The Divine Shepherd

Like a shepherd, lead us.  

Psalm 23. NRSV

1 The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.

2  He makes me lie down in green pastures;
he leads me beside still waters;

3 he restores my soul.
He leads me in right paths

    for his name’s sake.

4 Even though I walk through the darkest valley,
    I fear no evil;
for you are with me;
    your rod and your staff—
    they comfort me.

5 You prepare a table before me
    in the presence of my enemies;
you anoint my head with oil;
    my cup overflows.

6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
    all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
    my whole life long.

The daily readings in the Revised Common Lectionary include a reading from the Old Testament, the New Testament and a Psalm. It is the same psalm all week, the same psalm that is assigned for Sunday.  So I have been reading the 23rd Psalm all week.  When I realized some time back that this would be the psalm for Sunday, May 3 I asked Jordan if the vocalists of the Quarantine Qrew (their name for themselves) would be willing to sing it during worship.  So you may look forward to hearing it performed beautifully during our worship on Facebook Live Sunday morning.

Reading this psalm every day all week has been both a blessing and a challenge.  I hear the assurance and hope, but I also know that this is the psalm most often selected as a funeral reading, and that saddens me, as we cannot gather to mourn our loved ones who pass during these days of quarantine.  Part of mourning is sharing in community; our pain, our love of the departed, our stories, our hope for the future.  We share food and hugs and tears.  We cannot come face to face to do any of those things right now.  We mourn that fact - the fact that we are restricted from doing all of the things we are accustomed to doing, from seeing the people we are used to seeing, to going the places we are accustomed to going.  And again, we must mourn alone.  It is painful and difficult, especially as we do not know how long this will go on.

So I come back to the hope and comfort of David’s words.  When the nighttime fears come, I know God is with me.  Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I know God is with me.  I know God is my Shepherd, the one who guides me through good times and bad.  I am restored and comforted , my cup overflows with gratitude and hope.  And my fears are eased.

Divine Shepherd, we offer our love and gratitude to you this day for the blessings we receive.  Guide us through this time of uncertainty and sorrow, this dark valley, so that we may live in your house forever.  Amen.

An appointment with the Great Physician

Healer of our every ill

Matthew 9:12

12 But when he heard this, [Jesus] said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick." 

This really struck me this morning.  Such a simple truth.  Especially right now when many doctors are canceling appointments for routine checkups. They are scheduling phone appointments and virtual appointments for things like prescription refills and diagnosing “minor” illnesses.  Likewise, many of us are unwilling to go to the doctor’s office unless we really need to.   Even more than usual we avoid the hospital, especially the ER, because there are sick people there!  And the sick people really need to have the doctors’ attention.

Sadly, there are many in our country who can’t just go to the doctor when they are ill.  They may not have health insurance, or the co-pay is too high, or they can’t afford to take time off work no matter how sick they feel.  Even though they are sick and have need of a physician, they cannot get the care they need.  

Jesus told the Pharisees that his focus was on those who needed to hear the Good News of God’s love.  He spent time with the tax collectors and prostitutes and lepers - the unloved, unaccepted and socially unacceptable - because they needed to know that they, too, are beloved children of God.  He didn’t need to take  that message to the righteous, those who were already living as God wanted them to live, because they already knew this.  But he did need to tell those who thought they were beyond salvation that they, too, could enter the kingdom of God if they repented of sins and reconciled their lives with God’s desires for them.  They were soul sick, but could not get the healing, they needed, because for a variety of reasons they were not welcome in the Temple.

St. Augustine is believed to have said, ”The church is not a hotel for saints, it is a hospital for sinners.”   Yes, those of us in regular attendance at worship services and Bible studies and such understand that we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness.  But we forget sometimes, that we are called to carry the Good News of God’s love and forgiveness outside the walls, to the modern day lepers and public sinners.  We need to spend time not only with those who already know God’s love, but also with those who don’t, to make room in the hospital that is the church for those who are soul sick and need the attention of the Great Physician, but for a variety of reasons don’t believe they are welcome.

Lord, healer of all pains and ills, help us to make room for those who think there is no place for them.  Teach us how to speak and act so that we are always the best example of what it means to be Christian. Help us to heal the world, in the name of Jesus the Christ.  Amen.

Waiting

Romans 15:4 (NIV) 

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

Reading this today I immediately thought of all the Facebook posts and news articles reminding us that this is not the first deadly pandemic to force the US population into isolation.  The Spanish Flu of 1918 killed more than the 1st World War did.  The majority of those deaths came in the second wave, after people were tired of being inside and went back to life as usual.  It seemed to me, considering all the people who are protesting and suing over the current shelter in place orders, that perhaps we should pay attention to the old saying, “Those who do not read history are doomed to repeat it.” 

Everything that was written in the past was written to teach us.  We are not the first to ignore history, or indeed, fail to even read it.  The Bible is full of examples of this very thing.

Consider the Book of Judges. The people of Israel would do things that angered God, (usually worshipping other gods), a great enemy would come and threaten them, they would cry out to God for help, and God would send a hero - a judge - to lead them into victory over the enemy.  They would be faithful for a while, but 40 years later they would forget and they would do it all over again.  Eventually the leaders stopped listening to the prophets and they ended up defeated and exiled in Babylon.   And then, they waited.  They waited until finally they were given the opportunity to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple that had been destroyed, just as God had promised.  They just had to wait upon the Lord. 

Endurance and hope, two qualities that we really need to focus on right now.  It is not easy to stay in the house.  Many are without any income at all, no way to pay the rent, or buy groceries. They are desperate to get back to work, but also frightened about going back too soon.  Endurance while we wait for the heroes God has sent - scientists - to come up with a treatment or a vaccine is predicated upon the hope that they will, indeed, succeed in these aims. With God guiding them, they will.  All we can do is wait, and pray, and help each other get through this.  

  

Gracious and compassionate God, like the children of Israel, we cry out to you for help.  We have faith that your inspiration will guide those searching for a treatment and a vaccine for the virus that threatens so many lives.  Grant us the willingness to wait, and to endure, until that time comes.  Amen.

Giving Back

Psalm 116:12-14.  The Message

What can I give back to God

    for the blessings he’s poured out on me?

I’ll lift high the cup of salvation—a toast to God!

    I’ll pray in the name of God;

I’ll complete what I promised God I’d do,

    and I’ll do it together with his people.

In today’s reading the psalmist asks how we should repay God for all the blessings we have received.   The images in his answer made me think immediately of the way we do church - offering communion, prayer and service to God, not as individuals but as a community.  

Consider communion.   It hadn’t occurred to me before reading this particular version of the psalm, but whenever I have the opportunity to preside at the Lord’s Table, when it comes time to talk about the cup I always reach it out toward the congregation as if making a toast.  When I distribute the elements and each person takes the bread I say to them, “The bread of life.”  When they take the cup I say, “The cup of salvation.”  I give thanks to God  for all the blessings I have received by gratefully offering a toast to life and health. This isn’t something I do alone, but always as part of a community.   Even right now, when we participate in communion in our own homes while watching a video recording, we are still doing this as a community, sharing the elements together and offering our silent prayers together.  

We pray together often.  During worship, of course.  At the open and close of every Board and team meeting and bible study and small group.  All of these prayers are different, depending on the occasion and on who is praying.  Some of us are more eloquent pray-ers, some are more emotional, and some can’t do words at all.  But all of us pray one prayer together, every time we worship whether in person or online - the Lord’s Prayer.  Even though we don’t all say exactly the same words as everyone else, this is the one prayer that binds Christians together as a community.

And service.  There are so many ways to be of service to our community, but as individuals and in coordination with others.  One of the services we do together is our annual commitment card.  Yes, part of it is our monetary pledge - which is an important way to help do the Lord’s work in the world.  But there is also a place for how we can serve the church in the coming year, whether it is by more frequent attendance, or helping out with the food pantry, or singing, or reading during worship or taking on the challenge of Children’s Time.   Although these may seem like individual efforts, we do them as part of the body of Christ, as God’s people.

How will you give back to God today?  

Entertaining angels

Luke 14:12-14 Common English Bible (CEB)

12 Then Jesus said to the person who had invited him, “When you host a lunch or dinner, don’t invite your friends, your brothers and sisters, your relatives, or rich neighbors. If you do, they will invite you in return and that will be your reward. 13 Instead, when you give a banquet, invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind. 14 And you will be blessed because they can’t repay you. Instead, you will be repaid when the just are resurrected.

Entertaining.  Not exactly something that’s on everyone’s mind right now.  But when we do entertain there is a sort of expectation that they will return the invitation.  If nothing else, they’ll pay for the pizza next time.  We might not have a schedule showing whose turn it is, but in the back of our minds we do keep track.  And we do get a bit miffed if it seems like they don’t ever take their turn.  

Jesus tells the Pharisee who has invited him for dinner that what he should do is invite people who cannot reciprocate, pointing out that when you know someone is going to pay you back it’s not really a gift - it’s not really hospitality.  Hospitality in the sense it was meant in Jesus’ time is to make another welcome without expectation of payment simply because it is the right thing to do.  Indeed, to deny food and shelter to a traveler could cause their death.  Denying hospitality was one of the most heinous sins in the ancient world.  It is the sin that caused God to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.  

“Don’t neglect to open up your homes to guests, because by doing this some have been hosts to angels without knowing it.” (Hebrews 13:2)  There are folk stories in probably every culture about offering hospitality to some random wandering stranger and having it turn out later that they were a king or some such. Indeed, this is the point behind Jesus’ words in Matthew 25. “And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.”  If you treat everyone as if they are a king - or Jesus - without expectation of reward, you will be blessed.  

Right now we aren’t able to offer hospitality in the traditional way, by inviting others to our home.  But many are offering hospitality in a different way.  Delivering meals or groceries to people who cannot get out.  Making masks and giving them away.   Going over to chat with people who live alone through a screen door from six feet away.  Dropping off pieces of lemon meringue pie (thank you!)  All with no expectation of reward, for the doing of these things is blessing enough.   

How have you experienced hospitality being freely offered during shelter in place?

Let it be

Finding rest 

Matthew 11:28-30  Common English Bible (CEB)

28 “Come to me, all you who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest. 29 Put on my yoke, and learn from me. I’m gentle and humble. And you will find rest for yourselves. 30 My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”

When I read this passage today I thought, “Well, that’s pretty much everybody.  A rest would be very nice right now.”  This last month or so has been hard on all of us.  Just giving up hugs is hard. Staying home except for essential business is hard.  Working from home is hard.  And I can’t even imagine how hard home schooling and trying to keep active children occupied must be. Maybe we are managing not to focus on the situation too much through keeping to a routine or staying really busy.  Most of us are struggling with this reality we find ourselves in.   

It is that struggle that makes our burden so heavy right now.  One of the most difficult things for humans to do even under normal circumstances is to accept unpleasant realities.  We want to fight against situations and feelings we don’t like or don’t want to have to deal with. We really dislike feeling helpless and as if we are not in control of our own lives.  For this reason we have seen people on the news protesting angrily against the shelter in place orders.  Cooler heads are urging them to accept the situation as it is until it is safe to do some of the things that we are used to doing once again.  

Let go and let God. 

Let go. Easy to say.  Harder to accomplish.  It is good to remember that letting go doesn’t mean forgetting about the situation altogether.  It means giving up on the idea that you can somehow affect the outcome of a situation over which you have no control.  

Let God.  Well illustrated by Jesus’ example here.  Just as 2 oxen yoked together can more easily pull a load that is too heavy for one alone, Jesus asks us move aside from our solitary burden and allow him to share our load.  It is not that the situation will go away or cease to matter, but that with Jesus at our side it is easier to practice acceptance that we are not responsible for the entire burden, only for our own part in it.  With Jesus at our side, we can let go of fears and worries, knowing that no matter what happens, all will be well.   With Jesus at our side, our spirit can find rest even in the midst of chaos.  

There are so many things that our completely out of our control right now.  How will you practice acceptance today?

Hear me

Hear me

Psalm 116:1-4 Common English Bible (CEB)

I love the Lord because he hears
    my requests for mercy.

2 I’ll call out to him as long as I live,
    because he listens closely to me.

3 Death’s ropes bound me;
    the distress of the grave found me—
    I came face-to-face with trouble and grief.

4 So I called on the Lord’s name:
    “Lord, please save me!”

In a recent article in Time magazine, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright discusses our very real feelings of loss and uncertainty in the face of Covid-19.  Humans, he noted, have a great desire to know why things happen. We want to know why we suffer and we want to know there will be a happy ending.  But sometimes, he said, there is no rational answer.  There is no promise of a happy ending.  At times like this we would do well to embrace “the biblical tradition of lament.  Lament is what happens when people ask, “Why?” and don’t get an answer.” ( https://time.com/5808495/coronavirus-christianity/ ). Sometimes we must turn to the psalms for a way to understand how to get through difficulties.  

One of the first suggestions we are given when we ask for scripture verses that will comfort us in times of trouble is to read the Psalms.  I certainly got that advice, although at first I found it not helpful at all.  I went to my pastor and told her that reading all that happy happy joy joy stuff in the psalms just made me feel worse. That’s when she told me that there are other psalms that are not so happy, in which the psalmist cries out against God in anger.  In some of them everything turns out well in the end.  Others begin well, but end in pain and anguish.  Still others, like Psalm 137 - my personal favorite - are cries of depression and rage all the way through.    This was helpful.  What a blessing it was to learn that it is ok to question God, to say out loud that we are angry with God, to seek answers from God and come away with none.  

Today’s reading is not exactly a lament.  It is, however, a statement of hope and faith.  No matter what, when I come face to face with trouble and grief, I know I can call upon God, “because he listens closely to me”.  I may not get the answers I want. I may not be told that there will be a happy ending.  But I will be listened to.  God will hear my cries and my questions.  And sometimes that’s all we need - just to be listened to.

When have you needed someone to just listen to what you were saying?