Does It Matter

For those of you who might want to see the whole devotional booklet for 2022, I am adding them here today, December 5. Sorry I didn’t get them started on the first day of Advent!

– jamie

November 27, 2022 , First Sunday in Advent

Ecclesiastes 3: 1

There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven.

“Happy New Year!” Usually, we wait until January 1 to begin saying this to others, but as a Christian who attends church, you also know that the “liturgical year” begins with the first Sunday of Advent. Our worship year begins back in the Hebrew Bible, where the expectation of and hope for a Messiah was born. So, we reach into that part of the Bible as we begin Advent.

It’s time for us to move into this new season of the church year, to set aside time for new habits and practices. Today is a day for setting simple goals: to remember what some like to say is the “reason for the season.” 

Let’s begin with hope and expectation during these following days. Look for the spiritual gifts of Christmas. Soften your heart. Slow down.Try not to over-commit. Pray daily.

There’s a time and season for everything. 

Prayer: As we move into a busy season, help us to take a breath each day: a breath full of you, our God; in Jesus’ name we pray, amen.

November 28, 2022

Psalm 10: 1

Why do you stand far off, God? Why do you hide yourself in times of trouble?

Being asked to take time for God during the busyness  of December is a slap in the face for some people. “God doesn’t take time for me!” we might hear them say. 

How often are we actually listening and looking for God?

We’ve seen how often complaints against God are lodged by impatient people who quit trying after one or two brief attempts. 

A 10-year-old in my Sunday School class in Dublin, GA, figured it out. When asked if God still spoke to people in modern times, little Mandy spoke up: “Yes, God does. But people don’t take the time to learn God’s language.” 

Let’s take time. Someday, we will see that God is never far off. Someday, we’ll understand God’s language.

Prayer: We will search for you, God, in all the places you dwell. For your dwelling place is with people. Here we are: please help us to see you, in Christ’s name we pray, amen.

November 29, 2022

From John 1

In the beginning the Word was; and the Word was with God; and the Word was God….And the Word became flesh and lived among us.

Someone occasionally asks me if I believe in the Word of God. I say, “Yes. And I accepted him as my Savior.” Inevitably, I get a confused look.

The Word of God, according to the Gospel of John, is not a book, but a person, a real live blood-bones-skin-muscle human being. Of course, the Bible is also called the Word. John, though, felt that God spoke clearest by sending a human message: Jesus. Jesus is all we need to know about God.

We are in a time of waiting and expectation. We’re waiting for Jesus to be revealed to us once again, and we’re praying that that revelation will help us to grow in faith and understanding. We’re praying that we will be renewed in faith and gain new knowledge about God. We’re looking for the true Word of God in the person of the Savior.

Prayer: Show yourself to us, Christ Jesus, so that this time of Advent may be as meaningful to us as to those people long ago who awaited the coming of the Messiah, in your holy name we pray, amen.

November 30, 2022

Micah 5:2

But you, Bethlehem Ephrathah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from old, from ancient times.

Bethlehem plays an important part in the stories of Jesus’ birth. It was a very small place, not much of a village. There weren’t tons of inns, and if folks were staying there, it’s likely they were staying in tents. Still, it is the place of the Savior’s birth, and for us it will always be larger than life.

It just proves again that you don’t have to be rich, famous, powerful, or anything like what we too-often value in our culture: Jesus wasn’t just born in a stable, he was born in a place that was barely on the map! Yet out of these humble beginnings came the Lord of all creation, and it is the birthplace of our faith.

Prayer: Help us not to look for you among the rich and famous, Lord Jesus, but among the poor and forgotten. For, like your birthplace, it is in those unexpected and even unworthy places that you still dwell. We pray in your name always, amen.

1 Kings 19: 12

After the earthquake came a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper.

Or, “…a still, small voice.” We know the story of Elijah and the cave, a place he went to escape persecution, to gather his spiritual strength, to find some peace, and to listen to God. He didn’t recognize God in a powerful wind, or in an earthquake, nor in fire. After all the tumult, though, a gentle whisper barely brushed past his awareness, and there is where he found God.

We also crave some emotional event as God comes close to call us to service, to let us know God’s presence. We want handwriting on the wall, or an audible voice speaking clearly. 

Yet, God arrives almost hidden, like a baby wrapped in cloth hiding in a feeding trough full of straw. We are not called, always, to proclaim, to witness aloud; sometimes, we’re called to be still, to be silent, and bear witness to the gentle whisper. 

Breathe, and listen…

Prayer: As we take our next breath, gracious God, may we sense your presence, quiet as a whisper, barely audible, yet full of glory and love, in Christ’s name, amen.

Isaiah 9:6

For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God…, Prince of Peace.

There are not too many of us who do not recognize this verse, and some can hum along some of Handel’s Messiah as we read it.

Fewer of us will make the leap to these words of Jesus: Peace I leave with you… not as the world gives do I give to you (John 14: 27). The world’s idea of peace and Jesus’ peace are two very different things. The absence of war and conflict is not what Jesus means, although that is certainly part of it. Peace must include justice, equality, acceptance, includedness: in other words, God’s love for everyone.

It is our prayer on this Peace Sunday, that we – and everyone in the world because of our faithfulness – will someday experience this peace that Jesus hoped to bring into the world: not as the world gives…. Let not your hearts be troubled.

Prayer: We know, loving God, that we are unable to create peace without you. Make us people of love, that your true peace may come on earth, in the name of the Christ who is coming again into the world we pray, amen.

Genesis 1: 1a

In the beginning, God….

This is my favorite scripture some days! It’s simple, and my poor brain can wrap itself around the words, if not the actual concept. “The Beginning:” it needs the capital letters, doesn’t it? Even though it’s not really a “one moment” kind of event, it seems like a place in time somewhere when God started “doing.” 

Whenever life gets to me too much, I remember how small we really are. No matter who we are in humanity’s eyes, we could actually be nothing in God’s. All of the people we idolize today will be just a footnote in history. How many of us really think much about Atilla the Hun? I used to get up in arms about this President or that Senator: they are all mostly dead now. Even the ones I liked.

But God goes on and on. And because of Jesus, you and I are never just a footnote in God’s book: we are each and all dearly loved. As Desmond Tutu reminds us, “For God, you are special, with a specialness that is not replicated.”

Prayer: We thank you, loving God, that you are in charge. Help us to know how much you love us, that you created us to be yours forever, in Christ’s name, amen.

Isaiah 52: 15b

For what they were not told, they will see, and what they have not heard, they will understand.

Isaiah is talking about the impact of the suffering servant, the one we believe to be Jesus the Christ. This is a statement about faith: Isaiah sees that the impact of the suffering servant will be more than what is obvious and more than is even understood by our thought processes.

I read this as a statement about how we come to faith: we see and understand more than we are capable of because of God’s action in our lives. Faith is not something we earn but something that shakes us out of our preconceived notions into a way of knowing and experiencing that is given to us by God.

It is our hope, always, that we will grow beyond what we are capable of understanding into a faith that is more than knowledge and logic and calculation. We hope to see what we are not told and understand what we have not heard.

Prayer: God, during Advent, expand our minds that we might see as you see: the world, the cosmos, as a whole, and because of that, we can better understand the meaning of the Christ Child, for it’s in his name we pray, amen.

Scriptures: Psalm 53 (along with Psalm 14)

Psalm 53 and Psalm 14 are nearly identical. One commentary says that if we think of them like we think of a modern singer taking an old song and changing the tune slightly and maybe a word or two, that would probably explain the minor differences.

Some of our versions give us some information at the beginning of the Psalm, which would be tune instructions as well as (sometimes) who wrote the Psalm. In this case, Psalm 14 says that it’s a song by David; Psalm 53 says that the song should be sung to the tune of Mahalath, then says it’s a song of David.

One of the other main differences is the Hebrew words used for God. Psalm 14 uses mostly “Yahweh” (4 times, vss. 2, 4, 6, and 7) while Psalm 53 uses “Elohim” (all 7 times that God is mentioned).

The major difference in the two Psalms is verse 5; if Psalm 13 is the original, then probably the change in Psalm 53 refers to a specific event. But both Psalms are about God’s deliverance.

Why all the rigmarole about these two Psalms today? Well, not much. Looking at the Psalms as a refuge for us when we are seeking comfort, we sometimes come upon something that catches our attention. This was what happened for me.

I’m trying to stay away from Psalms of lament; we are deep into this pandemic now, hoping for relief soon. Psalm 53: 6 is the verse that jumped out at me this morning (and what follows is my paraphrase of the text): “I pray that our deliverance from what we’re going through would come from God soon! When God restores the well-being of faithful people, then all of us will rejoice and the Church will be glad!”

Remember: we’re not the first people who need deliverance, and we won’t be the last. Let’s always look to the triumph of Jesus over death as our hope; let’s look at the empty cross and the empty tomb; and let’s remember that whether we understand it or not, something happened on Easter that changed the lives of Jesus’ followers in ways they could not explain. All they could do, all we can do, is to live the Gospel (“good news”) of God’s presence with us through all that we face.

Prayer: God, let us not be overwhelmed by our fears; rather, let us celebrate each day for the gifts from You that are before us, in Jesus’ name, amen.

Scripture: Psalm 93

Easter Monday.

Where I grew up, Easter Monday was a thing, a holiday. I heard that it was because some legislators, arguing about Jesus’ “three days in the tomb,” decided that there was no way to get three days out of Friday to Sunday, so they decided that the Resurrection actually took place on Monday. While I’ve never bothered to find out if this really is true, it makes sense: the kind of thing a politician would come up with.

It doesn’t really matter. It’s a great story that children can tell each other (which is where I heard it – from the son of an attorney, no less!) . Do children still have heavy theological discussions like that? We certainly did, on a regular basis. We didn’t have Google, we had the World Book Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Britannica, but there was nothing that helped me find the truth, and after a bit, I just quit: there wasn’t much possibility after almost 2000 years that the truth would change the Church!

Sundays are always Resurrection days.

This year’s Resurrection Sunday probably was more meaningful to many of us than any before. Lent was a real thing this year, whether we like to observe it or not. I used to work with a guy who said Lent wasn’t in the Bible, so he didn’t mess with it; of course it’s in the Bible, and Shakespeare’s “a rose by any other name would smell as sweet” is applicable here: Jesus’ 40 days in the desert is where Lent comes from, and THAT’S in the Bible! Be that as it may, we’ve just been through a real Lent (where we actually gave up some of our life practice’s, like gathering together), and something shifted on Easter yesterday. Did you feel it?

Many of us did: some of you sent me sweet messages about how meaningful the service; the opportunity to ring our version of church bells in the parking lot – the blowing of our horns incessantly for about 45 minutes – made some us feel free and happy. Today, we’re back at sheltering at home and keeping our physical distance, but there’s a shift in some of us. The laughter and smiles and distant hugs from the safety of our cars did more than just make noise: it hit us, like Jesus walking into the room hit the disciples so long ago. There was an impact that we felt deep inside of us.

I always look for the hope. If our faith means anything to us, it means that we look at the whole picture: Jesus walked that lonesome highway and survived, fasted in the desert for 40 days and didn’t starve, was tempted by the Devil and won, died on the cross and was buried in a tomb and then rose from the dead: we keep these things in front of us, especially that empty cross and tomb, and find our lives mingled with his, and his life mingled in ours, and we know.

Hard times, come again no more!

Prayer: Loving God, thank You. Thank You for everything. May our gratitude live deep within us and all over the place wherever we go, in Jesus’ name, amen.

April 7, 2020      The Spring of our Discontent    Scripture: Matthew 22: 15 – 22

Holy Week 2020   Tuesday

Years ago, I was heavily influenced by Will Campbell, a self-described “Baptist minister from the South,” a description he used to differentiate himself from Southern Baptist ministers who supported segregation and racial violence against African Americans. Campbell called himself a “country preacher,” but he wasn’t like any country preacher I’d ever met anywhere!

Over the years, Campbell developed some strange relationships. He was friends with Ku Klux Klansmen and radical Black activists (“Jesus said love people, he didn’t say check out their politics and morals first”). He asked a group of white ministers once, after a group of Klansmen had shot and killed some civil rights protestors, “Have you visited those guys in jail?” When none of the ministers answered, he said something to the effect of, “Jesus said ‘I was in prison and you visited me.’ Did you think that everyone in prison was going to look like Jesus?”

Campbell did weddings with one big difference. They went like this: he asked the bride and groom if they had the marriage license; next, he asked them who the legal witnesses were, and had them sign the license; finally, he folded the license and put it in his coat pocket, and said, “We have rendered unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; let us render unto God the things that are God’s.” Then, the wedding proceeded.

I don’t always agree with Campbell; what I like about him is that he makes me think about faith in ways other than the ways I learned it. He challenges me to think outside the lines, sort of like Jesus does. Our problem is that we have read Jesus so many times and adopted a certain opinion about what he means that fits with what makes us comfortable. We forget that when Jesus said, “Give the emperor what is the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s,” everybody around him gasped and waited for the curtain to fall right then and there. You see, when Caesar is also God, then differentiating the two is a federal offense!

We walk this familiar road this Holy Week, bravely, because we’ve walked it before. We’re comfortable because the stories are etched into our lives, and we know how it ends: with a new beginning on the first Easter! It’s a challenge to us to try and take off our “Easter glasses” and see these stories as they unfolded for the first time. What does it mean to us to give to God what is God’s?

I think maybe Jesus is calling all of us to decide what, Who, we put first. That can make us awfully uncomfortable, as it did those who lived this story as it unfolded. It’s not all sweetness and light; there were reasons why Jesus had to die, and they weren’t all theological. But in times like these, remembering who is in charge gives us hope.

Prayer: Loving God, open our imaginations so that we can walk with the first followers of Jesus and observe in a new light the wideness of his teachings and the possibility that we can still be changed by him to be the people You want us to be, in his holy name we ask this, amen.

April 6, 2020 The Spring of our Discontent Scripture: Matthew 21: 12 – 13

Holy Week, 2020 Monday

Immediately after the “triumphal entry into Jerusalem,” Matthew gets Jesus off the donkey and into the Temple, as though Jesus cannot wait to get into trouble. As we walk this path with Jesus to the cross, let’s notice what he is saying to us as much as what he is saying to those around him.

I’ve watched lots of things be sold at church: Girl Scout and Boy Scout stuff, high school band things, bake sales, craft bazaars, and all the other things that fund raise for one organization or another. Preachers on TV have berated people selling things at church, only to jump on the bandwagon by having a coffee kiosk put in the new, huge church that they have built. “Be sure and by a church t-shirt,” they hawk from their pulpits.

It was not the buying and selling, per se, to which Jesus objected; many of the things we’ve purchased at church have gone to support mission and special projects that do good. Jesus was objecting to the selling of things for sacrifice, selling what people needed to do their religious duty.

What if we charged for a seat in the pews? If sitting in a pew was part of our duty as a Christian and as a citizen, as it was to a Jew of Jesus’ time, what then? Poor people would not be able to participate, or else we would have to charge different rates for different pews. Of course, we all have studied history and know that during the Middle Ages, the Church allowed people to buy shorter time in Purgatory, allowed them to buy masses to be said for the dead, and charged for various religious services. A rich person could do pretty much anything they wanted to because they believed that they could buy enough priests to pray them into Purgatory instead of Hell.

That’s the whole thing with this story and speaks to the hypocrisy that led to the Reformation. Jesus had nothing against sacrifices people offered to God; but the change in the practice of bringing your own animal as opposed to dropping by a kiosk to buy a dove or lamb and pretending that it was your sacrifice: therein lies the issue!

Jesus’ popularity began to wain at this point. It’s as though he wanted to make sure that he had turned as many people against him as possible. As we walk through the week with him, let’s try to realize that his teachings are not some sweet message of pie in the sky in the sweet by and by; they are radical departures from a comfortable religion that just marks time on earth.

Today, think about the teaching of Jesus that makes you most uncomfortable. If you can’t think of anything, think again. I know what Jesus said that sometimes even makes me angry at him. Christianity is not meant to be easy. Seems I remember Jesus saying something about “taking up your cross.”

Yikes!

Prayer: Help us to see beyond the easy sometimes easy road of faith to the hard truth that You are leading us to, our God, in Jesus’ name, amen.