Daily Devotions

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, joy is such a wonderful feeling…and it feels even better when we have a few close friends with whom we can share it. Friends help us smile and laugh, we tell stories of shared experiences, we enjoy being together. Thank you for the gift of friendship. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

We can learn something from those three friends. Something about giving to our friends what they really need – not answers or advice or sympathy, but presence, understanding and empathy. Nothing is worse than suffering alone – thank God for the gift of friendship to help us through the hard times of life.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, sometimes life turns on us and we find ourselves hurting. It is so hard to hurt alone, to suffer in silence, to feel cut off. Thank you for the power of friendship to bring us comfort and hope. Be with us, that we might be a friend indeed to others in our lives by being there for them when they need us. And encourage us, when we find ourselves suffering in silence, to reach out to our friends and receive the gifts you have there for us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let us pray: Heavenly Father, friendship is one of your greatest gifts. That we can love and be loved with no strings to attach us teaches us something about the meaning of life, and gives us a glimpse of who we are at our best. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

We are putting no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, hunger; by purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, holiness of spirit, genuine love, truthful speech, and the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left; in honor and dishonor, in ill repute and good repute. We are treated as impostors, and yet are true; as unknown, and yet are well known; as dying, and see—we are alive; as punished, and yet not killed; as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing everything.  We have spoken frankly to you Corinthians; our heart is wide open to you. There is no restriction in our affections, but only in yours. In return—I speak as to children—open wide your hearts also.  2 Corinthians 6:3-13

Sometimes it is helpful, when reading Paul’s letters to the Corinthians, to remember what we know of his time there.

Acts 18 tells us that Paul went to Corinth and began teaching in the synagogue there.  That arrangement didn’t last long, due to the heated opposition he was receiving, Paul moved next door to a home where he continued to teach.  Paul stayed there for 1½ years before moving on.  He left behind a strong Christian community that included Crispus, the leader of the synagogue next door.

Any person who has come to faith under the leadership of a good pastor, or any pastor who has laid his/her heart on the line in trying to build a Christian congregation can relate to the passion and the pathos of Paul’s time in Corinth.  This wasn’t about a person attending a church because it was “just the thing to do” nor was it about a pastor who considered him/herself a religious professional getting paid to do a job. 

And so it was, on down the road, that Paul heard that the church in Corinth was divided and falling apart.  The two letters he wrote (scholars think there was at least one more that wasn’t preserved) were attempts to get the congregation back on track.  They also include passages like today’s reading where Paul is reminding his friends of all that he went through in order to be among them, teaching and modeling the grace of God.  He suffered mightily.

There are two messages cloaked in Paul’s list of sufferings.  First, there is the reminder that Paul was willing to do whatever it took, suffer whatever would come his way, because of his passion for the good news of God’s love and the power of the Holy Spirit who guided and empowered him.  Paul understood that he had been bought with a price and thus was willing to pay any price to reach new believers.

And second, there is a subtle message to the Corinthians (and to us) that we are seriously misguided if we think that the Christian faith is a path to a safe and secure life of leisure and success.  Although we bear witness that life with Christ is better than life without, what that really means is that life is more authentic, more real, more meaningful.  We ought not be surprised when following Jesus gets difficult, when we find opposition, when we suffer along the way.

The Church will always find ways to be disappointing.  Division is just one decision away.  Broken people living in community consciously or unconsciously bring brokenness.  But none of that will stop the forward progress of the faith.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, we have often been disappointed in our faith journey, just as we have often been disappointments to you or others.  Protect us from discouragement and division.  Keep us strong in the face of opposition and hardship.  And work in us to promote the unity of the faithful even as we seek to spread the faith.  In Jesus’ name.  Amen.

As we work together with him, we urge you also not to accept the grace of God in vain. For he says,  “At an acceptable time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you.”  See, now is the acceptable time; see, now is the day of salvation!  2 Corinthians 6:1-2

What would it mean to accept the grace of God in vain?  Maybe this hinges on what we mean by the word “accept.”

For a long time a great debate has raged, sometimes loudly and sometimes muted in the background, about the role that we play in accepting the grace of God.  Some teach that God’s grace comes to us via the power of the Holy Spirit working through the means of grace – the Word and the sacraments.  We receive that grace through faith in Jesus.  We are grafted into the faith in our baptism and then live that faith for the rest of our lives.  Grace is the given gift.

Others teach that we play a more active role.  The Holy Spirit holds the grace of God in front of us like an offer – we receive that grace only as we actively accept it.  We might pray a prayer acknowledging our sin and need for grace and then ask God to accept us as we are, that we might become a child of God.  Baptism then becomes a sign that we have “sealed the deal.”

Frankly, as boisterous as this debate has often been between “theology of the cross, we are but beggars” and “theology of glory, we received Jesus into our hearts and life is oh so much better” – both sides seek the same goal:  God’s creation of a new community of believers who follow Jesus and respond to God’s love through lives which seek to enjoy and grow the kingdom of God for the sake of the world.

The point is discipleship, not simply the right definition of key phrases.  The real key question is:  What difference does it make?

What difference does God’s grace make in your life?  What difference does it make in your attitudes, your belief system, your spirituality, your behaviors, your care of and for others, your willingness to speak up and work on behalf of others?

What difference does God’s grace make in how you use your time, what you do in the world, how you spend your money, how you treat other people?

What if God’s grace doesn’t make any discernible difference in your life whatsoever?

Remember the audience to whom Paul is writing – he is writing to a Christian community of believers who have gotten off track.  They are not thinking or behaving in ways that would correspond to an active healthy faith.  So his words are a challenge to them – and to us.

Regardless of how we came into the faith, the question for today is how is the faith working in, and out of, us?  If we have gotten off track, there is no better time than right now to surrender again to the Lordship of Jesus in our lives, to return to the Source, to, as Luther would say, die and rise again in the waters of our baptism.

Now IS the day of salvation.  Now IS the acceptable time.

Let us pray:  Gracious Lord, we confess our selfishness, self-centeredness, pride and all that would render your grace vain in our lives.  Forgive us, restore us and lead us, to your glory and the welfare of your people.  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

“Why are you afraid?  Have you still no faith?”

Let’s be fair.  These aren’t really questions in the normal sense.  In that setting, the calm after the storm having just settled in, Jesus wasn’t really looking for a philosophical conversation about the nature of human emotions or the theological conclusions reached thus far by his boat mates.

They were afraid because they thought they were going to capsize in the night, drown, and float to shore like dead fish in the morning.  In their fear, in the face of the winds and the lashing rain, faith was the last thing on their minds.  They weren’t really thinking at all, just reacting to the storm.

Fear can do that to you.  When you are afraid, you don’t think clearly.  As a child, a squeak in the night fills your bedroom with monsters.  That isn’t about logic, it is a reaction.  As an adult, one night’s worth of the evening news is all it takes to shake the foundations of your world and replace security with insecurity. Who can count all that has the power to make us afraid?

As for faith…it isn’t like we have a “faith meter” somewhere inside us where we can check our “faith level” like we can check our blood pressure or temperature.  I’ve had people tell me that their faith never wavers, they never question it, it is always a powerful force within them.  But for most people, especially in the darkness of a worrisome night, faith is the last thing on their minds.

I understand faith to be a gift given by God through the power of the Holy Spirit.  It isn’t something I generate within myself.  But I do cooperate with God in that the basic faith practices of prayer, reading scripture, worship, fellowship, and service all reinforce, deepen and broaden my faith.  There is a “feeling” component of faith but there is also a knowledge base about faith and a commitment to trust/act on my faith.

And there are times, in the heat of the moment, when it is like faith kicks into high gear and I feel sustained by a power greater than myself.  In many ways, it is the calm times of life when faith suddenly gets relegated to “optional.”  Faith truly is a journey.  A shared journey.

For this isn’t a story about a group of men figuring out how to handle their fears in the midst of a storm.  It is instead a demonstration of the power of God to bring calm to a storm, despite our fears and the faithlessness.  Whether asleep or shouting the waves to peacefulness, Jesus never leaves the boat.

Let us pray:  Dear Lord, come to us in our fears and our anxieties.  The sea is so large and our boat is so small, but never too small for you.  May we ever trust you, your care and your keeping, though the oceans of our lives be fierce or calm.  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

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.