ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: A number of years ago, I preached a sermon on this text, and a few days later I received a letter in the mail. This letter was seeking to take issue with my sermon, specifically my choice of Bible passages. This individual was wondering why I kept preaching on passages that focused on Jesus caring for and involving those who had been excluded. Why didn’t I preach more sermons on immoral behavior like teenage sex. Now that’s a challenge, especially since the Bible was written at a time when females specifically (and many males) were being wed in their early teen years. But my response was actually part of the problem as it started a whole back and forth on teenagers having sex, when was the proper age for marriage, etc. Whether it was intentional or not, the question provided the letter writer a respite from being confronted by Jesus and his call to the least among us, the disenfranchised, marginalized and the lost. Did Jesus talk about a few other concerns? Absolutely, but when you look at his life and ministry, the reason for his arrest and execution, you come face-to-face with a message that asks: Are you loving the ones that society has forgotten? Are you giving this work more than lip service? Are you joining them in a meal and defending their valued presence at the table? Remember, Jesus did all those things to make sure we knew our beloved value in the eyes of God. Now it is our task to do the same for others. Prayer: Easily distracted! Our attention so often is diverted from what is really important. Holy God, keep us attentive to the Gospel, to the unrelenting and unconditional love of Jesus that is poured into us with a purpose. Let us continue to find new ways of using the power of love to bring more and more people around the table. Amen. TODAY via WordPress https://ift.tt/37jLtHN
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ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: Over the next three Sundays, I am going to preach from Matthew 10. It is one of the lectionary text, and I have been needing a different challenge lately. In recent months, we have moved from one crisis to another, and my preaching has, for the most part, been focused on speaking to what I have been hearing from people. This is one approach to preaching, but the lectionary (a three year cycle that covers a significant portion of the Bible) hands you four different texts each week – usually one Old Testament, a Psalm, a Gospel reading and one from the Epistles. I didn’t even read Matthew 10 before making that decision. This is all to say that for the next few days, I plan to give the preaching some context by looking at chapter 9. In this story, Jesus saw a paralyzed man and his first response was to offer forgiveness. That seems strange. Was the man paralyzed because he had sinned? Does this mean that our ailments are nothing more than punishment for our transgressions? Most of us would find that troubling, and the Book of Job is a parable-like attempt to dismantle any such thought. Jesus was living in a time when many believed that bad health was directly tied to sin, and for many who found themselves under Roman occupation, those who were sick, paralyzed or blind were blamed for the occupation. They must have sinned, and it was believed that they carried the mark of their sin (whatever the ailment might be) so that people could ascribe responsibility. Jesus publicly forgave the man, and then later in the story, provided him healing. Suddenly, the old narrative that had scapegoated the weak and unwell, was taken away. It forced many, who had never questioned this thinking before, to rethink and reimagine the world in which they were living. Maybe it was a bit more complicated than previously thought. It was easy to cast blame on those who could not defend themselves, and it might have even made some feel a little better. But in the end, scapegoating the wrong people keeps the old system in place. Jesus, by forgiving the man, was inviting the people to ask deeper and more challenging questions. Prayer: Holy One – Holy Spirit, keep us asking the needed questions about life, how we live and interact. Allow long held assumptions to be questioned, especially when assumptions seek to blame those who have no power to defend themselves. Create healthy conversations where we are confessional, acknowledging how easy it is to be drawn into simple explanations that may not necessarily be accurate. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/2UoB3RQ ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS via WordPress https://ift.tt/2XFYXui ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: Today during my sermon, I reference this story from Mark’s Gospel. It is one of the great stories in the Gospels, and a minister’s perfect launching pad for a sermon. It has a thousand potential sermons in it, and those are just the ones I can imagine. This exchange is interesting as Jesus showed Bartimaeus great respect in not assuming to know Bartimaeus’ needs. And unlike so many of these encounters in Mark’s Gospel where the recently healed are told to go and tell no one, Bartimaeus followed Jesus on the way. The language, “on the way,” is loaded language. It was more than the road they were traveling, it was the language used by the earliest Christians to describe their movement. These were people who followed in the way of Jesus, and for Bartimaeus, the way he met in Jesus was that of compassion, respect and a genuine interest in hearing what this nobody, according to society, had to say. Bartimaeus was empowered by his encounter with Jesus, and because he followed Jesus on the way, I imagine Bartimaeus helped others to find themselves in the way of Jesus. Prayer: You don’t just take care of our problems, Merciful Spirit of the Christ, but you provide us space to speak our own words and requests. In doing so, you have modeled for us the attributes of attentiveness to and appreciation of every individual life. Amen. ONLINE WORSHIP via WordPress https://ift.tt/2MyCIju ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: Though Paul rejected some of his Jewish heritage, he held to other parts of it. In this case, he taught the Jewish idea of history being divided into two parts: Present evil age and the coming new age. According to Paul’s thinking, it was the life and death of Jesus that became the entry point through which a person could travel into this new realm, beginning the journey in the waters of baptism. Though the present evil age would attempt to maintain its influence, Paul believed its power had no ultimate authority. In this time when many Christians are looking at the current world filled with hate and violence, disease and suffering, it is our task to point toward the new age that is already present because of Jesus and his witness. We do this by living as those who are a part of the new age, the new age of love, mercy and justice. Prayer: Help me to embrace your new world, O God, for it is my task as a follower of Jesus to fully represent, not what was, but what is. Amen. SEE YOU via WordPress https://ift.tt/2Y5N7IX ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: Can I be honest? I expect your response to be something along the lines of, “Bruce, we expect you to be honest. You’re a pastor.” Very good! My hope has been met with disappointment on more than one occasion. My faith-filled convictions that I truly believed aligned with God’s dream for this world have so often appeared to be coming to fruition, and then without notice, they came crashing down. Some of it has been as simple as an exciting program in the life of the church where it turned out that I was the only one who was excited. But other moments have come when it appeared as if something amazing was about to burst onto the scene. This was going to be the moment! And then, before my eyes, it crumbled. I am reminded of the sermon by Dr. Fred Craddock, entitled Bloody Knuckles, in which he told the story of an idealistic young pastor who spoke of an end to racism. After the sermon, an elderly African American man stood up and thanked the young pastor, but suggested that he might not fully understand what it was like until he’s stood at a locked door with bloody knuckles from knocking and knocking and knocking. Hope is a curious gift, might I say even frustrating at times. Maybe it’s because I want to see works of kindness and justice happen now, and as much as God would be in agreement, God uses human beings to make it happen… and we don’t always align ourselves with love and kindness. We sort of do, but then we use an escape clause or point to a distraction that gets everyone talking about something else. And the hope that was once very real appears to disappear. Paul wrote that hope does not disappoint us, and maybe he was right. Hope does not disappoint us, but the human response to God’s hope for the world can be a bit disappointing at times. Prayer: Allow for the life of Jesus to provide us a clear picture of your hope, O Generous and Kind God, and then attach that hope firmly to our lives so it is what drives our decisions each day. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/3cHNEGl ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: For the longest time, I did not like the word righteous or righteousness as I equated such words with self-righteousness. If there was one thing that irritated me within my own religion was the occasional sense of superiority, religious arrogance that bled into self-righteousness. Maybe I was bothered, in part, because I was so aware of my own failures and shortcomings in the faith (and I still am). But as I would come to understand, righteousness is synonymous in scripture with justice as the prophets spoke of justice. In fact, the prophetic poetry would often use the literary device of parallelism, saying the same basic thing two different ways to create heightened awareness and importance. Righteousness and justice were set side-by-side in this parallelism, as we find in the Prophet Amos, “…let justice roll down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream” (5:24). In his most impassioned sermon, Jesus made it clear that those who were denied the righteousness of God (and you could add the justice demanded by God) were not going to be forgotten. It becomes an indirect question to his listeners (and to us): Will you stand on the right(eous) side, the side of God’s justice? Prayer: For those of us who believe we can remain uncommitted to the work of righteousness and justice, O Lord, we request for you to create within us an appetite for a life that is lived for your just and right kingdom. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/2U8JoJ8 ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: How did you learn to walk? How did you learn to eat? How did you learn to say, “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” Most of us learned the basics of life through watching and imitating. It was a mix of success and failure, trial and error. Jesus provided an example of sacrificial love that would become the model for the Christian life, yet we don’t elevate this act as often as we should. For that reason, we are unintentionally teaching things that even Jesus would say, “That’s not me!” It’s interesting, especially as children, we learn a great deal from the more subtle cues, body language and the tone of people’s voices. Adults model things that they are not intending to model as they unconsciously react based upon an unnamed fear or bias. Studies seem to indicate that children are learning much more from our unintended teaching moments than we’d like to admit. Maybe this was why Jesus seemed so very deliberate with everything he did, while also taking time away for prayer and reflection. Those quiet moments are essential if our lives are going to communicate what we really want them to communicate. Prayer: O God in Three Persons, you have modeled in the life of Jesus so much of what is important. Let us reflect seriously on whether our intended and unintended teaching moments are communicating the values we hope to communicate. Amen. via WordPress https://ift.tt/2U2VgN6 ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS Thought for the Day: I assume that if life can flow from us, so can something else… something that is far from life-giving. I appreciated the recent Op-Ed by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. The imagery of this paragraph really stood out to me: I don’t want to see stores looted or even buildings burn. But African Americans have been living in a burning building for many years, choking on the smoke as the flames burn closer and closer. Racism in America is like dust in the air. It seems invisible — even if you’re choking on it — until you let the sun in. Then you see it’s everywhere. As long as we keep shining that light, we have a chance of cleaning it wherever it lands. But we have to stay vigilant, because it’s always still in the air. Racism and bigotry are like dust in the air, and though we may not see this dust, we are choking on it. Light has allowed us to recognize it a bit more clearly, especially those of us who are not directly impacted by racism and bigotry. Outside of a few very sick individuals, everyone is currently outraged and heartbroken, but we’ve been here before…only to see the passion diminish when something else grabbed our attention. There will be something else, but just because our attention has been drawn away does not reduce the “choking hazard” of hate that permeates every part of life. Vigilance is necessary, especially those of us who believe in the power of nonviolent resistance as the tool for real and lasting transformation. Anything else might bring change, but it won’t have the permanence that we all seek. Prayer: You have created us, Holy God, as agents by which life can be shared. For too many, life has been taken from them – emotionally, economically and physically. Use us however you see fit, and as you give us the Spirit of life, we shall share it in such a way that the springs of life shall flow in the streets, neighborhoods, businesses, courthouses, government buildings and even your churches. It is in the name of Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen. TOMORROW via WordPress https://ift.tt/3drqF3m ECCLESIOLOGICAL ETCHINGS via WordPress https://ift.tt/36NYQQc |
AuthorRev. Bruce Frogge Archives
April 2024
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