Daily Lesson for July 9, 2014

Today's Lesson is from Matthew chapter 23 verses 29 through 32:

29 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you build the tombs of the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous, 30 saying, ‘If we had lived in the days of our fathers, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ 31 Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. 32 Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers.

In Robert Penn Warren's novel "All the Kings Men" the narrator of the story is a kind of shadow or alter-ego to the main character. His name is Jack Burden, and the burden he bears is the terrible, shadowed history of his Southern family with its infidelity and cruel complicity in the terror of the American slave economy. It is the burden of shame.

One of the most difficult journeys is the journey toward coming to terms with the sins of our ancestors. It is fraught with such shame and dis-ease that most of us cannot face it. We cannot bear the burden long. For soon we discover the weight of our own mothers' and fathers' sins drags us down also as we realize we have coursing through our own veins the blood of the cruel, the unfaithful and even the murderous. And then we discover the burdensome truth that in so many ways we are beneficiaries of their duplicity and evil. 

I see this now throughout the South as in the last 25 years so many monuments and museums have been built to remember Slavery, Jim Crow, and the struggle for civil and human rights. It is fitting to build these, and has even become economically beneficial for a city to do so. But what Jesus said is so true in all of this - one generation kills the prophets and the next builds their monuments. But what is generally left unsaid or undone at these monuments to the past is the ways in which our past continues to give shape to our future. The past is left in the past with little attention to the ways in which that past also continues to order, capitalize, privilege, and segregate our present. We think it was all over in 1865 or 1965. To think otherwise is almost too much to bear.

But with God's help it is not too much. While there are no painless ways of coming to terms with the injustices of the past, today's Lesson reminds us that the alternative is even worse.

Santana famously said that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. But in order to remember it rightly, we must risk bearing its pain and the truth of its consequence.

Daily Lesson for July 8, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson are the hard and bitter words from Psalm 137 verses 7 through 9:

7 Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites

the day of Jerusalem,

how they said, “Lay it bare, lay it bare,

down to its foundations!”

8 O daughter of Babylon, doomed to be destroyed,

blessed shall he be who repays you

with what you have done to us!

9 Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones

and dashes them against the rock!

The headline in yesterday's New York Times read "Hamas Vows to Avenge Militants’ Deaths in Israeli Strikes". And such it is that we see the thirst for vengeance fueling one act of barbarity upon another in a revolving spiral of violence in the Middle East. Three Israeli schoolboys kidnapped and executed, followed by a Palestinian teenager apparently burned alive in retaliation, followed by the pledge of yet more violence to come. 

It is the children who die. And the world yearns for this senseless infanticide of its own sons and daughters to end; God yearns likewise.

I know that I write here without the experience of having been victimized first hand by terror nor by a response to terror. So my words come from a place of humility necessitated by distance. But they do come, because as Donne said "no man is an island" and "any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind."

Humankind continues to be diminished so long as we demand that our thirst for vengeance must be slaked. So long as we demand eye for an eye and tooth for tooth then the prospect for true and lasting peace will never come in the Middle East nor anywhere else. One side must have the courage to say, "Our desire for vengeance will go unmet. We will not mete out justice; instead we will choose to mete out mercy."

Today's Lesson speaks of the will for revenge. "Blessed shall he be who takes your little ones and dashes them against the rock!" the psalm says. It is rare that I disagree with the psalmist; but today I do. Today I disagree, even emphatically. No one is blessed by the killing of these Israeli and Palestinian children. No one has ever been blessed by the killing of a child. They are cursed for. The region is cursed. The whole world is cursed. So long as we continue to think the killing of our children is justifiable then we are cursed.

The world awaits a leader or leaders who will find the strength to resist the will toward vengeance and end the curse with mercy.

Maranatha. Lord come.

Daily Lesson for July 7, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Romans 8 verses 26 and 27:

26 Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness. For we do not know what to pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. 27 And he who searches hearts knows what is the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for the saints.

What a great word of comfort and consolation for our prayer - knowing we really don't have to get it right in order to get it right.

Let me be honest, three years of seminary plus another nine years of ministry and I still really don't know how to pray or what to pray for.  I bet you don' either.

We face a decision - should we go left or should we go right?  We have a preference, a desire - but is it God's desire for is?  Do we dare pray for it to come to pass?  Would it be selfish?  We carry a burden - it weighs us down.  We wish to lay it aside altogether, to run free of it.  But is it God's will that we carry this burden?  Is it God's will for us that this burden be our thorn in the flesh?  We desire liberation, resolution, an end to our struggles; we want to be set free from many troubles, predicaments, relationships, stages.  Yet we wonder if this is the way for us - what God has planned for us, and what is necessary.

The Lesson today frees us from fretting too much about all this.  It reminds us that we really can overthink things.  We can be too logical.  We can be so worried about getting everything in right sequence and order and so afraid to make a mistake when talking to God that we end up saying nothing.   Today's Lesson basically says to quite worrying about all that and start trusting.   Trust that we have a Spirit, the Spirit of Christ, who will intercede for us not only when our words fumble but also even when what we desire is not what God desires for us.

If we don't believe that then we need to remember Jesus, who poured out His heart, made His request to God, petitioned for help, and then said, "Not my will but thine be done."

God's will will be done in our lives when we start trusting Him enough to ask anything of Him and begin to discover that even in His "No" there is a great and liberating "Yes".

Daily Lesson for July 4

Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew 22 verses 16 and 17:

16 And they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are true and teach the way of God truthfully, and you do not care about anyone's opinion, for you are not swayed by appearances.  17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar, or not?” 

These words from Jesus are often remembered on the Fourth of July and other civic occasions.  What is not always remembered is that they spoken after some men came to test him - trying to pit Jesus' commitment to his religious convictions against his obligations to the ruling government.  "Is it lawful (meaning does it keep with Jewish religious law) to pay taxes to Caesar?"  They put Jesus between a rock and a hard place, trying to get dirt on him by either making him out to be treacherous to the religion or treasonous against the government.

There's a lot of debate right now about church and state.  The issues are complex and difficult with sincere people of faith and goodwill on both sides.  So be weary of taking part in pitting one side too strongly over another.  That's just what they tried to do to Jesus.

Daily Lesson for July 3, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is Psalm 133:

133 Behold, how good and pleasant it is
when brothers dwell in unity!
2 It is like the precious oil on the head,
running down on the beard,
on the beard of Aaron,
running down on the collar of his robes!
3 It is like the dew of Hermon,
which falls on the mountains of Zion!
For there the Lord has commanded the blessing,
life forevermore.

We head today into the long July 4th weekend when we pause as a nation to think on what America is what it means to be an American.  As we shoot off our fireworks on Friday, the rockets' red glare will remind us that the flag was still there; and in that moment we will do well to pause and to remember that for which the flag stands - "one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."

Much consideration has been given to those words "under God" and those ideals of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness".  What is often left unconsidered is the hidden word, tucked between: "indivisible".  I drive around my town and I see on the backs of bumpers another word "Secede" and I walk through my neighborhood and see another flag altogether: the "Stars and Bars" of the Confederate flag, and I think how unforgotten and how meaningful that word "indivisible" would have been when our Pledge of Allegiance was first penned six score and one ago.  On the heels of that fateful war when the cost of winning our nation's soul was the red blood of 600,000 men, that word "indivisible" would not have been so blithely lost.

I see another war brewing.  They call it a "culture war" - for now.  It is in many ways still a war for the soul of our nation; it is again a war about the meaning of freedom and to whom it is extended, and again a war about the meaning of the word republic, and how free any man is or is not in a democracy. It is only a culture war - for now.  But make no mistake, it is a war which is already exacting its toll on our people in blood and in spirit.

We would do well this weekend to remember the word "indivisible", to think on its meaning, and to pledge ourselves again to its cause - which means, we must pledge ourselves again to one another as brothers and sisters.  For as Dr. King once said, "We must learn to live together as brothers or we shall perish together as fools."

At the end of Ken Burns's documentary Civil War, it is said by someone that that war could still be lost.  That is true.  But if it can still be lost, it can also still be won.  Let us on this 4th of July pledge ourselves to ensuring that it will be one and that this one nation under God indivisible with liberty and justice for all might long endure.

Daily Lesson for July 2, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Psalm 129 verses 1 through 4:

Let Israel now say—
2 “Greatly have they afflicted me from my youth,
yet they have not prevailed against me.
3 The plowers plowed upon my back;
they made long their furrows.”
4 The Lord is righteous;
he has cut the cords of the wicked.

I want you to know something. I want you to know something about who you are.  I want you to consider for a moment all the things you have endured - the scornful looks, the bitter words, the shaming, the belittling, the ridicule, the disgraces, the things they did, the words they said - words which cut deeper than flesh and cut you like a knife, all the way into your heart.  "And a sword shall pierce your soul as well."

I want you to consider these things for a moment - painful though they be.  I want you to consider them, and I want you to know that you are a survivor.  You are a strong, strong, blood made of iron, survivor.

And God has come to heal your wounds.  The LORD has come to clear the field plowed deep with 14 or 40 or 400 years of indignity and dehumanization.  He has come to lift up valleys and make rough spaces smooth.  He has come to cut the cords that you might no longer be a beast of burden, enslaved to who you were or who somebody said you were.  The LORD has come to redeem you, to set you free, to make you whole.

You are indeed already a survivor; and you can be even more.

Daily Post for July 1, 2014

Today's Daily Lesson is from Matthew chapter 21 verses 31b and 32:

31b Jesus said to them, “Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. 32 For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds . . ."

On Sunday I had the honor of being asked to present a friend his five year sobriety chip.  Five years ago my friend may well have been the drunkest drunk in America - or at least he was working on it. He was what the AA book calls a "real alcoholic".

In presenting with his chip, I spoke about my appreciation for AA's way making people small enough to enter through the kingdom door.  I talked about how Jesus said a lot of religious people stand outside the door, keeping others from entering in and themselves end up getting locked out. They get locked out because they think they and everyone else has to rise up to some entry bar, when in fact the threshold is much lower.

After I presented my friend his chip, he can up and spoke and talked about how he got sober.  He said, "I went to the best residential treatment center in the country".  You might have thought he meant somewhere where the rich and famous go.  But then he went on, "I went to Managed Care - a rehab place for poor folks where I had to scrub the commodes and a glass of Kool-aid was considered a perk.

"And," he said, "that was exactly what I needed.  It was what I needed because it humbled me.  And I needed to be humbled."

Scrubbing the toilets saved my friend.  It saved him because it bowed him - both physically and spiritually.   And in bending over, cleaning his and others' human excrement, he found the threshold.

God's bar is actually lower than ours.  It's so low that even tax collectors, and prostitutes, and real alcoholics can get in.  They can get in because the bar is actually a bar to go under rather than over.  

And that means only those willing to bend over and be humbled will find the way.