Daily Devotions

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”  Mark 4:35-41

When I was growing up there was a list of sins that were never written down but were strictly forbidden in our house.  Chief among them was the ironclad rule – Thou Shalt Not Talk Back To Thy Mother!  There was a certain bit of leeway in the other “no no’s” of life but talking back to my mother brought an immediate and memorable response.  Even those little angry whispers as you turned and walked away were dealt with severely.

I’m not saying that is anything wrong with that rule or even most of my experiences in suffering their enforcement.  Respecting authority figures is an important value in life.  The trouble is, it is only natural that we take that same rule about “talking back to our parents” into all aspects of life with us.  And sometimes that severely limits us.

Sometimes those lessons of youth teach an inordinate mistrust of authority figures.  It is a short path from such mistrust to resentment and outright rebellion.  So it is important that we develop the skills of tactfully yet effectively disagreeing with authority figures.

And sometimes we carry those same lessons into our spirituality.  The God we know as our parent then becomes the “One Whom We Shall Not Talk Back To.”  This takes us to a place where we hold ourselves back, cut some deeply true parts of ourselves off from God.  We carry ideas that we can’t share any uncomfortable thoughts or feelings with God.  We can’t disagree, can’t argue, can’t get angry, can’t question.  Do that long enough and eventually God kind of “disappears” from our real lives.

So it is that we are surprised to hear the words from the mouths of the disciples, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”  Seeing those words in print is a bit antiseptic – imagine them instead being screamed in the dark, with flashes of lightning revealing the crashing waves and the rain pouring down the faces of the terrified disciples.

“Don’t you care that we are perishing!!!!!”

Matthew’s version of the story preserves a bit more piety in the disciples where, in the 8^th chapter, they say, “Lord, save us!  We are perishing!”  It becomes a plea for help rather than a question about Jesus’ compassion.

But Mark doesn’t scrub the disciples’ images.  He puts in their mouths the same prayer we have all prayed from time to time.  Over against the internal rules we might have grown up with, haven’t we all questioned God along the way?  Don’t you see?  Don’t you care?

I’m saying today that God welcomes such cries from our lips because they are OUR cries, from OUR lips and God is big enough to take it.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, when the waves crash around us we become terrified.  When life closes in on us, we become afraid.  So we cry to you without thought of politeness or manners.  Hear those cries for what they are – our longing to be safe in you.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd behind, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. Other boats were with him. A great windstorm arose, and the waves beat into the boat, so that the boat was already being swamped. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion; and they woke him up and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” He woke up and rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” Then the wind ceased, and there was a dead calm. He said to them, “Why are you afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great awe and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”  Mark 4:35-41

We’ll spend the first three days of this week having fun listening to this text.  Today we begin with the words, “Let us go across to the other side.”

The Sea of Galilee isn’t that large – about 13 miles long and 8 miles wide.  You can easily see across to the other side of the lake.  The disciples had spent their entire lives living on the shores of that lake or fishing its waters.  It was nothing for them to be afraid of.  They didn’t hesitate to get into the boat with Jesus.  They might even have been relieved at the idea of getting away from the crowds for awhile.

Little did they know what that night would bring.

The “idea” of crossing over to the other side was appealing to them.  But then a great windstorm arose, the waves started crashing, the boat started rocking and filling with water and they had serious second thoughts.  The “idea” of the crossing sounded good but the “reality” was terrifying.

We live this movement throughout our lives.  We know we can’t experience what life has in store for us “on the other side” unless we make that crossing.  We can’t grow up and move out into the world on our own without crossing over years of education.  We can’t share the true depths of intimacy with another without making a commitment to them. We can’t become parents without having children and parenting.  We can’t get “there” without leaving “here.”

We aren’t alone in that.

There is a little line in this text that we seldom give any consideration to.  It says, “Other boats were with him.”  Nothing is said about those other boats.  Nothing is said about their experience in the storm.  The disciples make no mention of those other boats.  But they were there.  They were going through the same thing.

Strange, isn’t it, that when we get caught in the stormy crossings of one stage of our lives to another that we can feel so utterly alone?  As if we are the only ones who have had to suffer through the challenges of college, or stormy conversations with those we love, or bad news from the doctor, or losing a job?  The temptation, crossing through the storms of life, is to see only the crashing waves and the boat filling up so quickly without connecting with the “other boats”, the other people, who have weathered precisely the same storms.

The other temptation, of course, is to stay on the shore and never attempt a crossing.  It is a temptation, but also an illusion.  For time, and life itself, never stands still.  The same storm of the crossing also lashes at the shore.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, you invited your friends to join you in a boat for a night time sail across a soon stormy sea.  You have invited us on a similar journey – casting our lives into your care and keeping, you bring us through many storms in our lives.  May your presence bring us a willingness to sail and courage in the face of the storms.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“From now on, therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view; even though we once knew Christ from a human point of view, we know him no longer in that way. So if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation: everything old has passed away; see, everything has become new!”  2 Corinthians 5:16-17

We seldom know the whole story….that isn’t strong enough…we never know the whole story.  It is impossible for us to know the whole story.  Only God knows the whole story.  Given this truth, this is where we must start.

For example, in all of the years that I have read the writings of the Apostle Paul, I’ve been aware that I don’t know his whole story.  I’ve guessed along the way, but only guessed.  I’ve read between the lines of a writer who was raised as a Jew but also a natural born Roman citizen.  A young boy sent away to boarding school to study under Gamaliel in Jerusalem and therefore entering the double bind of an “outsider” who would never truly and fully be accepted as an “insider” – a position that would curse him for the rest of his life, both as a budding Pharisee and as a passionate Christian and spokesman for the faith.

Such a “guess” helps me better understand the rage that Paul felt and wrote about when he heard about the two-faced dinner etiquette of Peter eating with the Gentiles.  Even though Acts tells us that Peter was the one given the vision of inclusivity, that wasn’t enough to motivate Peter to act differently when around Jewish/Christian leaders then he did when safely removed from their influence.  Paul would have none of that!

So it is with all people, everyone we’ve met, everyone we’ve known, even to the extent that we know ourselves.  We never know the whole story.  Only God knows the whole story.

But we know what we need to know.

And what we need to know is that we have never met, never known and never even imagine a person unloved by God.  For God so loved the world, the cosmos, the creation, that he sent his Son to live, die and live again.  When we are baptized, when we enter into that great equalizer of death, we are raised to the new life that is ours in Christ.  WE are transformed and that transformation leads us to SEE others in an entirely new light.  We see others, all others, as beloved children of God.

Of course others might not see themselves in that same light.  Which is the ground of our calling then to proclaim good news  into their lives in word and deed, that they might also come to see life as we do.  We might disagree about much, we might be very very different people, but the one thing we all have in common is the love of God.  We don’t know the whole story…but we already know the end.

And so it is that Paul can say “therefore, we regard no one from a human point of view” – Paul just can’t look at someone without seeing the love of God.  And that does indeed change everything.  No one can be dismissed out of hand.  There is no “outside”, only a broken “inside.”  There is a deeper story that undergirds the mysterious stories of our lives.  Our calling is to live connected to that deeper story for the good of the world.

Let us pray:  Lord God, you continue to shape us, to bring to full harvest the seeds of faith which have been planted in our lives.  You see what we cannot see, know what we cannot know.  And yet you reveal enough to guide us in our walk.  Continue to shine that Light before us as we carry the news of your new creation into these lives which we now live.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we try to persuade others; but we ourselves are well known to God, and I hope that we are also well known to your consciences. We are not commending ourselves to you again, but giving you an opportunity to boast about us, so that you may be able to answer those who boast in outward appearance and not in the heart. For if we are beside ourselves, it is for God; if we are in our right mind, it is for you. For the love of Christ urges us on, because we are convinced that one has died for all; therefore all have died. And he died for all, so that those who live might live no longer for themselves, but for him who died and was raised for them.  2 Corinthians 5:11-15

When does a child first learn to say the word “mine”?

I can’t remember the exact timeline but I remember well that, once learned, well before reaching the age of two, it was a word that was trotted out more often than possible.

“MINE!” when a visiting toddler reached for the wrong toy.  “MINE!” when we decided she had had enough Cheerio’s.  “MINE!” when a sibling wanted…just about anything.

It is a strange thing that, as they grew up, the word “mine” slipped off the radar screen when suggestions were made to attach it to toys or books or shoes clothing that hadn’t been picked up off the floor.

And it is a strange thing indeed that any toddler declares anything to be “mine” given their complete lack of participation in any economic or creative effort that resulted in the “mine object” entering our home.

Paul suggests, beginning with our very lives, that nothing in life is “mine.”  Life is a gift.  The only real belonging is the reality that we belong to God – the God who created us, who redeemed us, and who fills us with the breath of life.  We, and everything about our lives, comes with a tag that says “Use as intended” – and the whole kit and kaboodle belongs to God.

So it is that Paul is carrying this message to the Corinthians who seem to have forgotten much of what he taught them in the time he was among them.  They are being swayed by other teachers.  They seem content returning to the dead end lives in which Paul found them.  They are being manipulated by teachers who present an “eye candy” faith that is increasingly disconnected from the heart of God-given reality.

So Paul reminds them that they belong to God.  Their lives are not their own.  Their calling, like Paul’s calling, comes to them from the outside.  They live, not for themselves, but as representatives, ambassadors, of a divine sovereignty.  They have died to an old life that God might raise them to a new life and that changes everything.

Not “mine” but “thine.”

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, teach us anew that we belong to you.  Teach us to live with a lightness in our being and a sense of your purpose being lived out through us.  Remind us that we belong to you.  Always and forever.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

So we are always confident; even though we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord— for we walk by faith, not by sight. Yes, we do have confidence, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.  For all of us must appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each may receive recompense for what has been done in the body, whether good or evil.  2 Corinthians 5:6-10

Certain passages of scripture are difficult for me.  Two pieces of these four verses hold such difficulty.

Yes, there is a deep confidence in these verses.  Yes, we do walk by faith rather than by sight as children of God and there is deep comfort in that.  There is the assurance that we don’t have to see the end of the trail to know we are following the right path.  There is the promise that there is more to life, more to our destiny in Christ, than the difficulties we experience in life today.

But the dark side of such confidence is the temptation to quit.  To bail out.  It is the temptation to despair and hopelessness for this life.

The other troublesome passage is the reminder of our scheduled(?) appearance before the judgment seat of Christ and the declaration that, once there, we will get what we deserve based on the good or evil we’ve done in this life.

Here too is cause for despair.  This is how I saw the faith before I came to faith.  This is how Christianity worked for me as a child – God was like Santa, he saw everything and only gave me good things when I did good things.  All was right with God if I was nice, and all I got from God was bad if I was naughty.

99% of the time I was naughty.

But then I discovered this good news called “grace.”  I discovered that the mercy of God would trump the justice of God.  And I discovered that, when Jesus came to do for us what we cannot and will not do for ourselves, I was included in that number.  And everything changed for me.  My life, my passions, my goals, my future.

But I’m still naughty.

Lutheran theology helped me there.  It pointed out passages like Romans 7 and wrapped it in a doctrine called “simul ustus et peccator” which holds the tension that we all experience as being wholly both saint and sinner, naughty and nice, at the same time.

But then Paul tells me again that there is a big ledger book in heaven with a full list of my merits and demerits.  I’m pretty sure which column will turn out longer.  And again comes the temptation to despair.

Until I think about my children.  Nothing could stop me from loving my children and my stepchildren.  Even the list of their demerits.  And, I hope at least, that it would bring them joy to know that they can live their lives in such a way that will also bring joy to their parents.  But we’re here to help them grow up.  Being “graceful” parents does not mean that anything goes or that everything is OK.  It means being honest parents, helpful parents, self sacrificing parents.

Which changes everything and drives the despair away.  Because it allows me to see that moment before the judgment seat as the time for my last confession, the final experience of clearing the air, knowing that Christ truly and deeply knows me – and welcomes me home anyway.

That vision, strangely enough, makes THIS life holy and worthwhile.  Heaven can wait even as we strive for it each day.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, sustain us in the midst of the difficulties of this life with the promise of your presence and the hope of your love.  Forgive us our shortcomings and our fears, fill us with purpose and power to live fully and freely.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

He also said, “With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it?  It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.”  Mark 4:30-32

Maverick Welsh (his real name) is running for a city council position in my old neighborhood in Houston.  He has spent his working career as a history teacher at Jeff Davis High School.  I was just at a meeting across the street from that school last Saturday at Iglesia Evangelica Luterana El Buen Pastor, one of our Latino congregations in town.

One of the stories that he has been telling on the stump is about an email that he received from a fellow teacher in the Houston Independent School District.  She wrote to thank him for the encouragement he had given her.  It seems that one day, many years before, a young girl who came to Welsh at school one day, distraught that she had found out she was pregnant.  She feared her life was over.

Welsh listened to her story and then assured her that her life wasn’t over at all.  She still had a world of opportunities open to her.  He told her what a good student she was and suggested that she consider a career in education.  He told her how helpful it was to be a teacher who shared the same vacation schedule with her child and how teaching would give her a platform to help other young people make good decisions.

And that is how this planting of seeds works.  Often so secretly, so mysteriously.  A word here.  A loving deed there.  A firm correction and a hard dose of reality and a reminder of grace sprinkled in along the way.

Isn’t that how it has worked along the way for us?  We get discouraged and then something happens, or someone happens along, and we remember who we are and Whose we are.  Our faith seems so whispy and weak and then we find it carrying us through troubled waters we never saw coming.

From one strange character who upset everyone’s apple cart to eleven terrified guys hiding out in an upper room to thousands coming into a faith that would sweep the world.  In the big picture, and in the smallest detail like a snippet of consoling conversation that resets a child’s path in life, the Spirit takes the smallest of seeds and grows it into a work of beauty.

You and I have had those seeds planted deeply into the loam of our lives.  The harvest comes when we plant them in others.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, your eyes are on the sparrows, the smallest and most intimate details and corners of our lives.  Save us from discouragement and short-sightedness as we live as your seed-planting people.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

He also said, “The kingdom of God is as if someone would scatter seed on the ground, and would sleep and rise night and day, and the seed would sprout and grow, he does not know how. The earth produces of itself, first the stalk, then the head, then the full grain in the head. But when the grain is ripe, at once he goes in with his sickle, because the harvest has come.”  Mark 4:26-29

In 1900, roughly 97% of the American economy was directly connected to agriculture and we produced 100% of our food needs.   Today, that percentage has fallen to less than 3% and we produce 120% of our needs and more.  How did that happen?  Innovation, technology and science.  Farmers still work hard but if they want to survive, they also have to have the means to work smarter.

What was once considered a “bumper crop” would be a financial disaster today.  No one saves wheat seeds from 1951 to plant this spring of 2009.  Instead, there are people who constantly and creatively test new hybrids that are more pest and weather resistant.  They test the soil, apply chemicals as efficiently as possible and do everything they can to maximize their harvest.

And yet, given all of this, no one can make the rain fall or quit falling, the hail stay away or make a surprise visit.  Agriculture, the most basic function of providing daily bread to sustain our lives, remains an exercise of faith.  Mystery lies at the heart of the matter.

But Jesus wasn’t merely talking about wheat fields in his parable.  He was also talking about the mysterious planting and growth of seeds of faith in our lives.  People, events, moments all along the way plant those seeds in us.  Word and sacrament, Christian community, people who love us and people who test us, the ebb and flow of life in a broken world – all of this is about planting seeds of faith in the mysterious movement of the Spirit in our lives.

Yet, even given this mystery, how open are we are the people of God to rethink our ministry of planting and growing?  How is it that congregations can still think that doing worship and congregational life just like they did in 1951 will still be effective in the lives of people today?  Evidence tells us – in the experience of those Christian communities that have been open to change and adaptation – that it takes new forms and new styles and new ways of thinking/being to connect the Gospel with new people today.

Are we willing to go there?  Are we first in line to rethink, to experiment, to try and to test, all in the interests of connecting with new people, new fields, new missions?  Or are we content to sit back, knowing that we’ll get plenty to eat, without a thought to those who have long since moved on to other fields?

There is a great mystery in planting and growing.  But there is also a call to work both harder and smarter to reach our God-given potential.

Let us pray:  Thank you, Gracious Lord, for those people and those moments in which you planted seeds of faith in our lives.  Guide us, in our life together as your people, toward an openness to finding new ways to plant those same seeds in the lives of people today.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them, “Men of Judea and all who live in Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to what I say. Indeed, these are not drunk, as you suppose, for it is only nine o’clock in the morning.  No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel:  ‘In the last days it will be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams.  Even upon my slaves, both men and women, in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.  And I will show portents in the heaven above and signs on the earth below, blood, and fire, and smoky mist.  The sun shall be turned to darkness and the moon to blood, before the coming of the Lord’s great and glorious day.  Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’” Acts 2:14-21

Last night the Los Angeles Lakes beat Orlando in the first game of the NBA playoffs.  They still have three more, or five more, games to play to final settle the matter.  Some people have opinions, some even have preferences, but no one will know who ultimately wins until the fourth game is won by one team or the other.

Christians believe the game of life is already decided.  It is settled.  It is finished.  Jesus is King of Kings and Lord of Lords and his reign is one of peace, love and joy.  Peter knows that as he quotes Joel, “Then everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

Paul knows that as he writes to the Philippians, “Therefore God also highly exalt him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the Father.”

John knows that as he wrote in the words of Jesus, “When the Son of Man is lifted up he will draw all men to himself.”

Peter tells us that everyone gets to play.  Sons and daughters, young men and old men, slaves and free – everyone gets to play.  No one gets cut.  No one spends the game on the bench except those stubborn ones who refuse to play.  The angels line the stands, the church of all times and places cheers us on.

The question, for Christians, isn’t “Who is going to win in the end?” but “How do we play in the meantime?”

We play with passion and the relentless pursuit of the unveiling of the Kingdom of God, on earth as it is in heaven.  We play fairly and humbly with a conscious regard both of our sinfulness and our God-graced saintliness.  We play always ready to pass the ball of our faith to the next person, constantly striving both to model and to share a lifestyle of faith that brings joy and peace into a dark and broken world.

We don’t shoot people we disagree with.  We don’t demonize those who differ.  We transform swords into plowshares and we walk daily with God.

At the end of the day, when the game is finally over, we celebrate.  That was Joel’s vision, passed down and through Jesus to us.  Rejoice, come Sunday morning, as you share one more preview, foretaste, of the feast to come.

Let us pray:  Give us, gracious Lord, a vision of the end that will fuel the daily lives we lead.  Use us, as signs of your gracious love, that we might bring light into darkness and hope into every corner of the earth.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

Now there were devout Jews from every nation under heaven living in Jerusalem. And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each. Amazed and astonished, they asked, “Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each of us, in our own native language? Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabs—in our own languages we hear them speaking about God’s deeds of power.” All were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, “What does this mean?” But others sneered and said, “They are filled with new wine.”  Acts 2:5-13

We’ve all seen the jokes about change and the Church.  My favorite – for obvious reasons – How many Lutherans does it take to change a lightbulb?  “Change???”

Which is actually pretty weird, isn’t it?  How much sense does it make to be a “change averse” people when we belong to a faith that begins with the commanding invitation of our Leader and Lord, “Repent and believe in the good news.”?  Answer: It doesn’t make any sense at all.

Unless we practice selective hearing and we hear only what we want to hear.  Which is what we do.  So we focus on the Great Commandment and feel good about what a difference we make in the community with our clothing drives, our food drives and our Habitat for Humanity projects (all of which are wonderful and appropriate), but then we shrug our shoulders when asked how we are responding to the Great Commission in walking with new people toward newfound faith in Jesus.  Selective listening.

We talk until we are blue in the face about believing and the gracious love of God poured out in the good news….but we hardly give a thought to repentance, to turning around, to changing our direction and our minds and our actions.  Selective listening.

I know why.  It is easier.  On our own, we can do good works.  On our own, we can say all the right theological things.  But we can’t repent on our own and we can’t conjure up faith on our own.  For that we need the power of the Spirit and we need the movement of God which we cannot control or contain.  So we fudge on the hard stuff and focus on the easy stuff and we’re not alone in that.

The crowd gathered outside the room did the same thing.  That so many were gathered inside wasn’t new.  That so many languages were spoken at once wasn’t new.  But the understanding, the wonder, the joy – all of that was as new as new could get.  But those sneering at the door couldn’t handle it.  They symbolize the change averse, God-unconscious parts of all of us.  They don’t understand it so they put it down.  They dismiss it.  They sneer just as the crowds below the cross sneered at Jesus.

Show me a man who has come to a real faith in Jesus and I’ll show you a man who has changed.  He doesn’t think the same way anymore.  He is profoundly grateful and just as profoundly aware of the brokenness of his life from which he is being saved.

If I didn’t believe in the power of change, I don’t see much sense in the message of Jesus.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, keep us open-minded to the power of your Spirit working newness into our lives and the life of the world.  Soften the hardness of our hearts and open our ears and eyes to new possibilities of life.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

“And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting.  Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them.  All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability.”  Acts 2:2-4

Whether it is a North Dakota tornado or a Gulf Coast hurricane, I can’t hear the little phrase “rush of a violent wind” without at least a little bit of an internal cringe.  The wind, the movement of air, driven by changes in temperature, is like so much of life.  Unless it gets in our way, we take it for granted.

From the air we breathe to the air which cools our skin on a hot summer day, only when we “run out” do we even notice.  And then we realize how fragile life really is and how powerless we are beneath the weight of the natural forces of our lives.

The Spirit comes in a rush of violent wind.  They were waiting but they weren’t waiting for THAT.  They were waiting because Jesus told them something would happen.  How could they have known that the Spirit would blow in on them, the wind blowing into them and then exhaling with the sounds of languages that were at once familiar and strange.

People today can make fun of a word like “multicultural.”  They can put it down like every other expression of political correctness and modernity.  Yet do we realize that the violent appearance of the Spirit was a multicultural event?  A gathering of people from various places, speaking various mother tongues, and yet the coming of the Spirit became an explosion of diversity into a new kind of unity.  People understood one another!

The first new congregation to be born in Houston on my watch is First Taiwanese Lutheran Church.  God worshipped every weekend in Taiwanese.  I joined in the first year celebration of the Oromo Christian Fellowship and sat in a worship service listening to the Word coming to me in Oromo, one of the two chief languages of Ethiopia.  I’ll be joining with the Latino pastors in our synod on Saturday, hoping for someone to graciously translate to help me with my fledgling Spanish.  So it is that the Spirit continues to fill her multi-cultural, multi-linguistic Church with life through the power of the Word being spoken in the languages understood by various listeners.

A violent wind comes and we wonder, “Does this bring threat or promise?  Is it a good thing or a bad thing?”  And the Spirit assures us, from the inside out, it is good.  It is very good.

Let us pray:  Holy Spirit, as you move among us, blow your grace into our midst that we can see past the sinful dividing walls to embrace the vastness of your mercy.  Continue to speak Words that we can hear and understand, that we might be that reconciling Word in the life of the world.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.