Ordinary Days #3: “Good”?

  No one is good—except

   God alone. (Mark 10:18)

Jesus taught us that. When he was addressed as “Good Teacher,” Jesus replied, “Why do you call me good? No one is good—except God alone.” It’s one of those Jesus sayings that messes with our notion of who Jesus is. Shouldn’t Jesus say, “No one is good, only Me”? But, that wouldn’t be Jesus, would it?

C.S. Lewis calls our goodness, “a complex goodness.” This side of Glory, there is never unadulterated “good.” Whenever we do good, like give someone a cup of cold water in Jesus name, chances are we have our thumb in it and little bit of human debris trickles down into the cup. I’m thinking of the good people gathered in that group hug on the front porch yesterday morning, and the Psalm “Whenever good people gather, I give thanks to God.” It wasn’t the hug of the innocent, but it was the hug of good people.

 

Ordinary Days #2: Psalm 111

Whenever good people gather,

   I give thanks to God. (Psalm 111:1)

The girls/women departed with our traditional, on the front porch, group hug. I pray they make it to SFO in time—traffic and all. Funny how, in just a few days’ time, strangers can become beloved. Being friends of Abby’s gave the two strangers a big head start. Abby wanted them to know her grandparents and she wanted us to know she had good friends. Funny how friends of the ones we love become beloved to us.

Ordinary Days: Psalm 104

God takes the side of

   the needy! (Psalm 104:31) 

This morning I read Psalm 104. Not my favorite Psalm—too vindictive and vengeful. But, it ends, like most such Psalms, in a good place. Maybe the whole congregation is allowed such prayers because it is a prayer for God to make wrongs right. As the Apostle reminds us “vengeance is God’s business, not ours” (Ro 12:19).

Good Friday and Easter Morning, Ascension and Pentecost does not free us from the hurts and struggles of ordinary life. Glory awaits the “last trumpet sound.” Between now and then the Holy Spirit sustains us while Jesus above roots for us along the way. That’s why the Psalms still work for us. We pray as ones who are in need. Psalms are the prayers of needy people. 

When I came in, Linda reminded me that our dear friend down the street, was in surgery—needy surgery on his back. Something like mine only way more so. So we prayed for our friend, for his surgery: “Please Lord, bring him home well!”

Pentecost Sunday: A New Reality

God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts;

    so walk in the Spirit (Galatians 4:6 & 5:16).

On Pentecost Sunday, 50 days after Easter, the church celebrates how God poured out the Holy Spirit “on everyone: …sons and daughters …young and old …men and women” (Ac 2:17-18).  On this side of Calvary, things are different: “You are led by the Spirit now, not by the Law’s rules and regulations” (Ga 5:18).

It’s scary to walk without religious railings—like the first time you ride your bicycle without training wheels. It was too scary for the Galatian believers. They put the training wheels back on. “Shouldn’t we,” reasoned the Galatian believers, “follow dietary laws, and special days, and for goodness sakes, get circumcised?” No, says the Apostle, for if all that religious rigmarole worked, then “Christ died for nothing” (Ga 2:21). Pentecost encourages us to take off our training wheels and enjoy our new Spirit filled life in Christ.

What would it look like “to walk in the Spirit”? Well, “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace…” Or, as Eugen Peterson puts it in The Message: The Spirit “brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard—things like affection for others, exuberance about life, serenity. We develop a willingness to stick with things, a sense of compassion in the heart, and a conviction that a basic holiness permeates things and people. We find ourselves involved in loyal commitments, not needing to force our way through life” (Ga 5:22-26). It’s like that. 

The days and weeks and months after Pentecost Sunday are called Ordinary Days. Pentecost launches us into ordinary life which turns out to be quite extraordinary. Abby joined me around the fire pit this morning. She brought with her, from Texas, two delightful girl/women friends for a jaunt through Napa Valley, Lake Tahoe, Yosemite and grammy’s and papa’s house. We talked about how things went, what’s up, and read Psalm 85 about how “The Lord will give what is good.” It’s “good to walk in the Spirit.”

6th week of Eastertide: Sarah our Mother

 We are children of Sarah,

   the free woman. (Galatians 4:31)

I pretty much had it down that, by faith, we are children of Abraham (Ga 3). But, this morning, reading the Epistle to the Galatians in Eugene Peterson’s The Message, it struck me that we are also “children of Sarah, the free woman” (Ga 4)—Abraham the father of faith; and Sarah, the mother of freedom.

It has to do with Pentecost and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that sets us free from religious scruples. Sarah is our example of what the Holy Spirit brings—a life lived in freedom. Funny how we can’t think of Abraham without Sarah or Isaac without Rebecca or Jacob without Rachel; or, faith without the Holy Spirit. The Bible never tires of telling us of the beauty and grace of these matriarchs. So too, there’s something beautiful and graceful about life in the Spirit.

5th week of Eastertide: Ascension Thursday.

Christ who descended,

   also ascended far above all the heavens,

   that he might fill the whole universe. (Ephesians 4:10)

Pentecost is just around the corner—50 days after Easter. But, before we get to Pentecost we will need Ascension Thursday—40 days after Easter. That’s when we celebrate how our resurrected Lord returns to his heavenly throne bringing gifts (Eph 4:7-16) to be poured out ten days later on the Day of Pentecost. That is why we can’t get to Pentecost without Ascension. As Jesus told his disciples: “It is necessary that I go away so that I can send you the Holy Spirit”—our unseen Champion (Jn 16:7).

When Christ ascends. he retains his humanity; so that we speak of the Son of God as “The Human Christ Jesus” (1Tm 2:5). As the hymn goes: “Though returning to His throne, Still He calls mankind His own, Alleluia!” (Charles Wesley, 1739).

Our Ascended Lord’s Heavenly Work:

      -Jesus ascends to send us the Holy Spirit (Ac 2:33): Jesus is exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out the gifts of the Spirit upon us. The Holy Spirit keeps Jesus close to us even when he has left this earth and returned to his native heaven. The church receives the gifts of the Spirit so that our absent Christ remains present and known in the world through his church.

      -Jesus ascends to prepare a place for us (Jn 14:2-4): I go to prepare a place for you. In my Father's house there are many dwelling places. Then, I will come again and will take you to myself, so that where I am, there you may be also. Jesus was a carpenter. He knows how to build things. Heaven will need plenty of housing for the “great multitude that no one can count, from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages…” (Rv 7:9).

      -Jesus ascends to root for us (Rm 8:34): Jesus is at the right hand of God, sticking up for us. Good thing. Otherwise, we would be toast.

 

5th Sunday of Eastertide: Mother’s Day

 Like a nursing mother

    cares for her children. (First Thessalonians 2:8)

The simile snuck up on me as our pastor read from Paul’s letter to the Thessalonica congregation: “Just as a nursing mother cares for her children, so we cared for you. Because we loved you so much, we were delighted to share with you not only the gospel of God but our lives as well.” Something more than unloading the gospel is required. Something motherly, something deep and real. 

I suppose the metaphor comes naturally to one steeped in the sacred writings: “As a mother comforts her child, so God will comfort you” (Isa 66:13). Something like our Lord saying, “How often have I desired to gather your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings” (Lk 13:34). Or, maybe better, when Jesus says to his disgruntled disciples: “When a woman is in labor, she has pain, because her hour has come. But when her child is born, she no longer remembers the anguish because of the joy of having brought a baby into the world. So you have pain now; but I will see you again, and your hearts will rejoice, and no one will take your joy from you” (Jn 16:21-22). All those motherly words: caring and gathering, loving and delighting, pain and joy; used to describe God’s work and presences among his gathered people. The gospel is not The Gospel without such mothering.

On Mother’s Day, we recall such things—that God can’t be conceived apart from God’s mothering. Every mother is more than that, just as God is more than that. But on Mother’s Day we do well to honor that—that mothers, among other things, mother. In my hurt, when the transporters dumped my worthless body on the family room coach; mothers mothered me back to health. My wife Linda, serving as care giver—a euphuism for the gross work of bodily care; Jennifer pitching in; Rachel flying in—all state-of-the-art moms, mothered me. They gave me not only encouraging words; but, as the Apostle put it, they gave me their very selves—the best gift of all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkcJX38tsvo