Monthly Archives: September 2011

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: How we become one with Christ?

Readings

Exodus 17:1-7 and Psalm 78:1-4, 12-17

Ezekiel 18:1-4, 25-32 and Psalm 25:1-9

Philippians 2:1-13

Matthew 21:23-32

Devotion

Peace be with you!

Most of us who lived the twentieth century know who Mother Teresa is and how she lived out her life. Most of us probably have a quote or two by Mother Teresa on our chosen social network(s) profile(s).

Mother Teresa dedicated her life “in her own words, ‘the hungry, the naked, the homeless, the crippled, the blind, the lepers, all those people who feel unwanted, unloved, uncared for throughout society, people that have become a burden to the society and are shunned by everyone.’” (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia n.d.). She even experienced what it was like to be poor and hungry when she followed God’s call for her to leave the convent in September 1946 and start her own missionary, which she started in 1948. Her life mission became to follow God’s call to help the “poorest among the poor” (Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia n.d.).

Even when Mother Teresa struggled with her faith (like Jesus did on the cross when he said, “My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?”), she questioned where God was, but she never abandoned her mission. Mother Teresa tended to the needs of the poor, the homeless, the unprivileged, and the forgotten; she strived to give a voice to the outsiders of societies who others forgot.

Like Mother Teresa, Jesus Christ came into the world to serve those who were forgotten – the individuals on the outside of the religious community. Jesus came to give us the good news of forgiveness – the news that we, sinners, would be able to entered the gates of heaven.

But the forgiveness comes with a cost. As disciples of Jesus Christ, we must become one with him and be like him through our words and actions. We become one with Christ when we “mirror Christ’s humiliation, service and obedience (2:1-5, 12-13)” (Eastman 2011). To me, it seems impossible because we are sinful beings. How can we become one with Christ if we are in fact sinners?

Jesus attacks the bondage and the despair, which keeps us in the darkness, through his crucifixion, death, and resurrection. Therefore, we are released from bondage and despair. Christ empties himself for our release from bondage, which separated us from God the Father before. Christ gives himself for the Father’s plan to save us from our suffering, sinful being, and despair. We are saved through Jesus.

Since we are saved through Jesus Christ, we become a united community of disciples who go out and spread the good news. By becoming one of his disciples, we become one with Christ (or like Christ) as individuals and as a community. How can we become one with Christ?

When we say and do what Jesus Christ said and did, we become like him. Our role as his disciples is to spread the good news and to be an example to others through our actions as an united community. How can be an example to others? By living as Jesus, we carry out his example. When we clothe those without clothes … when we give shelter to the homeless … when we feed the hungry … we act of Christ’s love. We are also living out God’s plan as Christ did.

As a united community, we carry out God the Father’s plan. We are united with God the Father and with each other. We cannot do anything without Jesus Christ. It is the unity that builds and strengthens the Christian community.

Thanks be to God!

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for sending Christ to empty himself for our benefit. Help us to become one with Christ and to become a unity community. Thank you for uniting us in your community to carry out your plan. Amen.

Works Cited

Eastman, Susan. Philippians 2:1-13. June 5, 2011. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=1&alt=1 (accessed September 23 2011).

Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Mother Teresa. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mother_Teresa (accessed September 23, 2011).

Reflective Questions

Please feel free to answer the reflective questions through comments.  Please agree to disagree and be respectable to each other. Please take a moment, if you have not already, to sign the covenant.  You can answer all or just one of the questions. 

1. How do you empty yourself as Christ did?

2. How do you live as an example to others?

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost: What is Fair?

Readings

Exodus 16:2-15 and Psalm 105:1-6, 37-45

Jonah 3:10-4:11 and Psalm 145:1-8

Philippians 1:21-30

Matthew 20:1-16

Devotion

Peace be with you!

The society and culture has us thinking that the harder and longer we work the more we should be paid. To us, it seems fair – the more you put out, the more you should get in return. This is how we determined those who are hard-working and motivated and those who are lazy and just want a pay check.

But then we also live in a time where unemployment is at an all time high of 9.1% as of August 2011 (Division of Labor Force Statistics 2011). We all can name individuals who are struggling to provide shelter and food for their families. We understand the struggle [maybe not well…] these individuals are facing on a daily basis.

Maybe you are one of the individuals who is desperate to find a job. You are struggling to put food on the table for your two kids, and you have bill collectors calling daily. The bank is threatening to take the house back if you do not make a payment soon. If you could just get hired at one of the ten jobs you applied for, you can pay your bills and mortgage and put food on the table. If the economy would bounce back, maybe the companies would start hiring again. But do you do in the mean time?

In today’s gospel reading, Jesus tells the disciples the parable of the laborers. The landowner goes out early morning, mid-morning, early afternoon, and late afternoon to find laborers to work in his vineyard. When the day was over, the landowner told his manager to call in all the laborers and to give them what he was owed starting with the last hired group to the first group.

The manager gave the men in the last group the daily wage (Matthew 20:9). Then the manager gave the next groups of men the same daily wage as the last group. When the first group went to be paid, they thought they may get paid a little extra having worked longer the rest, but the manager paid the same daily wage (Matthew 20:10). The men in the first group felt slighted and grumbled against landowner (Matthew 20:11).

The landowner reminds the men in the first group that he paid them what they agree upon when he hired them (Matthew 20:2, 13). The landowner held up his end of the deal with them, and he just decided to pay all of the men the same daily wage no matter when he hired them, which is his right. By paying all the men the same daily wage, the landowner makes all the laborers equals (Matthew 20:12).

In Matthew 20:16, the landowner says, “The last shall be first, and the first shall be last.” The last group to get hired was the first to get paid, and the first to get hired was the last to be paid. Each group was made equal to the other groups by being paid the same daily wage – no more or no less. All are equal.

The parable demonstrates how God treats all of his children as equals – he favors no one [well…maybe Jesus]. No matter if we have been Christians our whole lives or if we become Christians the last second of our lives, we are welcomed into God’s kingdom just the same. Karl Jacobson, an assistant professor of Religion at Augsburg College, writes,

“The scandal of this parable is that we are all equal recipients of God’s gifts. The scandal of our faith is that we are often covetous and jealous when God’s gifts of forgiveness and life are given to other in equal measure.” (Jacobson 2011).

God is gracious beyond our imagination. We are so wrapped up in “what is fair” that we miss the fact that God loves all of us equally. We missed God’s forgiveness is for everyone – the individual who steals gum and the individual who murders his neighbor. We are all sinners and saints at the same time. So the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.

Thanks be to God! [Because we all know if I would not get into heaven if I had to be first.]

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for treating us all as equals. Help us to remember we are no better than the individual next to us. Thank you for your unique definition of justice and fairness. Amen.

Works Cited

Division of Labor Force Statistics. Labor Force Statistics from the Current Population Survery. September 7, 2011. http://www.bls.gov/cps/ (accessed September 14, 2011).

Jacobson, Karl. Matthew 20:1-16. September 11, 2011. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?tab=1&alt=1 (accessed September 15, 2011).

Reflective Questions

Please feel free to answer the reflective questions through comments.  Please agree to disagree and be respectable to each other. Please take a moment, if you have not already, to sign the covenant.  You can answer all or just one of the questions. 

1. Define justice and fairness.

2. What does it mean to be first?

3. What does it mean to be last?

4. How do we treat each other as equals?

Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost: The Memories

Readings

Exodus 14:19-31 or 15:1b-11, 20-21 and Psalm 114

Genesis 50:15-21 and Psalm 103:(1-7), 8-13

Romans 14:1-12

Matthew 18:21-35

Devotion

Peace be with you!

Ever since the 9/11 attacks on American soil, Muslin and Christian relationships have been strangled and hassle. Whenever a new Islamic center announces plans to build in American cities, individuals have demonstrated their distrust and discomfort with their new Muslin neighbors. In Murfreesboro, Tennessee, “not welcome” was spray-painted on the new walls, and a backhoe and other equipment was set on fire. The locals felt Islam was not a religion, and the “mosque” was a disguised terrorist compound. New York City locals in Manhattan felt the new purposed mosque would symbolize a victory for Muslins (Smietana 2011).

Sure, we, as Christians and Americans, have our valid fears of Muslins because Muslins from across the world attacked and damaged us when they hit the Twin Towers. It is only human nature to protect (physically, psychosocially, and spiritually) against the individuals who attack our way of living. Our physical, psychosocial, and spiritual ways of life define us as individuals, as a nature, and as a culture.

Any American old enough to retain memories when the Twin Towers fell can probably tell you where and what he/she was doing when he/she heard the news.

I remember waking up to Amy Grant’s song “From a distance” and thinking it would be a good day as I mentally went through my schedule for the day and set goals for the day.

I was a senior in high school in my creative writing class working (or I should say struggling) to write a poem on fall as the leaves were falling. Like any other day in that class, I was in my own little world with my fingers busy typing my train of thought while my classmates were chatting away. For whatever reason, another teacher stepped in and asked my teacher to come to his room, probably to check the stock market. I continued typing about red, orange, and yellow leaves, not thinking much about my surroundings. I heard my teacher come back in and hush whispers of the Twin Towers falling.

Not knowing what the Twin Towers meant, I continued working until the bell rang and I rushed off to gym. It was in gym where I realized what was happening, though we still were not sure why or how the two airplanes flew into the Twin Towers.

The day dragged on from there as we were all glued to the images on the television, even with the principal’s plea for teachers to carry out the daily lessons. Each teacher had his/her own different but common reason to keep their television on.

I remember going to church that night and everyone sitting in their usual pews. The only difference was the missing smile on our pastor’s face. The next few days fire departments and other public service departments rushed to New York City to help with the clean up, physical and psychosocial. The death toll and the effects on our way of life were un-imaginable. By the weekend, we, as a nation, would declare war on Afghanistan and later Iraq, a war we are still fighting.

It was a day in history. A day no one of us who live with the horrid images in our minds will ever forget. A day redefined our habits and fears as a nation. We have our human reasons for fearing the Muslins. But Jesus calls us to love our neighbor.

~ Erin M Diericx, September 3, 2011

 

Yet does God want us to damage our neighbors’ property? Does God want us to seek revenge? Does God want us to not welcome our neighbors?

Paul reminds us in Romans 14:1-12 that Jesus calls to love our neighbors, even those individuals who are weak in their faith. The individuals who still hang on the Israelite’s way of life (not eating meat, observing holy days and festivals, and keeping the laws) are those individuals who Paul defines as weak in their faith, because they cannot get their minds around the new way of life, which Jesus introduces.

Yet Paul calls us to care and love one another as Jesus does. We are not to hassle those individuals who are weaker in their faith than us. Instead we are to defend the weak because these individuals honor God the Father in their own way. The individuals keep the laws and observe the holy days as a way to worship God. Paul calls us to understand the different ways to worship the Triune God, and we need to respect each other’s ways of worship. It is not our job to judge or condemn each other because that is God’s job to judge and condemn those who do not repent. We are called to love and respect each other (Hultgren 2011).

The weak and strong have a common confession, regards of their personal habits, in God the Father. God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. We believe in the same the Triune God who loves us unconditionally.

God wants us to love our neighbors – those individuals we come into contact with but Paul never imaged our neighbors would be across the world. The Muslins are our neighbors – those living in United States as Americans and those living across the world.

In Cordova, Tennessee, the Heartsong Church welcomed the Memphis Islamic Center into the neighbor when they were breaking ground. When the center was not built in time for the Ramadan, Steve Stone, Heartsong’s minister, opened the church to the Muslins for their month long Ramadan for their evening prayers (Smietana 2011).

Individuals are working to build bridges between theological differences of Christians and Muslins. However, the work is making connections between the Bible and Quran, whether than glossing over or compromising over theological differences. For instance, the Bible and the Quran both refer to Jesus as the one born of a virgin, sinless, and a spirit of God. Jesus is found all over the Quran as well as the New Testament in the Bible (Taylor 2011).

Too often, we get caught up with the differences between us (or ourselves) and them (pick whatever them you want), and we forget to find the common ground. Christians and Muslins both have a great deal of respect for Jesus, the Son of God. Once we fine the common ground, we can start to understand we worship the same God, just in different ways. Just like Paul calls his readers to defend the weak, we should defend our Muslin neighbors who were not involved on 9/11 because we both seek to serve the same Lord. When we grow in our understanding of each other, we begin and continue the healing process.

Our neighbors are here for us to love (like God the Father loves us) and to grow to have mutual respect for each other.

Thanks to be God!

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for loving us unconditionally. Teach us to have mutual care, respect, and love for one another. Help us to forgive and love our neighbors, just as you forgive and love us. Thank you for your healing touch. Amen.

Works Cited

Hultgren, Arland J. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011.

Smietana, Bob. “Peace be upon Them: A Tennessee Church Welcomes its Muslin Neighbors.” SoJourns 40, no. 9 (September-October 2011): 16-18, 20.

Taylor, Aaron D. “Across the Great Divide: Christians and Muslins in the Post-9/11 World.” Sojourners 40, no. 9 (September-October 2011): 22-24, 26.

Reflective Questions

Please feel free to answer the reflective questions through comments.  Please agree to disagree and be respectable to each other. Please take a moment, if you have not already, to sign the covenant.  You can answer all or just one of the questions. 

1. How do you work with your neighbors?

2. Who are your neighbors?

Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost: Community based in Love

Readings

Exodus 12:1-14 and Psalm 149

Ezekiel 33:7-11 and Psalm 119:33-40

Romans 13:8-14

Matthew 18:15-20

Devotion

Peace be with you!

The number nine-one-one (911) has been drilled into our memory as soon as we knew our name, street address, and other important information. Nine-one-one represents a hope for those in trouble – caught in a fire, a car accident, a fight, a robbery, etc. No matter what hope was on the way – someone was on the way to help. No amount of danger was too great to take away that hope.

But a decade ago that hope and security nine-one-one gave us was taken away. We were attacked as a nation on September 11, 2001 (9/11/2001) as the Twin Towers came down as a result of terrorism. From then on, nine-one-one became a number that introduced insecurities to our general sense of safety as a nation. We labeled any Muslim, Arabic, or the like as terrorists who would attack us again. Any Muslim, Arabic, or the like were robed of their freedoms as Americans because others who looked like them attacked us.

Airports added security to the point that some individuals refuse to fly, because they feel their privacy is opposed. Individuals are hassle towards the Muslim, Arabic, or the like and took away their freedoms as Americans, because their counter-parts in other nations attacked us, including them, as a nation and as Americans.

It has taken a decade to mend the relationships that United States citizens have with the Muslim, Arabic, or the like citizens, and the trust issues are still there. This is what Paul is talking about when he says owe no one nothing but love (Romans 13:8).

When we love each other, we are fulfilling the Ten Commandments and the laws. We are building relationships with others as well as God the Father where love is the foundation of these relationships.

Paul names four laws from the Ten Commandments (Romans 13:9):

1. You shall not commit adultery;

2. You shall not murder;

3. You shall not steal;

4. You shall not covet (to want anything or anyone that is not yours).

When we commit these acts, we break relationships because we loose the trust, loyalty, and compassion individuals had for us. We loose it all with one act.

However, when we keep the above four laws, we continue to build the bonds with the individuals who we are in relationships with. We end up caring about others’ interests and their well-being. This love is held in the highest regard in any relationship; especially the relationship individuals have with God the Father.

Paul calls us to be awake (Romans 13:11). The world may try to get us to conform to its ways, but we are to live through the good news of Jesus Christ and follow his law to love each other and be in a community. As Jesus’ disciples, we are a community demonstrating God’s love through our actions by the way we live.

Salvation has been here since Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection for the forgiven of sins; salvation is yet to come on the Day of Judgment. These two statements seem like they contradict each other, but they are both true because salvation is two-fold. We already have salvation through Jesus’ crucifixion, death, and resurrection, which gives us the forgiveness of sins and the ability to enter heaven, even though we are sinful beings. The second fold of salvation will come on the Day of Judgment when we are allowed to enter heaven (Hultgren 2011).

When we keep the commandments and love our neighbor who is anyone we come into contract with, we are sharing God’s love and deepening our relationships with each other and God the Father. By doing so, we are living out the good news of Jesus Christ and are in fellowship with each other.

As a Christian community, we are to support each other as we renew our faith and remember our baptism on a daily basis. We are forgiven as a community as we remember our baptisms and take part in Communion. We are all forgiven and receive salvation through Jesus.

Thanks be to God!

Dear Heavenly Father, Thank you for your commitment to love us, even though we are sinners. Help us to remember our baptisms and the honor of taking Communion. Thank you for your grace. Amen.

Works Cited

Hultgren, Arland J. Paul’s Letter to the Romans: A Commentary. Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2011.

Reflective Questions

Please feel free to answer the reflective questions through comments.  Please agree to disagree and be respectable to each other. Please take a moment, if you have not already, to sign the covenant.  You can answer all or just one of the questions. 

1. Who is your neighbor?

2. How do you express love to your neighbors?