When All Seems Lost

THIS MESSY LIFE: BECOMING AN ADULT - PART 2

WHEN ALL SEEMS LOST
Sunday, November 10, 2019
Hosea 11:1-9, Mark 10:3-14

How can I give you up, Ephraim?
How can I hand you over, Israel?
How can I make you like Admah?
How can I treat you like Zeboiim?
My heart winces within me;
my compassion grows warm and tender.

Hosea 11:8

Can I be honest?

I have a love/hate relationship with the prophets in scripture.

On one hand I love that they cut straight the heart. They don’t mix words. They tell it like it is and they declare God’s truth without concern for what anybody else thinks of them. Their courage and faithfulness is the stuff of legend.

This is all fine and good, so long as they are just shouting down those idolatrous people in ancient Israel. Those people knew better. How many miracles did God do for their ancestors in Egypt? How many times did God bail them out of a tight spot in battle? How could they forget the one who brought them out of slavery and made them into a great nation at the center of the world, a city on a hill that would shine the light of God’s glory as far as the eye could see and live as a blessing to all the nations? To these people, the harsh words of the prophets seem perfectly reasonable.

Like the older brother watching the young prodigal come home, we want dad to really lay into him. “Give him what he deserves for abandoning you and our family and squandering all of your gifts for his own selfish pleasure.”

Only dad doesn’t respond the way we might want him to. This is where the prophets become difficult. Sometimes those harsh words are directed at me, or at us. Sometimes we, who think we have been so good staying faithful to God and living in his household all this time, are really the ones who need a wake up call. The prophets remind us how much we have taken for granted and how much we have missed the point of what God has called us to do and who God has called us to be for the sake of others.

Then we come to Hosea. Of all the prophets Hosea is arguably one of the most gut-wrenching and emotional prophets of the bunch. He stops at nothing to pull our heart strings until we can’t help but weep not only for the people of Israel, but for ourselves as we see how far God will go to bring us back home, even when we have “played the whore” as Hosea’s wife does more than once.

In the beginning of Hosea we cannot grasp the extent of God’s grace modeled by the prophet as he literally buys his wife back from slave auction after her own unfaithfulness put her there in the first place. By the time we get to chapter 11, the image shifts from a broken and painful marriage to a parent who is crushed by his or her child’s outright and continual rejection.

If this scene were played out on the silver screen, there would not be a dry eye in the house. But Hosea isn’t simply trying to make us cry so he can win an Oscar. He’s reminding us who we are and who God is and he is helping us understand why the prophet’s words to Israel and to us seem so harsh.

The prophet’s anger is not the anger of wrath or vengeance, but the anger, the frustration, and the desperation of the broken and agonizing heart of a mother or father overflowing with love for their wayward son or daughter.

This is the cry of our heavenly Father / Mother:

“How can I give you up?”

How can I make you understand the depth of my compassion and love?

What will it take for you to come home?

Click here to listen to entire sermon series - “THIS MESSY LIFE: BECOMING AN ADULT”

Christ on my Right, Christ on my Left...

Christ on my right,
Christ on my left…

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

You must therefore be careful to do as the Lord your God has commanded you; you shall not turn to the right or to the left. You must follow exactly the path that the Lord your God has commanded you, so that you may live, and that it may go well with you, and that you may live long in the land that you are to possess.

Deuteronomy 5:32-33 (NRSV)

Let your eyes look directly forward,
and your gaze be straight before you.
Keep straight the path of your feet,
and all your ways will be sure.
Do not swerve to the right or to the left;
turn your foot away from evil.

Proverbs 4:25-27 (NRSV)

As we can see in these verses, the Bible is clear. Christ is not on our right or our left… only straight ahead. To turn to the right or left is to stray into evil. So why would the writer of this prayer acknowledge the presence of Christ on both his right and left?

Perhaps the writer of this prayer is drawing more on the tradition of Job who says,

“If I go forward, he is not there;
or backward, I cannot perceive him;
on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;
I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.
But he knows the way that I take;
when he has tested me, I shall come out like gold.

Job 23:8-10

This passage seems to recognize that God is present with Job, before him, behind him and on his left and right, only no matter where God may be at work, Job cannot see it.

Similarly, when Abraham separates from Lot in Genesis 13:9, Abraham gives Lot the choice whether to go right or left. For Abraham, it doesn’t seem to matter which direction he goes. He knows God will go before him and he trusts God to protect his nephew as well. God’s presence is not limited to one direction or another.

Finally we come to Mark 10:35-38 where a few of the disciples ask Jesus to sit on his right and his left in glory. Jesus says they do not understand what they are asking and makes it clear he is in no position to make such a promise. We also know that Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father, but what we don’t often consider is the implication that the Father sits at the “left hand” of Christ. If God the Father is on the left, the left can’t be all bad.

The tradition of left and right throughout the ancient world is often divided into spiritual vs. carnal or worldly realities. In Latin, the original word for left meant “sinister.” Many cultures have associated the left with “evil.” Perhaps this comes from the fact that between 70 and 95% of the world’s population is right handed, leaving some throughout history to assume something is wrong with the anomalous few. Even as late as the 1950’s and early 60’s, my father was taught that being “left handed” was wrong and he quickly learned to become ambidextrous to prevent punishment from his Catholic school teachers.

Some Christians continue this distorted use of left and right in the political realm by declaring war against the so-called evils and godlessness of the “liberal left.” Indeed, Biblical language is filled with examples of the left being associated with evil and sin while the right is considered righteous, but this says far more about history and culture than about reality. God did not make the “left” inferior, whether left-handed, left-brained, or left in ideology and politics.

And then of course we have those few scriptures we saw earlier that focus on avoiding both the left and the right. This idea fits nicely into my own Wesleyan tradition of the Via Media, or Middle Way in which we emphasize both head AND heart, social justice AND personal piety, etc.

It amazes me how we build entire theological systems around such cultural stigmas such as the virtue or sinfulness of right and left. In the end, it seems that with God, AND is almost always a better word than OR.

Christ on the right AND Christ on the left.

What does that mean for you right now? We all know people who are more “left” and more “right” than us and we tend to consider our own position on the spectrum superior, even if unconsciously. Some are more logical (left-brained) and some are more creative (right-brained). Some are more liberal (left) and some are more conservative (right). But what if no matter where people find themselves on all of our human-conceived spectra of left and right, Christ is there… on our left, on our right, AND everywhere in between?

Reflections:

1. Where do you most see the issue of left vs. right show up in your life? Where do you see God on the spectrum and why?

2. What would it look like to see Christ on the “opposite side” from where you are standing?

3. If the way of God is indeed the “middle way,” then Christ meets us where we are at on the left and right and moves us all toward the center, toward each other, and toward our heavenly Father. How is Christ calling you toward someone else who may be coming from a very different position than you?

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Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise…

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

All Fired Up

THIS MESSY LIFE: BECOMING AN ADULT - PART 1

ALL FIRED UP
Sunday, November 3, 2019
1 Kings 18:20-39; Mark 9:2-4; Ephesians 6:12

Call on the name of your god, but don’t add fire.

1 Kings 18:25

In an “age of outrage,” as author Mark Manson calls it, everybody is quick to get “all fired up.” We stoke fires of opinion and anger everywhere we turn. We love heaping hot coals upon our enemies’ heads, not seeking their repentance as the scripture intends but rather for the purpose of revenge and seeking satisfaction in proving them wrong or even in watching them suffer (Proverbs 25:22, Romans 12:20). We antagonize others so they will turn against us and then claim we are only acting in self defense when we feel we are being persecuted. Never-mind that it was our own passive aggressive behavior that instigated the attacks in the first place.

A man once said that everyone hated him because he was a Christian, to which his wife responded, “Are you sure it’s because you’re a Christian, or could it be because you act like a jerk?”

Elijah was a lone prophet of the Lord in a world filled with idolatry. It didn’t matter how “right” he may have been, nobody was listening. But in the face of impossible odds, Elijah shows us a better way. He reminds us that the battle does not belong to us, but to the Lord.

When the prophets of Baal come against him, he calls them together not to argue but to lay down their arguments, their opinions, and their swords. They built an altar and Elijah says to them, “call on the name of your god, but don’t add fire” (1 Kings 18:25). In other words, let your gods speak for themselves. If you are right, let your gods rain down fire and consume the sacrifice.

As Elijah expected, nothing happened. “Maybe your god’s are asleep,” Elijah suggests.

Finally he repairs the altar and then has the wood and the sacrifice drenched with water so that nothing will burn. He has a trench dug around the altar and filled with water. Elijah takes things one step further. He not only refuses to “add fire” to the argument, but he soaks his own with water so it will be that much harder to light. Nothing he can do or say will win this debate with the prophets of Baal. It is all up to God.

And we know the rest of the story. Elijah prays to the Lord and the altar is consumed with fire from heaven. The sacrifice turns to ash and the fire even licks up all of the water in the trench. The Lord has spoken, where the gods of Elijah’s enemies remained silent.

This is not to say there would be no more bloodshed between the people. Elijah would find himself on the run and his life would continue to be threatened. Nevertheless, he models for us great wisdom in how we approach the battles and arguments we face in life.

As Paul writes to the Ephesians, “we aren’t fighting against human enemies but against rulers, authorities, forces of cosmic darkness, and spiritual powers of evil in the heavens.” (Ephesians 6:12). Elijah, like Paul, understood that the battle belonged to the Lord. It was not his place to wage war against the people. It was his place to step back and let God speak. God does not need our defense.

How might God be calling us to build altars in the world while at the same time refusing to add the fire? Our task is to create spaces for God’s fire to burn but lighting the fire is not our place.

God alone will send for the Holy Spirit and get the world all fired up.

Click here to listen to entire sermon series - “THIS MESSY LIFE: BECOMING AN ADULT”

Christ Beneath Me, Christ Above Me...

Christ beneath me,
Christ above me…

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

Have you ever noticed where people look?

Some people seem to be staring off into space, always looking up as though lost in a daydream. Others we might characterize as downcast, often keeping their gaze toward the ground and only glancing up occasionally to speak or interact as needed.

One could make a strong argument that our instinct to look away, either up or down, rather than maintaining eye contact with one another, says a lot about our own insecurity and inability to be fully present and engaged in the moment. In general, I would agree. As a society we do need to be far more intentional about being fully present with one another.

From another angle, we could use scripture to argue which is better, to look up or down. Colossians 3:2 says to set our minds on things above and not on the things of earth, while on the other hand, Psalm 119:105 tells us that the Word of God is a lamp unto our feet. So which is it. Do we look up to heaven, or do we focus on the path God lights up right in front of our feet? Some people spend so much time gazing up toward heaven, metaphorically speaking, that they end up making very little difference in the world around them. After all, they might argue, “The things of earth are passing away,” so why bother with them at all (1 John 2:17, 1 Corinthians 7:31). Others recognize God’s call to be good stewards of creation and to work for justice and mercy so that the Kingdom may be fulfilled “on earth as it is in heaven.” Yet we can just as easily become so embroiled in the despair and apparent hopelessness of the world that all of our efforts to make a difference feel like an exercise in futility. Without a heavenly perspective, the world may very well consume us.

What if it’s not so absolute? I’ll leave it to the psychologists to analyze all of the subconscious implications of looking up or down, but for now I would argue that no matter our natural inclinations, God invites us too look up AND down. Keeping an eye on heaven, we find the hope we need to proclaim the Good News on earth while keeping an eye on earth reminds us why such hope matters in the first place. Heaven is not an escape from the earth, it is the radical transformation and restoration of the earth and indeed of all creation.

If the Kingdom of God were a skyscraper, it would be built upside down. We look up to the eternity to lay solid foundations that will never crumble, but we build “upside down” as it were, so that the pinnacle of heaven’s towers reach all the way down to the earth so that God’s “penthouse suite” becomes readily accessible to all people. Like the New Jerusalem, God never shuts the gates (Revelation 21:25). The Kingdom is never out of reach, no matter how low we find ourselves in life.

Perhaps the most important thing we can take from all of this is that no matter which direction our gaze tends to fall, we will always be missing something if we only ever look in one direction. Christ above us… Christ beneath us… Christ before us… Christ behind us…

Always looking in one direction, whether up or down, will give you a kink in the neck. Maybe it’s time to stretch. Maybe Christ is saying to those who are downcast, “Hey, look, I’m UP here.” At the same time, Christ may be saying to those who are lost in the dream of heaven, “Hey, look, I’m DOWN here.”

Which way is God calling you to look right now? Whether above or beneath, Christ’s invitation is the same… “Come, follow me.”

Reflections:

1. Which direction do you find yourself looking more often, up or down? Why might that be?

2. Do you tend to see Christ more clearly when looking up toward heaven or when looking down at the path right in front of you? How?

3. Where do you most need to see Christ in your life right now? Beneath you, guiding your steps? Or above you, giving you hope for the journey?

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Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

Christ on my right,
Christ on my left…

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

Too Cool for School

THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE - PART 3

TOO COOL FOR SCHOOL
Sunday, October 27, 2019
1 Kings 12:1-17, 25-29; Mark 10:42-45

“If you will be a servant to this people by answering them and speaking good words today,” they replied, “then they will be your servants forever.”

1 Kings 12:7

We know Saul and David and Solomon. We know how God used these kings to establish a great City on a Hill at the center of the known world. We know the greatness of this united kingdom that stretches from Dan to Beersheba. But what of Solomon’s sons? What of this great kingdom they inherited?

Rehoboam went to Shechem where all Israel had come to make him king.

1 Kings 12:1

And so the dynasty of David and Solomon is passed on to the next generation. But Rehoboam did not grow up in the days of tribal chaos or of the endless wars with the Philistines. He did not witness the great cost of the spiritual failures of Saul and David. He only knew the seemingly unlimited power and wealth of his father, Solomon, whom even the Queen of Sheba came to honor. God had clearly blessed his father’s kingdom so it only makes sense to continue doing what his father had done.

Blinded by the glory, power and riches of success, it was easy to ignore the few naysayers who questioned some of Solomon’s political policies. “Your dad may have been a great King,” Jeroboam said, “but he was pretty hard on all of us who live up north. We’ll follow you as we followed him, but you might want to make a few changes.”

Even the elders who had served at Solomon’s side advised Rehoboam to reconsider his treatment of the northern tribes. “Become a servant to these people and speak good words to them today, and they will be your servants forever” (1 Kings 12:7).

But as a young king trying to prove himself in an adolescent kingdom, the word “serve” is not in his vocabulary. “Lead with strength,” his friends declared. “Show them who is in charge here” (1 Kings 12:10-14).

As great as Israel became under David and Solomon, it just as quickly fell into ruins. Not even 150 years had passed before the great nation God had built out of nothing turned to dust. Why? Because Rehoboam could not understand the true definition of greatness.

Jesus called them over and said, “You know that the ones who are considered the rulers by the Gentiles show off their authority over them and their high-ranking officials order them around. But that’s not the way it will be with you. Whoever wants to be great among you will be your servant. Whoever wants to be first among you will be the slave of all, for the Human One didn’t come to be served but rather to serve and to give his life to liberate many people.”

Mark 10:42-45

Our world says “serve or be served,” with the assumption that it is better to “be served.” God’s politics simply says, “Serve.” There is no other way.

Click here to listen to entire sermon series - “THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE”

Christ In Me

Christ in me…

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

Three simple words, and yet when it comes to the presence of Christ, perhaps this is the most complicated line of all. I mentioned the presence of Christ through the Holy Spirit in the previous reflection, but this is the time to dig a bit deeper into that mystery.

There is a reason God put on flesh and walked among us. We needed to see a God with skin on. We needed a God we could identify with. We needed a God who “walks with us and talks with us and tells us we are his own” (Charles Austin Miles, “In the Garden”, 1913).

If we’re really honest, there is a part of us that would be OK waiting on the whole “Spirit thing” until we get to heaven if we could just ask Jesus a few questions now, in person. We live in the physical world. It would be nice to talk to a physical God, even if only for a few hours or a day. As we said on Day 5 when we talked about the Ascension, Jesus in the flesh could only be in one place at a time and he could only dwell among so many people. But God desires to dwell with all people of all times. And so Christ sends the Spirit who does not merely dwell with certain people in a certain place or certain time, but who dwells “in” every person in every place for all time.

We find ourselves with an incomprehensible mystery, for we cannot explain or conceive of a relationship that intimate. Every human relationship, no matter how close, functions with clear physical boundaries and personal space. For the Holy Spirit, there is no such thing as “personal space” or physical boundaries. What does it mean for a living being to dwell “in” us. It just doesn’t feel right. Such intimacy makes us deeply uncomfortable. We cry out with the Psalmist, “Where can I go from your presence O God?” because part of us still lives with the shame of Eden and we do not want God to see that we are naked (Psalm 139, Genesis 3:7-11). We believe God sees everything, but we are very good at pretending to hide. Like little children, we cover our eyes and think we are invisible because we can’t see.

“Christ in me” can be truly freeing, if we embrace what it means to be fully known and yet fully loved. But this is a difficult truth to accept because we know our sin all to well. We all have things we want to hide. This is why we so often live as if Christ is not present at all. “If I can’t see the Holy Spirit,” we reason, “maybe the Spirit can’t see me.” It may not be a conscious thought, but our feelings of shame before God are all too real and our futile efforts to hide only prevent us from experiencing the joy and freedom of the presence of Christ in us.

If Christ is in us, there is truly no reason to hide. Our fig leaves only keep us from knowing the love of our Father.

My life is hidden with Christ, wrapped up in the covering of my Father
My life is hidden with Christ, no more use in running away.
No more use in hiding my face. No more use in hiding. There is nothing to hide.

No more sons and daughters hiding in the closet of fear…

- Andrew Ehrenezeller, “Naked”, 2011 (http://andrewehrenzeller.com/)

Reflections:

1. What first thoughts come to mind when you think about “Christ in you”?

2. Is the thought of God being so close and intimate comforting, frightening, or somewhere in between? Why?

3. How have you tried to hide from God’s presence in you? Are you presently hiding and if so, is it time to come out of hiding?

* All song rights belong to Andrew Ehrenzeller

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Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

Christ beneath me,
Christ above me…

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Coming Soon

I Arise Today:
A 40 Day Journey through St. Patrick’s Breastplate Prayer

Available in paperback and Kindle e-book through Amazon.

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

Homecoming King

THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE - PART 2

HOMECOMING KING
Sunday, October 20, 2019
2 Samuel 6:1-23

David and all the troops who were with him set out for Baalah, which is Kiriathjearim of Judah, to bring God’s chest up from there - the chest that is called by the name of the Lord of heavenly forces, who sits enthroned on the winged creatures.

2 Samuel 6:2

Life couldn’t get much better for David. His days of hiding from Saul had come to an end and he was on the throne. He claimed victory after victory over the Philistines and now we find him establishing a new capital city in Israel, Jerusalem, “David’s City.” This Philistines had captured the Ark of the Covenant, the very footstool of God who reigned above the Ark on the mercy seat between the cherubim.

David would establish Jerusalem once and for all by bringing this Ark, and with it, God’s very presence, to dwell in his city.

In 2 Samuel 7 we find David taking yet another step as he seeks to build a temple for God in his city, only God has other plans. “You are not the one to build the temple for me to live in,” God says (2 Samuel 7:5). Later in verse 11 we see that it is God who will build David a house, or a dynasty, not the other way around.

David may indeed be living large as the Homecoming King, but like any popular teenager, David and Israel with him may be letting their heads get just a little too big. Nothing can stop them, or so they think. They are doing great and wonderful things for God, but how much glory are they taking for themselves in the process?

Pride comes before disaster, and arrogance before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18 (CEB)

There is nothing wrong with doing great and wonderful things for God, but we must be careful that the things we do are actually the things which God desires and not the things which will merely inflate our own pride.

Click here to listen to entire sermon series - “THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE”

Christ Before Me, Christ Behind Me

Christ before me,
Christ behind me…

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

Christ is with us indeed, but not only as an abstract object of faith or a historical figure we remember learning about in Sunday School. Jesus, the Christ, is the Word Made Flesh, the Living Word of God who speaks all things into existence. The Word was there in the beginning and the Word is already present at the end of days. Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Christ has been with you on every step of your journey and Christ has already walked the path ahead.

Christ before me. This is what I mean when I say Christ has already walked the path ahead. This is what we mean when we say Christ is the Omega, the end, the consummation of all things. Christ before us cuts much deeper than the old cliche preachers use when they shout, “I’ve read the back of the book and we win.” It’s not just about some final victory in heaven. Yes, Christ went to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house, but Christ before us is also much more immediate.

Sometimes it feels like we are playing follow the leader with Jesus through the gospels, trying desperately to keep up with all he is trying to teach us, and then all of the sudden we hit the beginning of Acts and whoosh, he’s off in the clouds like Mary Poppins when the wind changes. Of course we know that is not the end of the story. God continues to be present with the disciples and later with the church through the Holy Spirit, but if we’re honest, most of us would prefer a “Jesus with skin on.” We’ll come back to that Holy Spirit issue in the next line of our prayer, but for now, how do we follow Christ up into those clouds?

Answer: We don’t. At least not yet. This is the problem we find in Acts 1:10-11 when the angels find the disciples staring dumbfounded into the sky when Jesus clearly told them to go and wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit’s power and then to go into all the earth to proclaim the Good News of God’s Kingdom on earth.

This is where the “Christ behind me” part comes in. There are days when it seems like Christ has gotten just a little too far ahead. We were following along just fine and then we hit a fork in the road and we’re not sure which way he turned. We choose a path and after awhile we have made so many turns we don’t even know if we’re still going the same direction.

Yes, Christ went to prepare a place for us and in one sense, Christ is so far ahead we cannot see clearly the trail he has blazed. But just when it seems all hope is lost, we turn around and look back to discover that the very Christ we were chasing aimlessly through the wilderness of life is standing right behind us. We look back over our journey and realize he was with us every step of the way and we didn’t even know it. Like the disciples on the road to Emmaus we ask, “Were not our hearts burning within us when he spoke to us along the road and explained the scriptures” (Luke 24:32). Something deep within us knew we could not possibly have been alone. Jesus would not have abandoned us. And yet we felt alone and abandoned. We didn’t know which way to go and we felt lost and afraid.

Maybe you’re in that place right now, feeling lost, alone and afraid. You know Christ has gone ahead of you and is calling you to something greater, but you have no idea what. This is a far more common experience than we would like. Running ahead in a state of panic rarely gets us where we need to go. It only creates more panic. Maybe we need to stop, take a breath, and turn around. We’re not turning around to go back to the way things were or to wallow in the nostalgia of the good old days when everything seemed more clear. No, we’re simply glancing back to get our bearings, to see where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.

And there we will see Christ, who has been right behind us the whole time encouraging us along the way. We will realize we were never alone and we were never really lost.

Christ before us. Christ behind us. It’s always both. He is never too far away.

Reflections:

1. Reflect on a time when you felt lost and couldn’t see the path God had for you. How did you feel and how did you respond?

2. Reflect on a time when you turned back to see the ways Christ had been present all along.

3. Where do you most need to see Christ right now, before you or behind you, and why?

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Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

Christ in me…

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer

Finding Our Place

THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE - PART 1

FINDING OUR PLACE
Sunday, October 13, 2019
Ruth 1:1-17, Mark 3:33-35

But Ruth replied, “Don’t urge me to abandon you, to turn back from following after you. Wherever you go, I will go; and wherever you stay, I will stay. Your people will be my people, and your God will be my God.”

Ruth 1:16

“During the days when the judges ruled, there was a famine in the land” (Ruth 1:1). The days when the judges ruled are days repeatedly characterized by the common refrain, “In those days there was no king and everyone did what was right in their own eyes.”

This season in Israel’s life is what I am identifying as a shift into adolescence. They have learned the basics of what it means to be God’s people. They have been set free from slavery in Egypt. They received the law at Mt. Sinai. They struggled through the wilderness and eventually settled in the land God promised to them. Like a 5th grader who has navigated all of elementary school and feels like they are the king of the mountain, so Israel has now become a big fish in a small pond. They have conquered. They are in control. But for all they think they know, they are not very good at using their power and privilege responsibly. The book of Judges shows us time and time again how far Israel strays from the lessons they learned in their childhood. As they shift into adolescence, they are not yet a fully developed nation. There is no king and they struggle to fully recognize the authority of God as their king. Just like children at this age think they have outgrown their parents, so Israel thinks they are ready to handle things on their own. By the time we get to the end of Judges, it is clear, they haven’t learned much at all.

During this time, we read, there was a great famine in the land. The crisis had gotten so bad that families some families had to leave their inherited land behind and move to Moab, a pagan land that had often been at war with Israel. And yet it is here among foreigners that we find one woman who shows us what it truly means to live as a child in God’s household. She, her sister-in-law, and her mother-in-law are all left as widows. She has nothing left. Her sister-in-law Orpah makes the sensible decision to go back to her mother’s household but Ruth refuses to return home. In one of the greatest statements of family solidarity in scripture, Ruth declares to her mother-in-law Naomi that she will stay with her no matter what. “Your people will be my people,” she says, “and your God will be my God.”

There was no obligation on her part to make such a commitment and no guarantees that they would even survive, let alone thrive as a family of widows in the wilderness. Through this act of faith and loyalty, God not only redeems Naomi and Ruth, but through her, God raises up a son named Jesse and a grandson named David. The rest is history. When God’s children had gotten so low they were forced to abandon their land and find refuge among the foreigners, God raised up a foreigner to show them once again what it meant to be part of God’s family, and through her and the line of her grandson David, the doors of our Father’s household were opened to every tribe, tongue and nation for all time. We were all foreigners and strangers, gleaning and struggling to survive on the margins of God’s household, but God sent his firstborn son out into the fields like Boaz to invite us into a home we never knew.

Credit for the excerpt on Ruth goes to Dr. Sandra Richter. You can watch her extended video on Redemption here:

Click here to listen to entire sermon series - “THIS MESSY LIFE: ADOLESCENCE”

Christ With Me

Christ with me…

The Lorica of Saint Patrick (St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer)

Christ with me…

Today we come to the most famous stanza of the Breastplate Prayer. These 15 lines are often used by themselves and they offer a powerful reminder of God’s continual presence in our lives. Let us take a moment to pray this segment together, slowly, line by line, breathing deeply between each line.

Christ with me,
Christ before me,
Christ behind me,
Christ in me,
Christ beneath me,
Christ above me,
Christ on my right,
Christ on my left,
Christ when I lie down,
Christ when I sit down,
Christ when I arise,
Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,
Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,
Christ in every eye that sees me,
Christ in every ear that hears me.

How do you feel?

For some, this may be a comforting prayer knowing that Christ is truly present in us and around us at every turn. For others, it may be a bit unsettling. We don’t mind going to God’s house for a weekly visit, but do we really want God hanging out in our house? It’s one thing to clean things up for an occasional guest, but we can’t keep everything straight all the time. What if Jesus sees how I really live? What will he say about the mess in the house of my life?

“Christ with me…”

Honestly, this is a summary of the next 14 lines. We could simply pray, “Christ with me” and everything that follows would already be implied. But there is a reason the writer broke it out in such detail. So rather than glossing over these feelings, whether comforting or worrisome, let’s take some time to really unpack each line and what it looks like for Christ to be present in all these ways.

It’s such a small and seemingly insignificant preposition, easy to read past without much thought. We see the word “with” and we immediately know there is a connection between two or more things or people. “I would like mashed potatoes with gravy” or “She is with her mom”. We wouldn’t bother taking time to analyze the meaning of such statements. It simply means that the two things or two people are together. We get it. Move on.

But what does it really mean for you to be “with” someone?

Am I “with” my daughter when she is watching a favorite show while I am on the couch reading? Well, yes… sort of. Are we “with” our friends when we are all sitting around the table at a restaurant on our phones while barely speaking to one another? Again, yes… sort of.

Technically we are with each other because we are “together” in the same place. If someone asked where I was, I would say I was in the living room with my daughter. If asked what we did last night, we might say we were out with some friends. And these would be honest answers.

But were we really “with” them? Physically, yes. But being together physically in the same space is not the same as being present with one another. In our world of constant distractions, being fully present in any moment is not easy. There are a million concerns that turn our thoughts away from whatever we are doing and whoever we are with in a given moment. We are not even good at being present in conversations because we tend to think more about what we are going to say or do next than about what the other person is actually saying.

And so when we pray, “Christ with me”, here is the question?

Are we simply aware that Christ is with us because, as the Psalmist writes, there is nowhere we can hide from God’s presence (Psalm 139:7-12)? Do we just live our lives with the Spirit hanging out in the same room without acknowledging Christ’s presence or do we live fully present “with” Christ who by the Spirit, chooses to be fully present “with” us?

Reflections:

1. Is the thought of Christ being “with you” more comforting or discomforting and why? Is the feeling different in different times, places or situations? Are there some places in your life you would rather Christ was not “with” you?

2. Reflect on a time when you knew God was “with you” but you were not fully present “with” God.

3. What steps will you take this week to be fully present “with” Christ?

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Our journey through St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer continues next week:

Christ before me,
Christ behind me…

Pray along with the full text of St. Patrick's Breastplate Prayer