Lectionary based "Weekly Word"
(updated each Tuesday)
= 2020 check out www.notperfectyet.com =
"Help! My Church is Leaving Me" - a study guide for congregations and church leaders in the United Methodist Church as we adapt to LBGTQ concerns .
Bill Kemp's Historical Fiction Series set in First Century Palestine: Bethany's People
Book 1 "Mary Sees All" is available in print or e-book format.
Book 2 "Martha Finds Rest" is now available on Amazon
Coming later this year:
Book 3 "Lazarus Dies First"
One lesson that we are learning with great difficulty during this time of self-quarantine is that we have the power within us to forgive each other. We can no longer avoid our spouse or children after we quarrel. We must intentionally restore community within our home…
What has our experience with the coronavirus been about? It’s been about waiting. In Acts 1:4, Jesus tells the disciples to wait. We will never be effective at anything in our lives unless we learn to wait.
Social distancing. Wearing masks. Having our workplaces and stores shut down. All of this involves suffering to do the right thing.
In this time of social distancing, we worry about whether we will be able to stay sane. Our world has become too limited for us. Yet in our spiritual house, there are many mansions.
The second chapter of acts describes the golden era of Christianity. But the most important thing we learn from reading Acts is that such things don't last. A golden age can end in two ways; either God says you're ready and sends the church out to transform the world. Or a golden age can end in nostalgia, apathy, and the failure to adapt.
The coronavirus is teaching us to be mindful of the invisible. Even as we worship online, we are members of the Church triumphant. Along with myriads of angels and saints only seen by our imagination, we commune in the family of God.
Thomas wasn’t there. Where was he? The Easter story in John chapter 20 tells about a man refuses to join with the other disciples in an online video-chat with Jesus. How do you like doing Zoom? There’s always someone who shows up muted or with their video turned off. Others simply opt out. This Easter on Zoom, my extroverted brother-in-law was in the shadows, occasionally disappeared, and never spoke. Like Thomas, he isn’t adjusting well to the new reality. We can see and hear, but not touch.
Liminal spaces form mental thresholds. They are neither here nor there. So too, the tomb where Jesus was buried. Grief ushers us into these liminal spaces. Its purpose is to enable to let go of what we must leave behind.
We enter Holy Week, aware that this is global pandemic. Those who die in Italy, Iran, and Wuhan are no longer foreigners to us. We remember the crowds and know that we are all in this together. No one is isolated from the compassion of Jesus.
I had made plans to fly out West to see my elderly mother and recently hospitalized brother this Sunday. Then the virus put us all in limbo. My concerns for their health and safety heightened with each news report. The bad fall my brother had taken at the end of February broke ribs and damaged his lungs. The verse, “And Jesus wept,” resonates with me. In this time of travel restrictions, I am thinking that Jesus had been weeping for many days.
If we learn the lesson of compassion, the coronavirus will reveal to us the glory of God. This disruption to our normal lives, has brought us to the place where we can encounter Jesus anew. Once we know we are blind, the sight-giver will come.
Social distancing has long been practiced in religious communities. If there is anything that the last three years has taught us, it is how to think like one of Jesus’ disciples before he died on the cross for the world. Fearing others brings out the worst in us.
Most of us are never told that we can set out from the known and the familiar to take on a further journey. To be, as Jesus puts it, born again.
In the spiritual world there is no doubt, all are loved. In this world, however, we toil under constantly changing conditions. Sometimes we are accepted. Sometimes we are scorned. We learn in time to doubt ourselves.
Consider the thinness of the barrier that separates earthly and heavenly things. When Jesus was transfigured, he stepped over that spiritual barrier in an instant. Then he stepped back.
From time to time, we are in situations where we must make a choice. The right choice leads to life, health, and the continuation of the loving relationships we enjoy on earth. Choosing wrong, may result in death.
Light was the beginning of God’s creation. God said the word and made light. Called it good. In the fifth chapter of Matthew, Jesus calls us good. That is the over-all theme of his sermon on the mount.
Everyone can be a disciple. Not everyone will. The first people Jesus called “left everything.” I put myself in their sandals and say, “I can’t follow Jesus today, because (fill in the blank).
If we read the Gospels, I think we see what John the Baptist saw. We know that maybe we should follow that Jesus. Maybe we should become his disciples. That leads us to the question, “Who can be a disciple of Jesus?”
When Jesus enters into Jerusalem, he is baptized again. This time by his suffering on the cross. He descends into hell and sets loose those who were held captive. Then on Easter he exits by way of the resurrection. This is our road map.
