Daily Lesson for April 8, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John chapter 15 verses 1 and 2:

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. 2 Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit."

There is no such thing as pain-free pruning. 

It's one thing to break off an old, dried-up and dead branch with no life in it. Hear it snap, and it honestly feels good.  But take the clippers and cut into a living stem of say a rose and its another matter altogether. It resists with its life, pushing back with energy stalking through its veins. To cut it you have to really clamp down -- maybe even use both fists. It bleeds. Do this a few times and then take a step back and the grief sets in; the rose bush just doesn't look right.  It looks naked and vulnerable -- like a shaved poodle.  It cried out to you, "Why did you do this?  I was flourishing."  

"No," you have to say back to it, "You were not flourishing. You were too full, top-heavy, too much for the soil beneath you.  It was necessary.

"It was necessary," you say it again to convince yourself.

Trimming back, letting go, sizing down, saying, "Not again this year," -- these are never painfree decisions.  But the root systems in our lives can only handle so much.  There is only so much nutrients we can draw from.  The law of diminishing returns says we can't just keep growing in all directions. Pretty soon we, like an overgrown rose bush, begin to lose our color. 

That's when pruning is necessary. It is necessary because it's not as important to be big as it is to be healthy and beautiful and pleasing to the eye of the gardener who planted and cultivates us. 

And in the end his delight is worth the pain. 

Daily Lesson for April 7, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Isaiah 30 verse 21:

And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, “This is the way, walk in it,” when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left.

One of the most important things we must do in order to get where we need to go in life is to learn to trust the voice we hear inside our spirits.

A couple of weeks back I had the serendipity of getting to listen to Bishop Carlton Pearson preach at the Cathedral of Hope in Dallas. Bishop Pearson was raised in a conservative Pentecostal home and grew up to become one of the most high-profile pastors in Southern, black fundamentalism. But 10 years ago, he went through a spiritual transformation which led him to a place where he could no longer think and speak of God as full of wrath, ready to inflict eternal damnation on disobedient humanity, but rather as a loving and longing parent seeking to woo his/her wayward children back to home. This was of course not an easy transformation for Bishop Pearson as many he was deemed a heretic and thousands of followers left him.  But, as he said in his sermon, there are things the we have been taught to believe about God which conflict with what we know in our spirits to be true about God. Bishop Pearson decided to trust what he knew to be true in his spirit; he decided to follow the voice of God speaking from within his own soul.

God speaks to us along our path. We know in the depths of our spirits what He/She is saying. We know that it is the way, the truth, and the life. And we know that it is beautiful.

What we have to do is hear the voice, and forgetting all else, follow it.  I guarantee we'll be glad we did . . .

Daily post for Easter Monday, April 6, 2015

Daily lesson for Easter Monday, April 6, 2015, comes from Acts 2 verse 24:

"God raised him up, loosing the pangs of death, because it was not possible for him to be held by it."

I love this Scripture. 

It was not possible for death to hold Him.  There was too much life in Him. Death had to let go.

The power that raised Jesus from the dead was the very power of life itself. There was more power in the life of Jesus than there was in the death of Hades. Resurrection was a foregone conclusion.  A miracle?  Yes.  But also a matter of natural law; you just can't keep a good man down. And goodness itself will always prevail in the end. "Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again."

The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is alive in all of us. It is the power of the cosmic Christ -- the atomic God-power we were each born with and which waits to be discovered. This is the essence of all spirituality.  It is the awakening of our divine nature within us. It is Easter for and in all.

Yesterday in his Easter prayer of invocation, one of our pastors quoted a portion of the following words of Baptist preacher and civil rights hero Clarence Jordan:

"The proof that God raised Jesus from the dead is not the empty tomb, but the full hearts of his transformed disciples. The crowning evidence that he lives is not a vacant grave, but a spirit-filled fellowship. Not a rolled-away stone, but a carried-away church."

God did raise Jesus from the dead.  God wants to raise us up also. The stone has been rolled away, and the tomb door is wide-open. Resurrection life is available to all; and it is impossible for death to hold us back. 

He descended into Hell

Even in death Jesus was upsetting traditional religion. While everybody was resting on the Sabbath, Jesus was busy preaching good news to the sinners in hell (For real, read 1 Peter 3:18-21).

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.

Daily lesson for April 2, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from 1 Corinthians chapter 11 verses 16 and 17:

16 The cup of blessing that we bless, is it not a participation in the blood of Christ? The bread that we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ? 17 Because there is one bread, we who are many are one body, for we all partake of the one bread.

Go sit down in the pews of almost any church sanctuary in America - whether great Gothic cathedral or plain, storefront church,  lift up your eyes toward the chancel or stage, and somewhere you'll see the communion table or altar (our forbears took the distinction between and altar and a table very seriously) and there in the oak or cedar or whatever other kind of wood you'll see the words carved bold and unchanged: "In Remembrance of Me".

In Latin to "rememor" means literally "to call to mind again" or "to again be mindful of". To remember is to retell or re-enact a story. To remember a story is to re-live that story.

Tonight Christians throughout the world will gather in their sanctuaries great and small and relive the story. At some point someone, usually a priest or pastor, will stand up and remember Christ's words. Taking and breaking bread, he or she will say, "This is my body broken for you." And then likewise taking a cup will say, "This is my blood shed for you." And in the remembering of Jesus' words and actions, the congregation will relive that last fateful night of Jesus' life yet once more.

Why do we do this?  Why do we remember? Paul says we remember that meal so that we ourselves can "participate" in it. Remembering allows for the condensing of all space and time so that we who were not there that last night are brought there by the power of memory. We become one with all Christians everywhere and throughout all time through the powerful act of remembering.

Tonight, whether beneath the great arches of some Gothic cathedral in France, or the fluorescent lights of a building originally designed to be a Kroger, we will all be one -- twelve followers of Jesus, mostly afraid, one blindly bold, and one with treachery in his heart, gathered around a plain, wooden table, watching Jesus' dark, veinular hands tremble as they take up the bread and pour out the wine. And we will all wonder who it is that might betray him. 

This is the power of reliving the story. Let us do this in remembrance of him.

Daily Leson for April 1, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Jeremiah 17 verses 7 and 8:

7 “Blessed is the man who trusts in the Lord,
whose trust is the Lord.
8 He is like a tree planted by water,
that sends out its roots by the stream,
and does not fear when heat comes,
for its leaves remain green,
and is not anxious in the year of drought,
for it does not cease to bear fruit.”

A friend used to say that we out here in West Texas may not have many trees but they're exactly where we want them.  She said this, of course, because we had to plant them all!

If you are a tree which happened to draw the short straw and be selected for West Texas, the best place you could hope to be planted is near a coulee or draw.  I drive through West Texas and its there, beside water or beside where water used to be, that you'll find the oldest, greenest trees. The roots of those trees have bore down, deep into the ground and stretched forth to draw water from sources both hidden and ancient.  These are the trees which have survived our scorching heat and our long droughts.

I know the metaphor needs no explanation; but we preachers' besetting sin is to over-explain things.  I'll be brief, I promise!

Those who have grown deep roots -- those who have read great and ancient wisdom stories, who know the Scriptures by heart,  who have listened to and heard great stories by campfire light, who have drawn courage from the saints, and who remember what their grandmothers told them -- these are the ones who bear life's scorching heat and long droughts. 

These are the trees who remain green and do not cease to bear fruit -- even in a dry and barren land.