Daily Lesson for February 26, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 40 verses 13-14 and 19:

13 For innumerable troubles have crowded upon me;

my sins have overtaken me, and I cannot see;

they are more in number than the hairs of my head,

and my heart fails me.

14 Be pleased, O Lord, to deliver me;

O Lord, make haste to help me.

19 You are my helper and my deliverer;

do not tarry, O my God.

Many years ago now when I was in seminary, I entered what I would call a deep depression and became overwhelmed by my struggles and troubles and could not see my way out.

I washed up at church one Sunday morning and the pastor Mel Williams, who knew I was struggling, came down from the chancel, took my hand in his, and sat quietly beside me in the pew during the organ recessional. As the recessional was nearing its completion, he quietly got up and walked to the back of the church to greet the congregation as it exited.

If you want to know what being saved means, that's what I would tell you. I was saved that morning. And I've tried to remember that somebody needs to be saved every single Sunday morning, and all other days also.

If its you, I pray God will send somebody to hold your hand.

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

Daily Lesson for February 25, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 50 verses 16 through 21:

16 But to the wicked God says: *

"Why do you recite my statutes,

and take my covenant upon your lips;

17 Since you refuse discipline, *

and toss my words behind your back?

18 When you see a thief, you make him your friend, *

and you cast in your lot with adulterers.

19 You have loosed your lips for evil, *

and harnessed your tongue to a lie.

20 You are always speaking evil of your brother *

and slandering your own mother's son.

21 These things you have done, and I kept still, *

and you thought that I am like you."

Of all the sad things a people might do, this last one in verse 21 may be the saddest.

Psalm 50 is written to a people who, in the words of Isaiah "worship God with their mouths, but their hearts are far away." Indeed, yet they seem to think their hearts are all in it. They think their hearts are in one accord with God. As the Psalmist says, they think God is like them.

And what are they like? They turn blind eyes to crookedness. They excuse all manner of infidelities. They accept lies and even being lied to as a matter of course. And they accept slander and defamation and smear campaigns as smart, realpolitik.

And, worst of all, they think God condones it all! They think God wills it all!

It's the Lenten season -- a time for self-reflection. And I'd say Psalm 50 is a pretty good mirror.

Lord, have mercy . . .

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

Daily Lesson for February 24, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 3 verses 12 and 13:

12Take care, brothers and sisters, that none of you may have an evil, unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God. 13But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today’, so that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

This morning I am thinking of all the encouragers out there who have not yet been given over to the seductive despair of cynicism. They still hope, still believe, still endure, still love, and believe in the redemptive power of being loved.

So they don't give up on us. They exhort us. They sharpen us. They encourage us like crazy. They love us -- like God loves us. They love us with God's hope for us and for the world.

It is a long journey. The 40 days of Lent reflect the 40 years of wandering for the Israelites. It is frustrating and exhausting and so very easy to become cynical and calloused. It so easy no longer to believe in the road, or its destination, or the people who are traveling beside us.

But thank God then for those among us who exhort and encourage us every day. Thank God for those who come with a little daily bread of uplift, and inspiration, and quickening of spirit.

To encourage is to literally "in heart". Thank God for those who make our hearts bigger. Day by day, and month by month, and year by year they keep they keep us believing in ourselves and in God.

Thanks be to God!

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

Daily Lesson for February 23, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 2 verses 13 through 21:

13 The Passover of the Jews was near, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. 14In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money-changers seated at their tables. 15Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money-changers and overturned their tables. 16He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a market-place!’ 17His disciples remembered that it was written, ‘Zeal for your house will consume me.’ 18The Jews then said to him, ‘What sign can you show us for doing this?’ 19Jesus answered them, ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.’ 20The Jews then said, ‘This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?’ 21But he was speaking of the temple of his body.

Yesterday the 500,000th American died of COVID-19 and this morning I was told that if we took a minute of silence to recognize every passing, we would have to be silent for a year. It is an astounding figure. With every passing there was a story and a life and somebody's broken heart.

It didn't have to be this way. There were way more lives lost than what was necessary. Had we acted more quickly and decisively and with greater togetherness we could have curtailed the numbers dramatically. But instead, we argued and politicized and ultimately decided that it was more important to go on with business as usual. It was a shame.

We are in Lent now. It is a time for self-reflection. It asks that we take the time to reflect on the past year, it's losses, and what they say about America, what they say about the shame of a number like 500,000 dead.

The Lesson this morning is especially poignant. The body is a Temple. Jesus wanted people to see and understand that and know that human beings are more important than business. They are more primary and valuable than the economy.

We decided from an early point to put the economy over people and we ended up losing both. The economy will come back -- is coming back -- but the people will not. They were sacrificed.

Jesus, too, was sacrificed for an economy. He put himself in harms way to protest and economy that deprived people of their personhood, which robbed them of their dignity, and plundered the Temple of the Body. Two thousand years ago, He was sacrificed and killed upon the altar of commerce. And now, two thousand years later we've sacrificed Him also.

When will we learn?

Will this Lent make a difference?

Will the silence of 500,000 dead speak?

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

Daily Lesson for February 22, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 8 verses 11 through

11 Take care that you do not forget the Lord your God, by failing to keep his commandments, his ordinances, and his statutes, which I am commanding you today. 12When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in them, 13and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, 14then do not exalt yourself, forgetting the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery, 15who led you through the great and terrible wilderness, an arid waste-land with poisonous* snakes and scorpions. He made water flow for you from flint rock, 16and fed you in the wilderness with manna that your ancestors did not know, to humble you and to test you, and in the end to do you good.

We are in the 40 days of Lent and the Daily Office gives us lessons day by day from the book of Deuteronomy -- a book which recounts the Israelites' 40 year sojourn in the wilderness and give instruction for living in the Promised Land after.

This morning's lesson is an instruction on not forgetting where it is that we came from. It is a reminder that though prosperity may find the people, they must never forget that they were once slaves in Egypt, having nothing of their own -- not even their own bodies.

We live in a prosperous land in America. On whole we are rich in the resources of wealth and education and standard of living. But almost none of us is more than two or three generations away from a poor farm with hardly a pot to pee in. Pardon the crudity, but it's true.

And the lesson today comes to remind us. We too were slaves, or immigrants, or migrants, or refugees, all of us trying make it by God's grace. We should never forget that. And whether or not we remember it is based one the way we treat others.

Last week I went to the clinic and the nurse saw that I was from Lubbock. She told me she grew up the child of migrant farm workers who made their way every year up to West Texas near Plainview to pick cotton. Now she has a good paying job with great benefits. She is a success now by many standards; but she still hasn't forgotten where she came from.

Neither should we.

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

Daily Lesson for February 19, 2021

 Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 31 verse 21:

“Blessed be the Lord! 

for he has shown me the wonders of his love in a

besieged city.”

When you think about this whole week in Texas and what a mess so many have on their hands, its frustrating and overwhelming and even downright infuriating.  This was a public utility failure, but private citizens are the victims.  Homes and houses of worship are the victims. And the burden has fallen heaviest on those with the least. 

Yet through it all, I’ve seen such coming together.  I’ve seen neighbors looking after neighbors, first responders aiding homeless, fire fighters turning off water valves for folks standing out in the frigid cold in their pajamas and LL Bean boots, Sunday School teachers opening extra rooms for class members, and a plumber on all fours beside the furnace in my own home after he gathered with his wife and children — one of which is two weeks born — and prayed that he could “help somebody” that morning, and plenty folks still remembering to fill the bird feeder, and some even help warm the frozen sea turtles. 

And yesterday, I literally saw with my own eyes the face of a black Jesus in the floor of a flood Eastside church, the image of Jesus reflected in the standing water from the centerpiece on the sanctuary wall. 

That’s it, we’ve seen Jesus present in the midst of all this, and — as the Pslamist says — “the wonders of his love in city besieged” by cold weather and poor planning. 

And day by day, we are still making it . . .

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

Daily Lesson for February 18, 2021

 Today marks the 475th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther, the arch reformer of the Protestant Church -- and even the Catholic one according to some historians.

In fact, I have heard of at least one Catholic Priest who, wishing to avoid controversy by quoting Luther openly, will make reference to "Brother Martin of Erfurt".

Luther's legacy is wide and long. And his protest against the abuses of the papacy and the affirmation of the priesthood of all believers are seminal, not only in Protestant theology, but even in social history. His was a radical movement of reform against the political domination of not only the church, but society as a whole. And the reform goes on.

But like any human, Luther had his shadows. His vehemence towards the Jews is a repugnance which cannot be ignored or overlooked, especially as his writings against them were used to justify so much hatred against them by the Nazis.

Perhaps Luther's dark side proves his central theological point -- that we can never be justified by our own works, but only by God. Indeed that is true; but we can also say his life tells us how our works can condemn us.

When I was a boy, I never heard about the dark side of Luther. He was a saint -- so far as we had them in the Baptist church. He was the good guy. He saved the church from all those, at best misguided and at worst devilish, Catholics.

Praise God I started to read some people who had the courage to tell the truth about Martin Luther and to demonstrate how he could come to embody the evils he was said to deplore. That was sobering; but it also helped me understand the veracity of what someone said: "The truth shall set you free; but first it will piss you off."

We can thank God for people who have dared to piss us off with the truth, that we might know and do better and so that the Church might not only be reformed, but -- in the old words of the Latin -- "sempter reformanda", always reforming.

The Episcopal Church offers this prayer for this day in its Liturgy:

"O God, our refuge and our strength, who didst raise up thy servant Martin Luther to reform and renew thy church in the light of thy word: Defend and purify the church in our own day and grant that, through faith, we may boldly proclaim the riches of thy grace, which thou hast made known in Jesus Christ our Savior, who, with thee and the Holy Spirit, liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever."

May God defend and purify the church indeed; and may God also defend those harmed too often by the church in its imperfection.

And may God have mercy on all . . .

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

Man of La Texana

 All the blame for the mess we Texans are in right now being put on windmills makes the following quote by Miguel de Cervantes sadly surreal:

"Since Don Quixote de la Mancha is a crazy fool and a madman, and since Sancho Panza, his squire, knows it, yet, for all that, serves and follows him, and hangs on these empty promises of his, there can be no doubt that he is more of a madman and a fool than his master."

Daily Lesson for February 17, 2021

 Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Jonah chapter 3 verses 6 through 9:

6 When the news reached the king of Nineveh, he rose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. 7Then he had a proclamation made in Nineveh: ‘By the decree of the king and his nobles: No human being or animal, no herd or flock, shall taste anything. They shall not feed, nor shall they drink water. 8Human beings and animals shall be covered with sackcloth, and they shall cry mightily to God. All shall turn from their evil ways and from the violence that is in their hands. 9Who knows? God may relent and change his mind; he may turn from his fierce anger, so that we do not perish.’

Today is Ash Wednesday, a solemn day of repentance in the Christian Church and a day for reflection on our individual and corporate lives. 

Repentance means change; and today is a day for asking ourselves how we are called to change as persons and as a society. 

In the book of Jonah, it was not just individuals in Nineveh who repented.  The whole nation did so. Even the animals did so!  This was a nation serious about change!

The last year of our lives has revealed so much to us. There is such profound inequity and injustice in our country and around our globe, such dearth of honesty in our leaders, such disconnect of community in and between us all. 

Today is a day for thinking on these things and committing to change. It is a day for committing to person and communal change. It is a day for committing for focusing and refocusing, organizing and reorganizing everything we can for the purposes of everything we should. 

And it’s not too late!  That’s the good news about all this.  We still have the opportunity to make things right. 

It wasn’t too late for Nineveh!  But even the animals had to repent.

How much more so the people . . . 

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

Snowstorm

 It’s been a distressing past 36 hours for so many and I am sorry for all those experiencing blackouts and other problems attributable to this massive winter storm. 

At the same time, I want to say how grateful I am for all the friends and family I see caring for each other and their neighbors now. Sons are calling sisters, daughters have gone to stay with parents, people are opening their homes up to friends and strangers, churches are loaning out generators for the homeless, and a married couple I know are driving around somewhere on the country roads of East Texas, delivering home visit medical care for the shut ins.  She’s  getting paid, he’s not, and neither are the Good Samaritans who just pulled them out of a ditch.  They said they’re welcome to stay the night too if they need. 

I tell you, I don’t know who the angels all are. Maybe we all are. 

But one thing I do know — and if the last months hasn’t taught us maybe these last few hours and days have — we belong to each other. We are connected to each other — or at least we dang sure should be anyhow.  

From the beginning we were supposed to be our brothers’, and sisters’, and cousins’, and neighbors’ keepers; and a lot of folks right now are showing that they still remember how to be so. 

Thank you.  

Daily Lesson for February 16, 2021

 Today’s Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 1 verses 24 through 27:

24 Now they had been sent from the Pharisees. 25They asked him, ‘Why then are you baptizing if you are neither the Messiah, nor Elijah, nor the prophet?’ 26John answered them, ‘I baptize with water. Among you stands one whom you do not know, 27the one who is coming after me; I am not worthy to untie the thong of his sandal.’ 

I have tremendous respect for John the Baptist. Coarse and crusty and a lot more fundamental than I am, he nevertheless demonstrated a humility which we all could learn from — especially us in the ministry. 

John was not a prisoner to his own ego. He was not consumed by his numbers or his name. He was content to preach the Gospel as he understood it, to tell the truth as he saw it, and to recognize the moment of the coming of the Lord when he witnessed it. 

Jesus said, “Of those born of women no one was greater than John the Baptist; but even the least in the kingdom is greater than he.”  

I think John was fine with that; and it proved the point. 

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

Daily Lesson for February 15, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Hebrews chapter 1 verse 14:

"Are not all angels spirits in the divine service, sent to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?"

It's cold and snowy here in North Texas and there was a child across the street lying down making snow angels in the driveway. With three more inches of snow now covering the ground the angel is no longer visible; but I know it was there.

Angels are everywhere in the Bible. They come to those in need. They appear to those with good news. They help fight our battles for us in the end.

On Sunday an angel will appear in the Lectionary reading. Angels, actually. They come to attend Jesus in the wilderness, to minister to him during the sojourn.

We may not can see them; but they have come to attend us too. They have shown up with food, or food for thought, or a shield from harm. They've come with a warm cup of coffee and good word that made all the difference.

No longer visible, we would swear it was there just for a time -- in the most needed time.

And we trust it will come again right when we need . . .

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

Daily Lesson for February 12, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Mark chapter 10 verses 35 through 37:

35 James and John, the sons of Zebedee, came forward to him and said to him, ‘Teacher, we want you to do for us whatever we ask of you.’ 36And he said to them, ‘What is it you want me to do for you?’ 37And they said to him, ‘Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.’

We are in the last days before Lent and the teachings of Jesus turn towards Jerusalem and the cross.

But the disciples have a hard time hearing. They are preoccupied with their preconceptions of the Messiah and have staked out their places in what they think will be his rule.

The brothers James and John want to have seats next to Jesus on his throne. And kudos to Mark for telling the truth about James's and John's ambitions. Matthew blames their mother. In any case, it could have been both.,

But what these boys ask for will not be given. They will not sit one at Jesus' right and one at his left when he comes into his his glory. That will be reserved for two others condemned to die on the cross.

What a thing to bear in mind, that when Jesus entered his glory he did so in the company of the criminals. Somewhere Barth called it the first church. That is something to consider when we think on our jails, and prisons, and the whole penal system in America.

But all this is still before James and John. Right now they are content with their delusions of grandeur. It will be a hard road for them learning to rethink everything.

And it's a hard road for us too . . .

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