Daily Devotions

For as in one body we have many members, and not all the members have the same function, so we, who are many, are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another. We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us: prophecy, in proportion to faith; ministry, in ministering; the teacher, in teaching; the exhorter, in exhortation; the giver, in generosity; the leader, in diligence; the compassionate, in cheerfulness. Romans 12:4-8

The Houston Texans started a new quarterback on Sunday and ended up winning the game. As much as I believe that sports are overblown in our country, there is still many life lessons that playing games can teach us.

The new quarterback played well enough for the team to win. But he didn’t win the game himself. It took the whole team.

Paul uses a few sports analogies in talking about the Christian faith but his favorite analogy is the human body. Our bodies, comprised of interdependent parts and systems, reflect our connectedness and relationship with the world around us. But not only that, our physical bodies reflect our connectedness and relationship to Jesus in that, together, we are the body of Christ in the world.

We all know that. We have all heard that before. There is no surprise in being reminded that we all have been given different sets of gifts, each of which has an invaluable contribution to make the wider common good of all. We aren’t even surprised to read the list of gifts.

Prophecy is the insight to tell the truth about the way life really is. Ministry is caring for and loving others. Teaching is helping others learn. Exhortation is offering encouragement to others. Giving is being generous with all that we have. Leadership is influencing others toward a desired outcome. Compassion is connecting with the pain of others and reconnecting them to hope.

None of that surprises us. We recognize those gifts as essential to the team, to the work of the body of Christ in the world.

But what does surprise us is the statement that “individually we are members one of another.” This, in a culture that prides itself on individualism and “it’s OK if nobody gets hurt”, cuts deeply. It means quite literally that we belong to one another and therefore we are accountable to one another. It means we can’t divide humanity into competing teams without paying a personal price.

This is the statement that holds together so many of the paradoxes of our lives – we receive by giving away, we win by surrendering, we show up for the sake of others, we welcome others and, in that, we find ourselves at home.

We are connected to each other. Keep that in mind as you move through this day. How different does the world look when we see all that moves around us as parts of a whole rather than disconnected pieces.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, give us a glimpse today, just a quick glimpse, of the connectedness within which we live. Help us see ourselves and others as members of the same body, reflections of your presence in the world. Help us see how our gifts contribute to the common good of all. May we find the joy of being a part of life as we do our part in our lives. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

The end of all things is near; therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers. Above all, maintain constant love for one another, for love covers a multitude of sins. Be hospitable to one another without complaining. Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received. Whoever speaks must do so as one speaking the very words of God; whoever serves must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ. To him belong the glory and the power forever and ever. Amen. 1 Peter 4:7-11

“Therefore be serious and discipline yourselves for the sake of your prayers…”

This past Sunday, on my way home from church, I stopped at a gas station about a block from our house. When I got to the counter, there were three little girls behind it. The two oldest had the chairs and the youngest was sitting on the floor. I put the things I would going to buy on the counter when the oldest girl told me that the person who could help me would be right back.

A couple of minutes later the man who normally runs things came out and began to ring my purchases up. I asked the man if he was their father and he proudly said yes. So I said to the girls, “So you have to spend your Sunday afternoons at work with your Dad? How boring is that?” They giggled.

But then their father said, “They only stopped by for a few minutes so I could say my prayers.”

Wow.

There are certain behaviors that clearly are communicated within Christian families. From today’s reading, loving others, being hospitable to others, serving others, speaking carefully to others, all of that fits neatly into the basket of what Christian parents communicate and pass on to their children. But being disciplined in prayer? How often do we model that in the lives of our children?

We realize that we ought never eat without thanking God for our food. Most of us pray around the table when we eat. But how often does that really happen? When our children are young, we say bedtime prayers with them. But at what age does that stop? Do we teach children that prayer is the last thing we do, or the first thing we do, as we move through our lives?

How often do our children see us pray? What difference might that make in their appreciation of the role that faith plays in our lives?

Let us pray: Dear Lord, far too often, turning to you in prayer is the last thing that crosses our minds as we move through our lives. By the power of your Spirit, inspire us to pray first in all things. Not out of self righteousness but as a sign of our dependence and trust in you. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then the other came, saying, ‘Lord, here is your pound. I wrapped it up in a piece of cloth, for I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.’ He said to him, ‘I will judge you by your own words, you wicked slave! You knew, did you, that I was a harsh man, taking what I did not deposit and reaping what I did not sow? Why then did you not put my money into the bank? Then when I returned, I could have collected it with interest.’ He said to the bystanders, ‘Take the pound from him and give it to the one who has ten pounds.’ (And they said to him, ‘Lord, he has ten pounds!’) ‘I tell you, to all those who have, more will be given; but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away.  Luke 19:20-26

In Jesus’ day, no one who was as rich as the master in this parable got that way honestly, legally, or ethically. The master in this parable is a crook, a robber baron, a Bernie Madoff. The only way anyone could accumulate that kind of wealth was by paying off the Romans, making loans to farmers at impossible interest rates, foreclosing on loans, and taking their land.

And the only way that those first two servants could have doubled their money would have been to do stuff that was just as unethical as their boss.

When the third slave tells his master, “I was afraid of you, because you are a harsh man; you take what you did not deposit, and reap what you did not sow.” he is simply telling the truth. He is courageously standing up against the corruption and oppression of a world that is controlled by those who see to it that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

At the end of the parable, the third slave looks like a loser, suffering for telling the truth, standing up to the powers that be, sacrificing himself by refusing to benefit from the under-handed ways that made his own master rich. Standing with the poor instead of the powerful.

The third slave looks like Jesus.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, open our eyes to all the ways in which our value system, our sense of right and wrong, our sense of purpose in living, has been knocked askew by our own personal and cultural misconceptions. Shape us, guide our imaginations, use us as you will. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then he told them a parable: “Look at the fig tree and all the trees; as soon as they sprout leaves you can see for yourselves and know that summer is already near. So also, when you see these things taking place, you know that the kingdom of God is near. Truly I tell you, this generation will not pass away until all things have taken place. Heaven and earth will pass away, but my words will not pass away.

“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.” Luke 21:29-36

Jesus refers to “that day” which might “catch you unexpectedly”. What do we do with that?

We could think about “that day” somewhere out in front of us. We could think of “that day” as something that will happen “someday”. Such thoughts might baffle us, confuse us, or scare us. But, like a warning that we will get cavities if we don’t brush our teeth or heart disease if we don’t give up fatty meat for supper every night, thinking about “that day” happening “someday” probably won’t motivate us.

We’ll just tuck that information back in the corners of our minds. We’ll forget about it, deny it, pretend it away.

And deep inside we know, if our preparations for “that day” have anything to do with our abilities to remain alert, or our inner resources of strength, then we’re probably already toast. There is probably already too much “dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life” weighing us down.

Someday is a weight we can’t bear. It is out of our reach.

But what if we think of “that day” simply as “today”?

I don’t know about “someday”, but I do know that today we give our dissipation to God, we can ask God for the gift of sobriety, and we can turn our worries of this life over to God to take care of.  I know that God can protect, care for, provide for, forgive, guide, and love us today. And I know we can realize that, depend on it, stake our lives on it. And it will work. For today.

Frankly, that is what I think Jesus is looking to give us. It is why, in the prayer he taught us, we pray “Give us THIS day our daily bread” instead of “give us someday our daily bread.”

All we have is today. That is all we need. And if, by God’s grace, we string enough todays together to reach someday, we’ll be in good shape.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, we pray for the grace to entrust our lives to your care and keeping for today. Help us face today with the confidence born of knowing that nothing can separate us from your love, the freedom that gives us to be ourselves, and the peace that it gives us to live honestly, uprightly, joyfully, and soberly. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

See, just as the Lord my God has charged me, I now teach you statutes and ordinances for you to observe in the land that you are about to enter and occupy. You must observe them diligently, for this will show your wisdom and discernment to the peoples, who, when they hear all these statutes, will say, “Surely this great nation is a wise and discerning people!” For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him? And what other great nation has statutes and ordinances as just as this entire law that I am setting before you today?

But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as neither to forget the things that your eyes have seen nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life; make them known to your children and your children’s children… Deuteronomy 4:5-9

On October 30th I wrote a devotion that played with the idea of God’s plans. A pastor friend of mine didn’t hesitate to dash off an email in response. He wrote to tell me that “of course God has a plan, Deuteronomy 6:4-9.”

God teaches us and we in turn teach our children. That’s God’s plan.

Far be it from me to take issue with a colleague who is both older and wiser than me…but, if it were that simple, how is it that we have wound up in 2014 with several competing branches of Judaism and 41,000 Christian denominations in the world? All of whom I expect are teaching slightly different things.

Thus, while I think that parents teaching children is not only God’s plan but it is also the way things actually work, there remains the issue of just what it is that parents are teaching.

We could, for example, teach our children that “our God is much better than all of their gods.” Deuteronomy says “For what other great nation has a god so near to it as the Lord our God is whenever we call to him?” We then position ourselves as competing with others in a religiously diverse world, arguing the merits of our local “god franchise” over against all of the others out there.

Does such “religious competition” make the world a better place? Is winning the hearts and minds of people, so that everybody else believes in the same god in the same way as us, really job one in what we teach our children?

Far better than looking out at the world we want to conquer, I think, is to look inward at the work that God wants to be doing in our lives and then passing that down to our children. Not just in our words but in our actions.

Jesus kept it simple. You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your mind, and with all your strength. And you shall love your neighbor as you love yourself.

It seems to me that there is a lifetime of teaching ahead of us in that alone.

Let us pray: Dear Lord, we have all internalized messages that we have been taught along the way. Some of what we have been taught has been and continues to be helpful in our lives. Some we need to discard. Grant us grace to tell the difference. And, by the power of your Spirit in our midst, guide us as we pass the faith which you have given us, to those who will follow after us. May we live in love for the good of the world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“But about that day and hour no one knows, neither the angels of heaven, nor the Son, but only the Father. For as the days of Noah were, so will be the coming of the Son of Man. For as in those days before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day Noah entered the ark, and they knew nothing until the flood came and swept them all away, so too will be the coming of the Son of Man. Then two will be in the field; one will be taken and one will be left. Two women will be grinding meal together; one will be taken and one will be left.

Keep awake therefore, for you do not know on what day your Lord is coming. But understand this: if the owner of the house had known in what part of the night the thief was coming, he would have stayed awake and would not have let his house be broken into. Therefore you also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an unexpected hour.” Matthew 24:36-44

Hypervigilance is a burden that far too many people carry through their lives. It is most often born in trauma. Whether from growing up in an abusive home or living with the memories of service in a war zone, those who suffer from hypervigilance are constantly scanning their surroundings, taking the emotional temperature of their environment, always waiting for the shoe to fall. It is an exhausting way to live. It disconnects and damages relationships.

Is this the life that Jesus envisions for us? Always worried that the thief is going to come and get us or that the Son of Man will show up at the airport while we’re waiting for our ship to come in?

Hypervigilance is born in fear. It is an acquired trait, a learned response. And it is powerful in the way that fear is always powerful. Especially in the lies that fear tells us which rob us of our confidence, leaving us feeling powerless in the face of threats that could very well be nothing more than figments of our imagination.

Is that what Jesus is doing to us with this text? With his warning to be “ready” is Jesus inviting us into lives of fear? Is he trying to scare us into the kingdom?

Unfortunately, far too many of us who sincerely believe we are serving Jesus’ cause are guilty of using fear to motivate compliance. We might think we are preaching the Gospel when in fact all we are doing is treating Jesus like a scary bogeyman out to get the stubborn, to flush the “lost” once and for all. No good comes of that. I know. I’ve been on the receiving end of such proclamation.

I rest instead in the mystery that no one knows where life is ultimately taking us but we do know that the hands in which we will ultimately end up have nail scars at the wrist.

What helps people who suffer from hypervigilance is community and love. Patient, caring, conversation. Time in the community of a group of people who are all suffering from the same thing. Trust eventually swallowing up fear. Little steps in the right direction with occasional relapses.

That sounds to me like the church.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, we trust our lives to you. We trust you in the face of anything and everything that would drive us into fear. We trust that you come into our lives through people who stand with us and for us. We trust that you won’t leave anyone behind. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days. Now Bethany was near Jerusalem, some two miles away, and many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to console them about their brother. When Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went and met him, while Mary stayed at home.

Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died. But even now I know that God will give you whatever you ask of him.” Jesus said to her, “Your brother will rise again.” Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection on the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live, and everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?” John 11:17-26

I’ve never seen anyone, dead for four days, come back to life. Medical science can’t do it. Benny Hinn can’t even pull off a trick like that. If you have been dead for four days, as the King James Version used to put it, “Lord, by this time he stinketh: for he hath been dead four days.”

I’ve never seen a dead man come back to live but I have seen plenty of people, as good as dead, who God has resurrected into brand new lives.

I know a guy who seemed to have the world by the tail, except for the part where he was on the edge of losing a high paying job because of his drinking. He kept all of that secret until the morning after he had been arrested for DUI. His wife was threatening to leave him and take their child with her. He was broken. I couldn’t do anything for him.

But I had a friend, a pastor in recovery from alcoholism, who once said that the only thing to do in a situation like that was to take the person to an AA meeting. So that is what I did.

Today he is a new man. Sober for years. Still married to the same patient and loving woman. He has a great life. And he would be the first to tell you that his sobriety is not something he did on his own – it is a gift from God that came through his willingness to take certain steps.

I know plenty of people like that. They all say the same thing. Their recovery has been their “this life resurrection to new life” and all the credit goes to God.

We say every week when we confess our faith using the Apostles’ Creed that we believe in the “resurrection of the body”. I do believe in that. I just don’t think we have to wait until we die to see it. God’s transformative power is available to us today, tomorrow, and forever. No matter how much it looks like we stinketh.

Let us pray: Thank you, dear Lord, for the power you have to raise us to new life, to pull us out of the ashes of our brokenness, out of the mud of life, and set our feet on a new path. Draw near to those who are hopeless, to those grieving the death of loved ones, and to those suffering in despair. For you alone are the power greater than ourselves who gives us life, new life, and the life to come. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

“Do not let your hearts be troubled. Believe in God, believe also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places. If it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. And you know the way to the place where I am going.” John 14:1-4

Give me an open canvas for a wedding and I am probably going to use the story from John 2 where Jesus turns the water into wine. Do the same for a funeral and you’re probably going to hear from John 14. I love/hate both of these passages.

How can you love and hate the same passages from the Bible? Easy. Just read them closely.

Expecting a miracle in your marriage is a pathway to disaster. And telling people at a funeral “do not let your hearts be troubled” is cruel. That’s what I hate about those passages. And it is also what I love.

I love, at a wedding, a story that promises that Jesus can take what is good and make it even better. I love how the story says, even though mass producing magnificent wine is a pretty cool parlor trick, the best is yet to come. Coming so early in John’s book, like the ceremony coming so early in a life long marriage, it draws you into the beauty of the story yet to come. I love it because it is so hopeful.

And here, in John 14, while Jesus clearly skipped his Clinical Pastoral Education 101 class which warns us against telling people how they are supposed to feel, I have to admit there is something powerful in the words “do not let your hearts be troubled.”

Think about it a bit. Someone has just been crushed by the death of a loved one. Whether a sudden tragic death or a long lingering suffering death, the loved ones left behind feel powerless, empty, grieving. They feel victimized by the forces of the universe. Like God turned God’s back on them. Like they are being punished. Their hearts are feeling explodedly troubled.

And Jesus leads with “do not let your hearts be troubled.” Jesus appeals to us, not as victims but as survivors, not as helpless children at the mercy of raging emotions, but as human beings capable of self-reflection and redirection and hope. And he doesn’t stop with that opening line but goes on to words of promise.

Jesus says he has prepared a place for us. He will come and take us to that place. He says there is life after death just as there is life within grief and life after grief has become something else. We are hanging then, with one hand on don’t let your hearts be troubled and the other hand on I will come again and take you to myself, until we finally realize that we don’t need to decide which hand needs to squeeze the hardest to hold on. We realize that we can just let go. And Jesus will take care of us.

Here too, the best is yet to come. I love/hate this passage. I can’t read it often enough.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, you love us in the face of life and you love us in the face of death. When we see death as a bleak brick wall or an enormous black hole in the ground and in our hearts, help us see it instead at the gate to eternal life. Help us see death through the lens of the resurrection, the miracle of life after life, that we might again see the miracle of life within life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

Then one of the elders addressed me, saying, “Who are these, robed in white, and where have they come from?” I said to him, “Sir, you are the one that knows.” Then he said to me, “These are they who have come out of the great ordeal; they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. For this reason they are before the throne of God, and worship him day and night within his temple, and the one who is seated on the throne will shelter them. They will hunger no more, and thirst no more; the sun will not strike them, nor any scorching heat; for the Lamb at the center of the throne will be their shepherd, and he will guide them to springs of the water of life, and God will wipe away every tear from their eyes.” Revelation 7:13-17

This past Sunday was All Saints Sunday and this text from Revelation was one of the texts we read in worship. It had been a tough week at church. Two very difficult funerals. The whole week passed with the taste of the “great ordeal” in my mouth.

I was just a kid when I read The Late Great Planet Earth. The writer basically combed the Bible for as much poetry and apocalyptic fantasy (yes, I said it) that he could find and then he tied as much of that as possible to rewriting history, spinning current events (in the 1970’s), and projecting future events. It would culminate in a horrible war and then Jesus would show up and clean house.

It scared the heck out of me. And sold millions of copies. It still sells.

I thought about all of that last week as the weekend drew near and an All Saints sermon was cooking inside of me. And then it occurred to me that we are already living in the midst of the great ordeal from which we long for release. We always have.

The Ebola virus has now been overtaken in the news by the NEXT BIG THING. As bad as it has been in some places, it pales before the plagues of the Middle Ages, the flu and the polio outbreaks from just a hundred years ago. There are wars and threats of war around the world (although nothing of consequence in the major population centers of the “developed” world.) Bad things are happening all around us. And always have.

The real question for us isn’t “When will Jesus return and clean house?”, the real question is “How are we to live in the meantime?”

Are we just to sit back, take what comes our way, fend for ourselves, and ride it out until that day when God will guide God’s own to springs of the water of life, and wipe away every tear from our eyes?

Or, seeing that day off in the distance, continue to live that future vision into reality by doing whatever we can to make a positive, loving, peaceful, life-giving difference as much as we can, as often as we can, to as many people as we can?

It’s a rhetorical question. I think we know the answer.

Let us pray: Gracious Lord, you send us into the world in your name, to be your hands, your feet, your listening ears, and your truth-telling lips. Encourage us to live fully and confidently, even in the face of the ordeals of our lives, with the confident expectation that you will take care of the big picture even as we tend the little corners of the garden where you have placed us. Let our love for you and others be a foretaste of the feast to come in the midst of a broken, self destructive, world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.

See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God; and that is what we are. The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is. And all who have this hope in him purify themselves, just as he is pure. 1 John 3:1-3

I love the line “the world does not know us…” I get that.

The Christian church – and I say it that way on purpose because it lumps us all together in one big diverse disagreeing extended families of cousins around the world – gets regularly trashed. It has become fashionable.

Facebook posts abound with how old fashioned and out of touch and hypocritical we are. One post tells us we ignore the “wants and needs” of entire generations of people, all to please grandma’s and grandpa’s and thereby keep the doors open.

We’re told that all we care about is money and buildings and stained glass. That the world will have to pry our cold dead fingers off our pipe organ keyboards. The sign might say “Lutheran” or “Baptist” or “Episcopalian” but all we are really are secret clubs of Democrats or Republicans who give for the sake of the tax breaks and care only about maintaining the status quo (which is code for our own personal and positional power.)

The world says we are either Tea Party Luddites, homophobes, and racists or else we are bleeding heart liberal homosexual loving sell outs who have traded the Ten Commandments in for “do you own thing, just don’t hurt anybody.”

The only time the Pope makes the front page is if he says something that might tweak the establishment. The only time most pastors make the front page is if they got arrested for stealing money or some sexual sin.

The world does not know us.

The world doesn’t see how insignificant our buildings really are to us. They are just tools. The world doesn’t see what happens within those walls. People showing up for one another, supporting one another, encouraging one another, praying together, serving, giving, crying.

Week after week after week, faithful people giving on their time, their skills, and their money to insure than the good that the church does keeps happening. People making way, learning new things, ever expanding the horizons of their views of God and the world.

Every week I watch what happens in the life of the congregation I serve. I realize, when I am working with couples preparing for marriage, that there is not one other place in the entire world where our conversation takes them right where they need to go to start their new lives on the right foot. I see conversations happening between young people and their children that would never ever happen anywhere else if not for the church to encourage them. I see random acts of kindness, consistent service, and streams of people showing up to our campus for recovery meetings and other activities that are profoundly life-giving.

The world sees none of that. At least nothing that gets reported on Facebook.

So I vote, let’s the tell the world about the side of the church that they have either never seen or have long forgotten. We will tell the world by speaking the universal language of the church – however muted, misunderstood, or misplaced – and that is the language of love. For that is all we have to give that matters.

Let us pray: Thank you for loving us, God of mercy, power, and presence. Keep speaking that love to us, and through us, for we so easily forget and so often need to be reminded that that is what you are all about, and that is all we need. In Jesus’ name. Amen.