Betrayal

Judas betrayed Jesus for 30 pieces of silver. What a paltry price for the Lord of the Universe. Further, as Jesus makes clear when they come to arrest him, there was no need. He was preaching in the temples and the streets daily, he could easily have been taken there. It is not as though he was invisible or even hiding. Jesus betrayed.

How often I betray Jesus. I water down his message so it will not seem to be quite so difficult to follow. I avoid the hurting person who could use a healing touch from me. I elude eye contact with the homeless man on the street. I betray Jesus, his message, and his influence in my life in so many ways.

I could make a long list - but I won't reveal it all here. I am sure I could come up with at least 30 ways I betray Christ. Perhaps it would be a good way to prepare for the events of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter Sunday to list 30 ways (one for each coin Judas received for betraying Jesus) that I personally betray him.

God is faithful and will forgive, if we confess our sins to him.

Love

The gospel of John quotes Jesus; "I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another."

The news this week is full of reports from a "Christian" militia that planned to arouse a revolt against the government of our country. Christian militia is an oxymoron. Jesus commands us to love one another. He makes it clear throughout his ministry that love characterizes our interaction with everyone, even our enemies and those who hate us for being Christian. Even when Paul uses the imagery of weapons of war to describe our Christian life, he is careful to explain what they actually are. The sword is not a sword, but the Word of God.

Extremist in virtually all religions incite followers to form militias and hate groups to defend themselves against the evils of other religions. True Christianity never incites us to terrorism or hate. Jesus always calls us to love others.

Gowing

Things are growing around here. The bulbs are coming up. The temperature is growing. Warmth and rain cause everything to grow.

Is your spiritual life growing? Are you nearer to God? Does he prompt you more and more to become involved in easing the lives of the poor? to righting the wrongs for those less fortunate than you? to healing the hurts of others? Beware of converting these to personal programs - making sure I have enough that I don't feel poor - making sure noone gets away with doing me wrong, or licking my own wounds. No, God calls us to be involved in his work among the poors, those treated poorly, and the hurting ones around us.

If we are growing in our life with God, we will see more and more of this in our world and we will be more and more involved in helping those around us. God is ALWAYS a god of transformation and change. Be a part of God's transformation.

Preparation

Be Prepared. That is the motto of the Boy Scouts of America. That is something we have all been taught from an early age. When you are doing something, make sure you are ready. When you take a test - study. When you are to be in a play - learn your lines. When you are going on a trip by automobile - make sure you have changed the oil inflated the tires have enough gasoline, etc. When you leave home - make sure you have on clean underwear. It goes on and on.

Being prepared is something we all know is crucial to everything going smoothly. But, it is also a trap. If you waited until you were fully prepared for every potentiality before you did anything. You would do nothing. The possibilities are endless, and so the preparation becomes endless. If you are going to do what really matters, it means you must sometimes step out and do things for which you are not really prepared.

Every major or minor step I have taken in my life has been taken withoug being fully prepared for all the possible consequences. Every step forward. And every step backward. The steps forward have been because of I was prepared for what came next or was able to scramble and make it work. The steps backward - because I had not anticipated the results and was not able to recover. However, if you only take steps for which you are fully prepared, you will spend all of your life in preparation and never take a step at all. That's why when God calls you and you follow, it is called "a step of FAITH."

Expectations

In several of the gospels the story is told of Jesus returning to Nazareth to preach and to heal as he has in other towns and villages. Unfortunately the people of Nazareth are convinced they know all about Jesus; his mother, his brothers, the kind of work he does. Because they knew what to expect from Jesus, they left no room for him to do anything new. There are few if any healings in his hometown and when he preaches in their synagogue, they run him out of town.

Are we sometimes guilty of thinking we know Jesus so well, who he is and how he works, that we allow no room for him to do anything new in us? Are we so sure of the Jesus we know that when he does something new in someone around us we do not even recognize that it is God at work in their lives? Have we confined Jesus to our preset definition of who he is and what he does? If we have, be sure that, just as Jesus does in the gospels, he will walk right through our limitations and continue his work elsewhere.

Jesus and the Sinners

While Jesus was on this earth, he chose to spend his time with sinners and the like. Even his disciples were found to be sinning on occasions. And whats more he defended their actions when they did. He held his greatest criticism for those who were sure they had done what was needed to earn God's favor.

It is the same today. We still think that God's presence comes to us by right living and prayer. We think God is with the "good" people and against those who are "bad." We think that if we prayerfully confess our sins to God we have earned his forgiveness. Or even that by spending the appropriate amount of time in faithful prayer and really trying, we can earn the right to God's presence in our lives.

But, if anything is clear from reading the gospels it is that exactly the opposite is the truth. When God came to live on earth he chose to eat with tax collectors and other sinners. The religious people of the day killed him for that. Is it any different today.

Justice

In the Gospel of  Matthew 21:33-41, Jesus tells the parable of the landowner who perfectly prepares a vineyard, leases it out to tenants who evidently do not want to pay their rent. They ruff up the servants he sends to retrieve the rent and evitually kill the landowners son. Jesus then asks the question what will the landowner do when he returns. Jesus uses this parable to make a point to the Jewish leaders to whom he is speaking. But we would be making a dangerous assumption if we thought he was not speaking to the church today as well.

Sometimes it does seem that God has put tenants in charge and has gone off to a faraway land and we the tenants of his garden have refused his requests for a fair rent. We see injustice all around us and wonder that God does not return right now and set things aright.

So what is a right response by us. It is simple, It is complicated, and it is not as easy as it will sound here. Simple - We are to work toward God's kingdom, justice, and honor for God. Complicated - as other parables make clear, it is not our place to clear out those who do not measure up to God justice. As the parable of the wheat and tares makes clear God doesn't trust us accurately enforce his justice. Complicated - it is very difficult for us to work for the futherance of God's kingdom and not try to force others to do the same. When there is so much that needs righting, it is difficult to focus on one small area where we can actually make a difference.

The glory is that when we fail to achieve what God expects of us, he accepts us anyway. The glory is all God's

Time

In 1973 Jim Croce recorded the love song, "Time in a Bottle," which, when realeased after his death in a plance crash, soared to the top of the charts. In the song Jim says that if he could put time in a bottle he would gather all the minutes from now to eternity and spend them all with his loved one. He also laments that there never seems to be enough time to do all the things you really want to, once you find them.

Praise be to God the creator of all things. Thanks be to God the creator of time.

I Confess that, as I look back over my past, there are moments that I would choose to put in a bottle to use in the future for some better purpose. Time I have wasted. Time I have spent that resulted in discord. Time I have spent trying to patch the rifts that resulted from that discord. Time I have spent fulfilling my desires rather than Gods. Time I have spent trivially occupied. I confess that I have not always spent my time as God wishes.

I confess that I am unable to retrieve those moments. They are forever lost.

I thank God for the present. His ever-present present, and his presence in this present. This is the moment God gives to me. Perhaps his greatest gift. He revels in the joy of the moment I give back to him - the moment I choose to spend just being with and in him.

I ask for God's guidance in the future. I ask him to always be with me, helping me to notice those around me who need a loving touch, a kind word, or something more tangible - food, gas, a bill paid. God, show me how to spend the moments I have left in loving and serving you in all that I do.

Now to the eternal, ever-present God be all glory and honor and praise. World without end. World that knows no time. Amen. Amen.

Understanding

Sometimes as we read the stories and conversations from the life of Jesus we are inclined to think how slow and dense these people around Jesus were.

We read of the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus. How dense Nicodemus seems. "Can a man enter his mother's womb a second time?" Jesus had to explain it over and over again, trying every metaphor he could come up with.

In two scenes set right next to one another, Peter first proclaims that Jesus is the Messiah and then, when Jesus in the next scene begins to expain what that means, Peter say oh no Lord that will never happen to you.

James and John send their mother in to Jesus to ask if they may sit on his right and left hands when he comes into his kingdom. We cringe and think, "oh no guys don't ask for that."

But do we understand any better what God's kingdom is about? Notice the questions is not would we have understood better had we been there? The question is even having the advantage of knowing the whole story of Jesus' life and 21 centuries of study and thought, do we come any closer to understanding to what Jesus calls us? Or what living in God's kingdom means?

Joyful Purpose

Life is too short to be wasted and too long to not be enjoyable.

A life that is built upon finding enjoyment, recreation, fun is sometimes wasted. Seeking only pleasure leads to accomplishing little of lasting value.

On the other hand spending all our waking hours trying to accomplish something we think is of lasting importance can lead to a life of frustration and dullness even boredom.

The secret is in finding those things which build lasting value and that we enjoy enough that we would do them whether they built lasting value or not.

But in truth any enjoyment we may have lasts for only a moment, and any purpose we have for our lives lasts little longer except for a very few who have their name listed in history books - but then what real value is there in having your name appear on a piece of paper when no one remembers the you that is behind the facts.

So where is joy; where is purpose. The only real and lasting joy is to be found by living in God's presence and the only real purpose is in being a child of God. Meaning and joy live together in God, our Father and Friend.

God At Work

Where have I seen God at work lately?
Ask yourself that question and think about it.

God is at work in every good, true, beautiful,faithful action around us. God is at work transforming disaster into good. God is not at work in causing the disaster, but God is at work following the disaster and redeeming the outcome. God is at work in his world, in and through us, and beyond our realm of understanding. God is at work.

The question is not, "Where is God at work?" the question is "Where have I seen God at work?"  It is a question of seeing him and believing him. He is. Having seen, can I see? Having heard, can I hear?