Daily Lesson for April 28, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Daniel chapter 3 verses 8 through 18:

8 Accordingly, at this time certain Chaldeans came forward and denounced the Jews. 9They said to King Nebuchadnezzar, ‘O king, live for ever! 10You, O king, have made a decree, that everyone who hears the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble, shall fall down and worship the golden statue, 11and whoever does not fall down and worship shall be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire. 12There are certain Jews whom you have appointed over the affairs of the province of Babylon: Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. These pay no heed to you, O king. They do not serve your gods and they do not worship the golden statue that you have set up.’

13 Then Nebuchadnezzar in furious rage commanded that Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego be brought in; so they brought those men before the king. 14Nebuchadnezzar said to them, ‘Is it true, O Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, that you do not serve my gods and you do not worship the golden statue that I have set up? 15Now if you are ready when you hear the sound of the horn, pipe, lyre, trigon, harp, drum, and entire musical ensemble to fall down and worship the statue that I have made, well and good.* But if you do not worship, you shall immediately be thrown into a furnace of blazing fire, and who is the god that will deliver you out of my hands?’

16 Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego answered the king, ‘O Nebuchadnezzar, we have no need to present a defence to you in this matter. 17If our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the furnace of blazing fire and out of your hand, O king, let him deliver us. 18But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods and we will not worship the golden statue that you have set up.’

One of the great mentors in my life used to say, "It is more important to be faithful than it is to be successful."

The three Jews Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego could not in good conscience abide by the executive orders of the King. King Nebuchadnezzar had ordered all the people to bow down to his power and authority.  They heard the order, but they could not abide.  For to do so would be a betrayal of their own convictions.  They would resist. They would resist -- come what may.  They would resist and hope God would intervene, but even if God did not intervene they would still not bow down to the King. 

We are all faced with decisions where our convictions are tested.  Resistance may mean opposition, rejection, ridicule and the loss of social position. It may not be popular or acceptable or "successful" in any way. But my friend is right; we are not called to be successful. We are called to be faithful.

Dr. King said, "Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But, conscience asks the question, is it right?"

That's a quote to write down and tape on the bathroom mirror. 

Daily Lesson for April 27, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 3 verse 9:

"Even now the axe is lying at the root of the trees; every tree therefore that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire."

Earlier this week I received an email in my inbox from one of our local arborists telling me all about the subterranean world that exists just outside my backdoor and the deeply connected but hidden ecosystem that links tree to tree beneath the visible topsoil of my yard:

"Under the surface of soil is an interconnected web of roots and fungi. In particular, mycorrhizal fungi are incredibly beneficial to trees. These fungi colonize the root systems of a host plant, and provide increased water and nutrient absorption, as well as increased protection against certain pathogens. In return, the host plants provide the fungi with the energy to continue this cycle."

The email went on to say that not only do the root systems of same-species trees connect beneath the ground, but so too do different species trees connect and form a kind of neighborhood of life together.  The scientific word for this is ecosystem; but a more common name for it is community.

We all live in community, ecosystems of communal life shared in ways that aren't always apparent but are nevertheless vital for our own livelihood and that of our neighbors. Just as disease or drought or infestation in one place threatens the whole ecosystem of trees, even across species, so also does sickness in one part of our neighborhood threaten the wellness of our whole communal life together. 

When John the Baptist talked about the "ax lying at the root of the trees" he recognized the subterranean affects of one sick tree on the whole neighborhood of trees.  He drew upon the image as a metaphor for the all-corrupting power sin has to destroy a whole community.

Original sins like sexism and racism and the degradation of creation are mostly hidden from our eyes. But beneath the surface they threaten our whole community. They have to be taken out down to their very root lest they destroy our whole life together. 

Daily Lesson for April 26, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 John chapter 2 verses 15 through 17:

15 Do not love the world or the things in the world. The love of the Father is not in those who love the world; 16for all that is in the world—the desire of the flesh, the desire of the eyes, the pride in riches—comes not from the Father but from the world. 17And the world and its desire are passing away, but those who do the will of God live for ever.

"Greed is good."

That's what the character Gordon Gekko infamously said in the 1987 film "Wall Street".  Everyone watching knew it was a deceit.

Or did they?

For 2,000 years greed has been seen as a universal vice in Western culture. Yes, there were plenty greedy people, but nobody liked a greedy person and very few wanted to admit to being greedy. 

But then, somewhere around 1987, a lot of people started thinking that Greed is good. 

Why?

When sociologists look back on the latter part of the 20th and early 21st centuries and they see what happened with the rise of wealth disparity and and the mess that was created with the Great Recession, they will point to greed. And the really astute ones will make the connection between the rise of Greed and the decline of regular religious attendance.

If you go to church or synagogue and hear the Bible read week in and week out then there's really no way you can in good conscience ever say, "Greed is good."  If you can, then your church is skipping over a whole lot of pages in the Bible.

Wealth in and of itself is not bad. But Greed is not good. It's not good for the community.  And, it's not good for the greedy either. In fact, it's absolutely destructive to both.

"Greed is good."  Gordon Gekko said that.

And so did the devil. 

Daily Lesson for April 25, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 John chapter 2 verses 9 through 11:

⁹Whoever says, ‘I am in the light’, while hating a brother or sister, is still in the darkness. ¹⁰Whoever loves a brother or sister lives in the light, and in such a person there is no cause for stumbling. ¹¹But whoever hates another believer is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and does not know the way to go, because the darkness has brought on blindness.

Whenever we think we may be right about something -- "in the light" is what the Lesson calls it -- yet we are hateful or embittered towards others then we are not at all in the light but in deep, deep darkness.

It is dismaying to me how many Christians have allowed themselves to come to hate whole classes, parties, news channels, and political families with no sense of shame or even compunction. The wolf of anger no longer has to even put on the sheep's clothing and people from all four corners laurel as a virtue and no longer a vice. 

And Jesus wept.

There's something we used to say around here that ought to be remembered:

"You can be all right and still be dead wrong."

Daily Lesson for April 24, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 1 verse 3:

3 He is like a tree
planted by streams of water
that yields its fruit in its season . . .

St. Paul said, "One plants, another waters, but God causes the increase."

Fruit naturally comes in its own due season so long as conditions are right.  The increase is a byproduct of sunlight, and water, and good soil temperature. A plant grows and bears fruit because life is in it.

We don't need to worry about the fruit of increase. Our job is to remain rooted in soil well nourished by the living water of the spirit. In due course we will blossom and we will grow and bear our fruit, all in God's good time.

Daily Lesson for April 21, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John 16 verses  1 through 7 and 12 through 15:

16‘I have said these things to you to keep you from stumbling. 2They will put you out of the synagogues. Indeed, an hour is coming when those who kill you will think that by doing so they are offering worship to God. 3And they will do this because they have not known the Father or me. 4But I have said these things to you so that when their hour comes you may remember that I told you about them. I did not say these things to you from the beginning, because I was with you. 5But now I am going to him who sent me; yet none of you asks me, “Where are you going?”6But because I have said these things to you, sorrow has filled your hearts. 7Nevertheless, I tell you the truth: it is to your advantage that I go away, for if I do not go away, the Advocate* will not come to you; but if I go, I will send him to you . . . 12 I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now.13When the Spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth; for he will not speak on his own, but will speak whatever he hears, and he will declare to you the things that are to come. 14He will glorify me, because he will take what is mine and declare it to you. 15All that the Father has is mine. For this reason I said that he will take what is mine and declare it to you.

We each have our own lonesome valley to walk, a journey not revealed until its own time comes.  

We wonder if we have the courage to walk the path which leads into the valley of shadows. We do not. Not yet, anyway. Courage is a grace and like our daily bread  it comes only just when we need and not before, lest we should learn to trust in our own strength and not God's. 

Our time is not yet here; but our time is coming. And then the Spirit  of truth shall come to be our guide through falsehood and shadow and the way of death and into the meadow of the Everlasting. Then and only then.

Tomorrow will have its own worries and there is no need to borrow from them. As for today, we wait, and we trust, and we delight in the singing of birds and the smell of honeysuckle blooming and we trust that tomorrow will have its own worries and there is no need to borrow from them. For God will take care of us also. 

Daily Lesson for April 20, 2017

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ezekiel 37 verses 1 through 4 and 7 through 10:

The hand of the Lord came upon me, and he brought me out by the spirit of the Lord and set me down in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2He led me all round them; there were very many lying in the valley, and they were very dry. 3He said to me, ‘Mortal, can these bones live?’ I answered, ‘O Lord God, you know.’ 4Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to these bones, and say to them: O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. . .7 So I prophesied as I had been commanded; and as I prophesied, suddenly there was a noise, a rattling, and the bones came together, bone to its bone. 8I looked, and there were sinews on them, and flesh had come upon them, and skin had covered them; but there was no breath in them. 9Then he said to me, ‘Prophesy to the breath, prophesy, mortal, and say to the breath: Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.’ 10I prophesied as he commanded me, and the breath came into them, and they lived, and stood on their feet, a vast multitude.

A body without breath is only a corpse. It is without vigor or substance. It's life force is neither present nor active. Bones and sinews are not enough to bring the body alive. 

This is true not only for the human being but also for all manner of organized bodies. It is not enough to have the structure, bylaws, constitution, order of service, and building. You must also have the spirit, the breath, and animating life force. You have to have soul.

In other words, you have to know not only that you are alive but also why you are. 

Daily Lesson for April 19, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 35 through 37:

35 But someone will ask, ‘How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?’ 36Fool! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37And as for what you sow, you do not sow the body that is to be, but a bare seed . . .

There is no Resurrection without there first being a death. Something must die before it is reborn again. There must be an end before there is a new beginning. Holy Week has to first conclude with Holy Saturday and all its grief and solemnity before the Resurrection rides the wings of dawn early in the morning on the first day of the week. 

The journey to new creation requires us to accept the death of the old. What is to come can only arrive with the end of what is. The end of what is is the beginning of what is to come. The burial of the old man must take place before a new man can walk freely out of the tomb.

We have an anthem in the Church called "Hymn of Promise" the last line of which says:

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,

In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see.

The end of our now is not the end of everything.  We may lament that the end has come; but we should remember that it is, as we say, the end "for good".  It is the end of what is and also the seed of what is to be.

Daily Lesson for April 18, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 15 verses 8 through 10:

⁸Last of all, as to someone untimely born, He appeared also to me. ⁹For I am the least of the apostles, unfit to be called an apostle, because I persecuted the church of God. ¹⁰But by the grace of God I am what I am, and his grace towards me has not been in vain.

I watched an old video clip the other day of the comedian Dick Gregory giving a fiery denunciation of the hymn "Amazing Grace" and its author, one-time slave ship captain turned clergyman John Newton. Gregory said it was abhorrently offensive that black people should so willingly sing a song written by someone so actively involved in slavery.

Gregory had a point. 

And I'm sure that very same point was made about Paul after he repented also.

God's grace is amazing. But it's also challenging. It's challenging every time a wretch gets saved. 

Good Friday

Special from Jerusalem 

A tumultuous week in the Judean city of Jerusalem came to an end today when Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish religious leader who many Jews claimed to be the Messiah but who Sanhedrin and some Roman officials saw as a threat to Pax Romana, was crucified on grounds of treason against the Empire.

Tensions mounted on Sunday when Jesus and his disciples marched into the capital and blocked the entryway to the Jewish Temple where thousands of pilgrims came to celebrate the Jewish Passover Festival.  This was the second time in three years Jesus' protest actions put a temporary stop to Temple transactions.  On Sunday it was reported he disrupted religious ritual by turning over the tables of the Temple Court money changers and chasing those selling sacrificial animals out of the courtyard.  Later Jesus purportedly threatened to take his protests even further.  Witnesses say he threatened to destroy the Temple altogether and to then raise it up after three days.

Jesus' actions jeopardized an already tenuous truce existing between Jewish religious and political authorities and Roman peacekeeping forces during the Passover Festival.  As Passover is a holiday celebrating the ancient Hebrews escape from slavery in Egypt, it has in recent years been a week fraught with clashes between Roman soldiers and pro-liberation extremists.  The actions of Jesus and other zealot-minded Jews necessitated Pontius Pilate, prefect of Judea, to move the bulk of his force from the Judean capital of Caesarea Maritima to Jerusalem for the festival to ensure order.  There was speculation Pilate might even go so far as to decide to shut the city down altogether if peace could not be assured.

But Jerusalem religious officials moved quickly Monday to keep crowds in order during the festival.  "The Feast of Passover is a religious event - not a political one.  The great masses of Jews are peace-loving people who are glad for the peace and prosperity Rome has brought to the region," Zacharias of Bethany, a member of the Sanhedrin said in a public statement endorsed by the body.  The statement went on to denounce Jesus.  "We reject the kind of opportunism exhibited in people like Jesus of Nazareth.  He is an extremist, an outside agitator whom the prefect is justified in apprehending."

Rival separatist leaders were quick to release their own statement in turn.  "The so-called peace Rome has brought is no peace at all," the separatist statement said.  God's promise for our people and our land is a promise for freedom.  It is a promise given to our Father Abraham and verified in the blood of the Passover lamb.  Moses did not lead our people across the Red Sea only to in turn now be slaves in our own land."

It was notable, however, that the separatist statement did not mention Jesus by name.  Jewish political observers suggest a leader like Jesus is unlikely to garner the support of pro-liberation Jews because of his apparent openness toward Gentiles, including a highly publicized meeting between Jesus and a Roman centurion in the Galilean town of Capernaum.  As one religious expert put it: "Jesus may wear Moses' sandals, but he does not carry his staff."

But it wasn't Moses who came to mind when Jesus made his way into town Sunday.  Instead it was David, the greatest of Israel's past kings.  As Jesus entered the city, sitting proudly astride a small colt - a gesture intended to reenact an ancient Jewish royal tradition - crowds lined the path shouting, "Hosanna," - a Hebrew word meaning "save" - "to the Son of David."  The crowd's message was clear.  They wanted their king - and they did not mean the Emperor Tiberius.

By Friday, however, it was evident to all in Jerusalem that Jesus was not the king they were looking for.  Late Thursday night he was arrested by Temple police and found guilty by the Sanhedrin in a hastily organized emergency trial.  Early Friday morning the Sanhedrin turned Jesus over to Pilate requesting the execution of the man known as "the Nazorean" on grounds of treason.  By 3pm that afternoon Jesus' body hung bloody and lifeless from a tree atop a high ridge just outside of the city.  At Pilate's order a sign was placed over his body written in Hebrew, Greek, and Latin: "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews".

The pointedness of the sign was characteristic of Pilate's strong-armed reputation as prefect, but conflicted with what sources close to Pilate say actually happened inside the governor's courtyard.  Those sources reveal the case against Jesus was not as cut and dry as Jesus' accusers, and later the sign, suggested.  The sources said Pilate saw the conflict over Jesus as primarily a struggle for control among the ranks of Jewish leaders; as such, Pilate was inclined to have Jesus simply flogged and released.  In the end, however, political expedience won out, sources say, as Pilate became convinced that Jesus' execution was in the best interest of the Sanhedrin and the region as a whole.  "It is better that one man should die than the whole nation perish," said a Sanhedrin member speaking on condition of anonymity.

Whether that man was innocent or guilty was apparently beside the point for Pilate.  This is Judea - one of the most lawless places in the Roman Empire and insiders within Praetorium say law and order will only be regained if the Jewish people learn not only to avoid treason but also even the appearance of treason.

On Friday afternoon a dark cloud settled over the city as the Nazorean struggled in his final hours of crucifixion.  It was a short time as these things go, but agonizing for those who kept watch.  A commiserate spirit among the onlookers accompanied the man's last gasps.  A woman was heard gently weeping in the distance.  "We had hoped he would be the one to redeem Israel," she said through her tears.  "We had hoped."  That was when Jesus, "King of the Jews" hung his head and died.

Pilate ordered the body be pulled down from the cross and given to some of Jesus' followers.  As the soldiers lowered the cross to its parallel position those around could see the body more clearly in its gruesome and mangled state.  One of the soldiers, who stood guard throughout the execution, looked up from the body and toward Jesus' followers and then spoke.  The language was Aramaic, but the words were spoken with the tongue of someone who grew up in perhaps the Palermo region.  "This," he said, "was a son of God."  

It was not altogether obvious what the soldier meant.

Daily Lesson for Maundy Thursday 2017:

Today's Daily Lesson is a reflection on Mark chapter 15 verses 12 through 16. This was first posted last year on Maundy Thursday. I am reposting it in light of the terrible events in Egypt earlier this week:

12 And on the first day of Unleavened Bread, when they sacrificed the Passover lamb, his disciples said to him, “Where will you have us go and prepare for you to eat the Passover?” 13 And he sent two of his disciples and said to them, “Go into the city, and a man carrying a jar of water will meet you. Follow him, 14 and wherever he enters, say to the master of the house, ‘The Teacher says, Where is my guest room, where I may eat the Passover with my disciples?’15 And he will show you a large upper room furnished and ready; there prepare for us.” 16 And the disciples set out and went to the city and found it just as he had told them, and they prepared the Passover.

Today is Maundy Thursday, the day the church commemorating Christ's last supper with his disciples.  This is the meal at which he gave his disciples a new commandment (in Latin "mandatum" -- hence "Maundy Thursday) that we are to love one another just as he loved.

Jesus' last meal was a Passover meal -- a meal remembering that fateful night when the Angel of Death struck down all the first born of Egypt but "passed over" the houses of the Israelites, thus sparing their children and enabling them to escape to freedom.  It was a meal of Unleavened Bread, a reminder that when the Israelites left Egypt they did so in a hurry, without even time to wait for their bread to rise.

This was an inherently political festival with it celebration of freedom from oppressors.  And Jesus and his disciples, suspected of fomenting unrest in the Roman-controlled city of Jerusalem, are forced to eat their Passover in a secret safe house which a man -- carrying a jar of water as a hidden-in-plain-sight sign-- leads them to.

Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Laureate Elie Weisel has written of the last Passover he shared with his family in Romania before their internment by the Nazi's. It was a time hauntingly similar to Jesus' last Passover:

"The authorities had forbidden communal prayer in the synagogues, so we arranged to hold services in our house.  Normally, on Passover eve, we would chant the melodies with great fervor.  Not this time. This time we only murmured the words."

On this night we remember all those past and present who have lived under oppression and without freedom, all those made to murmur and not chant their prayers aloud. We remember the Israelites in Egypt.  We remember the Jews of Romania and all other countries made to suffer the fate of the holocaust. We remember Christians living in places like Iraq and Iran where they will meet in secret to eat together tonight. We remember Baptists in the Ukraine and Republic of Georgia, where surveillance by the Russian Bear apparatus is a constant harassment and implicit threat. We remember also the Syrian refugees who left their homeland in haste, without having time to bring anything more than the Israelites before them. We remember them and we pray.

During the Passover meal service called the Haggadah which faithful Jews have observed for generations there is a reading from Psalm 114 which commemorates the Israelites escape from Egypt, the parting of the Red Sea, and the crossing of the Jordan into the Promised Land:

When Israel left Egypt, when the house of Jacob abandoned an alien tongue,

Judah became his sanctuary, and Israel His reign.

The sea saw them and fled, the Jordan flowed backward.

Mountains skipped like rams, and hills like lambs.

What frightened you, sea, that you fled, Jordan that you flowed backward . . . The earth trembles at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of Jacob's God.

The God of Israel, Jacob's God, is still alive.  This is His world. And He is still at work in it. And tonight we remember that this God still has the power to deliver His people from forces of darkness and to set them at liberty in a land of promise and hope.

Tonight we will proclaim this; and whether in great chant or in feint murmur -- it shall be proclaimed.

Daily Lesson for April 12, 2017

Today's Daily Office comes from Psalm 55 verses 4 through 8:

4 My heart is in anguish within me;

the terrors of death have fallen upon me.

5 Fear and trembling come upon me,

and horror overwhelms me.

6 And I say, “Oh, that I had wings like a dove!

I would fly away and be at rest;

7 yes, I would wander far away;

I would lodge in the wilderness; Selah

8 I would hurry to find a shelter

from the raging wind and tempest.”

For everyone there comes the existential moment when we realize we cannot run out of the the room through its walls. This is the moment of truth and acceptance or deep alienation. Often it is the moment of truth and acceptance after deep alienation.

We are not prepared. We have neither the tools nor the coping skills to survive the wilderness we find ourselves in. We would so wish to escape, to take on wings and fly away, but we cannot. The fate of circumstance and genes and the roll of dice have found us. Too many bad hands have finally caught up with us. This is our Reality.

"Give fifty dollars and we'll pray over and anoint this bracelet and send it to you."  "Go see one more specialist in Houston."  "Let's hope for a miracle."  And the stores goes under. And the band plays on. 

No. This is our Reality. We are at the end of our rope. 

And there is nothing in the world that we can do except hope in grace -- the grace which does not rescue but will redeem. 

Daily Lesson for April 11, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 12 verses 24 and 25:

24 Truly, truly, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. 25 Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life.

We cannot stay as we are. Free and happy as we may now be, we cannot remain as we are. We will eventually stagnate and then begin to harden or shrivel and eventually desiccate and die. This is the death of not only body but also soul. Our freedom and our happiness are wonderful gifts, but when they become ends in themselves then death sets in.  They must be given to and for others lest they be lost.

There is a deep and mysterious paradox in life -- bodily and spiritual -- that one cannot live for oneself alone forever. If we live for ourselves and for our own pleasures alone then we will die. But if we die to ourselves then we shall live. This is the mystery of eternal life -- that it can only be discovered first through dying.

Jesus says of the single grain which neither falls to the earth nor dies nor bears any fruit, "It remains alone."  But we know from the beginning of Genesis in the Garden of Eden that it is "not good" to be alone. We were made not only for our own freedom and happiness but also for others'.  When we cleave too much to our own lives then something in us eventually dies. But when we let go of our own lives and surrender them over for the sake of others then something inside us is reborn to eternal life.

There is life.  And there is death. And then there is the life that is discovered only through death. This is the eternal life of the spirit -- which can only be found after first being buried in the dust of the earth.

Daily Lesson for April 10, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 51 verses 16, 17 and 19:

16 For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it;
you will not be pleased with a burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.
19 then will you delight in right sacrifices,
in burnt offerings and whole burnt offerings;
then bulls will be offered on your altar. (ESV)


The Christian High and Holy Days are upon us and this week even the vast majority of the most low-church churches are planning something special for Good Friday and Easter. With Easter comes the Easter only crowd -- a group not to be despised nor scolded for its lack of faithfulness the rest of the year, but exhorted to greater faith, which always begins with deeper conversion.

Transformation at the deepest level never begins with money or sacrifice.  For these are often used by the head-strong recalcitrant as forms of appeasement.  I think of the man in our church (now nearing sainthood) who in the fledgling and cantankerous beginning of his discipleship decided that doing his part meant totaling up the entire church budget figure and then dividing it by the number of individual members. That was the part he owed -- nothing more.

The more deeply converted know they owe more than that. They know they owe everything and they know they could never pay it all back. The more deeply converted have been humbled. There is now no longer any sense of arrogance or entitlement.  They have discovered the deep truth of what God truly wants: a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart.  These things God will not despise. These God delights in; for God can really work with humility -- someone who knows that without God he's nothing more than a lump of clay.

Sunday before last the men's ensemble at our church sang an old hymn:

Lord, now indeed I find
Thy power and Thine alone,
Can change the leper's spots
and melt the heart of stone.

Jesus paid it all,
All to Him I owe;
Sin had left a crimson stain,
He washed it white as snow.

The heart of stone needs needs breaking. This is the first real step towards the deeper conversion -- a crack in the suit of armor.

And between the cracks grace sneaks in.

Daily Lesson for April 7, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Jeremiah chapter 29 verses 4 through 9:

4 “Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: 5 Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and eat their produce. 6 Take wives and have sons and daughters; take wives for your sons, and give your daughters in marriage, that they may bear sons and daughters; multiply there, and do not decrease. 7 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. 8 For thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel: Do not let your prophets and your diviners who are among you deceive you, and do not listen to the dreams that they dream, 9 for it is a lie that they are prophesying to you in my name; I did not send them, declares the Lord.

Sometimes we have to simply make peace with where we are in life.

Acceptance is a part of life. Not everything can be fixed.  Rescue is not always imminent. One generation may simply have to quit waiting for supernatural rescue and instead learn to do its best in the here and now.  Sometimes the Deus Ex Machina isn't a part of the script. The script exile and the script calls for us to make the best of a bad situation -- to build gardens and plant trees right where we are and not wherever else it is that we thought we should be.

The old Serenity Prayer asks for God to "grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change and the courage to change the things we can."

What we cannot change may very well be our circumstances; but what we can change is how we deal with them.

"Bloom where you're planted," the saying goes; and out here in blustery West Texas we might say, take root wherever the wind has blown you -- even if it's sand soil.

Daily Lesson for April 6, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Jeremiah 26 verses 7 through 11:

7 The priests and the prophets and all the people heard Jeremiah speaking these words in the house of the Lord. 8 And when Jeremiah had finished speaking all that the Lord had commanded him to speak to all the people, then the priests and the prophets and all the people laid hold of him, saying, “You shall die! 9 Why have you prophesied in the name of the Lord, saying, ‘This house shall be like Shiloh, and this city shall be desolate, without inhabitant’?” And all the people gathered around Jeremiah in the house of the Lord.10 When the officials of Judah heard these things, they came up from the king's house to the house of the Lord and took their seat in the entry of the New Gate of the house of the Lord. 11 Then the priests and the prophets said to the officials and to all the people, “This man deserves the sentence of death, because he has prophesied against this city, as you have heard with your own ears.”

This is what got Jesus killed.

It was the prophetic word spoken against the city of Jerusalem and the Jewish people which nearly cost Jeremiah his life and in the end did cost Jesus'.  The people had no ears to hear what they were saying. They could not grasp the Godliness of the deep, prophetic word which always comes hot and burning like freshly forged steel. The sword cut too deeply.

Last week I watched online as the Texas Senate debated an amendment to an education bill having to do with so-called "anti-American" education in the classroom. While I understood the impulse of so many of the senators to see that language in unequivocally positive terms, I did wonder how many of the teachings of the prophets and of Jesus were they talking about.

Freedom Rider and anti-Vietnam War preacher, William Sloan Coffin said, "I like to believe that I am an American patriot who loves his country enough to address her flaws."

That was Jeremiah; and that was Jesus. But it was too much for the people to bear. They simply did not have the will to understand that the word that was against them was in fact for them.

May we with ears to hear, let us hear.

Daily Lesson for April 5, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 10 verses 7 through 15:

7 So Jesus again said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, I am the door of the sheep. 8 All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep did not listen to them. 9 I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will go in and out and find pasture. 10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 11 I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12 He who is a hired hand and not a shepherd, who does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and flees, and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13 He flees because he is a hired hand and cares nothing for the sheep. 14 I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15 just as the Father knows me and I know the Father; and I lay down my life for the sheep.

Last week I was given a book on the history of the XIT Ranch by J Evetts Haley. When I was a boy my uncle lived in Mr. Haley's former home in Canyon, Texas and I spent many a weekend there as a child; so the book has a personal connection.

The XIT ranch was comprised of 3,000,000 acres of land given by the Texas Legislature in exchange for the building of the Texas State Capitol Building. Because the allotment included part or all of ten counties in the Panhandle of Texas the ranch took its brand "XIT" in reference to the "Ten in Texas".

The book tells the story of the constant struggles the ranch foremen had with bad cowboys who made their way onto the Plains ranch mostly after being fired or chased off from everywhere else they'd ever worked. Drinking, gambling, and simple dereliction were constant problems. Alcohol-fueled gun violence was enough of a threat that the carrying of firearms was strictly forbidden amongst the cowboys.

And theft of livestock was something to be constantly watched out for.  All sorts of schemes were cooked up by crooked cowboys to steal cattle for personal profit. There were colluding efforts to sell calves before they were branded, or to "hair brand" rather than "hide brand" the calves so the brand would be lost once the coat came in full. And then there were efforts to rebrand the cows with all kinds of creative modifications of "XIT".  Reading about these schemes made me think that these cowboys would really have done pretty well had they given their creative skills to good rather than ill.

Jesus did not know anything about cowboys; but he knew about shepherds. Drinking, gambling, dereliction, and theft were all known among the shepherds.  Those were the preoccupations of the hired hands, who cared not a thing about the sheep nor their owner but only about their own personal gains. Just like there were bad cowboys all over the Panhandle, there were hired hands of dubious kind all over the hill country of Israel. A good shepherd was hard to find; when you found one you knew you had something worth keeping. If you did not find one then you had better learn to sleep with one eye open.

All this, for Jesus, was a parable for the nation and its leaders.

For we, like sheep, can be led astray and, like cattle, stolen by cowboys working for their own brand.

Daily Lesson for April 4, 2017

Today's Daily Office comes from Romans chapter 10 verses 1 through 4:

10:1 Brothers, my heart's desire and prayer to God for them is that they may be saved. 2 For I bear them witness that they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge. 3 For, being ignorant of the righteousness of God, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to God's righteousness. 4 For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

The Law is good, Paul tells us. But the Law is only a tutor, a teacher of the pupil for a certain time before the pupil is ready to think and act for herself. The Law has its purpose and the purpose is good. But there is an end to the Law. The Law is not our God. We do not worship the Law. We are not enslaved to it. And we should not demand that others be enslaved to it either. The Law is not the LORD.

Getting this is the most difficult thing for religious people -- people who want very much to be good and know who all else is good and who else is bad. Obedience to the Law is the line which demarcating good from bad, us from them.

As part of a class on Dissenters this semester, I read the trial of Anne Hutchinson, the 17th century troublemaker who caused the great tempest in Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony by allegedly being willing to teach a man about the Bible. Though she knew more Bible than any man I've ever known, it was the Law of that Bible that a woman was not to teach a man, and for that apparent trespass she was brought to trial. The transcript is at once a lesson on the Bible and repartee.

Asking, shrewdly, why because she was not fit to teach a man in her home, why it was fitting to teach the all-male court, Anne Hutchinson showed that she would not back down. A strong spirit she was.  But she showed herself best not as a lawyer but as a Bible scholar and theologian when she reflected on Scripture. Paul said he suffered not a woman to teach him; but, she noted, Paul also said, "the letter killeth; yet the spirit giveth life".  It is not only the Old Testament Law whose letter can kill, Hutchinson said. New Testament laws like Paul's about women can kill also. Not only the Jewish Commandments, but even the Christian Gospel can be made into Law when we take hold of its letter and miss its spirit, she said. That is when even the Gospel's letter can kill and its spirit fail to give life.

"We are not under Law," Paul said, "but under grace."

When we get this we will stop demanding impossible things of ourselves and others, and start receiving the truth that women and others like Anne Hutchinson -- once excluded -- have to speak.

Daily Lesson for April 3, 2017

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 31 verse 5:

"Into your hand I commit my spirit;
you have redeemed me, O Lord, faithful God."

Two years ago my friend and mentor Ted, who was badly sick with cancer and only had a month or so to live, came to speak to our church in what he titled, "A Conversation About Death and Dying with a Dying Man".  Ted was very straightforward and he very much wanted to disabuse everyone of the denial of death. It is the acceptance of our death, he said, which truly allows us to live.

Death frees us from the notion that anything else save God can save us.  Death puts everything into perspective. In the end, it is not our job or our title or our income or our access to good health care, or even our own righteousness.  We all have a death to pay; and in that death we die and everything dies with us.  Only God remains.  Only God can save us.

And as the psalmist prayed, "Into your hands, I commit my spirit."

In the old funeral liturgy there is at the end of the funeral service or at the graveside a rite of committal and final commendation.  The committal is the final act of the people on behalf of the deceased. At that moment in the service I always offer a prayer to God where I offer the deceased up to God and imagine in my own mind God taking them into his strong yet gentle hands.  "We trust them with you, dear LORD," I say, "and we trust you with them."

In the end it all has to be in God's hands. And it will be. It will be in God's good and steady hands.

In the end only God can save us. And we trust that He will.