Month: October 2017

Sowers Gonna Sow

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 12; 146, Ezra 5:1-17, Revelation 4:1-11, Matthew 13:1-9

In the Parable of the Sower, a man casts seeds across many types of ground. Some of it is a bare path where the birds can snatch it up. Some of it is rocky and rootless. Some is thorny and inhospitable. And finally, some of it is good soil. The different types of ground, Jesus eventually explains to his disciples, represent the different types of people who hear the Gospel.

Not much is said about the sower, who may be Jesus, but who may also be anyone (or everyone) spreading the Good News. Would we consider this sower a good steward of his responsibilities? It sounds like an awful lot of seed went to waste. Why weren’t his efforts more focused? Was he unable to tell good soil from bad? Maybe. Maybe not. In the end, each type of soil yielded or did not as was its nature … but the sower left no ground without potential.

When it comes to spreading grace, or acts inspired by grace, stewardship takes on a new dimension. Funds may be limited, but generosity is not. Physical resources may be limited, but love is not. Time and talents may be limited, but forgiveness is not. So why be stingy with generosity, love, or forgiveness? Even if they don’t yield what we would hope, we don’t run out of them. They are meant to be cast about widely – almost irresponsibly – because they aren’t about what we get back.

Are some people going to take advantage of our good nature? Almost certainly. Are some people never going to “get it together” despite our best efforts to support them? Definitely. Is it our job to size them up in advance and decide whether or not to waste our efforts? Or to withhold that seed in a clenched fist, as though there’s a finite supply, until we find the exactly right spot to sow it?

If we want to be sowers like the one in the parable … it is not. So sow.

It’s a balancing act. We want to be wise about how we steward finite resources to meet needs, but we also want to be wise about which resources were never ours to keep anyway.

Comfort: The more generous you are, the less you will need.

Challenge: When you find yourself withholding what you have received through grace, meditate on why.

Prayer: Because the poor are despoiled, because the needy groan, may the Lord now rise up, and may we follow. (based on Psalm 12:5)

Discussion: Do you think your definition of who “deserves” grace is the same as God’s?

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That Lived-In Feeling

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 108; 150; Jeremiah 44:15-30; Acts 18:24-19:7; Luke 10:25-37

What if cleanliness really isn’t next to Godliness?

Jesus once told a parable about an unclean spirit which had departed from a person and wandered aimlessly for a while, only to return and find its old abode as accommodating as  an empty house, all swept and orderly. Of course it moved back in, and brought friends with it so that the home – the person – was worse off than before.

Maybe the word we’re looking FOR isn’t cleanliness so much as … tidiness.

This parable can be read on different levels. One is the danger of believing that once we’ve solved a spiritual problem, we are out of danger. Relapses – addictive, behavioral, or otherwise – occur when we stop being vigilant. When we’ve created chaos in the life of ourselves or someone else, regaining order is an important step, but it’s the beginning, not the end. Order not put to a purpose is like an uninhabited house; it will fill up with something, so we better pay attention to what that something is or we end up with unwelcome guests. Think of the “dry drunk” home, where the shelves have been cleared of liquor bottles, but dysfunctions both new and ongoing fill the space.

On another level, it is about the hollowness of order in the institutional church. The religious leaders kept the house of the Lord tidy by enforcing the letter of the law, but neglected the spirit. Demons of apathy took up residence. A church that deals with our sinful nature by prioritizing orderliness above wholeness may glitter like a gem, yet it’s not welcoming to those who need it most but can’t meet its superficial standards. Its rituals and sacrifices are like a stench before the Lord, who asks us to take in the unwashed beggar, the wailing widow, and the unruly orphan – and that’s going to be untidy no matter how much plastic is on the furniture. Our kitchens will fill with dirty dishes. Shoes will pile up in the doorway. They are not the disruption, but the mission. Together we learn to find a home for all of it in God’s house.

A house is designed to be inhabited, otherwise it’s just a shrine to a life that was. Shrines contain history; we worship a God who is present and living.

Comfort: Some of that messiness in your life is actually holy.

Challenge: If you are prone to clutter, create a little more order. If you have a place for everything and everything in its place, commit those things to a purpose.

Prayer: For God alone my soul waits in silence; from him comes my salvation. He alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress; I shall never be shaken. (Psalm 62:1-2)

Discussion: What distinguishes a holy mess from mere clutter? Which are you prone to?

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Cause and Effect

/ JJS / 2 Comments

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 108; 150; Jeremiah 44:15-30; Acts 18:24-19:7; Luke 10:25-37

Baseball is notorious for its superstitions. Players (and fans) will eat specific foods, wear specific clothes (often without washing them), and refrain from haircuts, shaving, or even bathing once they believe a certain behavior has brought them luck. Performance may improve when someone feels confident or empowered, but the activities themselves have nothing to do with winning or losing (cue disapproving comments from dedicated baseball fans). Human beings are wired to draw conclusions from perceived patterns, but when these patterns are coincidental or casual we are noticing a correlation, not a cause.

The Jewish people who sought refuge in Egypt dedicated themselves to idolatry because of a correlation. When the prophet Jeremiah warned them to stop making sacrifices to the goddess Asherah, also known as the queen of heaven, they outright refused, saying:

We used to have plenty of food, and prospered, and saw no misfortune. But from the time we stopped making offerings to the queen of heaven and pouring out libations to her, we have lacked everything and have perished by the sword and by famine.

Jeremiah had a different take. He claimed the desolation and disaster which befell them happened because the Lord was no longer willing to tolerate their abominable behavior. We can also be a little too ready to draw conclusions, with a solid amount of certainty, which turn out to undermine our faith.

One example is the sense among many Christians (and frankly many non-believers as well) that poverty is a result of moral failing. Another closely related example is that good health is a result of strong faith. These types of assumptions contain at least two dangers. The first is that they teach us to think of people who suffer from misfortune as lacking faith and therefore undeserving of mercy. The second is that they leave us unprepared for our own times of trial; many people experience a crisis or loss of faith when the good luck they attributed to faith finally runs out.

Because thinking critically is difficult and time-consuming, we are prone to substituting correlation – superstition – for faith, even doubling down after a superstition has been pointed out to us. Yet under duress, one is easily unraveled and disproved while the other is not. Faith can stand up to scrutiny, so let’s be brave enough to challenge the idol of our own thinking.

Additional Reading: For thoughts on today’s passage from Luke, see Good Samaritan and One of the good ones…

Comfort: Faith withstands both criticism and superstition.

Challenge: Think critically about what you believe.

Prayer: Bless our God, O peoples, let the sound of his praise be heard, who has kept us among the living, and has not let our feet slip. (Psalm 66:8-9)

Discussion: Do you have any superstitions?

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When life hands you Philemons…

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 122; 149, Ezra 4:7, 11-24, Philemon 1-25, Matthew 12:33-42

The Letter to Philemon is not only the shortest of Paul’s epistles, but the third-shortest book in the Bible.  It’s shorter than any of the devotional posts on this blog. It isn’t written to an entire congregation, but to a single person. It doesn’t contain grand theological arguments, but a simple request.

Though the underlying premise of the letter has been debated by some, we traditionally consider Philemon to be the owner of a runaway slave named Onesimus who befriended Paul during the period he was under house arrest in Rome. Paul convinced Onesimus to return to Philemon bearing this letter which asked Philemon to accept the slave as a brother in Christ. Paul, reflecting the character of Christ, was even willing to assume any debts Onesimus might owe that he might escape punishment.

Paul was asking both parties to do something incredibly challenging: to see each other not as cogs in the cultural machine, but as human beings deserving the dignity of any beloved child of God. Philemon had to overcome the  idea that, no matter what the law allowed, Onesimus was his equal in Christ. And Onesimus had to risk his continued freedom on the hope that Philemon was capable of what Paul was asking.

This situation encapsulates what seems to be a fundamental flaw in human nature: we are capable of dismissing entire categories of people as less than fully human. Slavery, which exists to this day, is predicated on this flaw. It’s not a liberal or conservative bias; consider the flurry of recent revelations of sexual harassment by media and other executives across the political spectrum. Communication on social media becomes more and more like reputational target practice. Examples abound.

This phenomenon has an unfortunately circular nature: because we can’t see everyone as human, we don’t believe they see us as human, which reinforces our negative assessment of them, which in turn reinforces their negative assessment of us, and so on…

Paul could have used his influence to strong-arm Philemon into complying with his wishes. While he wasn’t above using a little guilt (“I say nothing about your owing me even your own self”), he knew that trusting Philemon to grow in his own understanding of Christ’s love would make for a permanent change that pressure would not. It may seem unfair of Paul to impose on Onesimus to test this theory, but he was also free to obey Paul or not. Imagine the trust – in Paul, Philemon, and God – necessary to return.

When we are at odds  with people, we can seek victory or peace. One requires us to see others as losers – something physically, spiritually, or intellectually lesser than ourselves – and the other demands we see others as beloved equals. Which would Christ have us pursue?

Comfort: God isn’t worried about what other people think of you.

Challenge: Vulnerability is a risk we all must take.

Prayer: For the sake of my relatives and friends I will say, “Peace be within you.” (Psalm 122:8)

Discussion: Are you more aware of your own tendencies to discriminate (we all have them!) or of how you suspect other people might discriminate against you?

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Past Tension

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 88; 148, Ezra 3:1-13, 1 Corinthians 16:10-24, Matthew 12:22-32

After the Persians conquered Babylon, King Cyrus began to release the Jewish people from exile and captivity to return to their homes. The Book of Ezra tells the story of how they began to rebuild the home they had lost, including the temple. Cyrus had also returned many of the holy items from the original temple, so this second temple was a mix of the new and the old. This new temple elicited a mixed reaction from the people:

[T]he people responded with a great shout when they praised the LORD, because the foundation of the house of the LORD was laid. But many of the priests and Levites and heads of families, old people who had seen the first house on its foundations, wept with a loud voice when they saw this house […] so that the people could not distinguish the sound of the joyful shout from the sound of the people’s weeping.

Why did the older people weep? Some scholars believe it was because the new temple could never match the remembered glory of Solomon’s original temple. But perhaps it’s more complicated than that; the taste of nostalgia is bittersweet. These older people not only mourned what they had lost, but mourned what never was. The sight of a more humble foundation for the house of the Lord was a reminder of the unfaithfulness and corruption that made God willing to let them be taken into exile in the first place. The home they rebuilt needed to be one of substantially different character from the one they had left, no matter how fondly they remembered it.

How do we remember the past? Is it all “the good old days?” Or is it really just a longing for a time of innocence before we knew what we know now? Just as the widows and orphans who’d been cast off instead of cared for probably didn’t think of Jerusalem’s pre-exile days as especially good, many women, people of color, disabled people, and others may not be so enamored of a past which marginalized them. We are increasingly aware of violence, but violence in the U.S. and most of the world has been trending downward for years. People on the whole are healthier and live longer.

So what is it we hope to recapture?

Perhaps what we can do with feelings of nostalgia is try to recreate the world, or at least our tiny corner of it, with the beloved values we think we remember. Neighbors caring for one another – but with an expanded definition of “neighbor.” Feelings of safety – but with a better understanding of the violence that happens outside our particular social circle. A sense of family – but with the combination of joy and weeping it really is instead of the idealized version that never existed.

Every one of us in exile from the past. It’s how we rebuild the future that matters.

Comfort: Whatever your past, Christ ushers you into a better future.

Challenge: Talk with you family and friends to see if they remember your shared history the same way you do.

Prayer: Turn, O LORD, save my life; deliver me for the sake of your steadfast love. (Psalm 6:4)

Discussion: What are you nostalgic for? What are you glad is part of the past?

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Conspiracy Theory

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 143; 147:12-20, Ezra 1:1-11, 1 Corinthians 16:1-9, Matthew 12:15-21

It’s hardly even news any more when we discover the people who are supposed to be leading us or serving the public are not working in our best interest. The outrage we feel over scandals is less about being surprised or disappointed, and more about vindicating our suspicions about how the “other side” abuses its power.

From the personal and petty to the global and grandiose, people with power can’t seem to help abusing it and maintaining a choke hold on it. The Pharisees felt Jesus and his teachings threatened their power and they were willing to play dirty to retain it. Like the power-hungry across all times, they convinced themselves and others it was for the greater good.

It would be nice to say Christians today were not nearly as prone to conspire against Christ, but would it be true? Early Christians held beliefs that ran counter to the dominant culture. In America and large sections of the western world, Christians are the dominant culture. Because this is the case, it is easy to start assuming the things we value as a society must be Christian. We conflate value-neutral systems like capitalism and democracy, and institutions like the military and the constitution, with Christianity in a way that makes them seem like the Unified Theory of Everything Good. When Jesus gets bound up in marketing gimmicks and partisan politics and national pride, we have — intentionally or not — conspired to undermine his message. When Christians view and treat the poor as moral failures instead of fellow travelers, or encourage others to do so, we have traded Christ for comfort.

What if we could conspire on behalf of Christ? What if, instead of assuming Christ should value the same things we do, we sought to live in loving contrast to the parts of our culture — even the self-identified Christian ones — that resemble the institutions and hypocrisies he criticized? What if we did so in a way that was not about toppling the powerful, but raising the downtrodden? If we aren’t rocking the boat in radically inclusive ways, we’ll never know what it’s like to walk on water.

Comfort: The values Christ stands for are timeless…

Challenge: … so we can’t assume all his teachings were about the past.

Prayer: I love the LORD, because he has heard my voice and my supplications. (Psalm 116:1)

Discussion: Are there any conspiracy theories you think are true?

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Predictably Unpredictable

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 65; 147:1-11, Lamentations 2:8-15, 1 Corinthians 15:51-58, Matthew 12:1-14

The Book of Lamentations, written in response to the destruction of Jerusalem at the hands of the Babylonian empire, is a dark, heavy text offering little comfort of hope. Each of its five chapters is a complete poem unto itself. Though the author acknowledges God’s wrath was not unprovoked, he is bewildered by the Lord’s utter lack of mercy. He compares God to a foe of the people, and suggests the consequences far outweigh the nation’s sins.

In the second chapter of Lamentations, eyes fail from weeping, children faint in the streets from hunger, and the slain gather dusts in the streets. The author wants to know how the Lord could loose this devastation on the nation he loved as a bridegroom loves a bride. Yes we did some bad things, the author recognizes, but how could we have expected this? Oh … right … all those prophets.

When I worked with a church youth group of high schoolers, a young man approached me with a crisis of faith. He was devastated that God had not answered his prayers. His feared his girlfriend was pregnant despite all his (and one assumes her) prayers that it not be so. This was going to ruin their lives, he said. How could God let such a thing happen? It was a little surprising how in his mind he’d rationalized a situation where God’s character was the one in question.

But people speak often as if they had no part in contributing to the dire yet completely predictable situation in which they find themselves. Pregnancy doesn’t just happen. Neither do massive credit card debt, affairs, disciplinary action at school or work, drunken altercations, or committing oneself to strange gods. Yes these can be complex and all-too-human mistakes (well, most of them), but using that as an excuse just leaves us prone to making the same (or worse) ones again.

Israel couldn’t begin to repair her relationship with God until she owned up to her role in damaging it. Why risk the same sort of consequences, even if on a much smaller scale? Being honest about our own culpability both empowers us to initiate change and heal relationships with loved ones, ourselves, and God. We can lament if we must; it seems inevitable if not necessary. But then it’s time to do the hard and honest work. We like to avoid blame and guilt, but admitting to them is the first step in leaving them behind.

Comfort: God does not want us to live a life weighed down by guilt…

Challenge: … but we have to live with it before we can lose it.

Prayer: My Lord and creator, nothing about me is hidden from you. Help me to be transparent and honest with myself as well. Amen.

Discussion: How do you react to feeling guilty?

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Unburdened

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 57; 145, Jeremiah 44:1-14, 1 Corinthians 15:30-41, Matthew 11:16-24

Jesus told the people of Galilee (and – through Matthew’s gospel – all of us):

Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.

“Burden” was a vague term, perhaps intentionally so. Many things can burden us. Guilt. Family obligations. Persecution. Financial troubles. Illness. Worry. The list is endless, yet Jesus offered comfort and reassurance to all who felt burdened for whatever reason. How relieved the people must have been to hear from someone who did not wish to add to their already heavy burdens, but to actually relieve them.

Later on, Jesus had very different words for his disciples:

 If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.

Well that doesn’t sound like much of a relief, now does it?

Yet these messages are not contradictory. Jesus would have us learn whatever we need to draw closer to him. In the beginning, that may mean learning what burdens we can, should, and must lay at his feet. If the contents of our lives are so overwhelming that they crowd out Jesus, it’s time to let go of them. And if we can’t let go – for example, a caregiver of a sick child – we can spiritually reposition ourselves to let Christ help lighten the load.

We aren’t ready to pick up the cross on day one of discipleship. Before we can handle that weight, we have to be fully settled into Christ’s yoke – to genuinely trust in the strength of his “gentle and humble heart.” It may take a while, but then we can follow free of even the burden of trying to save our own lives.

Whether we need reassurance that it is safe to draw near him, or a push to follow him to the end, Christ’s words speak to us where we are.

Comfort: Wherever you are in your spiritual growth, Jesus is speaking to you.

Challenge: However close we feel to Christ, we can still grow closer.

Prayer: My Lord, I seek to grow ever closer to you. Amen.

Discussion: Which words of Jesus do you find comforting … and which do you find challenging?

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Heard

/ JJS / Leave a comment

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 57; 145, Jeremiah 44:1-14, 1 Corinthians 15:30-41, Matthew 11:16-24

When people aren’t inclined to listen to us, how do we make ourselves heard?

Some of us raise our voices, which feels satisfying but can hand people an excuse not to listen.  Others speak more softly, which in many situations can draw people in, but is not foolproof.  A co-worker once told me she saves crying for when she needs her husband to really listen. Young children apply sheer persistence: “Mommy… Mommy… Mommy…”

The Lord, who wanted the people of Israel to repent of their idol worship and return worshiping the one who had delivered them from Egypt, tried variations on all of the above:

I persistently sent to you all my servants the prophets, saying, “I beg you not to do this abominable thing that I hate!” But they did not listen or incline their ear, to turn from their wickedness and make no offerings to other gods. So my wrath and my anger were poured out and kindled in the towns of Judah and in the streets of Jerusalem.

The Lord wasn’t just angry about the idol worship. Even the sacrifices they did make at the temple were offensive as long as they forgot and neglected the widows and orphans among them to pursue their own pleasures. Because they didn’t want to hear they needed to change, they rejected the pleas and the shouts and – eventually – the disastrous signs from the Lord.

When we aren’t inclined to listen to someone, how do we justify ignoring them?

Being loud or angry doesn’t make them wrong. A softer approach doesn’t make them weak. An emotional response doesn’t mean they aren’t rational. And being annoying doesn’t invalidate their message. Even being wrong before doesn’t mean someone can’t be right later. As much as we might like it to be so.

Being heard and listening are both important skills to nurture. And one of the best ways to be heard is to make sure people know you are also listening. Important messages are seldom delivered in exactly the way we would like them to be. Listening now, even when we don’t care to, can save a whole lot of trouble later.

Comfort: You don’t have to say something perfectly for it to matter.

Challenge: Listen more than you speak.

Prayer: Let me hear what God the LORD will speak, for he will speak peace to his people, to his faithful, to those who turn to him in their hearts. (Psalm 85:8)

Discussion: What makes you not want to listen to someone?

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Dignity

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Today’s readings (click below to open in new tab/window):
Psalms 67; 150, Jeremiah 29:1, 4-14, Acts 16:6-15, Luke 10:1-12,17-20

But seek the welfare of the city where I have sent you into exile,
and pray to the LORD on its behalf,
for in its welfare you will find your welfare.
– Jeremiah, 29:7

You can’t attend church or Sunday school for very long without hearing about how Jesus told us to pray for our enemies. On the other hand, you don’t have to experience the world for too long before realizing Christians in practice do not necessarily prioritize praying for them over defeating, humiliating, or killing them. Whether it’s our rival in the neighborhood association or a dangerous, despotic regime rattling its sabers, wishing them well does not tend to be our go-to response. Rather, we go through some serious ethical and moral contortions to justify treating them like we want to. And it almost never occurs to us that our own defeat might be the better outcome in the long term.

Yet centuries before Jesus, God was telling the people of Israel through the prophet Jeremiah to pray for Babylon, the empire which had defeated and exiled them. Praying wasn’t just the kind, sacrificial thing to do: the welfare of the two nations was interdependent. How the people of Israel responded to their captors would be instrumental in the eventual welfare of both.

What’s in our own best interest … isn’t always in our own best interest. The Gospel isn’t specific about how we are to pray for our enemies, so naturally we resort to praying for things like their conversion, or at the very least that they see the world more like we do. But what if we prayed for the things we want for ourselves? That their children do not know hunger. That their citizens do not live in fear. That peace reigns among them. What if we prayed – or better yet wanted – these things for them regardless of whether they never came around to our point of view or even wanted these things for us? What if we worked toward it?

If this sounds like passive acceptance, it’s very different. Enmity relies on us dehumanizing each other. If an enemy can claim we have no regard for his life, he is excused from having regard for ours. Refusing to deny the dignity of personhood of each of God’s children is how we retain our own. The first shall be last is more than a Christian motto; it’s how we save each other.

Comfort: Your dignity is yours to cherish or abandon.

Challenge: Be careful how you speak about your enemies, for God loves them, too.

Prayer: I will both lie down and sleep in peace; for you alone, O LORD, make me lie down in safety. (Psalm 4:8)

Discussion: Do you think loving our enemies really accomplishes anything?

Join the discussion! If you enjoyed this post, feel free to join an extended discussion as part of the C+C Facebook group. You’ll be notified of new posts through FB, and have the opportunity to share your thoughts with some lovely people. Or feel free to comment here on WordPress, or even re-blog – the more the merrier!