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Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 13, 2012

Into the Wilderness
 
Living As If We Mean It-Because God Most Certainly Does

Read John 14:18-24.

”I will not leave you orphaned; I am coming to you. In a little while the world will no longer see me, but you will see me; because I live, you also will live” (vv. 18-19).

Irrepressible Life

Apart from the agenda on my daily calendar—”write column, pack for tomorrow’s flight, complete prep for teaching at retreat, run off message for Sunday morning, line up interviews for next week”—I make no predictions about what will happen over the next twenty-four hours or so. There are too many variables interfacing everything I intend to do and any number of things can and most certainly will happen to confound my plans.

But Jesus knew exactly what was coming at him. He knew it as he talked with his friends around the table in the upper room, and I believe it contributed to the urgency of his words. The immediate future was alarmingly clear, and Jesus revealed tremendous strength and honest bravery as he understood the inevitability of betrayal, torture, and death.
In complete humanity, both at odds with and beautifully complementary to his uncompromised deity, Jesus moved toward all the horror that the ensuing day and a half had in store.

In today’s scripture selection from John’s account of the Last Supper, Jesus speaks plainly and eloquently about the mystery that defines God’s grace, as he draws logical conclusions regarding our relationship to God based on his relationship with us.

I remember the way I was received into my wife’s family. Rebekah’s mother loved me instantly and without reserve both because she loved Rebekah and Rebekah loves me and also because I make Rebekah happy. It’s a lot like that with God. We love Jesus; Jesus loved us enough to die for us; God loves the Son; and we are all adopted into this family by virtue of Jesus’ great love for us. God the Father accepts and cherishes me—Derek Maul—not on my merit, but because Jesus died for me, loves me, and presents me just as I am at God’s Communion Table, as his very own brother. (See Rom. 5:8.)

Not only that, but Jesus points out how I will come to receive this fullness of life. It’s the same principle that applies to each one-of us. “It’s the life that I experience,” Jesus explained in many ways over the course of the evening, and that life will be ours in equal measure. Then, conclusively, “Because I live, you also will live” (v. 19).

Family

Our status as the brothers and the sisters of Jesus means that we share in that same life: the Christ-vitality, the deep and larger-than-life aliveness. The world around us, broken and cynical, may not see Jesus. The world may believe that Christ is defeated and defunct; but we know that the Christ-life is alive and vibrant and real.

Then, and here’s the kicker, the world—this ambient culture where we hang out in the everyday grind—gets the opportunity to see firsthand the compelling evidence of the resurrection in us. Because we, the church, are advertised throughout the New Testament as “the body of Christ.” What changes can you make in your life that will make that clear to others?

Prayer: Please live in us and through us, Jesus. Let us live more completely in the truth of your message. Amen.

Excerpted from:

Reaching Toward Easter: Devotions for Lent
Derek Maul
Retail Price: $16.00
CBD Price: $10.49

Reaching Toward Easter by Derek Maul offers a daily devotional pilgrimage through Lent, using the framework of the Gospel of John as a guide. Features include a suggested scripture reading for each day, prayers for personal devotions, and a leader’s guide for weekly group meetings.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.

Love this reading today. It is in line with our vision for this year as a church: Knowing God = Knowing Jesus (Colossians 1:15).

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 12, 2012

Into the Wilderness

The Jesus Imperative

Read John 14:9-14.

“How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own; but the Father who dwells in me does his works. Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father is in me” (vv. 9-11).

I love the language the great Teacher uses here, always schooling his listeners about the nature of God. Jesus is the interface of time and eternity, the known and the unknown, spirit and matter, the natural and the supernatural.

This is Incarnation, another moment when God, in Jesus, breaks quite literally into time and space. We have no adequate language for God—no way to conceptualize eternity, perfection, completeness, omniscience, or holiness. The Jews were on to something when they did not speak God’s name as a sign of reverence. But Jesus called the Father “Abba,” Daddy. And then he said that we too could know God in the same way.

We see in today’s reading that God’s intentions were focused into this flesh-and-blood world through the lens of Jesus. We see also that the Creator intends that kind of work to continue through all of us privileged to call ourselves Jesus’ followers.

Belief

Our foundational beliefs, Jesus suggests, are a critical factor in determining how we think, speak, and ultimately act. In other words, what we believe profoundly affects the manner in which we live. I think that Jesus understood this better than anyone else in history.

Jesus invites us to participate in the God-life in much the same way that he does. I honestly don’t think that Jesus came into this world preloaded with infinite knowledge and superhero abilities—kind of a GOD-version 7.7. Instead, it’s my opinion that Jesus had the opportunity and the responsibility to live and learn and grow and develop with the same reality-based constraints we all have to contend with. The difference is that Jesus, God made flesh, not only “increased in wisdom and stature” (Luke 2:52, NIV) but also surpassed all human expectations.

Jesus brought to the table the clarity of his belief. Jesus knew that he was in the Father and the Father was in him, and he understood how dramatically and conclusively belief affects everything else. That’s why he was constantly raising the question, and he parsed it again in the scripture we’re looking at today. Jesus challenged his friends to believe that God literally inhabited him, and that God “does his works” (v. 10) in and through the life he was living among his friends.

Salvation

One of the most helpful definitions of salvation that I’ve come across can be expressed as “participating in the work of God.” Jesus challenged the disciples to believe, so that they too could participate in the good work that God is up to in the world.

So in the last few days before he was killed by the people his radical ideas threaten, Jesus lays out what is important. He tries to make his friends understand that they will not “see the Father” in the traditional ways that they are used to imagining God, or via the ways they think they need to experience God. God, Jesus points out, is best understood and experienced in terms of allowing God’s work to take up residence in us, and then to believe, and, consequently, to live.

The Jesus Imperative

“Live!” That’s the Jesus imperative. And it’s a good word to conclude the first full week of Lent.

“Take the trouble to know me,” Jesus continues the thought from the question Thomas had posed earlier. “Take the trouble to know me and you will also know the Father. If you know God’s will, and then pray accordingly, greater things still are going to happen because you dare the commitment” (John 14:10-11, author paraphrase).

Prayer: Use me, Lord, use even me. Take me; melt me; break me; mold me; fill me. Amen.
 
Excerpted from:

Reaching Toward Easter: Devotions for Lent
Derek Maul
Retail Price: $16.00
CBD Price: $10.49

Reaching Toward Easter by Derek Maul offers a daily devotional pilgrimage through Lent, using the framework of the Gospel of John as a guide. Features include a suggested scripture reading for each day, prayers for personal devotions, and a leader’s guide for weekly group meetings.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 9, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Friday of the Second Week of Lent

FAITHFULNESS
I now know…that there is a long, hard journey ahead of me. It is the way of living, praying, being with people, caring, eating, drinking, sleeping, reading, and writing in which Jesus is truly the center. I know…that this way exists and that I have not fully found it.
How do I find it? George [Father George Strohmeyer, co-founder of L’Arche community in Pennsylvania] gave me the answer: “Be faithful in your adoration.” He did not say, “prayer,” or “meditation;” or “contemplation:’ He kept using the word “adoration?’ This word makes it clear that all the attention must be on Jesus and not on me. To adore is to be drawn away from my own preoccupations into the presence of Jesus. It means letting go of what I want, desire, and have planned and fully trusting in Jesus and his love.
Henri J.M. Nouwen, The Road to Daybreak: A Spiritual Journey

Faithfulness in Small Things
Then Jesus said…”Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Luke 16:10-13

Prayer
God, bread of heaven, let the activities of my daily life be so centered on your presence that my friendship with you is solidly entrenched in my heart of hearts. Let me serve your will and purposes and have the sense to forego the hollow pleasures of success and wealth. Amen.

Lenten Action
Spend a predetermined amount of time in adoration before the Blessed Sacrament. Make a list of the places in your area that have Perpetual Adoration so that you might take the opportunity to visit more frequently. Be faithful in continuing this practice after Lent is over.
 
Excerpted from:

Lent and Easter Wisdom from Henri J.M. Nouwen
Henri J.M. Nouwen
Retail Price: $10.99
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Thought-provoking words from renowned spiritual writer, Henri J.M. Nouwen, lead readers through a journey of conversion during Lent and Easter week. Each daily reflection–from Ash Wednesday through Easter–begins with thoughts from Father Nouwen on an appropriate theme, supported by Scripture, prayer and a suggested activity for spiritual growth.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Liguori.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 7, 2012

Into the Wilderness
 
Whom do you trust?

Pharisee and Tax Collector   
Luke 18:9-14

The story is told of a nobleman in Victorian England who commissioned a portrait photographer to take his picture. The man suffered no lack of self-esteem, coupled with an overly optimistic view of his attractiveness. The photographer brought his equipment to the gentleman’s home and proceeded to set it up in the parlor. All along the noble felt no qualms about offering unsolicited advice to the photographer about his preparations. ‘When all was ready at last for the photograph to be done, the noble announced: “Young man, mind you to do me justice with that camera of yours.” With hardly a pause the photographer responded, “Sir, your need for my camera’s work is not justice but mercy.”
 
Jesus tells a story to a group that suffers no lack of religious self-esteem. Two individuals pray at the Temple: a Pharisee and a tax collector. The Pharisee comes to the Temple, not so much imploring God’s acceptance as declaring his fitness for it. The prayer of the Pharisee thus becomes not a baring of his soul but a review of his resume. Grace is not really needed, much less asked for, since the Pharisee mentions ample evidence for his standing with God being obvious to everyone—including God. “`God, I thank you that I am not like other[s].”‘ This Pharisee is not like the extortioners, the unjust, the adulterers, to use the words of the parable. To put a more contemporary spin on it, this Pharisee is not like the ones who spend all their time in the bars or the welfare cheats or the Aryan Nations wingnuts. 

The prayer of the Pharisee, in ancient or modern dress, requires no divine presence. It only needs an audience of those who share the same disdains and the same upright behavior for the sake of self-congratulation.
The second prayer partner in the Temple is a tax collector, a traitorous parasite who exploits his own people by collecting the taxes of a foreign occupier. He stands back in a corner where he won’t upset anyone with his presence. Scarcely daring to raise his eyes off the floor and with a gesture of despair, all he can pray is, “God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’

According to Jesus, the tax collector—not the Pharisee—returns home justified in God’s sight. As Jesus saw the matter, everyone who sets himself or herself up will be taken down a few notches, while those who humble themselves will be exalted. “A person’s pride will bring humiliation, but one who is lowly in spirit will obtain honor” (Prow 29:23).

Justification looms large in the parable’s close as the most definitive distinguishing point between these two individuals. What separates them at the end are not the obvious variances in lifestyle, piety, and social stature (or the lack thereof). One returns justified; one does not. And the one who does catches us off guard and unprepared for the choices God makes…
…By comparing ourselves to others, particularly in ways that stack the deck in our favor, our prayers and spiritual posturing may reveal that we trust more in ourselves than in God. Or it may reveal a diversion on our part to avoid facing our own brokenness and fears. Either way, as long as we can find someone worse off (in our estimation) morally, spiritually, or politically, we risk seducing our-selves into thinking we stand justified in God’s sight. Haven’t we just proved that? But justification does not come down to showing how fortunate God must be to have friends like us. Justification turns on whom we trust. To trust in self is self-justification. To trust in God, even when the trust comes from a lowlife like this tax collector, opens us to God’s justification.

It is a scandalous parable, and the name of the scandal is grace.
May I see myself as you see me, O God, that I may trust my true self to you. Wholly. May I see others as you see them, O God, that I may accept them as you accept me. Graciously. Amen.

Spiritual Exercise
In your journal reflect on places of your life where you have difficulty trusting: trusting other persons, trusting God. As you are able, identify sources or causes of that difficulty. Pray about those matters that hold you back from trust, especially those that might have to do with a reluctance to share your true self or admit to weaknesses. Imagine the hands of God cupped open. Place yourself in that space held up by God. Entrust yourself to God.
 
Excerpted from:

Parables and Passion: Jesus’ Stories for the Days of Lent
John Indermark
Retail Price: $15.00
CBD Price: $11.99

Parables and Passion offers a disciplined encounter with the parables of Jesus in the season of Lent. The book allows reflection on one parable each day arranged around relevant themes. The Prologue offers a reading for Ash Wednesday, and the Epilogue provides readings for the final days of Holy Week.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 6, 2012
 
Into the Wilderness

PROVE IT!
Rich Man and Lazarus   
Luke 16:19-31
 
Have you ever played a game called “Prove It”? It’s not a board game or video game. You can’t order it from Milton Bradley or Nintendo. It’s one of those games we play in relationships, adapt-able to all ages. Children often play it. “If you think you can climb the tree as high as I can prove it!” Sometimes it has a darker side, used to exclude someone who is on the outs at the moment. “If you’re really my friend, you won’t play with Robin—’cause I don’t like her.” As children mature, the game gets more sophisticated. The love of parents becomes the target of the testing. “If you really loved me, you’d trust me and let me stay out later…”
…”Prove it” has two major problems in human relationships. It is a game that can be very destructive, used to distort even the best of qualities for purely self-seeking ends. In the name of love or friendship, some very unloving and unfriendly behavior seeks justification. The other problem is its addictive nature. In relationships dependent on “proof” of love or friendship, the demands for proof never go away. Like any other addiction, spiraling degrees of proof are required as time passes. Relationships based on constant proofs fight a losing battle, because in the end love or friendship must derive from trust. And trust is not something you can coerce from another person. It will be learned through experience, not proved by contrived tests.

This notion of trust versus proof goes to the heart of Jesus’ parable of the rich man and Lazarus. The parable opens with a study in stark contrasts: a rich man who enjoys the benefits of this world’s elite, and Lazarus who has to raise his eyes just to see past the gutter. When the next world comes, everything turns upside down. Beyond a morality tale about how tables get turned (and they will!), Jesus moves the story in an additional direction.
The rich man offers up what seems a hint of compassion for others, something clearly absent in his previous ignoring of Lazarus. The rich man (in some traditions called Dives) asks that Lazarus be sent to warn his five brothers about the follies of their ways. The appeal seems reasonable. It would be like the scene in A Christmas Carol by Dickens, where Ebenezer Scrooge’s long-dead partner, Jacob Marley, visits him. The sounds of Marley’s chains, forged by long years of greed and indifference, begin the journey of Scrooge toward compassion and humanity.

But listen to the reply of “Father Abraham” to Dives, a response that returns our focus to the theme of proving. “They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.” But the rich man is not satisfied. “But if someone goes to them from the dead, they will repent.” Bible, Schmible—nobody pays attention to that anymore. But let old Lazarus show up on the doorstep, and my brothers will beat a path to you. That’ll prove it!…
…Beyond the parable these closing words become even more intriguing. The parable is told by Jesus: Jesus who later resuscitates a friend by the name of Lazarus, Jesus whom God resurrects to life at story’s end (and discipleship’s beginning). Does the parable’s conclusion teach that even those events cannot prove faith? The answer may surprise us. The resuscitation of Lazarus pivots John’s Gospel. From that point forward the Temple authorities determine Jesus must die. Capital punishment, not faith, is the verdict of the raising of Lazarus.
Jesus’ resurrection evokes similar results. Disciples dismiss the first Easter witness announced by the women as an “idle tale” (Luke 24:11). Jesus shows his wounds to Thomas, only then to bless those who will believe without seeing. “If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.”

Faith cannot be proved by apparitions from the dead any more than it can be verified by an alleged burial shroud subjected to scientific scrutiny. Proof is not and never has been the point of our life and standing in Jesus Christ. Rather, faith beckons trust expressed in love.
Save me, O God, from endless bargaining and proof-testing of your love. Deliver me into the grace that sets me free to live with grace and to trust you wholly. Amen.
Spiritual Exercise
Consider your faith and participation in faith community. Where do you struggle with the need for proof? How does the need for proof affect your ability to trust in God, in others, in yourself? Pray for guidance and discernment in these matters. Seek a more gracious trusting of God with your life, relationships, and faith community involvements.
 
Excerpted from:

Parables and Passion: Jesus’ Stories for the Days of Lent
John Indermark
Retail Price: $15.00
CBD Price: $11.99

Parables and Passion offers a disciplined encounter with the parables of Jesus in the season of Lent. The book allows reflection on one parable each day arranged around relevant themes. The Prologue offers a reading for Ash Wednesday, and the Epilogue provides readings for the final days of Holy Week.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

March 5, 2012

Into the Wilderness

Do You See?

Two Debtors
Luke 7:41-47

The setting opens innocently enough. A Pharisee named Simon invites Jesus into his home for dinner. Or perhaps it’s not so innocent. Table fellowship has become one of the sticking points between some religious leaders, including some Pharisees and Jesus. Should Jesus sit down with a would-be opponent? Refusing to eat with those who have strict rules against dining with sinners might leave Jesus open to the charge of practicing a reverse prejudice…
…The dinner party goes haywire from the outset. The reason? Architecture starts it. Seriously. Few homes then have doors with locks. If the evening’s warmth or the cooking fire’s smoke congests the air in the room, the doors will be left wide open to the street—open for the breeze and who knows what else to blow in. The text records Jesus’ taking his place at table. That doesn’t mean he pulls up a chair and sits. Custom dictates reclining for the meal.

So picture the scene: door wide open to the thoroughfare, host and guests reclining around a table. And then it happens. That is, she happens. What her name is, the text gives no clue. What her identity is: well, the euphemism used is “a woman in the city.” From that, many identify the woman as a prostitute, though the text does not make that explicit a charge. The woman, victimized by her reputation in this town as a sinner, tends to suffer from the between-the-lines implications of the text as well. The intricate way Luke weaves this story entices us to make the same assumption of gossip that pilloried her in the first place. Maybe Luke does that to remind us just how pernicious and enduring gossip can be.
From this point forward the woman dominates the dinner party. Jesus’ reclining at the table makes it much easier to visualize her ensuing actions: bathing his feet with her tears, drying them with her hair, kissing his feet and anointing them with oil. Her actions disgust Simon. Polite host that he is, he keeps his thoughts about Jesus’ unprophetic behavior to himself.

Jesus does not. His thoughts take the form of this parable. Two debtors owe money to a creditor: one debt equals almost two months’ pay, the other closer to one and a half years’ wages. Neither person can pay the debt. But the creditor cancels the debts. So who, Jesus asks, will love the creditor more?

Jesus makes an odd connection. You’d have thought Jesus would have asked, “Who will be more grateful?” Or, “who will feel more indebted?” But for some reason, neither gratitude nor IOUs interest Jesus. “Which of them will love him more?” Simon mouths the right answer. “I suppose…”
“I suppose” does not exactly convey conviction. So Jesus comes at Simon from a different direction. “Then turning toward the woman, [Jesus] said to Simon,” “Do you see this woman?” Jesus asks. This is one way to avoid persons and situations that cause us discomfort. We just don’t see them. If homeless folk trouble us, don’t look at them. If conflicts in families or churches distress us, don’t acknowledge them. But the world doesn’t work like it did when we were three or four years old. Then we could squeeze our eyes shut and what we didn’t want to see would disappear. Not anymore. “Do you see this woman?”

Jesus insists that Simon see her, because she answers the parable’s question of who loves more. She, more than Simon, has proved hospitable. A good host provides water for the washing of the guest’s feet, soiled and worn from traversing roads of dirt and rock in sandals. But Simon provided no water. A good host greets the guest with a kiss of friendship. But Simon offered no kiss. A good host brings oil to soothe the guest’s head and hair from the burn of sun and drying of wind. But Simon provided no oil.
For every act of hospitality that Simon neglected, Jesus looks at this woman and says to Simon, do you see her? Do you want to see forgiveness embodied in love, because here it is. Here she is. “Which of them will love more?” the parable asks. And Jesus’ answer? “Do you see this woman?”
Jesus has an odd way of making heroes out of the most unlikely of characters. Samaritans, parents who forgive prodigals-and here, an unnamed woman whose utterly humble actions show love’s origins not in moral certitude or religious acumen but in forgiveness. A self-righteous Simon forgot about hospitality. The church might take note there of what happens when we forget to make ourselves and our communities hospitable places to those whose need of forgiveness simply reminds us of our own. The church might also take note of what happens when forgiveness unleashes love.
“Do you see this woman?”
O God, grant me eyes and spirit that open to your grace and to the ones you grace, that I may learn from them and from your forgiveness bound together in love. Amen.
Spiritual Exercise
Whom do you have difficulty accepting or even looking at? Pray to see them as Christ sees them. Pray to see yourself as Christ sees you. Forgive and be forgiven. And seek to love.
 
Excerpted from:

Parables and Passion: Jesus’ Stories for the Days of Lent
John Indermark
Retail Price: $15.00
CBD Price: $11.99

Parables and Passion offers a disciplined encounter with the parables of Jesus in the season of Lent. The book allows reflection on one parable each day arranged around relevant themes. The Prologue offers a reading for Ash Wednesday, and the Epilogue provides readings for the final days of Holy Week.
   
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Upper Room Books.

Week 1: Friday
Mark 4.21-41; focused on 4.35-41

Into the Wilderness

That day, when it was evening, Jesus said to them, ‘Let’s go over to the other side.’
They left the crowd, and took him with them in the boat he’d been in. There were other boats with him too.
A big windstorm blew up. The waves beat on the boat, and it quickly began to fill. Jesus, however, was asleep on a cushion in the stern. They woke him up.
‘Teacher!’ they said to him, ‘We’re going down! Don’t you care?’
He got up, scolded the wind, and said to the sea, ‘Silence! Shut up!’
The wind died, and there was a flat calm. Then he said to them, ‘Why are you scared? Don’t you believe yet?’
Great fear stole over them. ‘Who is this?’ they said to each other. ‘Even the wind and the sea do what he says!’
 
One of the things I love about the Psalms is the direct, in-your-face way the poet speaks to God. ‘Wake up, God!’ says the Psalmist; it’s time to call the wicked to account (7.6). ‘Wake up! I need someone to help me!’ (35.23); ‘Rouse yourself! Why are you asleep? Wake up, don’t cast us away!’ (44.23). ‘Wake up and show the pagans who’s boss!’ (59.5). The prophet Isaiah says much the same (51.9): ‘Wake up, wake up, Arm of the Lord–show us how strong you are!’

I suspect, of course, that if we’d sat these poets down in a cool, easy moment and asked them, ‘Did you really think God was asleep?’, they might have said, ‘Well, no; he is God, after all; but it certainly seemed as though he’d gone to sleep at the time!’ That, it seems, is a fairly typical expression of what we might call biblical faith: faith in a God whom we believe at one level to be all-seeing, never-sleeping, omnipresent and omnicompetent–but who, at another level, seems, from the perspective of our muddled and messy lives, to have gone to sleep on the job…
…The disciples ask the natural question: ‘Who is this?’ Mark wants his readers to supply the answer, not in a glib or easy way, but with the same awe and breathless wonder of the frightened little group on the boat. ‘Great fear stole over them,’ he says. You bet it did. And unless it steals over us, too, as we roll around in our minds the possibility that when we’re looking at Jesus we’re looking at Israel’s God in person, we are using the truth of the Incarnation as an intellectual screen behind which to hide for safety, rather than the lens through which the light and warmth of God can flood and transform our hearts and lives.

Mark places this story at the end of his long chapter on parables. And, though he clearly wants us to see this as something which actually, and dramatically happened, it too is a sort of parable. The parables left people with questions that they had to answer for themselves. This story left the disciples with questions that would take them a while to figure out properly. Mark, arranging his gospel like this, is saying to us (among other things) that part of the way the kingdom of God works is precisely by people having sudden and alarming questions raised in their minds which they will have to ponder and puzzle over.
Sometimes these questions are forced on us by events that are frightening and worrying at the time. Sometimes they grow slowly out of things we have read in the Bible or heard in church. This is normal and natural, however unsettling it may seem at the time. ‘Don’t you believe yet?’ asks Jesus, almost teasing his frightened followers. This theme continues: ‘Don’t you get it? Don’t you understand? You still don’t get it?’ (8.17, 21). Part of the point of Christian discipleship is to have our minds and imaginations challenged, opened, stretched, reshaped. The world–God’s world!–is quite different, and a lot more unpredictable and interesting, than we often suppose. And at the heart of it is Jesus himself, sometimes apparently asleep but ready to wake up, transform our scary situations, and bounce the question back to us. When we pray ‘Wake up, Lord!’ we need to be prepared for him to reply that it is we who have been asleep. Our wake-up call ! to God is often the moment when God’s wake-up call to us is finally getting through.
Today
Wake us up, O Lord, from our easy-going sleep. Help us always to remember that you are in control, no matter how frightening or alarming things may be.
 
Excerpted from:

Lent for Everyone, Mark, Year B: A Daily Devotional
N.T. Wright
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Lent for Everyone, provides readers with a gentle guide through the Lenten season, from Ash Wednesday through the week after Easter. Popular biblical scholar and author N.T. Wright provides his own Scripture translation, brief reflection, and a prayer for each day of the season, helping readers consider how the text is relevant to their lives today.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Westminster John Knox.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional
March 1, 2012

Week 1: Thursday
Mark 4.1-20; focused on 4.1-9

Into the Wilderness

Once again Jesus began to teach beside the sea. A huge crowd gathered; so he got into a boat and stationed himself on the sea, with all the crowd on the shore looking out to sea. He taught them lots of things in parables. This is how his teaching went.

‘Listen!’ he said. ‘Once upon a time there was a sower who went out sowing. As he was sowing, some seed fell beside the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Other seed fell on the rock, where it didn’t have much soil. There was no depth to the ground, so it shot up at once; but when the sun came up it was scorched, and withered away, because it hadn’t got any root. Other seed fell in among thorns; the thorns grew up and choked it, and it didn’t give any crop. And other seeds fell into good soil, and gave a harvest, which grew up and increased, and bore a yield, in some cases thirtyfold, in some sixtyfold, and in some a hundredfold.’

And he added, ‘If you’ve got ears, then listen!’

From where I am sitting I can see, out in the autumn fields, the farmer harvesting the corn. It isn’t all in yet; some of the fields won’t reach their full growth for another few weeks. But when I walk down the lane, or drive through mile after mile of golden grain gently waving in the wind, there is a strong sense of fulfillment. As far as the farms are concerned, this is the moment the whole year has been waiting for. This is what all the hard work has been about. It’s time to draw it all together and celebrate the goodness of land, rain, sunshine and fresh air, all contributing to the great harvest.

It is not surprising, given that ancient Palestine had an almost entirely rural economy, that the theme of harvest was a powerful image in the ancient scriptures, pointing forwards to the time when God would fulfill his promises at last. What’s more, when things had gone badly wrong–when God’s people had gone away into exile in Babylon–some of the prophets spoke not just of a coming harvest, but of a fresh ‘sowing.’ God would ‘sow’ his people again in their land, so that the new harvest, when it came, would be the result of a fresh act, a renewal of the covenant…

…Now this, I believe, was a very specific and urgent warning to Jesus’ contemporaries. God’s kingdom was going ahead–there really would be a bumper harvest, thirtyfold, sixtyfold and a hundredfold. But they might not be part of it, however much they thought it was theirs by right, and however much enthusiasm they felt for it at the moment. As so often, however, what was specific to Jesus’ first hearers can then be translated as the message we need to hear, and to speak, today.

Anyone who knows the state of Christian faith and life in the wider world today can be in no doubt that, despite the decline in church attendances in the Western world, the seed is being sown in all kinds of ways. New, enthusiastic movements are springing up all over the place. This parable issues a warning, not least to the leaders of such movements: how deep are the roots going? What protection are you offering against the birds and the thorns? Today’s excitement can easily become tomorrow’s boredom or worse. Some of the ‘new atheists’ were once–for a short while–keen Christians. Evangelists, church planters and pastors, take note.

Today

Grant us, sovereign Lord, to nurture the seed of the word, to guard it and let it grow, and to bring forth a harvest to your glory.

Excerpted from:

Lent for Everyone, Mark, Year B: A Daily Devotional
N.T. Wright
Retail Price: $15.00
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Lent for Everyone, provides readers with a gentle guide through the Lenten season, from Ash Wednesday through the week after Easter. Popular biblical scholar and author N.T. Wright provides his own Scripture translation, brief reflection, and a prayer for each day of the season, helping readers consider how the text is relevant to their lives today.

Used with the kind permission of our friends at Westminster John Knox.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

February 29, 2012

What Is Your Price?

Then one of the twelve, who was called Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests and said, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” They paid him thirty pieces of silver. And from that moment he began to look for an opportunity to betray him. (Matthew 26:14-16)

Into the Wilderness
 
Before arriving at the Last Supper, Judas had already agreed to betray Jesus. Jesus predicted his betrayal at the supper; and following the meal, he sent Judas away, saying, “Do quickly what you are going to do” (John 13:27). Within a few hours Judas would arrive leading guards dispatched by the priests to arrest Jesus.
Why did Judas betray Jesus? This is a question that believers have debated for nearly two thousand years. Some have speculated that Judas was a Zealot who began following Jesus anticipating that he would lead an uprising against the Romans. When it became clear that this was not Jesus’ plan, Judas, in disappointment, betrayed Jesus. Some have suggested that Judas, by his actions, hoped to force Jesus to rise up against the religious authorities and the Romans. Perhaps Judas, who already felt a bit at odds with the disciples, was offended when Jesus chastised him at a supper in Bethany during the last week of Jesus’ life. In these scenarios, Judas’ politics may have come before his faith, or perhaps Judas’ disappointment or hurt led him to succumb to evil.
We likely do not know the full motives of Judas’ heart, but the Gospels do tell us that among his motives was a desire for money. John reports that Judas, as keeper of the money used in the ministry of Jesus, would occasionally steal from those funds (John 12:4-6). Matthew tells us that Judas approached the chief priests asking, “What will you give me if I betray him to you?” (Matthew 26:15). They paid him thirty pieces of silver–about five weeks’ wages for an average worker.
Money has a strange way of affecting us. Paul tells us that “the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil” (1 Timothy 6:10). Jesus was tempted with riches by the devil and regularly preached about the struggle human beings have with a desire for wealth. That struggle is still with us today, as shown by the human greed and gluttony behind the economic crisis that began in 2008.
On several occasions Jesus spoke to people struggling with greed. He told the man we call “the rich young ruler” that the only way he could break free of his love of possessions was to part with them all by giving everything to the poor. On another occasion he told a man struggling with greed, “One’s life does not consist in the abundance of possessions” (Luke 12:15). I have committed these words to memory and frequently repeat them, as I am regularly tempted to focus on acquisition.
Eventually, the love of money can and will come into conflict with our love of God. In Judas’ case, the love of money won out. Slowly and by degrees, he came to rationalize his taking from the common purse and ultimately his betrayal of Jesus. Do you ever find your faith in conflict with your finances? Are you willing to give as God calls you to? Are you completely honest in your business dealings? on your tax return? Do you ever compromise your values in order to make the sale, close the deal, or get the raise?
Lord, forgive me for the times I have compromised my faith for the sake of having more. Help me remember that my life “does not consist in the abundance of [my] possessions” and to desire to serve you with all that I am and all that I have. Amen.
 
Excerpted from:

24 Hours That Changed the World Daily Devotions
Adam Hamilton
Retail Price: $9.99
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In this companion volume that can also function beautifully on its own, Adam Hamilton offers 40 days of reflection and meditation enabling us to pause, dig deeper, and emerge changed forever. The reflections, ideal for use in Lent, include Scripture, reflection on the events of Jesus’ final day, stories from Hamilton’s ministry, and prayers.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Abingdon Press.

Your Daily Lenten Devotional

February 28, 2012

One of Your Will Betray Me

And when they had taken their places and were eating, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me, one who is eating with me.” (Mark 14:18)

Into the Wilderness
 
All four Gospels record Jesus’ words at the Last Supper predicting his betrayal at the hands of a disciple. (We will consider the reasons for that betrayal in a subsequent devotional reading.) They also record Jesus’ prediction that before the night was out, Peter would deny knowing him. On his way to the garden of Gethsemane, Jesus went on to predict that the remaining disciples would abandon him.
Have you ever been betrayed, abandoned, or disappointed by a friend? Years ago one of my daughters came home in tears because a friend had “stabbed her in the back.” My daughter announced that she would never be the girl’s friend again. I understood how she felt. We all have felt betrayed by a friend at some point in our lives. Sometimes the person is not a friend but a family member or a professional we trusted.
There are forms of betrayal that are so severe and so psychologically damaging that breaking off the relationship is appropriate and necessary for emotional healing to occur. But most often what is required is grace.
Some years ago I was disappointed in a friend who had shared with another person something I had told him in confidence. My initial reaction was to decide he could not be trusted and to put some distance between us. But, prompted I believe by the Spirit, I called to mind moments when I had broken confidence or otherwise disappointed friends. It was hard to be angry with my friend when I had been guilty of doing similar things in the past. So I spoke to him, sharing my concern and disappointment; and he apologized. Our friendship was restored, and we continue to be good friends to this day.
Jesus knew his disciples would betray him, and yet he displayed extraordinary grace toward them at the meal. Knowing that Judas had already agreed to hand him over to the priests, Jesus still included him in the meal. Some scholars believe Jesus placed him to his left in the position of honor at the supper table. Knowing that Peter would deny knowing him, Jesus washed Peter’s feet. Knowing that all would abandon him, he called them his friends; prayed for them; and said to them, “This is my blood of the new covenant poured out for you and for many for the forgiveness of sins.”
Have you ever played the part of Judas or Peter or the other ten disciples by betraying, denying, or abandoning Jesus through what you have done or failed to do?
As you journey with Jesus in the closing hours of his life, is there anyone who has betrayed, abandoned, or disappointed you that he may be calling you to forgive?
Lord, forgive me for the ways I have played the part of Judas or Peter through what I have done or failed to do. As you have shown me mercy, help me to be merciful toward those who have betrayed or disappointed me. Amen.
 
Excerpted from:

24 Hours That Changed the World Daily Devotions
Adam Hamilton
Retail Price: $9.99
CBD Price: $6.99

In this companion volume that can also function beautifully on its own, Adam Hamilton offers 40 days of reflection and meditation enabling us to pause, dig deeper, and emerge changed forever. The reflections, ideal for use in Lent, include Scripture, reflection on the events of Jesus’ final day, stories from Hamilton’s ministry, and prayers.
     
Used with the kind permission of our friends at Abingdon Press.