Tag Archives: Loving all God’s children

Taking Responsibility

Advent

December 23, 2020

Scripture Reading:
Titus 2:11-14
For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all, training us to renounce impiety and worldly passions, and in the present age to live lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly, while we wait for the blessed hope and the manifestation of the glory of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ. He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.

Titus shares his guidance on how we, who have experienced the Grace of God through Jesus Christ, should represent Christ in our daily lives, renouncing impiety and worldly passions and living lives that are self-controlled, upright, and godly. This calling is individual and communal. We seem to have wandered away from both our individual and collective responsibilities.

The prophet Hosea uses the metaphor of an unfaithful wife, a whore to represent Israel’s nation as he calls it back to following God’s ways. Congress and our federal executive branch, for the last eight months, have tried to pass legislation to offset the damages inflicted on our nation and world by COVID-19. It has been many years since I saw the musical, The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas.  While watching our government’s inaction, words from The Sidestep song from that musical have flashed through my mind.

Fellow Texans,
I am proudly
Standing Here to Humbly see,
I assure you and I mean it,
Now says I don’t speak out as plain as day
Now fellow Texans I’m for progress
And the flag long may it fly,
I’m a poor boy
Come to greatness
So it follows that I cannot tell a lie.

Ohhhh I love to dance a little side step,
And ohhhhh I love to sweep around the wide Step.
Cut a little swath and lead the people on*.

I find it very disturbing that our nation’s stock market is reaping unprecedented highs during this pandemic while poverty increases markedly.  We can and should be critical of our leaders, and we must remember that ours is a nation of the people by the people for the people. In the final analysis, we are as much at fault as our leaders if we do not turn around from our worldly passions and hold those leader’s feet to the fire to act decisively for the Common Good. They need to be reminded that we, the people, have the final say, but we also need to remember that.

Prayer: Lord, forgive us for burying our heads in the sand to the growing poverty among our fellow citizens. Direct us on your path to care for all your children. Amen.

See full text at https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHZN_enUS922US922&sxsrf=ALeKk03-ge_4ow3DFyLzj4bbIpb-hIyENQ%3A1608564681860&ei=yb_gX9HkM4z2swWW_IeIDw&q=Lyrics+to+the+side+step+shuffle+from+the+best+little+whorehouse+in+texas&oq=Lyrics+to+the+side+step+shuffle+from+the+best+little+whorehouse+in+texas&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQDDoHCCMQsAIQJzoECC4QDToECAAQDToICAAQBxAFEB5QwtQDWLi_BWDfwAZoCXABeACAAYMBiAHIIZIBBDQzLjaYAQCgAQGqAQdnd3Mtd2l6wAEB&sclient=psy-ab&ved=0ahUKEwiR7dazst_tAhUM-6wKHRb-AfEQ4dUDCA0

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Loving People to Life

Epiphany

February 22, 2020

Scripture Reading: Matthew 17:1-9
Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, ‘Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.’ While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, ‘This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!’ When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, ‘Get up and do not be afraid.’ And when they looked up, they saw no one except Jesus himself alone.

As they were coming down the mountain, Jesus ordered them, ‘Tell no one about the vision until after the Son of Man has been raised from the dead.’

If you had been a first century citizen of what was once know as Israel then split in two, how do you think you would have responded to Jesus? Would you have identified him as a good man, best friend, great teacher, positive example, person with special powers, healer, wonderful storyteller, excellent leader, inspired prophet? At some point would you have wondered could this be the One, the Promised One, the Messiah? At what point might you have considered him God incarnate or Son of God? I wonder if Peter, James, and John confronted that question at what is now called the Transfiguration described in the above scripture.

I remember a movie about the beginning of the civil rights movement in the USA during the late fifties that told the story of a white middle-class woman who hired a black woman as her housekeeper. At first, she respected the housekeeper’s work and became close to her while remaining totally blind to the discrimination that was going on in her town. Finally, there was a bus boycott that resulted in her housekeeper walking a long distance every day to come to work. The white woman drove by her housekeeper walking home one evening and stopped to see why she was walking. The white woman offered the housekeeper a ride and as she drove her to her home the white woman’s eyes began to become opened to the realities of the housekeeper’s lives.  The story builds to a scene some time later when the white woman is arrives at a confrontation between white people on one side and black people on the other that was angry and getting out of hand. She had never taken a public stand on the issue before but after watching the hatred and fear she crossed the imaginary line and separated the two groups and stood with her housekeeper.

As followers of Jesus Christ we are called to cross the line out of hate and fear and start creating a world ruled by love as children of God.

Prayer: Lord, strengthen us for our journey of loving people to life. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

Accepting the Other

Jesus’ Ministry
January 26, 2019

Scripture Reading: Luke 4:14-21

When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
   because he has anointed me
     to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
   and recovery of sight to the blind,
     to let the oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.’
And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. Then he began to say to them, ‘Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.’ –Luke 4:16-21

Jesus accepted his call to bring wholeness to people which involves both creating oneness and assuring justice. We share his call, this call, today. All individuals in one way or another strive for wholeness. Some seek it in all the wrong places while some learn about love whether as children or later in life and choose to love and be loved; others reject what they learned and stray. God who is love always leaves the door open to them, like the prodigal son, to come home. We are not assigned the duty to judge anyone regarding their relationship with God. We are responsible for loving everyone so that all may experience the power and grace of God’s love enabling them to turn their lives around and become one who loves and receives love. The greatest challenge for most of us in answering this call is accepting people as they are and loving them anyway.

What do we do when dealing with people whose behavior is not deemed acceptable by us because of our culture or even our understanding of God’s ways. I am reading the book The Barefoot Woman which tells the story of a Tutsi woman raising her family in Africa where the Tutsi were outcasts. The author, Scholastique Mukasonga, is the daughter of the woman. In one chapter she described a tradition in that culture where the mother of a new born collects the baby’s feces and presents it with food for the other women of the village to eat denoting their acceptance of a new child in their lives including their commitment to help nurture the child. As I read this, I was both revolted by the very thought of it and impressed by the oneness such a ceremony demonstrates. The author’s mother had some qualms about the custom. While they attended the ceremony and supported the new mother, the daughters were instructed not to eat the food offered. I wonder how much of our disdain for people in our lives is more the result of our misgivings about behavior we do not comprehend and thus categorize as sin? Perhaps God knew what God was doing when God appointed Jesus as judge rather than us.

Prayer:
Help us accept each other
as Christ accepted us;
teach us as sister, brother,
each person to embrace.
Be present, Lord, among us,
and bring us to believe
we are ourselves accepted
and meant to love and live*. Amen.

*First verse of Help Us Accept Each Other by Fred Kaan see at https://hymnary.org/text/help_us_accept_each_other

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.

One Lord of All

Living in the Spirit
August 2, 2018

Scripture Reading: Ephesians 4:1-16

I therefore, the prisoner in the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of the calling to which you have been called, with all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, making every effort to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. There is one body and one Spirit, just as you were called to the one hope of your calling, one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all, who is above all and through all and in all. –Ephesians 4:1-5

Our reputation proceeds us and in many instances, our family’s reputation at least sits the stage for how others perceive us. While state employees by rule were hired via a merit system when I applied to work for Oklahoma many years ago, the reality was that if a local political power did not support you, you most likely did not get the job. I had never even met my state senator when I went to his office to ask for his support. He was very gracious and invited me into his office. Hearing my last name, he asked my lineage. After naming my father, he immediately said he had known my grandfather well. The senators said my grandfather was one of the finest men he had ever known. The Senator was one up on me as my grandfather died before I was born. We chatted about some fishing experiences he and one of my uncles had. I really do not recall much discussion about me at all. I left his office and drove the 15 miles home to my family’s farm. My mother met me at the door with the news that the state agency had called and I was to start to work the next day.

A few years later as a child welfare worker, I approached the local judge asking for an order to remove a 13-year-old girl from her home. She was being sexually abused by family members. The judge signed the order. Handing it to me, he said I signed this and you can see what you can do but I have known that family all my life and they are just no good. I knew the family’s dysfunction all too well but I was not ready to give up on the child. I was not around long enough to see if our intervention did any good, but I learned an important lesson about how the world shapes us and how hard it can be to step away from our histories.

How we live our life’s, how we love one another, as declared followers of Christ reflects for better or worse in our society on people’s attitudes toward Christ. On the other hand, Jesus Christ took on all the negatives defaming or limiting all of God’s children so that they inherited the new reputation of one who was without blame.

Prayer:  Lord, help us to see others through your eyes. Amen.

All scriptures are quoted from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicized Edition, copyright 1989, 1995, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights are reserved.