Daily Lesson for December 3, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 20 verses 1 through 7:

One day, as he was teaching the people in the temple and telling the good news, the chief priests and the scribes came with the elders 2and said to him, ‘Tell us, by what authority are you doing these things? Who is it who gave you this authority?’ 3He answered them, ‘I will also ask you a question, and you tell me: 4Did the baptism of John come from heaven, or was it of human origin?’ 5They discussed it with one another, saying, ‘If we say, “From heaven”, he will say, “Why did you not believe him?” 6But if we say, “Of human origin”, all the people will stone us; for they are convinced that John was a prophet.’ 7So they answered that they did not know where it came from. 8Then Jesus said to them, ‘Neither will I tell you by what authority I am doing these things.’

It is the second day of the Advent season and all the Lectionary preachers in the land are already thinking of John the Baptist, who will come to us next Sunday, preparing the way for the Lord. 

John was a real radical — a voice crying in the wilderness.  The religious authorities tried their best to ignore that voice. They would have wanted to suppress it. But John had tapped into something powerful in the people. He was talking justice and equity and preaching a non-racialized kingdom of God. It was radical indeed; and people from all walks of life — high and low, rich and poor — came out to hear and be baptized by him. Jesus came out to be baptized by him. 

And when John was imprisoned, Jesus took up his mantle.

Neither John nor Jesus had the imprimatur of the priestly nor political class to do what they did. But they had something else. They had the power of the living God alive inside them. 

That was more than enough spark to start the fire. 

Daily Lesson for November 30, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Romans chapter 15 verses 7 through 13:

7 Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. 8For I tell you that Christ has become a servant of the circumcised on behalf of the truth of God in order that he might confirm the promises given to the patriarchs, 9and in order that the Gentiles might glorify God for his mercy. As it is written,

‘Therefore I will confess you among the Gentiles,

   and sing praises to your name’; 

10and again he says,

‘Rejoice, O Gentiles, with his people’; 

11and again,

‘Praise the Lord, all you Gentiles,

   and let all the peoples praise him’; 

12and again Isaiah says,

‘The root of Jesse shall come,

   the one who rises to rule the Gentiles;

in him the Gentiles shall hope.’ 

13May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

The early Christians were known — and often despised — for their welcome and treatment of outsiders. They went against the ways and customs of their own communities as they welcomed the stranger and embraced the foreigner.  This often earned them charges of treachery amidst their own people. 

Justin Martyr, the early Church father who was put to death for not following Roman customs, protested his treatment and the treatment of other Christians in an apology to the Emperor:

“Formerly we hated and killed one another because of a difference in nationality or custom and refused to let strangers into our gates. Now since the coming of Christ, we all live in peace. We pray for our enemies and seek to convert those who hate us unjustly. So that, by living according to the noble precepts of Christ, they may partake with us in the same joyful hope of obtaining our reward from God, the Lord of all.”

God is LORD of all. Christ opens our eyes to see God in all. And it is “the glory of God,” Paul says, when we “welcome one another . . . just as Christ has welcomed [us].

This kind of moral imagination may make us different in the world. It may not sit well with our neighbors or communities or our national policies. But “since the coming of Christ” into our own lives, we understand what it means to be welcomed as aliens and strangers and know the transformative power of love and embrace. It is the gift we were given in Christ — an open door; and it is one we must keep open for others. 

It is one of the grave evils of our time that such a spirit of racism and xenophobia now pervade our land. But God is Lord of all; and we Christians, of all people, have to say so. 

Daily Lesson for November 29, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Zechariah chapter 13 verses 1 through 5:

On that day a fountain shall be opened for the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem, to cleanse them from sin and impurity.

2 On that day, says the Lord of hosts, I will cut off the names of the idols from the land, so that they shall be remembered no more; and also I will remove from the land the prophets and the unclean spirit. 3And if any prophets appear again, their fathers and mothers who bore them will say to them, ‘You shall not live, for you speak lies in the name of the Lord’; and their fathers and their mothers who bore them shall pierce them through when they prophesy. 4On that day the prophets will be ashamed, every one, of their visions when they prophesy; they will not put on a hairy mantle in order to deceive, 5but each of them will say, ‘I am no prophet, I am a tiller of the soil; for the land has been my possession since my youth.’

It is better to have no prophets at all rather than prophets who lead the people astray.

When the prophets become purveyors of hatred and abuse and they bless all manner of evil in God’s name then it is better that there were none in the land. And when the prophets fail to watch over and protect the people, but rather lead them down paths of unrighteousness for purposes of their own political and economic increase or leave them exposed at the hands of predators then they have no right to the office or title of prophet. For they have bring shame upon the office, and blaspheme against the LORD, calling evil good and good evil.

Now is a time for discerning the prophets. It is a time for deciding whether those who are said to serve the LORD actually do so, or if rather they really serve the purposes of the State, or the Party, or business, or their own personal gain.

Seminaries are drying up left and right. There aren’t enough students to keep the lights turned on. Catholic dioceses are having to pull in priests from all over the world to serve North America. It seems very few people want to enter the ministry. And we might think to ourselves whether this might not all be a kind of judgment upon the kind of priests and prophets and Christianity we have created in America. 

It’s something to think about. 

Daily Lesson for November 28, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Luke chapter 19 verses 1 through 10:

He entered Jericho and was passing through it. 2A man was there named Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax-collector and was rich. 3He was trying to see who Jesus was, but on account of the crowd he could not, because he was short in stature. 4So he ran ahead and climbed a sycomore tree to see him, because he was going to pass that way. 5When Jesus came to the place, he looked up and said to him, ‘Zacchaeus, hurry and come down; for I must stay at your house today.’ 6So he hurried down and was happy to welcome him. 7All who saw it began to grumble and said, ‘He has gone to be the guest of one who is a sinner.’ 8Zacchaeus stood there and said to the Lord, ‘Look, half of my possessions, Lord, I will give to the poor; and if I have defrauded anyone of anything, I will pay back four times as much.’ 9Then Jesus said to him, ‘Today salvation has come to this house, because he too is a son of Abraham. 10For the Son of Man came to seek out and to save the lost.’

Jesus truly saw no one as beyond God’s salvation. That was welcome news for the blind, the lame, the leper, and all the poor peasants who became his followers. But when Jesus opened his arms to the tax collector also he drew suspicion and criticism and stirred up a great deal of hostility amongst that throng of followers. It was the first hint that the great crowd which surrounded him would soon turn its cheers to jeers. 

I came to understand just how vilely hated a tax collector like Zacchaeus was when I once heard the confession of a friend and dying Vietnam War veteran.  As he sat dying of cancer, with just a few weeks to live, he shared with me an experience he had in war that still deeply troubled him. He and some other American and South Vietnamese soldiers had been in a small South Vietnamese community when a group of armed men pushed another man into the center of the village. The people surrounded the man, spit at and hit and in other ways brutalized him. After 10 minutes or so they then executed him in front of the whole village. The men in the village cheered.  So did the South Vietnamese soldiers. The American GI’s did nothing to intervene. They simply stood and watched while smoking cigarettes. 

My friend told me that the executed man was a North Vietnamese operative. He would often come into the village and demand money in exchange for not raping and pillaging and burning it. He was an extortionist in the first degree. The people hated him. They wanted him died. He had made the mistake of showing up when the American soldiers were present. This had been his last mistake.

And the real kicker for me in the story was what the people called him. My friend said they called the man a “tax collector”.

There’s the children’s song about Zacchaeus being a “wee little man, a wee little man was he”.  But that’s not what I think of when I read this story. I don’t think of children at all. I think of grown men brutalizing one another. I don’t think of a wee little man; I think of a dead man. 

And, I think of how appalling it must have been to the villagers in Jericho to hear Jesus say that the tax collector was a son of Abraham also.

Daily Lesson for November 27, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 3 verses 10 through 17 and 21 through 23:

10 According to the grace of God given to me, like a skilled master builder I laid a foundation, and someone else is building on it. Each builder must choose with care how to build on it. 11For no one can lay any foundation other than the one that has been laid; that foundation is Jesus Christ. 12Now if anyone builds on the foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, straw— 13the work of each builder will become visible, for the Day will disclose it, because it will be revealed with fire, and the fire will test what sort of work each has done. 14If what has been built on the foundation survives, the builder will receive a reward. 15If the work is burned, the builder will suffer loss; the builder will be saved, but only as through fire.

16 Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? 17If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple . . .

21So let no one boast about human leaders. For all things are yours, 22whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you, 23and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.

I have an old friend back in Lubbock who says, “You don’t join preachers; you join the church.”

It’s his way of reminding people that preachers come and go, but the church remains. The foundation remains. Christ remains. 

The church at Corinth joined preachers. Some joined Paul. Some joined Apollos. Some were wanting to join Peter (Cephas).  But Paul tells them they joined the church. They joined Christ. They belong to Christ. And so did the church. Not the preacher. 

Preachers and priests do come and they do go. They build. But Paul says the real test of their work is made visible after they’re gone.  It’s then that the fire comes. It’s then when the floods rise. It’s then that the mettle is tested. It’s then that everybody will know whether what was built was built to last. Whether it was solid stone built on the firm foundation of Christ or measly straw sure to be blown down by the winds of change.

We don’t join preachers. We join churches. We join them and we help to build them. And we pray we can build them to last. 

Daily Lesson for November 26, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Galatians chapter 6 verses 1 through 5:

My friends, if anyone is detected in a transgression, you who have received the Spirit should restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness. Take care that you yourselves are not tempted. 2Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ. 3For if those who are nothing think they are something, they deceive themselves. 4All must test their own work; then that work, rather than their neighbour’s work, will become a cause for pride. 5For all must carry their own loads.

We are to take no pride when others fall. It is no cause of delight or what the Germans call “schadenfreude”.  It is also no time for shaming.  For shaming is usually a form of distancing.  But the word says we are not to distance ourselves, but to draw near.

So long as we are distant and pointing fingers, we can delude ourselves and others in thinking we are better than or somehow set apart. But as we draw near, we touch their humanity and also our own.  It is here that we realize no one else is quite so bad and that we are not so good as is perceived from a distance. 

“Bear one another’s burdens, and in this way you will fulfill the law of Christ.” It is the law of Christ we are to fulfill, not the law of condemnation. It is the law of love, the golden rule of which is to treat others as we would wish them to treat us. 

We really aren’t any better than or worse than anybody else. When others stumble, it’s time for us to thank God for the grace we’ve been given to this make it this far stay on our two feet and, also, a time to reach down a hand and help the other guy or gal up, and help them bear their load for a little while. Because the truth is life’s a long journey and nobody will make it alone. 

Daily Lesson for November 21, 2018

Today’s Daily Lesson comes from Psalm 101 verse 6:

“My eyes are upon the faithful in the land, that they may dwell with me.”

I think sometimes God gives us little signs along the path just to let us know that in spite of whatever present doubts we might have about ourselves and our lives, we’re on the right path, going the right way, traveling with a whole caravan of angels and saints unseen, and absolutely being watched over and cared for.

Yesterday I received one of those signs. 

On Sunday, at the church’s annual Thanksgiving dinner I talked about my favorite teacher of all time, my fifth grade home room teacher, Mrs. Jamison, and how she would always tell us, “Count your blessings.”  It’s a phrase I think of every Thanksgiving and it always takes me back to Mrs. J’s class and how loved and cared for she always made me feel and also how witty and how wise she always was. 

Then yesterday I received a surprise package in the mail from.  It was a big canvas Christmas Grinch along with the words “Count Your Blessings”. And who was it from?  Mrs. Jamison.  

And along with the picture was a short but very touching note:

“Three good things about teaching are June, July, and August, and, may I add having special children and memories to carry me in my old age.

“I saw this poster and could not get it out of my mind. I just wanted you to have it and know that even the Grinch believed in God.

“Once again, counting my blessings!

Love you,

Mrs. J”

I’m counting them too, Mrs. J. 

I surely am.