October 25, 2015 Reformation Sunday

John 8:36  (The Promise)

“36 So if the Son sets you free, you are free through and through.”

To be set free is not to be able to do what ever I want to do when ever I want to do it.  To be free is to be a different person than I was, with a heart open to being willing to forgive;  willing to encourage;  willing to help;  willing to be a servant of compassion in a world of hate, bringing light in the darkness.

To be set free by the love of God is to become, as Luther once said, “Little Christ’s” who go about doing good, not because this is the way to earn heaven but because this is the way to show that we are free from the fear of losing heaven and to show not only that we love God, but that God first loved us!

Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, let your light shine through me;  set me  free to love!”

October 18, 2015 21st Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 10:23-31  (The Message)

23 Looking at his disciples, Jesus said, "Do you have any idea how difficult it is for people who 'have it all' to enter God's kingdom?" 24 The disciples couldn't believe what they were hearing, but Jesus kept on: "You can't imagine how difficult. 25 I'd say it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye than for the rich to get into God's kingdom." 26 That set the disciples back on their heels. "Then who has any chance at all?" they asked. 27 Jesus was blunt: "No chance at all if you think you can pull it off by yourself. Every chance in the world if you let God do it.

Having it all - and we all have much more then we need - makes it difficult to say I need help, I need something money can’t buy.  I need to be saved.  I need the grace of God.
We are so used to being in control that we find it difficult to “let go and let God.”  Yet that is the key not only to the AA way of life but to the life of faith.  It is hard to see how poor we are when we have so much that hides this truth from us.

As  Rudyard Kipling said to a graduating class of medical students.

“You’ll go out from here and very likely make a lot of money.  One day you’ll meet someone for whom that means very little.  Then you will know how poor you are.”

“Let go and let God!”  is more then a nice cliche;  it is a way of life which opens the doors of the Kingdom of God to us.  It is the way in - for all!




!

“The problem is not that we’ve tried faith
and found it wanting,
but that we’ve tried mammon
and found it addictive.”
Arthur Simon,
    Founder of Bread for the World









Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to not become addicted to things money can buy,
and miss out on what money cannot buy…the grace which is free and the love which is eternal,
and the happiness born of faith, hope and love.”

October 11, 2015 20th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 10:17-22 (The Message)

17 As he went out into the street, a man came running up, greeted him with great reverence, and asked, "Good Teacher, what must I do to get eternal life?" 18 Jesus said, "Why are you calling me good? No one is good, only God. 19 You know the commandments: Don't murder, don't commit adultery, don't steal, don't lie, don't cheat, honor your father and mother." 20 He said, "Teacher, I have - from my youth - kept them all!" 21 Jesus looked him hard in the eye - and loved him! He said, "There's one thing left: Go sell whatever you own and give it to the poor. All your wealth will then be heavenly wealth. And come follow me." 22 The man's face clouded over. This was the last thing he expected to hear, and he walked off with a heavy heart. He was holding on tight to a lot of things, and not about to let go.


What is going on in this story is a battle of the wills, not just the pocketbook.  A confrontation with addiction and a call to surrender.  It is your story and mine!

The question is sincere for the man is sincere.  But he wanted to be in control.  He wanted to do it his way.  “Just tell me and I’ll do it!” might well be a correct paraphrase of his dialogue with Jesus.

Jesus loved him.  What follows comes out of love not judgment.  He enters the man’s life at the one place where he does not want God to be, the one place he does not want to surrender.

This is always where God seeks entrance into our lives.  For until we surrender where we least want to surrender, we are still in control and doing it our way.  We are still seeking to be saved by good works rather than grace.  We have to reach the place where we know we can do nothing, then God can do everything.






“By grace we are saved, not works!  Let go and let God!
"








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord help me to surrender what I most want to keep and accept Your love as enough…enough to make the journey joyful beyond measure.”

October 4, 2015 19th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 10:13-16  (The Message)
13 The people brought children to Jesus, hoping he might touch them. 14 The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus was irate and let them know it: "Don't push these children away. Don't ever get between them and me. These children are at the very center of life in the kingdom. 15 Mark this: Unless you accept God's kingdom in the simplicity of a child, you'll never get in." 16 Then, gathering the children up in his arms, he laid his hands of blessing on them.

The Kingdom of God is ours as a gift - all we have to do is accept it,
openly, freely, confidently, joyfully, like a child.

It isn’t difficult for a child to accept a gift - it is a natural response, often with joy.  The child doesn’t think about deserving the gift; the child just accepts the gift.

A child also has a great capacity to trust.  When we trust we believe the offer of a gift, and  accept the gift without thought to why or how or why me?  The gift doesn’t depend on me.  It is freely given out of love; like a child I can accept  it, in love.  And live in confidence knowing no matter what, I am loved!

Prayer thought for the week:
“Lord, keep me mindful today and every day
that I am loved as a child and can trust in
your never ending grace.”

September 27, 2015, 18th Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 9:38-41  (The Message)

38 John spoke up, "Teacher, we saw a man using your name to expel demons and we stopped him because he wasn't in our group." 39 Jesus wasn't pleased. "Don't stop him. No one can use my name to do something good and powerful, and in the next breath cut me down. 40 If he's not an enemy, he's an ally. 41 Why, anyone by just giving you a cup of water in my name is on our side. Count on it that God will notice.

No one can bottle God up and keep God contained.  God manifests God’s self in unexpected places and people;  God’s spirit blows where it will and we know not where it comes from or where it goes.

Any effort on our part to try contain God is futile.  God is with those who know not God as well as those who claim to be for God.  In fact, they may well be some of God’s best servants!

This is part of the mystery and miracle of God’s spirit at work in our world.  We can be astonished by the irregularity of God.  It is not ours to judge others; it is ours to recognize the love of Jesus at work where ever it happens in whom ever it comes.


 

“It has been my experience that what
 makes us the saints of  God is not our
ability to be saintly but rather God’s
ability to work through sinners.”
         Nadia Bolz-Weber











Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, help me to remember that there is something of Scrooge in me too, and you can still use me in ways beyond my daring to believe.”

September 20, 2015 17h Sunday After Pentecost

Mark 9:33-35 (The Message)

33 They came to Capernaum. When he was safe at home, he (Jesus) asked them, "What were you discussing on the road?" 34 The silence was deafening - they had been arguing with one another over who among them was greatest. 35 He sat down and summoned the Twelve. "So you want first place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all."

 We all have a desire hidden within us to be a celebrity.  We would like to do our thing in a big way.  Yet it is as a servant that we have been called, to do our thing in a small way, often unnoticed but by God, and maybe those who are on the receiving end of our serving.

We are called to be servants and to get lost in doing good, without keeping score.  

To be a servant is to place oneself last and not worry about what I am going to get out of it.
It is to be like Jesus who “did not count equality with God something to be grasped, but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.”
Phil. 2:6,7

Prayer thought for the week:  "Lord, help me to get myself out of the center of life so
I can be a servant, with you at the center."

Sept. 13, 2015 16th Sunday after Pentecost

Mark 9:14-29  (The Message)

14 When they came back down the mountain to the other disciples, they saw a huge crowd around them, and the religion scholars cross-examining them. 15 As soon as the people in the crowd saw Jesus, admiring excitement stirred them. They ran and greeted him. 16 He asked, "What's going on? What's all the commotion?" 17 A man out of the crowd answered, "Teacher, I brought my mute son, made speechless by a demon, to you. 18 Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, grinds his teeth, and goes stiff as a board. I told your disciples, hoping they could deliver him, but they couldn't." 19 Jesus said, "What a generation! No sense of God! How many times do I have to go over these things? How much longer do I have to put up with this? Bring the boy here." 20 They brought him. When the demon saw Jesus, it threw the boy into a seizure, causing him to writhe on the ground and foam at the mouth. 21 He asked the boy's father, "How long has this been going on?" 22 Many times it pitches him into fire or the river to do away with him. If you can do anything, do it. Have a heart and help us!" 23 Jesus said, "If? There are no 'ifs' among believers. Anything can happen." 24 No sooner were the words out of his mouth than the father cried, "Then I believe. Help me with my doubts!" 25 Seeing that the crowd was forming fast, Jesus gave the vile spirit its marching orders: "Dumb and deaf spirit, I command you - Out of him, and stay out!" 26 Screaming, and with much thrashing about, it left. The boy was pale as a corpse, so people started saying, "He's dead." 27 But Jesus, taking his hand, raised him. The boy stood up.

This is one of my favorite confessions in the New Testament:  the farther of the boy who says honestly, out of the depths of his heart, “I believe; help mine unbelief!”

It’s like it is too much to swallow so fast yet it is so vital to his deepest needs that he lets Jesus know that he does have faith, even though he still has questions.

Don’t we all!

Faith is always accompanied by doubt, questioning, wondering, speculating, even uncertainty.
Contrary to the Message translation of the text, there are “ifs’” among believers.  That’s being human which is something none of us can shake.

I think this is the most honest expression of faith in the New Testament!  And much more true to the human condition then blind certainty can ever be.  Listen to these words from Ellie Wiesel, who lived through the fanaticism of the Holocaust born of the blind belief in the superiority of the Arian race.

 “I turn away from persons who declare that they know better than anyone else the only true road to God....My experience is that the fanatic hides from true debate...He is afraid of pluralism and diversity; he abhors learning.  He knows how to speak in monologues only...The fanatic never rests and never quits; the more he conquers, the more he seeks new conquests....A fanatic has answers, not questions; certainties, not hesitations,(and ) as the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche expressed it, (it’s) ‘Madness is the result not of uncertainty but certainty’.”
                                               Parade Magazine, April 19,1992

Something to wonder about as we wander out under the stars.




‘Madness is the result not of uncertainty
but certainty’.” Friedrich Nietzsche








Prayer thought for the week:  “Lord, I believe….with lots of uncertainty.  With the leap of faith (and love) I confess more then I can ever understand or be certain about.  Walk with me and love me with all my uncertainties.”