.” (Revelation 4:3 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Rainbow” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 7: Rainbow. Today the rainbow is everywhere. It arches across nursery walls and hangs on mobiles over cribs. It shows up in weather apps, corporate logos, and church banners. It’s been sentimentalized into children’s décor, commodified by brands that paint for June and rinse in July, and used to symbolize people on a spectrum of human sexuality.

We’ve also absorbed the rainbow into pop culture. Think of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon album cover, where a prism bends light into a spectral arc. For a generation, that image stood for mystery, rebellion, even transcendence. In its own way, it echoes what Scripture declared from the start: the rainbow is never just decoration. It unsettles, refracts, and reveals a deeper reality.

In Hebrew, the word is qeshet—a war bow. After the flood, God doesn’t just paint the sky; God hangs up the bow, pointing it away from earth. The sign of the covenant is not humanity’s promise to do better but God’s self-limitation: “Never again.” No more cosmic destruction. And notice the scope—this covenant comes long before Israel, long before covenant law or temple sacrifice. It embraces every living creature, “all flesh,” and even the earth itself. The rainbow is God’s ceasefire with creation.

That makes it profoundly subversive. In a world that keeps reaching for bigger weapons—legal, cultural, economic, literal—God’s first move after judgment is disarmament. The One who could destroy chooses instead to protect. Judgment gives way to mercy, and mercy is extended indiscriminately. It is not parceled out to the deserving. It is spread across the sky for all to see.

Of course, we’ve tried to tame the sign. Some Christians insist the rainbow belongs to us, not to others. Yet Genesis will not allow us to play that game. The covenant is not a trademark. It is with all flesh. Others slap the rainbow on products without the cost of solidarity. Scripture won’t bless that either. The rainbow is not seasonal branding. It is covenant faithfulness.

And here’s the irony: some Christians burn rainbow flags in protest, claiming the rainbow has been hijacked. But in the Bible, the rainbow was already scandalously inclusive. God bound Godself to all creation—creatures, people (all races, creeds, sexes, genders, etc.), and even the earth itself. If God could promise mercy to every living thing, how dare we burn the rainbow in the spirit of exclusion?

The subversive edge of the rainbow remains sharp. If God hung up the bow, then we cannot aim ours at neighbors—especially those already in the line of fire. If God covenanted with all flesh, then we cannot make exceptions for the vulnerable, the marginalized, the inconvenient. If the rainbow encircles the throne in Revelation, then heaven itself is crowned with mercy, not wrath.

The rainbow still asks: under whose sign do you stand? Do we live under the arc of God’s mercy, or under the shadow of our own bows? Do we take up the rainbow as covenant, or reduce it to decoration? When storms rise and clouds gather, the rainbow is God’s reminder: I will not destroy you. I will protect you. I am bound to you. And if we follow Christ, our lives should say the same to our neighbors.

The rainbow is not cute. It is covenant. It is God’s weapon laid down for good, a declaration that mercy—not might—has the last word. To live under the rainbow is to disarm, to stand with every living thing, and to mirror the arc of heaven’s throne in the life of the Church.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
God hung up the bow. If we follow Christ, we put ours down too.

PRAYER
God of mercy, you stretched a rainbow across the sky and promised life to every creature. Teach us to trust that promise. Disarm our fear, break our urge to exclude, and make us faithful to your covenant with all creation. Bend our lives toward mercy. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 6: The Seashell

September 26, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Romans 6:3–4

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name.” (Acts 22:16 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “The Seashell” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 6: The Seashell. Today seashells are everywhere. They decorate bathroom walls and beach houses. They hang from necklaces and sit in souvenir shops as reminders of vacation days and ocean breezes. Harmless, pretty, sentimental. But in the early church, the seashell was no trinket. It became a vessel of death and life — a sign not of leisure, but of dangerous allegiance.

Why? Because baptism itself was subversive. To step into the water was not just to make a personal choice, but to renounce everything Rome held sacred. Baptism meant dying to this world and rising in loyalty to Jesus — the one Rome had executed as a traitor. It was not merely symbolic. Families could disown you. Inheritance could be stripped away. Neighbors would brand you disloyal, suspicious, immoral. To be baptized was to be cut off from your household gods, from your family name and protection, and to join a subterranean movement with a terrible reputation.

To grasp the shock, imagine the reversal today: a Christian family’s child announcing they were now an atheist—or even a Satanist. The backlash wouldn’t just be private disappointment. It would ripple socially, touching reputation, relationships, even employment in some communities. That’s the kind of upheaval baptism triggered in the first century.

That reputation was fueled by rumors: that Christians held secret “love feasts” filled with sexual immorality, that they practiced cannibalism when they spoke of eating Christ’s body and drinking his blood, that they upended the household order by welcoming women and slaves as equals. To go under the water was to step into that reputation. You were no longer respectable. You were part of a sect Rome saw as both treasonous and depraved. Baptism was treason, and the seashell — often used to scoop and pour the water — became bound up in that act of rebellion.

The shell carried other echoes too. In Greco-Roman culture, shells were tied to fertility and birth. Venus was often pictured rising from the sea on a scallop shell. Christians didn’t directly borrow that imagery, but they reframed it. The shell whispered of a different kind of fertility — one that required spiritual death to this world and rebirth into a new humanity brought forth from the waters of baptism.

As time went on, the seashell became a pilgrim’s badge. Those who traveled to holy sites, like Santiago de Compostela, carried a scallop shell as a mark of their journey. It was practical — used to drink from streams — but also deeply symbolic. To wear the shell was to announce: I am not traveling for leisure, but for transformation. My life is a road of discipleship.

Put together, baptism and pilgrimage gave the seashell a dangerous beauty. It was never just decoration. It was a summons. The seashell told the world that you had died to Rome and risen into Christ. That your loyalty no longer lay with emperor, household, or inheritance, but with the crucified and risen Lord. That you were willing to walk the long road of discipleship, even when it meant being despised.

Today, we’ve tamed the shell into a souvenir. Pretty, harmless, something to match the curtains. But the shell still asks its ancient question: what does your baptism mean? Do you remember that in those waters you died — not just to sin, but to empire, to family idols, to all lesser loyalties?

And as the band Demon Hunter reminds us, the world is crowded with lesser gods — idols demanding our loyalty, false saviors promising security, belonging, or power. Baptism drowns them. It puts them to a watery grave. To rise from the water is to declare that none of those idols rule us anymore.

Because Rome still has its names today. Sometimes it waves the flag and baptizes nationalism as faith. Sometimes it hides in markets that tell us our worth is what we consume. Sometimes it creeps into families that demand loyalty to prejudice instead of love. Sometimes it sits in churches that bless power instead of bearing the cross.

To carry the shell is to reject those false lords. It is to live as if your life is a pilgrimage — marked not by comfort, but by costly transformation. To say with your whole being: my baptism was treason to the powers of this world, and my life is now hidden with Christ in God.

The seashell is not a trinket. It is Christ’s rebellious mission in your hand.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The seashell is not a souvenir. It is a summons.

PRAYER
God of new birth and long journeys, remind us of our baptism. Remind us that we have died to old loyalties and risen to follow Christ. Give us courage to walk the pilgrim’s road, to bear reproach, to seek justice, to love mercy, and to trust that you go before us. May every step of our lives echo the vows we made in the water. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

Devotional, Series

Sacred Signs of Subversion, Part 5: Ichthys (Fish)

September 24, 2025 Rev. Todd R. Lattig Leave a comment

Read Matthew 4:18–20

ALSO IN SCRIPTURE
“For ‘In him we live and move and exist.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’” (Acts 17:28 NLT)

Image: AI-generated using DALL-E and customized by the author. Used with the devotional “Ichthys (Fish)” at Life-Giving Water Devotions.

Part 5: Ichthys (Fish). Today the fish is everywhere. It’s on bumper stickers, etched into business cards, printed on T-shirts. For many, it’s become a logo more than a creed, a kind of Christian branding that invites parody as often as reverence. (Who hasn’t seen the Darwin fish with legs mocking its message?) What was once dangerous has become kitsch. And yet beneath that overfamiliar outline lies a story Rome itself would have found shocking.

In the first century, Christians lived in a world far more complicated than the straw-man Rome we sometimes imagine. Rome wasn’t blindly anti-religion; in fact, the empire welcomed a multitude of gods. Egyptian Isis, Persian Mithras, Greek Dionysus—their cults thrived openly. Jews were even granted exemptions to avoid sacrifices that violated Torah. Rome wasn’t looking to stamp out every foreign faith. What Rome demanded, however, was loyalty. Religion was fine as long as it didn’t undermine social order or civic devotion to the emperor.

That’s where Christians drew suspicion. They refused to burn incense before Caesar’s statue. They insisted on saying “Jesus is Lord”—a direct contradiction of “Caesar is Lord.” Neighbors whispered about their secret agapē feasts, communal meals of fellowship and prayer. But to outsiders, “love feasts” sounded like sexual orgies. Add in the scandal slaves ate alongside free men and women were leading congregations—erasing sacred household and societal hierarchy—and suspicion grew that Christians were destroying morality itself.

Then came the Eucharist. In hushed gatherings, believers repeated Jesus’ words: “This is my body…this is my blood.” Outsiders concluded they were cannibals, devouring human flesh and blood. Some rumors even accused them of killing infants, flouring their bodies, and eating them in grotesque rites. Writers like Minucius Felix preserved these accusations, proof that many Romans truly believed Christians were monsters.

And above all, the heart of their devotion was a man crucified as a traitor. Crucifixion was the most shameful punishment, reserved for rebels, runaway slaves, and insurrectionists. To worship one Rome had executed in this way was baffling at best, treasonous at worst. To gather in his name was to declare allegiance to a condemned enemy of the state.

From Rome’s perspective, Christians weren’t harmless eccentrics. They were politically suspect, socially disruptive, morally perverse, and religiously dangerous. In many ways, they were the “illegals” of their time—their worship unauthorized, their gatherings unsanctioned, their very existence beyond the boundaries of law and order. The Emperor Trajan’s letter to Pliny the Younger made the policy clear: don’t go on a witch hunt, but if someone is accused of being Christian and refuses to prove loyalty to Caesar, punish them. Even Pilate, infamous for cruelty, was removed from duty when he went too far—Rome was pragmatic, concerned with order. And this little sect seemed like chaos incarnate.

So they needed a way to recognize each other. That’s where the fish entered. Before Christ, the fish was a common symbol—tied to fertility in Greco-Roman cults, abundance in Jewish tradition, and ordinary life in markets and meals. No one blinked at a fish scratched on a wall. But Christians flipped it. In Greek, the word for fish—ichthys—became an acronym: Iēsous Christos Theou Yios Sōtēr (“Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior”). A simple doodle in the dirt carried an entire creed. Ordinary to the empire, explosive to believers.

Back then, that fish was rebellion. It meant: I belong to the traitor you crucified. My allegiance is not to Caesar but to Christ. And I am not alone. It was a secret sign of solidarity, a whisper of defiance under empire’s nose. Today, slapped on bumpers, it often says little more than “shop at my store.” But reclaiming the fish means more than nostalgia. It means living its spirit—courage in quiet ways, loyalty that refuses to bend, solidarity that confounds the powers.

The question is not whether we put a fish on our car. The question is whether our lives bear the mark of subversive allegiance. Where are we quietly refusing to burn incense to Caesar today? Where are we carving out little signs of solidarity with Christ—and with all who are crushed by empire’s demands? That’s what the fish still asks of us.

Because the empire is always watching. Sometimes it wears togas and laurel crowns. Sometimes it drapes itself in flags and slogans. Sometimes it cloaks itself in Scripture verses and cross necklaces, waving the Bible in one hand while pushing a partisan agenda in the other. Sometimes it hides behind markets and consumer brands. But in every age it whispers the same command: conform, compromise, give your loyalty here. And in every age, the fish whispers back: Christ alone is Lord.

So maybe the real challenge is not to slap a symbol on the back of our car, but to etch it into the choices we make. To refuse the sacrifices empire demands: silence in the face of injustice, complicity with violence, indifference to the poor. To live in such a way that if someone scratched a fish in the dust at our feet, we’d know exactly what it meant. And we’d answer in kind: I’m with you. You’re not alone.

That is the rebellion of the fish. That is the allegiance that endures.

THOUGHT OF THE DAY
The fish isn’t cute. It’s code for rebellion.

PRAYER
God of courage, you called the first disciples from their nets with a word of summons and a sign of faith. Give us that same boldness to follow Christ, even when our loyalty looks suspect to the world. Teach us to bear witness not with slogans, but with lives marked by quiet faith, stubborn hope, and radical love. Amen.

Devotion written by Rev. Todd R. Lattig with the assistance of ChatGPT (OpenAI).

A biweekly devotional