Daily Devotions

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens—wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. Isaiah 50:4-6

Who is this “teacher”, who is the “I” in the first verse?

This section of Isaiah falls within the portion that was written after the people of Israel had already been in Babylon for a significant period of time. The armies of Cyrus of Persia had defeated the Babylonians and therefore had become the new “big bully on the block.” Cyrus wasn’t particularly interested in the plight of the Jewish captives-become-refugees so the door was open for their return to what was left of Jerusalem.

The mood of the writing that shifts from purely “What did we do wrong to get here?” to “Who do we thank for setting us free?”. The Bible, the written Word, is about capturing the experience of the faithful in written form and in this shifting of perspectives it helps us see the movement in our own lives from bondage to freedom.

So again the question, “Who is this teacher in the first verse?”

Some would say that the community of Israel, the people of God, in their shared experience, are the teacher. They are the ones who capture God’s will in words in their sacred writings. They sustain the weary with their faith. They value learning as a spiritual discipline. They have learned through painful experience the hard consequences of rebellion. They have suffered the pain inflicted on them by their captors.

Clearly the earliest disciples of Jesus saw Jesus in these verses. With the poetry of Isaiah planted deeply within them, Isaiah’s words immediately came to mind in their reflections on the suffering and humiliation that Jesus endured. They heard stories of the way that Jesus quietly endured all that was done to him, without complaint or fighting back. Jesus was the teacher, the obedient one, the comforter of the weary.

Today, the writer of Isaiah makes all of this available to us. He brings us into the history of Israel. He reminds us of the language that the faithful have used to remember Jesus. He brings US hope, rest and a gentle reminder that following Jesus means carrying crosses. For we too often open ourselves to otherwise avoidable suffering because we are people of faith.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, in every age we hear your Word in new ways. Today, when we find ourselves still living in bondage – to sin, to debt, to war, to idols – we long as well for words that bring comfort in our weariness and inspire us to follow with courage and focus. Thank you for not giving up on us, for delivering us from evil, and for guarding us in the face of worldly opposition. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer when I called? Is my hand shortened, that it cannot redeem? Or have I no power to deliver? By my rebuke I dry up the sea, I make the rivers a desert; their fish stink for lack of water, and die of thirst. I clothe the heavens with blackness, and make sackcloth their covering. Isaiah 50:2-3

As we take our “Lenten inventory”, we come across these questions addressed from God to us. “Why was no one there when I came? Why did no one answer when I called?”

These questions are communication questions. They are prayer questions. But they are framed in a very different way than we normally frame prayer questions.

Normally we would ask ourselves, “When do I reach out to God in prayer? Why do I reach out to God in prayer? What do I ask for?” Do you see, in framing these questions, how it seems that the “communication with God” thing seems completely up to us? Our questions put us in the center – what we do or don’t do – and therefore leave very little room for God at all. Prayer becomes all about OUR talking with no room at all for our LISTENING.

This observation strikes pretty close to home with me. I live my life in the communication business. (Isn’t that what a pastor does? Isn’t that what I’m doing with my fingers right now as I type?) But God has placed my wife in my life, and I in hers, as a blessed gift of God’s grace. And more often than not, Kelley helps me see (or at least tries to help me see) that I’m not always the communicator I think I am. Sometimes the block is I don’t talk enough, more often the block is that I don’t listen enough. I’m convinced this is one of the reasons God invented marriage in the first place – so that we could learn on a daily basis what it takes for relationships to work.

God’s question to us through Isaiah isn’t about chiding us for not talking enough with God but for not listening to God as God speaks to us.

How does God speak to us? I suppose that list is longer than this but clearly it would include listening to God’s written Word alone and with others, listening to God’s preached and proclaimed Word in prayer, praise and thanksgiving in public worship, and listening in the quietness of our meditative hearts. God speaks to us when we are attentive in our listening. (See 1 Samuel 3:10)

Have we been attentive to God’s attempts to reach us? Has God been getting a busy signal on our end of the conversation? Is our spiritual cell phone turned off, our land line disconnected?

Rest assured. God never tires of reaching out to us. He has promised that he will never leave or abandon us. God doesn’t give up on God’s end of the relationship. But how are we doing on our end?

Let us pray: Dear Lord, here we sit. Right now, mindfully in your presence. Quiet the rushing thoughts that pass through us. Cut through the noise of our lives so that we might be still in your presence. Speak to us and we will listen. Guide us and we will know the Way. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Thus says the LORD: Where is your mother’s bill of divorce with which I put her away? Or which of my creditors is it to whom I have sold you? No, because of your sins you were sold, and for your transgressions your mother was put away. Isaiah 50:1

Lent is soon drawing to a close. We walk this week toward Palm Sunday and then to our focus on the last week of Jesus’ life. We will be listening to Isaiah 50 as we continue this journey.

Although it might provoke an interesting conversation, most Americans would agree that the darkest days of our country were the years spent killing one another in the Civil War. Are country was divided into two. Between 600,000 and 700,000 people died – more than the total deaths of all the other wars in our history, from the Revolution through Vietnam. 23,000 people died in one day in the Battle of Antietam.

If you asked the same question of the world as a whole, many would argue that the genocidal Holocaust in World War II was the darkest moment. The sheer heartlessness and cold calculation that led to the deaths of 5+ million Jews, homosexuals, communists and other political dissidents, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, some Protestant pastors and Catholic priests, black people, the mentally and physically disabled, and others is staggering.

People don’t forget darkness like that. They are scars on human history. And they are also the kind of experiences that force people of faith to come to grips with the great questions of how God could let something as terrible as this happen among the people God supposedly loves.

Among God’s people in the Old Testament, there were other equally dark moments, especially the destruction of Jerusalem by the forces of the king of Babylon and the forced eviction of much of the population from Jerusalem to refugee camps in Babylon. A proud people, who considered themselves the “chosen ones” of God, were reduced to squalor for at least a generation.

In this portion of Isaiah, the writer is wrestling with the questions such darkness brings to the surface. Against the human temptation to blame someone or something else – Nebuchadnezzar’s greed, the South’s addiction to slavery, Hitler’s insanity – the opening verse of this 50^th chapter does what we normally consider unthinkable…it blames the victim.

This is shocking. Blaming the victim seems heartless. How are we to hear this?

The key is remembering the difference between a survivor and a victim. A victim remains powerless; a survivor is empowered. A victim is trapped in the pain of their victimization; a survivor picks up the pieces, learns something, and moves on with life.

Lent is many things, among them a time for self reflection, a time for asking deep questions about the reality of our lives. It is not the time to play the victim, but to do something more akin to what the recovery movement does in working a 4^th step. It is a time to take inventory, to ask ourselves “What is our part in the dark moments of our lives?”

This is hard. Life is hard. But such self reflection makes life easier.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, it is so easy for us, seems so natural for us, to blame the actions of others for the pain in our own lives. And equally easy to take credit for everything good. As we move closer to our observance of Holy Week, help us to do the hard work of self reflection, that our confession run deep, and the healing power of your love run deeper still. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Love the LORD, all you his saints. The LORD preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily. Be strong, and let your heart take courage, all you who wait for the LORD. Psalm 31:23-24

I’m a weird sports fan. I don’t really care who wins most games. But I love to watch them. I listen to sports talk radio all the time when I’m driving in my truck but I don’t really care what they are talking about. I just find it interesting that people know so much about sports. I watch the Super Bowl with equal parts interest in the game and the commercials. This year was different.

This year I cared.

All year long I cheered for the Houston Texans (because I live here), for the Minnesota Vikings (because I loved them as a kid), and for the New Orleans Saints (because they are in our synod.) The game between the Vikings and the Saints was tough because I wanted both teams to win and neither team to lose. You can’t have it both ways.

On Super Bowl Sunday I preached in the morning at a church here in Houston. Toward the end of the sermon I talked about the keys to winning – later, we all watched the Saints do it.

No one in the media picked the Saints to win. But they did. Why? From my point of view they had three things in their favor. First, Sean Payton out-coached Jim Caldwell. He took huge risks. His team was better prepared. They played to win rather than playing not to lose. Second, the Saints were playing for more than their own individual glory. They were quite literally carrying New Orleans and all that that city has endured on their backs. They were playing more than a football game. And third, more than bringing in better players, Sean Payton has devoted the past four years to changing the culture of the organization from perennial losers to Super Bowl champions.

There is a lesson in there for the church.

“Love the LORD, all you his saints…The LORD preserves the faithful, but abundantly repays the one who acts haughtily. Be strong, and let your heart take courage.”

Today is a new day in the church. (Every day is a new day in the church but in a strange twist no doubt tied to original sin, the church often seems the last to know.)

Many of the old ways of “doing” church are finally breathing their last gasps. We are not at the center of the empire any longer. We seem to have finally arrived at where we have been all along – ambassadors of a foreign power working a revolution of people’s lives from the inside out. The world needs what we have been given to give away. The world needs love more than liturgy, faith more than doctrine, strength more than docility and courage more than conventions.

We need the best coaches we can raise up. The courage to take risks. The willingness to play to win rather than playing not to lose. We need to know that we are playing for keeps. And we don’t nearly have the time that we thought we did. Unless we turn things around, the only question left will be who is going to turn out the lights.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we pray today, at the end of yet another week, with another Sunday morning around the corner, that your Spirit be unleashed in our lives. Explode within us! Give us eyes to see the world around us as you see it – a broken place, desperately in need of recovery, of rebirth, of renewal. Fill us with faith, with courage and with love, for you, for others, and for the world around us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love. Do not let me be put to shame, O LORD, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol. Let the lying lips be stilled that speak insolently against the righteous with pride and contempt. O how abundant is your goodness that you have laid up for those who fear you, and accomplished for those who take refuge in you, in the sight of everyone! In the shelter of your presence you hide them from human plots; you hold them safe under your shelter from contentious tongues. Blessed be the LORD, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was beset as a city under siege. I had said in my alarm, “I am driven far from your sight.” But you heard my supplications when I cried out to you for help. Psalm 31:16-22

It is easy to see why New Orleans would develop into an important and prosperous city. The mighty Mississippi river, bisecting the country, gathering goods and products from east and west, bringing them down to New Orleans. A major deep water port, trading anything and everything, linking the fledgling country with the world.

The surrounding area also had produce, valuable produce, that grew well in the rich delta soil and was continually in demand. Cotton, indigo and sugar. All very labor intensive crops to plant, tend and harvest. Around these crops grew a whole culture, a social network formed around huge plantations.

The “big house” in front. Long tree-lined driveways, majestic pillars, grand porches, ornate furniture and decorations. And behind the big house, row upon row of slave quarters, housing the slave labor that propped up the whole system. The largest plantations had 500 or more slaves. Human implements.

New Orleans was at the center of the slave trade. Unlike other cities with active slave markets, New Olreans was also the center of the illegal slave trade. Pirates attacked slave ships and sold their booty in illegal auctions. The profits were obscene. Privateers, especially Jean Laffite (who got his start in the slave trade), attacked British and Spanish ships at will.

So it is that we read these verses from Psalm 31 through the lens of New Orleans and we see things we otherwise would miss. We read: “Let your face shine upon your servant; save me in your steadfast love. Do not let me be put to shame, O LORD, for I call on you; let the wicked be put to shame; let them go dumbfounded to Sheol.” And we see a culture where “servants” were human beings, bought and sold like cattle, thought of as less than human, yet the lynchpin in a system producing vast wealth. We read “the wicked” and we see the faces of those who prospered by theft, deceit and injustice.

And we see another line, “Blessed be the LORD, for he has wondrously shown his steadfast love to me when I was beset as a city under siege.” And we remember that New Orleans would have fallen to the British in 1814 were it not for the help that Jean Laffite and his men (and their weapons) provided to General Andrew Jackson. The painful adjustments the city has been forced to make as their plantation culture collapsed during the Civil War, as they came to grips with life after the Civil War, as they resisted the changes brought by the civil rights movement, as the city drowned in Katrina, and as it now struggles to come back to life with 1/3 of its population gone, great swaths of the city uninhabitable, the education system a mess amid some of the worst crime statistics in the country.

So, for New Orleans, we join in the psalmist’s prayer: I had said in my alarm, “I am driven far from your sight.” But you heard my supplications when I cried out to you for help.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, you see us as we really are. Behind our facades, our pretentions and our wishes, you see the realities of the brokenness of our lives. You see our worst ambitions, our capacity for evil, our twisted sense of status. You see the evil we can unleash on one another. And yet, you still love us with a love that will not let us go. A love that is our hope. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Be gracious to me, O LORD, for I am in distress; my eye wastes away from grief, my soul and body also. For my life is spent with sorrow, and my years with sighing; my strength fails because of my misery, and my bones waste away. I am the scorn of all my adversaries, a horror to my neighbors, an object of dread to my acquaintances; those who see me in the street flee from me. I have passed out of mind like one who is dead; I have become like a broken vessel. For I hear the whispering of many—terror all around!—as they scheme together against me, as they plot to take my life. But I trust in you, O LORD; I say, “You are my God.” My times are in your hand; deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. Psalm 31:9-15

Still thinking about New Orleans and Psalm 31…(and the religious roots of the green beer celebrations of St. Patrick’s Day…)

New Orleans – since its earliest days – has been known as a party city, a festive city, a place of decadence and revelry and debauchery and wine and food and music and fun. Oddly, or maybe not so oddly, it has also been known as a very spiritual, and very spiritually diverse, city.

Spiritually has always been central to life in New Orleans. Very diverse religious roots are planted deeply in the city. The spirituality of the native people was there before the first explorers arrived from other lands. The Roman Catholic Church came both directly from France but also with the interesting twists of the French speaking immigrants, the Cajuns, from Nova Scotia and other places in eastern Canada in the 1760’s. A distinctive branch of Louisiana voodoo was imported with the slave trade. And the first Lutheran congregation began in New Orleans in 1840.

Mix all of that up, throw in a little dash of post-Civil War reconstruction, black segregation, Mississippi blues and you eventually arrive at jazz, at Mardi Gras, at a city that parties and parades and “festivals” all year around. This city that has forever been plagued with problems, with grinding poverty, with deep racial divides, also celebrates life like few other places in the country. There might be reasons for that.

Psalm 31 is a psalm of lament. As such, it shares the basic structure of all such psalms. It opens with a introductory cry to God, continues with a description of lament or suffering (like the verses above), leads to a confession of trust, asks God to act, and ends with some type of praise.

In all of that, a psalm of lament is much like the journey we walk when slogging our way through the trials we experience in life. We trust God when its easy, we cry out when we get hurt, we ask for God’s help, and we praise God on the other side.

Of course all of this requires a bit of thoughtfulness. We need to pay attention to our lives, to our spirits and spirituality. We need a certain degree of “God consciousness” in our lives in order to reflect consciously on the presence and activity of God in our lives, and in the world around us. One could even argue that it is precisely this kind of “God consciousness” that is the goal of faith formation, of disciple-making.

In so many interesting ways, the festival life of New Orleans is actually grounded in the spiritual roots of disciple-making. Life in New Olreans is a living lament psalm that doesn’t get stuck in the middle but moves all the way through to the celebration of gratitude and life.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, open our hearts and minds that we can more consciously see your movements in the world. Open us that we might think more deeply and see more clearly how it is that we are walking with you and how it is that you are seeing us through the dark times of our lives. Open us to celebrate the gift that life will always be for us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

You hate those who pay regard to worthless idols, but I trust in the LORD. I will exult and rejoice in your steadfast love, because you have seen my affliction; you have taken heed of my adversities, and have not delivered me into the hand of the enemy; you have set my feet in a broad place. Psalm 31:6-8

“Worthless idols” is an interesting phrase. It reminds me of the oddly bizarre gold encrusted Buddha that strangely sat back in the corner in the basement of the Richland County Historical Museum in my hometown. I well remember how we used to walk past the reconstruction of the sod-buster little farmer’s cabin with the tiny bed, the old farm implements and glass displays of trinkets, back to the weird Buddha that didn’t seem to belong there.

Someone told us that it would be good luck to rub the Buddha’s belly so, with false bravado, we would do just that. Even though I was basically an irreligious little heathen, I always had a sense that what we were doing had something to do with idolatry.

I suppose that Buddha was worthless. We always wondered if the gold on it was real. I guess that would have given it some measure of worth. But I seriously doubt whether there was ever a connection between the rubbing of his belly and the wishes that I made. Ultimately, he was a worthless idol.

But aren’t all idols, by definition, worthless? That is, unworthy of our praise, our trust? When we “worship” God, we ascribe “worth” to God. When it comes to God, we are the unworthy ones. But, in Christ, in the gift of God’s love, in our identity as beloved children of God, God has invested a new kind of worthiness in us. In God’s eyes, we are worth all that Jesus did and does. That is why we worship God and that is why it is a crying shame that we would ever bow down to worthless idols.

But we do it all the time. Luther said that the false gods, the idols of our lives, are anything we look to for safety, security or identity apart from the God who creates, redeems and sustains us. False gods are untrustworthy. They are worthless.

Spending time in New Orleans, listening to the stories of those who have spent their lives here, is to hear many stories of “identity” – ethnicity, neighborhood, clan. I often find myself wondering just how open or how closed this city really is. I think perhaps that, rather than being so absolutely distinctive as a community, New Orleans is more microcosm than idiosyncrasy. As I shared yesterday, I hear so many of the same things here that I heard from my relatives from the prairies of North Dakota.

When someone from metro New Orleans tells me, “My German ancestors started this church back in the 1800’s. I’m a fifth generation member of this church. The congregation isn’t nearly what it used to be, first the neighborhood changed and then the storm hit. We’re surviving but it isn’t the same as it used to be.” – I realize that the only word that would need to be changed to say exactly the same thing about Lakota Lutheran Church in Lakota, North Dakota (population @300) would be Norwegian instead of German. The “storm” would be the changing economics of agriculture and the death of the family farm but the realities would be the same.

Worthless idols are just that. Untrustworthy. Unreliable. Shifting sands.

Ethnicity, race, class divisions, red-lined neighborhood walls that look like streets, all are untrustworthy sources of safety, security or status. The storms of life expose them for what they are. Illusions.

Only God, our common identity as creatures of a loving Creator, our common need for love and forgiveness, our common purpose to joing God in creating a good life for all, only that is impervious to the storms. Only that is solid rock. Only that is trustworthy.

Let us pray: Dear Jesus, forgive us lusting hearts and our knee jerk knee bowing to the false idols that constantly clamor for our attention. You are God, we are not, all of humanity is our brother and our sister and we are eternally grateful that you continue to remind us of that reality. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

In you, O LORD, I seek refuge; do not let me ever be put to shame; in your righteousness deliver me. Incline your ear to me; rescue me speedily. Be a rock of refuge for me, a strong fortress to save me. You are indeed my rock and my fortress; for your name’s sake lead me and guide me, take me out of the net that is hidden for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hand I commit my spirit; you have redeemed me, O LORD, faithful God. Psalm 31:1-5

I spent this past weekend in New Orleans, a place unlike just about every other place there is. (Folks there are always quick to remind me of that. Maybe they are right, or maybe they suffer from the same “terminal uniqueness” that afflicts so many of us.) This week we’re going to listen to Psalm 31, and to New Orleans.

New Orleans lies on the eastern most edge of the geographical area that comprises our “synod” (a churchy word for a community of congregations that travel through life together, like a Roman Catholic “diocese” or a United Methodist “district.”) In my new job I have the great opportunity to go “visiting” congregations and pastors – which is a great thing to do in New Orleans and actually harkens back to the plantation roots of New Orleans (and the immigrant farmer days of North Dakota) when that was a very popular activity.

As a cost cutting measure, when we from the synod office travel to New Orleans, we seldom stay in hotels. Some of our congregations here have become very adept at hosting the streams of volunteers who continue to travel here as the on-going recovery from Hurricane Katrina is still not over. And one of our pastors and his wife have extra bedrooms that frequently become a home away from home for people like me. I’m writing this right now from their kitchen table.

Hurricane Katrina was a nuclear explosion that threatened to gut the life of this city. While so many of us saw the storm on television, many people here saw their lives float away. Any illusion of safety or security, the bonds of family and neighborhood, the gathered memories of life, the ghettoized isolation of the underclass, all of that was ripped open, exposed for the world to see and then flushed down the toilet of the roiling waters of the flood. People here divide their lives into BK (Before Katrina) and SK (Since Katrina).

Most of the world has now moved on. Moved on to other news and other disasters and other chapters of life. Although the physical and emotional work of recovery is on-going, people here have also been about moving on. Frankly, lots of people have literally moved out. The city is 1/3 smaller than it used to be. We have congregations here that, in the wink of an eye, lost half or more of their families.

The whole region has had to come to grips with one of the great questions of our lives….”Now what do we do?”

New Orleans, like Chicago and New York and many other places, has long been a city of neighborhoods, ethnic enclaves and ghettos of poverty. It has functioned like a collection of islands, everyone seeking shelter in the comfort of their isolation. At the same time, it has also been a major port city, finding purpose along the deep waters of the mighty Mississippi and its muddy reach into the Gulf of Mexico. This is the tension of the place, and of our lives. Will we be an island or will we be a port?

The question that this city is living, the question that our congregations are living, is a question that we all need to ask and answer: Yes Lord, you have been our refuge, our fortress and our strength through the teeth of the storm, but now what shall we do? Shall we rebuild our islands of isolation or shall we become ports of hospitality, freely receiving your many gifts only to send them on to others?

Let us pray: Dear Lord, the storms of life continue to assault us, the many challenges and temptations and struggles that mark our days. We thank you that we find refuge in your love and strength, that you are our port in a storm. Guide us now as we commit our lives to you, today and every day. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then he handed him over to them to be crucified. So they took Jesus; and carrying the cross by himself, he went out to what is called The Place of the Skull, which in Hebrew is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, with Jesus between them. Pilate also had an inscription written and put on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, because the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city; and it was written in Hebrew, in Latin, and in Greek. Then the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.'” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.” John 19:16-22

When all is said and done, there is only one important mountain. It isn’t Mount Vesuvius, home of the gods. It isn’t Mount Everest, the natural world’s tower of Babel. It isn’t a place of glory and honor but a misshapen hill in the center of a town’s garbage dump. Golgotha. The Place of the Skull. Mount Calvary.

Moses left the mountain to travel back to the Egypt from which he had fled. He later came down another mountain to bring order into the lives of his followers, order which they rejected.

Elijah came down from Mount Carmel to the desert into which he retreated in fear for his life. Jesus came down from the mountain of his transfiguration to the crowds who waited down below – the hungry crowds who didn’t realize what they were hungry for.

No one stays on the mountain.

Jesus spent a horrific day on that final mountain. But he didn’t stay there. From his mountain to his tomb. But he didn’t stay there either.

And where did he direct his disciples to meet him after his resurrection? To another mountain top in Galilee. Yet even then, Jesus met them only to send them. To send them back to the plains with a story to tell and a mission to accomplish. If you are a person of faith, baptized into the kingdom, and you are willing to carry that story to another person, then you are evidence of the faithfulness of those first disciples.

There was a disagreement on Mount Calvary. Some argued that the sign should read, “This man said…” But Pilate wouldn’t give. He left the sign up that declared the bloodied Jesus to be King of the Jews. Was this Pilate’s way of sticking it to those who made his life complicated? Was this God’s ringing endorsement of the suffering, redemptive, love of Jesus? Can’t it be both?

Few of us live on mountain tops. Most of us think they are nice to visit. They put our lives into perspective. They teach us about God’s vastness even as they encourage humility in us. But ours is not a mountain top faith. Ours is a faith lives in the valleys, the highways and byways of the lives of real life people. May the mountain tops of our faith – especially that misshapen hill outside of Jerusalem – bring purpose and meaning to our lives.

Let us pray: Thank you, Jesus, for taking our brokenness unto yourself as you were lifted high on Golgotha. May your redemptive love flood us with courage and conviction as we tell your story in words and deeds. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and John, and led them up a high mountain apart, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his clothes became dazzling white, such as no one on earth could bleach them. And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses, who were talking with Jesus. Then Peter said to Jesus, “Rabbi, it is good for us to be here; let us make three dwellings, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.” He did not know what to say, for they were terrified. Then a cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud there came a voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!” Suddenly when they looked around, they saw no one with them any more, but only Jesus. Mark 9:2-8

There are high points in all of our lives – great accomplishments, graduations, beginning new careers, marriages, the births of children, the births of grandchildren. The most memorable of these moments feel almost transcendent, otherworldly. We can’t imagine our “good fortune.” We know we’ve seen a glimpse of glory. We know we have been truly blessed.

Here, halfway through the gospel of Mark, Peter gets such a glimpse. He sees Jesus together with the heroes of the faith – his own “Field of Dreams” – and he hears God’s affirmation of the person and ministry of Jesus. It was a mountain top experience, no wonder he wanted to stay!

But glimpses, by definition, are fleeting. Which is not to take anything away from them. They are what they are. But then – poof – it’s over. They find themselves looking around and seeing no one but Jesus.

But still hearing the echo of that voice, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him!”

This is the voice echoing through the lives of the baptized people of God. “You are my beloved child; listen to my Son.” Trust him, follow him, wherever he might lead.

So many other voices will beckon to you. So many other voices, like barkers at a carnival, will entice you with visions and dreams that promise you life. But I alone have given you life. I’ve marked you and sealed you and promised to be with you, from mountain-top to valley floor. Listen to me!

Soon they would leave this mountain behind. They would carry the memory, the vision, a renewed sense of purpose and God’s favor, but they would carry all that back down to the valley of life and the mountains yet ahead. For now, just now, we enjoy the peak. Or is it the “peek”?

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, thank you for the little peeks you give us into the glory of your kingdom at those peak moments, those wonderful moments, of our lives. May such moments encourage us and send us forth down the paths you open before us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.