It’s been said that people who believe that money can’t by happiness don’t know where to shop.

That, or they’ve never seen the looks on the faces of little kids when they come down for Christmas. Or the ecstasy of a teen with a new iPhone. Or the smile of a spouse when they get a new car.

We understand that we were designed by God to enjoy material things, in the right way of course. The point though, is that there is a right way.

In Sunday’s Gospel Jesus warns us about the perils of greed, that it can lead to selfishness and ignorance of the plight of the needy. But more importantly Jesus opens us up to the possibilities of living more fulfilled and purposefully by longing for something else.

Mark Zuckerberg famously said about his company, Facebook, that, ‘we don’t help people connect more efficiently to make money, we make money to help people connect more efficiently.’ In other words, it’s not about the money, it’s about the mission.

And this seems to be what Jesus is saying – go ahead and have your new iPhone, but don’t let your new iPhone have you. It is a capricious and unfulfilling God (as all Verizon customers know…) and it will cause you to focus on the wrong thing and become less of the person you want to be.

So if it’s not about the money but the mission, how do you define your mission? If you can’t, what’s that mean? If you can, what’s it calling you to focus on right now?

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Reading

Robinson Crusoe – Daniel DaFoe

The Good of Affluence – John Schneider

Rich Christians in an Age of Hunger – Ron Sider

A chaplain friend was visiting patients in a hospital when he stopped to see a woman who had just been admitted. At the conclusion of their conversation he asked if he could pray for her. She told him very politely, “No thanks, I don’t believe in prayer. I don’t believe it does anything and I think it’s a waste of time.” My friend heeded her request, they continued their conversation, and then parted on a pleasant note.

This Sunday we hear from someone who had a much different take on prayer. As we know, Jesus was a serious pray-er. He often went to solitary places and stayed up all night to pray. Jesus was so convinced of the necessity of prayer that He taught us what became the most famous prayer in the world: The Our Father.  Jesus articulated exactly how we should pray, what we should ask for, how persevering we should be, and how apt God is to respond. In contrast to the woman in the hospital bed, Jesus seems convinced that prayer does things, it is not a waste of time, and God does seem to care about our piddly concerns.

So from the perspective of someone who never prays, we hear how useless it is. While from the perspective of someone who prays often (and happens to be God...) we hear it is a lifeline. This may lead us to ponder that the reason we don’t see the importance of prayer in our lives may be because we’re not doing it enough.

Perhaps we're being encouraged to spend less time questioning prayer and more time doing it.

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Reading

Robinson Crusoe – William DeFoe

Free – Mark Scandrette

Practicing Resurrection – Eugene Peterson

The truth is that our lives are full of potential distractions – jobs, family, media, and free time (what’s that?)… And in Sunday’s gospel we hear how we might deal with them.

We pick up our story with a visit from Jesus to a friend’s home, where Martha and her sister Mary played host. It’s commonly assumed that Martha was busy taking care of guests while Mary just sat around - hence, Jesus chastised Martha for her distraction and commended Mary for her attention. However that’s not what the text says. We get no indication that Mary didn’t have as many tasks to tend to as Martha. What we do get is the idea that Martha allowed these tasks to distract her.

The importance of this distinction is that you and I often feel like the spiritual life is one in which we lock ourselves into solitary confinement, shunning responsibility, and wearing such heavy blinders that we’re oblivious to all that might divert us.

As we know, this is not our present reality. We can never prevent distractions, but we can improve the way we deal with them. Mary’s good decision wasn’t that she was bereft of distraction, it’s that she did not heed them, Mary put aside her diversions and focused on what was most important: Christ’s voice in her life.

What are we allowing to take us away from the voice of Jesus? How are we allowing the less important to supplant our awareness of God’s presence?  What priorities need resetting and precedents need reexamining? Distractions are often only distractions when we allow them to be so.

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Reading:

Practicing Resurrection – Eugene Peterson

Switch – Chip and Dan Heath

Resilient Ministry – Burns. Chapman, Guthrie

How mediocre has your walk with Jesus been?

Have you been too busy to pray?

Have you spoken badly about your neighbor, employees, or children? Are you feeling a bit shameful about it? Or are you feeling guilty because you’ve been a bad parent, watched something you shouldn’t have watched, said something you shouldn’t have said, and done some things you really don’t want anybody else to know about?

That’s what society calls a ‘sinner.’ We feel shame, embarrassment, humiliation and we beat ourselves up because we’re Christians and we should know and do better.

Which is what Jesus addresses in this Sunday’s Gospel.

We join Jesus as he has dinner at another rabbi’s house. But instead of commending the rabbi for his stellar religious observance, Jesus commends the person who was at the opposite extreme. Jesus lifts up a woman branded as a sinner, who can only cry and wash his feet with her tears. She commends to us a notion that just may bring you new life today:

Perfect fidelity has never been a requirement of following Jesus.

What are you beating yourself up about right now? Your laziness? Your busyness? Your anger?

Sure, we can rationalize and distance ourselves from our own messes. Or we can be like that unknown woman, that sinner, who simply fell at Jesus’ feet – in worship, compassion, and humility. Jesus isn’t impressed with all the good deeds you brought to church today. Jesus isn’t in awe of the great ways you’ve managed to keep the train on the tracks. Jesus is in awe when we agree to be ourselves. And we say we’re sorry. Admit to the truth. And cling to Him to take it from here.

How might we do that today? Forgive yourself. Our expectations should not be higher than God’s

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Reading

Switch – Heath Brothers

Damn Few – Rorke Denver

The death had come suddenly and unexpectedly.

He was the only son of a widow with no health insurance or viable means of support, a strapping young man who was very smart and very capable.

So when she came home from shopping to find him sprawled out on the living room floor she absolutely lost it.

Being Jewish, the funeral would be the next day. And the flood of emotion kept her up all night. When the undertakers arrived and the solemn procession to the cemetery ensued, she was comforted little by all the people joining her.

As the procession neared the cemetery a stranger approached. He stopped the parade, called to the corpse to wake up. And the young man did.

We can’t imagine the ensuing emotion.

God had brought to life something humanity had pronounced dead. This is what God does.

What if everything that’s ever died will live again?

What if the break up, bankruptcy, depression, and funeral are not the end?

Friends, we may be going through the worst of times (would anyone trade places with that widow?) and God wants us to know that death is not the end.

So what have we declared dead in our lives?  Our marriage, our financial situation, our hope of ever finding meaningful work?  God is working to restore, rebuild, and resurrect. We are the widow. We are the young man. We are the inheritors of resurrection. So why are we letting the things that are bothering us, bother us? Why do we mourn as if we had no hope? We are in God’s hands and God brings life to things that are dead. Period.

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Reading
Thin Blue Smoke – Doug Wargol

Switch – Heath Brothers

The Online Teaching Survival Guide – Boechtter and Conrad

It’s been said that all around us people are tiptoeing through life.

Staying close to shore. Not taking chances. Allowing their dreams to visit them only when they’re sleeping.

However, to tiptoe through life in order to arrive safely at death is not a good recipe for contentment, much less meeting the potential we’ve been given.

A far better way is to run, hop, skip, dance, create, and imagine our way through life – anything but tiptoe.

What makes us tiptoe is fear. And much of our fear is so deeply ingrained we can’t begin to name it. But it rules and dominates us in ways we really don’t like.

This is why you and I desperately need Pentecost.

This Sunday we are celebrating this church feast, which commemorates the coming of God’s Spirit to be with us. This is not to say we didn’t have God before, or that we now have some sort of double-dose. What it does say is that you are beloved by a God who is in you. You are watched over by God. You are not alone. No matter what happens all will be well because you have God and God has you.

In what ways are you tiptoeing through life? In what ways do you need to get more risky? How might you better grab hold of the fact that God is in us and with us and isn’t going anywhere?

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Reading
Thin Blue Smoke – David Worgul

Switch – Heath Brothers

The Online Teaching Survival Guide – Boechtter/Conrad

In Boston on Monday, two bombs scattered the sheep.

Many who hadn’t come to race, found themselves running anyway.
Others became shepherds.

They turned their coats into bandages. They carted the injured off to safety. They returned home with bloodstains. Others opened their homes to the stranded. Donated blood. Bowed their heads in prayer.

Coming to the aid of those who suffer is at the heart of what it means to be human. It is here where we find our deepest fulfillment. Given the choice to own a Ferrari, date a celebrity, or save someone’s life I would not be surprised if most people chose the latter.

And God knows this. In fact, this Sunday churches around the world will celebrate Good Shepherd Sunday, which is when we grab hold of that soul-saving notion that, just as God protects and keeps our souls, we are at our very best when we do the same.

So as we move through the myriad of emotions - fear, insecurity, grief, and loss – we do well to consider that our anecdote lies in the courage to stand up, run to the rescue, care for the afflicted, and give of ourselves to those who need it. May the Good Shepherd grant us strength so to do.

A link to some helpful prayers

Reading:
The Guidebook (NRSV Bible)
God is Red – Liao Yiwu
Entrepreneurial Leadershp Goosen and Stevens

It’s very possible your best days are behind you.

Many of us suspect this but don’t want to admit it. And so it can linger inside as despair and sadness, only to come out as anger or depression - perhaps because we often look at our lives as a series of accomplishments and once we’ve done the best we’ve done, we’ve lost our usefulness. What’s more, the less we’ve ‘done’ lately, the more society relegates us to more distant spheres of irrelevance, which doesn’t help matters.

Sunday’s Gospel says something about this.

We meet the disciples after Jesus has risen and they have returned to their work as fishermen. While we suspect they are bewildered and depressed because their best days are behind them, the text does not tell us this. What it says is that they were willing to join St. Peter and go back to work. Then, it is in the midst of this work that, again they notice Jesus, who provides further proof and encouragement to go off and spread the good news.

If all of life is a gift, then the gift of accomplishment is just that.

The muse that comes to the four members of the boy band, giving them a chart-topping hit at age 17 then disappearing forever, is not a commentary on their creativity as much as it is a sobering insight into the capriciousness of accomplishment. If we built a business, raised incredible children, or put in 30 years at the company, great, the muse did her work and we are no less human, no less beloved, than we were before. We’ve been visited by a blessing that came from outside of us and over which we had little control.

This means we are not that blessing. We cannot take credit for that blessing. We should not feel guilty if that blessing has moved on.

Recognizing that all creativity, originality, insight, and ultimately accomplishment, originate outside of ourselves and visit us in its own time, is an incredible stress reliever. It takes off the pressure and frees us up to, like the disciples, notice Jesus in new places.

Reading

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At Canaan’s Edge – Taylor Branch

God is Red – Liao Yiwu

The Guidebook (NRSV Bible)