Daily Devotions

When he had left the crowd and entered the house, his disciples asked him about the parable. He said to them, “Then do you also fail to understand? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile, since it enters, not the heart but the stomach, and goes out into the sewer?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) And he said, “It is what comes out of a person that defiles. For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.” Mark 7:17-23

This is one of those moments that appear throughout the gospels that we often read so quickly that we miss their magic. Mark, in writing the Jesus story, moves us from Jesus “in public” with the crowds (some for him and most against him) to Jesus “in private” with his closest friends. As readers, we join Jesus in both places.

In other words, we too get invited into this private conversation with Jesus. Once here, we very quickly realize that, even though we have lots of information that simply wasn’t available at the time to the initial disciples, we aren’t much different than they are.

We also fail to understand. We also tend to twist our insider status into a personal achievement rather than a gracious invitation. And yet we too learn at the feet of Jesus.

He tells us that which truly defiles, dirties, corrupts and breaks our relationship with God and with one another. The words, even presented in a list, trigger memories of past experiences, fantasies and realities, that scar our lives: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. A long list, but clearly not long enough to fully capture the brokenness of life.

This is who we are, and this is how we are. Nevertheless, this is who Jesus is now spending time with. This is who Jesus loved and loves. These are the character defects of a fallen people who would raise Jesus up to a cross. And this is who Jesus would rise back to and beyond in his resurrection. This is who Jesus promised, by his grace, to one day welcome home.

Later this morning I will begin spending the day with a crowd of other pastors and leaders in our church. There will be plenty of time, over lunch and during our breaks, for idle chit chat. People will ask one another, “How are you?” (It is the socially accepted ice breaker and invitation to further conversation.) And the customary response then is, “I’m fine. How are you?”

And maybe, at some point, we are fine. But the deeper reality is that, lurking beneath the surface, there is a war going on. Evil intentions, always threatening to win the day, yet tempered by what we have learned at Jesus’ feet – our brokenness can be redeemed, has been redeemed, and need not win the day. We have been, and are being, healed, cleansed and restored by love.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, you know the evil that lies within each and every one of us. You know how quick we can be to give up and give in and tear apart that which you lovingly seek to build – a community of grace for the sake of the world. Keep working on us, in us and through us. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then he called the crowd again and said to them, “Listen to me, all of you, and understand: there is nothing outside a person that by going in can defile, but the things that come out are what defile.” Mark 7:14-15

I’m having trouble with these verses this morning.

Their meaning is pretty obvious – Jesus is drawing a sharp distinction between what truly makes someone ceremonially unclean (the technical meaning of the Greek word translated “defile.”) It isn’t what lies outside of us that makes us unclean (casual contact with Gentiles or other ceremonially unclean people in the marketplace, therefore requiring ritual washing before we eat) but what is already inside of us that we carried with us into the marketplace in the first place.

But what do we do with this insight? That’s the problem.

When I was a kid, the Christian faith was all about “thou shalt not’s.” If talk of Christianity came up at all it was usually in the context of explaining why someone shouldn’t lie, swear, drink, smoke, use drugs, listen to rock and roll music or chase girls. Good Christians, in other words, didn’t do those things. They were bad. They would corrupt you. They would ruin your life.

Along the way, I did them all. Thus, according to those rules, I was unclean. Dirty. Corrupt. I also stayed away from church and pretended my way through my occasional visits.

So at first glance, especially again in the context of going after the Pharisees, Jesus seems to be opening the door to all of the things that were so fascinating to a young boy and still troubling to a middle aged man. But that doesn’t sound right nor does it feel right. Something else is going on here.

When I preach at the prison where I volunteer as a chaplain I invariably run into “holiness people.” I know there is a bit of irony in that but it is true. In my normal life I spend most of my time with Christians you might call “all things in moderation” sort of people. But the holiness people aren’t like that – they watch me like a hawk when I preach. They come up to me after worship and point out verses that I didn’t quote perfectly, or tell me about edgy words that I used that might have “opened the door for the devil’s toe hold.”

At first those folks kind of freaked me out. I came to dread in particular one guy who would catch me stumbling every time. He has a lot more time to study the Bible than I do and he would always yank out a verse or two to “correct” me. Mostly, he was right.

But then I began to notice something. It was obvious that the holiness crowd sat in the front of the room while the guys who just showed up in chapel to “do business” sat in the back. But what I learned over time was that their separation wasn’t limited just to chapel – that separation continued throughout the week. The “clean” sat in the front. The “dirty” sat in the back.

So one night I challenged those in the front to sit in the back the next week. They still haven’t taken me up on it…and I get far fewer Bible verses quoted to me after the sermon.

And that, I think, is the key to these verses. They aren’t about moral purity (not that there is anything wrong with that) but about the corrosive effects on human community of separatist religiosity that reduces the world to insiders and outsiders, clean and unclean.

The bottom line is that Jesus didn’t just show up for the good people but for all people. And my personal sense is that he would have hung with the guys in the back of the room.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, help us to discern what is good and right and helpful in how we live our lives in community with others. Help us find our way. Forgive us for judging ourselves or others with the wrong measuring stick. Keep us mindful of that which we so often simply do not see. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to keep your tradition! For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever speaks evil of father or mother must surely die.’ But you say that if anyone tells father or mother, ‘Whatever support you might have had from me is Corban’ (that is, an offering to God)— then you no longer permit doing anything for a father or mother, thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on. And you do many things like this.” Mark 7:9-13

There are three ways that Jesus figured out that the Pharisees he was talking to were withholding financial support from their parents in order to give those gifts to God. (In other words, to accrue the personal prestige that goes with being a ‘big giver’ at church.)

He might have had insider information – a Pharisee who came to him to talk about the practice. Highly unlikely.

He might have used his Superman-like x-ray vision into their hearts. I suppose that would be a viable option should you opt to go that route.

Or, the practice could have been so widespread among the religious leaders that Jesus could just assume it was a common practice among his audience that day as well. Bingo! Jesus helps us see this is the answer in his words – “thus making void the word of God through your tradition that you have handed on.”

Justifying ourselves, building a case for what we want rather than what God wants, even using key Bible passages to build the case, is as old as the story of eating the forbidden fruit in the garden of Eden. Even there, the man is so intent on justifying himself that he even includes God in his self justifying explanation – the woman whom YOU GAVE TO ME…

Remember the days of listening to music on vinyl records? No matter how hard you would try to take good care of your records, no matter whether you always kept them in their sleeves, brushed them before and after every play, replaced the needle more often than necessary, they would still get scratched. And once scratched, every time you would like to that particular song it would skip or hiss or crackle.

My friends, we have all been scratched. We are all sinners. We are all given to the temptation to justify ourselves, our actions, our attitudes, our practices, both corporately and individually. We are blind and lame. We are broken. The best of us are no different than the rest of us.

So God comes among us in Jesus. And Jesus becomes for us both Law and Gospel. His words and actions hold a mirror in front of us that expose us where we are most unloving and most likely to fall short of God’s intentions. He, by talking straight to a group of religious leaders, is the Law of God in their lives, not some dusty rulebook that can be twisted and manipulated and swallowed up by ever evolving human traditions.

And Jesus is the Gospel. The one calling us still to honor our parents, still to receive our daily bread with thanks, whether or not we wash our hands before eating. For Jesus came, not to ridicule, belittle or reduce the Pharisees to ashes, but to love them (and us) to the very end.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, a great price is paid when we seek to justify that within and among us that fall short of your loving intentions for people. Forgive us for twisting life around to conform to our image of it, rather than embracing our calling and responsibility to be reflections of your image. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

He said to them, “Isaiah prophesied rightly about you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘This people honors me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching human precepts as doctrines.’ You abandon the commandment of God and hold to human tradition.” Mark 7:6-8

These are harsh words and easily delivered in a harsh manner. Jesus has indicted, not only the Pharisees who are complaining about the lackadaisical manner in which the disciples of Jesus ignore the rules around ritual washing, but each and every one of us who have experienced our lips mouthing the words of the liturgy while our hearts were harboring memories and plans far short of God’s good intentions for our lives.

This is the danger of religion. This is the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, temptation to get the rites right while ignoring the deeper implications of our beliefs, our attitudes and our actions. An hour a week, a few bucks in the plate, and we’ve bought God off for another week. Isaiah is right to call us on this and Jesus is right to bring it back up.

Now comes the harder part: How can we tell when we’re doing it?

It is one thing to hear “teaching human precepts as doctrines”, the harder work is telling the difference between the two. In the real world of our faith, the difference emerges less as a matter of applying the letter of the law as it does in mutual conversation. The work of theologians today (and scribes and Pharisees then) was to engage in a lifetime of listening to the law and then reasoning out its implications for life. Always with a measure of humility and awareness of the temptation to justify ourselves.

Tomorrow Jesus will give us an example of how we can ignore the commandment of God to suit ourselves. Later in the week he will help us see what is so close to us that we are often blinded from seeing it. But for today we do well simply to be reminded that there is a difference between “human traditions” and the “commandments of God.”

What might be absolute common sense to us (human tradition), might be very incompatible with the “commandments of God.” What seems crystal clear to us (thou shalt not kill) can suddenly get very cloudy in the midst of questions around self defense, war, the justice system or medical decisions.

Sadly, we don’t always get these distinctions right. The critics of the Christian faith are quick to point out all of the ways through the years that the church has operated in very unloving, unjust ways. Guilty as charged. But the game isn’t over yet. We haven’t quit playing and trying our best to be faithful in the face of the challenges of life, with our own sin whistling in our ears.

What keeps us honest along the way, or at least striving to be so, are reminders like this from Jesus – we aren’t fooling God.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, keep stirring up the right questions within and among us. Keep pushing us toward greater honesty, deeper faithfulness, and more integrity in our life with you and one another. Forgive us for the times we give you lip service and encourage us to serve you and others in righteousness. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Now when the Pharisees and some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem gathered around him, they noticed that some of his disciples were eating with defiled hands, that is, without washing them. (For the Pharisees, and all the Jews, do not eat unless they thoroughly wash their hands, thus observing the tradition of the elders; and they do not eat anything from the market unless they wash it; and there are also many other traditions that they observe, the washing of cups, pots, and bronze kettles.) So the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not live according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?” Mark 7:1-5

The devotions are starting back up a week later than I originally planned. A lot of things have happened over the past month that weren’t in my original plans. My plan began with a long anticipated motorcycle vacation bracketed by preaching at the Woyatan mission in Rapid City, a short visit with my mother in Minnesota and my 30^th high school class reunion in my hometown of Wahpeton, North Dakota.

Unanticipated, those plans came to include emergency trips to Minnesota to transition my mom from an assisted living apartment to a nursing home, another trip as her condition worsened, and then learning, four hours after returning to Houston, that she had died. Another trip to Minnesota and all that is involved in emptying an apartment, planning a funeral, gathering with family, and saying our thanks and goodbyes.

While I was gone, a mission pastor in our synod (the father of the receptionist in our office) suffered a massive heart attack and remains in the hospital. Another assistant to the bishop, a friend and co-worker since my first parish, collapsed while walking due to a blood clot in his lung. He’s home now and recuperating. And then our bishop, who drove over from our national assembly in Minneapolis to help with my mother’s funeral, learned the next morning that his father-in-law in Ohio who was also in the hospital since July, had taken a turn for the worse. He died the next day.

I got home last week after my mom’s funeral to a pretty quiet schedule that allowed me to spend a good share of Thursday and all day Friday watching the ELCA national assembly live on the internet. (Modern technology is amazing.) I listened to hours of the long anticipated debate about ministry recommendations regarding homosexual clergy. It was, to say the least, painful. At the same time, the debate was handled with extraordinary care by our presiding bishop, conducted in an atmosphere of mutual respect and prayer, and ultimately came down to a vote that opened the door to a new day of integrity and truthfulness in our church.

I say all of this both to bring you up to date on why the devotions are beginning a week later than planned…and to reflect on matters of life and death that truly matter. The verses above are the opening verses of the gospel reading appointed for this Sunday. No one “cooked the books” on this. The New Revised Common Lectionary has been in place for many years. And yet I still find the narrow mindedness of the scribes and Pharisees breath taking. Given all of the challenges faced by the people of God, living under the thumb of the occupying Romans, taxed to the teeth to keep the machinery of Israel churning, caught in the matrix of competing religious leadership, they are worried about hungry disciples failing to wash their hands correctly before eating.

Let’s listen to Jesus this week and see what he has to say.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, sometimes the chances, changes and challenges of life are overwhelming to us. And yet, day after day, one day at a time, you give us the daily bread that keeps us going. Continue to lead us, to make provision for us, that we might remain steadfast and faithful to those things which truly matter. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

(This will be the last devotion until August 17^th as Pastor Kerry travels to South Dakota.)

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats, and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left. Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Matthew 25:31-36

I once exchanged emails with a member of my congregation, then the leader of our social ministries committee. We shared our favorite Bible verses. I, of course, picked one that encourages self acceptance, always a struggle for me, 1 Corinthians 15:8-10. And he picked these verses from Matthew about meeting Jesus as we connect with the lost, hurting and broken at their point of need.

Isn’t this close to the twin hearts of our faith? That God comes to us so that we might come to others? That God’s will is done on earth in reconciling with us so that we might reconcile with others? That God’s will is expressed in simple acts of kindness and courageous moves toward justice?

I think it is. And I think we far too often forget it.

We meet Jesus in the brokenness of our lives and that of others. Hunger, thirst, illness, bondage – these moments of our lives don’t recognize ethnicity or culture or color or creed. I’ve seen it in my life over and over again. When the bridge collapsed this week in Minneapolis it took everyone on it down – and when the rescuers came, they weren’t picky in who they chose to pluck from the waters.

Show me any hospital in the world and I’ll take you to the ICU waiting room. There it doesn’t matter what kind of car you drive or what your house looks like – when you join with others in the common pain of illness and healing, you find community.

All week long I have been thinking about my visit to Woyatan Lutheran Mission in Rapid City, South Dakota. As I shared on Monday, I’ll be preaching there on Saturday night at 5:30 and Sunday at 10:00 am. I’ve been thinking about ministry among Native Americans, about our shared history, about what the good news of God’s love means among us.

Yesterday I spoke of the common humanity we share, life together under and with the God who gives us and all creatures life. Today I want to remind us that the pain of life also unites us.

Reservation life is painful. Excruciatingly so. The Pine Ridge Reservation, roughly the size of Connecticut, about 120 miles south of Rapid City, is home to 40,000 people. The land is barren, bleak and largely worthless. Water is scarce and often polluted from agricultural runoff from the north. 97% of the people live below the federal poverty level. Unemployment is 85%, there is very little industry or means of making a living. There is one under-staffed and under-funded hospital in Pine Ridge. Only a small percentage of people own a car, most walk and hitch hike.

Housing is horrible, always overcrowded, many structures still with dirt floors. The school drop out rate is 70%. The mortality rate among infants is 300% higher than elsewhere in the country. Among adults, the Lakota have the lowest life expectancy of any group in America.

More than half the adult population battles addiction and disease, especially alcoholism, diabetes and heart disease. 80% of the families are touched daily by the ravages of alcoholism. Although the sale or possession of alcohol has been banned by the Oglala Lakota Nation since the early 1970’s there is a steady source of alcohol just across the border in Nebraska called “Whiteclay.” Whiteclay has approximately 14 residents and four liquor stores which sell over 4.1 million cans of beer each year resulting in a $3million annual trade.  Unlike other Nebraska communities, Whiteclay exists only to sell liquor and make money. It has no schools, no churches, no civic organizations, no parks, no benches, no public bathrooms, no fire service and no law enforcement.  Tribal officials have repeatedly pleaded with the State of Nebraska to close these liquor stores or enforce the State laws regulating liquor stores but have been consistently refused.

Did you know this? Do you care? Or do we hide behind caricatures and stereotypes and the same old justifications that have fueled the dehumanization the dominate culture has always shown?

What can be done? At the very least, the federal government can begin keeping its promises under the obligations of treaties which remain valid. The graft and corruption which has always been a part of bringing resources to the reservations needs to be stopped. And the Church needs to be present with a voice of love, acts of justice, and the encouragement of hope.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, come to us in the broken places of our lives to bring healing. Come to us as we offer our prayers for the health and well-being of those who lack the basic necessities of life. Come to us as we meet others in the common bonds of our pain. May your good, loving and just will be done on earth as it is in heaven. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“For it was you who formed my inward parts; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Wonderful are your works; that I know very well. My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes beheld my unformed substance. In your book were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. How weighty to me are your thoughts, O God! How vast is the sum of them! I try to count them–they are more than the sand; I come to the end–I am still with you.” Psalm 139:13-18

What happens when we read these verses as “people” rather than just as a “person”? How would that change our experience of the world and our actions within it?

As a person, you would think these words to be water on dry ground. Self acceptance is a very difficult thing for us in our dominate culture. We who have bought the farm of modernity have also bought into all of its marketing messages. We have lost a sense of our “self-ness” and unconsciously accept the culture’s assessment that we are what we do, or we are what we have, or we are what we look like. We’re left feeling too fat or too short or too tall or too poor or not rich enough or our hair isn’t right or our clothes aren’t in fashion. It gets exhausting trying to keep up with the Jones’!

Then comes the word, comes the Word, that tells us that we have been “fearfully and wonderfully made.” The Word which tells us that the God who creates us also loves us and accepts us as we are. JUST as we are. Loves us enough to take the bullet of the cross for us. We are fearfully made and fearfully loved and when that message sinks deep into us we finally catch a glimpse of the goodness of God that is in each of us.

It is good news – this news of our uniqueness, splendor and beauty. And it is bad news – because it reminds us how often and how easily we exchange the glory God has given us for junk food and junk lifestyles and junk attitudes/actions. This becomes our walk, the journey of being loved and learning to live like it.

Now what happens when we read these verses as “people”? When we join the rest of creation – plants, animals, fish, birds, reptiles, insects, and human beings of every color, culture and creed – and hear the word, the Word, that we are all “fearfully and wonderfully made”! Something changes, doesn’t it?

Suddenly, just as the journey of self acceptance fills our hearts with gratitude, as difficult as that journey is for us, to see the entire cosmos with such eyes does the same thing. To see every person in every other car on the way home from work today as a precious child of God. To see every tree, every blade of grass, as God’s handiwork, opens the world to us.

To see all of humanity as a brother or sister, to see all of the created world as a relative – isn’t this part of the worldview of a Christian? It is certainly part of the creed and the worldview of the Oglala Sioux – that we are the People and the world around us our relatives. This changes everything!

It reminds us that we aren’t alone. It reminds us that the world around us and its people are meant to be enjoyed, to share, to enrich one another, not to abuse, use, manipulate or destroy one another. It reminds us of God’s concern, care and provision for our lives.

Regardless of our distinctions and our differences, our “createdness” links us to others. How we understand and live in that is our spirituality which takes so many different shapes.

We are also linked by our common pain. More on that tomorrow.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, our Creater, Redeemer and Sanctifier – is it true? Is it true that you not only give us life but also sustain our lives and promise at the end to bring us home to you? Is it all true? If it isn’t, then we are hopeless and despair is our only path. But if it is, then lead us each day to realize this wonderful news anew, to let it fill us and sustain us and drive us in the love and justice we show to others. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“They came to Bethsaida. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; and when he had put saliva on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Can you see anything?” And the man looked up and said, “I can see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he looked intently and his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. Then he sent him away to his home, saying, “Do not even go into the village.” Mark 8:22-26

You just have to love this healing story. Jesus heals a blind man but it takes two tries. Like going to the eye doctor and listening to her as she flips her little flippy things in front of your eyes, “Better here?…or here?”

“I can see people, but they look like trees walking.”

That moment in this unnamed man’s healing is not far from the experience when Columbus and his bedraggled sailors first sailed to the shores of what, to them, was the new world. They came upon a land that was lush and green and populated with people the likes of which they had never seen. Both the invaders and the invaded, the visitors and the visited, saw the others through distorted lenses, like trees walking.

To the Europeans, the people they found were simple savages without any signs of what they believed to be civilization or culture – they were hardly dressed, used simple tools, were extraordinarily gullible in prizing trivial gifts like beads. And, because they spoke no English, the unconsciously arrogant Europeans thought of them as ignorant, unschooled and barbaric.

To the Native Americans, Columbus and his men appeared as gods. The impressive sailing ships, the strange dress, the sharp swords and other tools – all of this suggested that these indeed were a powerful people unlike any the natives had known. The hospitality they showed the Europeans appeared as deference. The game was on.

Both sides saw the other as “trees walking.” Both sides made crucial errors in understanding because they couldn’t see the whole picture. The Europeans did not find India despite bequeathing their hosts with the name “Indian” which would later serve to lump hundreds of culturally and linguistically different people into the single category of “red” man. The natives were not visited by gods but by mortals who carried not only passions and ambitions that would prove deadly to them but also germs which would be just as bad.

They couldn’t see each other.

If I have learned anything in my life, I have learned that people do not share the same world. People might share the same ground, might live in the same town, even live in the same house, but their experience of the world remains radically different. All of the wondrous diversity of God’s creation brings us to a place where we finally acknowledge that this diversity truly exists. Rather than denying it away, or forcing our experience on to others, is it possible instead that we respond with humility, that we ask questions, that we listen for answers that we might not understand, but still find meaning in the exchange?

Jesus had to touch the man one more time. And then, once healed, Jesus told the man not to go into the village. Why? It doesn’t make any sense to us! Why wouldn’t he go into the village? The normal answer is that, in Mark’s theology, Jesus wasn’t ready to expose his identity as Messiah quite yet, that would have to wait for a cross and an empty tomb. But what if there is a different answer?

What if Jesus realized that life would be dangerous for a man who could truly and finally see? Who could see the truth about God’s love for all people which will never find a home in a world that wants to divide people into insiders and outsiders, the accepted and the rejected, the civilized and the barbaric?

Let us pray: Dear Lord, we know we are blind and we know that we see. We know that our ability to see life comes and goes, we have blind spots and we have moments of clarity. As we look at other people in our world, in our lives, open us to accepting them as they are, to finding ways of sharing life peacefully, to discovering our common humanity. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“O LORD, you have searched me and known me. You know when I sit down and when I rise up; you discern my thoughts from far away. You search out my path and my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, O LORD, you know it completely. You hem me in, behind and before, and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me; it is so high that I cannot attain it. Where can I go from your spirit? Or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there. If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.” Psalm 139:1-10

I have some relatives who are fond of making mission trips to southeast Asia. I have mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, I’m all for the gift they are receiving in expanding their sense of the world and the renewed appreciation that experience brings. I’m all for reaching out and establishing relationships that cross boundaries of space, language and culture. But on the other hand, there is something a little stinky to me about the idea of “bringing God to the godless.”

Throughout history, stories abound about the Christian missionaries who traveled with the troops as people “discovered” new lands and new peoples. We now realize as we revisit those stories that “bringing God to the godless” was hardly the point of the journey. Bringing gold back home to Spain, bringing glory to the empire, bringing miners to the hills, bringing settlers to the land – these were the drivers. If anything, the Church was there to grease the wheels, to offer justification for very ungodly practices, and to make sure that the Church got a piece of the action as well.

The college I attended had a dormitory named after Bishop Henry Whipple, the first Episcopalian bishop in Minnesota. His experience as a pastor and missionary was indicative of what happens so often when we seek to carry the faith to new places. He traveled with a certain unconscious arrogance – he had news to carry that the Sioux and other people needed to hear. But as he came to know those he was sent to serve he began to understand that God was already there. Though not naming “Jesus”, the Sioux clearly had a deep spirituality that recognized God’s presence in everything, that saw life and all that life encompasses as a gift from God, and that led to a communal life with codes of honor and exemplary mutual caring.

But he also saw the exploitation, the corruption, the graft and the heartlessness of the men tasked with overseeing the “treaties” which the Native Americans had been forced to accept. Bishop Whipple spoke up on their behalf, reaching all the way to President Lincoln in 1862 with a plea for more honest and capable men to serve. And yet even there, what the bishop was after was a more honest and humane means of upholding the status quo – of removing the Native Americans from their home to make way for the white settlers – rather than interceding to stop the territorial expansion.

Later, that same bishop was among those who went to what is now South Dakota with the final (and successful if you want to think of it that way) attempt to remove all the Native Americans from the Black Hills, their holy land, and herd them into reservations on the most useless and desolate land in the state. His intercessions for fair and just treatment were ignored. And the Church, rather than being the source of health, healing and harmony that God intends, became yet another extension of white arrogance, greed and oppression.

Failing to see God “already there”, the Church imposed a “god” without ears, without hands, and without a heart.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, help us see beyond the veil of our prejudices and fears. Help us see you present in places, among people, where we often are unprepared to look. Help us learn the lessons of our past, that we might more faithfully represent you in the world as people of love, justice and service. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Fools say in their hearts, “There is no God.” They are corrupt, they do abominable deeds; there is no one who does good. The LORD looks down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God. They have all gone astray, they are all alike perverse; there is no one who does good, no, not one. Have they no knowledge, all the evildoers who eat up my people as they eat bread, and do not call upon the LORD? There they shall be in great terror, for God is with the company of the righteous. You would confound the plans of the poor, but the LORD is their refuge. O that deliverance for Israel would come from Zion! When the LORD restores the fortunes of his people, Jacob will rejoice; Israel will be glad.” Psalm 14

What does it mean to be a missionary? Through the years the answer to that question has changed and it continues to change. HOW you answer that question gives insight into how you might go about the work. If you believe you are “bringing Jesus to the heathens” then you will operate in a certain manner. If you believe you are “spreading God’s love and message through actions as well as words” you might operate differently.

My experience has taught me there is another way to look at the work of a missionary. I remember back when I was a kid and I attended a worship service led by a missionary home from Africa on a break. I don’t remember the details but I remember the wonder I felt at his guts to go there, and how different life was for me there in my little town.

More and more, I wonder if the ministry of a missionary isn’t ultimately directed more toward the “sending” community than to the “sent to” community. I want to think about that this week in our devotions.

How is it that we “bring” God, or “discover” God or “experience” God when we find ourselves in the company of those different than us? When we find ourselves talking about “God” in the midst of people who have a far different conception, or no conception at all, of the God we trust – what happens to our faith and our presentation of the faith?

Next Sunday, I’ll be speaking at Woyatan Lutheran Mission in Rapid City, South Dakota. This will be my 4^th year to share worship with them and experience a traditional Lutheran service of Holy Communion with aspects of Native American spirituality. If you’re in the neighborhood, I would love to meet you and they would love to have you join us at worship!

As I look forward to again being with the people of Woyatan I find myself looking back at the story of the intersection of our stories. I grew up with a great deal of fear toward Native Americans, fear which was grounded strictly in misinformation and ignorance. Although we had a Native American boarding school in my hometown which we visited every year while I was in grade school, and while I played basketball against their teams, we didn’t mix or blend. I knew next to nothing about their history, their spirituality, or the lives the kids there had lived on the various reservations from which they came.

And so it was that my racism just came naturally. It was just assumed. It was subtle in that it was assumed. And it was acidic as it led to name-calling, stereotyping and more irrational fears. Meanwhile, God was looking “down from heaven on humankind to see if there are any who are wise, who seek after God.”

Let us pray: Dear Lord, every day finds us coming up against boundaries that have mysteriously been drawn between people – sometimes officially but far more often through the hidden messages of fear and ignorance. Help us to see the lines of your love which connect us to all whom you have created. In Jesus’ name. Amen.