Weekly Devotional from Sept 4, 2013

Why do bad things happen to good people?  It is a question that has plagued mankind for quite a while, especially when we believe in a loving God.  After all, if God loves us, why does he allow these things to happen?  Why are guns allowed into school buildings and planes to fly into buildings and bombs going off at the end of races and chemicals to be used on civilians?  Amy and I are going through this on a more personal level as well, as Amy’s friend Hilary and her boyfriend Rob were struck by a car while they were out riding a tandem bike on Monday.  Rob unfortunately has passed away from the injuries while Hilary is in critical condition.  So we are always left with the question, why do bad things happen to good people? 

                Sadly, there are no fulfilling answers.  We have free will and we make bad, harmful decisions.  It sucks, but that is all that there is.  We don’t believe in a God who kicks little old ladies down the stairs as a sort of Karma or because He’s bored.  We believe in a God who loves us and cares for us enough that we are given the ability to choose, to bind ourselves to him and His will or to bind ourselves to the powers of darkness in all of its forms – intolerance, hate, greed, self-importance.  So pain is allowed to happen, because it is simply the way of the world, a world that has the ability to choose.  But in our suffering, whether through loss, disease, broken relationships, or anything else, God is with us.  God may not prevent all the suffering in the world, but He is still part of the cure, since we are given hope and we are given comfort in his presence and in one another, whom God has gifted us with.  

Now on with the Readings!  Per usual, from the daily lectionary.

Reading 1 – Isaiah 37:14-21 – God will not always be angry and hide away, but instead will bring peace and healing.

                I particularly enjoy verses 17-18, where the people keep turning back to the ways of sin, to the ways that take us apart from God and yet God says “I will heal them, I will lead them and repay them with comfort.”  Wow.  I’m always amazed whenever people say to me “The Old Testament is a vindictive, merciless, bloodthirsty God” or “the Old Testament is all about law and punishment.”  The love that God shows us in the New Testament is present throughout the Old Testament, as is the hope and the continual forgiveness.  God didn’t change, just that way that the story is told.   A lot changes when God comes down and walks among us and dies on a cross.  But the motivation was always there – God’s desire to be close to us, to love us, and to forgive us.

                The last two verses talk about the lack of peace for the wicked, but that lack of peace is because we refuse to sit still, we refuse to pay attention to God.  We keep getting caught up in the ever changing currents of life and trying to fulfill needs that can never be met on our own power.   We create all this chaos and all this anxiety around us instead of listening to God and being filled with the peace that God brings.  We create the chaos, which is a punishment enough for our worshipping the gods of money and comfort and self.  God doesn’t have to punish us, because our lives, our own free will, becomes punishment enough.

                Thank God that he is always here though, always right beside us and holding us and comforting us, because without Him we would be completely and utterly hopeless and lost.  No matter how much we fight against Him, He stays by our side and when we take the time to realize it, we find that peace indeed.

Reading 2 – Luke 14:15-24 – Parable of a man who throws a large party and invites all of his friends and they all have weak excuses to not show up.  So instead the man tells the slaves to go and bring in all the poor and the lame and crippled and blind, so that they might enjoy the feast.  After that, there is still room, so he tells the slaves to go and bring in everyone they find in the streets and alleys. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vaOzKDRF0D4  This is a video of Shane Clairborne from the ELCA Youth Gathering.  He is the co-founder of The Simple Way and talks about treatment of the poor and such.  Give it a listen!

When I was first going through the candidacy process to get into seminary, I had to sit before a committee and answer their questions.  One of the people came off as very snotty, but she had a point.  She asked me about my prayer life and I answered that honestly, at that time, I didn’t have much of one.  I prayed when I found time to pray, which wasn’t daily.  Her response, where the tone really set me off, was “Well if God has time for you every day, why don’t you have time for God?”  Which really puts me in the place of the guests who were not going to the party.  “Well I have band” or “I have sports” or “I have work” or “I just want to relax and not think about anything.”  We have all these excuses and so many more to not have active lives of faith, to ignore God and refuse the feast that is right before us.  We take time for everything, except for God, plenty of times in our lives.  But we can change that.  There are 24 hours in a day, and 60 minutes in each hour.  Can’t each of us take at least 10 minutes a day, or 1/144^th of a day, to praise God, to pray to God, to read scripture, to do something just for God?  It doesn’t matter if we do it in the morning or the afternoon or at night, but let each of us take those ten minutes to pray or to read scripture or to meditate on God.  10 Minutes.  I think we can do it, and then we can grow upon that.  But let’s just start.  If you are already there, awesome!  If not, we can do this together.

Reading 3 – Psalm 119:65-72 – Thank you for humbling me and teaching me your ways, Lord.  If you had not, then I would have continued to go astray.

                When I was in Clinical Pastoral Education, working as a chaplain at a retirement village, I was prone to being very defensive.  I didn’t realize it, but I was.  And it drove my supervisor nuts.  He would try to instruct me, and I would keep coming back with reasons on why I was doing what I was doing.  So one day, in the middle of the parking lot, and yet another round of me defending everything, he just let loose, yelling at me for not actually wanting help and wasting his time.  Not exactly my most shining moment.  But it was also what I needed in order to get past my hang-ups and to finally just listen to what he had to say.  I had to be humbled in order to listen.  I think we all need that at times.  When we are doing well and everything we touch turns into gold, we become full of ourselves and we begin to think to ourselves “I don’t need God.  Look at all that I’ve done.”  But we do need God, because without God we would have nothing.  Everything we have is because God gave us gifts and skills and people in our lives.  Left to our own devises, we would have and be nothing. 

                I said that the beginning that everything happens because we live in a sinful world and people have free choice.  And that is true.  But that free will also helps us to see life and to appreciate it and to learn from it.  What we have is fleeting, and we need to make the most of it.  If we grow too fool of ourselves and we worship ourselves, our money, our technology, and everything else besides God, we lose some of the fullness of this life.  We begin to get lost in the chaos and the thrashing around, or we don’t see the beauty around is in each thing that God has created.  When the bad things happen to good people, we are humbled and we can begin to see our need for God and the hope and the healing that comes from experiencing God. 

Let us Pray – Lord, help us always to be humble, that we may not lose sight of you and all that you have done and continue to do in this world.  Help us to be your servants, calling in everyone to come and see you and experience you.  Help us to be honest, to genuinely love and praise you every day, even on the days that we are filled with anger at you and the injustice in this world.  Guide us and lead us each day.  Amen.

                

I apologize for such the long break between posts.  It is amazing to me how fast things just completely snowball when we are not paying attention. One week of forgetting my password became several months of neglect.  Such is the normal occurrence with Sin, which is that one little thing will ultimately lead to a more and more, growing exponentially until one day we look back and say "How did I get HERE?!"
Since neglecting this page, I have started a weekly devotional as well on Wednesdays.  From now on I will strive to add both the sermons and the devotionals, as well as the occasional thoughts as I have done today.  Once again, I apologize, and now return you to the program as was originally intended.

12-30-12 - What are you wearing?

¹²As God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. ¹³Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. ¹⁴Above all, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. ¹⁵And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in the one body. And be thankful. ¹⁶Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly; teach and admonish one another in all wisdom; and with gratitude in your hearts sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. ¹⁷And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

Merry Christmas!  That’s right, its still Christmas until Jan. 6^th, so let the Christmas Carols ring loud and may we not find ourselves lacking in the Christmas Spirit.  And doesn’t our 2^nd reading today pretty much lay out what all of our cheesy movies tell us about Christmas Spirit?  “Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.  Bear with one another and, if anyone has a complaint against another, forgive each other; just as the Lord has forgiven you, you also must forgive.” 

Clothing plays a large part of our lives.  It displays our loyalties, whether it be to a sports team or a brand.  It can define our social status, whether we are in ripped up jeans and an old t-shirt or in a tailored suit.  We are so often told to dress to impress and that our clothing and how we do our hair will make our true first impression, before we even open our mouths.  This is something that has never really changed, all the way back to Joseph and his coat of many colors.  And not only all of that is true, but also that the clothing we wear prepares us for what we are going to do with our day.  It would not work to wear a sweater to go swimming or a swimsuit to go ice fishing, but instead we are to wear that which best suits our purpose.

So when we are told in Colossians to “clothe ourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,” all of these attributes of clothing come into play.  For our first impressions as Christians, before people even meet us, are colored by what we are clothed in.  For instance, I was visiting  Jewish friend yesterday and I brought up how Crown Theatre Productions here in town is converting into doing only Christian theatre, no more secular shows.  And his reaction was “When I think about theatre, I think about open-mindedness, of fun, and exploring life, searching for answers.  When I think of Christian Theatre, I think of the opposite, of close-mindedness, where you are told exactly what is right and what is wrong and you are beaten with it, with no room to find answers for yourself.”  And that is the outfit that we too often finding ourselves wearing, one of intolerance and judgment. 

And whenever we buy into that image, the worse our outfit gets to the rest of the world.  Whenever we cry out for a place of privilege that our religious rights are being persecuted whenever there are events held on Sundays, forgetting that our Saturdays are always filled as well without any worry about our Jewish brothers and sisters, that self-important image grows.  Whenever we hold a grudge against one another and spread rumors, we put on our heads a hat of judgment, which looks like a dunce hat.  Whenever we walk past the poor and oppressed with barely a thought or we cry out for vengeance, we wrap the coat of hate around us, and it is a bright coat that holds people’s attentions far more than any of our words will ever be able to.  And these clothes do nothing for us besides blind people from the love of God, including ourselves.  For whenever we act out of bitterness or pettiness, we only poison ourselves. 

But when we act out of love, when we clothe ourselves in love and compassion and humility, instead of judgment and self-importance and self-righteousness, we clothe ourselves in the will of God and we clothe ourselves in garments that bring light to the world, instead of darkness.  When we clothe ourselves in forgiveness and understanding, then we can begin to bring healing into this world and we can begin to heal ourselves.    

And that is what we are called to be as a church, a people and a place of healing, place that is open and welcoming to all people, no matter what we may wear.  For each of us is imperfect, each of us carrying our own sins and our own mistakes.  That is why we so often begin our worship services with confession and forgiveness, and why we pass the peace right afterwards.  We don’t pass the peace as a way to catch up with one another, but as way to share the love and the grace that God has already given us with one another.  It is a time to look that person in the eye who we might think has given us the greatest harm and to say “Peace be with you, I forgive you,” and to be given that peace and forgiveness right back. 

When we forgive, we are fully clothing ourselves in God’s righteousness, for we are showing love to our neighbor, showing compassion and kindness and patience.  In two days we begin a near year in the secular calendar, 2013.  May one of our resolutions be to not only forgive, but also to seek forgiveness.  May we set aside the burdens that we carry on our backs, the resentment of those who have left our community of faith over the years, the unthoughtful words that have caused us undue stress and driven wedges in our community and all of our lives, the perceived slights that have wounded us, and all the rest of those pains and hurts that have been inflicted upon us, let us let them go and be reunited with our brothers and sisters in Love, which binds us all together.  And may we open ourselves up to each other and to apologize and seek forgiveness for our words that we have spoken, for the slights and passive aggressive things that we have done, and for the actions that have caused any divides among us, showing humility and accepting that we are not always right, but instead are always in need of forgiveness ourselves.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu once said that “without forgiveness, there’s no future.”  And that is most certainly true.  If we cannot forgive one another and show compassion and kindness, then we can never do true ministry, the will of God, for we will be stuck and held done by the sins of others and our own sins as well, and we will be showing off clothing colored with judgment and hate and jealousy, nothing different from the rest of this broken world.  But if we are able to forgive, if we can choose love over hate and healing over pain, then our clothes shall shine brightly and call to each person to come home to God, to feel His healing presence in this world, and to experience the goodness and hope and peace that He brings. 

12-24-12 - Celebrate and find Peace

            Today we celebrate, we celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, a child born in a dirty stable, to a mother who was pregnant before she married her husband, in a land where they knew no one, and then glorified by shepherds, those not trusted by the rest of society. Such is the birth of our King, and how glorious it is that He should be born so lowly.

            And we should rejoice that God comes to us in such a meager, such a poor state.  We should rejoice that our Savior is the son of Mary and is born in a stable with the animals, because that is what makes God so approachable.  God is not some far off deity, up beyond the clouds who cares nothing for His creation.  No, God is one who is born in the filth of this life, and who will grow up and die a traitors death, all so that no one can claim to be too low to see God and to have God present with them.  None of us is beneath God’s love, none of us beneath the opportunity to stand with God.

            What child is this?  This is Christ the King, born so that there might be light and hope in this world, so that we may look beyond the black veil of death and see God and His eternal love for us.  So come, let us join the shepherds in adoring him.  Let us stop thinking about silver and good and our Christmas trees and Santa coming down the chimney, although remember He doesn’t come until after everyone is asleep, so kids, go to bed early tonight.  But let us look upon the Christ child and also see the man that he is to become.  The man who showed us what it truly means to love our neighbors more than ourselves and to serve.  The man who would take away the power of death by taking our Sin upon Himself. 

            Let us give thanks each day, and especially now as we remember his birth, for God coming to us in flesh, out of pure love for us, that we may approach him and know him and know that we are never alone, never left out in the cold, and never unloved, for through everything we have God with us, comforting us, and working through us to be a great light in this community and this world.  For this child shows us where true power lies.  Not in weapons and intimidation and bullying, but in loving service, which changes lives for the better.  Power lies in the capacity to change hearts and in forgiveness, not in jealousy and armies and grudges.  When we follow out great Prince of Peace, we are able to find healing and completeness, far beyond what our own desires may bring us.  So this Christmas season, let us love one another as our Father in heaven has first loved us, and allow ourselves to be humbled before others so that there may be forgiveness and healing, instead of pain and suffering.  For that is the greatest lesson baby Jesus teaches us, that no one is too good to be humble and in order to serve we must be willing to lower ourselves so we may be on equal terms with all.

            May the peace of God rest upon each of us this night and bring us to everlasting joy.  Amen.

12-23-2012 - Saints? Who needs them?! We do!

⁹In those days Mary set out and went with haste to a Judean town in the hill country, ⁴⁰where she entered the house of Zechariah and greeted Elizabeth. ⁴¹When Elizabeth heard Mary’s greeting, the child leaped in her womb. And Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit ⁴²and exclaimed with a loud cry, “Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb. ⁴³And why has this happened to me, that the mother of my Lord comes to me? ⁴⁴For as soon as I heard the sound of your greeting, the child in my womb leaped for joy. ⁴⁵And blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what was spoken to her by the Lord.” ⁴⁶And Mary said, “My soul magnifies the Lord, ⁴⁷and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, ⁴⁸for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed; ⁴⁹for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name. ⁵⁰His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation. ⁵¹He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts. ⁵²He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; ⁵³he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. ⁵⁴He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy, ⁵⁵according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever.” ⁵⁶And Mary remained with her about three months and then returned to her home.

            As Lutherans on a whole, we don’t really normally know what to do with Mary.  We know for sure that we don’t want to be like those Catholics who came up with the idea that Mary was virgin born as well and who have festivals for her and pray to her.  But so often we end up discarding her in a misguided effort to not be like another denomination within our Christian faith and we miss out on her strength and her faith and the message of God that she sings.

            First off, lets talk about her strength.  Imagine being this girl, this young virgin who has an angel come to her and tell her that she will be the mother of God’s child, the mother of God Himself.  Now before jumping to the honor of this situation, of being chosen by God, consider how this will play out in her life.  Consider how low unwed mothers are seen in our current time.  So often portrayed as welfare queens or as having low morals, even if neither of those stereotypes is remotely true.  And if not looked down upon, they may be pitied instead, but hardly ever lifted up as examples of how one should be.  Now that that discrimination and intensify it a thousand fold.  As our confirmation class has seen in reading various parts of the Bible, women routinely ranked below men to begin with, and actually their main  value in society was procreation and they had to maintain their virtue and only be with the man that they married, or else immense amounts of shame would be attached to them, and to the man that they may eventually marry, although most likely an unwed mother would be cast aside by basically any man.  After all, Joseph is about to do just that, although quietly instead of publically shaming her, until Gabriel comes and tells him to marry her instead.  It takes an act of God in order for Mary’s honor to be maintained at all.  And even today we question if Mary even was a virgin, as theories abound about what really happened, so her morality and purity questioned even 2000 years later.  But yet she had the strength to say yes to God, the strength to stand up to all the negativity and all the hurtful things that would be said about her and to her the rest of her life, all because she was obeying the will of God.  So often we cower when we might lose a friend or make people look at us weirdly when we are asked to fulfill our callings, to spread the gospel of Jesus Christ.  But instead of cowering, Mary allowed her life to be changed and accepted all the consequences that this change would bring.  And we should take her as that example of strength and seek to match it in our lives. 

            Her faith is equally as powerful.  Faith is not something that is purely in our heads, but instead is complete trust in God.  Mary trusted that God would keep His promise and acted in light of that.  This ties into her strength well, because when we trust in God, when we trust that God is caring for us, then we are given the strength to act.

            And her faith and her strength and her experience with God influenced how she saw God and the song that she sings when Elizabeth declares that indeed God has been working in Mary.  For she realizes that God looks with favor upon lowliness, not upon power and might.  He looked with favor upon Mary, who would be an unwed mother, scorned by society, in order to show his love and compassion for all people, and especially those who are outcasts of society.  By being the son of an outcast, God placed Himself with all outcasts.

            Then, she also says that the mighty are brought down.  So often we think about the idea that the more faith we have, the more stuff we are going to get, or the more prestige or power, but instead God says that those who are high up shall be cast down.  It’s the complete reversal of what we imagine that we want, which is what the message of Luke is all about.  Those who are high and lofty, who are too full of themselves and whom others idolize, they will be pushed down in order to show God’s power and because they have worshipped the gods of self and power.

            It is quite the opposite of our assumptions, and yet we are called to live in the light of this reality.  We live in the light that gives warmth and hope to the lost and the outcast, the poor and the lame.  We live in the light of one who cares for the lowest of the low, who when we are at our most broken lifts us up, and holds us in his arms and claims us as His own. That is precisely the good news of God though, that at our most beat down, when we have no friends and we’ve lost loved ones, and when we don’t even know how to love ourselves, God is right there beside us, loving us each moment of our lives, reassuring us that we are never alone and never truly lost.

            And even for the proud, there is hope.  For once God has sent them crashing to the ground, they will be able to look up and see who truly has the power and who truly is king of all. And let us not forget that we may be in this group ourselves.  We too need to be cast down at times, because we see ourselves as the ones with the power, we see our gifts and our resources as things that we have earned instead of being given to us by God, in order to be used for His glory.  How often do we fall into the trap that the powerful have, which is fearing losing that which we have and holding onto it tightly, instead of freely giving it away, as our Father does with his loving grace. 

            May we always learn from Mary’s example.  May we find her faith in our lives, which strengthens us to love the outcast and the poor, and to remember our place in the world as a child of God, that we may do His will and not our own.  Thanks be to God.

Amen.