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Secure Even When It’s Not Safe
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Taking Christ's Love to the Parish
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Jan, wandering seat to seat on the bus, was crossing state lines from Michigan to Wisconsin. Bruce had sent her the ticket. The two met at a church youth convention; now she was going to be his high school prom date. Here’s how it happened: At the youth gathering, during each morning’s worship, the two held the same green hymn book. During the afternoon Bible studies, sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor, she read compellingly from her red leatherette Bible. For evening reflections, the prayers she pulled from her blue plastic packet of devotions swept the room. Bruce was bedazzled. That’s why he bought the ticket. When Jan stepped off the bus, she shimmered, telling him how from seat to seat along Highway 2 she had saved souls, netting fourteen converts on a colorful missionary journey.
As delighted as Jan might have been, her proselytizing was not the kind of fishing for people Jesus was after when he passed along the Sea of Galilee, calling oily fishermen to “follow me.” What shook Simon and Andrew, James and John, and countless women and men throughout the ages to—immediately, impulsively—give up their nets, quit mending, abandon boats, and leave families and homes?
Jesus’ wild, sea-changing challenge demands courage. It dares us into a way of living, a manner of seeing, and a risk of not knowing but earnestly believing that when he asks us to step up, something more meaningful than all we have awaits us.
Jesus’ “follow me” comes amid a lifetime of rigorous monotony, in which we are constantly casting nets to catch more of what never satisfies. Jesus’ “follow me” is an epiphany. It is an invitation, not to “save souls,” but to be gathered and to gather the weak and despairing, to minister to the ruined and abandoned, scared and starving, to show compassion to the mean and unloving, and to embrace the great, greedy, proud, and demanding; all of this awaits us in the nets of God’s kingdom.
Devotional message and art based on the readings for January 24th, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
Was it wildfire nerve? Unchecked audacity? Holy purpose? The hammering of parents’ expectations? Maybe the privilege of being kin to Jesus? Or was it eccentricity as peculiar as his diet and wardrobe? What desire drove John to the wilderness, into the water of the Jordan? What ignited his fiery proclamation of repentance and forgiveness? What current pulled crowds from city and country into the water?
One can say, rightly, that it was ordained by God, compelled by the Holy Spirit, predicted by an angel. Yet there is a hitch in the story. Four easily missed but utterly important words gum up the works of any timid or tidy explanations: “I am not worthy” (Mark 1:7).
Something in John’s four words opens the baptismal story to torrents of wonder, floods of hope, drenching relief and recovery.
For some years the two friends had been together through what we often call the thick and the thin. They knew this and that, bits and pieces, the here and there of one another’s lives. And not only the trivial. They probed each other’s shadowed corridors and crumbling edges. Still, there were secrets, withholdings. One day, for reasons wrapped with nothing but the ragged swaddling of unaccountable grace, one said to the other, “It has been such a long, lonely journey, carrying a suitcase filled with secrets, the shames and deceptions I’ve folded and packed.” Then he began to tell. To confess. A repenting, a turning. His friend’s eyes filled with tears that watered his cheeks and dripped into his lap. All he could say through the flood was, “I love you all the more.”
Born literally of grace, breaking the dam of John’s four words, “I am not worthy,” is one stronger word, the word of the more powerful one: forgiveness. To John and to us who say, “I am not worthy,” Jesus answers, “Yes, yes, yes, you are.”
Devotional message and art based on the readings for January 10th, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
After hours of watching the news on television or scrolling through social media posts on screens big or small, your eyes can get tired. They get worn out not only from staring at the blue light of screens, but also from the unending stream of bad news. You might go to the newspaper, your favorite news channel, or Twitter with hopes of finding something good happening. Too often, you find the overwhelming problems of the world. It gets old. Your eyes get tired of seeing it all.
Two wise, faithful elders were in the temple praying and eagerly awaiting the good news that God had always promised to bring. They were filled with expectation and hope. But they were getting quite old, and after a long time of hoping, hopes can diminish. Faith can dwindle; eyes can get tired. Yet somehow, Simeon and Anna kept coming to the temple each day to pray and to wait.
Then the day came. The Spirit had guided Simeon. Anna had been sustained by her faith. Their old, tired eyes stayed open to see God’s saving acts in plain sight: Jesus was born to be the Savior and Messiah. Simeon says: “My eyes have seen your salvation!” (Luke 2:30). Anna gives thanks and prophesies about the redemption Jesus brings (Luke 2:38). In seeing God’s faithfulness, their hope is affirmed and renewed.
Many faithful people wait a long, long time to see what God will do to continue the story of salvation. Many elders among us have lived through trying times, never giving up hope, never ceasing to pray, always expecting that God will be faithful. In Christ, our old, tired eyes have been refreshed. All the bad news that wears us out and ages our bodies and minds is met with the good news of Jesus: God brings healing and forgiveness to all. Our eyes have seen God’s salvation!
Devotional message and art based on the readings for December 27th, reprinted from sundaysandseasons.com.
Copyright © 2019 Augsburg Fortress. All rights reserved.
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