March 29, 2020 Fifth Sunday in Lent

John 11:1-44 (edited) (The Message)

  1 A man was sick, Lazarus of Bethany, the town of Mary and her sister Martha. 2  It was her brother Lazarus who was sick. 3 So the sisters sent word to Jesus, "Master, the one you love so very much is sick." 4 When Jesus got the message, he said, "This sickness is not fatal. It will become an occasion to show God's glory by glorifying God's Son." 5 Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, 6 but oddly, when he heard that Lazarus was sick, he stayed on where he was for two more days. 7 After the two days, he said to his disciples, "Let's go back to Judea.
17 When Jesus finally got there, he found Lazarus already four days dead. 20 Martha heard Jesus was coming and went out to meet him. Mary remained in the house. 21 Martha said, "Master, if you'd been here, my brother wouldn't have died. 22 Even now, I know that whatever you ask God he will give you." 23 Jesus said, "Your brother will be raised up." 24 Martha replied, "I know that he will be raised up in the resurrection at the end of time." 25 "You don't have to wait for the End. I am, right now, Resurrection and Life. The one who believes in me, even though he or she dies, will live.  28 After this, she went to her sister Mary and whispered in her ear, "The Teacher is here and is asking for you." 29 The moment she heard that, she jumped up and ran out to him.  32 Mary came to where Jesus was waiting and fell at his feet, saying, "Master, if only you had been here, my brother would not have died." 33 When Jesus saw her sobbing and the Jews with her sobbing, a deep anger welled up within him. 34 He said, "Where did you put him?" 35 Jesus wept. 36 The Jews said, "Look how deeply he loved him." 38 Then Jesus said, "Remove the stone." Then he shouted, "Lazarus, come out!" 44 And he came out, a cadaver, wrapped from head to toe, and with a kerchief over his face. Jesus told them, "Unwrap him and let him loose."

“The pronouncement (“I am the resurrection and the life”) not Lazarus’s rather ludicrous stumbling out of the tomb, is the climactic moment of Jesus’ visit to Bethany.”

This is a story about the pain, disappointment, and suffering Jesus endured to effect human salvation; to show how much God loves us even when bad things happen to good people.  It reminds us how powerful God’s love is to raise us up and give us hope - no matter what.  It is both an intimate and theological story.  It touches the depth of human suffering and bewilderment with God and reminds us that even in the severity of life, God is faithful.  God is good.  God is worthy of all trust and praise..



"It is when things go wrong,
when the good things do not happen    
When our prayers seem to have been lost,
that God is most present.                                                  
We do not need the sheltering wings
when things go smoothly.
We are closest to God in the darkness,
stumbling along blindly."    Madeleine L'Engle

   

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, walk with me when darkness keeps me from seeing You,”

March 22 2020 Fourth Sunday in Lent

John 9:1-11, 35-38 (The Message)
 
 Walking down the street, Jesus saw a man blind from birth. His disciples asked, “Rabbi, who sinned: this man or his parents, causing him to be born blind?”
3-5 Jesus said, “You’re asking the wrong question. You’re looking for someone to blame. There is no such cause-effect here. Look instead for what God can do. We need to be energetically at work for the One who sent me here, working while the sun shines. When night falls, the workday is over. For as long as I am in the world, there is plenty of light. I am the world’s Light.”
6-7 He said this and then spit in the dust, made a clay paste with the saliva, rubbed the paste on the blind man’s eyes, and said, “Go, wash at the Pool of Siloam” (Siloam means “Sent”). The man went and washed—and saw.
8 Soon the town was buzzing. His relatives and those who year after year had seen him as a blind man begging were saying, “Why, isn’t this the man we knew, who sat here and begged?”
9 Others said, “It’s him all right!”
But others objected, “It’s not the same man at all. It just looks like him.”
He said, “It’s me, the very one.”
10 They said, “How did your eyes get opened?”
11 “A man named Jesus made a paste and rubbed it on my eyes and told me, ‘Go to Siloam and wash.’ I did what he said. When I washed, I saw.”

35 Jesus heard that they had thrown him out, and went and found him. He asked him, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?”
36 The man said, “Point him out to me, sir, so that I can believe in him.”
37 Jesus said, “You’re looking right at him. Don’t you recognize my voice?”
38 “Master, I believe,” the man said, and worshiped him.
40 Some Pharisees overheard him and said, “Does that mean you’re calling us blind?”


What we believe predetermines what we see.  The pharisees did not believe a man of God would heal on the Sabbath so anyone who did simply could not be of God.

Our beliefs can lead to blindness; our blindness leads to prejudice, judgment, and conflict.  We see too much of this today, in the church and in the world.

Faith is meant to be a centering force, opening us up and enabling us to see God at work around us and even sometimes through us.
To say, “Lord, I believe!” is to make a statement as to the direction of our lives - not the boundaries, which keep us restricted in our prejudices.
It means we are to be compassionate as our God is compassionate!

“Faith is a power and passion
in authority among the powers
and passions of my life.”
P. T. Forsythe







Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, open my eyes too see; open my heart to believe;
open my will to be your ambassador of compassion.”

March 15, 2020 Third Sunday in Lent

John 4: 5-11, 13-18, 27-29 (The Message )

5 He came into Sychar, a Samaritan village that bordered the field Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob's well was still there. Jesus, worn out by the trip, sat down at the well. It was noon. 7 A woman, a Samaritan, came to draw water. Jesus said, "Would you give me a drink of water?" 8 (His disciples had gone to the village to buy food for lunch.) 9 The Samaritan woman, taken aback, asked, "How come you, a Jew, are asking me, a Samaritan woman, for a drink?" (Jews in those days wouldn't be caught dead talking to Samaritans.) 10 Jesus answered, "If you knew the generosity of God and who I am, you would be asking me for a drink, and I would give you fresh, living water." 11 The woman said, "Sir, you don't even have a bucket to draw with, and this well is deep. So how are you going to get this 'living water'?
13 Jesus said, "Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again and again. 14 Anyone who drinks the water I give will never thirst - not ever. The water I give will be an artesian spring within, gushing fountains of endless life." 15 The woman said, "Sir, give me this water so I won't ever get thirsty, won't ever have to come back to this well again!" 16 He said, "Go call your husband and then come back." 17 "I have no husband," she said. 18 You've had five husbands, and the man you're living with now isn't even your husband. You spoke the truth there, sure enough."
27 Just then his disciples came back. They were shocked. They couldn't believe he was talking with that kind of a woman. No one said what they were all thinking, but their faces showed it. 28 The woman took the hint and left. In her confusion she left her water pot. Back in the village she told the people, 29 "Come see a man who knew all about the things I did, who knows me inside and out. Do you think this could be the Messiah?"

The Samaritan woman did not expect Jesus to speak to her.  And especially about something as intimate as life with God.  May it not be that God also encounters us where and when we don't expect it as well as in those we don’t expect God to be.

No one can believe for you.  We each must believe for ourselves.
Yet few if any believe alone, in isolation, without someone helping.

The testimony which most helps create faith is that which is most honest, real, and human. As was the woman’s words when she said, “Come see a man who told me everything I ever did.”

She opened others to God.  Her testimony was honest, real, and human.  She became living water.  She would never thirst again!  For she knew there was living water sufficient for anything and everything which was, is, and shall be.




A man from India once said the reason
why he could not accept Christianity was:
“It is not new, it is not true, but most of all,
 it is not you.”







Prayer thought for the week: “Lord, help me to live what I believe, so your love can become
living water through me.”

March 8 2020 Second Sunday in Lent

John 3:1-3, 14-17 (The Message)

1 There was a man of the Pharisee sect, Nicodemus, a prominent leader among the Jews. 2 Late one night he visited Jesus and said, "Rabbi, we all know you're a teacher straight from God. No one could do all the God-pointing, God-revealing acts you do if God weren't in on it." 3 Jesus said, "You're absolutely right. Take it from me: Unless a person is born from above, it's not possible to see what I'm pointing to - to God's kingdom." 14 In the same way that Moses lifted the serpent in the desert so people could have something to see and then believe, it is necessary for the Son of Man to be lifted up - 15 and everyone who looks up to him, trusting and expectant, will gain a real life, eternal life. 16 "This is how much God loved the world: He gave his Son, his one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. 17 God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again.

Nicodemus wanted to believe Jesus,
but his head got in the way of his heart.

His heart said, “Go for it!”
“Follow Him!”
“This is the One!”
but his head asked, “How can these things be?”

He tried his best but he couldn't figure Jesus out.
Not yet anyway.  He did become a secret believer and he was with Joseph of Arimathea when Jesus body was buried.  But today he is wondering what it is all about, and asking “How can these things be?”

How can it be that we have to be born again...and again...and again...and again, again, again?  Born from above;  of the Spirit;  of the one God sent?

It can be because we never get it all the first time, or the second, or third, or more.
We have to be born many times, over and over again as it slowly sinks in that God’s “love never ends and dazzling grace always is’.  And it is for all!  All!





“God’s love never ends
and dazzling grace always is.”
  William Sloane Coffin











Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, let my heart lead me into believing that which is amazing indeed!

March 1, 2020 First Sunday in Lent

Matthew 4”1-11  The Message

 Next Jesus was taken into the wild by the Spirit for the Test. The Devil was ready to give it. 2 Jesus prepared for the Test by fasting forty days and forty nights. That left him, of course, in a state of extreme hunger, 3 which the Devil took advantage of in the first test: "Since you are God's Son, speak the word that will turn these stones into loaves of bread." 4 Jesus answered by quoting Deuteronomy: "It takes more than bread to stay alive. It takes a steady stream of words from God's mouth." 5 For the second test the Devil took him to the Holy City. He sat him on top of the Temple and said, 6 "Since you are God's Son, jump." The Devil goaded him by quoting Psalm 91: "He has placed you in the care of angels. They will catch you so that you won't so much as stub your toe on a stone." 7 Jesus countered with another citation from Deuteronomy: "Don't you dare test the Lord your God." 8 For the third test, the Devil took him on the peak of a huge mountain. He gestured expansively, pointing out all the earth's kingdoms, how glorious they all were. 9 Then he said, "They're yours - lock, stock, and barrel. Just go down on your knees and worship me, and they're yours." 10 Jesus' refusal was curt: "Beat it, Satan!" He backed his rebuke with a third quotation from Deuteronomy: "Worship the Lord your God, and only him. Serve him with absolute single-heartedness." 11 The Test was over. The Devil left. And in his place, angels! Angels came and took care of Jesus' needs.

There is no place we can go and escape temptation.
There is no human who can escape temptation - not even Jesus.
To be human is to be temptable.
To sell out to temptation is to take the easy way out.  This Jesus did not do.

 Do we live for bread alone?  This is the test of capitalism which so consumes us.
I fear we are worshiping the stock market more then compassionate living.

Do we put God to the test?  Treated me right and I will believe in you?
“Every day with Jesus isn’t nice.”

Do we worship and serve the right God?  This is the test of our allegiance - to let God be God no matter what, as did the unknown person who wrote on a cellar wall in Cologne after World War II, “ I believe in the sun even when it is not shining, I believe in love even when I feel it not, I believe in God even when He is silent.”

Thank God there is forgiveness - forgiving grace - or none of us would make it!




“All my life I shall quiver,
resist and say it: Your will be done.”
Jesus in “The Last Temptation of Christ”








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to not take the easy way, but the compassionate way as I seek to walk with you.  And forgive me when I fail, so I can try again to be compassionate as you are compassionate.”