Daily Lesson for August 18, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 23 verses 23 and 24:

23 Then he summoned two of the centurions and said, ‘Get ready to leave by nine o’clock tonight for Caesarea with two hundred soldiers, seventy horsemen, and two hundred spearmen. 24Also provide mounts for Paul to ride, and take him safely to Felix the governor.’

As thousands seek desperate refuge from the Taliban's re-takeover in Afghanistan, we remember today Paul's frantic ride with the Roman cavalry from to Caesarea from Jerusalem, where he was sure to be killed for his political and religious beliefs.

We remember also Jesus and the Holy Family as they fled in the middle of the night from the wrath and hatred of Herod.

In remembrance of these refugees, and all others who seek asylum and a more hopeful future, we offer this Prayer for Refugees this morning from the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Services:

"Dear Lord Jesus, your family on earth knew the life of refugees when they fled to Egypt. Bless all who seek refuge on this earth. Meet their needs for safety and for home. Move the hearts of your people to show them welcome. Cause wars to cease and bring justice to the nations that no one will need to flee again.

In your great mercy, Lord hear our prayer.

Amen."

Daily Lesson for August 17, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Acts chapter 26 verses 30 through 32:

30 Then the king got up, and with him the governor and Bernice and those who had been seated with them; 31and as they were leaving, they said to one another, ‘This man is doing nothing to deserve death or imprisonment.’ 32Agrippa said to Festus, ‘This man could have been set free if he had not appealed to the emperor.’

William Sloane Coffin once asked whether it was really any worse to have blood on one's hands than it is to have them washed with the water of Pontius Pilate.

Today's Lesson makes something of the same point.

Herod Agrippa and Festus have a political problem on their hands. They've interrogated Paul. They've found no crime that he has done. What is more, they actually seem to sort of like him -- as much as they like anyone.

But when it comes down to it, the people wanted Paul's head. And so though they could find no crime within him, they suggest it is beyond the power of their own authority to do anything to free him.

Instead, they choose to send Paul to Rome, where anyone could tell you he'll be treated cruelly. But they pretend to convince themselves he may be treated justly. It is a convenient self-deception.

They wash their hands in Pilate's water.

I think of where we are today with mask mandates in America. All the elected school board officials, country governors, mayors, etc. plea that they don't have the power to decide anything. The power belongs to the governor, they say.

So at the end of the day, they don't have to be guilty; they can just be not responsible instead.

It's a convenient fact; but it is not the truth.

But then, as Pilate said, "What is truth?"

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

Daily Lesson for August 16, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 13 verses 14 through 16:

14 ‘But when you see the desolating sacrilege set up where it ought not to be (let the reader understand), then those in Judea must flee to the mountains; 15someone on the housetop must not go down or enter the house to take anything away; 16someone in the field must not turn back to get a coat.

What has happened in Afghanistan over the last few days is deeply sad, though probably predictable.

There are no answers. There are few consolations.

For my friends who fought there whom I have had the privilege of knowing and/or pastoring in some way, there is rightful frustration and also anger.

The lament should not be theirs alone. It should also be ours all as American citizens.

There was a book published at the outset of the War on Terrorism titled "War is A Force That Gives Us Meaning". The danger when we lose, or fail to win a war is that all can seem meaningless. It certainly does so now.

So, no easy answers this morning. No silver linings. Only the consolation that the Holy City has itself been here before; and the best Jesus himself could counsel was to tell those who could that it was okay to escape.

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

Daily Lesson for August 13, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 130:

1 Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord;

Lord, hear my voice; *

let your ears consider well the voice of my supplication.

2 If you, Lord, were to note what is done amiss, *

O Lord, who could stand?

3 For there is forgiveness with you; *

therefore you shall be feared.

4 I wait for the Lord; my soul waits for him; *

in his word is my hope.

5 My soul waits for the Lord,

more than watchmen for the morning, *

more than watchmen for the morning.

6 O Israel, wait for the Lord, *

for with the Lord there is mercy;

7 With him there is plenteous redemption, *

and he shall redeem Israel from all their sins.

The late, great Baptist preacher, theologian, and social gadfly Carlyle Marney refused to lead his people in prayer for anything he thought was actually in their hands to control. That was complicity in inaction, he thought; and he had the guts to say no.

Thus we come to prayers for deliverance from this dreaded COVID-19 disease. No prayer will do what masks and vaccines can do. So if we're looking for a miracle, it's already here. Prayers answered.

At the same time, however, we do pray that hearts will open to receive the miracle. And in humility we should understand how hearts might be closed. For too long too much has been done to erode the legitimacy of government. The Tuskegee Experiment alone is enough to put questions in the minds of a lot of black people. And years and years of questioning the conclusions of science on the fossil record, plus who knows how many end-times conspiracy speakers on Sunday nights, has put a whole lot of questions in the minds of a whole lot of people, most of which has been sadly unsettled and even evilly fomented by a whole lot of people sworn to serve and protect.

And so it's really all a question of legitimacy, and therefore it is perhaps a matter of prayer -- not for a sudden miraculous cure, but for the miracle of trust. We pray to God -- not so much for deliverance from the disease -- but for the changing of hearts and minds and an end to distrust.

The Psalmist says this morning, "Out of the depths have I called to you, O Lord."

The pediatric beds are full in Tarrant County. I can't much think of any deeper depth of sorrow and sadness than that. So we do call out. We cry out. We ask the LORD to help us.

And, more appropriately, we ask the LORD to help us help our ourselves.

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

Daily Lesson for August 12, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 10 verses 42 through 45:

42So Jesus called them and said to them, ‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. 43But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, 44and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. 45For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.’

Mother Teresa once said, “We cannot all do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”

Jesus turned the word "greatness" upside down. He taught his disciples to see that a truly great person is not a person with great power or supreme might, but a person who acts with love and with care for their neighbors, friends, and for their community.

This means that true greatness is mostly small, unseen, and selfless.

It is found in the guys who come on Thursday afternoons to cut the bushes at the community center, so while the poor are being fed outside during COVID a table has been set for them in the wilderness.

It is found in the friend who allows another friend to stay in his home until the guest has his feet underneath him again.

It is found in the church family that gave me and Irie not one but two cars when we were first starting out and poorer than Job's turkey.

It is found in the folks who devote their week to preparing special lessons for the Special Friends class for persons with intellectual disabilities.

The nations value greatness with power and with might and with an arrogance of authority and rule. But the greatest One came humble, and mounted on a donkey.

If we remember that today it will reframe a whole lot of things. And a whole lot won't be seen as such a big deal; but a whole little will.

And maybe then we'll understand the meaning of the mustard seed.

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

Daily Lesson for August 11, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 10 verses 28 through 31:

28 Peter began to say to him, ‘Look, we have left everything and followed you.’ 29Jesus said, ‘Truly I tell you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news,* 30who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age—houses, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields, with persecutions—and in the age to come eternal life. 31But many who are first will be last, and the last will be first.’

I heard something very funny the other day at church.

Two families have been friends for over sixty years. They raised their children together at Broadway. The two families are so close that the father in one once introduced the grown daughter in the other his "faux daughter". "Does that make you a 'faux pa'?" she wittily asked.

There are lots of faux family members to be discovered in a church community. For so many who have not had good relationships with their biological families family can be hard. But others become surrogates in special ways. Some lose family members over religion or politics or completely different values. It is very painful. But new relationships are also found in the community of the congregation.

So what Jesus said is trues. "No one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields, for my sake and for the sake of the good news, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age."

The losses can be heavy and grievous. But the gains can also be beautiful and life-giving, and the faux families very, very true.

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

Daily Lesson for August 10, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from 2 Samuel chapter 14 verses 12 through 14:

12 Then the woman said, ‘Please let your servant speak a word to my lord the king.’ He said, ‘Speak.’ 13The woman said, ‘Why then have you planned such a thing against the people of God? For in giving this decision the king convicts himself, inasmuch as the king does not bring his banished one home again. 14We must all die; we are like water spilled on the ground, which cannot be gathered up. But God will not take away a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished for ever from his presence."

Grave things befell the house of David. A daughter was raped by a half brother Amnon. And having avenged his sister's defilement by killing Amnon, another brother Absalom was banished from the house upon penalty of death. The general Joab devised a scheme to get Absalom back, sending a "wise" woman to the king who told a story of two sons at war with one another, one killing the other, and the people demanding the death of both. David could see in another family's circumstances how one death could not justify another, blood for blood. The woman then told David it was his family she was speaking of. So then she says these words: "God will not take a life; he will devise plans so as not to keep an outcast banished forever from his presence."

David relented, and Absalom was allowed to come back to the royal house, but he was not welcomed into David's presence. There was strict silence between the two. Nothing was said from David, nor was anything expected from Absalom. For two full years it went on like this, until finally Absalom revolted against his father and attempted to usurp his throne.

It's such an ugly and twisted and trauma-filled story. And it is hard to tell what is justice within the story. It's so messed up, it's hard to know what or who is right or wrong.

But at the end of the day, what it surely tells us is that there is no future and no hope without forgiveness. There is no future without reconciliation.

The wise woman is right. In God there is reconciliation, and there is atonement. There is the invitation to come and be near in the presence of the Lord. And the Lord devises schemes to bring the banished home -- for good.

But the way forward requires that we not only agree to live in the same house, but also that we talk to another. It requires that we work out the future together. It demands that we determined what kind of atonement is necessary in order for us to live in peace.

Those who have ears, let them hear.

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