Weekly Devotional for June 26

Scripture texts: Romans 7:14-25 (Appointed for June 30), 1 Corinthians 13

Friedrich Nietzsche once famously wrote that “Those who stare too long into the Abyss may find the Abyss staring back at them.” The saying means that those who dwell too long on the negative things of life can find that negativity haunting them in ways they never expected. I know precisely how this feels as the world has continued to drag my spirit down with its constant barrage of setbacks and terrible news.

I spoke about this in my sermon on Sunday; about feeling tired and burned out by all the bad news in the world and in my life. I am trying to find the hope in the midst of it all, because it is there. There are signs galore that God is at work even in the midst of disaster.

Sometimes however the biggest struggle is when I realize the “Abyss” isn’t just out there in the world; it’s in here, inside me. When my own mistakes and failures come back to haunt me. There are two examples of that in my life, one in my family and another amidst my work at Canadochly. In both cases, I’ve been called on the carpet for errors and mistakes I’ve made, which is never a good feeling. But what am I to do here? I am human and I am prone to err as anyone. The things of which I stand accused are things of which I’m guilty. There’s no escape here. No pleading innocence. I’ve genuinely screwed up. And that can be a heavy burden to bear.

Where is the hope to be found within? Where is God at work within?

St. Paul wrote at length about these very questions in the text from Romans that’s appointed for this week. (It’s definitely one of those Holy Spirit moments that as I’m sitting here, dining on ashes, that this text would be one of those appointed for the Daily Lectionary.) Like me, Paul seeks to do good. Paul wants to be a benefit to the world, to other people, and to the Church. But like all of us, he stumbles from time to time.

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do…For I have the desire to do what is good, but I cannot carry it out. For I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do—this I keep on doing.”

How many of us could say the same thing about ourselves? We all carry the burden of who we are and what we are. We can all fall into traps of our own creation, traps formed by our idiosyncrasies, our anxieties, our vices, our ignorance, our pride, and a whole host of other realities about ourselves. Satan has a frighteningly easy job when it comes to making us fail; we do a very good job of it on our own without any help at all.

This is, as Paul writes accurately, the reality of sin. What wretched people are we! Seemingly forever trapped between good and evil, torn by these two halves of ourselves that work against one another. But Paul also recognizes that what we are is not always what we will be and he gives thanks to God for the work that God does within each of us to bring us out of death (sin) into life (righteousness.)

There was a time when I loathed using 1 Corinthians 13 as a wedding text, but I’ve come a full 180 degrees on that. The reason is because of what that text really means and it ties in quite nicely with what Paul is talking about here in Romans. “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face-to-face.” It is a text about transformation. It’s about who we are is not who we will be. And how does that transformation come about? It comes through God’s love for us.

So here again, I find myself drawn to the truth of that saying from Brennan Manning that I’ve quoted so often of late. “God loves us as we are, not as we should be, because none of us are as we should be.” How true indeed. God loves us in our sin and in our righteousness. God loves us when we do good and when we do evil. God loves us when we succeed and when we fail.

The hardest thing for many of us to do is to forgive ourselves our faults. But a huge part of the Christian life is to see people as God does and to love them (in as much as we are able) as he does. That includes OURSELVES as much as anyone and everyone else.

My friends, can we love ourselves as we are loved? Can we forgive ourselves as we are forgiven? These are not always easy things to do. In fact, they can be among the hardest things we are called to do as Christians.

God loves you. God loves me. And because of that love, he’s not finished with us yet. He still at work in the midst of our lives, blessing our successes and forgiving our failures, drawing us every closer to that moment when we will no longer “see in a mirror dimly.” We’re an imperfect product that God continues to refine and mold and transform. But he will never stop working on us, because we are his precious ones. We are his beloved. He loves us. To him, we’re worth every effort. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for June 6, 2016

Scripture reading: Luke 8:40-56 (Daily lectionary text appointed for June 8), Genesis 18:9-14

Sometimes, it's hard not to laugh.

We laugh at things unexpected. That's essentially the essence of comedy. The joke never quite has the punch line you expect. People are never quite as grandiose as they appear. A person cannot be truly that foolish, can they? Someone fell over in the middle of the sidewalk. Didn't see that coming. Ha ha!

As some of the above examples imply, laughter can have an element of cruelty to it. The thing unexpected is someone's misfortune. An otherwise intelligent person says something stupid. An otherwise graceful person takes a tumble. Someone says something so outlandish that our only response is to laugh at them.

Which brings us to our Scripture readings this week. Two stories of miracles. Two stories of laughter. We are likely familiar with both. God announced to Abraham and Sarah that they will have a son in their old age. While biologically men are capable of fathering children at any point, it is common knowledge that the reproductive organs of women shut down after a certain age. While modern science has made that age later and later, this is not a modern story. It's ridiculous on its face. There is no way for Sarah to have children, so she laughs.

Jesus encounters the dead daughter of Jairus and declares boldly that she is merely sleeping. The crowd can see the evidence before them: the ashen skin, the lack of breath, the cold skin. The girl is quite dead. Who is this idiot who thinks this is what sleep looks like? So they laugh.

It's hard to blame them. What God proposes in both these stories is nonsense on its face. Dead is dead. Barren is barren (or menopausal, as the case may be.) These things cannot be changed. There is no cure for them, no reversal. To suggest otherwise is utter foolishness.

But as God says to Abraham, "Is anything too wonderful for the LORD?" Or as Jesus himself says at another point, "With God, all things are possible." (Matthew 19:26)

We make many bold and seemingly impossible claims as Christians. We claim that Jesus rose from the dead after being crucified. We claim that people have miraculously recovered numerous times in Biblical stories of incurable ailments. We say God parted the sea to let his people escape slavery. We claim Jesus walked on top of water and made enough food to feed thousands of people from one meager packed lunch. And perhaps most impossible of all, we claim that God loves us so much that he came down to earth as a mortal and then died to claim us as his own. It's enough to make one ROFL (I presume most folks are Internet savvy enough to know what that acronym means.)

But it's all true. For with God, all things are possible. Salvation is ours through the impossible love of a God beyond our comprehension. These ancient stories stand as evidence to that which we can barely believe. If God can and does do such things, what might he do with me?

Indeed.

Weekly Devotional - A Brief Discussion of Biblical Cosmology

I was on vacation last week (taking my own advice), so no devotional. This week, I've decided to something a little different. Rather than something inspirational, I think I'd rather do something of an education piece on an element of Christian theology that is not well understood. We think we know how this all works, but what the Scriptures say and what people believe are often miles apart. So, I'm going to dive into the nature of the Christian universe (i.e. our "cosmology.")

Heaven
Scripture Reference: Revelation 21:1-5

The Bible names heaven as God's place of residence. It is his "mailing address," the place where he rules on high over all of creation.

Here's the thing though. Nowhere in Scripture does it say that heaven is our ultimate destination upon death. Mortals certainly visit from time to time via visions (2 Cor 12:2, the whole book of Revelation), but no one moves in permanently. The souls that John witnesses in his vision in Revelation are only temporary residents (see Sheol below), as the ultimate goal of God's plan is their resurrection on the "new earth" spoken of in the passage I reference above.

So, when you die, you only go to heaven temporarily. Call it a visitor pass. Your real destination is the resurrection on the last day and your life eternal in the new creation. You don't get to move in as God's next door neighbor in Heaven. In fact, Revelation posits that God moves in next to you on the new Earth.

Sheol & Hell
Scripture Reference: Psalm 6:5, Revelation 20:10

The Old Testament refers to a place called Sheol, the place of the dead. In ancient Hebrew thought, the idea of an afterlife was somewhat more limited than in Christian thought. What we have instead is Sheol, where the dead go after departing their mortal life. Essentially a place of storage for their souls. The Old Testament makes clear that these dead have no consciousness or functionality. They simply are. The above Psalm reference is one of many where the Psalmist claim that the dead can do nothing to praise or worship God.

This is contradicted however by John's vision in Revelation where the dead are active participants in the worship of God and are in eager expectation for the promised resurrection.

What Sheol is not, however, is hell. In fact, the word "hell" is one we borrow from Norse mythology. The Bible also uses the word Hades in similar fashion, another borrowing out of Greek mythology. However, both words in their original use refer mostly to a place of storage for the dead, not a place of torment or torture. So even, hell is not hell in it original Norse or Greek meaning.

So where do we get this idea that Hell is a place of eternal torture? Well, part of Hades in Greek mythology is Tartarus, the place of punishment, where the unworthy dead are put through all sorts of horrific torments (see Sisyphus for example). Likewise, Hel in Norse mythology is often seen as the place of the failed or evil dead (as opposed to Valhalla where the "good" dead go.) John Milton, in Paradise Lost, is likely to have drawn on both of these mythologies in crafting his images of Hell for his poetry. Likewise, Dante ran with many of these tropes as well for his Inferno. Imaginative and evocative, certainly, but not Biblical.

What we do get in the Bible is "Gehenna," the garbage pit outside Jerusalem where all the city's trash was burned. When Jesus refers to "hell" in his teachings (e.g. Matthew 5:29), he's using the word Gehenna there. It's a nice metaphor that Revelation concurs with. The devil and his angels are cast into a "lake of fire" to receive their torment and suffering for their evil deeds, as are those mortals judged unworthy of the "Book of Life." (Revelation 20:15)

So here's the real question. Does Hell exist prior to God's final judgment? Where does Satan "live?" Where do demons come from? The Bible is not entirely clear about that. Legion fears being cast back to the "Abyss" (Luke 8:31). Is that Hell or yet another piece of the cosmological puzzle? I don't know.

The elephant in the room...
Scripture Reference: Luke 16:19-31

Jesus tells a parable, the Rich Man and Lazarus, that seems to contradict some of what I've said above. A couple things to note. First off, Jesus is not telling this story to inform people about the nature of Heaven and Hell; he is using it to express his frustration at the unbelief and cruelty of many people he's encountering in his ministry. Secondly, the text does not use the terms "heaven" or "hell" (i.e. Gehenna) here, but rather instead the "bosom of Abraham" and "Hades" (again, think Sheol.)

But Sheol is shown as a place of torment here. I suppose it's possible or even likely that Jesus is merely running with the popular understanding of the afterlife in his day to make his point. As I said, the parable is not about heaven and hell. It's about Lazarus' mistreatment and the failure of those who neglected him to repent of their cruelty, even though one has "risen from the dead." Presuming it is some manner of descriptive of the nature of the universe is a misuse of the text.

Conclusion.
It is not uncommon in the evolution of our faith for us to borrow bits and pieces of other forms of spirituality to give us language to describe the indescribable. The Bible itself does this, as do we who have lived into its legacy as Christian believers. Dante, Milton, and countless others have written about what they think these indescribable things are like, but none of them have a complete picture.

Simply put, our understanding of these greater mysteries is rather flawed and limited. We may not go to Heaven when we die believing; we may go to Sheol instead and spend some time there before God calls us back to life on last day.  Is Hell where the demonic powers live in the present time or is it the place of punishment God will create on the last day for those who have defied him? There is no certainty here because we are talking about things we humans do not fully understand. It is not so black and white as we've led ourselves to believe where the good go to Heaven and the bad into Hell. We certainly use such language (I have myself) to simplify what is ultimately a complex idea, but we must not assume our knowledge is complete and inerrant.

What we do know is this. God has promises us life eternal through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ. We refer to Easter and Christ's resurrection as a "first," that what he has gone through we will do likewise one day as well. Resurrection is God's promise. The new heaven and new earth are God's promise, a place where death is no more and suffering has come to an end. In the end, that's what really matters.

Return of the Weekly Devotional

Scripture: Mark 1:35-39

Pastor's Note: The last devotional I did was on Holy Week. Knowing the intensity surrounding the celebration of our Lord's Resurrection, I figured that would suffice for two weeks: both Holy Week and the week of Easter. 

Then life happened.

The week following Low Sunday was a trip out of town. The week after that was wedding preparations. The week following that was funeral preparations. The week after that brings us to today. Hopefully, we're back on track.


---

Pastor: I don't take a day off. The devil doesn't take a day off, so why should I?
Wise Parishioner: You need a better role model.

This old Internet meme highlights something we Pastors are often guilty of: refusing to take time for self-care. I'm feeling it right now, as my comments above point out; that sense of weariness as the weight of the world takes its toll.

But we bring it on ourselves, forgetting that we're no good to anyone exhausted and careworn. As the joke above points out, we need a better role model to follow and there is no better one than Christ himself. Jesus often took time out of his ministry to retreat from the world. He went off to the mountain to pray, to recharge, and to rest. And he does this A LOT. Two or three occasions in each of the Gospel accounts, the Mark text I reference above being just one of them.

from Pinterest

Now, as a pastor, I can call out myself and my colleagues for our failures in this regard. But let's be honest. We are hardly the only profession who is guilty of this failure.

Some months ago, I remember driving with the radio playing and an advertisement for a new business phone system came on. It was touting all these features, including "no matter where you are, you're never away from the office" or something to that effect.

What a nightmare. People would actually want that?

The sad truth is yes. For many, that's become something of an ideal. Never getting away. Becoming the ultimate paragons of productivity. We take work home with us in order to keep up with it. It goes with us on vacation. No matter where we are, we're never away from the office. We fill up our schedules with busyness and activity and do not take time to recharge. We see leisure and rest as evils, a sin of idleness or frivolity.

And we suffer for it. After all, as is true with people like me, we are no good to anyone exhausted and careworn and that's exactly what we're becoming.

Jesus often got in trouble for breaking the rules of the Sabbath, but he only ever broke them in common sense ways (i.e. helping people in need). He was fastidious in keeping those laws in the way they were truly meant to be kept: The Sabbath is the gift of rest, so take a break. His mountain excursions were his Sabbath and he kept to the habit, knowing he needed that time with his Father to renew his strength for the work ahead.

Go and do likewise. As spring and summer come upon us, don't let work become an all-consuming idol that devours your life. Remember the Sabbath and what it is for. Take a break to recharge and renew and become yourself again.

Weekly Devotional for Holy Week & Easter

Scripture reading: John 19:17-24, 28-30

I had two jokes cross my Facebook wall in the last week or so. The first, showing up on St. Patrick’s Day, was a picture of a group of people in a bar, drinking away. The caption read “If Americans have a drink called the ‘Irish Car Bomb,’ do the Irish have a drink called the ‘American School Shooting?’” The second was a New Yorker-style cartoon showing a man and a pastor together on the front step of a church on Easter Sunday. The caption read “I hate to say it, Pastor, but I think you’re getting stale. Every time I come here, you preach on the Resurrection.”

The first is, of course, a bit of black humor which may be all the more fitting this week with what we see on the news. The terrorist attack in Brussels dominates the national news, alongside the local news here in Pennsylvania of a retired police officer who murdered two Turnpike workers. The common perception is that we live in ugly times and they are getting worse. That’s probably not entirely inaccurate. With Donald Trump doing his best “Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?” imitation and his more rabid followers doing their best to obey by sucker-punching protesters, it seems we’ve reached a very dark place in our election cycle. Add to that the seemingly constant screech of warnings from scientists about climate change and we’re all starting to ask why we’re all in this handbasket and where are we going?

In a lot of ways, there should be nothing surprising by all this. We live in a broken world, marred by sin and death. All the nightmarish images we see on the news each night are merely a reflection of that reality. To put it metaphorically, we all live on Good Friday, seemingly stuck in the shadow of the cross. Our only perception is that of death and suffering. The temptation to despair is strong in these times.

But a dose of perspective is in order. As ugly as things seem to be becoming, we have been here before. That is perhaps why the first joke, however grim, gave me a chuckle. There was a time, not so long ago, when terrorist violence in Northern Ireland was a seemingly everyday occurrence (much as mass shootings have become here). And while there is still much tension there even today, they have largely moved beyond the ugliness of random violence. The cycle of history has moved. That’s the way of things. Today’s crisis is tomorrow’s memory. Tomorrow’s crisis…well, we’ll deal with it when it gets here.

But perspective isn’t just this sort of recognition that the world has always been screwed up, it’s also knowing that the cross we witness is a precursor to something grand and glorious. The story of Christ does not end on Good Friday any more than our fates are bound to this present reality. There is something more that awaits us. To quote the old saying, “It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming!”

Which brings me to the second joke. Yeah, it’s funny that a guy who probably only shows up once a year on Easter gets to hear the same sort of sermon over and over again. But that’s what we should all be hearing not just on Easter, but every week. It’s all about the Resurrection. Christ is risen! Death does not have the last word. The Kingdom of God comes. Easter is real. It’s Friday, but Sunday’s a coming!

That is our hope and our destiny. The cycles of history will turn as they will. Today’s crisis will fade and tomorrow’s will emerge. But one day, perhaps soon, the promise of the cross and empty tomb will come to fulfillment. Christ’s words from the cross will echo across the ages. “It is finished!” And the world will be set right at last. Life will triumph over death. This is God’s promise to the whole of creation. It is not here yet. That is abundantly clear. But it is coming. It is on the horizon. And therein lies our hope.

Christ is risen. And one day, so too shall we.

Devotional for Fifth Lent

Scripture text: John 12:1-11

This week, we have the evangelist John's take on a familiar story; the anointing of Jesus by Mary. The synoptic Gospels frame this story differently, showing in their version the woman as a stranger and one of ill repute at that. But John tells the story differently, with his anointer being Mary, the sister of Lazarus whom Jesus has just recently raised from the dead.

In fact, the only thing the two versions of the story have in common is that a woman washes Jesus' feet. That makes it difficult to reconcile the two versions as being two interpretations of a single event, as folks are wont to do with stories like this. The synoptic story is about hospitality and forgiveness, contrasting the woman's lavish behavior to Simon's stinginess as well as the woman's gratitude for grace to Simon's self-righteousness. John's story is about so much more.

John implies at the start that the anointing is an act of gratitude; Jesus has resurrected Mary's brother, Lazarus, and now she responds with this over-the-top anointing. Judas objects, doing his best impression of a modern day "concern troll." Jesus refutes his point in one of the most misunderstood retorts about the poor in the Scriptures. The story then concludes with the ominous warning that Lazarus is in the cross-hairs of the religious officials along with Jesus.

There's too much to unpack here in one short devotional. So I want to focus on two contrasting elements of the story, Mary and Judas.

Judas' words are largely ignored because of what we know of who he is. He's a thief and a betrayer, so the logic of his statements here is dismissed out of hand. Yet what he says is imminently practical, even if his motives are flawed. This act of anointing is wasteful. It is over the top. It is nonsensical. He may be a "concern troll," as I say above, but his concern is a valid one.

In the church today, whether we realize it or not, we often play the part of Judas here. Trying to be pragmatic, reasonable, and logical, we disdain and avoid the sort of extravagance or risk-taking that Mary embraces. But much like Judas, our concern masks an uglier motive; in our case, it's fear. Fear that we will fail. Fear that we will run out. Fear of what others may think or say.

But neither Mary nor Jesus cares for these things. All that matters is this lavish outpouring of affection, love, and thanksgiving. Jesus is the one who brings life from death. He's done it with Lazarus. He will do it again with all of us via the empty tomb of Easter.

What Mary has done here is a model for us to follow. Jesus himself echoes this event when he kneels down before the disciples on Maundy Thursday to wash their feet, another act of inappropriate extravagance, there highlighted as a model of service to the people God loves.

In many ways, what Jesus says about the poor here reveals an opportunity. If it is life-from-death that Jesus brings and if we are to reveal that truth by what we do and who we are, then the ever-present poor provide us infinite chances to show the world who Christ is. And we do that not with stinginess or reasonableness, but with over-the-top extravagance. These are people that God loves, people for whom Christ died and rose again, people for whom grace upon grace has been given. How can we not shower them (and all others Christ loves) with the same extravagant love that Mary shows Jesus? It's our calling. It's who we are. It's who Jesus wants us to be. Go and do likewise.

Weekly Devotional for Fourth Lent

Scripture text: Luke 15:11-32

There is that old story about a pastor who preaches the same sermon several weeks in a row. When he’s confronted about his apparent lack of creativity by his congregation, he replies “Given your behavior, it seems obvious that you haven’t gotten the message yet.”

A mite judgmental there, but that old story does highlight a simple truth about rhetoric. Repetition drives home a point. Keep repeating and people will start to listen.

So, I once again find myself ranting against the word “deserve,” since I think the parable of the Prodigal Son is precisely the text Jesus uses to damn that moralistic approach to life. And given that I’m preaching this text on Good Friday, you’ll likely hear some of these points again when I post that sermon in the weeks to come.

We all know the story. Younger son comes up to dad. “Drop dead, Dad, and give me what I deserve as your heir.” Dad, despite his better judgment, does just that. Son goes off to a faraway land and “all manner of pleasures and diversions were indulged.” Things go south pretty quickly after that and the son soon finds himself starving while tending to the pigs on some farm, a long way from the party scene he’d once enjoyed.

Here’s the thing. If this was a story about what people deserve, this is where the story would end. What goes around has come around. The son’s mistreatment of his father has come back to bite him and he’s received justice for his cruelty to his family. Jesus would stop talking and the moral lesson would be painfully clear. Your sin will be your undoing, so don’t sin. Don’t be like this son.

But that’s not the story Jesus tells. It keeps going. The son conjures up a plan to return to his father and beg to be a slave in the household where he grew up. To his credit, the son recognizes the enormity of his error and knows he deserves nothing, but yet hopes for a small pittance of grace from dear old Dad.

But a small pittance is not what he receives. When his father spots him, Dad runs out and scoops him up in a massive bear hug and showers him with tears and kisses. You can almost hear Dad blubbering about how overjoyed he is that his son has come home. Immediately, a great celebration is thrown together. The son is restored to his usual place in the household. All is forgiven.

The son receives far more than he could ever hope or dream. He deserves nothing, yet receives everything.

And that is grace. That is God’s approach to humanity. That’s how he sees us. Yes, we are fallen. Yes, we are sinful. Yes, we are broken. All those things are true and make us deserving of nothing. And yet, we receive everything. God’s love trumps all else; what we’ve done and what we are do not matter. Just all that the son has done wrong in the story does not matter to the father who loves him.

And yet, all too often we are the older brother in the story, who rejects his younger sibling out of hand. To him, all that his kid brother has done DOES matter. He doesn't deserve forgiveness. And he's right, the younger brother does not. But deserve has nothing to do with it. Grace does. His father pleads with him to see things has he does. Don’t you get it? Nothing else matters except our love for one another. NOTHING matters except love and the grace and forgiveness that follow from that love.

How often does God plead with us to see our brothers and sisters the way he sees them? How often does he call us to love our neighbor, to forgive our enemies, and to discard this blasphemy of deserving? Are we listening?

Grace is all that matters. Period.

Devotional for Third Lent

Scripture reading: Luke 13:1-9

One of the persistent failures of the human condition is our presumption that we are the center of the universe. Believing that "things have never been as bad as this" or that "those sins that I abhor in others are the worst of all sins" reveal a certain arrogance in us. We are not seeing things rightly or truthfully when we think this way.

In many ways, this is the mindset that Jesus is calling out in the Gospel text from this past Sunday. He's given two tragic examples of the current events of his day, a tower collapse and an attack by Herod's thugs on some Galilean worshipers in the temple. The human impulse is to claim that victims of these tragedies are somehow deserving of their fate. (If you've been keeping up with my Sunday sermon series this Lent, you know how much I just "love" that word.)

Jesus not only refutes this but he does so in a way that should make us all a bit uncomfortable. No, their sins weren't any worse than yours, so if they deserved to die for what they've done, SO DO YOU.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that I'm talking about this Luke text the day after I received Michael Card's latest email newsletter. In it, he included a reflection that tells a similar truth, speaking about these current times.

There are two major misunderstandings, it seems to me, that might tempt us to lose hope right now. The first is the failure to realize that world has already been lost. It is no less "lost" at the moment than it has ever been, and no less crazy. Even a casual flipping thru any history book will confirm this.

Again, the presumption of our own self-importance blinds us to this truth. We are lost and we are rightly deserving of damnation. But Michael doesn't end there.

The second misunderstand that leads us to lose hope is that there is no one who has the power to make things right. To a lost world Jesus says "I am the way." To a world that has departed from the truth, Jesus says, "I am the Truth." And to a world that is on a collision course with death, Jesus says, "I am the Life."

Immediately after telling the crowds the uncomfortable truth about our sin, Jesus tells a wonderful parable about a patient gardener. "Give it another chance. Give it another year. Give it time." Give it grace.

Grace is the infinite number of second chances that God gives to us out of his love for us. And that is our hope. All may seem lost, but God is in control here. Not us. And we are not lost because it is he who finds us. We are not lost because he loves us. We are not lost because our patient gardener is giving us another chance and will always give us another chance. That's grace, and in grace we find hope, for ourselves and for our lost world.

Weekly Devotional for Lent 2

Scripture text: Luke 3:31-35

Our Friday Bible Study at Canadochly has been spending the past several weeks (and future weeks to come) on looking at the book of Isaiah. It seemed a fitting thing as we moved through the Advent to Christmas to Lent to Easter cycle of the church year to study the Old Testament book that often accompanies us most closely through that journey. Isaiah is, after all, the most quoted OT book in the New Testament.

But beyond all that, it is the story of a prophet. The job of a prophet in the Old Testament was not to be a predictor of future events. They were not soothsayers; they were truth-tellers and there is a difference. The job of the prophet was to warn and to persuade. Beware, for this path that you are on is contrary to God's will and will lead the nation to disaster. Beware, for your neglect of the poor angers God and will lead to your destruction. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, and so forth are full of these sorts of passages.

Is it any wonder then why Jesus laments as he does in Luke, "O Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it?" Saying such things to the powers-that-be was a sure-fire way to end up on the bad side of any and every king and noble in the land. And you were not likely long for this world after that happened.

Jesus is equally doomed. Unlike the prophets, Jesus lived out God's desires in his own life. A prophet may talk about God's care for people, but Jesus lived it, demonstrated it, showed it to the world. And that was, in many ways, even more aggravating to the powers that be.

The powerful and ambitious in any society have always cultivated their power by dividing people against one another. Hitler is easily the most extreme example, with the Holocaust of the Jews and the often banal acceptance of it by society. But modern would-be leaders are not always as different as they pretend to be. Scratch the surface of many in this election cycle and you'll hear talk similar to this "Trust me, because I'll protect you from 'those people' over there who are different from you." The more things change, the more they stay the same.

But for Jesus, what mattered was not the anger of the powerful, but the love of God. And the idea that "God loves everyone" was not merely some pipe-dream or idealistic thinking, it is the truth. Jesus embodied that. He ate with tax collectors. He healed the lepers. He associated with prostitutes, the poor, and sinners of all stripes. His followers and closest associates were a who's-who of the "those people" of his day. Above anything else, that was what doomed him to the cross and he knew it. He did it anyway.

Like the prophets before him, he did it anyway. Why? Because the work was too important to be thwarted by the threats of the ambitious and powerful. The Gospel needed to be proclaimed as far and wide as possible. God loves you. God accepts you. God wants you to be his. You are precious to him, loved beyond words. In fact, God loves you so much that would even die for you, such a thing that should otherwise be impossible. Nothing else matters to God but his people. ALL his people, you included.

The torch has passed from Christ to his church and little has changed. We too are called to embody God's love to the world and that task is not without risks. It requires us to face the Other who we are taught to fear. It requires us to stand up to the powerful and their followers who would tell us those Other are not worth the effort. But they are. They were for the prophets. They were for Jesus. And they are for his Church. Why? Because God's love will not be denied. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for Lent 1

Scripture text: Luke 4:1-13

(Pastor's note: Since I'm not preaching the lectionary this year for Lent and doing a preaching series, I figured I'd dedicate this space to my thoughts and reflections on the Sunday morning lectionary texts.)

The Power of No

In many ways, we live in a society that considers the word "no" to be profane. We are actively discouraged from saying it. A child who says "no" to a parent is often punished. A customer who says "no" to a salesperson is just asking for the pitch to be ramped up to the Nth degree. Congress has driven its popularity to record lows by saying "no" to anything and everything the President has suggested. Men's Rights Activists claim that women don't really mean it when they say "no." Some of these examples are reasonable. Others border on nonsense. But regardless, "no" is seen as a bad word.

And our text today is all about "no."

Much like the examples above, some of these are reasonable. Others make little sense. Of course, that's the devil's trap. It's perfectly reasonable to turn those stones to bread or to force the world to submit to Jesus' vision. Throwing oneself off a building, on the other hand...

Reasonable however is not always wise and Jesus thankfully knows the difference. He recognizes the "quick and easy path" of saying "yes" to the devil's temptations. (Yes, I'm squeezing a Star Wars reference in here.) Yes, Jesus is hungry and yes, it is reasonable to use his power to grant himself food. But if he uses his divine might for such a simple and largely pointless thing here, where will he stop? Welcome to the slippery slope.

And yes, it would be easier to force the world to submit. To become the king and tyrant the crowd at Palm Sunday will soon desire him to be. Power and domination are anathema however to his message of love and grace. He would completely subvert and undermine his message about his father and utterly destroy his mission to save the world.

And yes, he could claim invulnerability by jumping off the temple. But Jesus was born to die and being invulnerable to the violence of this world would subvert and undermine that purpose. If the angels protect him here, what's to stop them from pulling him down from the cross later?

So, to these temptations, he must say no.

We can and probably should take a lesson for Jesus. What is reasonable is not always wise. We too face temptations particularly in these times.

Fear and anxiety, it seems, are our constant companions these days. We worry about our nation, about our church, about our paychecks, our families. We fear terrorism and crime. And all too often we focus that fear into distrust and outright hostility towards our neighbors.

It may seem reasonable. After all our jobs are disappearing and yet those immigrants keep coming. Terrorists don't look like us. We often equate crime in the inner city with people of color. And yet, most of this is based on perceptions that cold facts do not support. What may seem reasonable is not always wise. What we are tempted to do and believe because of our fears is the very trap the devil lays before us.

Like Christ, we are called to say "no" to these temptations. To remember Christ's call to love our neighbors, to forgive our enemies, and live peaceably with all people. To also remember that these people, however they may differ from us, are also people for whom Christ went to the cross, died, and rose again. They are our mission field. The more we fear them, the less likely we are to bring Christ to them.

Which is, of course, precisely what the devil would want. Fear is his ally. And to that fear, we must say no.

Devotional for Ash Wednesday

"All things die. Even the stars go out."

Among die-hard fans, the Star Wars prequel films, released in the late 90s and early 2000s, are largely regarded as tremendous disappointments. They are, however, not without their merits. One of those highlights actually does not come from the films, but from the novelization of the third prequel film, Revenge of the Sith.

In a brief scene before the main action of the story begins, Anakin Skywalker (the future Darth Vader) witnesses a supernova. This triggers something of an existential crisis in him, a crisis that largely drives the story that follows: Anakin's fall into evil and darkness. One line of his thoughts as he witnesses the dying star stands out to me even to this day.

"All things die. Even the stars go out."

I'm ever reminded of this observation every year on this day when we come into worship and hear the words anew from Scripture: "Dust we are and to dust we shall return."

Our mortality is the fundamental crisis of human existence. It drives nearly everything that we do, all that we think, all that we build. We fear death more than anything else. It is the true unknown that we all face. Oblivion. Non-existence. We use its fearsome power to threaten and destroy others, knowing how much it terrifies us in return. All that we are centers on death and finding ways to cheat or avoid it, only to discover that there is no cheating and no escape in the end.

Even the stars, whose life spans time we can barely count, billions of years, eventually die. Our paltry planet, in uncounted years to come, will eventually be consumed by one such dying star. Even that which we leave behind will not last. All the monuments that we might build to our life will fade away. The irony of the inscription below Ozymandias' statue in the famous poem belongs to all of us.

We enter into the season of Lent with the remembrance of this unpleasant truth. Even God did not avoid it. Incarnate as he became through Christ, he too faced death. He met the cross on Golgotha. But the story of Lent and Easter does not end on the mountain of the crucifixion. And in the midst of our truthtelling, we must also remember that there is life beyond. Life we cannot see, but life that has been promised to us nonetheless. The life of the empty tomb. The life of the resurrection.

Nature echoes this truth. Yes, the stars die, but you and I made up of their very essense. The "dust" of which we are created is stardust, the remnant of long dead stellar bodies. From death came life. And as it is true in astronomy, so it is with God and so it is with us. Yes, one day, we all die. But life beyond that awaits us. Amen

Weekly Devotional for January 24, 2016

Scripture reading: John 1:43-51 (Appointed for Jan 30)

I began last week's devotional with a mea culpa about the previous week's lack of a devotional reading. What I had planned for that absent week was to talk about Deborah in the book of Judges (specifically Judges 4:1-9). I was going to speak of how God often does the unexpected; calling forth into his service those the people think are least able or least worthy of it.

Deborah is no exception to that. After all, it's really only been in the last few decades (and the work is still far from done) that women have been regarded as equal to men. Yet here is a story from thousands of years ago where a woman leads the people of God to victory in battle.

This is hardly the only time God does this sort of thing. Again and again, countless times, God calls the least-likely to do extraordinary things for his Kingdom.

Which brings us to our reading from John and our discovery that Jesus himself was regarded as a surprise by many who encountered him.

"Can anything good come out of Nazareth?"

We all encountered people like Nathaniel. Snobs. The snooty. People who believe themselves above it all. The too-cool-for-school crowd. When Nathaniel hears that the Messiah comes out of some backwater town like Nazareth, he cannot believe it.

I can't imagine what he would think if he heard the full story of Jesus' birth. "Yes, he really was born in a barn."

I am convinced God loves to take people like this down a peg or two, but not in a harsh or unkind way. What God wants is for us to open our eyes and minds, to recognize that things aren't always as we believe them to be. And that's precisely what happens to Nathaniel. Once he meets Jesus, once he hears him speak, he comes to realize just how wrong he was. Yes, something good DID come out of Nazareth. The Christ himself.

We walk through our lives often thinking we've got this whole God thing figured out. But that's very much so arrogant presumption. God's always full of surprises. You never know who or what God might use to shake us out of our complacency. We never stop learning. We never stop growing. God is always showing us something new, about him, about our world, about the people around us. There is wonder here unimagined, right in front of us, if only we could see it.

Time and again, I am convinced that one of God's goals with us is for us to see this world and its people through his eyes. To view them with his love. When and if that happens, do you really think the things we hold up as so important will matter any more? Gender? Politics? Race? Sexual orientation? We are made imago dei, in the image of God, and he loves all of us beyond words.

Perhaps that's the greatest surprise of all.

Weekly Devotional for January 17

Scripture text: Luke 7:17-23

I'm going to begin today with a "mea culpa." I did not post a devotional last week, partly due to being absent-minded, but also partly because I just wasn't "there" spiritually. We've all gone through that from time to time, when life's troubles overshadow us. Times when things aren't going so well. Times when life just gets hard and we just down.

I know it's a bit verboten to admit, but we pastors go through it too. I know popular perception is that we're somehow paragons of the faith. We never doubt. We never question. We stand atop our pedestals as a model to emulate. But it's simply not true. We stumble. We struggle. Just like everyone else.

And that's one of the reasons when I'm in one of these moments of spiritual melancholy that I love this story from Luke's Gospel. It begins with John the Baptist in prison. Things in his life have definitely gone south in a big way. And John sends disciples to Jesus to inquire "Are you the real deal?"

Now wait a minute. This is John the Baptist. This is same fellow who even before he was born leaped in his mother's womb when Mary (pregnant with Jesus) came to visit. He probably grew up with Jesus. They probably played together as children. In fact, it's easy to argue that of all the people in the world, the only person who knows Jesus better than John is Mary. John knows Jesus backwards and forwards. How can he doubt who is cousin is and what he's about?

The answer to that is easier than we might care to admit. Life hasn't exactly worked out the way John expected. He's in prison. His ministry has fallen apart. He's probably depressed. He's probably feeling a bit lost. Things that were once certain to him are no longer. Everything that John ever believed is now in question.

The greatest prophet of all time (by Jesus' own reckoning) is struggling with doubt. If he can, who of us can't?

Jesus takes the question that John's disciples convey to him in stride. "Go and tell what you see." It's the perfect answer to John's dilemma. For what do those disciples witness but the blind receiving their sight, the poor hearing good news, the lame walking, the lepers are healed. They see the Kingdom of God in-breaking upon our world. They see the very thing John predicted was coming.

Doubt, struggle, melancholy, depression are real, of course, but one thing they do is often blind us to the truth. Jesus' response to John's disciples is to open their eyes (and, in turn, his) to what was truly happening. We are no different. Our lives may stumble from time to time, but the world keeps turning and God keeps working. The Kingdom continues to break in upon our world. It's still out there, doing what it does: transforming our world from what it is to what it is meant to be.

Martin Luther King, whose life we celebrated earlier this week, once said the "arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice." It does indeed. For us at times, it may seem that it takes far too long, but the Kingdom is coming. Good will overcome. God will triumph. Even if we do not see it, it is still coming. Have faith. Hold fast. The universe is turning to align with God's plan. Trust in that. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for January 3, 2016

Scripture reading: Matthew 2:1-12 (Appointed for January 6: The Festival of Epiphany)

I've long argued in preaching and teaching that our God is a god of surprises. He never does what people expect. He's always doing the unexpected, the surprising, the "hey, wait a minute..."

We see this throughout the Scriptures. For the father of his Chosen, he picks a man named Abram who is both aged and childless. For the liberator of his people, he picks an exiled murderer with a stuttering problem named Moses. The greatest king of his people is not some virile Adonis, but the ruddy youngest son of Jesse, so inconsequential that he's forgotten when Samuel comes to anoint the new king. Jesus calls a tax collector and (according to the traditions) a prostitute to be among his most devoted followers.

The story of Jesus' birth fits this pattern. The king of kings, the savior of the world, is born not in a palace, but in a manger: the feeding troth of animals. His birth, the most monumental event in human history, is not welcomed by the high and mighty, but by slaves and shepherds. And while Luke tells us those same shepherds told what they had witnessed far and wide, it doesn't seem they were listened to by very many.

Which bring us to Matthew's version of the Christmas story. Strangers from the east, diviners and sorcerers of the Persian court, arrive as a diplomatic envoy to the court of King Herod, seeking the newborn King of the Jews. This news of a new king is utter shock to everyone in Jerusalem. They didn't have a clue.

Does anyone else note the irony here? The Jews, the remnant of the Chosen Hebrews, those most steeped in the Scriptures, those most familiar with the prophecies of Messiah, had utterly missed that Christ had been born in their very midst. And the only people who seemed to realize this monumental event were these foreigners, followers of the Zoroastrian religion, who knew next to nothing of Yahweh and his holy Word.

God did it again. Gotcha! Surprise!

The Christmas story is hardly the last time God has done this. The most influential Christian of the early Church, the one who wrote the majority of the New Testament, was a former persecutor of Christianity. The one who denied Christ three times goes willingly to his martyrdom for the sake of the Gospel. These fishermen and commoners who Jesus called disciple and apostle spread as far as India and Europe to spread the Gospel they'd embraced. Surprise after surprise.

Even today, God continues to zing us with his surprises, showing the wonders of his grace.

Which is one the reasons I get so discouraged by the fear and prejudice I see in so much of the Church today. How do we know that Muslim might not become the instrument of God's work in the world tomorrow? How do we know that immigrant might not become the means by which God brings a new cure for disease into the world? The least likely people have been chosen time and again to be God's hands in the world. If the magi can proclaim Christ's birth, what can't God do with any of us?

The author of Hebrews warns us to be ever welcoming, since angels do appear in disguise in our midst. God is ever at work in our world, constant in his love of surprise. Hey, people, watch this...and then wonders unfold before us. Sinners do amazing work of righteousness. The mute speak. The deaf hear. The lame walk anew. Open your eyes and your heart and God will surprise you too.

Devotional for the week of December 20, 2015 (Week of Christmas)

Scripture reading: Micah 4:1-5 (Appointed for December 22)

Most of us have probably heard the old Chinese "curse:" May you live in interesting times.

Well, I think it is a fair statement that we are living in those interesting times right now.

I have had the fortune (misfortune perhaps) to have lived through the final years of the Cold War, a time when nuclear annihilation seemed like a very real possibility. I remember Samantha Smith asking the Russians if they were going to blow us up. I remember President Reagan joking about outlawing Russia and that bombing would commence in 5 minutes. I remember preachers talking about the end of the world being just around the corner; that because Chernobyl translates to "wormwood" in English that the accident in the Ukraine was proof that the Apocalypse was nigh. I remember the fear.

Now maybe it's the difference between a child's perceptions and an adult's, but the fear and anxiety now FAR overshadows anything I remember from the 1980s. On one level, it doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. Statistically, you are far more likely to be mauled by a bear, eaten by a shark, or struck by lightning than you are to be killed by the hands of a terrorist. Maybe even all three at once.

That sounds like a nasty D&D monster: The Lightning Bear Shark. Which is fitting since the odds of dying to an imaginary monster is still probably more likely than dying in a terrorist attack. Not that it matters. Perception is almost always more important than reality when it comes to these sorts of things.

But even reality isn't very fun right now. Yes, terrorism is real, but remote. What is more immediate for many of us are other threats, other things that frighten. There's crime, there's economic insecurity, there's disease, there's the death of loved ones, there's the changing demographics of our society. People feel like life is leaving them behind. That leaves us unsettled...nervous...scared.

It may not be a lot of consolation, but this truly is nothing new. The world we live in is an unsettling place. In many ways, we're always out of sorts. What changes is the form that it takes. It's a broken world, broken by sin, death, and discord. Even if we didn't have the teachings of our faith to tell us that, we would know it in our guts and in our hearts. Life just ain't right. We're ALWAYS living in interesting times.

God is, of course, fully aware of this. He knows the world is broken. It wasn't his intention for things to be this way; Genesis makes very clear the world was made "good." But he was there when it went wrong and he's been here ever since, slowly and inexorably putting things back to right.

Time and again, God reveals this intention for our world. He is going to put things back the way they were supposed to be. Our passage from Micah today is one such example. It is a reiteration of the Old Covenant, the purpose of God for the world. The nations will come to God to learn his ways, to put aside their differences, "to learn war no more." Swords to plowshares and peace on Earth and all that.

In this time of year, we see another powerful example of God's intentions for our world in the birth of his Son. It it no coincidence that even in the famous Christmas story, we hear again this purpose of God: Peace on Earth, good will towards humankind.

Those words and the plan and purpose behind them resonate in our day as much if not more so than they ever have. No matter how "interesting" life becomes, God is at work. God is present. God, through Christ, is bringing peace on Earth.

So we'll live through terrorism, cold wars, lousy job markets, and an ever changing and sometimes seemingly darkening world. God remains true to his promise and his purpose. There will come a day when all will be set right. There will come a day when all the nations and all the people will stream to him to learn peace once more. The Old Testament testifies to this. The New Testament testifies to this. Christ brings this through his birth, life, death, and resurrection.

It is coming. Fear not. For this great news for all people...

Merry Christmas.

Weekly Devotional for December 13, 2015

Scripture readings: Psalm 80:1-7, Jeremiah 31:31-34 (Appointed for December 17)

"We preach best what we need to learn most."

I used that quote from the 2003 Luther movie on Sunday to describe my task that day. When I stood before the congregation at Canadochly that morning, I could feel the weight of the world on my shoulders and everything that goes with it: discouragement, weariness, and desperation. I spoke to seeing the light in the darkness, to finding hope and joy in the midst of life's travails, knowing that it was what I, if no one else, needed to hear.

If anything, in the days since, the darkness of my world has gotten more oppressive. The young man, Freddie Kemfort, that I spoke of in my sermon died that afternoon. I've spent most of this week preparing for his funeral and visiting with his wife and two young daughters (ages 3 and 1). My emotions alternate between rage at the unfairness of this mess to empathetic sorrow at what his family must be experiencing to the fear of "what if," knowing that my own beloved wife is only one month younger than Freddie.

So what then do I need to hear today? Is it what you need to hear as well?

It is not coincidental that among the texts appointed in the Daily Lectionary for this week is Jeremiah 31:31-34. This is, of course, one of the many Old Testament prophecies that we Christians interpret as predictive of the coming of Christ Jesus on Christmas. And given that it is the time of Advent before Christmas, such texts are fitting.

But I find its pairing with Psalm 80 to be curiously fitting in another way. Psalm 80 is a lament, a cry of anguish to God about some calamity or misfortune.

O Lord God of hosts,
how long will you be angry with your people’s prayers?
You have fed them with the bread of tears,
and given them tears to drink in full measure.
You make us the scorn of our neighbours;
our enemies laugh among themselves.

These are not the words of some happy camper. These are the words of someone in pain, someone fed up with the trials of life, someone tired of dealing with life's crap. Someone like Freddie's friends and family. Someone like the people at my congregations. Someone like me.

And then, as if in answer, come the words of God to Jeremiah.

The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.

We know this new covenant. It was a man, God made flesh in the form of an infant born in a stable in Bethlehem 2000 or so years ago.

As I have said in nearly every funeral sermon I have ever preached (and after nearly 15 years of ministry, that's quite a lot), that God does not sit idle while his people are in pain. God is on the move. He is acting to put right what has gone wrong with his world and our lives within it. The Old Covenant to Abraham was the first step of that. I remember well its words.

'and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’ (Genesis 12:3b)

That universal blessing came in the New Covenant that Jeremiah predicted. It came in Christ, who lived, died, and rose again for the sake of us all.

All too often in our society today, we pretend away our pain in the onslaught of faux Christmas cheer. But Christmas has no meaning without our pain. Our pain is the reason Christmas exists, because it is the reason Christ came. He came to put things right. He came to destroy sin and death and open the way to salvation and eternity for us. He came to fulfill the promises God had made in both the Old and New covenants and from the cross, he cried out "It is finished!"

We like to harp on the "true meaning" of Christmas. Well, this is it. God wins! God is setting the world to right. God has answered the prayers of his people, the deepest longing of a broken world. All made right in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. God wins!

And because of that, so do we.

Weekly Devotional for the week of December 6, 2015

Scripture text: 2 Peter 1:2-15

I make no secret that I am often quite political in my writing and proclamation. From where I sit, living as a Christian in a democratic society demands our active participation in the civic life of our society, turning it as best we can to best reflect the Christ we serve and his wishes for his people. We are here to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, speak for the voiceless, and welcome the stranger. We are called to love our neighbor and there are many ways in which we can steer the ship of state to do that by our votes and our voices. (This is, of course, in addition to our proclamation of the Gospel, a task for which the state is particularly unsuited. Luther would agree and I would point to his teachings on the Two Kingdoms as to why.)

That said, however, I am very cautious to make my comments to be about policies, not about people or parties. No single individual or political party best reflects the just world God brings with his kingdom, nor are they meant to. We will never see that perfect world by our own doing; all we can do is come a little closer and create a more just society to benefit as many as possible.

Bearing all this in mind, I am deeply concerned about where our society is moving in recent days. I can no longer be silent, nor can I ignore the fact that these trends are being driven by people with an agenda. A leading Presidential candidate is howling out more and more outrageous and hateful rhetoric about every minority under the sun. The President of a leading Christian university calls upon his student body to arm themselves in order to offer violent retribution against people of the Muslim faith (and yes, I know he clarified his remarks later to point out he was not referring to all Muslims, but the lynch mob spirit surrounding his original remarks make such “clarifications” moot. )

More disturbing by far than these individuals are those who are listening to them. Trump and Falwell tell the people of our country to hate; millions eat it up and many are acting on it. A Philadelphia mosque was vandalized with a decapitated pig. A Muslim taxi driver is shot by his passenger because of his religion. My Facebook wall has become a disheartening place to visit, as people I love and respect are likewise spewing out ugly and bigoted rhetoric against people of all stripes: black, Muslim, immigrant, LGBT, you name it.

It’s no secret that many, if not most, of these people are Christian.

Have we fallen so far into fear that we have forgotten who we are and whose we are? I see nothing that is Christ-like in this hateful language and in those who are listening to it and acting upon it. We are so quick to forget what really matters, to turn our back on Christ and on our faith in the face of an appealing evil. What Trump, Falwell, and others have said may sound good and it may have a certain sick logic to it, but make no mistake, they are speaking EVIL. They are not acting or living in accord with the Christ we serve, regardless of whatever claims they may make otherwise. “By their fruits, you will know them.” (Matt 7:20) The false prophets that Jesus warns us about just a few short verses before that? They are in our midst and on our TV screens and our Internet feeds. Some of them have famous names. Some of them are our friends. But they are leading people astray nonetheless.

It is times like these where the words of St. Peter truly have their impact. As Christians, we are to move closer to Christ, “making every effort to confirm our calling and election.” We do this by goodness, not evil. We do this by knowledge, not ignorance. We do this by self-control, not panic. We do this by perseverance, not surrender to our anger. We do this by trusting God, not our own strength or weaponry. We do this by mutual affection and love, not hatred. This is who we are to be and not this false Christianity of paranoia and hatred.

Peter sees his role as one of “always reminding you of these things.” We need that reminder constantly. It is so easy to fall into the traps of smooth-talking charlatans who tell us lies that sound really good in times of turmoil and uncertainty. Jesus knew such people would be out there and that far too many would fall prey to them. Peter, remembering well his Lord’s warnings, repeats them anew for us. Do not forget who you are. Do not forget what God has done for you in Christ; that he has died and risen again for your salvation. Do not forget the calling of your baptism; that you are to proclaim Christ, his love, his promises in all that you say and do. This is what it means to be Christian. Not what the hate-mongers of our current political climate are selling.

Remember!

Weekly Devotional for November 30, 2015

Scripture text: Luke 11:29-32 (Appointed for Wednesday, December 2)

Ah, Jonah.

I am often guilty of saying this or that text of Scripture is one of my favorites, so much so that it becomes easier to count the ones I do not consider favorites than the ones that are. But if I were to rank my favorite texts in much the same way the music industry does pop songs, the book of Jonah would easily rank in the top 5.

There’s a reason for that. Jonah is a lot more than the old fish story we heard as kids. Jonah is a complex man, painfully human and a product of the times in which he lived. He’s rather unique in that among all of the prophets, apostles, liberators, and disciples we read about in both the Old and New Testaments, in that he’s probably the only one who does NOT want God’s will to be done.

It’s the whole reason he flees across the sea to begin with. He’s not afraid of death nor is he lazy. He simply does not want God to forgive the people of the Assyrian Empire. He knows that if the Assyrians of Nineveh repent, God will forgive and God will spare them. He doesn’t want that; He wants the Assyrians to burn, so he runs away, hoping he can run out God’s clock and force the hand of the Almighty.

Of course, God is not so easily tricked, Jonah does end up in Nineveh after his episode with the fish, the people do repent, and God does forgive. It works out the way God intended all along.

In today’s passage, Jesus references this story to highlight the willingness of the foreign Ninevites to submit to God’s will, contrasting these people of history with the stubbornness of the religious authorities of his own people in his own time. It’s not a pretty picture.

So what does this have to do with us today?

We Christians like to think of ourselves as responsive to God’s will. But often times we are Jonah and we are the Pharisees and scribes of Jesus’ day, using our piety to mask our disgust at God’s willingness to embrace those we reject. I hear the howls of angry people, often Christians, against those of other races, religions, political backgrounds, etc. I hear words of hate and condemnation for those who are different. Worse still, I see these things on an increase in these difficult days.

And then I see atheists and non-believers stepping up to feed the hungry, care for the sick, and welcome the stranger and I wonder if Jesus were here with us today if he wouldn’t speak these same words to this “wicked generation.” The sign of Jonah condemns us as well.

It doesn’t need to be that way. As God says to Jonah at the conclusion of his book, “Should I not be concerned about Nineveh, that great city, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people?” If God cares for the foreigner and all those who are different from ourselves by race, religion, political affiliation or whatever, shouldn’t we? If we are followers of Christ and Christ came to save sinners of every tribe and race (Rev 7:9), should we not follow his example? Showing love rather than hate? Cooling our anger and our fears to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed even to those we might have previously rejected?

Being a Christian is not meant to be easy. In fact, I’d argue that if your faith leaves you nice and comfortable in your prejudices and preconceptions about people, you’re doing it wrong. The faith of Christ is an active thing; it drives us out into the world to confront and to comfort those who are different than us with a word of hope that we ourselves have received. We are not called to stew in our own malice and perceptions of pious self-superiority; we are called to proclaim the good news to a world that desperately needs it.

So get busy.

---

Post Script...

I submitted this blog post yesterday just hours before news broke of the horrific shooting in California. I cannot help but think that these nightmarish events that occur with terrifying frequency in our society today are proof of the desperate need for the Church to be the Church.

I have seen a number of commentators point out that the core of the problem behind this violence is first and foremost our culture. I could not agree more; we simply do not take care of one another the way other nations and societies do. We gripe and complain that providing even the most basic necessities for life to those less fortunate is a drain. No wonder the desperate see violence as their only outlet. If they didn't have guns, they'd use knives, swords, or some other weapon, but violence would still be their response because we won't listen to them any other way.

Additionally, we stand around and complain when no one does anything about the problems of crime, violence, and poverty. My response is "What are you waiting for?"

It's long past time that we stop leaving all this to "somebody else." It's long past time we stopped ignoring our brothers and sisters (at best) or denigrating them (at worst).

I stand by what I said above. This isn't going to be comfortable or easy. But if you want to stop the killing and stop the hating, step up and start doing something. It won't happen any other way.

Weekly Devotional for November 23, 2015

Scripture Reading: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-22 (Appointed for November 27, 2015)

I hope all have had a blessed Thanksgiving holiday.

The perennial question asked around this time of year is “What are you thankful for?” Reflecting further on the things that I preached about this past Sunday, I can say with confidence that I am thankful this year (and most every year) for those people in my life who have taught me the faith, who have encouraged that faith, who have taught me that I matter.

A comment was made on this blog this past week about the question of the Syrian Refugees, reminding me that our purpose as Christians is not just to “welcome the stranger,” but also to spread the Good News of Jesus Christ. I could not agree more, but I would point out that there are few things that I can imagine that can spread that Gospel more potently than to offer kindness to people in desperate need. After all, that is what Christ himself did when he reached down to heal the sick and the suffering.

Those simple acts of kindness are what fuels our evangelism, far more so than all the Bible verses we might quote or theological arguments we might make. If you want to make Christ real to people, be like him, in as much as you are able.

My Thanksgiving this year was somewhat bittersweet. As many pastors do, I linger somewhat on the fringes of my previous congregations and previous communities, seeking not to interfere with my successors, but ever curious about the people for whom I cared for many years. Wednesday was a bad day for the Davis, WV community and for the congregation of St. John’s Lutheran in particular. One member (a good personal friend of mine) set himself on fire at his hunting camp and had to be helicoptered to Pittsburgh hospital’s burn unit. A long time member of the Davis community (and another good personal friend) revealed that she had uterine cancer. And one of the most beloved and loyal members of the St. John’s congregation joined the Church Triumphant. All in one day.

It is the third person that I would like to talk about and as good an example of the point I’m trying to make in this blog post as I could find. Don Gnegy was everything a pastor could want in a congregation member: loyal, intelligent, and compassionate. He will be greatly missed.

Don, some years ago, during a church renovation project.

Eleven years ago now, I was in a very rough spot. It all started on Friday. My beloved grandfather was in his last months of life and teetering as those who are dying do between life and death. Every day, there was that question. Is this it? I got the call from my mother. He’s not doing well. You probably want to come down.

I had adopted a beautiful little Finnish Spitz mix named Binksy from a couple moving overseas about a year before, but on this particular weekend, she’d taken ill. I had to board her anyway because I was leaving to see my grandfather, and where I boarded her was the local veterinary office. So they promised to look after her and see what they could do about her illness.

Binksy in her prime

I also had a doctor’s appointment. I had been suffering some severe pain in my abdomen and groin for several weeks and I needed to be checked out. Turns out, I had some rather large hernias that required pretty immediate surgery.

Anyway, I drive to Charleston, my hometown, and visit with my grandfather. He’s not doing well, but this proves a false alarm. But while I’m there, I get the call that Binksy had died.

I returned to Davis in time for services on Sunday. That morning, I did as some pastors do: I asked that my congregation minister to me. I dumped on them everything that had happened in the past three days; the need for surgery, my ailing grandfather, and the loss of my beloved pet.

After services, Don Gnegy pulled me aside. “I can’t do anything about your grandfather and the surgery, but I might be able to help you with a dog. Let me check.” Don’s daughter, Donna, breeds border collies, so I was curious as to what he had in mind.

Skip ahead a week, and Don grabs me before worship. “There’s a dog available and she’ll cost you about $150.”

I’m thinking, “$150 for a pure-bred border collie from a breeder. That’s a steal!” I agree to his terms immediately.

Skip ahead another week. Don again pulls me aside. “The dog’s on her way and she’ll be free.” But there was a complication. This was the week of my surgery. I couldn’t take a new dog, particular one as active as a border collie, while I was recovering from that.

Don waved it off. “Don’t worry. We’ll keep her until you are ready.”

The dog is my beloved Pammy-girl. She’s twelve years old now and still going strong. She’s in the care of my parents, since I was unable to take her with me to York. But I love her still and she’s been the best dog I ever had.

Pammy-girl, resting comfortably at my parent's home.

Don went out of his way to show kindness to me when I was in dire straits. He didn’t have to do that. There was nothing demanding that kindness of him except his faith and his compassion towards me. In that moment, Don showed me that I mattered. He evangelized me in a time of doubt and darkness, building me up, lifting me up out of the haze. This story is one of my favorites to tell people because what he did still means the world to me.

This is what Christianity is about. This is evangelion, “telling good news.” When Paul calls on the church in Thessalonica with his final exhortations in his letter, this is what he’s talking about. Do good to one another. You never know what even the most basic kindnesses can do for others. Amen.

Weekly Devotional for November 15, 2015

Scripture Readings: Daniel 8:15-27, Hebrews 10:32-39 (Appointed for Tuesday, November 17)

We are now 5 days out from the horrific events in Paris and the “terror” that terrorist attack was meant to engender is already in full swing. My Facebook wall has already become a massive tribute to the fear and bigotry that often lies just beneath the surface of otherwise decent and ordinary people. Calls to reject the refugees who are fleeing the tyranny of ISIS. Calls to close the mosques of American Muslims. Calls for violence against Muslims of all stripes worldwide. You name it. I’ve seen it, posted there in social media for the world to see.

This, of course, echoes the words of public figures and pundits who are stoking the fear for their own ends. In this election season, it pays to pander so pander they do.

And, in the midst of all this, I find myself reading the Apocalypse of Daniel from the Old Testament. Texts that speak about the villainy of the “kings of Medea and Persia” and others from those lands who will come after them. It could be very easy for many to see such texts and wonder if those predictions are playing out before our very eyes.

Of course, I’ve seen that claim on Facebook of late as well. It’s the End Times! Be afraid all the more!

In many ways, I am thankful that these Daniel texts are paired with the words of the book of Hebrews in the New Testament. Much like Daniel, there is talk here of persecution, suffering, imprisonment, and the loss of worldly goods, all things again that can be frightening to us. But Hebrews comes with an additional warning: “But we are not among those who shrink back and so are lost, but among those who have faith and so are saved.”

Saint Paul speaks of this elsewhere: “For you did not receive a spirit of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received a spirit of adoption. When we cry, “Abba! Father!” it is that very Spirit bearing witness with our spirit that we are children of God." (Romans 8:15)

The first casualty of war is the truth and we who are caving into our fear in these times of potential and/or imminent war are very much in danger of losing the truth of the Gospel. Regardless of whatever terrifying things are happening throughout the world, we still belong to Christ Jesus. We are still the children of God. We are still those who are saved. God remains in control now and always. We are not meant to be “those who shrink back” in fear and hatred, but we are to be the beacon of truth in the midst of frightening times. We are meant, as Hebrews reminds us, to be the ones who persevere in times of trial such as these.

It is not easy to be a Christian. I’ve argued before how much harder it is to believe than not to (quoting as I do that song from Steve Taylor.) And these times are why. Fear is an easy temptation. There is much in the world that frightens. But what are our fears to the God that we serve? The one who did not spare his own son, but gave him up for all our sakes? That is who stands with us in the midst of these times and always. That is the one who has promised us life in the midst of death and darkness.

We cannot forget this truth in these troubling times. The world seeks to lash out in fear and anger, and while there is likely to be retribution against those who have perpetuated this evil, we must not allow the innocent to be caught up in this as well. As Christians, we are called to aid the downtrodden, to welcome the stranger, precisely because our fate is secured in Christ and we have nothing to fear in this world. That is who we are. That is what we believe. The world needs our voice now more than ever, a voice of sanity and compassion in the midst of madness and terror. It is our calling. It is our truth. Hold fast and be who we are meant to be.