Luke 15:1-3, 11b-32
This weekend, a friend introduced his youngest daughter to the 1987 movie “The Princess Bride.” I don’t remember when I first saw the film, but one of the memorable lines is delivered by the character Inigo Montoya after Vizzini exclaims, “Inconceivable” one too many times. Montoya tells the other man, “You keep saying that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”
The quote came to mind when I read today’s gospel, because many Bible translations name this passage “The Prodigal Son.” But I confess, “prodigal” doesn’t mean what I thought it meant. I don’t remember the first time I heard this story, but I know I always heard the emphasis placed on the return of the wayward son and the way that he “comes to himself” or returns to his senses and then practices his apology as he makes his way back to his father’s house. The problem when we read this story that way, as Candler Divinity School professor Tom Long wrote, “The prodigal son becomes the “comeback player of the year.”[i]
But he isn’t called the prodigal son because he comes back.
“Prodigal” means “wasteful, extravagant, reckless, or excessive.” The editors who decided what to title the different bible stories call him the prodigal son because he wastes his inheritance.
I believe the true prodigal in this story is the father. After all he is the one who, in defiance of all cultural norms, gives the younger son his share of the inheritance when he asks for it. He is the one who doesn’t hesitate to welcome the son back when he returns. In fact, not only does the father reconcile with him but he is the one who tells the servants to kill the fatted calf, encouraging the whole household to celebrate his return. He loves excessively. The father delivers the same grace we receive from God, wholly unmerited or unearned, given joyfully and without reservation.
And not only to the younger son. When the older brother confronts his father, the father says, “Son, you are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” (v. 31) A rule follower who demonstrated loyalty and responsibility, the older son hasn’t experienced any joy from remaining in relationship with his father. He has accumulated only resentment that boils over when he witnesses the father’s love for the younger son. We hear how his resentment has warped his view of the world when he complains to the father about “this son of yours.” Although the two are brothers their common bond has been eaten away by resentment.
Franciscan teacher Father Richard Rohr writes in Breathing Under Water,
“The death of any relationship with anyone is to have a sense of entitlement. Any notion that “I deserve,” “I am owed,” “I have a right to,” or “I am higher than you” absolutely undermines any notion of faith, hope or love…”
It is what Rohr calls a “soul-destructive” attitude.[ii]
The father pleads with the older son to join the party being thrown for “this brother of yours” but Luke never tells us how the story ends. Is the family restored? Or does the older son continue to engage in soul-destructive behavior? And how does the younger son respond to the grace he has received?
Those questions are left to holy imagination. Our hearing of the biblical story always is affected by our own life experiences, so the ending we might picture could be influenced by whether we were younger siblings or older, our relationships with fathers and father-figures, and our own experiences of forgiveness.
The good news of this gospel is that, regardless of where we locate ourselves in the story,
each one of us is loved extravagantly and recklessly by God —
even when we feel entitled to our place in God’s family;
even when we squander God’s generosity;
even when we abandon God in good times, only to return when we are desperate and need help.
Each one of us is loved extravagantly and recklessly by God — even when we do and say all the right things but keep our hearts closed to joy and the other fruits of God’s Spirit in our lives;
even when we let resentment and evil harden our hearts to our brothers and sisters in Christ;
even when we get frustrated or insulted at the foolishness of our prodigal God’s grace.
We are all loved, and God is waiting to welcome us home as God’s children. In a few minutes we’ll share the peace of Christ where, like the father embracing his son, we are reconciled to God and with one another, and then, at this Table, in Holy Communion, we will celebrate a foretaste of the feast to come, enjoying the promise of God’s forgiveness for our sin and the ways God’s mercy is new every day.
Let us pray…
Merciful God,
We give you thanks for the redemptive love that you give us through your son Jesus;
Forgiven and fed send us out in the world as ambassadors of your reconciling grace, that everyone would know your love.
Amen.
[i] Tom Long. “Surprise Party” in Living by the Word, The Christian Century, 2001.
[ii] Richard Rohr. Breathing Under Water. 61-62.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Wednesday, March 27, 2019
Third Wednesday in Lent - "Joyful Humility"
Philippians 2:5-11
We continue reading tonight from Paul’s letter to the Philippians with Chapter 2 verses 5 to 11, and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Have you ever read a book and discovered the words of the title in the prose? Recently, I noticed it when I read Where the Crawdads Sing and again in The Ragged Edge of Night. When you notice it, it can feel like the author has written that sentence just for you to find. Sometimes, preachers do this too; last May when Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached at the royal wedding for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, he included the words from the well-known hymn “There is a Balm in Gilead’ in his sermon. In these six verses that we just heard from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, scholars think the apostle is quoting “an early Christian hymn or confession of faith.” [i]
It’s helpful to learn a little more about Philippi as we read more of Paul’s letter. Remember, he is writing to one of the scattered Christian communities in the Roman Empire. In 42 BCE the city had been the site of a Roman civil war. Caesar’s armies had triumphed and awarded land to loyal Roman soldiers and later Caesar colonized the city. At the time Paul is writing, closer to the middle of the first century CE, the city’s leaders are the descendants of those Romans.
As we will hear later in Paul’s letter, one of the reasons he is writing is because the congregation at Philippi is divided. Two people in the congregation, Euodia and Syntyche, are at odds and the congregation is suffering.[ii] Here, Paul is calling for unity because of their common bond in Christ Jesus. Much as he would write later in his letter to the Romans, he urges the Philippians to pattern their lives in the way of Jesus and not the world they lived in, which was one of Roman empire, might and the lordship of Caesar.
The verses of the “Christ Hymn” describe Christ as an obedient servant, contrasting divinity and humanity; death and life; humiliation and exultation; bending and raising; heaven and earth and things above and below.[iii]
Some may cry out at the futility of imitating Christ, but Paul encourages us that we can pattern our words, actions and thoughts after Him.
Following Christ in this way becomes a self-emptying practice, where we surrender everything selfish and self-serving so that we may be filled and animated by God’s Holy Spirit, for the sake of the world. And in the freedom our faith gives us, we live in service and in accompaniment with others, not for own sake, but for the joy of seeing Christ in each other.
Christ-like humility can be manifest in care and support, physical presence and service. But it isn’t only in acts of self-giving service that Christ shows humility.
In the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story of people bringing their children to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray for them. The disciples speak out sternly against them to discourage them, but Jesus rebukes the disciples and tells them, “Let the little children come to me.” [iv] It easy to forget that in the first century, children were not valued in the same way they are today, but Jesus insists that no one is excluded from God’s love.
Another example of Christ’s humility is seen in Matthew and Mark when Jesus encounters the Syrophoenician woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon, and she pleads for his mercy. At first he is dismissive, answering, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” but when she challenges him, saying, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Jesus relents and shows mercy.[v] He allows himself to learn both from a woman and a person who worshiped a different God, a person who had no status in his culture.
In Because of This I Rejoice, Methodist pastor and author Max O. Vincent writes, “Humility puts the interest of others before self-interest.” Christian unity grows out of this self-emptying practice that empowers us to seek the presence of God in each other, despite our differences. Importantly, unity does not mean uniformity; God creates us in all of our diversity and we celebrate everything God has made as good. Paul’s letter calls us to remember that regardless of our differences, above all, we are Christ’s.
Let us pray…
Holy God,
We give thanks for the self-emptying love Your Son gave us, taking on all of our sin and brokenness that we would be redeemed and called Your beloved children.
Give us courage to humble ourselves for the sake of the world.
By Your Spirit animate our lives that we are witnesses to your love and mercy.
We pray in the name of your Son Jesus.
Amen.
[i] “Christ Hymn of Philippians.” Enter The Bible. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/Controls/feature/tool_etb_resource_display/resourcebox.aspx?selected_rid=248&original_id=9, accessed 3/25/2019.
[ii] Sharon H. Ringe. “Commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.” Working Preacher Commentary. Luther Seminary.
[iii] C. Clifton Black. “Commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.” Working Preacher Commentary. Luther Seminary.
[iv] Matthew 19:13-14; Mark 10, 13-14; Luke 18:15-16
[v] Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30
We continue reading tonight from Paul’s letter to the Philippians with Chapter 2 verses 5 to 11, and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
5 Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, 6 who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, 7 but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.
8 And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. 9 Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, 10 so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, 11 and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
Have you ever read a book and discovered the words of the title in the prose? Recently, I noticed it when I read Where the Crawdads Sing and again in The Ragged Edge of Night. When you notice it, it can feel like the author has written that sentence just for you to find. Sometimes, preachers do this too; last May when Episcopal Presiding Bishop Michael Curry preached at the royal wedding for Prince Harry and Meghan Markle, he included the words from the well-known hymn “There is a Balm in Gilead’ in his sermon. In these six verses that we just heard from Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, scholars think the apostle is quoting “an early Christian hymn or confession of faith.” [i]
It’s helpful to learn a little more about Philippi as we read more of Paul’s letter. Remember, he is writing to one of the scattered Christian communities in the Roman Empire. In 42 BCE the city had been the site of a Roman civil war. Caesar’s armies had triumphed and awarded land to loyal Roman soldiers and later Caesar colonized the city. At the time Paul is writing, closer to the middle of the first century CE, the city’s leaders are the descendants of those Romans.
As we will hear later in Paul’s letter, one of the reasons he is writing is because the congregation at Philippi is divided. Two people in the congregation, Euodia and Syntyche, are at odds and the congregation is suffering.[ii] Here, Paul is calling for unity because of their common bond in Christ Jesus. Much as he would write later in his letter to the Romans, he urges the Philippians to pattern their lives in the way of Jesus and not the world they lived in, which was one of Roman empire, might and the lordship of Caesar.
The verses of the “Christ Hymn” describe Christ as an obedient servant, contrasting divinity and humanity; death and life; humiliation and exultation; bending and raising; heaven and earth and things above and below.[iii]
Some may cry out at the futility of imitating Christ, but Paul encourages us that we can pattern our words, actions and thoughts after Him.
Following Christ in this way becomes a self-emptying practice, where we surrender everything selfish and self-serving so that we may be filled and animated by God’s Holy Spirit, for the sake of the world. And in the freedom our faith gives us, we live in service and in accompaniment with others, not for own sake, but for the joy of seeing Christ in each other.
Christ-like humility can be manifest in care and support, physical presence and service. But it isn’t only in acts of self-giving service that Christ shows humility.
In the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke all tell the story of people bringing their children to Jesus that he might lay his hands on them and pray for them. The disciples speak out sternly against them to discourage them, but Jesus rebukes the disciples and tells them, “Let the little children come to me.” [iv] It easy to forget that in the first century, children were not valued in the same way they are today, but Jesus insists that no one is excluded from God’s love.
Another example of Christ’s humility is seen in Matthew and Mark when Jesus encounters the Syrophoenician woman in the district of Tyre and Sidon, and she pleads for his mercy. At first he is dismissive, answering, “It is not fair to take the children's food and throw it to the dogs.” but when she challenges him, saying, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table.” Jesus relents and shows mercy.[v] He allows himself to learn both from a woman and a person who worshiped a different God, a person who had no status in his culture.
In Because of This I Rejoice, Methodist pastor and author Max O. Vincent writes, “Humility puts the interest of others before self-interest.” Christian unity grows out of this self-emptying practice that empowers us to seek the presence of God in each other, despite our differences. Importantly, unity does not mean uniformity; God creates us in all of our diversity and we celebrate everything God has made as good. Paul’s letter calls us to remember that regardless of our differences, above all, we are Christ’s.
Let us pray…
Holy God,
We give thanks for the self-emptying love Your Son gave us, taking on all of our sin and brokenness that we would be redeemed and called Your beloved children.
Give us courage to humble ourselves for the sake of the world.
By Your Spirit animate our lives that we are witnesses to your love and mercy.
We pray in the name of your Son Jesus.
Amen.
[i] “Christ Hymn of Philippians.” Enter The Bible. Luther Seminary. https://www.enterthebible.org/Controls/feature/tool_etb_resource_display/resourcebox.aspx?selected_rid=248&original_id=9, accessed 3/25/2019.
[ii] Sharon H. Ringe. “Commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.” Working Preacher Commentary. Luther Seminary.
[iii] C. Clifton Black. “Commentary on Philippians 2:5-11.” Working Preacher Commentary. Luther Seminary.
[iv] Matthew 19:13-14; Mark 10, 13-14; Luke 18:15-16
[v] Matthew 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30
Sunday, March 24, 2019
Third Sunday in Lent
Isaiah 55:1-9; Luke 13:1-9
Not quite three weeks ago, we began Lent with a cross of ashes on our foreheads and the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Confronting our mortality can be jarring as we remember the saints who have gone before us or witness a young child receiving the ashen cross. But the ashes aren’t just about death. In Lent, “what seems like an ending is really an invitation to make each day a new beginning, in which we are washed in God's mercy and forgiveness.”[i]
When Mt. St. Helen’s erupted in May 1980 the ash traveled east and, in many places, it was just an awful mess. But, surprising the farmers there, the crops in the breadbasket of the northwest thrived. It turned out that when the ash fell on wheat fields, it sealed the moisture in the ground for the young thirsty plants. There was more happening there than they could see.
This morning in Isaiah and again in the gospel, we hear echoes of the Ash Wednesday plea from the prophet Joel for God’s people to return to God with all our hearts. First, the Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah to the exiles in Babylonian captivity, telling them, “
6Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Then speaking to the Galileans, Jesus says, “unless you repent, you shall all perish…”
Like death, repentance is one of those words that makes us uncomfortable; after all, who wants to admit that we have failed, been unrighteous or wicked, and need to change direction?
The Good News today is that even as we confess our sin – what we have done and what we have left undone, or the ways in which we have turned in on ourselves – and we repent – turning around and changing direction – there is more happening there than we can see.
I believe this is why Jesus tells the parable that follows.
Remember, parables are the stories Jesus tells that use familiar parts of the lives of his audience to teach them about God. Maybe it’s human nature but when we hear parables, often, we identify with one of the characters and we assign one of the characters to God.
So, when this parable about the barren fig tree is told, the man who owned the vineyard is described as God.
But that interpretation makes God impatient, even angry and detached. It also makes the One who back in Genesis called all created things “very good” ask, “Why should [this barren tree] be wasting the soil?”
That doesn’t sound like the merciful God who we know from God’s activity in the world or the steadfast God whose promises we hold as hope in broken places.
So, what changes if, instead, we identify the man as the world we live in? Isn’t it more in character for the world to be the impatient one, the one expecting more productivity and faster results? The one to call something, or someone, a waste of space or time and threaten to cut it off or destroy it?
The fig tree itself is the Kingdom of God, the ways we live out the fullness of who God has created us to be as God’s people, and proclaim God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness to everyone. We know it takes time and patience to follow Jesus, and sometimes it doesn’t look like much is happening.
Understanding the parable this way, I believe the caring gardener who has nourished and tended the fig tree and watched it for signs of life and growth is a better depiction of the God whom we know from Scripture, the One who understands there is more happening there than the world can see.
Answering Jesus’ call to return to God – to repent - the parable encourages us to renew our trust in God’s promises, believing that God is faithful and will do what God does: bring life from barrenness and restore hope.
It is not for us to know how. As the Lord continues in the reading from Isaiah,
8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
What we do know is that in the waters of baptism God’s mercy is made new every day, and at the Table we are nourished for the journey of discipleship, as we strive to live out our baptismal promises “to live among God's faithful people, to come to the word of God and the holy supper, to be nurtured in faith and prayer, learning to trust God, proclaiming Christ through word and deed, caring for others and the world God made, and working for justice and peace among all people.”[ii]
Our trust in God’s restorative and life-giving promises sets us apart from a world where division sours relationships and corrodes communities and calls us to respond to our neighbors with the same tenderness and mercy that God first gives us, confident there is more happening there than we can see.
Let us pray…
Holy and nurturing God,
Thank for your tender care and for the joy of salvation that we have in faith.
You call us to repent and return to you; by Your Holy Spirit make us obedient;
Teach us humility and patience that as Your disciples we would bear Your mercy and love in the world.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.
[i] “Introduction, Ash Wednesday,” Sundays and Seasons.
[ii] “Affirmation of Baptism,” ELW.
Not quite three weeks ago, we began Lent with a cross of ashes on our foreheads and the words, “You are dust and to dust you shall return.” Confronting our mortality can be jarring as we remember the saints who have gone before us or witness a young child receiving the ashen cross. But the ashes aren’t just about death. In Lent, “what seems like an ending is really an invitation to make each day a new beginning, in which we are washed in God's mercy and forgiveness.”[i]
When Mt. St. Helen’s erupted in May 1980 the ash traveled east and, in many places, it was just an awful mess. But, surprising the farmers there, the crops in the breadbasket of the northwest thrived. It turned out that when the ash fell on wheat fields, it sealed the moisture in the ground for the young thirsty plants. There was more happening there than they could see.
This morning in Isaiah and again in the gospel, we hear echoes of the Ash Wednesday plea from the prophet Joel for God’s people to return to God with all our hearts. First, the Lord speaks through the prophet Isaiah to the exiles in Babylonian captivity, telling them, “
6Seek the Lord while he may be found, call upon him while he is near; 7let the wicked forsake their way, and the unrighteous their thoughts; let them return to the Lord, that he may have mercy on them, and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
Then speaking to the Galileans, Jesus says, “unless you repent, you shall all perish…”
Like death, repentance is one of those words that makes us uncomfortable; after all, who wants to admit that we have failed, been unrighteous or wicked, and need to change direction?
The Good News today is that even as we confess our sin – what we have done and what we have left undone, or the ways in which we have turned in on ourselves – and we repent – turning around and changing direction – there is more happening there than we can see.
I believe this is why Jesus tells the parable that follows.
Remember, parables are the stories Jesus tells that use familiar parts of the lives of his audience to teach them about God. Maybe it’s human nature but when we hear parables, often, we identify with one of the characters and we assign one of the characters to God.
So, when this parable about the barren fig tree is told, the man who owned the vineyard is described as God.
But that interpretation makes God impatient, even angry and detached. It also makes the One who back in Genesis called all created things “very good” ask, “Why should [this barren tree] be wasting the soil?”
That doesn’t sound like the merciful God who we know from God’s activity in the world or the steadfast God whose promises we hold as hope in broken places.
So, what changes if, instead, we identify the man as the world we live in? Isn’t it more in character for the world to be the impatient one, the one expecting more productivity and faster results? The one to call something, or someone, a waste of space or time and threaten to cut it off or destroy it?
The fig tree itself is the Kingdom of God, the ways we live out the fullness of who God has created us to be as God’s people, and proclaim God’s abundant mercy and forgiveness to everyone. We know it takes time and patience to follow Jesus, and sometimes it doesn’t look like much is happening.
Understanding the parable this way, I believe the caring gardener who has nourished and tended the fig tree and watched it for signs of life and growth is a better depiction of the God whom we know from Scripture, the One who understands there is more happening there than the world can see.
Answering Jesus’ call to return to God – to repent - the parable encourages us to renew our trust in God’s promises, believing that God is faithful and will do what God does: bring life from barrenness and restore hope.
It is not for us to know how. As the Lord continues in the reading from Isaiah,
8For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. 9For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.
What we do know is that in the waters of baptism God’s mercy is made new every day, and at the Table we are nourished for the journey of discipleship, as we strive to live out our baptismal promises “to live among God's faithful people, to come to the word of God and the holy supper, to be nurtured in faith and prayer, learning to trust God, proclaiming Christ through word and deed, caring for others and the world God made, and working for justice and peace among all people.”[ii]
Our trust in God’s restorative and life-giving promises sets us apart from a world where division sours relationships and corrodes communities and calls us to respond to our neighbors with the same tenderness and mercy that God first gives us, confident there is more happening there than we can see.
Let us pray…
Holy and nurturing God,
Thank for your tender care and for the joy of salvation that we have in faith.
You call us to repent and return to you; by Your Holy Spirit make us obedient;
Teach us humility and patience that as Your disciples we would bear Your mercy and love in the world.
We pray in the name of Your Son Jesus,
Amen.
[i] “Introduction, Ash Wednesday,” Sundays and Seasons.
[ii] “Affirmation of Baptism,” ELW.
Wednesday, March 20, 2019
Second Wednesday in Lent - "Joyful Witness"
Philippians 1:12-26
We continue reading tonight from Paul’s letter to the Philippians with Chapter 1, verses 12 to 26, and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. 20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
In this part of his letter, Paul tells the church in Philippi that the Gospel has gone farther, or reached more people, because of his imprisonment. Even in chains, he is a witness to the power of faith in Jesus Christ. And in these verses, he is rejoicing in the progress of the Gospel.
Paul persuades us that evangelism – sharing the Good News – can happen under any circumstances.
Rob Bell, an evangelical pastor and author, tells the story of going to a concert with some of his friends and hearing a man shouting at the crowd. He catches the words, “burn”, “sin”, “hell” and “repent” and then he hears the word “Jesus”. The man was shouting in a bullhorn and waving paper pamphlets, telling people if they don’t change their ways and do better, they will face eternal damnation and the fires of hell. He was using Bible passages to hammer home his threats.
Unfortunately, whether it’s from our experience at a concert venue, main street, or television, the man who Bell nicknames “Bullhorn Guy” is what comes to mind for many of us when we hear the word “evangelism.” The word that literally means “the Good News” is now associated with arrogance, coercion and condemnation. And even if you have a more benign or neutral view of evangelism, you might think, like one person said in Bible study on Monday, “we’re Lutheran, we don’t do that.”
And while we don’t often canvas neighborhoods knocking on doors or go on beach trips with Four Spiritual Laws booklets tucked into our pockets, we are each equipped as evangelists because of the faith we have in Christ to be witnesses to the Gospel. And, tonight, I want us to reclaim the practice of evangelism, if not the word itself.
In his book about Philippians Because of This I Rejoice, Max Vincent tells a story from when he was in the third grade and a friend on the school bus asked him, “What is your witness?” After a minute of panic, he told the boy that he knew God loved him even though God knew the bad things he had done. That was a new idea to the boy and their conversation continued from there.
Importantly, God has to be the subject when we are sharing the Good News.
Tonight is a great example; you have chosen to gather for worship and for prayer because it means something to you to be part of the Body of Christ, to hear God’s Word spoken and preached, or to take time apart from the rest of your day to encounter God. If someone asked you, “What did you do Wednesday night?” what would you say? Is Lenten worship a joyful practice for you? Why?
Remembering that God creates us for relationship and doesn’t want us to be alone, maybe you could talk about your gratitude for sharing a table with friends or the importance of the relationships you have here.
Or, remembering that God is revealed in the Word and the Spirit gathers us as God’s people, you could explain that worship nourishes you and strengthens you for the challenges you face the rest of the week or how the music lifts your spirit.
Often our personal experiences can be a reference point for our witness of the Gospel, but we can also tell the stories of what is happening around the world remembering that we are one part of the Body of Christ the whole world over. Then we get to celebrate when congregations partner together to provide housing to the homeless or offer disaster relief to flooded communities like those in eastern North Carolina or Nebraska, or we hear about the young adults in global mission working in other countries to share God’s love with the world.
Vincent challenges us to identify where Christ is at the center of our lives and to share why we make the choices we make when we are in conversation with others.
Like Paul who rejoiced despite his imprisonment, invite people to be curious about your faith. Who knows - we may be surprised at the unexpected ways God uses us and our circumstances to further the reach of the Gospel.
Let us pray…
Holy God, We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus and the gift of salvation You have given each of us.
May we always be joyful remembering Your abundant love and mercy for us.
Give us courage to witness to your redeeming love.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
We continue reading tonight from Paul’s letter to the Philippians with Chapter 1, verses 12 to 26, and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
12 Now I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that what has happened to me has actually served to advance the gospel. 13 As a result, it has become clear throughout the whole palace guard and to everyone else that I am in chains for Christ. 14 And because of my chains, most of the brothers and sisters have become confident in the Lord and dare all the more to proclaim the gospel without fear
15 It is true that some preach Christ out of envy and rivalry, but others out of goodwill. 16 The latter do so out of love, knowing that I am put here for the defense of the gospel. 17 The former preach Christ out of selfish ambition, not sincerely, supposing that they can stir up trouble for me while I am in chains. 18 But what does it matter? The important thing is that in every way, whether from false motives or true, Christ is preached. And because of this I rejoice.
Yes, and I will continue to rejoice, 19 for I know that through your prayers and God’s provision of the Spirit of Jesus Christ what has happened to me will turn out for my deliverance. 20 I eagerly expect and hope that I will in no way be ashamed, but will have sufficient courage so that now as always Christ will be exalted in my body, whether by life or by death. 21 For to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. 22 If I am to go on living in the body, this will mean fruitful labor for me. Yet what shall I choose? I do not know! 23 I am torn between the two: I desire to depart and be with Christ, which is better by far; 24 but it is more necessary for you that I remain in the body. 25 Convinced of this, I know that I will remain, and I will continue with all of you for your progress and joy in the faith, 26 so that through my being with you again your boasting in Christ Jesus will abound on account of me.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
In this part of his letter, Paul tells the church in Philippi that the Gospel has gone farther, or reached more people, because of his imprisonment. Even in chains, he is a witness to the power of faith in Jesus Christ. And in these verses, he is rejoicing in the progress of the Gospel.
Paul persuades us that evangelism – sharing the Good News – can happen under any circumstances.
Rob Bell, an evangelical pastor and author, tells the story of going to a concert with some of his friends and hearing a man shouting at the crowd. He catches the words, “burn”, “sin”, “hell” and “repent” and then he hears the word “Jesus”. The man was shouting in a bullhorn and waving paper pamphlets, telling people if they don’t change their ways and do better, they will face eternal damnation and the fires of hell. He was using Bible passages to hammer home his threats.
Unfortunately, whether it’s from our experience at a concert venue, main street, or television, the man who Bell nicknames “Bullhorn Guy” is what comes to mind for many of us when we hear the word “evangelism.” The word that literally means “the Good News” is now associated with arrogance, coercion and condemnation. And even if you have a more benign or neutral view of evangelism, you might think, like one person said in Bible study on Monday, “we’re Lutheran, we don’t do that.”
And while we don’t often canvas neighborhoods knocking on doors or go on beach trips with Four Spiritual Laws booklets tucked into our pockets, we are each equipped as evangelists because of the faith we have in Christ to be witnesses to the Gospel. And, tonight, I want us to reclaim the practice of evangelism, if not the word itself.
In his book about Philippians Because of This I Rejoice, Max Vincent tells a story from when he was in the third grade and a friend on the school bus asked him, “What is your witness?” After a minute of panic, he told the boy that he knew God loved him even though God knew the bad things he had done. That was a new idea to the boy and their conversation continued from there.
Importantly, God has to be the subject when we are sharing the Good News.
Tonight is a great example; you have chosen to gather for worship and for prayer because it means something to you to be part of the Body of Christ, to hear God’s Word spoken and preached, or to take time apart from the rest of your day to encounter God. If someone asked you, “What did you do Wednesday night?” what would you say? Is Lenten worship a joyful practice for you? Why?
Remembering that God creates us for relationship and doesn’t want us to be alone, maybe you could talk about your gratitude for sharing a table with friends or the importance of the relationships you have here.
Or, remembering that God is revealed in the Word and the Spirit gathers us as God’s people, you could explain that worship nourishes you and strengthens you for the challenges you face the rest of the week or how the music lifts your spirit.
Often our personal experiences can be a reference point for our witness of the Gospel, but we can also tell the stories of what is happening around the world remembering that we are one part of the Body of Christ the whole world over. Then we get to celebrate when congregations partner together to provide housing to the homeless or offer disaster relief to flooded communities like those in eastern North Carolina or Nebraska, or we hear about the young adults in global mission working in other countries to share God’s love with the world.
Vincent challenges us to identify where Christ is at the center of our lives and to share why we make the choices we make when we are in conversation with others.
Like Paul who rejoiced despite his imprisonment, invite people to be curious about your faith. Who knows - we may be surprised at the unexpected ways God uses us and our circumstances to further the reach of the Gospel.
Let us pray…
Holy God, We give you thanks for Your Son Jesus and the gift of salvation You have given each of us.
May we always be joyful remembering Your abundant love and mercy for us.
Give us courage to witness to your redeeming love.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
Sunday, March 17, 2019
Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 15:1-12, 17-18
Luke 13:31-35
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go, and the cat tells her, “That depends on where you are going.” When Alice replies, “I don’t know” the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
The same thing holds true for discipleship. We can say that in Lent we want to “return to God with all our hearts”, but discipleship isn’t about following blindly or without thinking; it is our response to the knowledge of grace that we have first been given. We can not return to an unknown God.
The Word of God tells us who God is. Last Sunday we heard Moses recount the promises God made to our ancestors in faith and heard how those promises are woven into our identity at baptism: living in the faith we have received, we have confidence in God because we know that we are God’s beloved children and we know what God has accomplished already.
Except when we don’t.
Because sometimes it is hard to believe.
Today, in the Genesis text, we meet Abram, the patriarch of our faith, and of Judaism and Islam. Earlier in the book, God made a three-fold promise to Abram:
first, that his name will be known;
second, that his descendants will be numerous and become a great nation,
and third, that he will be rewarded with land.
These three things are what God will do for Abram.
But in this text, Abram has grown tired of waiting on God and he is arguing with God, questioning God’s faithfulness. He is struggling to believe.
Graciously, God doesn’t get angry, strike him down or revoke His promises. Instead God takes Abram outside and tells him to look up at the sky, saying, “Look toward heaven and count the stars if your are able to count them. …So shall your descendants be.” (15:5)
For generations, stars have helped people navigate or find their way. In Scripture, of course, the magi report the appearance of the star over Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth. (Matthew 2) But for centuries before and since, the stars have guided travelers on the way.
The North Star, which is located so near the earth’s axis that it appears to stay fixed in the sky, is one of the most well-known stars. “In Norse tales, [the North Star or] Polaris was the end of a spike around which the sky rotates; in Mongolian mythology, it’s a peg that holds the world together.”[i] And among the First Nations’ peoples, there’s the tale of Na-gah, a tenacious mountain climbing sheep, who climbs through tunnels to reach the top of the highest mountain he has ever seen. When he reaches the peak, he looks down on the earth from above but then he realizes he cannot get back down and he will die on that mountaintop. His father Shinoh is looking for him from the sky above him and he weeps when he sees that Na-gah can’t return to him. So that his son will not die, Shinoh turns him into a star who will be a guide for “all the living things on the Earth and in the sky.”[ii]
God directs Abram to look at the stars for assurance of God’s promises. The same Creator God who puts the stars in the heavens cares for each one of us. “We know,” from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28-29) This is the confidence we have in faith.
While Abram makes many missteps (because we know this isn’t the last time he will try to wrest control of his circumstances from God) today’s gospel shows us another way. When the Pharisees come to Jesus and warn him that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus remains steadfast. He is committed to the work he is doing – casting out demons and performing cures – and he is un-willing to change his plans for the convenience of avoiding confrontation or escaping opposition. He persists, telling the Pharisees he will finish the work he has been given and then he will leave. He will not let fear make his decisions for him.
Created by God and redeemed as God’s children, we too are called to obedience.
In modern culture where autonomy or independence are celebrated, obedience — submitting to the authority of anyone other than ourselves — is counter-cultural. In our school days, obedience might have meant a grudging and grumbling acquiescence accompanied by eye rolling. Even now a call to obedience might provoke resentment as though obedience to someone or something demands an unwarranted and undeserved sacrifice. But the late pastor and author Eugene Peterson described obedience as “the strength to stand and the willingness to leap.”[iii]
Obedience is our response to God’s good and generous grace that has been poured out upon us. In faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our obedience to God flows from our salvation.[iv]
This Lent as we commit to return to God with all our hearts, may we be confident in what God’s Word tells us about who God is and who we are as God’s children, and obediently follow Jesus, looking for the Light of the World to guide us just as the stars led Abram, the magi and centuries of travelers on the way before us.
Remembering God used the stars as a sign of the promises given to God’s people, I invite you to take the paper star that is inside your bulletin and write down a prayer or a promise that you want to make. You may put your star in the offering plate later during worship or keep it for yourself as a reminder of God’s faithfulness.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
You made the heavens and the earth and then you made us!
Thank for your creative and life-giving Spirit that enlivens us to witness to your abundant mercy and grace.
Help us return our hearts to You that we would obey Your Word in all things.
Strengthen us to follow Your Son Jesus and stand for those who cannot.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Daniel Johnson. “Meet Polaris, the North Star.” Sky and Telescope, April 19, 2018. https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/stargazing-basics/meet-polaris-the-north-star/ accessed 3/16/2019.
[ii] “Why the North Star Stands Still: A Paiute Legend.” https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WhytheNorthStarStandsStill-Paiute.html, accessed 3/16/2019.
[iii] Paraphrased from Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 164-165
[iv] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 405.
Luke 13:31-35
In Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland Alice asks the Cheshire Cat which way she should go, and the cat tells her, “That depends on where you are going.” When Alice replies, “I don’t know” the cat says, “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go.”
The same thing holds true for discipleship. We can say that in Lent we want to “return to God with all our hearts”, but discipleship isn’t about following blindly or without thinking; it is our response to the knowledge of grace that we have first been given. We can not return to an unknown God.
The Word of God tells us who God is. Last Sunday we heard Moses recount the promises God made to our ancestors in faith and heard how those promises are woven into our identity at baptism: living in the faith we have received, we have confidence in God because we know that we are God’s beloved children and we know what God has accomplished already.
Except when we don’t.
Because sometimes it is hard to believe.
Today, in the Genesis text, we meet Abram, the patriarch of our faith, and of Judaism and Islam. Earlier in the book, God made a three-fold promise to Abram:
first, that his name will be known;
second, that his descendants will be numerous and become a great nation,
and third, that he will be rewarded with land.
These three things are what God will do for Abram.
But in this text, Abram has grown tired of waiting on God and he is arguing with God, questioning God’s faithfulness. He is struggling to believe.
Graciously, God doesn’t get angry, strike him down or revoke His promises. Instead God takes Abram outside and tells him to look up at the sky, saying, “Look toward heaven and count the stars if your are able to count them. …So shall your descendants be.” (15:5)
For generations, stars have helped people navigate or find their way. In Scripture, of course, the magi report the appearance of the star over Bethlehem at Jesus’ birth. (Matthew 2) But for centuries before and since, the stars have guided travelers on the way.
The North Star, which is located so near the earth’s axis that it appears to stay fixed in the sky, is one of the most well-known stars. “In Norse tales, [the North Star or] Polaris was the end of a spike around which the sky rotates; in Mongolian mythology, it’s a peg that holds the world together.”[i] And among the First Nations’ peoples, there’s the tale of Na-gah, a tenacious mountain climbing sheep, who climbs through tunnels to reach the top of the highest mountain he has ever seen. When he reaches the peak, he looks down on the earth from above but then he realizes he cannot get back down and he will die on that mountaintop. His father Shinoh is looking for him from the sky above him and he weeps when he sees that Na-gah can’t return to him. So that his son will not die, Shinoh turns him into a star who will be a guide for “all the living things on the Earth and in the sky.”[ii]
God directs Abram to look at the stars for assurance of God’s promises. The same Creator God who puts the stars in the heavens cares for each one of us. “We know,” from Paul’s letter to the Romans, “that all things work together for good for those who love God, who are called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28-29) This is the confidence we have in faith.
While Abram makes many missteps (because we know this isn’t the last time he will try to wrest control of his circumstances from God) today’s gospel shows us another way. When the Pharisees come to Jesus and warn him that Herod wants to kill him, Jesus remains steadfast. He is committed to the work he is doing – casting out demons and performing cures – and he is un-willing to change his plans for the convenience of avoiding confrontation or escaping opposition. He persists, telling the Pharisees he will finish the work he has been given and then he will leave. He will not let fear make his decisions for him.
Created by God and redeemed as God’s children, we too are called to obedience.
In modern culture where autonomy or independence are celebrated, obedience — submitting to the authority of anyone other than ourselves — is counter-cultural. In our school days, obedience might have meant a grudging and grumbling acquiescence accompanied by eye rolling. Even now a call to obedience might provoke resentment as though obedience to someone or something demands an unwarranted and undeserved sacrifice. But the late pastor and author Eugene Peterson described obedience as “the strength to stand and the willingness to leap.”[iii]
Obedience is our response to God’s good and generous grace that has been poured out upon us. In faith, we are freed for the sake of the world, and our obedience to God flows from our salvation.[iv]
This Lent as we commit to return to God with all our hearts, may we be confident in what God’s Word tells us about who God is and who we are as God’s children, and obediently follow Jesus, looking for the Light of the World to guide us just as the stars led Abram, the magi and centuries of travelers on the way before us.
Remembering God used the stars as a sign of the promises given to God’s people, I invite you to take the paper star that is inside your bulletin and write down a prayer or a promise that you want to make. You may put your star in the offering plate later during worship or keep it for yourself as a reminder of God’s faithfulness.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
You made the heavens and the earth and then you made us!
Thank for your creative and life-giving Spirit that enlivens us to witness to your abundant mercy and grace.
Help us return our hearts to You that we would obey Your Word in all things.
Strengthen us to follow Your Son Jesus and stand for those who cannot.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] Daniel Johnson. “Meet Polaris, the North Star.” Sky and Telescope, April 19, 2018. https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/stargazing-basics/meet-polaris-the-north-star/ accessed 3/16/2019.
[ii] “Why the North Star Stands Still: A Paiute Legend.” https://www.firstpeople.us/FP-Html-Legends/WhytheNorthStarStandsStill-Paiute.html, accessed 3/16/2019.
[iii] Paraphrased from Eugene Peterson, A Long Obedience, p. 164-165
[iv] Luther, Freedom of a Christian, 405.
Wednesday, March 13, 2019
First Wednesday in Lent - "Joyful Prayer"
Philippians 1:1-13
Our reading tonight is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
These words are the beginning of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, one of the congregations he planted in the eastern and northern Mediterranean during his missionary travels. It is one of his prison letters, written sometime between 50 and 60 CE. We know that Paul was imprisoned in Jerusalem and in Rome several different times during the years that he traveled, and “although his death is not recorded in the Bible, later traditions say that he was martyred near Rome, probably between 60-64 C.E., during Emperor Nero's reign.”[i]
As you listen to the words he has written, imagine that he is sitting in what was likely a crudely dug hole in the ground that served as a prison. He would have been dependent upon people who knew him to provide him with food and to be couriers for his correspondence.
But uncertainty and anxiety are not the emotions we hear in Paul’s words. Instead, his letters characteristically begin with thanksgiving. He gives thanks first to “all the saints” – not the ones who will be canonized in the church in future centuries, and not the ancient heroes of the faith whose names would have been known then, but the living and gathered saints who are all the people of this congregation right now.
He is in prison, locked up and separated from those whom he loves, but he has a deep well of thanksgiving that is grounded in their common Lord Jesus Christ.
Continuing his letter, Paul tells the Philippians that he is making his prayers for them with joy.
Beginning with the ashes we put on last Wednesday, traditionally, the season of Lent involves sober reflection, confession and repentance. In a Family Circus comic strip, Dorothy sees her mother holding a crucifix, where Jesus is hanging on the cross, and says, “I liked seeing Jesus in the manger better.” We expect joy in the Christmas story and certainly at Easter, after the resurrection, but reading Philippians, Methodist pastor and author Max Vincent suggests that joy belongs in Lent, too.
What do you think Paul means when he says he is praying with joy? (pause) Is it joy because they’re such wonderful friends, or because prayer is his favorite way to pass the time?
If I’m honest with myself, remembering that God already knows my heart, joy isn’t immediately what comes to mind when I think or talk about prayer. Sometimes, when I pray, it is with an agenda – God, please fix this situation or heal that person; other times, I pray because I promised I would and now I’m checking it off the to-do list. Other times, I might pray a familiar prayer like the Lord’s Prayer and my mind wanders or I worry if I’m saying the words everyone else knows. In another Family Circus comic, little Billy is on his knees praying when he tells his mother, “In case God is tired of the same old prayer, I recited Humpty Dumpty [tonight].”
Importantly, Paul’s pattern of joyful prayer begins and ends with God.[ii] He has witnessed how God is working already in the lives of his friends and he has confidence that God will continue to accomplish good work through them. His ability to give thanks and pray joyfully flows out of unity in Christ with the people in Philippi and in their shared partnership in the gospel.
This week, come before the Lord with joy as you make your prayers; maybe you can adopt a prayer of thanksgiving like Paul’s, or try another prayer practice just for this Lenten season.
Throughout Lent we will be reading Philippians together, learning more about the joy that Paul experiences in faith and expresses in this letter. Each week we’ll hear about a different discipline that Paul carries out – prayer, witness, humility, hospitality, asceticism and giving – and challenge ourselves to come to our discipline of Lent joyfully.
Let us pray…
Holy God,
Fill our mouths with laughter and our tongues with joy as we remember all you have done; (Ps. 126)
We come before you with thanksgiving for your Son Jesus Christ, and for your abundant mercy.
Help us know the joy we all have in salvation and teach us to rejoice with all Your saints, confident You are present with us in all circumstances.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] “Paul.” enterthebible.org Luther Seminary. http://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=9, accessed 3/12/2109
[ii] Max O. Vincent. Because of This I Rejoice. 34.
Our reading tonight is from Paul’s letter to the Philippians and I am reading from the English Standard Version translation:
1 Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, To all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi, with the overseers and deacons:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,
4 always in every prayer of mine for you all making my prayer with joy,
5 because of your partnership in the gospel from the first day until now.
6 And I am sure of this, that he who began a good work in you will bring it to completion at the day of Jesus Christ.
7 It is right for me to feel this way about you all, because I hold you in my heart, for you are all partakers with me of grace, both in my imprisonment and in the defense and confirmation of the gospel.
8 For God is my witness, how I yearn for you all with the affection of Christ Jesus.
9 And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more, with knowledge and all discernment,
10 so that you may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,
11 filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ, to the glory and praise of God.
The Word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.
These words are the beginning of Paul’s letter to the church at Philippi, one of the congregations he planted in the eastern and northern Mediterranean during his missionary travels. It is one of his prison letters, written sometime between 50 and 60 CE. We know that Paul was imprisoned in Jerusalem and in Rome several different times during the years that he traveled, and “although his death is not recorded in the Bible, later traditions say that he was martyred near Rome, probably between 60-64 C.E., during Emperor Nero's reign.”[i]
As you listen to the words he has written, imagine that he is sitting in what was likely a crudely dug hole in the ground that served as a prison. He would have been dependent upon people who knew him to provide him with food and to be couriers for his correspondence.
But uncertainty and anxiety are not the emotions we hear in Paul’s words. Instead, his letters characteristically begin with thanksgiving. He gives thanks first to “all the saints” – not the ones who will be canonized in the church in future centuries, and not the ancient heroes of the faith whose names would have been known then, but the living and gathered saints who are all the people of this congregation right now.
He is in prison, locked up and separated from those whom he loves, but he has a deep well of thanksgiving that is grounded in their common Lord Jesus Christ.
Continuing his letter, Paul tells the Philippians that he is making his prayers for them with joy.
Beginning with the ashes we put on last Wednesday, traditionally, the season of Lent involves sober reflection, confession and repentance. In a Family Circus comic strip, Dorothy sees her mother holding a crucifix, where Jesus is hanging on the cross, and says, “I liked seeing Jesus in the manger better.” We expect joy in the Christmas story and certainly at Easter, after the resurrection, but reading Philippians, Methodist pastor and author Max Vincent suggests that joy belongs in Lent, too.
What do you think Paul means when he says he is praying with joy? (pause) Is it joy because they’re such wonderful friends, or because prayer is his favorite way to pass the time?
If I’m honest with myself, remembering that God already knows my heart, joy isn’t immediately what comes to mind when I think or talk about prayer. Sometimes, when I pray, it is with an agenda – God, please fix this situation or heal that person; other times, I pray because I promised I would and now I’m checking it off the to-do list. Other times, I might pray a familiar prayer like the Lord’s Prayer and my mind wanders or I worry if I’m saying the words everyone else knows. In another Family Circus comic, little Billy is on his knees praying when he tells his mother, “In case God is tired of the same old prayer, I recited Humpty Dumpty [tonight].”
Importantly, Paul’s pattern of joyful prayer begins and ends with God.[ii] He has witnessed how God is working already in the lives of his friends and he has confidence that God will continue to accomplish good work through them. His ability to give thanks and pray joyfully flows out of unity in Christ with the people in Philippi and in their shared partnership in the gospel.
This week, come before the Lord with joy as you make your prayers; maybe you can adopt a prayer of thanksgiving like Paul’s, or try another prayer practice just for this Lenten season.
Throughout Lent we will be reading Philippians together, learning more about the joy that Paul experiences in faith and expresses in this letter. Each week we’ll hear about a different discipline that Paul carries out – prayer, witness, humility, hospitality, asceticism and giving – and challenge ourselves to come to our discipline of Lent joyfully.
Let us pray…
Holy God,
Fill our mouths with laughter and our tongues with joy as we remember all you have done; (Ps. 126)
We come before you with thanksgiving for your Son Jesus Christ, and for your abundant mercy.
Help us know the joy we all have in salvation and teach us to rejoice with all Your saints, confident You are present with us in all circumstances.
We pray in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
[i] “Paul.” enterthebible.org Luther Seminary. http://www.enterthebible.org/newtestament.aspx?rid=9, accessed 3/12/2109
[ii] Max O. Vincent. Because of This I Rejoice. 34.
Sunday, March 10, 2019
First Sunday in Lent
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
Luke 4:1-13
For as long as I can remember, black and white photographs hung on the walls of my grandparents’ house at Buggs Island Lake. Most of the pictures on the walls were snapshots from my mother’s childhood, together with her brother and sister, but there were a couple of older portraits too and pictures of my grandparents’ travels out west and to China. On a bookshelf there were more photographs in albums that told the story of how they had built their house, room by room, year by year.
My grandmommy is the person who got me interested in our family history. Computers and the internet were still relatively new technology for any of us who weren’t engineers or computer scientists, but she had carefully printed notes that recorded the generations of my grandfather’s family back to their arrival from Yorkshire, England. In the decades since, I have added to her notes and shared our ancestors’ stories with my own children.
This kind of recitation of stories and preservation of memories is at the heart of today’s reading from Deuteronomy. The last of the five books of the Jewish Torah, or Pentateuch, Deuteronomy retells the stories of the covenant relationship between God and God’s people in a series of speeches and acts by Moses.
Our text this morning is part of one of Moses’ last speeches to the Hebrew people before his death and their entry into the promised land without him. Here he is recalling God’s generosity to them and instructing them about making an offering of first fruits when they enter the new land. As part of making their offering, he tells them to recite their history as God’s people, beginning with the words, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….”
Tracing their family’s ancestral history of Jacob’s flight to Egypt during the famine, through slavery to the Pharaoh, their escape across the Reed Sea and their exodus in the wilderness, they would not quickly forget where they had come from and whose shoulders they stood on. With repetition, the story of God’s generosity and salvation is woven into each person’s identity and becomes part of the warp and weft of the fabric of the community’s identity, too.
In the same way, the promises of God that we have been given are woven into our identity at our baptism when we receive the promise of forgiveness and new life in Christ.
Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber once told the story that, when Martin Luther himself was hiding away in a castle translating the Bible into German so that for the very first time somewhat regular folks could read the Word of God for themselves, he struggled mightily with doubt and discouragement from what he understood to be the devil. And he was known to not only throw the occasional ink pots at whatever was tormenting him and causing him to doubt God's promises, but while doing so he could be heard throughout the castle grounds shouting “I am baptized!”.[i]
In today’s gospel account, we hear Luke’s telling of the temptation of Jesus after his baptism. And, every time the devil questions who Jesus is, and tries to lure him into a lie, Jesus responds immediately with the Truth that he knows in God’s Word. Jesus knows the promises God has made; he is confident in God’s power to fulfill those promises; and he refuses to believe the devil’s lies.
The season of Lent mirrors the forty years that Israel spent in the wilderness before they reached Canaan and the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. Listening to their stories, I wonder, “How do we respond when we are tempted to forget God’s generosity? Do we take God’s promises seriously?”
Right now, I am listening to a book The Ragged Edge of Night; it’s a story set in the early 1940s in Germany and one of the characters is a former Franciscan friar whose order was disbanded when the Nazi party dismantled Catholic institutions as their power grew. As the man tells his story, he is reconciling his former life in the order where he wore a simple grey habit and cincture, lived in one room and worked as a teacher - where all his needs were provided for - to his current circumstances where his coat is now thread bare, he is living in a village under austere war-time conditions and he is eking out a living teaching music. Even as his faith sustains him in difficulty, he wrestles with the world he is living in and the brokenness that he witnesses. He could respond in anger or self-pity, but he doesn’t.
Remembering God’s generosity doesn’t mean that we will never experience suffering or want; in fact, it isn’t about money or wealth at all. Remembering God’s generosity is remembering that God has chosen relationship over exile, love over judgment and life over death, making us God’s own beloved children.
We don’t have photographs or albums that tell us the story of our ancestors in faith. Our identity as God’s children flows out of our relationship with God, established at creation, affirmed in baptism and nourished every time we come to the table for Holy Communion. With thanksgiving, we remember who we are as children of God when we hear again the stories of the generations before us and the promises God gave them and we say again the words of our faith in prayer and liturgy and sing them in our hymns and proclaim again God’s love to the world.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
Thank you for our ancestors in faith who led us to You and for bringing us to be fed and forgiven;
Imprint your saving word on our hearts and in our mouths that we can respond with Your truth when we face the devil;
Teach us to respond to the world with generous spirits and hearts that reflect your abundant love.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.
[i] https://sojo.net/articles/how-say-defiantly-i-am-baptized, accessed 3/8/2019
Luke 4:1-13
For as long as I can remember, black and white photographs hung on the walls of my grandparents’ house at Buggs Island Lake. Most of the pictures on the walls were snapshots from my mother’s childhood, together with her brother and sister, but there were a couple of older portraits too and pictures of my grandparents’ travels out west and to China. On a bookshelf there were more photographs in albums that told the story of how they had built their house, room by room, year by year.
My grandmommy is the person who got me interested in our family history. Computers and the internet were still relatively new technology for any of us who weren’t engineers or computer scientists, but she had carefully printed notes that recorded the generations of my grandfather’s family back to their arrival from Yorkshire, England. In the decades since, I have added to her notes and shared our ancestors’ stories with my own children.
This kind of recitation of stories and preservation of memories is at the heart of today’s reading from Deuteronomy. The last of the five books of the Jewish Torah, or Pentateuch, Deuteronomy retells the stories of the covenant relationship between God and God’s people in a series of speeches and acts by Moses.
Our text this morning is part of one of Moses’ last speeches to the Hebrew people before his death and their entry into the promised land without him. Here he is recalling God’s generosity to them and instructing them about making an offering of first fruits when they enter the new land. As part of making their offering, he tells them to recite their history as God’s people, beginning with the words, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor….”
Tracing their family’s ancestral history of Jacob’s flight to Egypt during the famine, through slavery to the Pharaoh, their escape across the Reed Sea and their exodus in the wilderness, they would not quickly forget where they had come from and whose shoulders they stood on. With repetition, the story of God’s generosity and salvation is woven into each person’s identity and becomes part of the warp and weft of the fabric of the community’s identity, too.
In the same way, the promises of God that we have been given are woven into our identity at our baptism when we receive the promise of forgiveness and new life in Christ.
Lutheran pastor and author Nadia Bolz-Weber once told the story that, when Martin Luther himself was hiding away in a castle translating the Bible into German so that for the very first time somewhat regular folks could read the Word of God for themselves, he struggled mightily with doubt and discouragement from what he understood to be the devil. And he was known to not only throw the occasional ink pots at whatever was tormenting him and causing him to doubt God's promises, but while doing so he could be heard throughout the castle grounds shouting “I am baptized!”.[i]
In today’s gospel account, we hear Luke’s telling of the temptation of Jesus after his baptism. And, every time the devil questions who Jesus is, and tries to lure him into a lie, Jesus responds immediately with the Truth that he knows in God’s Word. Jesus knows the promises God has made; he is confident in God’s power to fulfill those promises; and he refuses to believe the devil’s lies.
The season of Lent mirrors the forty years that Israel spent in the wilderness before they reached Canaan and the forty days that Jesus spent in the wilderness. Listening to their stories, I wonder, “How do we respond when we are tempted to forget God’s generosity? Do we take God’s promises seriously?”
Right now, I am listening to a book The Ragged Edge of Night; it’s a story set in the early 1940s in Germany and one of the characters is a former Franciscan friar whose order was disbanded when the Nazi party dismantled Catholic institutions as their power grew. As the man tells his story, he is reconciling his former life in the order where he wore a simple grey habit and cincture, lived in one room and worked as a teacher - where all his needs were provided for - to his current circumstances where his coat is now thread bare, he is living in a village under austere war-time conditions and he is eking out a living teaching music. Even as his faith sustains him in difficulty, he wrestles with the world he is living in and the brokenness that he witnesses. He could respond in anger or self-pity, but he doesn’t.
Remembering God’s generosity doesn’t mean that we will never experience suffering or want; in fact, it isn’t about money or wealth at all. Remembering God’s generosity is remembering that God has chosen relationship over exile, love over judgment and life over death, making us God’s own beloved children.
We don’t have photographs or albums that tell us the story of our ancestors in faith. Our identity as God’s children flows out of our relationship with God, established at creation, affirmed in baptism and nourished every time we come to the table for Holy Communion. With thanksgiving, we remember who we are as children of God when we hear again the stories of the generations before us and the promises God gave them and we say again the words of our faith in prayer and liturgy and sing them in our hymns and proclaim again God’s love to the world.
Let us pray.
Holy God,
Thank you for our ancestors in faith who led us to You and for bringing us to be fed and forgiven;
Imprint your saving word on our hearts and in our mouths that we can respond with Your truth when we face the devil;
Teach us to respond to the world with generous spirits and hearts that reflect your abundant love.
We pray in the name of Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen.
[i] https://sojo.net/articles/how-say-defiantly-i-am-baptized, accessed 3/8/2019
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Ash Wednesday
Matthew 6:1-6,16-21
In some congregations this past Sunday people were invited to bury the “alleluias” signaling the beginning of Lent. One colleague lamented the year he had hidden them in the baptismal font and forgotten where they were stashed; colleagues were reminded that if they were burying the alleluias, they better have a way to remember where they’re hidden. It’s fun for me to imagine having a roughly drawn treasure map thumbtacked to the wall in the sacristy or tucked here into the pulpit Bible to show us the way back to the treasure at Easter.
But in practice, burying the alleluias for Lent — or simply refraining from using the word for “Praise God!” that occurs so frequently in our liturgy and songs — is one example of a discipline where we take a rest from something in order that its meaning or significance will be renewed when we return.
Through giving, fasting and prayer, the season of Lent invites us to rest.
Giving beckons us to step off the treadmill of everyday life that is always urging us to do more and have more. Resting in the knowledge that God cares for each one of us as lilies in the field, we are reminded that all we have has been given to us by God and belongs to God already and we are commanded to give the best of our first fruits to God, instead of withholding them or keeping them for ourselves. And when we give to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger, (Mt. 25) our sight is renewed and we see each person with God’s eyes, as a fully human and fully loved child of God.
Fasting — giving something up for a period of time — also invites us to rest. Instead of filling ourselves up with activity or junk food, we empty ourselves. A common spiritual practice in Scripture, fasting isn’t about inflicting suffering; it is about heightening our attentiveness to what God is doing.1 Whether we fast from a particular food or a habit, fasting creates space for us to be filled by God.
Prayer, often described as talking to God, invites us to rest from all the other things we could be doing so that we can draw close to God and renew our strength. Prayer lets us name the concerns of our hearts, but the best conversations aren’t one-sided, so prayer also asks us to wait on the Lord to speak. Amid the noise and wordiness of our lives, silence invites us to listen for God.
Safe in God’s care, filled by God’s Spirit and renewed by God’s Word for us, we are strengthened for whatever lies ahead.
Today on Ash Wednesday, particularly, we prepare for Lent with confession and repentance. We confess our sin— the way we curve in on ourselves, and away from God; the ways we live imperfectly as disciples; the ways we make idols of our stuff, our desires and our selves; the ways we stumble and do our own thing instead of following Jesus.
Our repentance is not passive. As we put on ashes, we commit to actively “turn around” — to turn away from ourselves and return to God with all our heart. Lent offers us opportunities to find meaningful practices that help us live as followers of Jesus, not just for forty days but for all time.
Let us pray…
Holy Lord,
We give you thanks for your abundant mercy and love;
teach us how to follow your Son Jesus and find our treasure in You;
when we are weak in faith, strengthen us and fill us with your Holy Spirit.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our savior and Lord.
Amen.
1 www.bishopmike.com
In some congregations this past Sunday people were invited to bury the “alleluias” signaling the beginning of Lent. One colleague lamented the year he had hidden them in the baptismal font and forgotten where they were stashed; colleagues were reminded that if they were burying the alleluias, they better have a way to remember where they’re hidden. It’s fun for me to imagine having a roughly drawn treasure map thumbtacked to the wall in the sacristy or tucked here into the pulpit Bible to show us the way back to the treasure at Easter.
But in practice, burying the alleluias for Lent — or simply refraining from using the word for “Praise God!” that occurs so frequently in our liturgy and songs — is one example of a discipline where we take a rest from something in order that its meaning or significance will be renewed when we return.
Through giving, fasting and prayer, the season of Lent invites us to rest.
Giving beckons us to step off the treadmill of everyday life that is always urging us to do more and have more. Resting in the knowledge that God cares for each one of us as lilies in the field, we are reminded that all we have has been given to us by God and belongs to God already and we are commanded to give the best of our first fruits to God, instead of withholding them or keeping them for ourselves. And when we give to clothe the naked, feed the hungry, and welcome the stranger, (Mt. 25) our sight is renewed and we see each person with God’s eyes, as a fully human and fully loved child of God.
Fasting — giving something up for a period of time — also invites us to rest. Instead of filling ourselves up with activity or junk food, we empty ourselves. A common spiritual practice in Scripture, fasting isn’t about inflicting suffering; it is about heightening our attentiveness to what God is doing.1 Whether we fast from a particular food or a habit, fasting creates space for us to be filled by God.
Prayer, often described as talking to God, invites us to rest from all the other things we could be doing so that we can draw close to God and renew our strength. Prayer lets us name the concerns of our hearts, but the best conversations aren’t one-sided, so prayer also asks us to wait on the Lord to speak. Amid the noise and wordiness of our lives, silence invites us to listen for God.
Safe in God’s care, filled by God’s Spirit and renewed by God’s Word for us, we are strengthened for whatever lies ahead.
Today on Ash Wednesday, particularly, we prepare for Lent with confession and repentance. We confess our sin— the way we curve in on ourselves, and away from God; the ways we live imperfectly as disciples; the ways we make idols of our stuff, our desires and our selves; the ways we stumble and do our own thing instead of following Jesus.
Our repentance is not passive. As we put on ashes, we commit to actively “turn around” — to turn away from ourselves and return to God with all our heart. Lent offers us opportunities to find meaningful practices that help us live as followers of Jesus, not just for forty days but for all time.
Let us pray…
Holy Lord,
We give you thanks for your abundant mercy and love;
teach us how to follow your Son Jesus and find our treasure in You;
when we are weak in faith, strengthen us and fill us with your Holy Spirit.
We pray in the name of Jesus, our savior and Lord.
Amen.
1 www.bishopmike.com
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Transfiguration of our Lord
Luke 9:28-43
When I read the gospel assigned for today, my first question was, “Why are there two stories?”
Sometimes Jesus uses a story to answer a question. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the story of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 10 when he answers the lawyer who asked, “Who is my neighbor?”
But that’s not what is happening here.
Other times Jesus uses multiple stories to explain a characteristic of God. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the parable of lost things in Chapter 15 connecting three different, but clearly related stories, to describe the joy God finds in relationship with us.
But that’s not what is happening here, either.
In this passage, the connection between the stories isn’t obvious. Instead, Chapter 9 reads more like a series of journal or diary entries by one of the apostles:
Day 1: Jesus commissioned us today “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (Luke 9:2)
Day 6: What a success! We proclaimed the good news and cured diseases everywhere!
Day 7: Now we’re back in Galilee and crowds have gathered around Jesus. Today, more than five thousand men plus women and children were there and Jesus “spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” (Luke 9:11)
And tonight, Jesus predicted that he will suffer and be rejected by the leaders here in Israel. He told us he will be killed!
Later when he asked us who people say that he is and who we say that he is, Peter declared that Jesus isn’t one of the ancient prophets or John the Baptiser raised from the dead, but the Messiah of God, the Christ, the anointed one whom God has promised to us.
Day 15: A couple of us went up on the mountain to pray with Jesus and are still overwhelmed by what we saw and heard there. God spoke to us on that mountaintop!
And after we came back down the mountain, we were again surrounded by crowds who need Jesus.
It turns out the stories in today’s gospel have more in common than I first knew, revealing two different portraits of the holiness of God.
The first one is what we expect “holiness” to look and sound like: The dazzling clothes and brilliant shining light. Heavenly bodies. A loud voice that sounds like Charlton Heston or Morgan Freeman thundering in our ears. The terrified reaction of the apostles.
But the second story is also about the holiness of God:
If we hear ourselves in the story as one of the apostles, then it’s what happens when we come down off the mountaintops, when we leave our places of sanctuary and worship, when we come face to face with the crowds who still need Jesus.
And if we locate ourselves in those crowds – because we have only glimpsed Jesus from far away, or we’ve eaten with his followers and listened to his teaching, but have not yet experienced the merciful love of God firsthand,
then it is a story of God’s healing grace for us.
Importantly, when I speak about holiness, I am not speaking only of heaven or the divine. God’s holiness is a “both/and.” Psalm 99, an enthronement psalm, proclaims in verse 1, “[God] sits enthroned upon the cherubim” – the winged heavenly creatures who are found in the holiest of places - and in verse 2, “God is great in Zion.” - among the earthly civilizations. As Eden Seminary’s J. Clinton McCann writes, “The holiness of God is not wholly other.” (emphasis mine)
When a colleague wondered out loud what to make of the first story where the apostles on the mountaintop were “drenched in glory”, I remembered Father Richard Rohr’s description of our world as Christ-soaked, made sacred and anointed by God’s presence in us. I believe we have these two stories because we are invited to see how God is being revealed in both the mystical showing of God’s power in God’s only Son and the physical healing of the father’s only child.
In Lutheranism, we believe the work of trans-figuration or trans-formation is ongoing. We confess we are both saint and sinner. We know that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in our salvation through Jesus Christ. And we believe that we are sanctified - or made holy - by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, even as we, like Peter and the others, live as imperfect disciples.
The Transfiguration of our Lord is always immediately before Ash Wednesday, the first day of the forty-day season of Lent. When we gather together on Wednesday particularly, we will confess our sins and commit to return with all our heart to God. Throughout Lent, we are invited to re-discover God’s ongoing presence in our lives, to pray and draw near God, fasting or abstaining from things that distract us from God, and giving out of the abundance that God has first given us.
Drenched in God’s love, mercy and glory, we are invited to be transformed and to participate in the transformation of the world.
Let us pray…
Holy and grace-filled Lord,
Thank you sending Your Son Jesus to us to love us and heal us.
We are drenched by your mercy in baptism and made holy by your Holy Spirit.
Show us how to live as your disciples, and proclaim the good news to all who need Your Son.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.
When I read the gospel assigned for today, my first question was, “Why are there two stories?”
Sometimes Jesus uses a story to answer a question. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the story of the Good Samaritan in Chapter 10 when he answers the lawyer who asked, “Who is my neighbor?”
But that’s not what is happening here.
Other times Jesus uses multiple stories to explain a characteristic of God. That’s what he’s doing when he tells the parable of lost things in Chapter 15 connecting three different, but clearly related stories, to describe the joy God finds in relationship with us.
But that’s not what is happening here, either.
In this passage, the connection between the stories isn’t obvious. Instead, Chapter 9 reads more like a series of journal or diary entries by one of the apostles:
Day 1: Jesus commissioned us today “to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal.” (Luke 9:2)
Day 6: What a success! We proclaimed the good news and cured diseases everywhere!
Day 7: Now we’re back in Galilee and crowds have gathered around Jesus. Today, more than five thousand men plus women and children were there and Jesus “spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who needed to be cured.” (Luke 9:11)
And tonight, Jesus predicted that he will suffer and be rejected by the leaders here in Israel. He told us he will be killed!
Later when he asked us who people say that he is and who we say that he is, Peter declared that Jesus isn’t one of the ancient prophets or John the Baptiser raised from the dead, but the Messiah of God, the Christ, the anointed one whom God has promised to us.
Day 15: A couple of us went up on the mountain to pray with Jesus and are still overwhelmed by what we saw and heard there. God spoke to us on that mountaintop!
And after we came back down the mountain, we were again surrounded by crowds who need Jesus.
It turns out the stories in today’s gospel have more in common than I first knew, revealing two different portraits of the holiness of God.
The first one is what we expect “holiness” to look and sound like: The dazzling clothes and brilliant shining light. Heavenly bodies. A loud voice that sounds like Charlton Heston or Morgan Freeman thundering in our ears. The terrified reaction of the apostles.
But the second story is also about the holiness of God:
If we hear ourselves in the story as one of the apostles, then it’s what happens when we come down off the mountaintops, when we leave our places of sanctuary and worship, when we come face to face with the crowds who still need Jesus.
And if we locate ourselves in those crowds – because we have only glimpsed Jesus from far away, or we’ve eaten with his followers and listened to his teaching, but have not yet experienced the merciful love of God firsthand,
then it is a story of God’s healing grace for us.
Importantly, when I speak about holiness, I am not speaking only of heaven or the divine. God’s holiness is a “both/and.” Psalm 99, an enthronement psalm, proclaims in verse 1, “[God] sits enthroned upon the cherubim” – the winged heavenly creatures who are found in the holiest of places - and in verse 2, “God is great in Zion.” - among the earthly civilizations. As Eden Seminary’s J. Clinton McCann writes, “The holiness of God is not wholly other.” (emphasis mine)
When a colleague wondered out loud what to make of the first story where the apostles on the mountaintop were “drenched in glory”, I remembered Father Richard Rohr’s description of our world as Christ-soaked, made sacred and anointed by God’s presence in us. I believe we have these two stories because we are invited to see how God is being revealed in both the mystical showing of God’s power in God’s only Son and the physical healing of the father’s only child.
In Lutheranism, we believe the work of trans-figuration or trans-formation is ongoing. We confess we are both saint and sinner. We know that we cannot by our own reason or strength believe in our salvation through Jesus Christ. And we believe that we are sanctified - or made holy - by the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, even as we, like Peter and the others, live as imperfect disciples.
The Transfiguration of our Lord is always immediately before Ash Wednesday, the first day of the forty-day season of Lent. When we gather together on Wednesday particularly, we will confess our sins and commit to return with all our heart to God. Throughout Lent, we are invited to re-discover God’s ongoing presence in our lives, to pray and draw near God, fasting or abstaining from things that distract us from God, and giving out of the abundance that God has first given us.
Drenched in God’s love, mercy and glory, we are invited to be transformed and to participate in the transformation of the world.
Let us pray…
Holy and grace-filled Lord,
Thank you sending Your Son Jesus to us to love us and heal us.
We are drenched by your mercy in baptism and made holy by your Holy Spirit.
Show us how to live as your disciples, and proclaim the good news to all who need Your Son.
We pray in Jesus’ name,
Amen.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)