Daily Lesson for February 27, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John chapter 3 verses 28 through 30:

28 You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’ 29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom's voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

My friend Ted who passed away earlier this month may have been the most selfless man I've ever met -- definitely the most selfless minister I've ever met.  Whereas so many preachers have studied to prove themselves witty and smart, Ted studied hard to be made meek and humble of spirit.  His insights and knowledge were truly profound; yet they came always from a deep font of wisdom inside him and never from a place of conceit or love of the crowd.

At Ted's funeral John Wesley's Covenant Prayer was offered. It is a prayer of complete submission to God; and it is a prayer Ted prayed ever morning. As the congregation joined together in reading it, I realized that it was in praying this prayer morning by morning that Ted became the man he was -- a man humble and selfless, and wholly given to the purposes and glory of God.

Here is the prayer:

I am no longer my own, but thine.
Put me to what thou wilt, rank me with whom thou wilt.
Put me to doing, put me to suffering.
Let me be employed for thee or laid aside for thee,
exalted for thee or brought low for thee.
Let me be full, let me be empty.
Let me have all things, let me have nothing.
I freely and heartily yield all things to thy pleasure and disposal.
And now, O glorious and blessed God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit,
thou art mine, and I am thine.
So be it.
And the covenant which I have made on earth,
let it be ratified in heaven.
Amen.

Daily Lesson for February 26, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 10 verses 1 

“At that time the Lord said to me, ‘Cut for yourself two tablets of stone like the first, and come up to me on the mountain and mmake an ark of wood. 2 And I will write on the tablets the words that were on the first tablets that you broke, and you shall put them in the ark.’

There is an old Jewish midrashic tradition that says as the Israelites traveled through the wilderness, they carried with them in the ark of the covenant two sets of tablets of the Ten Commandments.  The first set was carved and etched by God, yet broken by Moses in the face of the Israelites' idolatry with the Golden Calf. The second set was that which God instructed Moses to carve out of the mountain rock himself. 

The spiritual meaning of this old midrash tells us that we each have two tablets within us. The first set is pure gift, carved and etched by God -- yet broken by our own selfish rebellion.  We keep its broken pieces as a reminder of what was once pure and undefiled, but now shattered in each of our lives. The second set did not come so easily, it took work -- hard, painstaking work on our part.  This set too is just as fragile as the first set, so we lay them together -- one to remind us of the precious fragility of the other. We treasure both; for we know that without the broken we would not have the whole.  One was first, the other was second, but they are both present; and we carry both into our future.

"First the fall, and then the redemption," Julian of Norwich said, "and both are the grace of God."  May we learn to treasure both the fall and the redemption, the broken and the whole, in the ark of our own souls. 

Daily Lesson for February 25, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 9 verses

13 "Furthermore, the Lord said to me, 'I have seen this people, and behold, it is a stubborn people. 14 Let me alone, that I may destroy them and blot out their name from under heaven. And I will make of you a nation mightier and greater than they.'"

What an offer!  On the long road trip through the wilderness and after a colossally mistaken attempt by Aaron to quell the people's anxieties by making a Golden Calf, God pulls Moses aside and whispers in his ear. "Hey, what do you say you and me ditch these guys, head off and start our own company."

A great idea -- leave the people and all their wining and complaining, just get in the car and ride off and not have to hear ever again their complaints about where we are, where we aren't, why not, and how a contemporary worship service or a more reverent and dignified hour of stillness (depending upon the faction) is what God would like.

"Did you say the car is already running?  All I gotta do is get in?"

It's so tempting. I would love to do it; and they could all eat our dust as we burn rubber on the way out. Maybe I would add something colorful in Hebrew as we drove away.  

It would feel so good.

But it would not be good. It would not be good because God called us out of Egypt as a people, and the Promised Land just won't be the Promised Land if it's only reached by one person.

"Sorry God, I just have to say no. While it's tempting to get into the car, I just can't do it. And besides, I'm really not sure you'd be with me anyways."

Daily Lesson for February 24, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 9 verses 4 and 5:

4 "Do not say in your heart, after the Lord your God has thrust them out before you, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ whereas it is because of the wickedness of these nations that the Lord is driving them out before you. 5 Not because of your righteousness or the uprightness of your heart are you going in to possess their land, but because of the wickedness of these nations the Lord your God is driving them out from before you, and that he may confirm the word that the Lord swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob."

There's a big brouhaha going on today in the media about American exceptionalism -- in fact every day there's a brouhaha going on the media about American exceptionalism.

So here's my thought. We are exceptional in a lot of ways, the most important of which is our commitment to individual human rights and freedom. We haven't always lived up to our ideals, but our creeds speak to who we intend to be: a country with liberty and justice for all.

But I'm not sure getting into fights about how great we are, who thinks we're great, and who ought to be punished because they don't think we're as great as I do scores a lot of points in the exceptional category. 

Perhaps we should take a lesson from today's Scripture, if we're good it's by God's grace; if we're exceptional it's because a lot of other nations and their leaders have fallen from that grace. There's really not a lot to brag about; but there's everything to say thanks for.

And then remember these words: To whom much is given, much is required.

Daily Lesson for February 23, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from John chapter 2 verses 9 and 10:

 9 When the master of the feast tasted the water now become wine, and did not know where it came from (though the servants who had drawn the water knew), the master of the feast called the bridegroom 10 and said to him, “Everyone serves the good wine first, and when people have drunk freely, then the poor wine. But you have kept the good wine until now.” 

A few weeks back I preached the memorial service for L.E. Anderson, one of the best caterers in town. I chose as my text the story of the wedding feast at Cana -- where the party ran out of wine.  I said the couple had chosen the wrong caterer!  But thank God they invited Jesus, who turned the water into wine, and his mother who put him up to it.  Colossal party foul averted.

But at L.E.'s funeral I asked people not to focus their attention so much on Jesus in the story, but to watch the servants.  It was those guys and/or gals got to play a first hand role in Jesus' first miracle.  They got the privilege of filling the huge stone jars with the water; and then they got to watch him turn that water into wine.

And then a really interesting thing happened -- something I wouldn't have seen had I not been memorializing a caterer; they kept their mouths shut about the whole thing. A full-fledged wedding disaster was averted, and they went on as if things went off without a hitch. And when the water was turned into wine, and it was the really good stuff, I mean the REALLY good stuff, Jesus and the servants just disappeared. Instead, it was the groom who got all the credit. And the servants -- the caterers -- made sure it stayed that way.

I want to be caterer today. Sure, nobody will notice me unless disaster strikes. But I will have the pure joy and privilege of helping Jesus make others look good; and I won't have the need to write a tell-how about how it might have been otherwise had it not been for me and Jesus. I mean, come on.  Me and Jesus?  No, Jesus; and I get the privilege of being asked to take part in what He's doing for somebody else.  And that's more than I could really ever ask for. 

Daily Lesson for February 20, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Deuteronomy chapter 7 verses 12, 13 and 15:

12 “And because you listen to these rules and keep and do them, the Lord your God will keep with you the covenant and the steadfast love that he swore to your fathers. 13 He will love you, bless you, and multiply you. He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your wine and your oil, the increase of your herds and the young of your flock, in the land that he swore to your fathers to give you . . .15 And the Lord will take away from you all sickness, and none of the evil diseases of Egypt, which you knew, will he inflict on you, but he will lay them on all who hate you. "

This morning I was disturbed in spirit to read this Old Testament text from the Deuteronomic Law as the daily lesson. This kind of "Do good, get rewarded; do bad, get punished," message has been used for all kinds of abuse.  If you have children and are disease free and have ample food then you must be a good person and so God is blessing you; but if your crops don't grow and so you suffer from lack of nutrition and therefore are more susceptible disease and therefore can't have children, well then it all must be from God because you obviously must be a sinner.

There is a special Latin word for that kind of theology; it's called Bovinus Excrementus.

It needs to stop.  We must put away all wooden, literalistic readings of either Old Testament or the New Testament scriptures which make God out to be abusive, vengeful, violent, cruel, or anything else other than loving and kind. Trusting these scriptures do have something to say to us, we have to be free and imaginative enough to interpret them spiritually rather than literally. For as Paul said, "the letter killeth; but the spirit gives life."

So here's a stab at trying to interpret Deuteronomy 7 by spirit, rather than law:

Those who live in God find God's grace. They live at peace with God and with all the earth.  There is beauty and serenity in themselves and in their families. This is what it means to live a blessed life.  And they live in the blessing even in the midst of hardship and disease. On the other hand, those who live at enmity towards God and the people of God will never find peace.  They are always struggling, and always striving and always at war within themselves and with all the world. They literally make themselves sick; eventually they will destroy themselves, their families, and their whole community.

All Scripture is inspired by God, yes; but not all interpretations are. Whenever Scripture is interpreted in such a way as to make God out be as petty and vindictive as we, then be assured we are getting the full letter of the Law, but no spirit. 

Daily Lesson for February 19, 2015

Today's daily lesson comes from Psalm 37 verses 3, 5 and 6, and 8 and 9:

3 Trust in the Lord, and do good;
dwell in the land and befriend faithfulness.
5 Commit your way to the Lord;
trust in him, and he will act.
6 He will bring forth your righteousness as the light,
and your justice as the noonday.
8 Refrain from anger, and forsake wrath!
Fret not yourself; it tends only to evil.
9 For the evildoers shall be cut off,
but those who wait for the Lord shall inherit the land.

There is an old saying that the meek shall inherit the earth, but somebody else gets the mineral rights.

That's basically the story one of my friends is living through right now. He's one of the good guys -- loyal, diligent, and there to serve the company, his bosses, and his fellow employees. Just the guy you would want working for you; and just the guy who gets hosed when times get tight.  It seems the nice guy really does finish last.

It's my friend this psalm is talking to. It's talking to the meek and disinherited, to the nice guy who doesn't even get a consolation for finishing last. And what's the word for my friend?  The word is: "Befriend faithfulness."

It's tempting to act unfaithfully -- to lash out in a rage of anger at God, and the abusive system, and at the powerlessness of friends to help, or to just die altogether defeated in spirit and wait for the body to follow. It's tempting.  Langston Hughes's words capture the temptations:

What happens to a dream deferred?

      Does it dry up
      like a raisin in the sun?
      Or fester like a sore—
      And then run?
      Does it stink like rotten meat?
      Or crust and sugar over—
      like a syrupy sweet?

      Maybe it just sags
      like a heavy load.

      Or does it explode?

There is another option. It is the option to "befriend faithfulness". To be a friend means to stick it out, to stay beside come hell or high water.  To be a friend of faithfulness means to keep the faith even when life has robbed you of job, benefits, home, and land. Faithfulness's friend holds on -- even when everything around him is trying to pull him apart. 

I write but in fear that I might come off smug. But I write nonetheless for two reasons: 1) The truth is anyone of us could end up where my friend is. Life can deal a series of bad hands to anyone of us or our employers and we could be in a bread line come next year.  None of us are immune to a raw deal.  2) Jesus, our LORD, grew up in a disinherited land amongst disinherited people. He and they knew what it was to be used, abused, oppressed, dried up, and discarded. He and they knew the temptations to either shrivel up or to explode.  But he did not; and he taught others to not. He taught them how to hold on to their dignity, stay in touch with their humanity, and keep their faith.  And when he stood in front of a multitude of the forlorn on the mountainside in Galilee, he looked into their eyes and asked them not to give up on God. He quoted today's daily lesson:

“Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. And Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled."

Somebody else may may indeed take the mineral rights; but nobody and nothing can take away our trust in a God who sees and knows and will ultimately make things right.  For we have befriended faithfulness; and we've decided to be friends for life.