One of the more important, if not entertaining, lessons parents teach their youngsters is the difference between eating food, and everything else they might be interested in putting into their mouths. In a world of antiseptic wipes, gels, and coughs that must now be stifled in the crux of one’s arm, we take great care to teach about and model for them everything we ingest.

We do so because what we take into our bodies can change everything.

Taking something into our bodies is the most profound way there is of accepting it.  Not just in the kitchen, but in the bedroom.  While the mind ascents and the soul becomes stirred, it is the body that gives us the most tangible expression of what we mean to say, do, and accept.

Accepting the reign of Christ is at the center of Sunday’s Gospel – when Jesus tells us about a landowner who rents out his vineyard to some hoodlums who refuse to accept his authority. They don’t recognize who’s boss and, as a result, pay the price.

Accepting Jesus’ authority has gotten no easier.  We still want to have things our way, take all the credit, and ignore the landlord.  This is why Christians go to great lengths to ascent to God’s reign, not just with mind and soul – but, through the Sacrament of bread and wine that Jesus commended – we accept God’s reign through our bodies as well.

So if we are what we eat, could Communion make us anything better?

-----------------

Reading

Not Your Parent’s Offering Plate – J Clif Christopher

Matthew – Donald Hagner

Living in the Village – Ryan C. Mack

11 years ago traveling through airports was easier, meeting people of Arab decent was less cautionary, and more of us thought that everybody loved the United States.

9/11 changed all that.  And now, as we mark its tenth anniversary, we reflect on how things have changed and must change for us to move farther along the road of healing, to avoid anything like that again, and to importantly, consider what God is up to in all of this.

Of course, we can’t stop twisted people from doing twisted things.  We cannot change others, we can only change ourselves, and looking more closely at our own place in the world is a good place to start. 

The fact that most Americans self-identify as Christians yet cannot name all four Gospels is well documented.  North American Christianity is historically, and notoriously, an inch deep and a mile wide.  Reacting, then to a religiously motivated act with shallow roots in our own religion, not surprisingly yields a less than satisfactory response – of which there have been many.  The solution to bad religion then, is not more bad religion, or no religion, but good religion.

In this Sunday’s Gospel, we are reminded that ‘good religion’ is about forgiveness and reconciliation.  It is about turning the other cheek and forgiving 7 times 70.  It is about cherishing peace above retribution and humility over vengeance.  Our world desperately needs ‘good religion’ – and we are all called to spread it. So may we mark this dark anniversary with a renewed pledge to reach for the light – to get more serious about our work of reconciliation, humility, and love.  Ten years later there are still evil people planning evil things – so let the good people plan good things.

Reading

Rambam’s Ladder – Julie Soloman

At the Still Point – Sarah Arthur

The Thank You Economy – Gary Vanyerchuk

image by Noel Sikes, Conyers, GA

Years ago I confided in a close friend about my feelings toward another mutual friend.  My comments were expressly confidential – so you can imagine my anger when I learned that my close friend had spilled the beans, and told our mutual friend everything I’d said.  I was irritated and embarrassed - furious that my confidence had been betrayed.  I wanted to write my close friend off – and I did, for quite some time.  Has this ever happened to you?

As we know, forgiveness and reconciliation are at the heart of Christianity. And many times this is the hard work of the Gospel – this is what Jesus means by ‘carrying the cross’ and ‘turning the other cheek.’ In this Sunday’s gospel we will hear Jesus give advice about how we’re supposed to handle disagreements like this – that we’re to confront the issue, not let it slide, that we’re supposed to ask others to help, if need be, and we’re to realize that this is God’s work – the healing of the world starts when you and I work to heal the brokenness that’s right around us.  How can we pray for world peace when we’re holding a grudge, refusing to own up to our parts in disordered relationships, and not allowing peace to rule in our lives?

So we ask ourselves these really tough questions: with whom, at the present moment, might we have an egregious disagreement – who are we mad at – what brokenness around us needs our attention - and where is the Gospel calling us to make peace, for our good, and for the good of the world?

Reading

The Thank You Economy – Gary Vanyerchuk

At the Still Point – Sarah Arthur

Pigs in Heaven – Barbara Kingsolver

Ever drive down the freeway and approach a highway that goes to some faraway place, and just want to take it?  Maybe we’ve just come from a disastrous business meeting, a breakup with a girlfriend, or a blow-up with a best-friend – and we just want to ditch it all and get away.

No doubt the mom we meet in this Sunday’s gospel felt the same way.  Her daughter was gravely ill, and she had nowhere to turn.  But she didn’t run away from the problem, she ran to the solution.

At first Jesus didn’t pay any attention to this woman because she was all wrong – wrong gender, religion, race, and ethnicity – but she was determined. She knew Jesus could fix it.  She knew that life trumps death, hope trumps despair, healing trumps illness, and Jesus overcomes it all.

“Ditching it all” only ever gives a fleeting moment of relief – it doesn’t ultimately help.  She had to persevere, she had to be determined, she had to stay on the highway no matter how difficult and troublesome.

Every day you and I are tempted to take the easy route.  That exit ramp to evasion is an enticement we often can’t resist.  In our world of short attention spans, quick rewards, and the avoidance of anything painful, it makes doing the hard work of staying the course toward what’s good and right, even tougher.

But this is where the reward is – and we know it.

Each one of us have been given a project, an attitude, a relationship, a commitment, to which the completion will bring glory to God.  But the road gets tough.  We want to take the exit ramp, any exit ramp.  Jesus’ message to us is that it pays to stick to it.  There is a reward for ambition, determination, and perseverance.

What places in our lives are demanding this?  Are we quitting too soon?  Are we avoiding what we ought to be up to?  What do we need to do to quit running away from the problem, and run toward the solution?

Reading

Matthew for Everyone – NT Wright

Not Your Parent’s Offering Plate – J. Clif Christopher

Beginner’s Grace – Kate Braestrup

God is absolutely obsessed with us.  God spends all day and all night thinking about us.  There is not one moment in God’s day in which God is not 100% focused on us.  God spends every waking moment contemplating what we’re doing and where we’re going.

And God’s awareness of our ups and downs has given us some of the most profound stories about how God, and the world, works.  We call them parables. 

This Sunday we’ll hear 5 of them.  They’re anecdotes taken from everyday life that tell us how God’s deepest desire - to walk and talk with us – actually fulfills our deepest desires.  Jesus’ story – about His desperate love for the world – is a story He longs to tell and re-tell through the average, the everyday, and the mundane.

What would our lives be like if we thought about God as much as God thinks about us?  Or what would they be like if we looked at the everyday things all around us and let God talk to us through them?  What would it be like if we understood that every arrival, departure, conversation, and interaction had a message?

Jesus found deep insight into God simply by looking around Him and letting God talk.  I bet we can too.

------

Reading

Radical – David Platt

God is Back – Micklethwaite and Wooldridge

A Place Called Freedom – Ken Follett

Why doesn’t God do something?

Whether it’s about dictators who slaughter innocents, politicians who can’t find budget compromises, or media folk who condone dishonest newsgathering to pad the bottom line.  Is the Almighty paying any attention?  What is God waiting for?

We get some insight this Sunday when we hear Jesus tell a parable.  It’s about God planting seeds during the day, then an enemy sneaking around at night and planting weeds on top of them.  When the sabotage is discovered, we hear that the Lord doesn’t pull up all the plants, but allows the good plants and the weeds to grow side by side until the harvest.  Judgment is not immediate.  Harsh transgression is not met with instant chastisement.  And that can really bother us.

How many of us yearn to see the backstabber at the office found out - and that sleazy acquaintance who’s sleeping around, finally discovered?  And when it doesn’t happen we get angry, discouraged, and frustrated.  But while Jesus may not offer a detailed explanation, He makes it clear that this won’t go on forever.  There will be an end, a judgment, a reward for those who live for God.

To live for God, then, is to understand that God’s time is not our time.  It is to be patient, faithful, and ever-mindful of the reality of God right beside us, right now.  God is doing something.  God is not absent.  God is not missing.  God waits.  Can we?

Reading

Climb Higher – Kristine Miller

Beginner’s Grace – Kate Braestrup

A Place Called Freedom – Ken Follett

Acre after acre of knee-high cornstalks, line up in attention like white crosses at Arlington, reaching for nutrients they know they will get.  Both above and beneath, the soil-water-sunshine combo will nurture the genetically modified seed whose corporate inventor still reaps the royalties, at least that’s what that Monsanto sign up front probably means.

Massive wheeled watering systems will tentacle out over the plains to sprinkle just the right amount of water at just the right time, all according to the bioengineering department’s calculations.  Meanwhile the multi-million dollar fleet of combines perches like lions behind coliseum gates, ready to pounce with precision on a fairly predictable abundance.

Modern agriculture has every reason to scoff at a biblical image of a Sower whose farming techniques lack such precision - a fist-full of precious seeds on the rocks, another on the hard path, how about some in the thorn patch?  But the Sower cares not about the sowing, all that matters is the reaping!  ‘Be good soil!’ goes the message, ‘Be one who hears, understands, and yields 30, 60, even 100 fold, for the fickle, worldly-minded, and easily distracted yield nothing.’

Cultivate the ‘good soil’ in ourselves is the message.  But how do we do that?  We suspect that raking out the hard path, clearing the rocks and removing thorns are what’s needed.  It may mean dealing with the bitterness, laziness, and restlessness and lifting up a mindfulness, prayerfulness, and farmer’s work ethic that enrich and revitalize.

So in these quieter summer months, how might we cultivate good soil?  What does good soil look like?  What needs to be cleared away, what needs to be added?  What do we need to hear and understand to yield 30, 60, even 100 fold?

Reading

God is Back – Micklethwait and Wooldridge

The Third Twin – Ken Follett

How to Build an Engaged Congregation - Winesman