Faith, Grace, and Hope

Matthew 6:7-21  God of all people and places, you dwell in heaven and you walk with your creation. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. Your name is the source of all hope, joy, and consolation. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. Your ultimate reign is that for which we dare to long. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. Grant us what we need for today and the courage to share it with others. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. Dissolve the guilt and shame of our sins in forgiveness and strengthen us to do the same for others. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. Do not allow us to be waylaid by the forces that oppose you. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. At the end of all things, draw us to yourself through Christ. Your name is holy. Your deeds are amazing. People like solutions. There is hardly anything more aggravating than not being able to

As far as I can tell, Paul (the apostle) liked to be right. Luther and Calvin, may they rest in peace, both liked to be right. Yet none of those three ever wrote anything like this: “I told you! I told you it would be worth it!!! This is unbelievable!!!!!!!!” I imagine shouting that one day when I see Lisa and the kids in heaven. They will no longer be my wife and kids, but we will love each other more than ever. I picture myself looking them in the eyes and saying, “I told you He would come through! I knew He would be true to His promises. I knew every sacrifice would be worth it. This is insane! He is amazing!!!” (p. 131) If, at the start of the world to come, someone greets me by gripping me tightly and saying, “I told you so”- I will know without a doubt, no matter the scenery, that I am in hell. Unless the voice is coming from Jesus, in which case I will fall on my knees and say, “I believed, Lord, forgive my unbelief.” Be that as it may, Francis Chan’s  You and Me Foreve

If I could ask Jesus a question or two about Matthew 5, my first question would be this: What do you mean “blessed are”? Does it mean that mourning is a blessed state that is to be pursued? Does it mean that we find a sense of blessing or a tangible blessing when mourning happens in our lives, but we don’t need to seek it out? Is mourning a basic reality of a faithful life and so we will receive the blessings that inherent in that life, through mourning and these other realities? This passage seems confusing to most of us. It seems like a good one to hear on All Saints’ Day or at a funeral, when we can attribute the blessings to those faithful who have died and now rest in light. They have inherited and surely now they are blessed. As for the rest of us, we just muddle about as best we can. How, then, do we sort out the bits about salt and light? Or that part about the law? When Matthew, the author of this gospel, wrote, he was organizing the teachings and works of Jesus f

The Lord is with us in our grief, God has brought us too far to leave us now. The Lord is with us in times of trouble, God has brought us too far to leave us now. The Lord is with us in our hunger for mercy and our pursuit of justice, God has brought us too far to leave us now. The Lord is with us in time of humility and humbling. God has brought us too far to leave us now. The Lord is with us in the depth of righteous anger. God has brought us too far to leave us now. The Lord is with us in the height of peacemaking and reconciliation. God has brought us too far to leave us now. We are the salt God uses to season creation and the lamps through which God’s own light shines. God has brought us too far to leave us now.

When rejecting an invitation, according to Amy Sedaris, one simply says, “I can’t come.” You don’t add a reason. “Anything after ‘because’ is bullshit,” according to Sedaris. That’s what I think of when I see the dearth of nominations for Selma in the Oscars. There weren’t more because the movie didn’t play the game, send out screeners, open earlier, deal with political backlash well. Frankly, my dear, anything after because is bullshit. I have already seen Selma twice and I’m trying to figure out when I will see it at least a third and maybe a fourth time. I am not much of a moviegoer. I think I saw three movies last year. Selma, though, is a big screen phenomenon. There is a nuance in the faces, in the looks, in the gritted teeth and the beads of sweat that will be missed on a small screen. Furthermore, there is a public sensitivity to the directing that is palpable when one is sitting in proximity to other bodies, hearing the gasps, sighs, cheers, and tears. David Oyelow

2 nd Sunday in Christmas Sirach 24:1-12; Wisdom 10:15-21; Ephesians 1:2-14; John 1:1-18                         Today we had readings from the books of Sirach and the Wisdom of Solomon. Most of you probably don’t have those books in your Bible. (Yes/no?) These two books, along with Judith, Tobit, I and II Macabees, Baruch, and Esther, make up the seven extra books that appear in the bibles of the Roman Catholic Church, but not usually in Protestant bibles. If they appear in your Bible, and you don’t have a “Catholic” bible, they will appear in a section called the “Apocrypha”.             These seven books were written in a four-hundred year space that is otherwise unaccounted for through the history of the Hebrew Scriptures and the start of the New Testament books. They were originally written in Greek and not in Hebrew. At least one council of Jewish leaders rejected these books for the canon , or collection, of the Hebrew Scriptures.             Some later Chri