A 7 Central Things Lenten Devotional

              Hey, we made it all the way, from Ash Wednesday to Easter! We’ve given the 7 Central Things of Worship a look with fresh eyes. We’ve engaged with scripture, reflected on some ideas and authors and the world as it is; I’ve offered some preliminary maxims about these aspects of Christian practice, and we’ve prayed.               As I finish up this 17,000 some word devotional, I am aware of its inadequacies, and more so still my own. None the less, I hope I have pointed to God, who is gracious and faithful, who meets us in worship and in the world, who loves each one of us so very deeply. I hope this message can be heard in a world that can be indifferent and overwhelming, where idleness, isolation, and individualism can drown out the Spirit’s message. I hope these reflections deepen your Christian practices: meeting Jesus in word and sacramen...

                God who so loves the world that you sent your own Son, let us follow him. Let us be present with and for the world in ways that echo and point to Jesus. Deliver us from prejudice and a lack of love, help us to love our neighbor and share your love with them. In the name by which we are sent to baptize, the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.

  Sarang, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons It is not good to attempt to spread the Gospel in ways that are manipulative or insincere, incurious, or closed off from those with whom you seek to share the Good News. A spirit of judgment is surely asking for failure and is unfaithful to the whole venture. It is not good to travel thousands of miles away to share the Gospel, without considering your own context. Separating the good news of Jesus Christ from your roles, relationships, and responsibilities is irresponsible.   It is good to be sent out to serve our neighbors near and far—siblings and strangers, and witness to what God is up to in the world. We are called to accompany, be with, people on their journey with Jesus. This ministry of presence will draw us deeper into the world around us, its joys and flaws, where the Spirit is at work and where folk are in bondage to Sin. We ought to be curious enough about ...

  Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin FRCP(Glasg), CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons               As I did in the Thanksgiving section, I’ll be pulling some questions from my handy chart of 21 questions in this reflection. Decentralization—Where and how are we sent when we are already dispersed?               This is a vocation question. We have all kinds of roles, relationships, and responsibilities that we are already present in. Ask yourself, how can I be present in them in ways that point to the Good News? It can really be that simple, ongoing intentional reflection on those three Rs.   Demographic Shift— How are we sent differently to the changing demographics in which we live? After all, we’ve been called to all nations since the start, how might we do so effectively? Communicating ...

              “Open yourself to all that is human and you will find that every vain desire to escape from the world disappears. Be present to your age; adapt yourself to the conditions of the moment. Father, I pray you not to take them out of the world, but to keep them from evil.”—Father Roger               It may seem a little funny that I quote the head of a monastery as an example of sending, but the attitude expressed in the above quote exemplifies a faithful way to exist for our neighbors, whoever they are. Be present with them, in the time and place that we find ourselves in. Learn to understand and even love the world, not to rescue it and drag it away to some far-off place where a pure, unsoiled life can be lived, but to be salt and light—to preserve what is good, season it to be what it is, and to heal what needs the disinfecting that sunlight b...

                The Hymn “The Canticle of the Turning” is a favorite among a whole generation of Lutherans, probably all for vaguely the same reason, it was sung at an especially powerful moment in their life. For me it was sung before my cohort of Young Adults in Global Mission left the Lutheran Center in Chicago to our particular destinations around the world. A one-man band sent us off; if I remember correctly, he was simultaneously playing bagpipes, a harmonica, and drums. He played as all of us excited and anxious young people sang Mary’s song about the transformation of the whole world on account of her son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. It was the song that sent us out into the world to join in that mission. In my case that song sent me to an 850-year-old English abbey converted into a retreat centre where I cleaned rooms, taught kids archery, and served booze to Anglican Bishops.      ...

Bavarian State Library, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons               The above pieces of scripture are two charges to the church, that almost form a call and response, with each other. Matthew: Go to all nations! Make them disciples! Acts: Begin here in Jerusalem, but know that this new thing the Spirit is doing ripples out, to Judea where you’re from, but then Samaria, where you insist very heavily that you are not from. Point to what God has done in Jesus Christ among your people, and among those who you consider “those people.” In embracing the familiar and the other, the ripple in the pond will become a tsunami, splashing upon all the earth. Matthew: That is your calling. Baptizing them, teaching them everything about Jesus’ way of life. Jesus who is so very present with us, even as we leave Galilee. He will be with us, always! Acts: Truly, he is present! The Spirit, his Spirit, attests to who he...

              O God of story and presence and memory—incarnate one who meets us at table, feed us with your very self. Encounter us in bread and wine, allow us to celebrate the feast that flows from and points to “the great and promised feast.” Make out of us a community of anticipation, a community aware of and in awe of your presence among us. Empower us to practice this holy meal in ways that honor you and make it plain to all the world that the words “for you” are a promise “for you .”   Amen.

  Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons It is not good to practice a wholly ephemeral form of spirituality—one devoid of incarnation and physicality. If your only experience of God’s love is a warm feeling from words read or heard, you may miss a gracious avenue towards comfort and assurance, Christ’s body and blood given for you. After all, there are so many physical signs in this world that point to fear and death, you ought to receive at least one sign of God’s love and life, for you ! It is not good to worship and to eat in ways that dismember the body of Christ, that maim members of it. It was wrong for the Corinthians to make economic and educational distinctions in how people received the Lord’s Supper, such divisions of the Table are still wrong! It is not good for communion to be done in a way that makes it unrecognizable as a feast. On one hand, that can be caused by the disposition of those who receive the feast, but also by the type of elements u...

  Metropolitan Museum of Art, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons -Disestablishment & Decentralization—Have you ever experienced Dinner Church? Have you ever gone through a whole worship service, but seated, the focus of the service on the meal. Surely we gather—there is a whole protocol to greeting dinner guests isn’t there?, read scripture—cross table story telling is a beautiful thing, and are sent into the world to serve—perhaps even ending that service by drying the dishes… but the whole thing is embedded in eating. It makes the various pieces of advice from the early church make more sense… hey Corinthians don’t force the poor to pack a lunch, while the rich experience the eucharist as a catered meal! In a world where gathering in a church building might feel foreign, bringing church to a restaurant, or at least a meal space, can speak afresh. In a world where going up to an altar rail and eating a wafer and a sip of wine doesn’t say “Feast” to some folk, it might be time to r...

                When I teach first communion I tell my story from internship in Baltimore. We also read through the story of “Grandma Ollie Mae’s Molasses Raisin Bread” from Samuel Torvend’s book Daily Bread, Holy Meal . It is a way to touch upon the major aspects of communion by analogy. The story about Ollie Mae’s bread reminds us how re-membering something creates a community, how the bread described in the book is a bread of everyday folks and a bread for a journey. It is also overabundant and filled with joy and thanksgiving. While that doesn’t tell the whole of what makes Communion Holy, it is a good start. Holy Communion is a meal of memory—like Paul we pass on what was first given us. One of the few non-negotiables I learned in liturgy class was that the bread used for Holy Communion needs to be the simple staple food of a culture, and the wine needs to be the celebratory drink of the culture—common joy. ...

  Addshore, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons My first week of internship at St. John’s Pimlico was rough. Someone took a crowbar and bent open my mailbox and took all my remaining things I’d shipped to myself from Seminary. I was mugged at knife point in front of my apartment. Finally, I witnessed a shooting. As you might imagine, by that first Sunday I was shook ! We worshipped together, and we reached the point of the service where I came up to receive Holy Communion. Pastor Gregg said the words, “The body of Christ, for you! The blood of Christ, for you!” And in receiving that wafer and wine, I finally understood what no Confessions class could teach—the existential nature of the physicality of the sacraments. I needed a promise of God’s goodness as physical as all those signs of dread and death that permeate this world. I needed a promise that I could consume, a promise that gave a little warmth to the body going dow...

  Nheyob, cropped by Tahc, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons               Have you ever thought of collective memory? The ways events can pile on top of each other and make meaning out of history rhyming and echoes of the past upbuilding the future? Well, if you haven’t, consider 1 st Corinthians 11. It is these words of institution we use on Sunday for Holy Communion. We remember what Paul offers to the church in Corinth—that divided and strained congregation in Greece that Paul seeks to unite around the common story and common body of Christ Jesus our Lord. Words he has received from the wider church—the words Jesus spoke on the night he was handed over, words we find in the Synoptic Gospels (Matthew, Mark, and Luke). Words preparing his disciples for his death, and resurrection. Words harkening back to other liberative words—another meal of salvation....

                 Gracious God, Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer of all that is good in our lives, banish from us the sword of cynicism and our idleness around the practice of praise. Ennoble our practices of gratitude, that they might be catchy and sustain us through seasons of sorrow. We pray this in the name of Jesus Christ, for whom we are always thankful. Amen.

  A. Davey from Where I Live Now: Pacific Northwest, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons It is not good to denigrate God’s good creation, to cling to sarcasm and cynicism, instead of thanksgiving and praise. Likewise, it is not good to miss opportunities to be thankful, there are an awful lot of ways to join all the earth in praising God, we should take every one that we can, otherwise moments of sorrow and suffering might overwhelm us.                 It is good to celebrate everything God has first given us; to celebrate God’s world and celebrate with God’s world! We do so in worship, and if there are ways to make that more apparent, it is imperative that we do so.               It is good to cultivate habits of gratitude, wherever they are found. Be they in daily humorous questions that jolt ...

Rest and Be Thankful sign by John Firth, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons               As I’ve been writing the 3D section of these devotionals I’ve maybe veered a little away from the 21 questions I have about liturgical ministry in the world as it is. So, in today’s reflections I’m going to try and move us back to those questions. -Disestablishment—What parts of disestablishment ought we give thanks for?               It’s a fair question that parries the assumption that everything about the new order is antagonistic to the Gospel. For example, a defacto established church is also an obliged church, a church that can never be more than a chaplain to the culture, never a witness, never counter-cultural or even counter-counter-cultural. I thank God that we don’t have to pretend consumerism and hyper-individualism is good, bl...

                In Diana Butler Bass’s Grateful: The Transformative Power of Giving Thanks she explores the ins and outs of thankfulness, what it means to be and do gratefulness individually and collectively. She quotes a Benedictine monk who observed, “Ninety-nine percent of the time we have an opportunity to be grateful for something. We just don’t notice it. We go through our days in a daze.” To shake off that daze Bass recommends habits of gratitude. An example she uses is the Buddha’s playful way of remembering to be thankful every day no matter what—start by being thankful that you learned a lot today, and if you didn’t learn a lot at least a little… and he keeps noticing smaller and smaller things to be thankful for until finally he says, “well, at least be thankful that you didn’t die today.” Bass notes that gratitude is contagious, that scientists have noticed that experiencing moral elevation, that is...

                At my last annual eye exam, my optometrist suggested that I see a specialist; she thought something looked a little off, but 90% of the time what she saw wasn’t a problem. So, I went to an ophthalmologist, completely chill—there is a 90% chance it is nothing. I ran through the eye chart, got a puff test, all the semi-regular stuff that gets done to one’s eye. Then they brought me to a back room and started manipulating my eye with what looked and felt like a spoon and a dental tool.               Next thing I knew there were needles in my eye injecting numbing solution and a big old laser burning the back of my eyes. By the time I went back to the waiting room, I felt like a throw away towel someone used to clean up a flooded muddy basement. 1 in 10. How lucky, I thought.           ...

  Godfried from Utrecht, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons               The first Church Council took place in Jerusalem—the question and controversy was over what non-Jews had to do to be a “Person of the Way” or as we might say today, part of the Church. Some said follow the whole law, others none of it. As Acts and Galatians report the end decision was somewhere between following an interpretation of the “Noahide” laws, the commandments Noah received in Genesis, and Paul’s famed, “Remember the poor.” So, a faithful life involved charity and minimal ritual purity to maintain table fellowship between Jewish and non-Jewish Christians.               I bring all of this up, because as you can see in 1 st Timothy there were folk practicing a variety of scruples, abstaining from marriage and from foods of one sort of another—perhaps ...

Incarnate God, witnessed by Bible and preachers of every age, speak clearly to us, so that we can hear… hear, be we indifference or possess overwhelmed ears that no longer know how to hear your story. May we come to your word in humility and ready to be changed. Amen.

  Paul, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons It is not good to confuse the Scriptures and the incarnate Word. Nor is it good when scripture is resisted or destroyed because it contains Law as well as Gospel. It is not good when the Bible’s witness to Jesus Christ is drowned out by a cacophony of stories, many more banal than the average soap commercial. Nor is it good when we claim that the Bible has properties that it does not claim for itself, confusing the intensions and interests, genres and functions, with various modern works—namely science books or blueprints for governing a modern state. On the other side of the coin, it is not good when familiarity breeds contempt—when we believe we know scripture so well that we refuse to go deeper, or even take it seriously. When scripture can no longer surprise or challenge us, we’ve lost the plot. Often times, this is a sign that we’ve overlayed our reading of scripture with cultura...

  117PXL, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Disestablishment—The Church is being disentangled from the culture in a variety of ways, and that likely shapes our story, scripture, the Word. There was a time when the knowledge of our narratives was so ubiquitous in our culture that the Bible was almost a storehouse of double entendres and shaped the very language—people had “Damascus moments” and knew it referred to the Apostle Paul’s encounter with the living Christ, being a “Doubting Thomas” had more nuance to it than now, people were their “brother’s keeper” and knew if they weren’t they were “raising Cain”, folk once knew how to pronounce Methuselah, because their parents were as old as… And there is some good to language and culture dripping with the Bible. For example, having aha! moments that tied a common experience to the story of God. Perhaps, at its best, this cultural familiarity allowed people to read beyond the ...

  Schwetz, Ferenc, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commonn             Luther famously wrote, “The Bible is the cradle of Christ.” This is very crucial for understanding what Lutherans mean when we use the phrase  Sola scriptura  that is, Word Alone. Some Christians seek to make the Bible into a science textbook (see  The Fundamentals  by Lyman Stewart) or a rule book for secular governance (for example, John Calvin’s brief theocratic rule of Geneva), but as Lutherans, we believe Scripture testifies to Jesus Christ and is the basis for the teachings of our faith. When we read the Bible, it strikes us a Law and Gospel, naming both the reality of Sin in the world and the even greater reality of God’s love for the whole wide world.             Now, for those who haven’t done a lot of Bible readi...

  Derek Jensen (Tysto), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons               I think we all have experienced those sermons where something clicks, I hesitate to use the phrase but “the word becomes flesh” for us . A professor from seminary tells a story of his mother considering a sermon she’d heard and realizing halfway through her commute home that the truth preached was true, for her , and it being transforming. Similarly, CS Lewis has his famous bike ride that was a conversion to the Faith.               For me it was at our annual Chuckwagon Service in Cheyenne Wyoming. It was an outdoor service that corresponded with Frontier Days—the week of the big rodeo. We were out there under the sun, it was an especially hot Sunday, and Pastor Sarah was preaching on giving the little ones a glass of water—the small kindnesses that genuinely have transformativ...

                My impulse, when citing scripture about the Word is to go to the Gospel of John and regale people about the Logos —that is, John points to Jesus as the Word/Wisdom/Blueprint of God, and the shocking part of that is that the Logos becomes flesh. The danger is that as a culture we’ve so completely identified Word with Bible and scripture, that we start to confuse the Bible and Jesus. To be clear, there are useful analogies one can make between the two, for example: If we’ve always affirmed both the divinity and humanity of Jesus, it shouldn’t be too hard to affirm both the divine and human hand in the inspiration of scripture. But confusing the thing pointing to God’s acts, and God’s acts themselves, is dangerous; as one of my predecessors in the ministry drilled into several congregations he served, “We worship Jesus, not the Bible.” So, let’s go to two earthier examples of the Word, one where Script...

                God who was faithful to unfaithful David, God who made good to flow out of the bad relationship between Joseph and his siblings, God we find in Jesus Christ—forgiving sins and healing lives—call us continually to repentance and forgiveness, empower us to be repairers of the breach, give us sensitive spirits and prophetic voices. Make your Church, O Lord, to be a place where victims are heard and cared for, and a people who offer concrete steps toward right relationships. Amen.

  R. and K. Wood, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons It is not good to make excuses for a sin based on it being part of your job or role. Similarly, hiding from sins that are extremes of what you’ve done in the past and it was okay, does not make them any less a sin. In fact, if a “success script” you rely on leads to sin, it is worth reflecting on the entire script; for example, “I just love too much” was maybe a dangerous thing for David’s soul and relationships all along, but he didn’t realize it until it led him to rape and murder. It is not good to describe sin or forgiveness in solely disembodied ways—it can make it hard to know that someone has broken a relationship or that the mending of that relationship has occurred. In that line of thought, it is not good to wallow in a sin after it has been forgiven, after a while it can come off as bragging or picking at a scab.   It is good to take seriously the ways we’ve harmed other people, even if the hurt was uninten...

  A crime forgiven by Neil Owen, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons Disestablishment —How do we hear confession and forgiveness? Do the words we use still work? I’m a big proponent of the worship re-writing resource In these and other words, because it forces us to ask questions about language, about the tension between familiarity and surprise . I know when I’ve tweaked the liturgical language of our confession and forgiveness, I inevitably get some interesting responses. Folk who’ve been using the words found on page 77 of the Lutheran Book of Worship since it came out in the 70s are surprised that I seem to be telling them that they are forgiven for their sins . The liturgy had become so familiar that they no longer recognized what the words even meant!               And that right there is the challenge and opportunity of the disestablishment of the chur...

                Sometimes it feels like forgiveness is uplifted as the highest of values, and also the least well explained. A pastor (I know I’ve done this) will breathlessly describe forgiveness as the core of the gospel, or the most important outworking of the Spirit in our lives, or some other nice thing about forgiveness. And we leave it there for everyone to work out on their own. As you can imagine this can lead to guilt for those who don’t forgive, charges of hypocrisy at Christians who don’t forgive well, and folk are taken advantage of, because they forgive in ways that don’t reckon with the reality of being sinned against.               Luckily Desmond Tutu and his daughter Mpho Tutu wrote The Book of Forgiving: The Fourfold Path for Healing Ourselves and Our World which lays out practical steps for forgiveness: 1. Tell the story—Just the...

  When I was in second grade, we had a show and tell day. We each put a precious object of ours onto the radiator by the window and then went down the line looking at one another’s beloved things. One girl had brought a porcelain unicorn her grandmother gave her. It was beautiful, it made me think of fantasy stories and strange enchanted worlds. And at some point, it broke. I don’t know if it caught on my shirt, or if someone else bumped into it. The teacher made a big deal out of the destroyed unicorn, and no one confessed to knocking it over. Its destruction was the center of our classes’ life for multiple days, I know I began to feel guilty, not being sure if I’d somehow been at fault—and I wasn’t the only student worried that they may have somehow destroyed our classmate’s beloved thing—we’d hurt her! Eventually the class took up a collection and replaced the unicorn with a porcelain dragon.               I don’t ...

장영재탐험단, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons               “You are the man!” Said the prophet Nathan to surprised David; David who perhaps did not realize his “taking” of Bathsheba and his murder of her husband Uriah, was anything other than a kingly prerogative. After all, Israel had been warned, if you choose the monarchy instead of the tribal system, kings’ll conscript your men, take your wealth, make war, and take your women.               But David’s “loving too much” and taking on the trappings of Kingship had consequences. Consequences for his Kingdom, his friends and lovers, his family, and his soul. And so, we receive this psalm, “Have mercy on me, O God.” Blot out! Wash! Cleanse! I, I alone have done this! This sin shoots backwards to my very birth. Purge me! Create in me a clean heart! Cast m...