Saturday, February 29
Texts: Psalm 51; Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 18:1-7
Scripture Thought: (Isaiah 58:6-9)“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness[a] will go before you,and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard 9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
Reflection: Outward religion. Pick-and-choose commandments. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. We don’t like these things when we see them displayed by other people; we aren’t always quick to see them in ourselves. If we take the context of the various parts of the Bible into due consideration, we should soon see that this is not a new problem, and it isn’t one which belongs exclusively with one version of Christianity. It’s not just an evangelical issue, or a Catholic short-coming, or a liberal error; it comes across all segments of the church. It occurred in ancient Israel, as the prophet complained, and it was going on in the days when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem and the roads of Judea.
The problem with making the rituals the main thing is not only that is doesn’t get to the heart of God, which it doesn’t do if unaccompanied by an understanding of the purpose for the practices; the bigger problem is that succeeding generations will come to think of the ritual practices as the “real thing” regarding godly living. Then when it is concluded that no spiritual, economic, or physical benefit is being derived from such observances, the faith itself will eventually be abandoned by a new generation. And the bigger problem still is that those who suffer in the world, longing for the blessings of dignity, value, and simple daily bread will go without them.
There are positive actions appropriate for God’s people; it is not just a matter of not doing evil, but of actively engaging in the good. It cannot be simply a matter of depriving oneself of food for a short time, but must also be one of providing food for the one who is hungry. It’s not just a matter of treating one’s workers fairly--a condition not being met in the first place in Isaiah’s prophecy--but of loosing the bonds of those who are oppressed. It’s not only a matter of not mistreating children by physical action or false teaching, but is also one of seeing to it that the needs and interests of the children are being satisfied, that their understanding of God will be informed by the love of those who know Him and embrace His character. If our Christian lives are defined simply by “going to church” or “doing daily devotions” or refraining from some of the sinful practices of the world, we should not be surprised to notice that our faith lacks power. Instead of giving something up for Lent, perhaps we should be picking up something for Lent and beyond. Or better, picking up someone who has fallen or has been trampled by life. To do that, we might have to put something else aside, which is just the kind of fasting that God seems to want, according to Isaiah. Oh, and according to Jesus, too.
Prayer: Lord, let each outward practice of our faith lead toward renewal of life in Your image and likeness. Show us the need You have made us to fill in Your name; open our eyes to the invisible bondage which keeps people from knowing life as a gift and You as its Giver. Let us know true fasting, true worship, and give true honor to You by taking on more and more the character of Your Son. Amen
Friday, February 28
Texts: Psalm 51; Jonah 4:1-11; Romans 1:8-17
Scripture Thought: 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Reflection: Have you ever wondered why some people become angry about what seem like such little things? Maybe you’ve caught yourself getting upset about a matter that didn’t really make much of a difference to anyone else, or even to yourself--after giving a little thought, that is. Sometimes we rethink the importance of that which arouses our anger; sometimes we are blind to the fact that something has taken on an inordinate level of importance in our lives. Could it be that the things which anger us reveal more about us than we want to know, or want anyone else to know?
Jonah had a problem. His anger over a shriveled plant that had become his shelter from a hot sun.revealed his heart, and God called him on it. Yes, Jonah had become possessive of a gift he had no right to consider his own. His comfort was important, and it had been taken from him. He considered it his right to have it, though it came about through no effort or merit of his own. It’s easy to assume “ownership rights” over the things that make life pleasant for us, leading us to forget that they are gifts and therefore failing to foster thankfulness toward the giver of the gift. But the greater problem Jonah had was one that many of us have--an ungodlike heart. Jonah’s longing was for retribution against terrible people who had done harmful, destructive things against him and his countrymen, his neighbors, his friends, his family: God’s longing was for the redemption of those same people. It isn’t the case that Jonah knew something about the sins of the Ninevites that God didn’t know, such that if God would only realize who they really were He’d agree with Jonah. God knew the Ninevites better than Jonah did, including their misdeeds; He also knew they could become better and the world would be better for it.
We likely, at least at certain times, resemble Jonah’s heart more closely than we do God’s. Lent is the perfect time for us examine our minds and our attitudes toward the good things we have received in our lives, rejecting a sense of entitlement in favor of a sense of gratitude. It’s also a time to examine our attitudes toward those who have wronged us or who disagree with us, and to see them for what they can become rather than for what for they have done. It’s a time to set aside our desires for retribution. It’s a time to become more like God, seeking the redemption of the lost.
Prayer: O God, your heart amazes us with its longing for the redemption of humankind. You know better than any of us what it is to be defied, to be marginalized, to be misunderstood, to be challenged, to be cursed. Teach us Your ways--not overlooking, but overcoming, not with force, but with the power of love. We confess our attachments to gifts You provide as though they were ours by merit. We repent of our desires for revenge and our slowness to embrace the possibility of redemption for our enemies. Heal us, and remake our hearts into copies of Yours. Amen.
Thursday, Feb. 27
Texts: Psalm 51; Jonah 3:1-10; Romans 1:1-7
Scripture Thought (Jonah 3:7-10): 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Reflection: Perhaps the hardest part of treating the season of Lent as the church initially intended is connecting a message of repentance to people who don’t see anything wrong with themselves. It’s not that people do not believe that evil exists; it’s just that evil always seems to be something that has been externalized. It owes to some force, some “ism” to which other people have fallen prey or with which they have become complicit. Socialism, racism, white supremacism, consumerism, sexism, elitism, etc., etc. They have nothing in common except that they all provide an opportunity for us to externalize the (moral) problem, locating it in the “other” and by implication exonerating oneself.
In the Jonah text for today, this same tendency exhibited itself in the unwilling attitude of Jonah toward the task he had been assigned. Preach repentance to the Ninevites? You’re not serious, right? Right? They’re the ones who do terrible, cruel things to the powerless people the conquer; they're the ones who show no mercy to man, woman, or child. They’re awful. They personify evil itself. They’re the worst. They’re the ones who ripped us from our homes. Innocent us, just minding our own business, never bothering them in any way. It has been repeated innumerable times in human experience--we know who the evil ones are, and, furthermore, we want them punished severely. We don’t want to hear of forgiveness; we want them to appreciate the full force of the evil they have perpetrated. And we’d prefer to do it ourselves when we’re able.
Isn’t it interesting to note that the difference between the Ninevites and the Israelites could not have been more stark? The Israelites had been called to repentance under threat of severe penalty and declined. The Ninevites--the foreigners, the “Gentiles.”--heard that call and repented immediately, in hopes that God would be gracious. And it didn’t sit well with Jonah, as the succeeding chapter of the biblical story records for us. How far from God’s heart! How far from His ways! How far from repentance; for blindness to one's own sin prevents anyone from seeing who God truly is. He’s seen most clearly in His mercy. Where there is no awareness of sin, of one’s complicity in evil, there can be no experience of such mercy.
Prayer: Gracious Father, Self-giving Son, Merciful Holy Spirit, hear our prayer. Too little have we weighed our own sin; too much have we magnified the sins of others. Grant us the knowledge of our own failures and the weakened souls out of which they come. Let us then seek Your mercy and commend it to those whom we have deemed unworthy. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns in union with the Father and the Son, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Ash Wednesday, February 26
Texts: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Scripture Thought for the Day: Ps. 51:10-12
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Reflection:
It’s that time again. Another season is upon us. No, not baseball season, though many of us do look forward to that every year. It’s the season known as Lent. It’s not as happily anticipated as the sound of wood on cowhide, but it has far greater potential to give us renewed meaning, renewed hope and renewed purpose. The prophet Joel calls out to “Sound the alarm! Call a sacred assembly!” For what purpose? The purpose is two-fold. First is to call upon God’s people to repent--to change their minds in order to change their behavior, so that they might fulfill the purpose for which they had been called as God’s people in the first place. The second aspect of that purpose is so that blessing might flow to them and through them. It was the disobedience to God’s design that hindered the flow of God’s blessing on life.
We live in a time of significant public turmoil. Accusations and charges against the ways and even the integrity of other people seem to dominate so much of the public discussion, especially in a presidential election year in the USA. Beyond that, people are divided by race, culture, stands on moral issues, and so much more, to the point where it is difficult to have civil conversations between people of different viewpoints. Unfortunately, Christians have not acted much differently from the way non-Christians have responded to those with whom they disagree--or to those with whom they share the Christian label, but come to different conclusions about this or that text, this or that doctrine, or even this or that political party.
This Lenten season I am trying to listen for and follow a different path. It involves repenting of following the ways of the world in our disagreements and learning anew the ways of Jesus. It was a path followed by John Wesley in the early days of Methodism in England. He and his followers were widely criticized for their stricter moral standards, leading people to view them as nothing more than criticizers. But his response was to point out that they were not criticizing anyone but themselves; they were attempting to identify their own faults, not the faults of others, so that they might “put on” Christ instead. Rejecting one way in order to embrace another are two sides of repentance; one side is turning from, the other side turning toward. During this Lenten season, let us turn our attention from the faults and transgressions of other people, and look more closely at how our own lives have strayed from the way Jesus leads.
Prayer: O Lord, my own sin is great. I have failed to love the ones You have placed in my path, I have treated with disdain and ridicule those with whom I disagree. I have spoken unkindly of those whom You love. Search my heart that I might truly repent; renew it daily by Your grace and for You glory. Amen.
Texts: Psalm 51; Isaiah 58:1-12; Matthew 18:1-7
Scripture Thought: (Isaiah 58:6-9)“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains of injustice and untie the cords of the yoke, to set the oppressed free and break every yoke? 7 Is it not to share your food with the hungry and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—when you see the naked, to clothe them, not to turn away from your own flesh and blood? 8 Then your light will break forth like the dawn, and your healing will quickly appear; then your righteousness[a] will go before you,and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard 9 Then you will call, and the Lord will answer; you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
Reflection: Outward religion. Pick-and-choose commandments. Hypocrisy. Self-righteousness. We don’t like these things when we see them displayed by other people; we aren’t always quick to see them in ourselves. If we take the context of the various parts of the Bible into due consideration, we should soon see that this is not a new problem, and it isn’t one which belongs exclusively with one version of Christianity. It’s not just an evangelical issue, or a Catholic short-coming, or a liberal error; it comes across all segments of the church. It occurred in ancient Israel, as the prophet complained, and it was going on in the days when Jesus walked the streets of Jerusalem and the roads of Judea.
The problem with making the rituals the main thing is not only that is doesn’t get to the heart of God, which it doesn’t do if unaccompanied by an understanding of the purpose for the practices; the bigger problem is that succeeding generations will come to think of the ritual practices as the “real thing” regarding godly living. Then when it is concluded that no spiritual, economic, or physical benefit is being derived from such observances, the faith itself will eventually be abandoned by a new generation. And the bigger problem still is that those who suffer in the world, longing for the blessings of dignity, value, and simple daily bread will go without them.
There are positive actions appropriate for God’s people; it is not just a matter of not doing evil, but of actively engaging in the good. It cannot be simply a matter of depriving oneself of food for a short time, but must also be one of providing food for the one who is hungry. It’s not just a matter of treating one’s workers fairly--a condition not being met in the first place in Isaiah’s prophecy--but of loosing the bonds of those who are oppressed. It’s not only a matter of not mistreating children by physical action or false teaching, but is also one of seeing to it that the needs and interests of the children are being satisfied, that their understanding of God will be informed by the love of those who know Him and embrace His character. If our Christian lives are defined simply by “going to church” or “doing daily devotions” or refraining from some of the sinful practices of the world, we should not be surprised to notice that our faith lacks power. Instead of giving something up for Lent, perhaps we should be picking up something for Lent and beyond. Or better, picking up someone who has fallen or has been trampled by life. To do that, we might have to put something else aside, which is just the kind of fasting that God seems to want, according to Isaiah. Oh, and according to Jesus, too.
Prayer: Lord, let each outward practice of our faith lead toward renewal of life in Your image and likeness. Show us the need You have made us to fill in Your name; open our eyes to the invisible bondage which keeps people from knowing life as a gift and You as its Giver. Let us know true fasting, true worship, and give true honor to You by taking on more and more the character of Your Son. Amen
Friday, February 28
Texts: Psalm 51; Jonah 4:1-11; Romans 1:8-17
Scripture Thought: 10 But the Lord said, “You have been concerned about this plant, though you did not tend it or make it grow. It sprang up overnight and died overnight. 11 And should I not have concern for the great city of Nineveh, in which there are more than a hundred and twenty thousand people who cannot tell their right hand from their left—and also many animals?”
Reflection: Have you ever wondered why some people become angry about what seem like such little things? Maybe you’ve caught yourself getting upset about a matter that didn’t really make much of a difference to anyone else, or even to yourself--after giving a little thought, that is. Sometimes we rethink the importance of that which arouses our anger; sometimes we are blind to the fact that something has taken on an inordinate level of importance in our lives. Could it be that the things which anger us reveal more about us than we want to know, or want anyone else to know?
Jonah had a problem. His anger over a shriveled plant that had become his shelter from a hot sun.revealed his heart, and God called him on it. Yes, Jonah had become possessive of a gift he had no right to consider his own. His comfort was important, and it had been taken from him. He considered it his right to have it, though it came about through no effort or merit of his own. It’s easy to assume “ownership rights” over the things that make life pleasant for us, leading us to forget that they are gifts and therefore failing to foster thankfulness toward the giver of the gift. But the greater problem Jonah had was one that many of us have--an ungodlike heart. Jonah’s longing was for retribution against terrible people who had done harmful, destructive things against him and his countrymen, his neighbors, his friends, his family: God’s longing was for the redemption of those same people. It isn’t the case that Jonah knew something about the sins of the Ninevites that God didn’t know, such that if God would only realize who they really were He’d agree with Jonah. God knew the Ninevites better than Jonah did, including their misdeeds; He also knew they could become better and the world would be better for it.
We likely, at least at certain times, resemble Jonah’s heart more closely than we do God’s. Lent is the perfect time for us examine our minds and our attitudes toward the good things we have received in our lives, rejecting a sense of entitlement in favor of a sense of gratitude. It’s also a time to examine our attitudes toward those who have wronged us or who disagree with us, and to see them for what they can become rather than for what for they have done. It’s a time to set aside our desires for retribution. It’s a time to become more like God, seeking the redemption of the lost.
Prayer: O God, your heart amazes us with its longing for the redemption of humankind. You know better than any of us what it is to be defied, to be marginalized, to be misunderstood, to be challenged, to be cursed. Teach us Your ways--not overlooking, but overcoming, not with force, but with the power of love. We confess our attachments to gifts You provide as though they were ours by merit. We repent of our desires for revenge and our slowness to embrace the possibility of redemption for our enemies. Heal us, and remake our hearts into copies of Yours. Amen.
Thursday, Feb. 27
Texts: Psalm 51; Jonah 3:1-10; Romans 1:1-7
Scripture Thought (Jonah 3:7-10): 7 This is the proclamation he issued in Nineveh:
“By the decree of the king and his nobles:Do not let people or animals, herds or flocks, taste anything; do not let them eat or drink. 8 But let people and animals be covered with sackcloth. Let everyone call urgently on God. Let them give up their evil ways and their violence. 9 Who knows? God may yet relent and with compassion turn from his fierce anger so that we will not perish.”10 When God saw what they did and how they turned from their evil ways, he relented and did not bring on them the destruction he had threatened.
Reflection: Perhaps the hardest part of treating the season of Lent as the church initially intended is connecting a message of repentance to people who don’t see anything wrong with themselves. It’s not that people do not believe that evil exists; it’s just that evil always seems to be something that has been externalized. It owes to some force, some “ism” to which other people have fallen prey or with which they have become complicit. Socialism, racism, white supremacism, consumerism, sexism, elitism, etc., etc. They have nothing in common except that they all provide an opportunity for us to externalize the (moral) problem, locating it in the “other” and by implication exonerating oneself.
In the Jonah text for today, this same tendency exhibited itself in the unwilling attitude of Jonah toward the task he had been assigned. Preach repentance to the Ninevites? You’re not serious, right? Right? They’re the ones who do terrible, cruel things to the powerless people the conquer; they're the ones who show no mercy to man, woman, or child. They’re awful. They personify evil itself. They’re the worst. They’re the ones who ripped us from our homes. Innocent us, just minding our own business, never bothering them in any way. It has been repeated innumerable times in human experience--we know who the evil ones are, and, furthermore, we want them punished severely. We don’t want to hear of forgiveness; we want them to appreciate the full force of the evil they have perpetrated. And we’d prefer to do it ourselves when we’re able.
Isn’t it interesting to note that the difference between the Ninevites and the Israelites could not have been more stark? The Israelites had been called to repentance under threat of severe penalty and declined. The Ninevites--the foreigners, the “Gentiles.”--heard that call and repented immediately, in hopes that God would be gracious. And it didn’t sit well with Jonah, as the succeeding chapter of the biblical story records for us. How far from God’s heart! How far from His ways! How far from repentance; for blindness to one's own sin prevents anyone from seeing who God truly is. He’s seen most clearly in His mercy. Where there is no awareness of sin, of one’s complicity in evil, there can be no experience of such mercy.
Prayer: Gracious Father, Self-giving Son, Merciful Holy Spirit, hear our prayer. Too little have we weighed our own sin; too much have we magnified the sins of others. Grant us the knowledge of our own failures and the weakened souls out of which they come. Let us then seek Your mercy and commend it to those whom we have deemed unworthy. Through Jesus Christ, Your Son, our Lord, who lives and reigns in union with the Father and the Son, to whom be glory forever. Amen.
Ash Wednesday, February 26
Texts: Joel 2:1-2, 12-17; Psalm 51; 2 Corinthians 5:20b-6:10; Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
Scripture Thought for the Day: Ps. 51:10-12
Create in me a pure heart, O God, and renew a steadfast spirit within me. Do not cast me from your presence or take your Holy Spirit from me. Restore to me the joy of your salvation and grant me a willing spirit, to sustain me.
Reflection:
It’s that time again. Another season is upon us. No, not baseball season, though many of us do look forward to that every year. It’s the season known as Lent. It’s not as happily anticipated as the sound of wood on cowhide, but it has far greater potential to give us renewed meaning, renewed hope and renewed purpose. The prophet Joel calls out to “Sound the alarm! Call a sacred assembly!” For what purpose? The purpose is two-fold. First is to call upon God’s people to repent--to change their minds in order to change their behavior, so that they might fulfill the purpose for which they had been called as God’s people in the first place. The second aspect of that purpose is so that blessing might flow to them and through them. It was the disobedience to God’s design that hindered the flow of God’s blessing on life.
We live in a time of significant public turmoil. Accusations and charges against the ways and even the integrity of other people seem to dominate so much of the public discussion, especially in a presidential election year in the USA. Beyond that, people are divided by race, culture, stands on moral issues, and so much more, to the point where it is difficult to have civil conversations between people of different viewpoints. Unfortunately, Christians have not acted much differently from the way non-Christians have responded to those with whom they disagree--or to those with whom they share the Christian label, but come to different conclusions about this or that text, this or that doctrine, or even this or that political party.
This Lenten season I am trying to listen for and follow a different path. It involves repenting of following the ways of the world in our disagreements and learning anew the ways of Jesus. It was a path followed by John Wesley in the early days of Methodism in England. He and his followers were widely criticized for their stricter moral standards, leading people to view them as nothing more than criticizers. But his response was to point out that they were not criticizing anyone but themselves; they were attempting to identify their own faults, not the faults of others, so that they might “put on” Christ instead. Rejecting one way in order to embrace another are two sides of repentance; one side is turning from, the other side turning toward. During this Lenten season, let us turn our attention from the faults and transgressions of other people, and look more closely at how our own lives have strayed from the way Jesus leads.
Prayer: O Lord, my own sin is great. I have failed to love the ones You have placed in my path, I have treated with disdain and ridicule those with whom I disagree. I have spoken unkindly of those whom You love. Search my heart that I might truly repent; renew it daily by Your grace and for You glory. Amen.