Daily Lesson for January 29, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 10 verses 19 through 22:

19 Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, 20 by the new and living way that he opened for us through the curtain, that is, through his flesh, 21 and since we have a great priest over the house of God, 22 let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water.

After pastoring for as long as I have now you begin to get a sense of the fear and anxiety some bring with them into the house of God. Holy places are too much to bear, the sense of being found out too great to endure. Thus there is the hiding, the avoidance of eye contact, and the rapid departure after -- or perhaps even before -- the benediction. Most of all there is the overwhelming sense of shame. 

I know these things not only because I see them as a pastor, but also because I lived them as a person. In fact, in some sense it might be true that I am a pastor because I lived and was afflicted by it all in my own personhood.  I lived it; and I am a pastor because I want others to know it really isn't life at all but rather death.

My deepest desire is for others to find and know what I discovered and now know: that by grace we are no longer alienated but are at one with God. We are accepted, we are welcome, we have been made pure. God is at peace with us; and all we have to do is accept this good news in the depths of our own souls and be at peace with God.

The Gospel writer Matthew tells us that when  Jesus died the curtain in the Temple was torn in two, rent asunder from top to bottom. This imagery to drive home the point that God has acted from heaven to remove the barrier we put up on earth.

I am standing now at the altar, looking out over the congregation. It is a mixture of well-known saints and well-known sinners. I am standing with bread in one hand and a cup in the other. My arms are open. I look out over the congregation of sinners and saints and see that some are looking up towards me, while others have their heads down, their eyes turned.  I sound the invitation. "This is the LORD's house," I say, "not my house. And this is our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ's table, not mine either. And he says, 'Come.'"

It is by the blood of Jesus that we approach the holy place with confidence.  The curtain has been split.  There is no more alienation or separation.  We are at peace. May this good news sink down into the bones of every saint and sinner and all the rest of us in between -- we are at peace. 

Thanks be to God. 

#2BeAtOne

Daily Lesson for January 28, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 5 verses 39 through 42:

39 You search the Scriptures because you think that in them you have eternal life; and it is they that bear witness about me, 40 yet you refuse to come to me that you may have life. 41 I do not receive glory from people. 42 But I know that you do not have the love of God within you.

Yesterday I watched a very tense and heated argument between two people over a hot-button issue where the Bible was invoked as "the Word of God." So I read today's Daily Lesson this morning and I wonder if the Gospel writer John would have approved.  I have to think John would not have approved because for him the Scriptures were not the "Word of God" -- at least not in the way that term was being used in the argument.

For John the definitive "Word of God" was not the Scriptures but the fullness of God alive in Jesus of Nazareth. The Word of God was "made flesh". This was the ultimate expression of God's Word -- a human being fully alive with the light and life of God.

The Scriptures bear witness to this life; but they are not the life themselves. As the lesson says, we may "think" they have eternal life, but they do not have eternal life in and of themselves. The Bible points us to life in and with God, but it is not itself God and should not be confused or used as such.

In the exchange he has in today's lesson Jesus says something quite incredibly important. In a debate about the meaning of Scripture Jesus says,  "I know that you do not have the love of God within you."

The exchange I witnessed yesterday had a lot of Bible verse quoting, but not an ounce of anything I could recognize as love. Which makes me think somebody had missed the whole point.

Daily Lesson for January 27, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 5 verses 25 through 29:

25 "Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to execute judgment, because he is the Son of Man.28 Do not marvel at this, for an hour is coming when all who are in the tombs will hear his voice 29 and come out, those who have done good to the resurrection of life, and those who have done evil to the resurrection of crisis."

Now that last word may not have been how you memorized the Scripture. It's my translation, I confess it. I have seen it otherwise translated as "judgement".  And the Authorized version was even more severe, using the word "damnation".  "Those who have done evil to the resurrection of evil."

But before anyone sentences me to damnation for taking the teeth out of this text, may it be noted that the word "crisis" is the most literal translation of the Greek word "krisis".  And so therefore it is an irony that my translation is not a softy-lofty, namby-pamby one, but a strictly literal one. Those who have done evil are eventually brought to a resurrection of "crisis".

The hour is coming, Jesus says, when the dead living in tombs shall hear the voice of God. The tombs, I am sure, may be literal or may be metaphorical. It may be physical death or spiritual death. But in any and all cases, all hear a voice calling them out from death into resurrection.

Some are called into the resurrection of life. These are the ones who though they have died already live. They are the ones who are already alive with the light of life -- a light which death cannot extinguish.  There is more life in them then death can ever take. They hear the voice calling to them in the valley of shadows and they rise and walk with hope and trust and utter serenity. The light of resurrection is within them.

Others hear the voice and are stricken with fear.  It is fear that could be at once either full of foreboding and a sense of utter damnation, or finally the sense of peace and the serenity which apprehends one who surrenders to one with whom, as the hymn says, "there is a kindness in his justice".

This is the moment of crisis -- to rise and walk toward the voice of the one who calls, trusting in His goodness and mercy, or to remain dead alive, stuck dead alive, entombed forever in the punishment of our own sins.

This is the crisis; and its hour is coming. It's hour is here.

It's hour is always here.

And Jesus calls to Lazarus, "Come out."

Artwork:

Master of the Hunterian Psalter. Hunterian Psalter, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.  http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54296 [retrieved January 27, 2016]. Original source: http://special.lib.gla.ac.uk/images/psalter/H229_0011vwf.jpg.

Daily Lesson for January 26, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 15 verses 1-11, and 17 and 18:

After these things the word of the Lord came to Abram in a vision: “Fear not, Abram, I am your shield; your reward shall be very great.” 2 But Abram said, “O Lord God, what will you give me, for I continue childless, and the heir of my house is Eliezer of Damascus?” 3 And Abram said, “Behold, you have given me no offspring, and a member of my household will be my heir.” 4 And behold, the word of the Lord came to him: “This man shall not be your heir; your very own son shall be your heir.” 5 And he brought him outside and said, “Look toward heaven, and number the stars, if you are able to number them.” Then he said to him, “So shall your offspring be.” 6 And he believed the Lord, and he counted it to him as righteousness. 7 And he said to him, “I am the Lord who brought you out from Ur of the Chaldeans to give you this land to possess.” 8 But he said, “O Lord God, how am I to know that I shall possess it?” 9 He said to him, “Bring me a heifer three years old, a female goat three years old, a ram three years old, a turtledove, and a young pigeon.” 10 And he brought him all these, cut them in half, and laid each half over against the other. But he did not cut the birds in half. 11 And when birds of prey came down on the carcasses, Abram drove them away. . .17 When the sun had gone down and it was dark, behold, a smoking fire pot and a flaming torch passed between these pieces. 18 On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying, “To your offspring I give this land . . .”

Here we have the beginning of religion as we know it, the institution of ritual, and the concept of shedding blood in ratification of covenant with God. Here is the beginning of the mystery of our faith.  This mysterious service of worship comes at a definitive moment in the narrative, after Abram is promised the land, but before he is to receive it. What happened when the sun went down was a kind of guarantee on the promise.

The psychology of this dark and mysterious encounter suggests that there is within us an inherent need for outward signs and symbols and tangible things which help us to control our anxieties and relieve our fears. The promise of the land to come, off in the distant future, is accompanied by elements which can be immediately touched. This is necessary for Abram and the text seems to accept it without judgment.

But interestingly, before this mysterious ratification of the promise of the land, there was another promise -- the promise of the progeny.  For this promise, we are told Abram needed no ratification; he simply "believed and it was accounted unto him as righteousness."  In other words, he believed and he therefore had no need for blood covenant to be made.

What are we to make of this?  There is something primordially like Abram in each of us -- something which needs symbols and ritual to help relieve our anxieties about an uncertain future -- especially uncertainty about our children's future. The things we do at altars -- lighting candles, drinking elements, kneeling in prayer -- perform this function for us. This is the religious role of ritual -- tangible acts which serve as signs of God's promise.

But these signs are signs for us -- not for God.  The shedding of blood at the altar was a sign for Abram, not for God.  The promise of land had been made by God and all Abram really had to do was believe it as he had believed the promise of progeny.  What was given to Abram in that night service of worship was a gift and a provision to help the believer in his unbelief.

The promise is there -- for us and our children. In the end we shall all enter the promised land. "And all things shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."  It is enough for us to believe it.

But in order to allay our anxiety and fear in the meantime, God gives us signs and promises at the altar -- a testament to the veracity that God's promises are true in our sure belief, in our uncertain doubt, and everywhere in between.

Daily Lesson for January 25, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 4 verses 46 through 53:

46 So he came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had made the water wine. And at Capernaum there was an official whose son was ill. 47 When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went to him and asked him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. 48 So Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” 49 The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.” 50 Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and went on his way. 51 As he was going down, his servants met him and told him that his son was recovering. 52 So he asked them the hour when he began to get better, and they said to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.” 53 The father knew that was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.”

The moment of serenity is the moment of healing.

After all the begging and bargaining with God turns out not to have done a thing, when we realize we just can't talk Jesus into coming down to heal our son or our daughter or our father or mother, when we finally accept that the signs and wonders we've been praying for just aren't going to happen, then the miracle takes place:

In the acceptance of our circumstance,
In trust that we have been heard,
At peace that they and we are in the LORD's hands,
At rest in the promise that that shall live -- whatever it should mean.

This is what it means to believe.  This is what it means to have faith.  This is what it means to live in the miracle.

Daily Lesson for January 22, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 4 verses 16 through 26:

16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him.24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”

I love this scene for all its depth of love and compassion and insight into our human condition. 

She must have been in such pain, this woman drawing water by herself at the well outside of the dusty Samaritan town.  Five husbands, and a sixth man who is not her husband. And here she is again coming back to the old well alone, lugging her dry and empty bucket.

A man asks for a drink. He is a Jew; and a Jew would only have wandered into Samaria and spoken with a woman for reason and was not water. She was flattered. She was disgusted. She was ashamed. She was hopeful. She was all these things and none of them. She was empty.

But then the curious stranger begins to speak of something, some kind of water that he has, some water that can fill up the emptiness and pour -- gush -- out of the well, out of the pit, out of a place that sometimes in Scripture refers to hell. Here he is offering something so full of water that it can quench the flames of her living hell. "Give me this water," she says.

"Go, call your husband, and tell him to come here too," the stranger says. "Husband?  I have no husband?"  "Right you are, you've had five and you are now living with a sixth who you aren't married to."

And here she tries to turn the conversation. She wants to talk about religion.  "Your people worship on a mountain in Jerusalem, right?"  That's an old trick, a defense shield; when things start to get personal people talk about church, about worship, about religion. "Do y'all teach there's only one way to heaven?  Are ya'll charismatic?  I gotta have the spirit. Do you have guitars?  Do you wear robes?" It's much easier to talk about my issues with the minister of music than it is to talk about my issues with me, and men and women and this old well. 

The stranger turns the conversation back. "It's about time," he says, "that those who really want to worship God will worship God in both spirit and also in truth."  In other words, he was telling her the work of the spirit won't just be on the surface but will go way down to uncover the truth of who we are and why we do what we do.

"I know the Messiah is coming," she says, "and when he comes he will uncover everything."  "I -- the one speaking to you -- am he," the stranger said. 

And there must have been something in those words which was so moving, and so tender. His tone must have been so full of compassion, his eyes so inviting, his heart so evidently honest and trustworthy and full of love: "I -- the one speaking to you -- am he."  It must have been because after he said this she turned and went back into town to tell others.

"I've found a man," she said when she got back into town.  "Yeah, yeah," a friend of mine says the people must rolled their eyes, "you're always finding men."  But this man was different.  And to prove it, she showed them all that she had left her bucket behind. She had left that well, that he'll, for good.

The stranger still comes. Showing up at old wells and worn-out bars.  He still comes, offering us a drink to slake our thirst, and a style of worship that gets at the truth. He comes, to our well -- to our hell.  "Come, and taste," he says. "I -- the one who is speaking to you -- am he."

And some deep, deep inside us -- some emptiness -- believes it, and trusts it, and already begins to be filled.

Attribution:	He, Qi. Samaritan Woman at the Well, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=46112 [retrieved January 22, 2016]. Original source: heqigallery.com.

Daily Lesson for January 21, 2016

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

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. 2 And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. 3 And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. 4 Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” 5 And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. 6 And the Lord said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. 7 Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another's speech.” 8 So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. 9 Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

Now here's something to consider.

Is it just a coincidence that this story in Genesis is found in chapter 11 -- the same chapter one files from in bankruptcy court when reorganization is necessary?

Okay, I know it probably is just a coincidence.  Nevertheless, the lessons of Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code and Chapter 11 of Genesis are the same: the recognition that we as humans have a capacity to overextend ourselves, and that a little time for reorganizing is sometimes necessary.

We think of what happens to the people at Babel as a great curse -- a cursed mark like those who file for bankruptcy. But what happens at Babel is actually a blessing insofar as it saves the people from their own hubris and overreach. Their confusion, usually a curse, turns out to be a blessing, and their wandering a gift from God.

At some point in life we all have to file Chapter 11. What we intended to build didn't really get off the ground; or if it did get off the ground, it got just high enough for everyone to see before anyone realized it wouldn't hold. How humiliating.

But sometimes humility is just what we need.

"What's the gift in it?" my mentor and friend Ted Dotts used to ask.  The gift is the ability to start over again.  Confused? Yes. Cast to the four winds? Indeed.

But no longer consumed with making a name for ourselves, and no longer under the impression that a night tower can be built in the skies without a very firm foundation in the earth.

There is a gift in that.  There is a gift to be found in Chapter 11.  There is a gift in Babel.

Daily Lesson for January 20, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 9 verses 20 through 25:

20 Noah began to be a man of the soil, and he planted a vineyard. 21 He drank of the wine and became drunk and lay uncovered in his tent. 22 And Ham, the father of Canaan, saw the nakedness of his father and told his two brothers outside. 23 Then Shem and Japheth took a garment, laid it on both their shoulders, and walked backward and covered the nakedness of their father. Their faces were turned backward, and they did not see their father's nakedness. 24 When Noah awoke from his wine and knew what his youngest son had done to him, 25 he said,
“Cursed be Canaan;
a servant of servants shall he be to his brothers.”

For hundreds of years this passage was interpreted as the genesis for a curse on all the dark (meaning African-descended) people of the world. This so-called "Curse of Ham" was then in turn used to justify slavery and all manner of other inequality against blacks. The reasoning? All Ham's descendants were cursed of God and made to be perpetually servants because Ham looked on his father Noah's nakedness and did not try to cover him up.  It was right there plain as day, in chapter 9 of the Bible.

There is a Latin word I learned in seminary for that kind of Biblical interpretation. It is called Bovinus Excrementus.

So here's my take on this story:

Ham is the only brother who was willing to tell the truth about his father (see Daily Lesson from January 18).  The other brothers Shem and Japheth do their best to keep their dad's secret, hide things, and cover up (literally).  So Shem and Japheth are regarded as favorite sons, while Ham gets cursed.

But note who the curse comes from. Ham is not cursed by God, but by Noah -- Noah who got so drunk that he passed out naked.  And we used that to justify slavery?  Hmm.

There is such a thing as a generational curse.  Everywhere we look we can see poverty, substance abuse, domestic disturbance and their consequences passed on from one generation to the next.  But these are not of or from God and it is blaspheme to say they are. It is we who curse ourselves and the generations which follow -- not God.

What God is in the business of is undoing the curse, restoring the family, and restoring the blessing -- from generation unto generation.  And God does it all the time.

This is the good news of who God is and what God does; and anyone who says anything else is preaching Bovinus Excrementus.

A Prayer:
God of the many blessings, undo the curses we have laid upon ourselves and our children and our children's children, and help us to walk in the way of healing, restoration and newness of life.

Daily Lesson for January 19, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 3 verses 17 and 18:

17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God.

The Son of God came to save the world and not to condemn it; for we were doing plenty good enough of a job condemning ourselves already.

We dwell upon and berate and beat ourselves up over all that we ought not have done but did, or all that we ought to have done but didn't. Our sons of commission and omission eat away at us and we end becoming prisoners to our own sin, wardened by our own sense of guilt and shame.

But the Apostle Paul says, "There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus." In other words, there is no condemnation for those who believe what God was trying to say to us in Christ. Again, "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn us, but to save us."

So self-condemnation is an abnegation of what God was trying to say to us in Christ -- it is an act of dis-obedience (literally, a refusal to hear).  It is an assumption -- implicit or outright -- that God's verdict of not-guilty is unlawful and erroneous, and an insistence that I must be in the judgment seat.  It is an insistence that I play God.

So here it is a third time, "God did not send His Son into the world to condemn us, but to save us."  To refuse this word salvation, to demand our guilt, is to set ourselves up in the judgement seat and try play God.  And that's the real condemnation -- self-condemnation.

A Prayer:
God of salvation, your word of mercy and of life was spoken through your Son Jesus the Christ. May we be open to hear this word and to receive it, and to reject all other words of judgment and condemnation -- especially when they are spoken by ourselves.  The Son has set us free; may we be free indeed.

Daily Lesson for January 18, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 8 verses 6 through 12, 20-21.

6 At the end of forty days Noah opened the window of the ark that he had made 7 and sent forth a raven. It went to and fro until the waters were dried up from the earth. 8 Then he sent forth a dove from him, to see if the waters had subsided from the face of the ground. 9 But the dove found no place to set her foot, and she returned to him to the ark, for the waters were still on the face of the whole earth. So he put out his hand and took her and brought her into the ark with him. 10 He waited another seven days, and again he sent forth the dove out of the ark. 11 And the dove came back to him in the evening, and behold, in her mouth was a freshly plucked olive leaf. So Noah knew that the waters had subsided from the earth. 12 Then he waited another seven days and sent forth the dove, and she did not return to him anymore.

20 Then Noah built an altar to the Lord and took some of every clean animal and some of every clean bird and offered burnt offerings on the altar. 21 And when the Lord smelled the pleasing aroma, the Lord said in his heart, “I will never again curse the ground because of man, for the intention of man's heart is evil from his youth.”

We can never really escape ourselves and our story.

Human sin had so thoroughly overcome the human species that the LORD decided to start anew with Noah's single family. The floods came and the waters rose and all life -- human and animal -- was drowned save those hidden in the ark. When the rains stopped and the waters began to recede, Noah released a raven out of the shelter of the ark. We are not told why he did so, but if we think metaphorically we know the raven is a bird closely associated with death. Noah wished the raven would fly far away from the ark, dying itself, and leaving its partner without a mate for propagation. But the raven did not fly far away; instead it flew to and fro, probably feeding on the carcasses of the dead drowned in the flood. The bird stalked and mocked Noah and his ark; and so too did death. And when the water finally recessed enough for those in the ark to disembark, Noah made an offering to God. And when the offering's pleasing aroma went up to God what God thought of again was -- evil.  And soon after, we see Noah and his family, said to be righteous, propagating the whole sinful human story all over again.

We can not escape the sins of our past. They stay with us. And if we are honest, we would admit that sins are present to us also -- hidden in the ark of the human heart. We would like so much to open a window and make it all fly away. But our sins stay with us. They stalk us. They caw at us like a raven as if, in Philo's words, "pointing to something hidden."

The answer is not escape -- whether in an ark which Noah tried this chapter or through strong drink which he will try in the next. The only answer is to learn to live with it all -- to accept it about ourselves. God makes this decision in the Noah story. God chooses to accept us, work with us in all our complicated folly and fallenness, and never try to destroy us again. We have to learn to chose the same.

At the end of the story Noah sends out another bird, a dove. It returns to the ark with an olive branch -- a sign of peace. The LORD has made peace with us; it is up to us to make peace with ourselves.

Daily Leson for January 15, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 16 verses 3, 5 and 6:

3 As for the saints in the land, they are the excellent ones,
in whom is all my delight.
5 The Lord is my chosen portion and my cup;
you hold my lot.
6 The lines have fallen for me in pleasant places;
indeed, I have a beautiful inheritance.

A few weeks back I was asked to officiate the funeral service for a ninety-something year-old woman. I sat and listened to the family tell about their mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. As we were sitting talking, one of the granddaughters remembered back to a funny conversation she had with her grandmother 25-years or so ago. As a little girl, probably around 6 or 7, she had heard of heaven and wondered about it and therefore asked her grandmother, the person most likely to know, just what exactly heaven was going to be like. "Oh it's going to be wonderful," her grandmother told her, "it's like we'll get to go to church not just once a week, but every single day."  With apologies to the pastor in the room, the granddaughter confessed that that did not quite sound like her idea of heaven.  "All I could think of," she said, "was the thought of having to wear scratchy pantyhose not just once per week but every single day -- for all eternity."

We all laughed and I did not take offense. The thought of scratchy pantyhose isn't my idea of heaven either. But in that moment I also learned something about her grandmother, what she loved, where she had spent her life, and how it had shaped her vision for the age to come.

If you spend 90 or so years in the church, weathering the storms, sticking through the bad preachers, and enduring all the pettiness, in the end something happens. You begin to look around and something dawns on you -- something that you did not see or even want to see before. That these church folk, these sinners and ne'er-do-wells stumbling their way into the church doors Sunday after Sunday with scratchy pantyhose and ill-fitting suits on their backs and green-bean casseroles and potato salad in their hands, really are the saints.  As the Psalmist says, "They are the excellent ones in whom is my delight."

You can't see this after a year or two; and you see it probably even less after six or seven years. You have to stick around to see it -- and it usually takes takes a lifetime.  But once you've seen it you know and you know it's true: Heaven is like being able to go to church, not just once a week, but every single day for all eternity.

Daily Lesson for January 14, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 1 verses 45 through 49:

45 Philip found Nathanael and said to him, “We have found him of whom Moses in the Law and also the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” 46 Nathanael said to him, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?” Philip said to him, “Come and see.” 47 Jesus saw Nathanael coming toward him and said of him, “Behold, an Israelite indeed, in whom there is no deceit!”48 Nathanael said to him, “How do you know me?” Jesus answered him, “Before Philip called you, when you were under the fig tree, I saw you.” 49 Nathanael answered him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God! You are the King of Israel!”

Now here is a story of primordial meaning.

Jesus saw Philip under the fig tree.  Now what does that mean?  If you're thinking you can read ahead in the book of John to find out you can't. You can read ahead -- and you should -- but John never mentions the fig tree again. You won't find the meaning of the fig tree by reading ahead, but rather by reading behind.

Go way back, deep into primordial time, into the Garden.  There, in that beautiful Garden filled with all of the trees of the forest you'll remember seeing two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Evil. And there you'll also remember seeing or perhaps even being present in the loins of a man or the womb of a woman who having just eaten of the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, are now newly awakened to the sickening aftertaste of sin called shame.

And so there they are, and perhaps there we are too "in them", hiding in that garden and finding cover behind the leaves of yet now the third tree mentioned in the Book of Genesis, you guessed it: the Fig Tree.

Then hunched over behind a single and not very suitable fig leaf, comes the voice of Adam: "I heard you calling in the garden, and I was afraid because I was naked; so I hid."

The story is trying to tell us that Jesus came to earth like God came into the Garden, calling our names walking towards us. But before we could hear anything, long before we could make out even a voice and much less our own names, and way, way before we nervously heard the crunch of God's feet drawing closer on the earth, He saw us. He saw us before we saw Him. He saw us, cowered "in Adam", hiding behind our Fig Trees, full of embarrassment and sin-sick with the rancid taste of the bittersweet and soured fruit stuck in our mouths. He saw us there -- dying of shame in the consequences of our own sin.

He saw us; and that's when He came.

Daily Lesson for January 13, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 4 verses 3 through 10:

3 In the course of time Cain brought to the Lord an offering of the fruit of the ground, 4 and Abel for his part brought of the firstlings of his flock, their fat portions. And the Lord had regard for Abel and his offering, 5 but for Cain and his offering he had no regard. So Cain was very angry, and his countenance fell. 6 The Lord said to Cain, “Why are you angry, and why has your countenance fallen? 7 If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well, sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it.”8 Cain said to his brother Abel, “Let us go out to the field.” And when they were in the field, Cain rose up against his brother Abel, and killed him. 9 Then the Lord said to Cain, “Where is your brother Abel?” He said, “I do not know; am I my brother’s keeper?” 10 And the Lord said, “What have you done? Listen; your brother’s blood is crying out to me from the ground!”

Last night, just before bedtime my boys had a bit of a row as the youngest, lying on the floor in a Linus position sucking his thumb with a blanket half-way covering his head, casually reached up and with his non-thumb sucking hand and tried to trip his older brother as he walked by. I was sitting just opposite the two and I could see the anger -- righteous as it was -- flash in big brother's eyes. I knew this was trouble and I rose up from my reading chair to try to intervene before the nukes were launched. By the time I could break in, big brother had gotten in two good, anger-induced, stomps to Linus's head and shoulders. They were quick, strategic strikes. I was there before a third stomp could be landed.  After it was all said and done -- lasting less than five seconds in total -- I could see that big brother didn't really feel good about what he had done, but he did seem to feel better. The anger in him had subsided. It was now time to go to bed; and off he went.  And Linus went back to sucking his thumb.

Welcome to Genesis 101.

Over the centuries, it has been wondered why Cain's offering was not accepted. Much has been made of the fact that the text says his brother Abel gave of the "firstlings" of what he had, while Cain gave only "an offering". I doubt, however, that that's the Scripture's point.  Cain could have given it all, I think, and whatever he gave would still have been rejected. For there was anger inside him -- consuming, stomp on his brother kind of anger -- and no outward gift could conceal it. God knew and God had no regard for it -- no matter how large of a gift was used to try and cover it up.  The sin of anger was lurking at Cain's door and its desire was to eat him alive -- which it did.

St Paul said that we can give away everything -- all our positions -- but have not love we are "nothing". As the Prophet Isaiah put it, our righteous deeds are "like filthy rags". Giving to the church whether in money or time will not cover over the sin inside us; in fact, what we discover is that it actually draws the sin out. This is one reason why there is so much conflict in church -- because holy places expose the unholiness inside us.  Perhaps, in a mythic sense, this is why the altar table is both the place where we lay our money and murder our Lord.

There is anger inside us all. It may start off as righteous anger. But ultimately it's desire is unrighteousness.  Its desire is to consume us. Its desire is murder.

We must learn to master it before it masters us.

Daily Lesson for January 12, 2016

Today's daily lesson comes from Genesis chapter 3 verses 22 through 24:

22 Then the Lord God said, “Behold, the man has become like one of us in knowing good and evil. Now, lest he reach out his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat, and live forever—” 23 therefore the Lord God sent him out from the garden of Eden to work the ground from which he was taken. 24 He drove out the man, and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim and a flaming sword that turned every way to guard the way to the tree of life.

In his book "Choosing to Live" my friend Jerry Campbell reflects on his journey through the process of grief following his wife Veta's passing away. In the process of his grief, Jerry remembered a dream he had two decades before:

"I dreamed that I was sleeping when a messenger from God appeared before me.  The messenger wore a long, brown robe with a large cowl.  I could not see the messenger's face. Suddenly I became aware of the messenger addressing me with a question . . . 'What is the most brilliant and important characteristic given to humans?' Without pause the answer jarred me wide awake! 'Death.'"

After the Couple ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, the Snake was sent to bite the dust, the Woman was made to have pain in childbirth, and the Man was made to eat bread from the sweat of his brow.  These were the curses.

But then there was a blessing also. The Couple now knew they were naked and vulnerable.  So the LORD sewed for them garments of skins (some rabbi somewhere said these were snake skins!) to clothe them. This was the first blessing after the fruit was eaten. Then, in the the very next sentence, there is God's concern that now the Couple can eat of the fruit of eternal life and, afterward, the LORD's decision to send the Couple out of the Garden of Eden. I've always known that after the curses the clothes were God's blessing. Jerry's dream has helped me to see that expulsion from Eden and its consequence -- death -- is also.

Death is a great motivator. To know that we are dust and that to dust we shall return brings to us consciousness. We are vulnerable. It is a dangerous world. There are snakes out there. And we are running out of time.

To know that we will die is the first lesson in knowing what it is to live. And to those who use that knowledge -- to love and serve and spend time and build up treasure where treasure has ultimate meaning -- it is a great blessing. The blessing of knowing that tomorrow is not guaranteed awakens is to the blessing of today.

After Jerry was awakened by his dream he says he made his way to the bathroom, reflecting on the meaning of the night visitation he wrote in his journal. "Humans are born to die; death is the boundary that gives meaning and urgency to life . . . I know it was a dream, but I can't shake the feeling that God has sent me a message."

Me neither.

An additional thought on this is that it was a grace that God knew if we were to be saved we would have to be saved through death. God then crossed the boundary to walk and even die with us in the valley outside the garden.

Daily Lesson for January 11, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 2 verse 7:

" [T]hen the Lord God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature."

What does it mean to be human?

The word "human" itself comes from the Latin "humanus", which means "of the earth".  It's the same root word we get the word hummus from. Same origin -- us and the garbanzos in our hummus, and the beasts of the field, and the birds of the air, and the fowl of the sea. We are all "of the earth" -- meaning whether mammal or reptile or amphibian we are all fashioned of the same organic matter.  We are all a part of this same animal kingdom -- and having been in a fraternity in college I know this to be true.

So what makes a person a human being?  The scientific classification for the primate who reading this and hopefully actually getting something out of it is "homo sapient".   "Homo" comes from the human genus -- something we are delighted to share with the Neanderthal.  "Sapiens" means knowledge. And apparently it is now even appropriate to call the anatomically modern human the "Homo Sapiens Sapiens" -- because though it's taken a few million years we ain't as dumb as we used to be.

The lesson then is this: We of the genus human were all born of mud and clay and the dust of the earth; but what makes us truly human is the breath of God -- the gift of spirit.  God formed "man" of the dust of the earth, the Scripture says, but it was not until God bent down and breathed into his nostrils that man became "a living being".

It is one thing to be a two-footed, self-conscious Homo Sapiens Sapiens of the primate order and the mammal class; but it is another thing to have the spirit of God inside of us. And it is only when we have been given this breath in the intimacy of divine encounter with God, that we can be said to be a living being, truly alive, what God intended for us to become when God set out in the beginning to go and play in the mud.

Daily Lesson for January 8, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 17 verses 3 through 6:

3 But the people thirsted there for water, and the people grumbled against Moses and said, “Why did you bring us up out of Egypt, to kill us and our children and our livestock with thirst?” 4 So Moses cried to the Lord, “What shall I do with this people? They are almost ready ato stone me.” 5 And the Lord said to Moses, “Pass on before the people, taking with you some of the elders of Israel, and take in your hand the staff with which you struck the Nile, and go. 6 Behold, I will stand before you there on the rock at Horeb, and you shall strike the rock, and water shall come out of it, and the people will drink.”

I have written before of cowboy poet and friend Andy Wilkinson's line about the Llano Estacado being a place "where rain must be dug up before a crop can grow."

Water hidden in the earth is a metaphor for strength of character and inner resource -- for the spirit of God within.

This spring will not be found by looking up towards the heavens and waiting for them to open. That's the first prayer -- for something miraculous to fall from the sky.  But this hidden spring waits to be discovered after that first prayer goes unanswered -- when the God on the clouds fails to come.

That is when we begin to look elsewhere, not up and outward, but inward and deep. And it is there that we discover another, perhaps more amazing miracle -- the hidden miracle within which all this time was hidden, waiting to be discovered.

The Scriptures tells us to wait on the early and also on the latter rains. But how old are the runs which must be dug up?  They are the oldest rains -- hidden since time immemorial.  Hidden since the foundation of the world -- in us.

You've got to be pretty desperate to go digging for water. The skies have to be shut up for a long time to give reason for us to start digging and we've got to be thirsty -- desperate thirsty -- for us to finish. But the legend says there's water hidden in the rock; and the old timers say it's true. And when we get dry and thirsty enough we'll each pick up a spade or a staff and seek to find out for ourselves; and what we discover is an inner resource deep and miraculous enough to sustain us through even the driest and most difficult of times.

Daily Lesson for January 7, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8 verse 3:

3 And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord.

I once heard an old, no-nonsense preacher tell his congregation that while he had heard many times many folks say they weren't being fed in church what he wondered was, "Is it really that they're not being fed, or is it that they just ain't eating?"

I liked the insight -- and the wit.

But here's something even better: sometimes we are left spiritually hungry, not out of any lack on either the preacher or the hearer, but rather because God wants us to be hungry.

Sometimes God wants us to hunger and thirst and be dissatisfied.  And God does this, we are told in today's lesson, to humble us and make us to remember just how dependent we are upon God and God alone.

Jesus fed the 5,000 one day.  The next they all came again -- this time demanding to be fed; but Jesus refused. They had missed something when full; they would only learn it when empty. And the something was humility.

I think now on my own early attempts to feed the flock with the sermons I preached when I first started out. And I think of all those old saints, now departed, who sat and listened to me while at 29 or 30 I told them about God -- and thought I knew what I was saying. Here I was a little lightning bug describing the rays of the sun.  I could only speak out of my experience and my experience was so thin.  I mean, it's so embarrassing! I once preached a sermon about how to boil an egg; talk about not being fed!

But then I think of those saints, and how they did what the saints always do: they endured.  They endured my little jokes and anecdotes and after the benediction they left church having not been fed anything at all but some cream puff religion.  But they did endure; and they came to know that it wasn't all about their being fully satisfied.

And in the end maybe that was the real word from the LORD -- their willingness to hunger, and God's astonishing ability to sustain the flock even with only the crumby bread I had to offer.

Daily Lesson for January 6, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 49 verses 6 and 7:


6  He says:
“It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
to raise up the tribes of Jacob
and to bring back the preserved of Israel;
I will make you as a light for the nations,
that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
7 Thus says the Lord,
the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One,
to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nation,
the servant of rulers:
Kings shall see and arise;
princes, and they shall prostrate themselves;
because of the Lord, who is faithful,
the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you.”

Today is the Feast of Epiphany -- the day we remember the star's appearance to the three Kings in the East and their long journey to the town of Bethlehem.  It is a day for remembering that we ourselves are called to be -- as the Apostle Paul put it -- "as lights shining in the universe."

"You are the light of the world," Jesus said. On one hand that sounds so ridiculous.  The light of the world?  But I am so dim, the light in me so small. As Gregory of Nazianzus said, I am but "a lamp up against the sun", a smoldering wick beneath a dark and dense night's sky.

And yet, the smoldering wick pushes back the night's darkness. It's not much; but it is enough.  This defiant wick in me is enough to drive the dark away.

After being off the air for several days in the wake of 9-11, The David Letterman Show came back on on September 17, 2001 with musical guests Odetta and the Harlem Boys' Choir. Odetta and the children sang, "This Little Light of Mine".

Amidst all the darkness around me today, I'm going to choose to let the defiant little light given to me shine.  And I'm gonna let it shine, let it shine, let it shine.

Maybe my light won't drive all the darkness away, but I'm going to trust that it will make the difference where it needs to . . .

Daily Lesson for January 5, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Ephesians chapter 6 verses 10 through 18:

10 Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of his might. 11 Put on the whole armor of God, that you may be able to stand against the schemes of the devil. 12 For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places. 13 Therefore take up the whole armor of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand firm. 14 Stand therefore, having fastened on the belt of truth, and having put on the breastplate of righteousness, 15 and, as shoes for your feet, having put on the readiness given by the gospel of peace. 16 In all circumstances take up the shield of faith, with which you can extinguish all the flaming darts of the evil one; 17 and take the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, 18 praying at all times in the Spirit, with all prayer and supplication.

As we can see from what we read and view in the news and social media, we are living now in a dark time and what has the potential to throw us back into a dark age. As we think on what it means to actively engage the darkness in the struggle for light, the first thing we must remember is that there is a great and unseen cosmic spiritual war going behind the curtain of the visible stage where the wars, rumors of wars, and oppressions we see are playing out. This is what Paul meant when he said, "our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but . . . against the powers. The powers are hidden behind the scenes; but they are also active and dangerously besetting to the world of peace.

Twentieth century theologian Walter Wink wrote a series of very helpful reflections on the spiritual warfare behind the struggle for justice and peace and liberation from oppression.  In his three-volume series, Naming the Powers, Unmasking the Powers, and Engaging the Powers, he wrote of the three-tiered 1) Name Powers - meaning, find the courage to speak and name abuse 2) Unmask Powers - meaning, open the curtain on the economic, political, psychological and spiritual ways in which powers oppress, and 3) Engage the Powers - meaning, face them in creative ways which seek not to destroy them but rather to turn them to repentance and turn them back to their God-given purpose and being.

Central to Wink's reflection on engagement with the dark powers of the world is his understanding of prayer. Prayer is necessary Wink says because, "the struggle to be human against the suprahuman Powers requires it. . . Prayer is . . . the interior battle where the decisive victory is first won, before engagement in the outer world is even possible."

The Quakers say, "If in confronting a beast you become a beast then beastiality has won."  We are engaged now in battle with many a beast -- global terrorism, the abuse and exploitation of the vulnerable -- especially women and children, the curtailing of liberty and human rights, and encroaching lawlessness, just to name a few.  In this present spiritual battle, prayer is the way we remind ourselves that we were born human beings and not beasts, children of light and not darkness -- and so too were our enemies.

To remember this takes supernatural spiritual strength -- the kind only a life steeped in communion with God can provide.

Daily Lesson for January 4, 2015

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Joshua chapter 4 verses 1 through 7:

When all the nation had finished passing over the Jordan, the Lord said to Joshua, 2 “Take twelve men from the people, from each tribe a man, 3 and command them, saying, ‘Take twelve stones from here out of the midst of the Jordan, from the very place where the priests' feet stood firmly, and bring them over with you and lay them down in the place where you lodge tonight.’” 4 Then Joshua called the twelve men from the people of Israel, whom he had appointed, a man from each tribe. 5 And Joshua said to them, “Pass on before the ark of the Lord your God into the midst of the Jordan, and take up each of you a stone upon his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the people of Israel, 6 that this may be a sign among you. When your children ask in time to come, ‘What do those stones mean to you?’ 7 then you shall tell them that the waters of the Jordan were cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. When it passed over the Jordan, the waters of the Jordan were cut off. So these stones shall be to the people of Israel a memorial forever.”

Every nation needs a memorial to remember its founding and other momentous events and people in its history. Pierre L'Enfant, the architect of the National Mall in Washington, DC knew this. As early as 1791 he was imagining a grand space where the new United States of America's government buildings, museums, and national memorials could stand in a monumental and dignified way.  L'Enfant knew memorials would need to be built in order for the people to remember their and know itself as a nation.

Families need memorials too.  For centuries most people were so poor, the only memorial most families could afford was the Family Bible, and I remember Willie Nelson's "Family Bible" say the same thing I'm trying to say this morning:

There's a family Bible on the table
Its pages worn and hard to read
But the family Bible on the table
Will ever be my key to memories

There's a Family Bible from Irie's side in our family. On my side there's an old pump organ that my uncle has that the Seay side of our family brought all the way from Gainesville to West Texas in covered wagon around 1900.  In our house there is a watercolor of Gettysburg a friend in Vermont painted and gave to us. The viewpoint is a densely wooded are with a stone gate opening to a sun-lit field. There's all kind of metaphor in that. Another memorial I have in my study at home is a 1950s era decorative plate with a picture of church set in it.  That church is Lowe's Grove Baptist Church, the church where I was ordained.

Joshua told the Israelites to make a memorial when they passed over the Jordan and came into the Promised Land. The memorial was not for them. It was for the generations who would follow -- so that they would know the history, remember where they'd come from, and who they're called to be.

May we continue to make memorials.  And may our children continue ask of their meaning. And may we always have something meaningful to answer.

Daily Lesson for January 1, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Matthew chapter 1 verses 19 through 21:

19 And her husband Joseph, being a just man and unwilling to put her to shame, resolved to divorce her quietly. 20 But as he considered these things, behold, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, son of David, do not fear to take Mary as your wife, for that which is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. 21 She will bear a son, and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”

"Have you been saved?"

That's the question that tormented me on the last day of Vacation Bible School when I was eight or nine. I was with a friend at his church and the little card I was asked to fill out wanted to know. We talked about it a long time. It was the difference between heaven and hell -- streets paved with gold or eternal torment. And the little card wanted to know -- wanted to make it official:
"Was I saved?"

And the card wanted to know something else. It wanted to know my home phone number.

I checked the "no" box on the salvation question. I wrote down my home phone number. I was such a good boy -- though I wasn't saved, or at least didn't feel saved.

When I got back to my friend's house I put two and two together then panicked. They asked for my home phone number.  And they had the dirt on me -- that I wasn't saved. I was soon to be busted. It would be worse than a call home from the principal's office. This would be a call from church, probably from the pastor, maybe from God.

I knew what I needed to do. "I need you to call your mom at work," I said, "and tell her I checked the wrong box today and that I really am saved.  And tell her to call the church and let them that I'm saved. And let them know my parents don't need a call from them, or from the pastor, or from the church."

Today is the Feast of the Holy Name. It's the celebration of the day when the Holy Name was given to the Holy Child. The Holy Name given was "Jesus".  "Yeshua". "God saves".

That's what I want to tell that little eight year old boy. It's what I want to to tell that church. God saves.  So relax. Hear it again: God saves.

And God does.