February 23: Thursday before Lent I

Our Reading:  Matthew 5:1-12.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1160.

Theme:  The Beatitudes

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading: 

• For the first part of Lent we are going to be reading the tract in Matthew 5-7 usually called the Sermon on the Mount.  It is one of the best known passages in the New Testament, and often one of the most misunderstood.  Many people praise it as the most sublime teaching of human moral wisdom ever written.  One wonders if people who say that have actually read it, much less tried to live the way Jesus speaks here.  We need to have very teachable hearts as we approach these words, and we need to be ready to be deeply challenged and humbled by them.  There’s a lot more here than just idealistic advice on how to get along with your neighbors.
• These first verses show the situation pretty clearly:  they are an outline of the model Jesus has for a blessed life, and at the same time they are just about the opposite what most of us want to teach our children about how to approach the world.  What sports coach do you know that would want the kids on their team to be poor in spirit, mournful, meek, merciful, and persecuted?   Jesus is aiming at something very different from making competitive and successful players on the sports field, in academics, business, politics or any of the other fields of human endeavor.  Don’t weasel out on this and confuse yourself or your children by telling them that what all this means is to be nice and good things will come your way.
• Jesus’ manifesto here is to say that he is trying to open our eyes to a new world that God is bringing, and it will be very different from the one where force and violence determine what wins and is called “right.”  To be ready for that world is to be a different kind of person than the present world is looking to form and reward with the goods of this world.  To be poor in spirit, to mourn for the world’s sinfulness, to hunger and thirst for righteousness is to see how hollow and fake most of the present age is.  There is a rebelliousness against the present order of the world that goes a great deal deeper than looking to redistribute some wealth or power.
• Being ready for God’s new world, his kingdom, means knowing the mercy you have received and showing it to others, making peace where others make war and violence, and being ready to sacrifice status to be in touch and in tune with God.  That will get you hard times, Jesus says, but it will all be worth it.
• We do not defeat sin by condemning it.  We do not stop violence by perpetrating it.  We do not become rich by taking wealth from others.  We stand for God, in God’s ways, waiting for God to vindicate our faithfulness.  And we destroy his enemies by making them our friends and his.  That is the only Revolution that counts.

Prayer:  Lord, open our eyes to see the world as you see it and us, and open our hearts to receive your love, that we may be instruments of your coming kingdom.

Action:  Watch the news or read the newspaper with your family.  Pick out a story from today’s news, and rewrite that event as it would be in the kingdom of the Father.  How would it be different?  How would we act, while we wait for that kingdom, to make that story more as it should be?

February 22: Ash Wednesday

Our Reading:  Matthew 6:1-6,16-21.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1164.

Theme:  Giving, prayer, and fasting

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading: 

• What people do when they find themselves in trouble has usually been to try to correct course.  Both symbolically and practically, when your are headed the wrong direction, you have to turn around, if you want to get where you want to go.  And that usually means first, you have to stop.  The symbol for that kind of deep moral screeching halt has been—for about 4000 years—sackcloth, dust and ashes.  That’s why we call it Ash Wednesday.
• Anyone who thinks the Church is a bunch of humorless old poops needs to think about the sense of humor and self-mockery involved in reading this passage (especially verse 17) for the last 1500 years just before everybody in town got the ashes of penitence mushed on their foreheads.  Conscious or not, it takes some chutzpah to do just the opposite of what your Lord told you to do about fasting and penance.  The basic underlying spiritual principle is something like, whatever makes you puff up with pride about yourself and think about how good you are, do the opposite: if wearing the ash cross embarrasses you, keep it there; if you feel proud about showing your religiousness, wash it off.  All said and done, that does follow Jesus’ counsel:  let not the right hand know what the left hand doeth.  The church has sometimes taken that a little over far, especially in administrative affairs, but its heart is in the right place on that.
• In the end, we follow Christ: he emptied himself that he might be with us as we are; we do all we can to empty ourselves of all but him.  When he lives in us, we are most alive and most ourselves.  When we are full of ourselves, we are the most hollow creatures in the world.  Even the most jaded and secular of souls has experienced this, if they have ever fallen in love and been unable to think of themselves because their new love filled their imaginations.  Love is God’s secret trump card, and he loves to play it.  Thank God!

Prayer:  Teach us, O God, to stop on the paths we so often take to our harm and destruction, to turn around and to go back to you, running or plodding, and fall into the holy embrace of your forgiving love.

Action:  Go get your ashes.  Struggle with it.  Either way.

 

February 21: Tuesday of Last Epiphany

Our Reading:  Luke 10:17-23.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1273.

Theme:  The 72 disciples return

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading: 

• When the large group of disciples return, they are triumphant and joyous, totally pumped by the healing and exorcisms they have been able to effect by the name and authority of their Master.  You can feel their enthusiasm bursting from the page.
• Jesus affirms their sense of victory: the powers of evil are on the run, and the followers of Christ will be able to count their triumphs over the dark powers of the world.  ”I have given you authority…and nothing shall hurt you…” is the most sweeping promise we will ever hear of God’s ultimate conquest of evil in and through us!
• But, Jesus warns, don’t get fixated on the powers conferred on you.  (Way too much danger there of confusing ourselves with the source of the powers!)  Rather, keep your heart and mind focused laser-like on the place this grace comes from, God’s choice of us as his instruments of healing, reconciliation, love and power.
• Anybody who ever suggests that Christianity creates losers or a slave mentality (that was Nietzsche’s line, amongst others) needs to face squarely this kind of preparation and experience that Jesus gives his leading followers.  And it has been true throughout history that Christ’s Church has been the incubator of the leaders of the Western world for over 1500 years.  The drone of the media and secular academia cataloging the mistakes of Christians and the Churches through history is only the latest attempt to blind people to the works of grace and mercy in their millions that have been brought about by Christ’s people.  Show us the hospitals and schools, the street missions and the care centers raised up freely by the voluntary gifts of a people other than the community of Christian faith over centuries–without the force of Caesar’s taxing authority–and the whining din of secular criticism might take on some credibility.  It won’t happen any time soon.  Let your children know where they can look for real help in time of need.

Prayer:  We thank you, gracious Master, for giving us your Spirit to minister in your name.  Help us to be bold to proclaim your love with acts of generosity and kindness each day of our lives, that we may witness to your grace to us and grow in its power.

Action:  Make a list of all the church-related groups in your community who do works of mercy and care for others.  Start with the Yellow Pages, or better yet drive around town and count them yourself block by block.  In each one Christ is present in his people, continuing to heal and comfort and strengthen and free.  Find one to give you time and money to, and stick with it.  You are never closer to Christ than when you help someone in his name.

February 20: Monday of Last Epiphany

Our Reading:  Luke 10:1-12.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1273.

Theme:  Jesus sends out 72 disciples

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading: 

• This is a second mission, larger than the group of 12 who were the core group of his disciples.  Notice the symbolism involved: the Twelve correspond to the “number” of the people of Israel (the 12 Tribes, Patriarchs, etc.); 72 is the putative and traditional number of the “nations”–all the various peoples of the Earth.  (Sometimes it is given as 70 instead (Genesis 10), and the text variants parallel that.)  So there would be a pretty clear message here that Luke wants us to understand that Jesus is expanding his mission early on, symbolically at least addressing his message to the nations, not confining it to the Chosen People.   Another likely allusion is to Exodus 24 and the appointing of the 70/72 elders to aid Moses in the teaching and judging of the newly liberated people.
• The instructions to these missionaries are to stay on the move–they are harvesting what God has planted and given growth.  Lambs amid wolves, they are not to try to settle down or take long advantage of their welcome, wherever it is offered.  And they are not to look for the best deal or meal, but proclaim the news of the kingdom and heal the sick, and then get on their way.
• This second mission is a reminder to us that we are not nearly as settled in life, whatever our particular calling, as we may often think.  ”Here we have no continuing city, but we seek one that is above.”  We settle into a routine and accommodate ourselves to the world around us only at a great risk of becoming like it before it has become like the Father’s plan calls it to be.  We need to be a little strange to this planet, in order to be ready for what God is bringing about to make a new world.  We need a divine discontent with what is to look forward to what shall be.
• Can that be a gift we can give our children, to know the difference between being happy and being conformed to this passing world?  Or will they somehow need to learn that later, from someone else?

Prayer:  Make us your missionaries, Lord, in all the places you send us, that we may be bringers of grace wherever we are and content with nowhere except where you are.

Action:  Make up your own missionary tee shirt.  Be creative; toss any ideas that suggest you think you’re better than whoever sees it.  Wear it out in public from time to time and see if you get any responses or inquiries.  Re-read this passage every time you put it on: you’ll need every lick of advice Jesus gives here.

February 19: Last Sunday after Epiphany

Our Reading:  Mark 9:2-9.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1226.

Theme:  Jesus transfigured

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading:

• Jesus’ transfiguration takes place, as Mark tells it, six days after Peter identified him as the promised Messiah.  It is a graphic confirmation of that insight–it demonstrates what Peter confessed he believed.  The vision includes the gleaming white light that is the sign of God’s overwhelming Glory, the Presence, and they view Moses and Elijah, the exemplars of the Law and the Prophets, in conversation with Jesus.  It is a supremely opaque event: it shows what we cannot see and tells what we cannot hear.  It is alarmingly other-worldly, and the three disciples who went up the mountain with Jesus are pretty dumbstruck by it.
• They respond (voiced by Peter) by trying to translate the vision into something they can understand, normalize and ritualize: let’s build shrines like the booths we build at the feast of booths!  But the Voice out of the cloud shuts down that attempt to tame things, ordering them to listen to the Son.  Suddenly there is nothing there but Jesus with them, and he directs them to keep it mum until his destiny in Jerusalem has been worked through to the end.
• Very few are ever vouchsafed such mystical moments as this, and doubtless for good reason: we have a hard enough time handling everyday life.  The disciples’ need to struggle for control of their feelings and understanding (another kind of control) is a place most of us go when faced by overwhelming and strange experiences.  Jesus knows they (and we) cannot really fathom the experience, and that trying to sort it out in a reasoned, normal way, will rob it of the power that will be there for them, when his Resurrection illuminates what they have just seen.  This is bigger than we can understand, anymore than our dog can understand when we get excited about what we read in the evening paper.
• Learning to embrace the humility in letting God be God, and us be us, is one of the most difficult tasks in human life.  It is made all the more so by a society that tells us we have the right and even duty to open all secrets and control all events.  Hope you can get over that.  You will be a lot closer to the kingdom of God when you start.  That is called faith.
• The real point of the transfiguration is that Jesus really is out of this world, and he brings to this world a light and life that transforms it for the better.  His way will be hard, and the way for any who follow him will be likewise no easy path.  (We are asked to embrace that path at least a little bit with our Lenten disciplines.)  But it is the path to eternal life.

Prayer:  Jesus, Lord of impenetrable light, let your life shine in us, that we may enter into your presence always, and worship, and obey.

Action:  Go into a totally dark room.  Sit or kneel comfortably.  Pray “Come, Lord Jesus.”  Light one candle.  Look at it closely, intensely.  Study it.  Let the eye of that flame pierce you, and look through your many masks and veneers, until the innermost you is seen by the Lover at the heart of that light, and you have seen him, and know that you are his.

 

February 17: Friday of Epiphany VI

Our Reading:  Luke 9:57-62.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1273.

Theme:  The cost of following Jesus

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading: 

• Warning: hard sayings ahead!  We have three quotes of Jesus speaking to various people who wanted to be part of his fellowship, but misunderstood it in different ways.  These words show Jesus as uncompromising in his sense of reality: he cuts little slack to those who think this is going to be easy or are half-hearted in their commitments.
• To the over-enthusiastic fellow who gushes about what he will do to show his devotion, the Master’s reply is a splash of cold water: where he is going is no easy or comfortable road, and no place to rest belongs to those who take on this mission.  Know what you are getting in for!
• To the second guy who wants to take care of his personal obligation to honor his father by burial, the shocking words “Leave the dead to bury their own dead…” says that the mission is going to trump all the old traditions and moral responsibilities.  Even the deepest family sentiment has to come second to be a faithful disciple.  ”The  dead” who are to do the burying here may well be those who do not accept the proclamation of the Kingdom and so are burying more than just a loved one, they are burying a whole exhausted and fruitless way of life.  But we cannot escape the harshness of this demand–even as it points to new life in the kingdom, it is ruthless in its command to seek the new life by abandoning the old.  That is the old way forward out of the shipwreck of the age that is dying.
• Likewise the one who wants to say good-bye to friends and family at home rather than immediately following is told he is “[not] fit for the kingdom of God.  The feel we get here is the urgent demand to leave the sinking hulk of this world behind and jump for dear life, not looking back (shades of Lot’s wife! [Genesis 19:26]).  Jesus’ sense of urgency is unmistakably apocalyptic: he knows the world as his generation knows it is about to end.  (And it surely did.)  He knows a new world is in the making (and it surely was, and is).  Those who will seek to serve God’s will cannot afford to be double-minded–a choice is demanded and a choice must be made without delay. Is it somehow different now?

Prayer:  In peace you call us, Lord of all times and places, to follow you without delay and making no compromise with what we leave behind:  teach us this peace that is the healing of all our fears and all our needs for security and possession and reinforcement of our small prides.  Set us free to follow you.

Action:  Practice jumping as far as you can.  The good old standing broad jump.  A tiger or an alligator behind you might help you jump farther, do you think?  What is the alligator chasing you?  How far can you jump without help?

February 16: Thursday of Epiphany VI

Our Reading:  Luke 9:49-56.  Online here.  ESV Children’s Bible p. 1272.

Theme:  For and against

Some Things to Talk About after your Reading:

• Understanding what Jesus is about doesn’t come easy; it didn’t to the disciples and it still doesn’t to us.  Having been chided over their boastful competitiveness in yesterday’s verses, they turn like teenagers to figuring who is in and who is out, wanting to stop someone who is not part of the “club” from using Jesus name (=authority) to do healings and exorcisms.  Jesus’ response is sweepingly inclusive:  one not against you counts as one on his side–don’t cut off someone for the wrong reason.
• Even those who are rejecting, as in the next verses (51-54) get better treatment that the zealous disciples believe they deserve.  Refusing hospitality to Jesus and his followers because they are Jerusalem Temple-affirming Jews, these Samaritans turn him away.  (Wikipedia has a fascinating article about them; there are 745 left in the world today!)  The disciples are decidedly angry about this rejection and want to threaten and destroy  the village.  Jesus shuts them down with a rebuke, moving on to another village.  (The Gospels are surprisingly affirmative to the Samaritans, especially the Gospel of John–there is some thought that he may have known a group of converted Samaritans who became part of his church later.)
• Much of this sounds like Jesus is dealing with a bunch of adolescent boys rough-housing through the countryside.  It may fairly comforting to anyone who has ever been a youth worker!  Perhaps a deeper point for us to consider is that Jesus’ patience (and sometimes lack of it) with his own disciples is a reminder that we need  to be aware of our own spiritual immaturity and silliness.  Becoming aware of that (and its eminent apostolic precedents) is the key to our own learning patience and maturity toward our children, students, friends and strangers.  If we are no more clear than Peter, James and John were about the way to go about our mission, what we can learn from them is that they do learn, and through a long and hard schooling, they do become worthy of the title Apostle.  And so can we.

Prayer:  Lord of all patience and grace: teach us to act with the same generous guidance toward those in our care and fellowship that you have manifested to us; forgive our sins as we to indeed forgive others, and when we are slow to follow the mind of your Christ, let his rebuke bring us about in the way we should go.

Action:  What do you learn when you go somewhere you are not welcome?