Lenten Devotions – Day 12

Tuesday, March 3, 2015

Today’s Scriptures: Matthew 13:31-35 and Luke 13:20-21

“He told them another parable: "The kingdom of heaven is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened." (Matt. 13:33)

“The Kingdom of God works into us like yeast, and it grows like a seed in good soil. It enters quietly, holistically, radically, joyfully subversive, right into the core of our humanity, unfurling, renewing, and giving work to our hands. It shows up when we live loved and where we love each other well. And the Kingdom of God lasts.” ― Sarah Bessey, Jesus Feminist: An Invitation to Revisit the Bible's View of Women

  In Matthew, chapter 13 there is a set of parables where Jesus helps the crowd understand the nature of the kingdom of Heaven. Jesus proceeds to tell the “great crowd,” around him many things in parables. He begins with the parable of the sower, then explains to his disciples the purpose of the parables and explains the parable of the sower. He follows with the parable of the wheat and the weeds (13:24-30, which we covered on Feb. 26 in our devotions). Then he tells two short parables about the mustard seed (we used Mark’s version on Feb. 18) and then today’s parable of the yeast. Later, Jesus tells a cluster of four short parables, which we will cover later. Each parable addresses some aspect of the kingdom and though some are short, each tells us something about the nature and purpose of the God’s kingdom and keeping in mind this whole cluster of parables can help us best in understanding the kingdom.

  This parable is part of a pair, and shares the meaning of the preceding Parable of the Mustard Seed, namely the powerful growth of the Kingdom of God from small beginnings. As with the Parable of the Lost Sheep and Lost Coin in Luke 15, this parable is part of a pair, (mustard seed and Leaven) in which the first parable describes Jesus' work in terms of a man's agricultural activities, and the second in terms of a woman's domestic activities. Jesus is asking the crowd whether male or female, privileged or peasant, it does not matter to enter the domain of a first-century woman and household cook in order to gain perspective on God’s kingdom.

  Although typically leaven symbolized evil influences elsewhere in the New Testament (as in Luke 12:1). The use of leaven as a positive symbol for the kingdom of heaven is that it was widely regarded as an agent of corruption (fermentation) in the ancient world. A strange aspect of parables is their often paradoxical nature. They present as good something commonly regarded as bad (leaven as metaphor for kingdom of God, a "Good" Samaritan) or they present as bad something we regard as good.

  What would have strike Jesus’ listeners as odd was Jesus' comparison of the kingdom of heaven to something from the sphere of women's work. The kingdom comparable to something as mundane and menial as making the dough for the daily baking! Bread baking was not only woman's work, it was servant's work - a daily drudgery necessary to keep the most basic dietary staple on the table.

  The parable describes what happens when a woman adds leaven (old, fermented dough usually containing lactobacillus and yeast) to a large quantity of flour, enough flour to feed about 100 people. The living organisms in the leaven grow overnight, so that by morning the entire quantity of dough has been affected.

Lenten Devotion – Day 11

Monday, March 2, 2015

Today’ Scripture: Mark 10:13-16 and Mark 9:33-37

"Let the little children come to me; do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs. Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it." (Mark 10:14-15)

“Real success in the kingdom of God is not about being strong and looking good and knowing all the right answers. It's about continually yielding oneself to Jesus and determining to take purposeful little steps of obedience, and the ragged reality that it's all about God and His grace at work in us.” ― Mary Beth Chapman, Choosing to SEE

  When we read scripture passages about the Kingdom of God, we often see the words, “belong,” “receive,” and “enter.” In the scripture reading for today, we see the use of all three of these words as Jesus compares, belong, receive and enter the kingdom with the attributes of a child, least in the society, obedient, playfulness, and trusting behavior.

  Rabbis of Jesus time used the expression, “to take upon oneself the Kingdom of God” which they meant the scrupulous observance of the Torah. Jesus was comparing this expression, “whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it," (10:15) that to enter the kingdom of God is something other than scrupulous observance of the Torah.

  Jesus announced God’s kingdom coming as a gift and as an experience into which, if they have the receptiveness of a child, individuals may enter here and now. The comparison is not so much the innocence, humility or obedience of children; it is rather the fact that children are at ease, receptive, and content to be dependent upon others’ care and bounty. Though this is not the only comparison which can be understood in this passage about children and the kingdom. In Mark, this is the first time Jesus directly associates the kingdom of God with little children.

  Mark 10:13-16 must be seen in light of Mark 9:33-37 and that both of these references to a child build not primarily on assumed characteristics of children but rather on their social status in the first-century world. Using children as a comparison to the kingdom because the disciples attempt to chase the children away, Jesus is speaking of those marginalized and dominated in society, like women, the poor, the unclean and children. The child was the “least” in familial and societal structures. Jesus was inviting his disciples into a new reality of community and family, where the “least” becomes the model for discipleship where the disciple takes up the powerlessness and vulnerability of the child.

  The kingdom of God is something that has been given. While God’s kingdom can “belong” to the children as something already possessed, it is also described as a gift that awaits our possessing. It will be inherited. The meek, Jesus said, “will inherit the earth” (Matt. 5:5). Paul in turn speaks of those who “will not inherit the Kingdom of God.” (1 Cor. 6:9-10; 15:50; Gal. 5:20; Eph. 5:5)

  In addition to being a gift, the kingdom of God is equally a realm one enters. Here the imagery is quite different, for the kingdom of God is cast as a domain into which one moves. It meets everyone with God’s welcome in Jesus’ invitation.

Lenten Devotional – Day 10

Saturday, February 28, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Luke 17:20-25

Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he answered, "The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, 'Look, here it is!' or 'There it is!' For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you." (Luke 17:20-21, NRSV)

Christianity is not a religion that gives some people a ticket to heaven and makes them judgmental of all others. Rather, it’s a call to a relationship that changes all other relationships. Jesus told us a new relationship with God also brings us into a new relationship with our neighbor, especially with the most vulnerable of this world, and even with our enemies. But we don’t always hear that from the churches. This call to love our neighbor is the foundation for reestablishing and reclaiming the common good. Which is fallen into cultural and political - and even religious-neglect. - Jim Wallis, “On God’s Side: What Religion Forgets and Politics Hasn’t Learned about Serving the Common Good”, Brazon Press, 2013, pp. 3-4.

  We often don't recognize the moral crisis and spiritual conflict of our age, until something "shakes us up" to the reality of our present condition. The Chinese character for signifying the idea of “crisis” combines two other characters, the one for “danger” and the other for “opportunity.” Crisis is made of both, and so too is the current situation of the church. Dangers lurk on all sides for churches, but probably the greatest dangers lies within. Dangers lurk for us because we may be looking in the wrong places. We expect God to do something very specific for us so we can live comfortably as the church, but God is at work in another part of our community and we miss the opportunity to join God as God’s partner.

  The Pharisee’s expected the Messiah to bring the kingdom or reign of God with a great deal of flashily drama and the mighty arm of God who would crush their enemies and establish His rule forever. Jesus was not what they expected and they failed to see the kingdom in their midst, because they were looking for something else.

  The reward for doing what is right and just and the penalty for sin and wrong-doing are not always experienced in this life. Scripture assures us that someday the day of the Lord and the final judgment will come. Though at the present, Jesus tells us that there will be persecution, suffering, and difficulties in this age until he comes again at the end of the world. God extends grace and mercy to all who will heed his call. Do we take advantage of this grace and mercy to seek God's kingdom and to pursue his will?

  An erroneous translation often used by other versions of scripture have said that “The kingdom of God is within you." The more precise translation is "The kingdom of God is among you." (v. 21) The implication of the new translation is that God's Spirit is most active in our relationships with one another.

  Jesus used parables to describe the Kingdom in part because you simply can’t give a definition of the Kingdom. The kingdom of God defies any definitive definition, but you come realize you are living within it in the presence of Jesus, in the presence of other disciples and you recognize you have come near to it. Hopefully, we have all had the experience of feeling we are in a special place, a place where the kingdom has come near. A place where we feel joy in the fellowship of others, we experience the power of the compassion, love, and support shared with us, the facility, the restrooms, and the coffee might not be very good, but the people are a treasure and to leave seems so hard to do.

Lenten Devotion – Day Nine

Friday, February 27, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Matthew 18:21-35
"For this reason the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves…. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?'” (Matt. 18:23. 33)

A [man] had a particular besetting sin, and he used to confess it and God would forgive him. But no sooner had he been absolved than he would trip up and sin again. One day this happened, and he rushed back to God and said, "I'm sorry, I've done it again." And God asked, "What have you done again?" For God suffers from amnesia when it comes to our sins. God does not look at the caterpillar we are now, but at the dazzling butterfly we have in us to become. In the Lord's Prayer, Jesus bids us ask God to forgive us as we forgive those who have wronged us. Not to forgive others is to shut the door to our own being forgiven. - Desmond Tutu, An African Prayer Book (New York: Doubleday, 1995), 38.

  In his book Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve, Lewis Smedes says that the parable of the unforgiving servant is about God and us. It promises that if we act like the unforgiving servant, then God will act like the king. “Jesus grabs the hardest trick in the bag, forgiving, and says we have to perform it or we are out in the cold, way out, in the boondocks of the unforgiven .… He is tough because the incongruity of sinners refusing to forgive sinners boggles God’s mind. He cannot cope with it; there is no honest way to put up with it.”

  In the gospel of Matthew, Peter walks up to Jesus and says, “Lord, if another member of the church sins against me, how often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” Jesus answers, “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times” (18:21-22). Then Jesus tells this parable about the unforgiving servant.

  Now some will object to this open-ended approach to forgiveness, saying that it turns Christians into doormats, fails to hold sinners accountable, and invites abusers to continue their abuse. The Chinese consider Jesus’ teaching about forgiveness unmanly.

  A Chinese Christian was once explaining forgiveness to a group of people gathered in the chapel by the mission hospital. He said, “I will tell you how we obey this commandment. When you are sick or hurt, you come to the hospital and we nurse you, dress your wounds, and care for you, but you go away and revile us and lie about us. Then, when you are sick once more, you come back and we nurse you, and care for you again and again. That is forgiveness.”

  Jesus is saying that forgiveness is at the heart of life in the church — it creates a distinctively merciful community. Why is this? The parable of the unforgiving servant answers this question by revealing the reason we must offer forgiveness to one another. It has nothing to do with the pursuit of justice, and everything to do with the character of God. Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven “may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves” (v. 23). So Jesus is saying that we can learn a little something about life in God’s kingdom by paying attention to a story about how this king deals with his debtors.

  The king begins by calling a debtor to appear before him. The man owes him 10,000 talents, which is an insanely large sum of money. The king orders the slave to be sold, together with his wife and children and all his possessions, so that a payment can be made. With nothing left to lose, the slave falls on his knees before the king and says, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you everything.” Surprisingly, the king shows pity and releases the slave, forgiving him the entire debt (vv. 24-27).

  That’s the kind of God we have, says Jesus, a king who has mercy on us, and who forgives us our debts. Now that’s a pleasant parable, but we haven’t reached the end. That freshly forgiven slave races out comes upon a second slave who owes him a hundred denarii, a significant sum, but it’s positively microscopic compared to what the first slave owed the king. The first slave seizes the second slave by the throat and demands that he pay him what he owes. The second slave falls down and pleads with him, “Have patience with me, and I will pay you” (v. 29).

Lenten Devotion – Day Eight

Thursday, February 26, 2015

Today’s Scripture: Matthew 13:24-30

“'Master, did you not sow good seed in your field? Where, then, did these weeds come from?' He answered, 'An enemy has done this.' The slaves said to him, 'Then do you want us to go and gather them?' But he replied, 'No; for in gathering the weeds you would uproot the wheat along with them.” (Matt. 13:27b-29)

God is often faulted for creating a world full of suffering and evil. The issue is complex, both philosophically and theologically; but surely it is inappropriate to blame God for a problem He did not initiate, and [that is] in fact, one which He has sought to alleviate, at great cost to Himself. God sent His Son to inaugurate the Kingdom and to "destroy him who has the power of death, that is, the devil" (Heb. 2:14). God is not the cause of suffering and sickness; He is its cure! Jesus' ministry and death guarantee this. - George Malone, "Those Controversial Gifts"

  This parable is a description of a reality we would rather not admit. Can’t God do something about the enemy and do it now? What is God good for anyway if God can’t see to it that evil is eliminated? The parable of the wheat and the weeds is not told for the sake of action but for the sake of honesty. Our presence in the world as Christians is not about a full-blown plan to get rid of evil at every turn.

  Some disciples of Christ tend to believe that their calling is to seek out and purge sin and evil. Frankly, I don’t want that job. I don’t trust myself. But I do trust God. Our presence in the world as Christians is to be the good, loving and compassionate. To live the Gospel. To be the light. To be the salt. Because we are, says Jesus to be his disciples. This should be good news. This parable calls us simply to be. To be the good in the world, even it seems more profitable to be bad. To be light when darkness will surely try to snuff us out. To be salt when blandness and conformity and acceptability seem like the easier path.

  God intended His creation as good from the beginning and thereby the Kingdom, but sin, greed, lust, violence, revenge contaminated the good creation. To uproot the bad now would destroy the good. Or, to put this in the language of Jesus, we're going to have to put up with the weeds among the wheat, the phonies among the pious, the false among the true, the fake among the genuine, sinners among the saints.

  The good news is that Jesus describes this field, which is the "world" (v. 38), as a field of wheat, not as a field of weeds. When Jesus sees the world, he looks out across not a field of weeds in which there is wheat growing, but a field of wheat in which there are weeds growing. This should be encouraging news for us. We can view the world around us with all its violence, terrorism, and hatred and be discouraged and to believe that evil is all around us, about to overwhelm us and about to win. In fact, Jesus reminds us that there are more of the faithful, more of those who have not bowed the knee to Baal, more of those whose core values are still biblical ones, than we sometimes realize. Yes, the "children of evil" exist and they do damage to the crop, but they exist in a field that is predominantly a field of wheat, not weeds.

  Remarkably, Jesus doesn't offer a grand plan for getting rid of the weeds that plague the field of wheat. There's no protocol for waging war on weeds. There are no rules of engagement about marching into a field of wheat to root out the weeds. In fact, Jesus says that we should go about our business. Our job is to be wheat, not weeds. We're not called to be the farmer. Rooting up weeds is not part of our job description. We'd like to rain down hellfire and brimstone, but Jesus counsels us otherwise. Wheat farmers say that at harvest the dry weeds will just blow right through the combine.

Lenten Devotion – Day Seven

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Today’s Scripture Reading:   Luke 10:1-12
“But whenever you enter a town and they do not welcome you, go out into its streets and say, ‘Even the dust of your town that clings to our feet, we wipe off in protest against you. Yet know this: the kingdom of God has come near.’" (Luke 10:10-11)

“If we're going to impact our world in the name of Jesus, it will be because people like you and me took action in the power of the Spirit. Ever since the mission and ministry of Jesus, God has never stopped calling for a movement of "Little Jesuses" to follow him into the world and unleash the remarkable redemptive genius that lies in the very message we carry. Given the situation of the Church in the West, much will now depend on whether we are willing to break out of a stifling herd instinct and find God again in the context of the advancing kingdom of God.” ― Alan Hirsch, The Forgotten Ways: Reactivating the Missional Church

  Sometimes the Kingdom of God may come near to us and we miss its appearance. Something great comes our way and we fail to recognize it. We may be looking for the extraordinary miracles of healing, power, and wonder, when the reality is that the extraordinary often comes wrapped in the ordinary, in the small, seemingly simple things.

  In 1863, a newspaper editor from Harrisburg, PA only 35 miles away from Gettysburg, heard Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, which was not even the main speech of the day’s activities, when the president was to make only a few brief remarks. The next day the editor wrote in his paper: "We pass over the silly remarks of the President; for the credit of the nation, we are willing that the veil of oblivion shall be dropped over them and that they should no more be repeated or thought of."

  One of the worst things that can be said of people is that greatness passed them by, and they did not recognize it. Yet in the words of Henry David Thoreau:

    The morning wind forever blows;
    The poem of creation is uninterrupted;
    But few are the ears that hear it.

  Every one of us at some moment in our lives have felt that morning wind blowing by; every one of us has been partakers in that uninterrupted poem of creation. Yet how many of our ears have really heard it; how many of our eyes have truly seen it? What is preventing us from seeing the kingdom of God and letting it into our lives? Are we relying on seeing only the extraordinary miracles of God’s presence in our lives and missing the wonders, we can behold in the simply ordinary things of life, the seemingly insignificant moments.

  At times, we let the kingdom pass us by because the wonder of its greatness threatens our own sense of importance. We so enjoy ruling our own private kingdoms, no matter how small and insignificant they may appear to others. While pre-occupied with our own accomplishments, we fail to witness the wonders of God unfolding before us and they remain just out of our reach because we do not wish to let go even for a moment what we feel is more important.

Lenten Devotion – Day Six

Tuesday, February 24, 2015

Today’s Scripture: John 3:5-10
  Jesus answered, "Very truly, I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.” (John 3:5, NRSV)

African-American slaves were not allowed to have their own worship and were rarely allowed access to the Bible, so they "held clandestine religious gatherings at night, a practice that continued after emancipation. The slaves saw in Nicodemus' night visit proof that it was possible to come to Jesus even when those in power forbade it. Nicodemus was a model, someone who was willing to act on his own against the will of the authorities. The slaves' faith surpassed that of Nicodemus. Nicodemus' night visit was only exploratory, and in this story in John 3, he does not understand the invitation Jesus extends to him. The slaves, by contrast, understood and embraced what Jesus had to offer. They were willing to risk their safety and their very lives to come to Jesus. The slaves are a powerful example of those who "come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God" (3:21). — Gail R. O'Day, "The Gospel of John," The New Interpreter's Bible (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995), 555.

  The story of Nicodemus is the only place where John has Jesus using the phrase, “Kingdom of God” both references are related to “being born… (either above/again or water and Spirit, vs. 3, 5). Yesterday, we covered verse 3, today we will take a look at verse 5. These two verses both speak of the kingdom of God and speak about it in two different ways. Verse 3 states we need to be “born from above/again” in order to be able to “see” the kingdom of God. Verse 5, states “no one can enter (as opposed to “see”) the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit.”

  Then Jesus tells Nicodemus, in the next verse, “What is born of the flesh is flesh, and what is born of the Spirit is spirit.” (v. 6) Jesus is attempting to get Nicodemus to understand that this new or second birth is a spiritual birth coming through the Holy Spirit. We all come into this world as flesh and blood humans, but we need to have life breathed into us by the Spirit in a birth from above, in order, to “see” and “enter” the kingdom of God. Paul, states this same idea later in First Corinthians when he states, “What I am saying, brothers and sisters, is this: flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God, nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.” (1 Cor. 15:50)

  Jesus is talking, here, about being born. If there’s one thing in life we don’t do on our own, it’s being born. We burst into this world screaming and kicking and thoroughly dependent upon others for everything. How can we ourselves possibly arrange to be reborn in the Spirit? It’s not our doing, we can avoid it or reject it, but the actual birth from above is the work of the Holy Spirit. It’s a holy mystery, an awe-inspiring gift. And that is why we have a whole sacrament to commemorate it: the marvelous, grace-filled sacrament of water and the Spirit called baptism.

  What does it mean to be born of the water? Water is the symbol of cleansing. When Jesus takes possession of our lives, when we love him with all our hearts, the sins of the past are forgiven and forgotten. To have our sins washed away. We never outgrow the need for having our sins and imperfections washed away daily and continuously. The water in baptism reminds us of our need for daily cleansing and washing.

  What does it mean to born of the Spirit? The Spirit is the symbol of power. When Jesus takes possession our lives it is not only the past that is forgotten and forgiven; if that were all, we might well proceed to make the same mess of life all over again; but into life there enters a new power which enables us to be what by ourselves we could never be and to what by ourselves we could never do without the power and presence of the Holy Spirit. Making an affirmative decision to follow Jesus wherever he leads us. It means to have the love of Christ, the joy of Christ, the peace of Christ, the patience of Christ, kindness of Christ, the goodness of Christ, the faithfulness of Christ, the gentleness of Christ, the self-control of Christ living inside of us. It is having the Spirit of Christ taking up residence in us and living within us.