Devotional Pts-week of Sept 28

Sunday -Psalm 78- I half expected the psalm for today to refer to the testing at Massah and Meribah for the reading from Ex. 17. It is a recitation of the events of being freed from slavery in Egypt. It emphasizes the vital import of teaching the Biblical stories and words to our children. It can be a good spiritual exercise to seek the hand of god over the events of one’s own life.

Monday-Sometimes when I don't know what to pray, I pray the psalms. They are so honest and put into words many of my emotions. This song, based on Psalm 104, echoes many of the psalms of praise. The writer, Robert Grant, was a privileged man who was concerned with social issues of his day. He fought for many minority groups who were oppressed and who had little voice.>aurie Neil

Tuesday (Drawn from God Pause on Philippians) Paul says to live then in a manner worthy of the gospel. One aspect of that worthiness is unity—" ... striving side by side with one mind. I rarely see any group operating with one mind. when it does, it usually means trouble, as we are falling into a trap, too quick an assumption, or “groupthink.”...

Wednesday-Prayer is to spirituality what the laboratory is to science: the place for experimentation, innovation and surprise. Your fingers get burned and beakers explode and your hands get cut. You go back to life and it explodes with an Aha!--accompanied by blood, sweat, and tears! - Ira Kent Groff

Thursday-(The Eucharist)  became, already in the first centuries after Jesus’ death and resurrection, a powerful symbol of unity, of giving and sharing, of allowing the breaking of self and giving the self over for the world. It was the secret ritual by which the community defined itself and held itself together in its essential message. Frankly, most people have never been ready for its radically demanding message of solidarity with both suffering and resurrection. richard rohr

Friday-"May I, my you, may we-not die unlived lives.-May none of us live in fear -of falling or catching fire.-May we choose to inhabit our days,-to allow our living to open us,-to make us less afraid,-more accessible,-to loosen our hearts-until they become wings,-torches, promises.-May each of us choose to risk our significance,-to live so that which comes to us as seed-goes to the next as blossom-and that which comes to us as blossom,-goes on as fruit." (Dawna Markova)

Saturday-In God Pause, nate Bendorf wrote recently that we may wish divine revelation and answers to our questions on a “silver platter.” Instead, Jesus sometimes answered a question with another question. Sometimes, answers match the Christian life. answers emerge slowly in the flow of life, its ups and downs, its hills and valleys, its light and dark moments. we sometimes need to grow into answers. Sometimes, only perspective can giv eus the angle of vision w eneed to come to grips with an unbidden answer.

Notes for sermon Phil 2, Ex. 17, Mt. 21

eptember 28-Ex. 17, Phil. 2, Mt. 21:23-32

I don’t trust myself with power, as I fear I would help myself too  much or try to help others too much. At the same time, I know that I do not like being told what to do, so I would have a hard time in a religious tradition that prizes obedience to one’s superior, as in the military or with a bishop.

Israel remembered, even in the psalms, ancient attempts to test power over God In grumbling, The people seem to expect Moses to have power over God. Instead of being delighted with an amazing outpouring of gifts, they ak, and wonder why do we even have to ask? Why shouldn't it be here now> I am deliberately comparing the slave generation to children, as they have to learn to become a free people; the issue of water in the desert is important for the body of course, but the quarrel, the contention over it toward God haunted the memory of Israel. it may even suggest that deep with us all is the desire to question or test God. Indeed, one could read the Lord’s Prayer save us from the time of trial as save us from the time of testing God.

Being empowered requires  a sense of agency and action, of being able to do something. It includes the power of choice and some capacity to move. It is able to live with the tension of being dependent, independent, and interdependent. It realizes that power shared works best for the long term. Power over may work in a crisis but it dissipates. Look a the reaction of Moses fearing what the people could do next? IN the old KJV he refers himself as a nursing father, again these people were in the infancy of development; the wilderness was a place for them to learn how to govern themselves before arriving in a land flowing with milk and honey.

losing power or better relinquishing power. Many think Paul is quoting a hymn that the Philippians use in worship that Jesus  lived a life that was the opposite of being power hungry or exercising domination power over others but he lived humbly, not as an emperor or a rich mogul but a simple craft worker and rabbi.

Does the faith urge us to be doormats? Does the faith urge us to be in the face of people constantly on our version of the faith?

Philippi was the site of a battle for control of Rome and its lands were given to veterans of the battle. Paul uses that background, perhaps, to counter the image of Christ here in regard to military and political power.

Second, this passage has us  to try a remarkable thing., It is one thing to seek Christ in others. it is quite another matter to try to see things through the eyes of christ, to share a divine perspective on life itself.The incarnation of Christ into our world, our joys, our struggles is not mere playacting but a full immersion of God into human life. Jesus walks in our shoes, is kin with us, part of our lives, as close as our own breath and heartbeat. I think of the awe in which G. Washington was held because he could turn his back on power, as he walked away from the presidency after two terms. If you watched the PBS special on the Roosevelts, TR never got over that tradition. In the end, the parable has us sit up when we realize that the two responders do not exercise power well. Perhaps the Scripture points us toward a God who works through us, who empowers us to live as god envisions.

Week Of Sept 14 quotes

Sunday-Ps. 114 is today’s psalm. i am getting to take a class from the the eminent scholar Clinton McCann at Eden Seminary, so my interest in the Psalms will only be heightened lately, as we have a good bit of reading.This psalm looks back into the freeing of Israel from Egypt and the water found in the desert. It has the feel of an ancient prayer to me where it looks on the power of God as measured against that symbol of disorder, the sea. Something solid, the mountain, is pictured as skipping like a young calf. How would you imagine the power of God in 2014 images?

Monday- Genesis 50:15-21 -Much of life is a matter of perspective. Do you see the end of an era or the beginning of something new? Do you look out at a field of dandelions and see hundreds of weeds or hundreds of wishes waiting to be made? Joseph has plenty of evil to be angry about, and yet he reaches a point when he can look back and say to his brothers, "Even though you intended to do harm to me, God intended it for good." From God Pause

Tuesday-earthbeat: A Journey Towards Earth's Wellbeing-”In the interminglings of relationship-I may touch your beauty, that in the moisture of the earth and its flowering and fruiting- I may smell your beauty,that in the flowing waters of springs and streams I may taste your beauty, these things I look for this day, O God,these things I look for.” John Philip Newell

Wednesday--”We're all falling. This hand here is falling.-And look at the other one. It's in them all. And yet there is Someone, whose hands infinitely calm, holding up all this falling.”— "Autumn" by Rainer Maria Rilke (translation by Robert Bly)

Thursday-"The first service that one owes to others in the fellowship consists of listening to them. Just as love of God begins with listening to his word, so the beginning of love for our brothers and sisters is learning to listen to them.”- Dietrich Bonhoeffer

Friday-How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him who brings good tidings," says Isaiah (52:7). Not how beautiful are the herald's lips, which proclaim the good tidings, or his eyes as he proclaims them, or even the good tidings themselves, but how beautiful are the feet—the feet without which he could never have made it up into the mountains, without which the good tidings would never have been proclaimed at all.Generally speaking, if you want to know who you really are, as distinct from who you like to think you are, keep an eye on where your feet take you.~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Saturday-Tomorrow we read of Paul's injunctions against judging others. Why do we tend to judge negatively? Why is it hard for us to judge others well? Why do we so easily jump on first impressions and appearances as a clue to character? When have judgments interefered with your relationships?  

devotional Pts to Ponder Sept 21 week

Sunday-Ps 105 recounts some experience of Israel..It is a hymn of praise for God looking after a small, seemingly insignificant nation to allow them to become a people. God cares for the powerful and powerless alike.  

Monday-"When you are offended at another's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger." -- Epictetus

Tuesday- M18:21-35-Peter struggled with the concept of forgiveness too. When he asked Jesus about it, Jesus responded with these words: "Forgive not seven but 77 times." While Jesus' response sounds formulaic, his message is clear: "Forgive always or without limits." Forgiveness is rarely easy to do, and there isn't a simple formula for living it out. Sometimes it means starting by letting something go. Sometimes it means forgiving someone over and over again. Whatever the case may be, it is an act of the heart that opens us up to live more fully into the life that Jesus desires for us. -Lord, forgiveness is hard. Help me to open my heart to my brother and sister. Nudge me to forgive others as you have forgiven me. Amen.Lisa Kipp,Pastor, Zumbro Lutheran Church, Rochester, Minn.

Wednesday-"Paul insists that 'neither death nor life...can separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.' If death, then, is no threat to our relationship to God it should be no threat to anything. If we don't know what is beyond the grave, we do know WHO is beyond the grave." (William Sloane Coffin)

Thursday- God shows us a man who gave his life away to the extent of dying a national disgrace without a penny in the bank or a friend to his name. In terms of human wisdom, he was a perfect fool. And if you think you can follow him without making something like the same kind of a fool of yourself, you are laboring under not a cross, but a delusion.There are two kinds of fools in the world: damned fools and what Saint Paul calls "fools for Christ's sake" (1 Corinthians 4:10).~originally published in Wishful Thinking and later in Beyond Words

Friday-What comforts do we have that make us glad but not grateful? Our tendency is to appreciate good things only after they're gone. I sure appreciated my bed and shower more after a recent camping trip. That trivial awareness will hopefully awaken a permanent, deeper gratitude for all the mercies God provides me.Dear Lord, thank you for your abounding love. Help us to take no joy in judging others. Open our eyes to your providence of not only earthly comforts, but divine grace. Amen.Laurie Neill Family Life Pastor, First Lutheran Church

Saturday-Just returned from vacation from Zion and Bryce Parks. Stunning grandeur, but I can only hold so much within. I get a loss for words and get inured to the beauty. What are majestic sight sin your experience?

Sermon Notes for Sept 21-Mt. 20, Ex. 16

September 21 Ex. 16, Mt. 20

God is not a capitalist. Few things reflect the strange new world of God’s economy than 2 of our readings today.God’s economy is a shift to sharing and equality. It moves beyond careful calibration of who deserves what. We continue to look for marks of salvation. We continue to try to make sure that those who are saved as deserving. God’s household economics is centered on gift, centered on abundance. God’s wants us to share what we need.

When we encounter a parable, it is good to remember that they make reference to God’s way in the world, not a slice of real life. this is a parade example of how parables may deliberately confound our expectations and assumptions about daily life to push  us to see God in a different light.It can be a good way to try on the different character for size. For some reason, most of us do not want to live with the owner for very long.This story hits me between the eyes on always asking people for more for church, more time, more attention, more educational activity more money.                             

In the end, this is a story of the nature of God’s generosity, far more than some wage plan.envy creates the evil eye.If Cardinal fans existed in this time, we would have heard Larussa would have parted the Red Sea quicker. Cardinal fans walk on water, so no need to part the Red Sea. Pujols deserved what he was paid. Of course, some continue to gripe about the wage scale for professional athletes in light of what we pay, say teachers.

Slaves work for nothing for themselves but make their masters rich. Free enterprisers want the most production at the least cost. To break out of a slave mentality, they are given the gift of manna falling from the sky. As they move to a place of their own, they receive bread for hte journey.When I was a boy, my mother would tell us, do you think money grows on trees? Well here, food does drop from the sky. They have to gather it for each day, as in the Lord’s Prayer, but it falls on them like rain. As Bruegemann says, this is God’s decisive answer to a sense of anxiety and scarcity. If we are filled with a sense of well being, we can share and be generous with each other.thje manna won;t keep’ it can;t be invested but consumed for the hungy people.

I sense a new religious dimension in the parable for us. Jews have been the chosen for millennia and have suffered grievously for it. Why do Christians get the same benefit? When I was young we used to speak of the deserving poor, and we connected it to effort, work, and what someone deserved. Some folks detest the idea of a deathbed confession of faith, as they fear someone has lived a fun-filled dissolute life. It is interesting that we identify with those who worked all day and some latecomer gets the same share of the pie.In the economy of heaven, we get to the same place.we so easily set ourselves up as judges of who should get what according to our calculus. We know all about reward, but we dismiss the idea that we should be punished for malfeasance or neglect of our duties.

Happiness is like manna; it is to be gathered in grains, and enjoyed every day. It will not keep; it cannot be accumulated; nor have we got to go out of ourselves or into remote places to gather it, since it has rained down from a Heaven, at our very door” Tyron Edwards

Devotional Gems Week of August 31

Sunday-Ps.105 selections are today’s psalm.It seeks the face of God in creation and in the covenant pledge God made with us. how would you define seeking the face of God?  What is our impulse for seeking the face of God? To what degree t do we encounter the face of God in others in Jesus Christ? What do we do that makes god wish to turn the divine face from us?

Monday-May the love of life fill our hearts. May the love of earth bring joy to heaven.May the love of self.deepen our souls. May the love of neighbour heal our world. As nations, as peoples, as families this day may the love of life heal our world. -from Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace

Tuesday-Savior teach me the silence of humility, the silence of wisdom, the silence of love, the silence of perfection, the silence that speaks without words, the silence of faith. Lord, teach me to silence my own heart that I may listen to the gentle movement of the Holy Spirit within me and sense the depths which are of God.

Wednesday-”What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.” Saint Augustine

Thursday-From Hauerwas memoir, Hannah’s Child. “”Learning how to say God is hard but good work,..because the training necessary forces us to be honest with the way things are. Our lives are but a flicker. We fear ourselves and each other...it helps us imagine to live in a world we do not control.”

Friday-The ISIS(L) group is pushing me to reconsider my thoughts on non-violence. the worst part of me want revenge against their cruelty. At bottom, I want them stopped. With Augustine, i have a difficult time not justifying defense for the innocent.Even If I were to adopt a personal pacifist posture, I don’t yet see how I could claim the right to endanger someone else if I could stop an assault.

Saturday-O God of life,who chooses creation over chaos/ and new beginnings over emptiness,/we bring to you the disorder of our nations and world and the emptiness of our lives and relationships. Bless us and the nations with the grace of creativity. Bless us and all people with the hope of new beginnings. John Philip Newell, Celtic Treasure:

Sermon Notes Rom.12:9-21

August 31, Rom. 12:9-21

I have read the passge from Romans  a lot at weddings.It is a christian ethic in a nutshell.I have always liked Barths’ idea that a fmaily is in itslef a little church.I must admit that we find a lot of material within that shell.Maybe better is a Christian ethic in outline.

Last week we read of Paul's polar distinction between being conformed to the operating system of the world as we know it and the transformation of a Christian worldview. We then see that love is the agent of transformation. We need to be careful here, as he is not speaking of romantic passion alone,but a power so complete that it goes beyond the sense of finding completion with another but a willingness to sacrifice one’s life for another, to see one’s well-being wrapped up in another.

I am haunted by his phrase, let love be genuine or sincere, or unfeigned.One way is to be able to rejoice with those who rejoice. Compassion flows more easily often than being able to appreciate the good fortune of another. You know that love is genuine when we are able to rejoice as if we ourselves did something fine, as when we glory in the accomplishment of a child or grandchild. Of course, when we find it difficult to mourn or weep with someone, we are living on the outskirts of love. when we find it easier to blame a victim that to mourn with them, we have created  a barrier.

A quote has been attributed to Gandhi that while hate may be the opposite of love; it is fear that drives hate.

Paul imagines love as an inner drive that results in action. to me it conjures up my difficulties in physics with its mathematical descriptions of forces and vectors.

Let mutual love brotherly love, (philadelphia) be tender/kind In the movie Philadelphia the Tom Hanks character and the attorney move toward one another, beyond being attorney and client

communicating/participating in the needs of the saints

Paul moves now toward enemies to bless and not curse them, and this sound like the Sermon on the Mount. Unless you are a complete saint, all of us are tempted to return evil for evil.The advice seems to radiate outward until it reaches that most difficult item for us: to love our enemies. I tend to think of love as operating within a limited circle of intimates, but Paul seems to think of it as a force field that pulses outward in all directions, unlimited by proximity.Return no one evil for evil.

   I wish to suggest that being fervent in spirit , steadfast in prayer is vital to this whole way of living. I continue to shake my head at how easily christians shake off any sense of being relgious when they speak of matters secular, how eaisly they speak just like everone else, perhaps with less passion and understanding. Praying takes our needs into a spiriutal framework, so it goes beyond a decision tool. It moves us into a different realm, God’s way for us. To pray places us more fuly, or with more awareness in the presence of a Spirit who is moving and working through the world as it is to remake the world as it could and should be.Perhaps we can dare to say that love forms the energy of the Spirit of God.-What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men. That is what love looks like.Saint Augustine

Devotional Pts Week of Sept 7

Sunday-Ps.149 is part of series of praises. This one includes praise with music.Praise does not come easily to some of us.Many of us may need the aid music to build a sense of praise.Some like And some dislike current praise songs.What songs build praise  within you?  

Monday-The rhythm of our lives is always in need of balance: tending to our own soul while tending others; attention to our being while going into the world to serve and work. How can you be still while in motion?

Tuesday-Surprise us, Lord, for surprises keep us hopeful. They stir behind the musty folds of our weariness then rush out, shouting in glorious unpredictability. They spin us ‘round till our eyes are full of dizzying stars--a galaxy of miracle. Go on...surprise us, Lord. (Jim Hughes)

Wednesday-“When one community’s redemption means the suffering of another, it cannot be redemption for either.” Marc Ellis

Thursday-Giver of this day Gift of every moment.May we be bearers of comfort. May we be strong in our soul to cry at the wrongs of nations to weep with the bleeding earth to mourn with those who mourn  in the loss of life and lands  in the loss of dreams and hope. May we be strong in our soul. -from Praying with the Earth: A Prayerbook for Peace

Thursday-"Wherever people love each other and are true to each other and take risks for each other, God is with them and for them and they are doing God’s will."- from Secrets in the Dark“

Friday-What can we say beyond Wow, in the presence of glorious art, in music so magnificent that it can't have originated solely on this side of things? Wonder takes our breath away, and makes room for new breath. That's why they call it breathtaking. We're individuals in time and space who are often gravely lost, and then miraculously, in art, found.In art, we feel the breath of the invisible, of the eternal—Anne Lamott..

Saturday-I Will Turn 60 later this month.I have been told that I will be officially harmless.In our theology,no one is harmless.All of us sin. Do you  make it a habit to examine the harms you caused regularly? Have they changed over time? Looking back, where have you improved or fallen short?

Sermon notes on a forgiveness model Mt. 18:15-20 Rom. 13:8-13

Sept 7 Mt. 18L15-20, Rom. 13:8-13

For most of my ministry, I worked in small churches,. Here our adult education classes are small church size. whenever a meeting is small, someone will say, where two or three are gathered. While well-meaning, they are ripping the quote out f context. We hear it in full this morning: it refers to people gathered together to make peace.

Conflict always occurs. the interesting question is what how do we respond when it occurs. Some repress its very existence; others swallow hard and let resentments build up; others seek to try to promote peace. Matthew’s gospel gives us a method of forgiveness or mediation. The last section of our book of Order apes the rule of v civil procedure to try to manage disputes in church settings.

Ritual of the passing of the peace in church as training for reconciliation. We do not do a very good job of working through elements of worship. At one level, passing of the peace is silly, a sif you are being introduced to people whom you have known for years. Hear these words form the book of Order on worship (W

The parties get heard. Some of us say that we are not listened to when others do not do what we want. Others merely require voice that they say their piece, they get a sense that they are at least understood, even if someone does not agree with them, and they are satisfied. this is vital as some hurt feelings occur out of simple misunderstanding and misperception that may be helped by clearing the air a bit.The initiator of story corps is doing a series on the improtance of listening to the stories we have to tell.

A mediator does not take sides for one party as in the adversary system but is interested in the parties arriving at an agreement they both can live with. It is less about winning and losing. Amos Oz said a compromise is something that both parties can accept with clenched teeth,

the rule of love in Romans as connected to forgiveness and a pattern of right behavior

Forgiveness is difficult. I am not sure of what is more difficult to admit wrong or to offer forgiveness when we are hurt. So Matthew gives us a structure to approach it in a more formal method. we heard precious little about forgiveness in Ferguson.Notice that sometimes people do not wish to be reconciled. I knew of a couple who would not go through any marital s therapy because and I quote, the therapist may agree with you that I could be wrong about something.Some folks need anger to give them the energy to make it through the day. Some folks like to fight forever.Sometimes then letting someone to their own devices, after trying, after keeping the door open, is the best limited human love can be capable of. some folks only want to win battles, large or small.Can it be an accident that this material is in a place where we encounter the word church in this gospel? I have puzzled over how people act more immaturely in church than they do in the work world or in other organizations.in part, that reslts from church being a place wher we declare  our senseof dependence instead of independence. Second, we look to church to be a zone of no coflict and we react badly when that is not the case.Paul does give us a roadmap in our reading today. It is asterling reminder that one size doesn't fit all. Too often Christians speak of one option alone as he Christian way.