The Risk of Grace
March 30, 2011
When our children, entered into the world of driving a car on the road. We as parents would often remind them not to take unnecessary risks. Today, as they are both no longer teenagers, we still caution them to be careful, to not risk their life for something foolish.
Today we are reminded that our heavenly Father has taken a risk on us with his grace. To the world it seems foolish. To us it is a blessing. Because of the risk of grace, God invites us daily on a journey that sometimes seems risky at best. We call it walking in faith.
The Risk of Grace.
1 Corinthians 15:30-31
And why do you think I keep risking my neck in this dangerous work? I look death in the face practically every day I live. Do you think I’d do this if I wasn’t convinced of your resurrection and mine as guaranteed by the resurrected Messiah Jesus?
When we follow Christ in faith, there is no telling where we he will lead us. His love, mercy, and grace convince us to go with him to the ends of the earth (usually beginning with a step across the street), and so our adventure begins.
Far too many of us are content with being comfortable in our faith. As long as Jesus doesn’t as too much of us, as long as we get enough good feelings, as long as it’s fun to be a Christian, as long as nobody turns up their nose at us when they find out we believe, we hang in there. This is phony Christianity. It’s not the real thing.
Listen to the witness of the faithful in the New Testament book of Hebrews.
Hebrews 11:32-35a
I could go on and on, but I’ve run out of time. There are so many more-Gideon, Barak, Samson, Jephthah, David, Samuel, the prophets… . Through acts of faith, they toppled kingdoms, made justice work, took the promises for themselves. They were protected from lions, fires, and sword thrusts, turned disadvantage to advantage, won battles, routed alien armies. Women received their loved ones back from the dead.
Great stories of faith. Wonderful encouragement. But hen the writer continues with a different list.
Hebrews 11:35b-37
There were those who, under torture, refused to give in and go free, preferring something better: resurrection. Others braved abuse and whips, and, yes, chains and dungeons. We have stories of those who were stoned, sawed in two, murdered in cold blood; stories of vagrants wandering the earth in animal skins, homeless, friendless, powerless-
That list is scary and you might be thinking, Not what I signed up for. Why would anyone endure such suffering? Because they were convinced that God would keep his promise of resurrection. They lived to bring glory to God and that one day God would reward them for their faithful walk.
Who are you living for? To whom is your life glorifying? For whom would you endure suffering? In this season of Lent we are reminded of the suffering that the Son of God, Jesus, endured for us. Simply because you are loved. It is the risk of grace.
Be still and listen to what God is saying to you!
Standing firm while under attack
December 7, 2010
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Who Jesus Really Is
December 7, 2010
Did Jesus fail to come when you rubbed the lantern?
Then perhaps Jesus is not a genie.
Did Jesus fail to punish your enemies?
Then perhaps Jesus is not a cop.
Did Jesus fail to make everything run smoothly?
Then perhaps Jesus is not a mechanic.
Over and over again, our disappointments draw us deeper and deeper into
who Jesus really is … and what Jesus really does.
William A. Ritter, Collected Sermons
While Waiting, Pay Attention to Today
November 30, 2010
Luke 21:34-36
“Be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life, and that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.”
Jesus warns about preoccupation with the end-times predictions and instead commands simple attentiveness to God’s presence every moment of every day: Be alert at all times (21:36)
We are tired of waiting for our dreams to come true. So we become numb to our world and seem to just walk through each day with little thought, but of getting through another day. What if we became more aware of each moment? Jean-Pierre de Caussade called it: “The Sacrament of the Present Moment.” He described it this way: “This discovery of divine action in everything that happens, each moment , is the most subtle wisdom possible regarding the ways of God in thisl life.”
What will you do today to help cultivate this simple attentiveness?
From a letter to Bonhoeffer’s fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer, December 1, 1943, written from Tegel prison camp.
I think we’re going to have an exceptionally good Christmas. The very fact that every outward circumstance precludes our making provisions for it will show whether we can be content with what is truly essential.I used to be very fond of thinking up and buying presents, but now that we have nothing to give, the gift God gave us in the birth of Chirst will seem all the more glorious; the emptier our hands, the better we understand what Luther meant by his dying words: “We’re beggars; it’s true.” The poorer our quarters, the more clearly we perceive that our hearts should be Christ’s home on earth .
Pastor Debner
Zion Lutheran Church
Why does our church use Blue instead of Purple for Advent?
November 29, 2010
I found this blog that seemed to sum up the answers to why we use purple or blue at Advent.
From The Lutheran Zephyr a blog of Chris Duckworth
Advent: Blue or Purple?
What is the “proper” color of Advent – blue or purple? Purple was the long-standing color used by Lutheran congregations, as well as other liturgical churches, through most of the 20th century. The purple of Advent and of Lent served two purposes – emphasizing the royalty of Christ, as kings in western culture over the centuries were often adorned with purple garments. Furthermore, purple has a penitential nature to it, inviting introspection and repentance on behalf of the believer.
Indeed, the connection of Lent – with its pilgrimage to the suffering of the cross – with penitential acts is pretty easy to make. As we reflect on the sin of the world that nailed our Lord to the cross, we also confess our own sin and seek to live more faithful lives.
But penitence in Advent, in preparation for Christ’s birth? Absolutely. For as we prepare to see Christ face to face, in the Christmas incarnation and in his promised return to earth, we anticipate both joy and judgment. Joy, for in coming to us God is bridging the gap that separates humanity from its Creator. But judgment, too, for in coming to us God will confront our sin and brokenness, and pass judgment on the degree to which humanity has been unfaithful to God’s commands and vision for human community.
That’s a pretty good case for a purple Advent, don’t you think?
Well, blue has a pretty good case to make, too. In the late 20th century, some churches began to use blue for Advent, while retaining purple for Lent. Why?
I can’t give you the historical details – what great church councils or scholars or congregations first began the shift. But I can tell you that blue offers us a different shade, so to speak, of Advent. If the purple of earlier years resonates with the penitential nature of the season and draws certain parallels to Lent, the deep blue of Advent highlights the expectant nature of the season, and of our faith.
Deep blue is the color of the clear, predawn sky, the color that covers the earth in the hours before the sun rises in the east. Most of us are not looking at the sky at that hour – perhaps we’re still asleep, or too weary to notice it as we get onto the Metro or hop into our car for a long commute. Nonetheless, a deep, dark blue is the color that covers us in the dark, cold hours before the sun dawns.
Thus we use deep blue for Advent to shade the season with a hint of expectation and anticipation of the dawn of Christ. Surely penitence and spiritual discipline is part of the traditional Advent observance, and this is why so many of you are using Advent wreaths and our congregation’s Advent devotional to mark the days of Advent. Advent is a time to recommit to our faith and to our God – no matter the color! But Advent involves more than penitence, and by using deep blue we err on the side of emphasizing the church’s hope-filled and faithful watch for Christ. The deep blue of Advent is meant to inspire in us the hope of faith, and to encourage us to keep watch for the promised light of Christ to break over the horizon, changing night into day, darkness into light, and filling our lives and our world with a holy and righteous splendor.
No matter your color preference, I hope and pray that you will find this season to be shaded by both the purple and the blue, by the reflective self-examination suggested by the penitential purple, and by the hopeful anticipation suggested by the predawn blue … for both colors call us to lives of faithfulness in this time before the coming of our Lord.
Waiting is an Art (Mon Advent 1)
November 29, 2010
Today is Monday, November 29, 2010. We are in the season of Advent. Advent means “coming”. We are waiting and preparing for the coming of Christ, as the babe in Bethlehem and as the King of Kings and Lord of Lords on the last day.Celebrating Advent means being able to wait.
Waiting Is an Art
Isaiah 11:1-4
A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse,
and a branch shall grow out of his roots.
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might,
the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
and decide with equity for the meek of the earth.
Waiting is an art that our impatient age has forgotten. We are a people who no longer wait, we get what we want now. Credit cards make it so easy to purchase items right away. The discipline of saving and waiting to buy items is no longer a reality. We are impatient waiting in lines. When you think about it, there are very few things that we wait for anymore. I wonder if this is because we don’t want to do without something. It might show our weakness, or our lack of success, if we have to do without something.
Have you ever struggled with the deep questions of life? Waiting for the truth to be revealed? The questions about why things have happened or why events have not taken place as your dreamed or envisioned, or planned. It’s at time like this that our impatience hinders us. For often the greatest, most profound, tenderest things in the world, we must wait. To open your soul to the soul of another person, to find love is something that can not be hurried. To wait nine months and hold the new born child in your arms is an event that can’t be hurried.
Waiting is an art that must be learned as Christians, as we wait for the day of the Lord to come. Discipleship – discipline – are the ways that we live as we wait. Advent is a season to help us learn new disciplines as we wait. What discipline will you begin today, that will help you wait in this season of Advent?
From a letter to Bonhoeffer’s fiancee Maria von Wedemeyer, December 13, 1943, written from Tegel prison camp.
Be brave for my sake, dearest Maria, even if this letter is your only token of my love this Christmas-tide. We shall both experience a few dark hours-why should we disguise that from each other? We shall ponder the incomprehensibility of out lot and be assailed by the question of why, over and above the darkness already enshrouding humanity, we should be subjected to the bitter anguish of a separation whose purpose we fail to understand…And then, just when everything is bearing down on us to such an extent that we can scarcely withstand it, the Christmas message comes to tell us that all our ideas are wrong, and that what we take to be evil and dark is really good and light because it comes from God. Our eyes are at fault, that is all. God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives...
Lord God, keep us awake in our faith, alert and ready to do what is right. May, the Lord be as near to you as your clothes. May he help you live in good ways and keep you awake in faith. Amen.
Sincerely,
Pastor Debner
Zion Lutheran Church
The Advent Season is a Season of Waiting (Sun. Advent 1)
November 29, 2010
Today is the first day of the Advent Season. Each day in the Advent Season, I will be sending a daily reflection. Most days will include a quote from Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906-1945). He is one of the twentieth century’s most beloved theologians, who was also a Lutheran pastor. He was part of the resistance movement against Adolf Hitler, which resulted in his arrest in 1943. He spent the next two years in prison, writing to his fiancee, Maria, to his family, friends and to the church. In April of 1945, ten days before the Third Reich surrendered, Bonhoeffer was hanged at the age of 39. The writings he left behind continue to speak to us of God’s bold vision for his called out people, the church.
| The Advent Season Is a Season of Waiting |
| Listen! I am standing at the door, knocking; if you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you, and you with me..Rev. 3:20
The Advent Season is a season of waiting. Jesus is standing at the door knocking. Will you open the door? We don’t open the door for just anyone, especially those who seem different than us. Maybe for Christ? But what if you were told that our Lord is coming in the form of a beggar, asking for help. As long as there are people, Christ will walk this earth as your neighbor, as the one through whom God calls you, speaks to you, makes demands on you. Christ is standing at the door; he lives in the form of a human being among us. Do you want to close the door or open it? Christ is knocking. It’s not Christmas yet, but it’s also not the great last Advent, the last coming of Christ. We live in the in between. In our waiting, we are to be about our Lord’s work. We are called to be people of compassion, who heal, forgive, restore and resurrect all those who have fallen. In this season of Advent we are waiting, for lots of things. But as Christians we are waiting for the final Advent, the final coming when Christ will make all things new. When Christ will no longer be hidden in the neighbor, but revealed in all his glory. As you wait this Advent, will you have your eyes open, spying where Christ might be? Are you longing for the final Advent when all things will be new? We can, and should also, celebrate Christmas despite the ruins around us….I think of you as you now sit together with the children and with all the Advent decorations–as in earlier years you did with us. We must do all this, even more intensively because we do not know how much longer we have. .. Lord God, keep us awake in our faith, alert and ready to do what is right. May, the Lord be as near to you as your clothes. May he help you live in good ways and keep you awake in faith. Amen. Sincerely, |
Thoughts as Summer Approaches
May 31, 2010
A gang of drunkards was rowing a country-boat along a lake. On the way they saw a shop where liquor was being served. It was getting dark and all of them were tired. They decided to stop and resume the row after relishing a drink. They got out of the boat and tied the boat safely with a rope to a tree on the bank of the lake. Then they entered the liquor shop and ordered drinks. They filled their bellies to the full with the liquor and returned to the boat with unsteady steps. They got into the boat and rowed hard, happily singing a fond melody in the ecstasy of intoxication. Hours rolled on. At sunrise, when they came back to their senses, they were surprised to find that they were still stationed near the liquor shop. They examined the boat and found that it was still bound to the tree. In the intoxicated state, they forgot to untie the boat. It could not move though they rowed hard for a full night!
A prayer group had a senior leader. He used to repeat this request in every prayer, “Lord, clean all the cobwebs entangling my life.” One day, tired of hearing this repeated request, one smart member who was to pray next, prayed aloud, “Lord, our leader has been praying every day to get his cobwebs removed. Kindly grant him the strength to kill the spider that is causing this constant trouble!” The members greeted the prayer with great applause.
This summer as your schedules begin to wind down. Be careful that you do not find yourself rowing your boat, only to find that your still tied to the tree. It may also be true that we will spend sometime cleaning out the cobwebs, when we might want to be Killing the spider.
May your journeys this summer be free and your lives uncluttered with cobwebs.
Good Friday, April 2, 2010 The end of our Lenten Journey Day 40
April 1, 2010
I enjoyed Debra Dean Murphy’s writing so much that I found her thought on Good Friday and share them now with you as well.
Take time this day to contemplate God’s great love for you lived out in the passion.
by Debra Dean Murphy
During Lent of 2004 Mel Gibson released The Passion of the Christ, his controversial and enormously popular depiction of the last days of Jesus. Because it was Gibson’s movie (think Braveheart, Mad Max, Lethal Weapon), it was expected to be bloody, violent, and in-your-face intense. Gibson himself was clear about his intention to ratchet up the gore factor: “I didn’t want to see Jesus looking really pretty,” he said in promotion interviews. “I wanted to mess up one of his eyes, destroy it.”
Crucifixion in the ancient world was a gory spectacle. Since its purpose was to deter insurrection–to send a clear message to would-be political subversives–the brutality of this form of capital punishment was breathtaking. It’s not unreasonable to suppose that Jesus had a messed-up eye.
But it is interesting (and important) to ask why the biblical narratives do not dwell on the violence and the physical brutality. And it’s worth asking how our cinematic/cultural fascination with blood and carnage and general gruesomeness has shaped our understanding of the cross and of suffering and salvation.
Gibson was also quoted in interviews as saying that, in making The Passion of the Christ, he “wanted to be true to the gospels.” But the passion narratives in each of the four gospels are strikingly spare in their accounts of Jesus’ physical suffering and death. The synoptics say simply that “having scourged Jesus, Pilate delivered him to be crucified. When they came to the place which is called The Skull, there they crucified him.” Just a few verses later Jesus is dead.
If Gibson really wanted “to be true to the gospels,” he would have focused more on the people, the crowds especially, who are integral to the Passion story. He would have explored Jesus’ Holy Week dealings with both the powerful and the poor. The scourging and the crucifying wouldn’t have taken up much screen time.
So why is it that the New Testament handles the details of Jesus’ physical pain and suffering with a kind of no-fuss minimalism? It’s not, as many commentators have pointed out, because they thought such details unimportant. Clearly, the whole gospel story builds toward Jesus’ confrontation with the powers in Jerusalem. It’s not because the writers were squeamish about blood or because they were embarrassed by the way Jesus died. The apostle Paul boasts unapologetically in the cross of Christ.
Rather, the gospel writers seemed to sense that to fixate on the bloody details would risk endorsing a false view of what the cross of Christ accomplishes–a false view that goes something like this: An angry, offended deity demanded payment for humanity’s great debt of sin, and so Jesus had to suffer–really suffer, violently suffer–in order to appease God’s wrath and pay the debt in full.
Unfortunately, various versions of this idea have taken hold through the centuries and we’ve yet to fully shake them. We’ve all heard them in one form or another.
But they miss the mark, for the crucifixion is not the act of a wrathful Father piling condemnation on the innocent, victimized Son. As Miroslav Volf puts it, “Jesus is not a third party inserted between God and humanity to take care of human sin. He is the God who was wronged . . . God placed human sin upon God.”
“God placed human sin upon God.”
In Christ, writes the Apostle Paul, “God was reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them.” Note carefully that it’s not: Christ was reconciling an angry God to a sinful world. It’s not even that Christ was reconciling a sinful world to a loving God. Rather: God in Christ was reconciling the world to himself. As Volf says, “the One who was offended bears the burden of the offense.”
Our response to this truth, then–this gift–is profound gratitude. But when the brutality of Jesus’ death is unduly emphasized (exploited)–when our gaze lingers too long upon the messed-up eye or the bloodied brow–we are distracted from gratitude and are drawn instead into cheap voyeurism and sentimentality.
Frederica Matthewes-Green puts it this way: “It would be as odd as welcoming home a wounded soldier, and instead of focusing on the victory he won, dwelling on the exact moment the bayonet pierced the stomach, how it felt and what it looked like. A soldier might well feel annoyed with such attention to his weakness rather than his strength.”
“This is the sense we pick up in the Gospels,” Matthewes-Green goes on to say. “Jesus’ suffering is rendered in the briefest terms, as if drawing about it a veil of modesty. What’s important is not that Jesus suffered for us, but that Jesus suffered for us.”
The blood and gore in a film like The Passion of the Christ manipulate emotions and stir up misplaced pity. We can end up feeling so sorry for the beaten-up Jesus–poor guy–that we miss the point: in walking the way of suffering, Jesus compels us to do the same.
Maundy Thursday is for April Fool
April 1, 2010
Today I found this post on the web and found it to be a good devotion for me, so I share it with you.
Blessings on this Maundy (New Command) Thursday Day 39 in Lent.
Maundy Thursday is for April Fools
by Debra Dean Murphy
Is it any wonder that, since the very beginning of the Jesus movement, Christians have been suspected of doing strange, disgusting things when they gather for their sacred rituals?
Cannibalism was the charge leveled against the earliest Christians: “What do you mean you eat the body and blood of your Lord?” incredulous civil authorities demanded of those first underground believers. Their understandable horror is lost on us.
This ”fellowship meal” that Christians continue to share (sounds so benign, doesn’t it?) is rooted in denial, betrayal, a disciple’s suicide, a Messiah’s death, the body and blood of this crucified Messiah, and . . . dirty feet.
Jesus gave the mandatum–”to wash one another’s feet”–after he showed his disciples how to do it. This act of humility, he said, is not peripheral but integral to life in the reign of God. It is servant leadership learned in the doing of it.
With his enthusiasm characteristically misplaced, Peter wants the full-service wash: “my hands and head also, please!” But Peter’s foolishness provides the opportunity for Jesus to prefigure another friend’s imminent betrayal: “you are clean, though not all of you.”
Peter’s ignorant exuberance. The silent treachery of Judas. This fugitive community gathered for the last meal of a soon-to-be-condemned state criminal. Strange beginnings for a strange community, indeed.
In the midst of misunderstanding and a friend’s double-cross, Jesus sinks down to the lowliest of places to reveal not only the nature of servant leadership in the Kingdom but the very meaning of his death. Into the chaos and confusion of human existence the God of heaven stoops to dwell; into deceit and double-dealing, into the misery, fraud, and loneliness of our small lives–into this and more the Word became incarnate, and lived among us “full of grace and truth.” And the life he lived led to the death he died.
In a video segment of the popular Bible study, Jesus in the Gospels, South African theologian and Methodist bishop Peter Storey notes how fond Christians are of saying–especially during Holy Week perhaps–that “God sent Jesus to die on the cross.” But that way of putting it, says Storey, robs Jesus of his humanity, his capacity for moral choice; Jesus, on this view, is little more than a programmed robot, marching passively to a preordained fate.
God sent Jesus into the world not to die, Storey reminds us, but to love. And to those who tried to fence his love in, whose empty legalism was exposed, whose very social order was threatened–to those it became clear that to stop his loving they would have to destroy him. And so they did.
But on the night before he died, Jesus spent his love–his profligate, prodigal love–in an act of domestic servitude, washing the feet of his mystifed family of followers. This act of love was wasted on a dunce like Peter and a scoundrel like Judas and from that we know that it is wasted, even now, on cons and failures like us.
