Daily Lesson for March 31, 2016

Today's Daily lesson comes from Exodus chapter 13 verse 8:

8 You shall tell your son on that day, ‘It is because of what the Lord did for me when I came out of Egypt.’

The Exodus is what theologian Jurgen Moltmann calls "a perpetual event" -- an event which takes place "once and for all."  And it is to all that the command is given to observe the Passover meal, year by year in rememberance of what The LORD did to free his people from slavery in Egypt.

Yet it is a special kind of rememberance that the Israelites are commanded to observe. The Israelites are commanded to remember in the past tense, but also always in the first person. The child asks at the Passover meal, "What is the meaning of this meal?" And the answer is a first person answer:  "It is because of what the LORD did for ME when I came out of Egypt."

It is this first person rememberance which has kept the Jewish people always mindful of the plight of the stranger, the refugee, and the sojourner.  As soon as the Israelites crossed over the Red Sea they were given the Law which again reminded them in first person that they were strangers in Egypt and that experience was to shape the way they ought to think and act towards the stranger among them. "So you, too, must show love to foreigners, for you yourselves were once foreigners in he land of Egypt," (Exodus 10:19), "Do not mistreat or oppress a foreigner, for you were foreigners in Egypt," (Exodus 22:21), "You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the LORD your God," (Leviticus 19:34).  These words are not only for that first generation of Israelites brought from slavery to freedom, but binding on all generations.  Again, in Moltmann's words, they were spoken "once and for all."

How would it shape us to think of ourselves, to remember ourselves, as people who were once slaves, once sojourners, and once foreigners?  How would it shape the way we think of the foreigner among us?  What about the manual laborer?  The community wishing to worship their own God in their own way?  Persons enslaved by forces of death and oppression, whether personal or societal? Would we have more sympathy, more compassion, less judgment if we were to remember that it was "out of Egypt" that we came also?

"It is because of what the LORD did for me," the lesson says. In other words, I couldn't do it by myself -- I needed help; and therefore it's required of me to help others also.

Exodus is a "perpetual event" -- something which happened to me and is a blessing for others also.

Daily Lesson for March 30, 2016

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

35 But someone will ask, “How are the dead raised? With what kind of body do they come?” 36 You foolish person! What you sow does not come to life unless it dies. 37 And what you sow is not the body that is to be, but a bare kernel, perhaps of wheat or of some other grain.

In order to know the power and reality of resurrection we must first of all know the power and reality of death. Something must always die before it is to be born again. It must wither in its fall of life, die, be buried and lost forever in its former nature before its new nature can spring forth.  This is true not only for our physical bodies, but in fact for all things. Resurrection without death is simply not possible. The death of what is must come and all that is must be grieved in order for all that will be can be embraced.

It is Spring and before too long the butterfly eggs will begin hatching into larvae. But a butterfly larvae was not created to be a larvae -- which can only crawl. It was created to be a butterfly -- which can fly. So in order for it to become what it was created to be the butterfly larvae must cocoon.  It was say goodbye to its former state and all that it knows in order to embrace what it does not. In a very real sense, the larvae must die so that the butterfly can be born.

"There is a time and season for everything under the heavens," the writer of Ecclesiastes says, "a time to sow and a time to harvest, a time to be born and a time to die."  Wisdom is knowing what time it is, and being ready, when it is time, to die to what is now so that what is next can be discovered -- not only under heaven, but also in.

The butterfly was made to fly in the heavens and not just crawl on the earth.

Fly butterfly, fly.

Daily Lesson for March 29, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 12 verses 29 through 32:

29 At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh who sat on his throne to the firstborn of the captive who was in the dungeon, and all the firstborn of the livestock. 30 And Pharaoh rose up in the night, he and all his servants and all the Egyptians. And there was a great cry in Egypt, for there was not a house where someone was not dead. 31 Then he summoned Moses and Aaron by night and said, “Up, go out from among my people, both you and the people of Israel; and go, serve the Lord, as you have said. 32 Take your flocks and your herds, as you have said, and be gone, and bless me also!”

The story of Exodus is a reminder to us of just how much, and how quickly all may be lost when a nation is left in the hands of the arrogant, obdurate, and hard-hearted. Was it years, or just a few months?  Perhaps it was just weeks, and the great Egyptian empire was brought to its knees because of the pride of Pharaoh and his people.

I think of other houses ruined by the pride of leaders and nations. I think of the first photographic images of total war taken of Richmond, VA in the aftermath of the Civil War. And with that goes in my mind Lincoln's words from his Second Inaugural, that "every drop of blood drawn with the lash" was being repaid by another "drawn with the sword".  Then there are the pictures of Berlin and Dresden, while cities brought to rubble by Allied bombs.  Or, even closer, we look at pictures from Syria, where Assad's refusal to give up power has left him president of a nation in ruins.

The words from Lamentations come to mind, when the city of Jerusalem was left vacant and desolate upon its own fall, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?"

The Exodus story is a cautionary tale, warning us against hubris, folly and the arrogance of power.  And the warning for us is not to pass by the Egypts in our history books and consider them as nothing. For they were something indeed -- mighty and powerful and great.

And then the midnight hour came; and there was a cry in all the land.  And by then it was too late.

Let the people's with ears to hear always hear.

Daily Lesson for March 28, 2016

In the church calendar Easter is more than a single-day event.  Easter is a whole season of 50 days leading up to Pentecost.  These 50 days are known as the "Eastertide".

The word "tide" is a fitting description.  When Jesus is raised from the dead all of the disciples at first doubt the news. When they hear rumors of a resurrection they  think it's "an idle tale".  Later, seeing Jesus in flesh and blood they still doubt. They literally cannot believe their own eyes. But the Resurrection waves keep coming in, and the tide of belief rises and swallows all unbelief.

The Eastertide keeps rising.  Wave by wave, it keeps washing ashore, deeper and deeper onto dry land until all the earth is bathed in Resurrection, until the whole world is baptized in the sea of hope and new creation.

Holy Saturday Reflection

Holy Saturday is a day of mourning and reflection. In the aftermath of Jesus' crucifixion we are shocked and confounded by the brutality of Friday. Who could do such a barbarous thing to another human being? We miss the point, however, if we think we are incapable of doing the same or similar kinds of evil for the same reasons they put Jesus onto the cross.

Reflecting on another horrific event, the Holocaust, philosopher Arne Vetlesen, has written that separating those who commit crimes against humanity and marking them as abnormal actually in the end helps "perpetuate the very conditions which made its occurrence a historical fact in the first place."

And as history has taught us, one condition often present when genocide happens is the condition of war. Genocide is justified as a matter of course, unfortunate or otherwise, simply because it is seen to be necessary. As genocide scholar and social psychologist James Waller has written, [T]he greatest catastrophes occur when the distinctions between war and crime fade; when there is dissolution of the boundaries between military and criminal conduct . . ."

The distinction between war and criminality dissolved at the very center of Christ's cross. It is tradition that the two men who were crucified beside him were "thieves". But in fact, a better translation of the Greek word is "insurrectionists".  This is the same word Josephus used to describe Jewish enemies of the Roman state. And we know the charge against Jesus was treason.  He was crucified as a matter of course in a time of war -- and two beside him, and how many hundreds of thousands, nay millions, others?

We are in jeopardy of missing the point if we fail to see just how possible it would have been for us to put Jesus to death, if we had been told to do so, because it was said to be necessary. We would have just been following orders.

"We're you there when they crucified my Lord?" the old spiritual asks. And the answer is: we could have been; and we could be again if we're not careful.

Art:

Flagellation of Jesus, from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN. http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=55447[retrieved March 26, 2016]. Original source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Hallstatt_5928.JPG.

Special from Jerusalem

Special from Jerusalem

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was not altogether obvious what the soldier meant.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was not altogether obvious what the soldier meant.

Going to dark Gethsemane

The night sets in. Soon Jesus will go to dark Gethsemane. And God will enter the agony of Pharaoah and the Egyptians weeping over the loss of their children.

Did e're such love and sorrow meet?

Art Attribution:	Chagall, Marc, 1887-1985. Passover Angel of Death (detail), from Art in the Christian Tradition, a project of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library, Nashville, TN.  http://diglib.library.vanderbilt.edu/act-imagelink.pl?RC=54649 [retrieved March 24, 2016]. Original source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/28268439@N04/3478029092/.

Daily Lesson for March 24, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 15 verses 12 through 16:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

When Israel left Egypt, when the house of Jacob abandoned an alien tongue,
Judah became his sanctuary, and Israel His reign.
The sea saw them and fled, the Jordan flowed backward.
Mountains skipped like rams, and hills like lambs.
What frightened you, sea, that you fled, Jordan that you flowed backward . . . The earth trembles at the presence of the Lord, at the presence of Jacob's God.

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

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

Daily Lesson for March 23, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 12 verse 11:

“The stone that the builders rejected
has become the cornerstone;
 this was the Lord's doing,
and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

It is our experiences of exclusion, rejection, pain, loneliness, and suffering which later form the bedrock of our character and being. This was true for Joseph, for the woman at the well, for Paul and the other Apostles, and of course for Jesus himself.  Wisdom has sought to teach this to us in every generation. It shows up again and again in the Bible and in our fairy tales. The Cinderella story would not be true without the scorn and rejection Cinderella suffered from her step-mother and step-sisters. As St. Paul says in reflecting on his own rejection, "Suffering produces character," (Romans 5:3).  Diamonds are formed under heat and pressure.

This week we remember Jesus' rejection. Though at the first of the week crowds waved their palm branches in exaltation, by the end Jesus will be left all alone. He will not do or be what the people want and expect him to do and be.  By the end of the week the whole city of Jerusalem will think him a lost cause at best, a traitor at worst, and a fool for sure.

The old spiritual says:
I’ve been ‘buked an’ I’ve been scorned
I’ve been talked about, sho’s you’re born

Jesus was rebuked and scorned and beaten and crucified and left for dead.

And without all that he wouldn't be Lord.

Daily Lesson for March 22, 2016

Part 2 of 2

I leave there and drive across town to another assisted living facility another friend calls home. In May she will reach the century mark.

There are no doors to the rooms here, so I look in from the hallway and see that she is sleeping soundly. I enter the room and look around. Her Bible is open on the bed beside her along with a paperback novel. I kneel at her bedside and begin to recite the 23rd Psalm. I do not know if it is the disturbance of my voice or the familiarity of the words, but my friend wakens. So as to avoid any possible confusion, I look up at her and announce who I am.  "It's your pastor."  "Oh good, pastor.  I was hoping you'd come by."

She raises herself and sits up on her bed and I move to sit beside her.  The first thing she says is, "What do you get for turning 100?"  "Oh, I don't know," I say, "breakfast I guess?"  We laugh. "Probably," she says. I take the Bible lying beside her.  "May I look at this?"  She agrees and I thumb through the pages in the front where the family tree is recorded. "You come from Alabama?" "No. Florida. But I was born in New Jersey."  "Jersey?"  "Well, don't hold that against me. They're mostly the same."  We then talk a little while about what her father did for a living, and about her daughters -- one of whom died a long time ago and the other who comes and has lunch with her mother every day. Without prompting, she then begins to tell me what a wonderful mother she herself had. I think back to my last visit at the other facility and about the other woman's mother. I know this friend's mother will be coming for her also. She will come with Jesus and all the angels. Maybe that's what she'll get when she turns 100.

I say a prayer and as I am walking out I hear the agitated cry of another woman in the room across the hall. "Help.  Get me out of here," the voice yells.

As I walk into hallway I cross over to my friend's neighbor's room and peak my head in. "Hello ma'am," I say.  "Hello," the woman says back, "can you get that walker and me out of here?"  "I'm not sure I can do that; but maybe if you're okay with it I can sit down and we can talk a little while."  "Okay," she says. I sit, introduce myself as a pastor.  "Oh good," she says, "I need a pastor."  "Well good," I say and ask the woman her name and where she's from. She's from Arkansas she tells me. "What part," I ask, "by Fayetteville or Little Rock or where?"  "By Fayetteville," she says but she can't remember the name of the town. When I tell her my mother's family comes from Arkansas she smiles. "Up in Clinton; did you ever hear of Clinton, Arkansas?"  "Oh yes I did," she says with a warm and familiar smile. "Were you raised in the church?" I ask.  "Oh yes, First Methodist Church."  "A Methodist?  Alright," I say.  "My great-great aunt Mary was a Methodist up there in Clinton. A great great woman in my mother's life, in her dad's life, and in my life too. She passed away just last summer and I miss her terribly."  "I'm missing her too," the woman says, "she sounds wonderful. She reminds me of my mother."

We talk for a little longer. She has trouble with remembering where she is or where her family is, or even what century we are in. But there's a calmness in the room.  I think of the old hymn, "There's a sweet, sweet spirit in this place; and I know that it's the presence of the LORD."  I rise up from my seat and tell my new friend I must be going now but want to pray for her before I leave if that would be alright.  "Oh yes, please," she says. I walk over to her recliner and standing over her I reach out my hands and touch her silver hair. I say the Lord's Prayer. At first it is just me. "Our Father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name . . ."  Soon enough however she joins her voice with mine. "Give us this day our daily bread . . ."  At the doxology, I trail off allowing her to complete the prayer: "For thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever."  After we conclude, we both open our eyes and she looks up at me, "Thank you," she says, "you've made my day."

I say goodbye and walk out of her room and out of the facility into the bright light of the late-winter sun. I'm glad I paid these visits, I think to myself. I would have missed out not being here today.

As I make my way to the car and head back towards the office I remember the words I quoted at the eulogy for my Aunt Mary, words from Maya Angelou, another woman from the great state of Arkansas, and a spiritual mother to many generations: "They probably won't remember what you said, they might not even remember what you did, but they'll always remember how you made them feel."

They'll remember; and I'll remember too.

Daily Lesson for March 21, 2016

Part 1 of 2

With it being Spring Break last week was slow around the church and so I had the chance to go out and visit some people I have not seen in a while and wanted to connect with. In this profession we say, "pay someone a visit," and I do not know why except to think it always costs something -- a free hour or day or week -- to go and see someone. But whatever is paid, I have found I usually receive back two-fold.

On Thursday I went and paid my visit to several friends in various nursing homes around town.  These are the people now living in a different time -- without cell phones, or appointment books or even clocks.  The time they are in is always whatever moment they are in. I knew I could drop in unannounced and would be as welcome that day as any day, and as all days.

One of my stops was to a memory care facility here in town where one of our church members has been for several years now. She lives with dementia and slowly it has eroded her ability to make new memories. When I visit I now have to tell her who I am.  "It's your pastor," I say.  "Oh honey," she says, "it's so good to see my pastor."  I can tell it is.

On this day there's a concert in the commons room where a man in a black cowboy hat and boots is playing 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s western songs. He runs the gamut from Hank Williams's "I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry" to Marty Robbins' "El Paso".  The residents sing along joyfully and with full throats on all the song's choruses and my friend claps appreciatively at the end of each song. But it seems there's special appreciation and meaning found in the chorus of Roy Rogers's "Don't Fence Me In":

O give me land, lots of land, under starry skies above
Don't fence me in
Let me ride through the wide open country that I love
Don't fence me in

For a moment we're all riding Trigger on some far away range without fences; we're all either Roy Rogers or Dale Evans -- if only in our minds.

I am about to leave and one of the residents wearing a green sweater looks at me and begins to walk across the commons towards me. I am nervous. She has the look in her eye that perhaps she wants to talk or dance.  I resist the urge to make a break for it and decide to stay and talk.

"Do I know you?" she asks.  "Do you come here often?"  I tell her I am not sure she knows me, but that I am the pastor of Second Baptist and perhaps she has seen me there or here visiting.  She shakes her head.  "I know you from somewhere," she says. "Well, where are you from?" I ask.  "Dalton, Georgia," she says. There is light in her eyes and a smile on her face.  Up to this moment we have been in real time, if I did not know then perhaps I would think we were not in a dementia unit, but at some ordinary concert.  But then she looks again at me with the light of life and says to me, "My mother is coming to visit me."  Now I know it is the dementia that is speaking, for this woman is too old to have a mother still alive. I go along. "Oh, she's coming to visit?  That'll be nice. I can tell you're looking forward to it."  "Yes," she says, "and I hope she takes me back with her."

And, now, I'm not so sure. Is it just the dementia talking? Or is what she said as true and as real of a statement as anyone I will hear today?: She's waiting on her mother to come and visit from far away and take her back with her.

"I hope your mother does get to come and visit and that you get to go back with her," I say.  "I hope so too," she says, the light still shining out of her eyes.

I tell her I need to be going. I have some other friends I need to visit, I say.  We hug. "See you around," she says.

On the way out, I stop at the nurse's station and speak with the woman at the desk.  I point back to the commons room and say, "The woman over there in the commons room in the green sweater."  "Yes," she says and tells me her name. "Thank you," I say.  "Well, she says her mother is coming to visit her and is going to take her back with her.  And she would want me to ask; if you see her mother, will you please let her in?"  The woman behind the desk looks back at me knowingly and without even a hint of oddity or strangeness, "I will," she says.

To Be Continued . . .

Daily Lesson for March 18, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 9 verses 27 through 34:

27 Then Pharaoh sent and called Moses and Aaron and said to them, “This time I have sinned; the Lord is in the right, and I and my people are in the wrong. 28 Plead with the Lord, for there has been enough of God's thunder and hail. I will let you go, and you shall stay no longer.” 29 Moses said to him, “As soon as I have gone out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord. The thunder will cease, and there will be no more hail, so that you may know that the earth is the Lord's. 30 But as for you and your servants, I know that you do not yet fear the Lord God.” 31 (The flax and the barley were struck down, for the barley was in the ear and the flax was in bud. 32 But the wheat and the emmer were not struck down, for they are late in coming up.) 33 So Moses went out of the city from Pharaoh and stretched out his hands to the Lord, and the thunder and the hail ceased, and the rain no longer poured upon the earth. 34 But when Pharaoh saw that the rain and the hail and the thunder had ceased, he sinned yet again and hardened his heart, he and his servants.

I watch my boys wrestling with one another on the floor. The younger of the two, Bo, is usually the instigator, doing something to pester his older brother Daniel.  Before long Daniel has Bo on the ground in a death grip. Bo is squealing like a peg, begging for his life; he's at the verge of real tears.  "Stop, please stop!" he begs.  I intervene by asking Bo if he's going to keep pestering his brother. He swears he won't. I make Daniel release the death grip and get off his little brother. As Daniel releases and begins to climb off Bo cocks his leg and thrusts it full force into Daniel's back; he obviously hasn't learned his lesson.

Neither has Pharaoh. Here now we're on the 7th Plague, it's raining fire and hail, and we would think Pharaoh is ready to say uncle. And he is, but he doesn't really mean it. Like Bo, he begs and pleads for mercy, but once the immediate pain and desperation are passed, here he is defiant once more. All the crops are destroyed by the storm. Yet, Pharaoh has it in the back of his mind that the wheat and emmer (a type of wheat) were too young to be destroyed. So once the storm is passed there he is, cocking his leg and kicking it at Moses and his people once more.

Humility is what's left when we can't resort to anything else. But Pharaoh still has other options. He still as a little something hidden back for a rainy day. He still thinks he's smart enough to save himself. What he doesn't realize is that he's contending with God. God can save him. The wheat he has stored in his pyramids won't save him. Whatever strength he has left in him won't save him. Only God will save him. But to say, "I give," to God will take real, real humility. Pharaoh will either find it or die fighting it.

Daily Lesson for March 17, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 131 verses 1 through 3:

 O Lord, my heart is not lifted up;
my eyes are not raised too high;
I do not occupy myself with things
too great and too marvelous for me.
2 But I have calmed and quieted my soul,
like a weaned child with its mother;
like a weaned child is my soul within me.
3 O Israel, hope in the Lord
from this time forth and forevermore.

Now here is the image of full serenity: a child at her mother's side, trusting fully that her mother is good and faithful and shall not let her down.

The child is no longer a babe.  She is weaned now, meaning she is beyond the time and need for constant solicitation and tending. She has grown older now.  She trusts. She knows her mother is there and will not fail her. She is no longer at her mother's bosom or even in her lap. She is at her side. Her mother is there, loving and protective and near; but there is also separation. The child and her mother are two and not one. They are together but not the same. What the child has learned is to trust -- to trust her mother and to trust herself.

It is in our separateness from God that we learn to trust in God. As we grow and mature, we are weaned. We no longer seek to control or manipulate or remain as one with God. We are separate, we are distinct, we are our own persons. The psychologists call this discovery "individuation".  But it is in our individuality that our mutuality takes on new meaning and beauty. We are not God; but we are God's children, holding hands, following, walking together, embracing, and learning even to let go.

Daily Lesson for March 16, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 7 verses 14 through 19:

14 Then the Lord said to Moses, “Pharaoh's heart is hardened; he refuses to let the people go. 15 Go to Pharaoh in the morning, as he is going out to the water. Stand on the bank of the Nile to meet him, and take in your hand the staff that turned into a serpent. 16 And you shall say to him, ‘The Lord, the God of the Hebrews, sent me to you, saying, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness.” But so far, you have not obeyed. 17 Thus says the Lord, “By this you shall know that I am the Lord: behold, with the staff that is in my hand I will strike the water that is in the Nile, and it shall turn into blood. 18 The fish in the Nile shall die, and the Nile will stink, and the Egyptians will grow weary of drinking water from the Nile.”’” 19 And the Lord said to Moses, “Say to Aaron, ‘Take your staff and stretch out your hand over the waters of Egypt, over their rivers, their canals, and their ponds, and all their pools of water, so that they may become blood, and there shall be blood throughout all the land of Egypt, even in vessels of wood and in vessels of stone.’”

Now here's an interesting and quite comical story -- almost Shakespearean in its bawdiness.  What we have here is bathroom humor -- quite literally.

Pharaoh has gone out to the water; or, as one interpretation has it, he has gone out to make water. He's doing what all men do in the morning before they shave. This is the text's subversive way of telling the reader that Pharaoh is a man and only a man.

As Pharaoh is doing what he is doing, Moses and Aaron show up with Aaron's staff. Yes, the reader is meant to understand the staff with double entendre. What we have here is a showdown of manhood.
The Nile will be turned to blood by the power of Aaron's staff. But to Pharaoh it's nothing.  This magicians can do the same. The Egyptians have been turning the Nile to blood for 40 years. This is how they control slave population -- by drowning the slave babies in the Nile. Pharaoh's heart is unmoved; he has seen blood before. The Egyptians' water has been polluted by the effects of Pharaoh's ideology for as long as anyone can remember.  The blood in the Nile resulting from this showdown is a matter of degree, not substance.  Environmental degradation is small price to pay for control. This too shall pass, Pharaoh thinks.

But Pharaoh's weakness has been exposed. He is a mortal and not God -- and certainly not the LORD God.  And though Moses has yet to find his voice, he has shown his courage.  For his name is Moses, meaning "drawn up out of the water".  He was delivered from the bloody waters of the Nile once before; and he is beginning to believe the LORD was telling him the truth when he said all Israel will be delivered with him.

Daily Lesson for March 15, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 5 verses 15 through 23:


15 Then the foremen of the people of Israel came and cried to Pharaoh, “Why do you treat your servants like this? 16 No straw is given to your servants, yet they say to us, ‘Make bricks!’ And behold, your servants are beaten; but the fault is in your own people.” 17 But he said, “You are idle, you are idle; that is why you say, ‘Let us go and sacrifice to the Lord.’ 18 Go now and work. No straw will be given you, but you must still deliver the same number of bricks.” 19 The foremen of the people of Israel saw that they were in trouble when they said, “You shall by no means reduce your number of bricks, your daily task each day.” 20 They met Moses and Aaron, who were waiting for them, as they came out from Pharaoh; 21 and they said to them, “The Lord look on you and judge, because you have made us stink in the sight of Pharaoh and his servants, and have put a sword in their hand to kill us.”
22 Then Moses turned to the Lord and said, “O Lord, why have you done evil to this people? Why did you ever send me? 23 For since I came to Pharaoh to speak in your name, he has done evil to this people, and you have not delivered your people at all.”

The road to freedom always involves resistance, pushback, and eventually active opposition. Taking the first step towards freedom is one thing; but the second step is more difficult.  The third even more difficult than that. The more steps towards freedom we take the more aware of just how much is against us we become. Powerful forces are deeply invested in our bondage -- whether political, religious, or personal. Freedom never comes easy.

Gandhi is said to have taught his followers, "First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

We don't win anything important without a fight.  And the struggle is always with forces both outside and in.

Daily Lesson for March 14, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 4 verses 10 through 12:

10 But Moses said to the Lord, “Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either in the past or since you have spoken to your servant, but I am slow of speech and of tongue.” 11 Then the Lord said to him, “Who has made man's mouth? Who makes him mute, or deaf, or seeing, or blind? Is it not I, the Lord? 12 Now therefore go, and I will be with your mouth and teach you what you shall speak.”

1991. The end of my eighth grade year at Ed Irons Junior High School. I am running for Student Council Vice President of Ed Irons Junior High School. My campaign is sufficiently well-funded. I have the endorsement of the current student council. I have a killer slogan: "Price for Vice".

There is just one problem: I have to give a speech in front of all the 7th and 8th grade classes.

I stand up before the sea of pimple-faced teenagers. I pull out my paper. I begin to read -- fast, very, very fast and I never look up. Beads of sweat turn into rivers rushing down my back and the side of my face. "Who turned off the air conditioner in here?" I wonder.  Then, suddenly, without looking but only by feeling I realize my right leg is shaking. It twinges in both the thigh and heel. It shivers of its own and I cannot do a thing to stop it.   An alien has taken control of it. All I can do is pretend not to notice and keep reading, keep reading, keep reading and doing it very, very fast.

The speech is over. The votes are cast. Price will not be Vice. What Price will do is go home and cry in shame and embarrassment.

And sitting in my room with the door closed and wishing for it to remain shut forever, I swear to myself that I will never again be so stupid to put myself out there.  I swear to myself I will never ever try to speak in public again.

He who has ears to hear, let him hear. He who has a mouth to speak, let him speak.

Daily Lesson for March 11, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 2 verses 11 through 15:

11 One day, when Moses had grown up, he went out to his people and looked on their burdens, and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his people. 12 He looked this way and that, and seeing no one, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. 13 When he went out the next day, behold, two Hebrews were struggling together. And he said to the man in the wrong, “Why do you strike your companion?” 14 He answered, “Who made you a prince and a judge over us? Do you mean to kill me as you killed the Egyptian?” Then Moses was afraid, and thought, “Surely the thing is known.” 15 When Pharaoh heard of it, he sought to kill Moses. But Moses fled from Pharaoh and stayed in the land of Midian.

Moses' anger almost undid him in the beginning. Morally outraged at the injustice he saw his Hebrew people suffering at the hands of the Egyptians, Moses acted rashly and with vengeance in killing one of the Egyptians.

First he tried to hide the body in the sand, the next day he discovered that he had been found out. It would be Moses himself who would have to hide now in the desert sands -- for forty years.

The fight against injustice, oppression and brutality is a good fight; but it must be fought in a good way. It cannot be fueled by hatred or vindictiveness or a desire for revenge. As the Quakers say, if in fighting a beast we become a beast then Beastliness has won.

Daily Lesson for March 10, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Exodus chapter 1 verses 15 through 20:

15 Then the king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, one of whom was named Shiphrah and the other Puah, 16 “When you serve as midwife to the Hebrew women and see them on the birthstool, if it is a son, you shall kill him, but if it is a daughter, she shall live.” 17 But the midwives feared God and did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but let the male children live. 18 So the king of Egypt called the midwives and said to them, “Why have you done this, and let the male children live?” 19 The midwives said to Pharaoh, “Because the Hebrew women are not like the Egyptian women, for they are vigorous and give birth before the midwife comes to them.” 20 So God dealt well with the midwives. And the people multiplied and grew very strong.

Maya Angelou used to tell the story of the black made in Montgomery who was confronted by her mean old boss lady who asked her if she intended to participate in the bus boycotts.  "Oh no way, no ma'am," she said.  "All that that boycott will get is trouble, and you know I don't want no trouble. I am gonna' stay clear of it all. In fact, I ain't even gonna go near those bus boycotts. I'm just gonna walk myself to work."

Protest and resistance come in all manner of shades -- some more obvious than others. Everyone does what they can, where they can; and it all works together to make a difference.

And Moses is born.

A poem for today:

"You say the little efforts I make
Will do no good
They never will prevail
To tip the hovering scale
Justice hangs in balance
I never said I thought they would
But I am prejudiced beyond debate
Which side shall feel the stubborn ounces
Of my weight.

Author unnamed, 19th century former slave

Daily Lesson for March 9, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 8 verses 22 through 26:

22 And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. 23 And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” 24 And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” 25 Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. 26 And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

Here is a deeply mythic story. By saying it is mythic, I do not mean to say it did not happen; but rather I mean it is a story which conveys a truth that is deeper than the context of the story itself. In other words, it is a deeply human story.

We all have to leave the village. We all have to leave home. We all need to have our eyes opened to truth and light beyond what we experienced in the confines of our little village -- even if our little village is New York City.

Yesterday something interesting happened. Hillary Clinton won Mississippi's Democratic Presidential Primary with 83% of the vote. Eighty-three percent. That is an incredible landslide. But that is way down South. Up North in the Michigan Democratic Primary less than half the Democratic voters checked Clinton's name.  Bernie Sanders won there.  It makes me think, how much of our view of the world is shaped by where we are and who is around us?  How much of what we think and feel and even see -- or think we see -- is determined by what village we were born in?

The blind man was given his sight. It was hard coming and it didn't come all at once. But here's a real truth: had the blind man not been willing to step outside his little village of Bethsaida then his eyes would have remained closed forever.

Oh, and by the way, do you think there might be any significance to the fact that Jesus' disciples Peter and Andrew and Philip and Nathaniel were all from Bethsaida and the rest from little villages just like it?

Like I said, this story conveys a truth deeper than the context of the story itself. Maybe it even conveys a truth for some village people like us.

Daily Lesson for March 8, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Genesis chapter 50 verses 1 through 3:

Then Joseph fell on his father's face and wept over him and kissed him. 2 And Joseph commanded his servants the physicians to embalm his father. So the physicians embalmed Israel. 3 Forty days were required for it, for that is how many are required for embalming. And the Egyptians wept for him seventy days.

My boyhood pastor and dear friend Hardy Clemons literally wrote the book on grief. "Good Grief" is its title and it's a reflection on the process of grief he walked so many through during his long career as a shepherd for the bereft and weary of soul. The central message of the book is that grief is a process and needs to be given time to run its course.

I shall never forget Hardy telling me that after his wife Ardele passed away another close friend called Hardy and said, "Okay, big boy, I am wondering now if you just wrote that book of yours or if you read it also and intend to do what it says?"

Grief is a process that must be given its due time. We can't rush it, hasten through it, or "just get over it."  Grief is a journey and everyone must give themselves permission to walk the journey at their own pace, without the pressure of needing to arrive too soon.

Joseph is on the journey of grief in today's lesson. It is not a quick trip. After his father died all Egypt wept for 70 days. And that was just the beginning stage. Next Joseph and his brothers and an entourage of Egyptian dignitaries and servants travelled back to Canaan from Egypt to bury the boys' father in the Promised Land. On the trip, they stopped at one place for a full week of lamentation. The Canaanites were so startled by the brothers' grief that they actually named the town "Mourning of Egypt".  The point is the brothers took their time to grieve and grieve hard, and they didn't really care what others said about it.

Good grief is a journey. It's more for the turtle than it is for the hare. One, slow step in front of the other, sometimes pausing for long periods in the same place. That's not being stuck in grief; that's sticking it through. There's a difference.

And when the journey is completed, we like Joseph and his brothers come back.  We come back, not to the Promised Land, but rather back to Egypt, back to the place we have learned to call home -- for now.

Daily Lesson for March 7, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 10 verse 23:

“All things are lawful,” but not all things are helpful. “All things are lawful,” but not all things build up.

There is tremendous freedom in Christ. The law, with its rules and regulations, has been set aside for that which is greater. We are not under law but under grace (Romans 6:14)!

But that doesn't mean we have license simply to do whatever we feel like without accountability. We do still have an accountability to ourselves and to our community.  And the thing that's counted on is that I will act in ways that are spiritually upbuilding and constructive to the whole.

I hear a lot about, "My rights," -- whether that be the right to say what I think, openly bear the arms I want to bear, or publicly picket against all manner of things I want to protest against. Fair enough.  But before I exercise any right guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States, I also need to run it by the law of love and the ethic of edification.  And that is always a higher hurdle. For as Paul said, "All things are lawful; but not everything builds up."

Daily Lesson for March 4, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 88 verses 13 through 18:


13 But I, O Lord, cry yto you;
in the morning my prayer comes before you.
14 O Lord, why do you cast my soul away?
Why do you hide your face from me?
15 Afflicted and close to death from my youth up,
I suffer your terrors; I am helpless.
16 Your wrath has swept over me;
your dreadful assaults destroy me.
17 They surround me like a flood all day long;
they close in on me together.
18 You have caused my beloved and my friend to shun me;
my companions have become darkness.

In his book "A Cry of Absence" Martin Marty writes of the terminal cancer diagnosis of his wife Elsa in 1981 the days leading up to her death late that her.  In a very touching scene in the memoir Martin tells how each night they would lie together in bed and read the psalms, he reading the even and she the odd. One night, when it came his time to read Psalm 88, he passed over it. "What happened to Psalm 88?" Elsa asked.  "I didn't think you could take Psalm 88.  It's a bleak psalm."  Elsa then said very lovingly to her husband, "Who do you think you are to decide what I can take?  The light ones don't mean anything if you haven't walked through the dark ones."

Psalm 88 is, in Martin Marty's words, "a wintry landscape of unrelieved bleakness."  It does not end all neat and pretty, with a bow on top. It does not end in the light of hope. It ends in darkness. It ends in verse 18, with darkness as the psalmist's only companion.

We might wonder, why is this psalm there in the Bible?  What place does so bleak a word have in the canon?  It is there because sometimes some of us are there, because at sometime we'll all be there -- with a diagnosis that is terminal, with a loved one who is dying, in a bleak and wintry place from which there is simply no escape.

It's times like these that darkness is our only companion. Reading Psalm 88 teaches us to befriend the darkness and not to fear it, to accept it as part of the journey -- an unavoidable part.

Sometimes in pastoral counseling, when someone is deeply sad or depressed or hopeless, I will read to them Psalm 88, with its pain and loss and at end sense of abandonment.  "Now why," I ask, "would the Biblical writers include this in the Bible?  Why would they allow this to remain without any sense of resolution?"  The person across from me usually shakes his or her head in an expression of not knowing or understanding. A long silence follows. And then I lean in, "Because, I think, the Bible knows that a person like you needs this word, this voice, this word of irresolution. Because this voice belongs."

Who am I to say anybody can't take reading Psalm 88? This dark psalm belongs. The darkness belongs.  The darkness belongs because people in the darkness belong, and because God's companionship can be found even in the darkness.

Daily Lesson for March 3, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verses 30 through 44:

30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. 35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 And taking the five loaves and the two fish he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

In this story of the feeding of the 5,000 there is an interesting detail which is easily missed but is a clue to what the writer Mark is intending to tell us about Jesus. The detail is this: the grass was green.

The Bible does not usually give us descriptions about setting. We don't get a lot of color commentary on the trees or the fields or the sky. We don't, that is, unless it matters.

The grass was green beside the Sea of Galilee. And 5,000 people were there, hungry and helpless -- "like sheep without a shepherd".  And looking out on to that sea of humanity he had compassion on them and he made them sit down on the green grass and he fed them.

Or, if you're getting the picture . . . The shepherd made his flock to lie down in green pastures and beside still waters and restored their souls by setting a table for them. It's the 23rd Psalm in action.

Mark is trying to tell us something about Jesus. That he is the good shepherd. That he restores our souls in our times of greatest desperation and want. That he provides for us here in the wilderness. And that he can be trusted in the way ahead, that he can be trusted to deliver us through even the valley of the shadow of death.

Receive now again these faithful words from the Psalmist and take comfort in the promise they afford for us who walk without fear behind our good and faithful shepherd:

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.

Daily Lesson for March 2, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson is from Psalm 81 verse 10:

I am the Lord your God,
who brought you up out of the land of Egypt.
Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it.

Martin Luther was once asked by one of his students what God was doing before God created the world. "Dreaming up punishments for people who ask those kinds of questions," Luther answered.

We know God in relationship, through God's acts in history and with God's people. We do not think of God as "the Unmoved Mover" as Aristotle did.  God is very moved, very involved, very engaged.

The image we have from today's psalm is that either of a baby bird with his mouth open wide in the nest or an infant child being spoon fed by her mother or father. The Psalmist is saying, "You want to know what God is like?  Think momma bird, or a loving parent."

God is not just up there or out there or back there somewhere. God is involved, reaching down in the mud of the earth to form us in creation, feeding us like baby birds in the nest, delivering us from all manner of evils.  God is a personal God, with His eye on every sparrow and every person and counting every single hair on every head.  In other words, God is involved -- and passionately so.  And that means, when anything happens to even the least of these, God not only notices, but also cares -- and cares enough to act.

So, what was God doing before God made the world?

My answer: nesting.

Daily Lesson for March 1, 2016

Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 78 verse 15 and 16:

15 He split rocks in the wilderness
and gave them drink abundantly as from the deep.
16 He made streams come out of the rock
and caused waters to flow down like rivers.

There is a reservoir buried deep within each human soul.  This is not surface water and is therefore not easily accessible. Only the splitting of rocks can get to it. In other words, only pain opens us to the deep discovery of the well within.

It is out of the depths that the source and sustenance of life stirs.  It lies there mostly hidden and unknown and even unheard of until desperation forces us to looking for it. And there it is, buried deep and hidden from plain sight, yet coursing and flowing beneath and so very full of life. Only the pain of being cracked open, split apart, and dug deep into can lead us to this marvelously surprising discovery:

I've got a river of life flowing in -- and now out -- of me.