Daily Lesson for October 11, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 10 verses 12 through 14:

12As you enter the house, greet it. 13If the house is worthy, let your peace come upon it; but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you. 14If anyone will not welcome you or listen to your words, shake off the dust from your feet as you leave that house or town.

When Jesus sent his disciples out he instructed them to take ownership of their own peace. They could enter a place and offer its people peace as a blessing. Or, if the place and people were unreceptive, the disciples could receive their peace in return. But Jesus was very clear, no place and no people were to take the peace away from his disciples. Peace was theirs to keep and to steward.

What made that possible was without doubt the lightness with which Jesus instructed his disciples to travel. They were to, "Take no gold, or silver, or copper in your belts, no bag for your journey, or two tunics, or sandals, or a staff." People with more than enough never have peace. They have too much to protect. They're too tied to people and place. Those who travel lightly carry peace with them, and they bless others with their peace also.

It's the first day of the workweek. We're being sent out into the world. Let us learn to walk lightly and without fear. And may the peace of God, which surpasses all other possessions, guard our hearts and our minds in all places and at all times.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Daily Lesson for October 8, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 12 verses 14 through 19:

14 Indeed, the body does not consist of one member but of many. 15If the foot were to say, ‘Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 16And if the ear were to say, ‘Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body’, that would not make it any less a part of the body. 17If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? If the whole body were hearing, where would the sense of smell be? 18But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. 19If all were a single member, where would the body be?

This is a hard concept for we Americans to get.

We were brought up on the virtues of rugged individualism and fierce independence. John Wayne alone in the saddle was the quintessential American icon. The Lone Ranger was a close second.

But Saint Paul had a different vision. He too could be seen as lone ranger, but probably because of all he suffered, and how dependent he had to become on others in his imprisonments, Paul spoke much more of the collective -- a whole working together as one with many individual parts.

We have spent the last 20 months arguing about the individual's rights versus the many's safety. How different it all would have been if we had seen that the one and the many are not at all opposites, but all members of the same one body.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Daily Lesson for October 7, 2021

 Today is the 90th birthday of Bishop Demond Tutu, someone who has been a great source of joy and courage for me from afar for many decades. In celebration of the day, I share with you the birthday wishes I sent to the Bishop via the Desmond & Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation on this wonderful day:

“Happy Birthday Bishop!

I am a Baptist minister in Texas (no longer a Southern Baptist) and my wife Irie and I gave our first child Daniel the middle name Desmond in your honor. He is now 11-years old. 

We salute you. We celebrate with you. And we continue to believe in the Rainbow People of God all over this earth because of you. 

O happy day when you were born!

May your Spirit, and the Spirit of our Lord continue to be born again and again for ages to come . . .

Rev. Ryon Price, Fort Worth, Texas”

Before he retired, Bishop Tutu talked often about the traditional South African concept of “Ubuntu”, which he defined as “My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

On this 90th birthday of this great human being, may we remember that all our lives and all our future are bound up together in a common Ubuntu humanity.

Let us dare to live into it all together. 

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of the historic Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.  

Daily Lesson for October 6, 2021

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 9 verses 10 through 13:

10 And as he sat at dinner* in the house, many tax-collectors and sinners came and were sitting with him and his disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, ‘Why does your teacher eat with tax-collectors and sinners?’ 12But when he heard this, he said, ‘Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. 13Go and learn what this means, “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” For I have come to call not the righteous but sinners.’

I love this story. It's the story that first captured my imagination about Jesus. We read it in Bible Study when I was in high school and Jesus' quick wit and good sense grabbed hold of me. When Jesus said, "It's not the healthy who need a doctor, but those who are sick," I was like, "Well, I'm coming back to listen to more that this guy has to say. He's brilliant and isn't afraid to cause a little trouble." The Pharisees were slack-jawed.

This was the kind of community I imagined creating in my first church. The kind of place where sinners were welcome. The kind of place where the sick could find a doctor. I wanted it to be a radical church.

But then I got to church and found out something pretty shocking. I didn't have to gather all the sinners and sick people. They were already there! Philanderers, and tax cheats, and racists, and drunks, and gluttons of all kinds. There they all were -- right out there in the pews.

I was slack-jawed, which means I was a lot more like the Pharisees in this story than I was like Jesus.

We don't really have to worry about gathering all the sinners. They'll turn up.

And that dream of the perfect community of sinners we like will be replaced by real sinners we don't.

And that too is church.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Daily Lesson for October 5, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 11:

17 Now in the following instructions I do not commend you, because when you come together it is not for the better but for the worse. . .20When you come together, it is not really to eat the Lord’s supper. 21For when the time comes to eat, each of you goes ahead with your own supper, and one goes hungry and another becomes drunk. 22What! Do you not have homes to eat and drink in? Or do you show contempt for the church of God and humiliate those who have nothing?

In the early Church, the Lord's Supper was actually a sit-down meal, full of food and drink, and a lot more than the parsimonious little wafers and cups we hand out today. And, when it came to the wine they used the good stuff -- not the Welch's many Protestants use today.

But not all was well in the early church. It seems that the richer would come and eat with each other, while the rest of the folks were still probably working. A high time would be had at the Lord's table, with some getting good and drunk, while the poor would be left hungry, hoping for scraps left from the table of the rich.

It wasn't the Lord's Supper -- it was a gated communion.

It's only gotten harder and harder for the rich and poor to share a meal. In COVID is been almost impossible. But we need to find a way to break bread together. And we need to do so regularly.

Our jobs and our neighborhoods divide us. So too do even our Sunday Schools classes. But a shared table is where we meet Jesus.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Daily Lesson for October 4, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson is attributed to St. Francis of Assisi:

Lord make Me an instrument of Your peace

Where there is hatred let me sow love.

Where there is injury, pardon.

Where there is doubt, faith.

Where there is despair, hope.

Where there is darkness, light.

Where there is sadness joy.

O Divine master grant that I may

Not so much seek to be consoled as to console

To be understood, as to understand.

To be loved, as to love

For it's in giving that we receive

And it's in pardoning that we are pardoned

And it's in dying that we are born...

To eternal life.

Amen.

Today is the Feast Day of St. Francis and a good day to remember we have little control over how we are understood. What we say and what we do is often interpreted by the experience and perspective and also prejudice of others. We do our best to speak and act as clearly as we can, but at the end of the day communicating who we are and what we are about is difficult and challenging. This is a part of the reason why St. Francis said we are to "Preach the Gospel at all times, and only when necessary use words."

We do have more control over how we understand. A good practice for today is to try to understand more fully and deeply. Part of this requires that we suspend judgment. I've been trying to practice this. When in conversation with others, I pay attention to when feelings of judgment come up in me. Rather than reacting defensively with harshness or rejection, I'm trying to instead say, "Tell me more." That's an especially difficult thing to do when what others are telling us seems to lack understanding of what we're saying or what we're about.

Everyone wants to be understood. It is an original human impulse. I suppose it's why we evented screaming.

But God gave us two ears and only one tongue. So let us try to listen deeply. Let us try to really hear. We don't have to agree. But we would do well to try to understand.

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.

Daily Lesson for October 1, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 8 verses 5 through 7:

5 When he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to him, appealing to him 6and saying, ‘Lord, my servant is lying at home paralysed, in terrible distress.’ 7And he said to him, ‘I will come and cure him.’

Jesus healed the servant of a centurion. He also healed the son of a royal official.

These acts must have garnered Jesus suspicion amongst his followers. He was willing to be kind and compassionate towards the occupiers. He treated the gentile dogs with humanity. Didn't he know that this kindness would never break the backs of the occupiers? Didn't he know that they were at war? Didn't he want to see his own people go free?

Jesus did not see the world in the same "us versus them" terms. He had compassion on all. He would have compassion on all. He would have compassion on the suspected-criminal in the streets; and he would have compassion on the officer doing what he's been taught to try to clean them up.

Who is guilty? Who is right? Whose life matters? Whose life is collateral? Whose is expendable?

Jesus acts. Jesus saves. One is healed.

Maybe the whole world also . . .

Ryon Price is Senior Pastor of Broadway Baptist Church in Fort Worth, Texas.