Daily Lesson for March 31, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Philippians chapter 4 verses 8 and 9:

8 Finally, beloved,* whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence and if there is anything worthy of praise, think about* these things. 9Keep on doing the things . . .

We have been reading Bishop Michael Curry's book The Way of Love in several Sunday School classes at church and I just concluded a small group study of the book last night. For those who don't recognize the name, Bishop Curry is the head of the Episcopal Church who preached the wedding for Meghan Markle and Prince Harry.

The book is a summons for us not to give up on love. It is a call not to surrender to hatred or cynicism or to take on the dirty trickster tactics of this world.

In the last chapter of the book the Bishop says:

"Let no one be deceived: Kindness is not weakness any more than love is a whimsical sentiment.

"Love is powerful, transformative, free, and freeing to all."

Then he quotes Dr. King:

"We must discover the power of love, the power, the redemptive power of love. And when we discover that, we will be able to make this old world a new world. Love is the only way."

I needed this book. I needed to be told not to grow weary in well-doing. I need to be encouraged to keep walking the path of love.

And, indeed, it is the only way.

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

Daily Less for March 30, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 12 verse 24:

24Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit.

There is a saying that you can count the number of seeds in an apple but never the number of apples in a single seed.

Jesus died and his body was planted like a seed into the earth. Yet his spirit was then born thousands of times over in his people. It died a single grain; but when it was raised it bore fruit now billions of times over.

So many strong, and courageous, and loving people have passed since last Easter. It is a deep sadness for the earth.

But we must not be afraid or dismayed, beloved. For the world may take the body, but it cannot take the spirit. The body is buried as one; but the spirit is made alive a million times over.

The body is taken from us; but the spirit remains. The spirit lives on in hope and in resurrection.

Let me put a finer edge to it. Congressman John Lewis was taken from us. But the spirit of the power of the right to vote remains. It cannot be denied. The body is buried; but the spirit of the right for all people to vote endures.

Live in hope, beloved. Keep striving. Do not be dismayed. Do not be overcome. They buried the body; but they could not bury the spirit. They killed Jesus; but they could not kill all that he was about.

So do live in hope, beloved. For "the body they may kill; but his truth abideth still".

And the one single seed is still at work, making new this old, old earth.

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

Daily Lesson for March 29, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 51 verses 6 though 9:

6 Indeed, I have been wicked from my birth,

a sinner from my mother's womb.

7 For behold, you look for truth deep within me,

and will make me understand wisdom secretly.

8 Purge me from my sin, and I shall be pure;

wash me, and I shall be clean indeed.

9 Make me hear of joy and gladness,

that the body you have broken may rejoice.

It is Holy Week and on Maundy Thursday evening I am going to speak on the ways in which trauma is passed down generation to generation.

In Resmaa Menakem's profound book "My Grandmother's Hands", he speaks specifically of racialized trauma and its effects on the body. Menakem says trauma is passed down one generation to the next through three ways:

1. In families, in which one member abuses another.

2. Through unsafe and/or abusive systems, structures, institutions, and cultural norms.

3. Through our genes.

In today's Lesson David speaks of the "sin" within him at birth. This is the place from which we get the idea of "original sin".

Though we don't know much about David's childhood or family, we get the sense from Scripture that his father did not think much of him. We know the unresolved trauma David inflicted on others was passed onto his children. But we can also imagine that there was trauma passed onto David by his own family.

David calls this his "sin" and "wickedness"; though we might view it as unresolved and generational trauma which lived in his body from the beginning. It is his "family curse".

Faulkner said, "the past is never past". It is within us. It lives in our marrow, and blood, and bodies, and is passed on in our genes. Our sins and the sins of our fathers and mothers are passed onto us in our bodies through our genes.

The way to healing comes through address. It comes through attention. It comes through acknowledgement of what is within us -- what we have done, what others have done to us, and what we have watched others do to others.

The curse does not have to be forever. We can make profound changes in the ways we act and react. But it does take attention. It takes awareness and intentionality. It takes us considering the words we will hear on Thursday, "This is my body, broken . . ."

So it is; all of our bodies broken and in need of healing, in need of mending.

And the mending comes. The healing in our souls comes. For there is a Balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole and to cure the sin-sick soul.

May we receive the balm this Holy Week . . .

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

Larry McMurtry

 I was saddened to learn today of the author and American treasure Larry McMurtry's passing. As it happens, I have read six of McMurtry's books in just the past three months, including the magisterial Lonesome Dove which I just concluded a few days ago.

Aside from a greater appreciation of the Lonesome Dove TV miniseries, what has been most compelling about this experience is the astonishment I have at McMurtry's character development and his ability to capture something essential about the place I call home and the people who belong there. So much so, that for years the West Texas therapist I trust most would assign McMurtry's The Last Picture Show as a mirror into the West Texas people of a certain era. This was the generation of my grandparents who hailed from Wichita Falls, not far from Archer City, the inspiration for McMurtry's fictional Thalia.

McMurtry is said to have known how to write about the strength and complexities of women; and his ways of addressing race, though often understated, were often poignant and truth-telling. When the matter of how black women were treated and mistreated in the mid-20th century Western Horseman, Pass By McMurtry was deemed too controversial, his African-American character Halmea being replaced by a white woman in the book's made for TV version Hud.

As for preachers, we didn't get a lot of respect in McMurtry's books and perhaps deservedly so. McMurtry didn't seem to much like professionals of any sorts -- not even professional writers, though professional book sellers did have some respect. But the clergy in McMurtry's books pretty much got written off for all their hype and demagoguery. McMurtry didn't like people who pretended. And pretending at religion was perhaps the worst, next to pretending at love.

Love was always complex, as in McMurtry's screenplay of Brokeback Mountain and, years earlier, in another taboo relationship described in his 1962 novel Leaving Cheyenne.

In that Western a decades-long love triangle exists between a woman and two men who are also best friends. She has sons with both and one of the boys gets religion where he is taught to hate sin — and especially hate his mother’s sin. When he turns 18 the son comes home talking about “fornication and adultery”. His mother tells him those were “just two words” to her — “even if they do come out of the Bible.” “But you did them,” the son says, “in this house we’re living in too.”

“I wasn’t saying I didn’t" the mother says in her first person narrative. "And I wasn’t saying I’m good. I guess I’m terrible. But words is [sic] one thing and loving a man is another thing . . .”

She loved them both, she said. And those biblical words — fornication and adultery — didn’t describe love at all.

There was a lot of fornicating and adultery in McMurtry's novels. There was also a lot of killing.

Love was rarer found; and so better treasured, even when tragic.

I am going to miss McMurtry. This world needs the kind of guy he was, someone who would dare to show up on stage to accept an Oscar in a Texas tuxedo -- black tie and blue jeans. This world needs a little less pretense and a lot more truth telling -- even when the truth ain't pretty.

No, preachers didn't square all that well with Mr. McMurtry. But neither did they with Jesus. For it was Jesus himself who said to the preachers, "See, the tax collectors and prostitutes are going into the kingdom of God before you!"

Yes, the tax collectors, and prostitutes, and sinners, and now even the writers too. We should read them. We should read this one.

We should read and see that a prophet has been among us, wearing black tie and blue jeans, and with the sword of unvarnished truth within his hands.

"Cast a cold eye

On life, on death.

Horseman, pass by."

Daily Lesson for March 26, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 22 verse 1:

"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

This past Sunday I preached a sermon on the divinity and humanity which are both in complete solidarity in Jesus.

In Jesus God knew suffering. God knew pain. God knew rejection and torture and terror. To put it very strongly but not unbiblically, Jesus God knew Godforsakenness.

So we have a God who is in complete solidarity with those who suffer. We have a God in complete solidarity with those who protest. God enters flesh and becomes one with all those who wonder where God is and why God has forsaken them.

In other words, God throws God's lot in with the Godforsaken, the struggling, the tortured.

This is something to think on very deeply over these next few days as we enter into the Holy Week. God went to a cross. God went to a gallows. And God struggled to breath under a knee pressed down on a neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

And as the old spiritual says:

"Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.

Were you there when they crucified my Lord?"

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

Daily Lesson for March 25, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from Romans chapter 11 verses 1 through 5:

I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. 2God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew. Do you not know what the scripture says of Elijah, how he pleads with God against Israel? 3‘Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars; I alone am left, and they are seeking my life.’ 4But what is the divine reply to him? ‘I have kept for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal.’ 5So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace.

This morning's Lesson gives us Paul worrying and fretting over his people and trying to hold on to the promise of hope for their future.

If anyone has ever worried over their people -- whether that be their church, or their synagogue, or their party, or even their country -- this is a good word from the apostle. Read the whole chapter and you see the argument he is making that a remnant of the people, saved by grace, will be sufficient to save the whole nation. In other words, Paul and those others worried over their own people are not to despair.

We must not despair now. God has not abandoned God's people. God has not abandoned God's world. This is our Father's world -- and our Mother's too! And we are God's people. So too are our brothers and our sisters and friends. God still holds out hope for them all. So should we.

Trust in the grace of God. Trust and be not dismayed. God is still at work redeeming the nations. And God is still at work redeeming our families and our communities.

There is an old saying, "We can't out-give God." We can't out-hope God either. God hopes. And God helps. And God is at work now to redeem Israel and all the rest of us also.

Thanks be to God.

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

Daily Lesson for March 24, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 10 verses 11 through 15:

11 ‘I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. 12The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. 13The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. 14I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, 15just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.

Today marks the 41st anniversary of the martyr death of Archbishop Oscar Romero, prelate archbishop of San Salvador, and human rights leader. He was assassinated while celebrating mass at the altar. No one was ever convicted of his murder.

Romero's appointment as archbishop was at first looked on with suspicion by many liberationist priests due to his natural conservatism. But as he saw the tensions and injustices within his country growing, and the degree to which the military dictatorship was willing to go to retain control, Romero began to speak out and soon became a champion for the poor and oppressed. As he grew more bold, Romero soon took on the target of an enemy of the state.

Romero is the model of the kind of pastor Jesus speaks of in today's Lesson -- someone willing to lay his own life on the line for the sake of his people.

In observance of Romero's death, the Episcopal Church prayed this prayer this past Sunday:

"Almighty God, who didst call thy servant Oscar Romero to be a voice for the voiceless poor, and to give his life as a seed of freedom and a sign of hope: Grant that we, inspired by his sacrifice and the example of the martyrs of El Salvador, may without fear or favor witness to thy Word who abideth, thy Word who is Life, even Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Spirit, be praise and glory now and for ever. Amen."

Indeed, may we all learn to be voices for the voiceless and act without fear or favor for the sake of those whom we are called to love, serve, and lie down our lives on behalf.

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

Daily Lesson for March 23, 2021

 Today's Daily Lesson comes from John chapter 9 verses 35 through 41:

35 Jesus heard that they had driven him out, and when he found him, he said, ‘Do you believe in the Son of Man?’* 36He answered, ‘And who is he, sir?* Tell me, so that I may believe in him.’ 37Jesus said to him, ‘You have seen him, and the one speaking with you is he.’ 38He said, ‘Lord,* I believe.’ And he worshipped him. 39Jesus said, ‘I came into this world for judgement so that those who do not see may see, and those who do see may become blind.’ 40Some of the Pharisees near him heard this and said to him, ‘Surely we are not blind, are we?’ 41Jesus said to them, ‘If you were blind, you would not have sin. But now that you say, “We see”, your sin remains.'

"We see through a glass darkly," St. Paul said. And he who thought he could see about as well as anyone! But God humbled him. God blinded him. And the road to Damascus he was blinded by the light, and his loss of sight began his gain of soul. He was humbled; and through the experience he was changed.

The other Pharisees in today's story aren't so humble. They think they see the world so clearly. They think they know who exactly a sinner is and why. They think the blind man must be a sinner -- he or his parents. They have no idea that somebody could simply be born a certain way without judgement or accusation from God.

Their sightedness blinds them. And morally speaking, their ableism disables them. And, as Jesus says, because they say, "We see," their sin remains. For they are too blind to see even the log in their own eyes.

We pray today for a deeper humility. We pray to see our own sin. We ask to be made aware of our own physical and moral ableism. We ask to see. But first we need know we need to stop seeing everything so clearly.

It's the road to Damascus, a route that will bring us to our knees, and the beginning of a more humble and kind way. May God send us there.

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