Someone Has to Go First
On the Conversation You've Been Putting Off
Most of us don't see it coming. You're sitting across from your mom or dad at the kitchen table, or riding somewhere together with the radio doing most of the talking, or just watching them move through a room they've lived in for years — and something catches you. Maybe it's the way they reached for the counter without thinking about it. Maybe it's a name that took a little longer to find than it used to. Maybe it's nothing you could even point to, just a quiet feeling that settles in your chest somewhere between dinner and dessert.
And most of us do the same thing with that feeling. We set it aside. We let the moment pass. We tell ourselves there's still time, that today is a good day, that bringing it up would just make things heavy when they don't need to be.
But that feeling doesn't really go away, does it. It just waits. And somewhere underneath the waiting, love is already asking the question you haven't figured out how to say yet.
Most of us keep putting it off for reasons that make complete sense when you're living inside them. We don't want to seem like we're rushing anything, or that we've already started thinking about what comes after. So we stay quiet because quiet feels kinder, even when it isn't. We tell ourselves they've earned the right to not have to think about hard things, that they're doing fine and we should just let them be fine.
But here's something I've learned from years of sitting with families in the middle of their hardest moments. Most parents have already thought about it. Many of them have been waiting for someone to open the door. They just didn't want to be the one to bring it up and worry you, so they've been carrying it quietly the same way you have, each of you waiting for the other one to go first.
And then there's the reason most of us admit last, if we admit it at all. We don't want to have the conversation because having it means we have to look directly at something we've been keeping in the corner of the room. Starting the conversation makes it real in a way that the quiet feeling in your chest at the kitchen table does not.
So the conversation waits. And if we're honest, we're not entirely sure which one is doing the waiting — the love or the fear. Most of the time they're sitting in the same chair. I've been in rooms on both sides of this conversation. Rooms where it happened in time, and rooms where it didn't.
When it didn't, grief arrives with a companion nobody invited. The casseroles come, the flowers arrive, the people fill the house — and somewhere in the middle of all of it someone has to start asking questions that feel impossibly practical for a moment that is so deeply human. Is there anything in place? Where is the paperwork? What did they want? Those questions don't come from greed or impatience. They come from love trying to keep moving when it doesn't know what to do with itself. But they are heavy questions to carry in an already heavy room.
When it did happen in time, something is different. Grief is still there — love always makes it heavy, and nothing changes that. But there is a little more breathing room. A little more space to just be sad without also having to be frantic. I have watched families in those rooms too, and what I notice is not the absence of pain but the absence of panic. Someone thought ahead. Someone had the conversation. And now, in the hardest moment, that quiet act of love is still speaking.
The difference between those two rooms is almost always that hard conversations either happened or they didn't. The conversation that wasn't easy to begin actually was begun, and decisions, desires, and wishes were shared.
So if you've been carrying that quiet feeling around, the one that showed up at the kitchen table or in the car or just watching your parent move through a room — maybe it's time to stop waiting for the perfect moment, because the perfect moment is not coming. What is coming, eventually, is the moment when the conversation can no longer happen at all.
You don't have to have all the answers before you begin.
You don't need a folder full of documents or a checklist or a plan already in place. You just need a way in. And sometimes the simplest way in is also the most honest one. Something like: I've been thinking about you, and I want to make sure we've talked about some things while we have the chance. Not because I'm worried, but because I love you and I want to get this right.
That's enough to open the door. The rest of the conversation will find its own way.
And if somewhere along the way you'd like some help thinking through the practical side of things — the financial piece that love sometimes needs in order to do its job — I'm always here for that conversation too. No pressure. No script. Just two people talking about taking care of the ones we love while we still can.
Because here's what I know after years of standing with families in their hardest moments. The conversation you're afraid to start is very often the one your parent has been hoping someone would begin.
Love just needed one of you to go first.
Throughout the pages of Scripture, two worlds run alongside each other like parallel tracks that never quite meet. There is the world that exists. The one we wake up in every morning. The one where the poor in spirit are overlooked, where those who mourn are told to move on, where the meek get pushed aside and the hungry stay hungry and mercy is rationed out to the people who deserve it. This is the world most of us have learned to navigate, the one we have made our peace with, the one we have quietly decided is simply the way things are. And then there is the world God desires. The world that was always meant to be. The one where the last are first and the broken are held and the overlooked are seen and the hungry are filled and mercy flows without a ledger. The world where shalom — that untranslatable Hebrew wholeness — is not a distant hope but the actual texture of daily life. Jesus sat down on a hillside and spent eight statements describing that second world. And then He preached a sermon that turned the first one upside down and inside out. We have been sitting on that hillside together for a while now. Seven posts and seven altars along with seven announcements of a world that God desires. And now Jesus says — it will cost you . Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. This is the last beatitude. And it is the only one that comes with a warning. Everything before this has been an announcement and an invitation. Come as you are. Drop the mask. Show mercy. Make peace. Be a thermostat. The kingdom of God is breaking into the world, and you are invited to be part of it. But now Jesus looks at that crowd — that tired, hoping, half-believing crowd — and tells them the truth about what joining this revolution actually costs. Because it is a revolution. You don't begin a revolution with warm and fuzzy words. The writers of the Declaration of Independence pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. Jesus is asking for something in the same territory. Now for most of us the cost will not be physical. We are not the countless men and women around the world who are beaten, imprisoned or killed for the name they carry. Their courage is in a category that humbles everything else. But Jesus is also talking to ordinary people living ordinary lives in ordinary places. And He is telling us that when we start living the beatitudes — when we show favor to the overlooked, when we invite the marginalized in, when we practice mercy and purity and peace — we will pay a price. Maybe not with our bodies. But with our comfort. or our status or our carefully managed reputations. We might get pushed to the margins ourselves. We might get passed over and excluded. And Jesus says — "Blessed! I am still on your side. I will meet you there." Last June I posted blogs about Pride Month. I did so because I believed they needed to be posted. I believe in the dignity of my friends in the LGBTQ community. I believe they have a place at the table. I believe that when Jesus looked at that hillside full of people the religious system had pushed to the margins, He was looking at them too. I posted. And then the negative hateful comments came. And I went quiet. I convinced myself I was avoiding conflict. I told myself it wasn't the right moment. I told myself a lot of things that sounded reasonable in the moment and hollow in the days that followed. The truth is simpler and less flattering than any of that. I calculated the cost. And I decided it was too high. I was a thermometer. I adjusted to the temperature of the room instead of setting it. And the people I care about — the ones who had every reason to expect me to stay loud — watched me go silent. To my friends in the LGBTQ community — I am sorry. You deserved better from me. You deserved someone who meant it all the way through, not just when it was easy. The silence was a failure and I own it. I don't say that to make this post about me. I say it because this beatitude will not let me off the hook. And here is what Jesus says to do when the cost arrives, which is the part that has stayed with me longer than anything else in this entire series of beatitudes. He says rejoice and be glad. And here is the Unlikely Altar for this last one, and it is different from every altar we have visited in this series, because it is not a place you can photograph or a moment that happens to you while you are standing at a gas station or sitting at a graveside or watching a baseball game. It is something you do. It is the comment you type and actually post when the easier thing would be to scroll past. It is the moment in a meeting when something wrong is happening and you are the one who says so, knowing full well what it will cost you before the words are even out of your mouth. It is the June when you stay loud after the pushback comes instead of going quiet and telling yourself reasonable-sounding things that feel hollow three days later. That moment, ordinary and unremarkable, probably witnessed by nobody who would think to circle it on a calendar and call it holy, is exactly where the world God desires breaks into the world that exists. That is the revolution Jesus started on a hillside when He began calling the wrong people blessed. And He is still looking for ordinary people who want to join it, not the brave ones and the heroic ones and the ones who have already figured out how to make it look easy, but the ordinary ones who calculate the cost and decide to pay it anyway, even when they have failed to pay it before, even when the silence is still fresh enough to sting. The kingdom is closer than you think. Sometimes it looks like a bench. Sometimes a grave. Sometimes a bunt in the ninth inning, a bag of cold fries, a cheering section full of strangers, a mask finally laid down, or a box of ashes sitting quietly in a closet. And sometimes it looks like an ordinary person deciding that grace is worth the cost. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — the God who announced grace to the overlooked, who stood at the grave and said I am with you, who cheered the names of the forgotten, who loved the face beneath the mask, who kept moving toward the ones who kept saying no — that God is on your side when the room goes cold and the cost turns out to be real and the leap feels more like a stumble than anything graceful.
There is a difference between a thermometer and a thermostat that most of us never give a second thought. A thermometer tells you the temperature of the room. It reads what is already there, adjusts to whatever surrounds it, and reports back faithfully. It is reactive by design; in other words, it waits to be acted upon. The room decides what the thermometer says. A thermostat does something different entirely. It doesn't adjust to the room; rather, it sets the temperature. It decides what the room will become and then works quietly, persistently, without fanfare, until the room catches up. It doesn't wait for conditions to improve before it does its job. A thermostat makes the first move. Jesus had a word for the thermostat kind of person. He called them peacemakers . And He said they would be called children of God . Now here is something worth pausing on, because the promise attached to this beatitude is unlike any of the others. The other beatitudes talk about the kingdom of heaven, seeing God, or receiving mercy. But this one claims they will be called children of God. And that was not some throwaway compliment. It meant something in the first century, and it means something today. I was watching one of my boys play baseball one evening, standing along the third base line with a buddy of mine. Out of nowhere, he looked over at me and grinned. "You can't deny those kids", he said. "Every time I see them I see you." That is what Jesus is describing. A family resemblance so clear that nobody has to be told. Which means that if peacemakers are the ones who look like their Father — then the central characteristic of God must be peacemaking itself. The whole sweep of Scripture points exactly there. A God who keeps moving toward people who keep turning away. A God who initiates, absorbs, returns, and offers again. A God who, even when the door keeps closing, finds another way to knock. That is the family business. And Jesus is inviting us into it. But we need to be careful about what we think peace means. When most of us hear peace, we think about what is absent. The absence of conflict or the absence of noise. The quiet that settles in when everyone has finally stopped fighting. But that is not what Jesus meant. The word He used for peacemaker doesn't appear anywhere else in all of Scripture — it is unique to this one beatitude — and at its root is the Hebrew understanding of shalom . And shalom is not about absence. Shalom is about presence. Shalom is the presence of wholeness and the presence of grace . It is about a restoration to the way it should always meant to be. Shalom is taking what was broken and making it whole. We could translate this beatitude, “ Blessed are the whole-makers" - the one who moves toward broken things and offers restoration. Now those who are “ whole-makers ” or “ peacemakers ” are not naive about how broken things are. They have simply decided that the broken thing is worth moving towards. They are not passive; they are like a thermostat, setting the temperature. Peacemakers make the first move. I know something about what that costs. My father left when I was young. He left without a goodbye, a note, or a warning. He was just gone, the way a foul ball disappears into the stands and doesn't come back. For a long time I didn't think much about it. You can't grieve what you don't yet understand. But years later things changed for me as I was leading a group through Philip Yancey's book What's So Amazing About Grace? One of the chapters was titled "Breaking the Chain of Ungrace, " in which Yancey discusses what it takes to break the cycles of resentment, blame, and pain. Something in it reached into my chest and wouldn't let go, so I made a decision. I was going to be a thermostat and move toward the broken thing. I found him on the internet along with his office number. His secretary answered and told me I must have the wrong number — Mr. Vershel didn't have any children. But I didn’t quit. I sent an email carefully written, making sure that there was no blame or judgment - - just a son wanting to know his dad. And I waited and waited and…then I sent it again. And again nothing. Years later I found him on Facebook. So of course I sent a message and a friend request. And again silence. Three attempts and three doors closed. Three times the same basic message: you do not exist. “ Blessed are the peacemakers ”, Jesus says. He does not say, "Blessed are the peacemakers whose peace is accepted." I don't know exactly how to say what happened next without it sounding like something it isn't. There was no reconciliation. No phone call where everything finally got said. No moment where the distance collapsed, and we found each other on the other side of it. He died. And somehow — I still don't fully understand the path it traveled — his ashes ended up with me. There is a box in my closet that holds what is left of him. Right next to the box with his old baseball glove — a left-handed glove I found years later, a glove that never fit me, from a game we never played together. One box for the man who left. One box for the life we never had. I did not plan to become his keeper. But here we are. And I have thought about this more than I can explain — the man who denied having children ended up in the closet of one of the children he had. The peacemaker became the keeper of the one who would not make peace. I don't think that is an accident. I think that is shalom working in ways I cannot fully trace. Because shalom doesn't always look like resolution. Sometimes it looks like faithfulness in the face of rejection. Sometimes it looks like a thermostat that keeps working even when the room never warms up. Sometimes it looks like a son who keeps his father's ashes because there was nobody else to keep them — and found, in that strange and quiet act, something that felt less like loss and more like grace. The Unlikely Altar for this beatitude is not the moment peace is finally achieved. It is the moment it is offered anyway. It is the phone call you make and the email you send into the silence. It is the move you make toward the broken thing — not because you are certain it will work, but because you are a chip off the old block of a God who never stopped moving toward you. Maybe that relationship in your life never gets resolved the way you hoped. Maybe the door stays closed. Blessed are the peacemakers still. Not because the peace was accepted. But because they looked like their Father when they offered it. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget — we come from a God who is in the business of moving toward broken things. That is the family resemblance. That is what people are supposed to see when they look at us. Be the thermostat.
Not far from where Jesus sat down to teach, there were theaters. The region of Galilee in the first century lived inside a broader Greco-Roman world, and that world loved spectacle. Open-air theaters with stone seats carved into hillsides and stages wide enough to hold a crowd’s attention were scattered throughout the landscape around the very places Jesus walked and taught. The people who followed Him up that hillside didn’t have to imagine what a theater looked like because they had seen the performances for themselves. They understood the craft of it all. And they understood the masks. In the ancient world, actors wore them. Large, exaggerated masks that told the audience who the character was before a single line had even been spoken. The hero wore one face, while the villain wore another. And the audience? Well, they never saw what was underneath the mask. The actor himself could be exhausted, grieving, uncertain, or afraid, but none of that mattered once the mask was in place. What the crowd saw was the performance, and what the crowd got was the carefully constructed version presented to them under the lights. Those actors were called hypokrites . Now, here is something most people never hear in church. In the first century, that word was not originally an insult. A hypokrite was simply a performer, someone trained and respected for the ability to step into a role convincingly enough that the audience believed every word. The problem was not the theater. The problem came later, when Jesus looked at the religious leaders of His day and realized they had started doing the same thing with faith. He wasn’t calling them names as much as He was making a diagnosis. “You have become performers,” He was saying. “You have learned how to wear the right face in public. You know the right prayers, the right language, the right gestures, the right places to stand so people can see you. You have become so skilled at performing holiness that somewhere along the way you may have forgotten the difference between the mask and the man underneath it.” That crowd on the hillside would have heard those words differently than we do now. They would not have heard a simple moral scolding. They would have heard a surgeon naming the wound out loud. So when Jesus says, “Blessed are the pure in heart,” He never actually stops to define what that means. There is no checklist attached. No seven habits of the spiritually successful. No formula for finally becoming impressive enough for God. He simply says the words and lets them settle over the crowd like a question hanging in the air. Because honestly, who among us is pure in heart? Who among us has nothing hidden, nothing managed, nothing rehearsed? Who among us has never worn a face that looked calmer, kinder, stronger, or more faithful than what was really happening underneath? But if you keep following Jesus through the Gospels, something begins to come into focus. Again and again, His sharpest words are aimed not at broken people, but at performative ones. He tells the Pharisees they are polishing the outside of the cup while the inside remains untouched. He watches one man stand in the temple, praying a polished, carefully constructed prayer about all the ways he is better than everyone else around him. Then Jesus notices another man standing at a distance, unable even to lift his eyes toward heaven, simply whispering, “God, have mercy on me, a sinner.” And Jesus says, “That one. That one went home justified.” Augustine once said that the real contrast in this Beatitude is not between purity and impurity, but between purity and hypocrisy. I think he was right, because a pure heart is not a perfect heart. It is not a heart that has finally climbed high enough to escape the mess of being human. It is not a heart that has figured out how to impress the room. A pure heart is simply an honest one. It is the person who finally grows too tired to keep performing and instead comes to God carrying what is actually true. And I think that is what the people on the hillside found so startling. Most of them could never keep up with the religious performance expected of them anyway. They were fishermen and laborers and tax collectors and women who had spent years being quietly reminded that they were falling short. The distance between who they were and who they were supposed to be felt enormous. They had been taught, directly and indirectly, that holiness belonged to people who performed better. Then Jesus sat down, looked directly at the people who could never quite keep the mask in place, and said, “Blessed.” I imagine some of them exhaled for the first time in years. I think about this often when I sit with families in grief. There is a version of grief that knows exactly how to behave in public. The right words get spoken. The right face gets worn. Everything is managed with quiet dignity, and I understand why. Some pain feels too personal to spill open in front of a room full of people. But every now and then, somebody stops performing. A daughter who held herself together through the visitation and funeral quietly breaks down at the graveside. A son who has not cried in decades suddenly reaches for his mother’s hand and cannot let go. A widow finally stops answering the question, “How are you doing?” with polite reflexes and simply says, “I honestly don’t know.” And those moments always feel holy to me. Not because composure is wrong. But because in those moments, there is no performance left. People let their masks slip, and suddenly something true stands in the open air between everybody who is present. I think that is what Jesus meant. Not that God only meets us when we fall apart, but that God has never needed our performance in order to love us in the first place. He meets us most deeply in the places where we stop pretending long enough to be known. The Unlikely Altar for this Beatitude is difficult to photograph because it is not really a place. It is the quiet moment, often unexpected and sometimes a little uncomfortable, when you finally grow weary of carrying the mask. Maybe it happens in your car after you have held yourself together all day. Maybe it happens in the middle of a conversation where something inside you simply quits trying to sound okay. Maybe it happens late at night when the performance becomes too heavy to keep carrying for another hour. That moment, strange as it sounds, may be holy ground. Not because you finally got your life together, but because you finally stopped pretending that you had. May we know, may we remember, may we never forget: God has never loved the mask more than the person underneath it. Take off the mask. That is all. Just take it off.