Devotion for Tuesday, March 31

Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Psalm 10; Jeremiah 25:8-17; Romans 10:1-13; John 9:18-41

Meditation: Faith is such an amazing gift and so full of energy and possibility! It is the centerpiece of our daily reading from Romans today and worth giving some time to in this devotion.

Frederick Buechner writes four little novels about a shyster named, Leo Bebb (they’re all in a collection called: The Book of Bebb). Bebb has made a career of hustling people through one deception after another. But a strange thing happens when he seeks to make his take on the persona of a minister as latest hustle. When he takes on the role, he actually becomes the person – The Rev. Leo Bebb.

It all happens when he visits a town where he plans to pull off his latest scheme. Assuming the character, he writes in his name on the register at the motel where he will stay – and when he puts the Reverend in front of his name. This sparks something in him suddenly making him into a genuine holy man. Yes, he’s still the shyster, he always was, but he also finds himself using his so-called talents for those who down and out. What has changed is that he suddenly began to operate on faith – and it fit.

Paul invites us into a similar faith. He speaks of the burden of the Jews – always having to find a way to live out the Law of Moses, the covenant with God. It’s all good, to be sure. The promises of God are there, the right ways to live with neighbors and to honor and worship God. But there is always the insecurity, as well. “Have I really done what is required? Am I a nominalist, that is, one who is only concerned with meeting the letter of the law? Have I understood what is required spiritually and achieved what is above and beyond the call of duty? Or if I’ve messed up, what will happen then?”

Paul says that faith operates differently. It doesn’t require one to scale the heights of heaven in order to justify oneself with God, nor does it find you condemned if you have done something wrong. The word of faith is as easy as saying out loud: “Jesus is Lord, Jesus is good, Jesus rose from the dead and is alive to broadcast God’s love.” The word of faith is as easy as believing this in the hopes of one’s heart.

I hear counselors and youth group organizers and social workers ask people to pay for their sessions, their trips, or for the help they receive because if folks don’t pay even a little, they will also depreciate the value of what they receive. These people are certainly justified in this as experience proves. What is given freely is valued less because it did not cost anything. Nevertheless, when it comes to God, this principle does not apply. God give to us freely all of the time – i.e. your next breath of air! Faith is the attitude that recognizes this and receives it. It’s all that is asked: Believe. It’s all the Rev. Leo Bebb did, to be honest. He made a faith statement and it changed him.

Prayer: Gracious God, you give us more than just the air. You gave Jesus to us freely. Let us be energized by receiving him as a gift. Protect us from remaking him in our image, our self-justification denying your generosity and love. Amen.

Devotion for Saturday, March 28

Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Saturday, March 28, 2009

Psalm 29, 126; Jeremiah 23:9-15; Romans 9:1-18; John 6:60-71

Meditation: Vera White was our speaker yesterday at a stewardship seminar put on by the presbytery. She was wonderfully personable and related her own story about giving that I found quite compelling. What made it enjoyable was that while she was talking about money, she put it in terms that we quite uncalculated.

Vera is an associate executive presbyter in Pittsburgh Presbytery, employed to help with new church development, mission and stewardship. She said that when she first came into the job, she felt quite at home with the new church and mission parts of the job description, but not the stewardship part. In order to take steps toward the end of leading in stewardship efforts, she and her husband made a decision about their own stewardship. They would tithe. They would give 10% of their income to the ministry of their local church. As they did, something of a new perspective came over her. She began to feel rich.

She explained that her newfound well-to-do-ness came from the fact that she saw a list of the monetary gifts given to the church. Before, she and her husband had been in the middle somewhere. Now with their 10% giving, they suddenly rose right up to the top of the chart. She and her husband were now “major donors,” a category she had earlier reserved for those who had large financial resources. What this meant in terms of her monthly budget was that she had to hold onto her beaten-up, well-driven Geo Metro, instead of getting a new car. But like in the Cinderella story, the pumpkin became a chariot because driving the Geo meant that now she was a “philanthropist.” She and her husband gave a tithe.

I laughed about all of this, relating to her tithing story and glad of it. She said that the real richness in tithing was that her giving became a whole lot less about calculation – what budget numbers need to be met, what cuts could be made – and much more about the joy of being generous as a way of acknowledging how generous God is. Just think of the blessings of God’s generosity which are all around: Beauty; Love; Kindness; Hope; Justice; the compelling stories about Jesus! One doesn’t calculate the value of a night’s rainfall on the roof. Instead, we wait for its effects: grass turning green, flowers blooming in garden and on tree. Vera White’s commitment of generosity suddenly had her enjoying a new standard of wealth, much of it so very freely given.

Our texts from Romans and the Gospel, as well as our two Psalms invite us to some sense of this kind of generosity, I’d say. They try to lead us out of calculations and the language of requirement, law, entitlement. The kernel of the Gospel is in Peter’s words to Jesus. When others found his words too difficult and left, Peter in staying said: “Where else would we go to find the words of life?” Abundance, grace, joy, mercy are the foundational words of our Christian faith. On this weekend day, give some thought how you are rich in them.

Prayer: Generous God, thank you for the beauty of a new spring. Thank you for the fellowship of believers and for the joy of sharing life with neighbors and friends in our community. Thank you for our family members we love, and also for those you call beloved who may live on the other side of the world from us, or maybe just on the wrong side of the tracks. Let us grasp your holiness in the grace you lay before us, which is also meant to define us as your children. Amen.

Devotion for Thursday, March 26

Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Thursday, March 26, 2009

Psalm 78:1-39; Jeremiah 22:13-23; Romans 8:12-27; John 6:41-51

Meditation: The lessons from the Psalms, Romans and John have much to them today. They are core texts dealing with central biblical issues: the exodus, God’s redemption of creation, the Holy Spirit in us praying with sighs too deep for words, and communion (aka Jesus is the bread of life). Having read the three of them and appreciated them, nevertheless, it was the Jeremiah reading that hit me like it was today’s headline.

Did you catch it? “Woe to him who builds . . . his upper rooms by injustice; who makes his neighbors work for nothing, and does not give them their wages.” It sounded just like the Wall Street Journal article a church member gave to me two days ago. The article was on “Why Foreign Aid is Hurting Africa.” And in the article, it spoke of how great cash gifts from the likes of the World Bank unfortunately lead to corruption, to war and to poverty. For the corrupt have built “upper rooms for their homes,” the writer said in essence, stealing from aid money. In doing this, the African economies were brought to a standstill through the systemization of such corruption. As a result, the one with all the cash became the new target of rebel leaders who gathered armies of the impoverished and disenfranchised, because it was clear where the capital was kept. Over and over, this cycle repeated in downwardly spiraling tragedy. Jeremiah’s words are freshly news.

Jeremiah mimics this kind of corruption, saying in their voice: “I will build myself a spacious house with large upper rooms.” He speaks of how the unjust official sizes up windows for the upstairs, rooms paneled with cedar and painted with vermilion. But then he points out the end of it all by reminding them what good had been lost. He asks “Did not your father eat and drink and do justice and righteousness? Then it was well with him. He judged the cause of the poor and needy; then it was well.” In other words, when justice was done, when there was equity among neighbors, everyone ate and drank, too. It was well. But when greed took over, it toppled the whole society.

My trip to Africa brought me to Liberia. They have a new and different kind of President there, I think. Her name is Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. She’s the first popularly elected woman President in Africa. Following twenty plus years of civil war, she is trying to be a president who serves her people. She has a big task ahead of her, and is making a bit of progress. She’s cleaned up the trash that was knee deep throughout the capital city. The new peace seems to be encouraging some entrepreneurial efforts among the people. She’s trying to get infrastructure rebuilt, but it is going to take a lot of time and a continued trust by many because the new day also asks people to make changes. Her efforts may produce fruit if the people of the country remember that they are neighbors to one another – just like the Bible asks us to be. If neighborliness and justice are not crowded out by big upper rooms with fine windows, cedar and vermilion paint, then it can be well with them. In our American news, it seems the same story can also be told.

Prayer: Covenanting God, you ask us to keep our sister and brother, to care for others’ well being. By doing this, we will also find our own well-being. Let us love our neighbors as ourselves as a way of loving you, God. Amen.

Devotion for Tuesday, March 24

Lessons from the Daily Lectionary – Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Psalms 98, 135; Jeremiah 17:19-27; Romans 7:13-25; John 6:16-27

Meditation: Back in my high school days we used to bum a little money off one another in the lunch line from time to time. In our California surfer slang, we’d say: “Hey man, do have any bread you can give me?” It all sounded quite idealistic. We’d avoid saying anything about money so that it sounded like we were above it all – asking instead for “bread.” Yet, in truth, we’d buy anything but bread with it, maybe some junk food or worse. But by asking for bread we tried to dress up our mooching as something communal, even spiritual.

If you’re already read through the passage in the Gospel of John for today, you’ve already seen where I’m going with this. One on side of the lake, Jesus performs a miracle turning a disciple’s collection of a few loaves and fishes into a feast. When Jesus disappears in the middle of the night (walking on the water to the other side of the lake), the crowd hurries after him. Their pursuit of him is presented in a guise. They say that they are after something ideal, something spiritual, but Jesus discerns that they have come for much more mundane reasons. They liked that he could feed them.

It’s right and good that Jesus combines the physical feeding of the multitude with the spiritual truth where he says to us: “I am the bread of life.” I find that it is often good to be a “both/and” kind of person than an “either/or.” Jesus is that way. If he denied the value of material loaves of bread he wouldn’t have fed the folks. Yet, he does not neglect the larger point that what feeds the body also points to a greater hunger.

A daily time of reading and prayer is one way to pay attention to that greater hunger – to God in our lives. At times it’s hard to set aside the time for this. You may have noticed that today’s meditation didn’t arrive first thing in the morning, nor did one come at all yesterday. Ooops! As Paul says, the spirit may be willing but the body can be weak. In college I sought to read through the entire Bible in a year’s time. I was going to do this by reading three chapters per day. I found that if I kept the daily reading for eight consecutive days, the reading had now become a good habit. If I fell off my reading for only three days, a bad habit was formed. To get back to it, I would remember that I am a forgiven child of God. I’d confess the need for renewal and start reading, awaiting an eighth day in which my good habit could return. And it did. I finished the Bible with a few weeks to spare.

Today, let us keep our spirit even as we have moments where our physical and mental resourcefulness fail us. Let us know that Jesus offers himself as the bread of life, which sometimes means that he also gives us that material bread that is also a staple.

Prayer: Lord, we bless you for Sabbath rest. When we read scripture and pray we enter into a daily rest. We receive daily nourishment in our prayers and reading which helps us find you in the midst of life. Forgive us for our failings. Keep us encouraged in our faithfulness and in our relationship with you and others. Give us our daily bread and give us, Jesus, the bread of life. Amen.