Reflection and Renewal: We Want Things Our Way (based on 1 Timothy 2:4)

God, you are loving and kind. Your grace is bottomless. You want us to reflect that same love and grace in your world.

But this can be difficult to do sometimes. We’re constantly bombarded with messages from other voices - voices that say we should make ourselves the center of our worlds, that we should narrow our focus on on just ourselves, and that we should pursue what will make us feel good right away.

As a result, we sometimes find ourselves pushing away from connection and community because we don't want anything to impede on our freewheeling and our ability to have things our way.

Other times we think we’re unworthy of being loved, have no value, and therefore assume that no one would ever want to have relationship with us.

It can be so easy for us to fall back into those ruts.  We often get it wrong, so we come asking for forgiveness.

May your grace be a constant reminder of the good that we should wish for all of creation. May your love be a continual reminder of the inherent value we have and the original goodness you created the universe with.

May we stay committed to and remain active in the work of restoration and renewal in your world.

Amen

Responsive Call To Worship: Come, All Who Are Weary (based on Matthew 11:28-30)

Reader: Come, all that are weary; all that are carrying heavy burdens

All: In God, we can find rest

Reader: Come, take what God has to offer: love, forgiveness, and grace
All: In God, we can find peace

Reader: Come, let us give thanks to the source of all good things

All:  Let us praise God, who is our salvation

Wilderness Lessons: Jesus In The Desert - Kayla McClurg in inward/outward

Haven’t we, too, sometimes sensed a clear calling, only to find ourselves thrust soon after into the desert of suffering?

Arising from the waters of his baptism, Jesus hears a voice calling him "Beloved." Yet it is the Spirit of this same voice that drives him out into the wilderness for a rigorous 40-day initiation.

Haven’t we, too, sometimes sensed a clear calling, only to find ourselves thrust soon after into the desert of suffering? In Mark’s telling, much of Jesus’ experience is left to our imaginations. He is, we are told, “tempted by Satan.” He is “with the wild beasts.” The angels “wait on him.” The details are not given, thus inviting us to enter the story and contemplate it as our own.

It takes real commitment to lay down important plans and projects and withdraw into the wilderness. So much momentum can be lost in 40 days.

By the time Jesus is back, John has been arrested. The movement falters. So soon, Jesus must face the very real possibility that their dream of God’s realm being embodied on earth might be lost. Maybe it is already too late. What good has the wilderness been? Has it taught him defeat or determination, cowardice or courage?

When he hears of John’s peril, Jesus leaves—going to the very region where John was taken, right into the heart of danger. Wilderness has shown him what matters most, and what time it really is.

“The time is now,” he begins to preach in John’s stead. “The realm of God is very near.” For every busy one of us, facing our daily urgencies, Jesus sets a new order, follows a new master. Dare we join him?

The full article is available here

Jesus: A Denouncer Of Piety - Frederick Buechner

When Jesus said, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword," what he presumably meant was that it was not passivity that he came to bring.

Christ was a denouncer of a narrow and loveless piety, the scourge of the merely moral, the enemy of every religious tradition of his day, no matter how sacred, that did not serve the Kingdom as he saw it and embodied it in all its wildness and beauty.

Where he was, passion was, life was. To be near him was to catch life from him the way sails catch the wind.

When Jesus said, "I have not come to bring peace, but a sword," what he presumably meant was that it was not peacefulness and passivity that he came to bring.

Instead, he came to bring that high and life-breathing peace that burns at the hearts only of those who are willing to do battle, as he did battle, to bring to pass God's loving, healing, forgiving will for the world and all its people.

The full article is available here

Franklin Graham's Hypocrisy On Religious Violence - Craig M Watts at Red Letter Christians

You might think Graham is a pacifist as he distances himself from the violent people who distort Christianity.  But if you think Franklin Graham is an advocate of nonviolence who opposes Christians engaging in violence and deadly conflict you would be mistaken.

In his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, essentially all that the President did was remind the group gathered for prayer that not only Islam but Christianity as well has been used to justify horrible violence and war. 

Calling for a degree of religious humility and self-examination strikes me as a reasonable thing to do. Clearly there are many people who don’t agree. Franklin Graham is among them. Or at least he and others don’t agree when it is done by President Obama.

Many on the right want to justify or minimize the violence that has been done by Christians in the name of their faith. Or they suggest that even if Christians once did horrible things, those things were done long ago. Apparently the statute of limitations has passed. Ignore the fact that currently tens of thousands of Muslims are fleeing Christian militias in the Central African Republic or the terrorist attacks done by right wing Christians in recent years.

You might think Graham is a pacifist as he distances himself from the violent people who distort Christianity.

But if you think Franklin Graham is an advocate of nonviolence who opposes Christians engaging in violence and deadly conflict you would be mistaken.

When Jerry Falwell, the founder of the old Moral Majority and Liberty University, boldly proclaimed, “God is pro-war,” Franklin Graham didn’t object. To the contrary, at the time he was in full agreement.

Graham is not one prone to quote Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the peacemakers; they will be called children of God” (Matthew 5:9). That line doesn’t easily tumble from the lips of someone who can say, “There’s no excitement and thrill like the complexities of war. It heightens perceptions. The smell of gunpowder. The sound of shrapnel hitting a building. Everything in you slows down, except your reflexes. They become quicker, because all of life’s emotions are played out on a razor’s edge. Your instincts take over…. War satisfies my need for danger. I love to go places where bombs blow up.”

The full article is available here

The Infinite Silence Speaks - Gene Marshall at Progressive Christianity

The Infinite Silence Speaks
through every rustle of tree leaves,
through every singing bird,
through every sound of any kind,
and through the silent spaces between the sounds.

The Infinite Silence is Void and Darkness
but also Fullness, a dazzling back-light
that shines through
every gleaming tree, every shimmering squirrel
and surrounds every human being
with a halo.

Finding Common Ground In The Names of God - The Banner

“We've learned we have the same basic understanding of God’s character. Our discussions have been richer and more lively than past sessions.”

When retired school teacher Glenn Ploegstra began using the Names of God issue of theToday devotional in his discussion group with Muslims and Christians, he found a surprisingly common connection with people of traditionally different faiths.

Every three weeks Ploegstra and other Christians from various branches of Christianity meet with a group of Turkish students, mostly committed Muslims, at Cleveland State University in Ohio.

The gatherings—called the “Bible-Qu’ran Group”—began several years ago when Ploegstra’s friend Bill Schubmehl connected with the university students from Turkey.

These students, in addition to achieving their masters or doctorate degrees, also wanted to understand western culture and the Christian faith.

The meetings begin with a potluck buffet of ethnic foods brought by the participants. Then after a time of fellowship, members spend 60-90 minutes learning about Christianity one week and Islam the next.

“Our purpose is to understand one another, not to try convert someone to the other’s faith,” Ploegstra explains. “We've learned we have the same basic understanding of God’s character. Our discussions have been richer and more lively than past sessions.”

The full article is available here

Does Obama Owe Christians Apology for Speech at Prayer Breakfast? Micah Bales in Sojourner's

Denying the truth, or pretending it doesn't matter, will never change the past.  We can't act as if it's a bad dream that we can forget.  Pointing our fingers at the one sharing truth doesn't change the truth.

In his remarks at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama spoke about the reality that any religion, including Christianity, can be used as justification for acts of terror.

Why should I be offended by that?

That’s a fact. That’s our history. Every Christian should be aware of what we are capable of when we turn our eyes away from the self-sacrificing love of Jesus and instead turn Christianity into an ideology that justifies terror, brutality, oppression and war.

[In a recent speech, Dr. Michael Brown reminded, and in many cases, educated the Christians present about the horrors committed in the name of Christ during the period when Christians, under the banner of the cross, rode through Europe and terrorized the Muslim and Jewish population. He pointed out that even today, the Jewish people associate the word "Christian" with the Crusades.]

We humans have a long track record of twisting our most precious faith into a weapon of violence and hatred. This shouldn't be a controversial statement; it should be a matter of ongoing repentance and prayer for people of faith everywhere.

Christians and conservatives condemned the President's comments as petty and off point. It was as if denying the truth of Obama's statements or his use of these facts as a warning regarding the dangers of religious extremism would make everything just go away.

Denying the truth, or pretending it doesn't matter, will never change the past. The Church is guilty of terrible acts in the Name of Christ, and we must own up to this. We can't act as if it's a bad dream that we can forget.

Pointing our fingers at the one sharing truth doesn't change the truth.
The full article is available here

Rainn Wilson: A Spiritual Revolution Is Coming - in Progressive Christianity

Selma: MLK and US - Shannon Jammal-Hollemans in Do Justice

It is our turn to hold each other up. To continue to fight the battles that King and his colleagues began. Together.

In the film Selma, we meet Martin Luther King, Jr. the man. We see, quite clearly, that he was a man whose strength was not his own.  King was upheld by those who surrounded him. In Selma we meet those men and women. It was their strength that upheld King in his darkest moments, and gave him the courage to move forward, one step at a time.

In one poignant scene, King asks a colleague what good is it having access to the lunch counter at Woolworth’s if a person can’t afford to buy a hamburger or read the menu or has been so broken down in his psyche that he doesn’t feel like he even belongs there.

This is the question that remains today, albeit in a slightly different form. What good are equal rights when systems remain in place that continue to bar African Americans from equal access to education, healthcare, housing, and public safety? 

In 2013 the U.S. Supreme Court voted to strike down key components of the Voting Rights Act that King worked so tirelessly to secure. The U.S. Congress is currently debating whether or not they will restore some of these components.

We still live in racism’s grip. Like all sins, it will not go away through wishful thinking or turning a blind eye.

As Christians, we have a call to seek justice which means working to dismantle the legacy of our history of oppression. Justice is not inevitable, but something God calls us to work for.

We are the agents of his reconciliation. It is our turn to hold each other up. To continue to fight the battles that King and his colleagues began. Together.

The full article is available here