Devotion for January 29, 2016

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27; NIV).

            Part of Paul’s argument in 1 Corinthians 12 is that every part contributes. This has at least two implications: 1) parts that are more obviously helpful can’t lord it over those who are not; and 2) parts that are less obviously helpful can’t denigrate their own contributions. Let’s think about that second point for a minute. I’ve often said, for example, that the homebound often offer an invisible but important ministry of prayer. That’s important. Likewise, I’ve had a conversation over the years with the elderly along the lines of “Why am I still here? I don’t have any use.” But sometimes a person’s ‘use’ doesn’t have anything to do what they contribute. Sometimes our ‘use’ is that we offer an opportunity for someone else to grow in love and service. That’s important, too. And, frankly, those with the least to contribute offer the clearest object lesson that we are saved by grace, not by our own contributions. That’s one of the reasons I love baptizing babies: they are pure pictures of grace, of salvation as a free gift. In sum, the church does not measure value in the same way that the world does, and by the Holy Spirit we see value in every member.

Devotion for January 28, 2016

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it” (1 Corinthians 12:27; NIV).

            You know, it wasn’t a bad sermon last weekend, and there are some thoughts we could take from it. Chief among them was this: in our congregations, we belong to each other as the parts of the body belong to each other and as the members of a family belong to each other. Let’s just reflect for a second on the beginning of that sentence. In our congregations we belong to each other. So often we think of the church in some abstract sense, so abstract that in fact the church becomes irrelevant. We think that of our spiritual life in terms of me and God. No wonder so many Americans are able to ‘worship’ by watching something on the internet at home. We reason, “I’m here; God’s here; what more do I need?” What we need is a recognition that God in His wisdom places Christians together in real communities, in real congregations. I understand that congregations can be a source of real frustration. The music can be poor; the preaching can be inarticulate; the people can be difficult. Look at your average congregation and you many not easily identify it as the glorious reality that is the body of Christ. And yet woven into the very fabric of the New Testament is the clear teaching: Christians are gathered in congregations, and in those congregations they share God’s life together.

Thoughts for January 27, 2016

            This devotion also has nothing to do with last weekend’s sermon, either.

            Monday night, I officiated the funeral of a man who was by every measure too young to die. Yesterday morning, I was summoned to a family who just that morning endured a sudden and catastrophic loss. One of the most pivotal moments of my life was the sudden loss of my father: in the morning he was there; in the afternoon he wasn’t.

            Some thoughts: first, this is why we believe. We throw ourselves on the grace of God manifest in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection precisely for moments such as this. Some folks, faced with catastrophe, find their faith shaken. “How could God…?” they ask. That seems to me precisely backwards. When life is hard, when sin and its terrible consequences rear their ugly heads, we ought to exclaim, “How terrible is brokenness that humans have inflicted on God’s world!” That places the blame where it appropriately belongs. And, along with that, we ought to exclaim, “Thanks be to God that He delivers us” (Rom. 7:25)! For it is our God who saves and promises a life after death.

            Second, it pays to treat life as a precious gift and to be reconciled to those we are in conflict with. St. Paul says that love “keeps no record of wrongs” (1 Cor. 13:5), and he urges us to be reconciled to each other (cf. Col. 3:13). Sometimes, we just don’t feel the urgency of that. We’re angry; we’re hurt; we’re in no rush to see things restored and set right. Sometimes, it’s just plain old pride: “He hurt me; I can wait until he realizes his mistake…” At least two things are wrong with such thinking. First, such bitterness only makes us sick. Holding a grudge, refusing to forgive, putting off possible reconciliation—that’s spiritually damaging. It makes us hard. (God says that he will replace our hearts of stone with hearts of flesh [Ez. 11:19]; how dare we than replace a heart of flesh with a heart of stone?) Second, it imagines that we have all the time in the world, and sometimes that just not the case. I can’t tell you the number of regrets I’ve heard expressed because someone didn’t say what needed to be said before it was too late.

            Life can be short. It’s good to think on that, to build a faith that prepares us for an uncertain future, and to keep our accounts paid. It’s good to live each day in the expectation that eternity is near.

Some Thoughts on Suffering for January 25, 2016

Monday: “If only there were someone to mediate between us, someone to bring us together” (Job 9:33; NIV)!

            This devotion has nothing to do with last weekend’s sermon. The last few days I’ve been reading Job, and today I was reading Job’s complaint in chapter 9-10. (You can find them here.) I was struck by several things.

            First, early in chapter 9, Job seems to anticipate God’s appearance at the end of the book. In the last few chapters, the Lord challenges Job to answer Him, if he can, and He asks the sufferer a series of questions which are simply beyond human knowing. Here in the early part of chapter 9, Job anticipates that; he knows that God’s ways are beyond his own little ways.

            That reflection—that God is beyond him—leads to the verse I cited above, namely, Job’s wish for a mediator who would bridge the gap between him and his God. I don’t know why I never noticed this before, but isn’t that exactly what Jesus is? The one who bridges the gap between God and men. That’s what St. Paul says in 1 Timothy 2:5: “For there is one God and one mediator between God and mankind, the man Christ Jesus.” And Jesus mediation is not just as a go-between. He is the one who creates the bridge by His innocent suffering and death.

            Third, in chapter 10, Job wonders if it would make a difference if God were flesh and blood like he himself is. Would God understand Job’s plight better if He were? And that, too, leads to Jesus, who did become human—fully and completely human. The book of Hebrews repeatedly notes that our Lord Jesus understands us for having become one of us.

            I’m reading Job because I’m thinking about suffering and loss, and I think these three lessons are helpful to frame that reflection: 1) ultimately, God is God and we are not; we do well to remember that. 2) While the difference between God and man could make God seem completely inaccessible, the work of Jesus reminds us that He has opened that pathway again. We may not understand God’s ways, but we can at least say with full certainty that He loves us and desires to have us near Him. 3) Finally, we may not understand God’s ways, but in the incarnation of Jesus, He fully understands ours. That, too, is a source of comfort.

Devotion for January 22, 2016

Friday: In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires (Romans 6:11-12; NIV).

            The new name given in Baptism reveals the extraordinary change that the Lord works in us through that Sacrament. A new name, a new creation, forgiveness—all tied to Baptism. And in the verse above, we learn that Baptism gives us a new boss, too. (I’ve only cited verses 11-12, but earlier in the chapter, Paul makes it clear that these things happen in Baptism.)

            Think about this: you are no longer a slave to sin. Sure, we Christians still do sin; the sinful nature remains in us all through life. But we are not ruled by sin. It’s not our boss; it’s not our master. In Christ, we are recreated and given a chance for holy living. I think that’s incredibly important. Sometimes I think that Christians think that falling into sin is inevitable, so they don’t put up much of a fight. Paul would have us know that we have received a new birth, a new beginning, a new nature. So, when he calls us to holy living, it’s not an impossible ideal or just so much rhetoric. It’s a calling to live up to the gift already given.