Daily Lesson for January 30, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verse 53:

"When they had crossed over, they came to land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore."

Here is a curious little sentence that passes right by us if we aren't paying attention. After feeding the 5,000 Jesus sent the disciples in the boat on across the Sea of Galilee toward a place called Bethsaida, while he stayed and dismissed the crowds. He then spent several more hours alone in prayer before crossing the lake himself deep in the night -- on foot.  For hours the disciples had been struggling across the lake against an adverse wind.  When Jesus came to them he stilled the waves; but the boat had been so driven so off course that when they finally got to shore they had totally missed their original destination Bethsaida, and ended up at a place called Gennesaret.

I like that as a metaphor for life. We set off in some direction for some given destination but about half way across the lake life happened. We struggled with adverse and in some cases fierce winds. Sails ripped and our little dingy of a life was in danger of being sunk. It was then that our Lord came to us in the dark and calmed the winds. The dingy was saved!  But Bethsaida?  No, reaching Bethsaida is no longer possible -- not now anyway.  And it's here we have a choice.  We can hang our heads and mope about all that was stacked against us and spend all our days in despair over not getting to Bethsaida, or we can look at it another way; we can keep in perspective just how lucky we were to make it to Gennesaret -- just how lucky we were to make it anywhere!

We didn't make it to Bethsaida -- so what?  We made it to the shore of Gennesaret. By the grace of God, who came to us in the midnight of our struggle, we made it to Gennesaret. And the rest of the journey will depend on what we do here today in this place and no other.  

And the best news?  Instead of going on to Bethsaida, our Lord Himself has seen fit to stay with us here in Gennesaret also.  And that means some pretty interesting things are bound to happen right where we are.

Daily Lesson for January 29, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verse 39:

"Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass."

The Bible is usually not heavy in descriptive detail.  As Tom Long says, the Bible does not say something like, "He zipped his brown, patent-leather briefcase, put on his yellow fedora and stepped out beneath the azure sky."  That's why when the Bible does give specific detail and color it's time to pay attention.  Today's lesson, the feeding of the 5,000, gives descriptive detail; understanding the detail helps us understand the story. 

When Jesus stepped out of the boat he saw the multitudes of people and "had compassion on them for they were like sheep without a shepherd."  Just before he went to feed them we are told he made them sit down on the green grass. The color of the grass is a small but curious detail. It's curious because Mark never gives descriptions like this and because, well, the grass is almost never green in Galilee.  It's like saying the grass was green in El Paso.

So what's up?

Think about it.  The sheep are in want, but the shepherd provides by first having them sit down in green pastures. Remember hearing something like that before?  "The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not be in want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures . . ."  It's the Twenty-third Psalm.

The lesson today is that Jesus sees us in our multitudes of hunger and helplessness and has compassion on us. He comes to feed and to care for us. He calms our spirits and eases our fears and sets a banquet table for us right in the middle of a dry and barren desert.  He is our Good Shepherd and he makes provision -- today on the green grass, and tomorrow beside still waters, and when the time comes even in the valley of the shadow of death. His goodness and mercy do indeed follow us all the days of our lives and we trust him that he knows the way that we might dwell in the house of the LORD forever. 

Daily Lesson for January 28, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 119 verses 67 and 71:

67 Before I was afflicted I went astray,
but now I keep your word.
71 It is good for me that I was afflicted,
that I might learn your statutes.

Yesterday I got reacquainted with a friend from school who loves somewhere else in the country. A friend of a friend reintroduced us on Facebook. When we put it together that we knew each another, our mutual friend said that some time ago she had asked this long-lost friend if he knew me but he had said no. I told her that was because a he could not believe or even conceive that the guy he knew before had actually turned out to be a pastor. 

I am learning to give thanks for my story.  I am learning to give thanks for my journey -- not to revel or delight in it, but to see it for the way it has shaped me and to thank God for how God used it. As one contemporary song says, "God blessed the broken road . . ."

Maya Angelou, who passed away last year, has probably taught me more than anyone about just how important it is to be kind to one's own story. She wrote a book titled "Wouldn't Take Nothing for My Journey Now", and that book and all of the rest of her books bear witness to the healing power of the broken roads we have journeyed upon.  If we could all come to a place of no longer wishing for another journey, but rather accepting the one we have been on and embracing its blessedness there would be far less shame and guilt in our world and far more beauty.

So many of us live as Adam and Eve in the Garden, hiding ourselves because of guilt and shame. And it is a shame that so much of Western Christianity has taught us to be ashamed.  But the ultimate point of that Garden story was not to leave us hiding behind our stories of guilt and shame, but rather to tell how while in our stories of guilt and shame God comes to us -- with the grace that can turn brokenness into blessing. 


Perhaps Julian of Norwich put it best, "First the fall, then the redemption and both the grace of God."  

Our whole story -- nothing but the grace of God. 

Daily lesson for January 27, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 6 verse 5:

"And he could do no mighty work there."

After a powerful preaching and healing campaign throughout Galilee, Jesus has gone back to Nazareth.  But there, amidst his own people and in his own hometown Jesus could do no powerful miracle. 

I hope you can see the Gospel for your life in that: Jesus, the Messiah and Son of God, could do no miracle in his own home.

So many of us want so desperately to try to fix our families. Husbands and wives and sons and daughters or friends we love are lost or broken or screwed up and we are desperate to try to save them.  So desperate that we end up enabling them or pushing them further away or destroying everybody else -- including ourselves. We want so badly to work a miracle but the Gospel -- the Gospel -- says Jesus could work no mighty work.  

We must accept this. As the serenity prayer says, we must  "accept the things we cannot change".

But just because we cannot work a miracle does not mean we can do nothing. Note the Gospel says he could do no "strong" work at home. Sometimes it is not the big things, but the small things -- the writing of a letter, a place at the table, a ride to a first AA meeting, the holding of a hand.

Sometimes we just can't work a mighty miracle. But as Mother Theresa said, "We are not called to do great things, but small things with great love."  Sometimes the small things are enough. Sometimes they are not. We must learn to accept all of this, and receive it as the Gospel truth. 

Daily Lesson for January 26, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Paul's words to the church in Galatia found in Galatians chapter 1 verses 13 through 15:

13 For you have heard of my former life in Judaism, how I persecuted the church of God violently and tried to destroy it. 14 And I was advancing in Judaism beyond many of my own age among my people, so extremely zealous was I for the traditions of my fathers.

Tradition.  Custom. Heritage. Way of life.  From his youth Paul was trained to respect and protect these things with zeal. And because Paul was one of the brightest students of his generation he was also all the more zealous in guarding these things -- even to the point of persecuting the church.  Paul had everything he knew about himself invested in his traditions and their preservation. His whole identity and sense of self was wrapped up in this. So what a struggle it must have been for Paul to begin to let go of these things and ultimately "consider them as rubbish" compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ and himself in Christ.

To know oneself in Christ is to know oneself as "before the foundations of time".  It means to begin to see oneself and one's core identity no longer in a particular race, clan, country, or club, but rather in what Paul Tillich called the "Ground of all Being-ness", which is God. In Christ, Paul discovered what it means to no longer live as "Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female" but as a human born from the ground of God's being.

Where do you find your ground of being?  Is it in your culture, its traditions, your people's way of life?  Are these the things you want to spend your life defending?  Or is there something deeper to be found -- something greater, something before and after, something eternal. 

In another letter Paul put it by saying, "Our citizenship is in heaven."  What he meant by this is that our ultimate identity is in heaven. When we think on what that is like and who we shall be when we get there then suddenly so much of what we thought was so important here and now begins to fade in the glory of what will be there and then. And suddenly we discover the meaning of the words from that old hymn, "And the things of this world will grow strangely dim in the light of His glory and grace."

Daily Lesson for January 23, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Mark chapter 4 verses 37 through 41:

37 And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. 38 But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” 39 And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. 40 He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” 41 And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?”

What an incredible miracle in this Gospel story. Jesus stands boldly upon the bow of the ship with wind and waves battering the little vessel. And amidst this great and terrible storm he commands the waters and the waves to cease and there is peace and stillness. The imagery is that of Genesis 1 where the creation is formless and topsy turvy and waters cover the face of the deep, but God Himself speaks order into the chaos. The Gospel story then ends with a question, the disciples wondering if this Jesus might be God, for who else could command the waves and the waters to draw back.  What a miracle. 

Except, that's not the incredible miracle I'm talking about. The miracle I'm amazed with is not the one Jesus performed from the bow of this. The miracle which most amazes me the one he did just before, while still in the stern. How in the world, I wonder, was he able to sleep during that storm?  How, while the boat was being rocked and ravaged, was the little Lord Jesus still able to lay down his sweet head?

To take control of what is happening is one thing. To take command and speak authority and abate all wind and waves and chaotic forces --  it's impressive, no doubt.  It's the power of God indeed.  But to sleep, to rest so peacefully and without fear, even while the forces of chaos are turning your little dingy of a boat or a life every which way -- that is quite another. This is the power, not so much of God, but of a man who absolutely trusts in God.  It is the power and strength of a man who, though facing certain death from a perfect storm of all that life can throw at him, does not call upon God to calm the storm, but instead calms himself and prays to his God, "Into your hands I commit my spirit."

The Gospel story ends in questions. We have the question of the disciples wondering who this man with such power is. But that's not really what we are meant to ponder. That's the disciples' question. We are meant to ponder Jesus' questions. "Why are you afraid?" and "Where is your faith?"  See, Jesus knows that if we can figure out why it is that we are afraid and where it is what or who it is that our faith is ultimately in, then we will begin to have the peace which allows us to be at rest in any storm -- even those we cannot or should not drive back.

Storms come. They are intent to rock our little boats. And what a miracle it is to be able to drive back the storms with a commanding word from the bow. But with the storms beating away outside, what an even greater miracle it is to be serenely at peace and at rest and without fear  inside the stern.

Daily Lesson for January 22, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Isaiah 45 verses 9b and 10:

Does the clay say to him who forms it, ‘What are you making?’
or ‘Your work has no handles’?
10 Woe to him who says to a father, ‘What are you begetting?’
or to a woman, ‘With what are you in labor?’”

Do me and yourself a favor. Relax for a minute or two. Set your phone down. Close your eyes -- not yet!  After this paragraph, close your eyes and just try to relax. Let your fingers go lose breath deeply, and just think on the word, "Be".  Okay, see you in a couple of minutes!

In my office I have a poem by e.e. cummings titled, "Just Be".  It is reminder to me that by God's creativity I am who I am and it is good, and beautiful, and blessed, and that I should give a gift to myself and see it all as such.

That requires acceptance and love of myself. It means loving and accepting my race, my hair color and texture, my skin tone, my size, my shape, my sex, my sexual orientation, my gifts, my graces and my disgraces.  It means accepting and  loving who I am and being okay with who I'm not.  It means playing my part in the great symphony of life with joy and delight and not quibbling with God over why I gotta be a woodwind rather than brass.  Accepting and loving myself and my part means playing the smoothest woodwind music I can possibly play while at the same time delighting in the music of others.

Dr. King used to preach a now famous sermon commonly known as the "Street Sweeper Speech".  In it he said, ‘‘If a man is called to be a street sweeper, he should sweep streets even as a Michaelangelo painted, or Beethoven composed music or Shakespeare wrote poetry. He should sweep streets so well that all the hosts of heaven and earth will pause to say,   ‘Here lived a great street sweeper who did his job well.’”

Whether we're created to be a street sweeper or a the next Michaelangelo really doesn't matter. What matters is that whatever we were created and gifted to be, we be it.  And we don't try to be or wish we were anybody else.  

God delights in who we are; we should too.