Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen, in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the nations.
Luke 4:22
All spoke well of him and were amazed at the gracious words that came from his mouth. They said, ‘Is not this Joseph’s son?’
Words of Grace For Today
Is this not George’s son?
Is this not Katie’s daughter?
Is this not your Granddaughter?
Just ordinary people George, Katie, and you, right!? So …
So how can any real person so ordinary give rise (or rather birth) to a young person so spectacular as God’s chosen servant, one to bring justice to the nations, one who can speak so well that all are amazed at this person’s gracious words.
Wow, how can it be? First that there is such a person who can change the course of history, and second that this peculiar person, this spectacular person, comes from an ordinary family?
Which is that the best things about life, and the best possibilities in history, grow from a healthy family. Or at least we hope they do.
…
But …
in reality the best things (or people) in life grow from families that are … well … the most screwed up and dysfunctional families ever. And then in reality sometimes the best things (and people) in life grow from the healthiest families ever … and all the kinds of families between the worst and the best.
Thank God, then, that we get to celebrate all that God gives us … including a chosen person who brings justice to all the nations, and more importantly, that God gives us the gifts and people who love us so much that all the world seems right … and is just right.
Surely the Lord your God has blessed you in all your undertakings; he knows your going through this great wilderness. These forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing.
Matthew 16:18
I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
Words of Grace For Today
Life is fragile, so eat dessert first.
The value reflected in this humour is that pleasure is all life has to offer, and life is going to end at any time, unpredictably, so grab all the pleasure you can while you still can.
God acts to free God’s people from slavery in Egypt, delivering them to 40 years wandering in the wilderness. Wilderness is not plentiful with the necessities of life, and even here God has been with the people, walking with them, and providing all the people need. They have lacked nothing.
God sends Jesus to be a living human, in the most understandable language for us humans. Jesus story is to teach and guide us to live lives worthy of God’s blessing given to us. Even as Jesus offers himself (in order to demonstrate God’s power in weakness, in forgiveness {not vengeance}, and God’s enduring unconditional love that graciously forgives us all our sins), and will no longer be present to the disciples as he has been, Jesus does not desert the disciples. He provides the Holy Spirit to guide them, and takes their ‘rock’, Peter (the one so zealous yet foolish and full of faults), and builds on that a church that will last and not succumb even to the power of the Devil.
How do we respond?
The popular concept that comes the closest to simply explain our appropriate response is ‘pay it forward.’ That is, give to others what God has given to us, namely abundant life (through gracious forgiveness and the renewal of life).
Pay it forward.
A concept that is easy to understand, and very exactly when we try to exercise it fully … since God has given us so, so, so much!
God’s value for our lives would have the humorous saying go like this:
Life is fragile, so give it to others while you still can.
Both we and our ancestors have sinned; we have committed iniquity, have done wickedly.
Titus 2:14
He it is who gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity and purify for himself a people of his own who are zealous for good deeds.
Words of Grace For Today
There is no shame in admitting one’s own sins, and the sins of one’s ancestors.
To face reality, especially the dark reality of one’s own sins is not easy or common or even possible …
unless first one know that God has, even before time, known we and our ancestors would sin, and God has not ever abandoned us to our sin. God has planned even before time how God would respond to our sins by redeeming us with God’s own son’s life as the model of how to live: sacrificing in order to unconditionally love those least deserving of love, in order that they will know God’s generous and gracious forgiveness.
So we have the story of Jesus, living as one of us, giving his life to teach, heal and guide and in the end to offer himself to be crucified, so that we would see that we need not sacrifice people, we need not scapegoat people, we need not work (futilely and destructively) to free ourselves; God has done all that is required.
We have the story of Jesus’ love for all people, especially the outcasts, the ill and ‘ill-fated’, those forced into and captive to poverty, the corrupt, the arrogant, and even the unjust.
We receive renewed life so that we can be the instruments of Jesus love for those in our time and place.
Thanks be to God, for though we are wretched sinners all, we are God-made saints, called to bring God’s justice and grace to bear on the world we live in.
Thus says the Lord: Keep your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for there is a reward for your work, says the Lord: they shall come back from the land of the enemy.
Luke 18:7
Will not God grant justice to his chosen ones who cry to him day and night? Will he delay long in helping them?
Words of Grace For Today
Words of hope fill scriptures: God will come to the aid of those downtrodden, those driven into poverty, those dealt injustice and abuse, and those ostracized with lies and gaslighting.
These are not events that happen elsewhere or at other times. These evil things done to good people take place in this place and time. Corrupt individuals (some known as the wealthiest community leaders) are recruited by corrupt police to file false reports about situations they create in order to lie and denigrate good people. Corrupt police lie about what they have reported to them in order to make good people look guilty. Corrupt pastors cooperate in creating false reports about honest, innocent and good people in order to gain favour with corrupt church and community leaders. Corrupt lawyers pretend to defend the innocent, though they do just enough to make it look like a plausible defence while leaving room for false convictions of their innocent clients, from whom they take tens of thousands of dollars in fees – all to ‘throw them under the bus’, the financial ruin part and parcel of the means used to ruin innocent, honest people.
Even though the evidence does not make out the charges, corrupt judges abound in the courts, and testimony that exonerates the accused is removed from the transcripts (as judges are allowed to edit the court transcripts), and even then testimony is falsified in their judgments at crucial points in order to make convictions possible.
In a word, barbarism rules! Here and now barbarism rules!
Because the courts command armed police and sheriffs and the entire penal system, which is staffed for the most part by bullies and more than a few totally corrupt guards and staff, most people either are naively and intentionally unaware of the injustices done to so many innocent people. Or people who are fully aware of the injustice, keep quiet so as not to attract attention to themselves, hoping not to be the next victim of the barbarism.
…
God’s chosen people have no such choice.
And God does not abandon God’s chosen people. God comes to our rescue soon and very soon. God brings us out of the land of this barbarism and establishes justice here and now for all people, by the work of God’s chosen, the many good, honest, and outspoken people who dedicate their lives to bringing justice and truth to bear on this barbarism that corrupts not just individuals, but the very foundation of civilization.
Soon and very soon.
Yes, soon and very soon, those who are so corrupt, who habitually undermine true justice, our enemies will be exposed and removed, so that God’s will may be done among us, through us.
But the midwives feared God; they did not do as the king of Egypt commanded them, but they let the boys live.
Acts 5:29
But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority.’
Words of Grace For Today
But …
For humans there is an obligation to obey as they are commanded by other humans.
When humans choose not to do so for good reasons the consequences are usually dire, whether it is the state funded police and courts (rightly or corruptly, as it is in all places through all of history, especially here in Alberta) or criminal violence or psychological attacks on one’s well-being. This is what forms the obligation. Do or die (or at least have a chunk of one’s life is taken away.)
God always commands other than corrupt police, courts, kings, and religious authorities. God’s commands do not carry an obligation to obey them like human commands. Contravening human commands results in consequences that rob one of physical life. Obeying human commands may provide a small reward, even if it appears huge it is still small, for humans have little to offer, even if it is large sums of money, power, or fame.
Contravening God’s commands results in the consequence of one’s own choosing, that is one separates oneself from God. This does not ‘rob’ one of physical life. Being separated from God is in itself the definition of having no life, not of any kind. Obeying God’s commands provides the greatest reward, even if it appears small it is still without limit, for one chooses to walk with God, which is itself definition of an abundant life.
When we choose to ignore human authorities in order to obey God, there is a small ‘but’ after the demands of human authority and before our actions that contravene human authority and fulfill God’s will for us and for all people.
When God intervenes in our lives, showing us how small the tempting rewards of corrupt human wealth, power, and fame are, our sinful actions are not followed by a simple little ‘but’. They are followed by a universe changing statement, one like the German ‘Doch’. Then follows a statement that re-orients us back to God’s will for us and all people.
Pharaoh ordered the baby be put to death but the midwives allowed the baby to live.
Pharaoh did not care what God willed, DOCH Moses would live, grow up in Pharaoh’s house, run for his life after killing an abusive overseer, and, after years in the wilderness regaining his understanding of God’s world and God’s will, he would return to lead the people to freedom from slavery, into the wilderness, where the people would learn, and fail to learn, to hear and follow God’s commands.
Likewise Peter and the disciples choose to obey God’s will and not human authorities. They would go on to form the beginnings of the Christian faith and spread it to churches around the Mediterranean, from where through the successive generations, others would carry the faith across the whole earth. We have thus received our faith because of Moses and Peter and many other people’s following God’s will when it contravened human authority.
If we so comfortably think that we can please human authority and follow God’s will, we are naively corrupted to ignore God’s will. We either do not know God’s will, or we refuse to see how corrupt human authority is in all places and all times, even now here in Alberta. In either case there are still many whose stories can only be told with a ‘but’. And always God’s story about us contains many many ‘Doch’, as God rescues us from our sins, over and over again.
We pray for just government, church leaders, a business leaders, and leaders in all aspects of life. Doch God calls us to pray that God’s will may be done, also in and among us, for human authority always corrupts itself, ignoring God’s will and leading people to try to live apart from God. Or worse, corrupt religious leaders lead many, many people to follow false godlets, even when the call their godlets by God’s own name.
So we ought to pray that God would bring yet again a ‘Doch’ into our life stories, guide us back to God’s will, and use us to bring God’s will (which is to love, forgive, and share life abundant with all) to all people … starting with ourselves and our own people.
He loves righteousness and justice; the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord.
Matthew 6:25
Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing?
Words of Grace For Today
What is it to worry?
What would it be like to have no concern for drink, food, or clothing? Would we survive? … Well not in most of the world no we would not.
So is there something other than ‘worry’ for our drink, food and clothing, and having no concern for our drink, food, and clothing?
The question is not if there is something between these two extremes. The question is how do we consider our needs? Do we consider these first from our needs’ demands on our time and energy … or do we consider everything first from God’s great generosity with us, and God’s abiding presence in the world?
If we start every calculation from God’s grace and love for us, it makes no sense to be worried about our daily needs, for all that we need for life is already given to us. We only need to remember how filled the earth is with God’s steadfast love.
Then we can get on with life. The purpose of our lives is no longer trying to get for ourselves. Rather we have the greatest purpose in sharing all that we can, with everyone, especially those who do not have enough to provide for their and their family’s basic needs.
What a life! A life of plenty!
With every opportunity to share everything with those most in need.
It does not get better.
…
So why do so many people think they have to take as much as they can get from others, just to meet their daily needs?!
Or Greedy Human Ambition That Will Only Destroy Us?
Jeremiah 32:42
For thus says the Lord: Just as I have brought all this great disaster upon this people, so I will bring upon them all the good fortune that I now promise them.
1 John 3:2
Beloved, we are God’s children now; what we will be has not yet been revealed. What we do know is this: when he is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.
Words of Grace For Today
Today we exercise our human capacities to accomplish work that we endeavour to complete. It is often work that puts us one step closer to a goal, towards a future that we see possible for ourselves or for other people. Some goals are little more than our survival, or others’ survival. Most often even those are some variation of survival plus a better life. It is honourable to wish others to have more than the bare minimum to survive, to enjoy life abundant as God promises us all people can have. It is honourable to strive to have life abundant ourselves, to have a measure of security against those things that endanger our survival. These are the blessings of God for us that we can give them to others.
We create real evil for ourselves and many other people when we try to create securities that protect us from what we cannot protect ourselves, for then there is no end to what we take out of life for ourselves, and we inevitably take it from others at others’ expense (sometimes even their lives) and we find ourselves incapable of giving to others that which we’ve taken from others. We hoard it for ourselves.
This is all about freewill. God gave humans freewill, and we certainly exercise it, both in the beauty of love for others and all of creation … BUT also in the ugly greed and avarice that robs others and all creation of life itself.
Jeremiah expresses an ancient view of freewill. We may think we have freewill, but God at least partially intervenes and brings woe as punishment for sin and blessings as reward for righteousness to God’s people.
The Vikings TV show portrays the exploits of Ragnar Lothbrok and his contemporaries (dramatized beyond what we know of that time from the available historical accounts.) The Norse gods and the Christian God play a large part in the lives of all the people, from the leaders driven to conquer and rule more territory, to the warrior and soldiers who fight for leaders, sometimes this one, other times that one, and the peasants and farmers who provide for their leaders generously and sometimes enough for their own families. The interplay provides one overriding truth (chosen by the writers and creators), which is that the gods and God are used to further the aspirations of the most ambitious, to ameliorate those who receive no advantage, and to explain everything as ‘the will of the gods’ or as it is ordained by God.
Fate. These statements undercut human freewill and responsibility.
The most ambitious and destructive individuals see all this and use this ‘religious’ excuse in every way possible to further their own ambitions … which inevitably costs many other people their lives! The freewill of these people is to use the mass acceptance of Fate as an explanation for the course of life to hide their own sins so freely done.
It is a horrible and accurate portrayal of what the human heart is capable of. Let no one today be so foolish to think this does not continue, and will continue as long as humans survive. So how are we to respond to the pervasive sin and evil wrought so freely by humans?
We cannot declare with any honesty that we are entirely free of such sin and evil. There is no one that qualifies for that purity, no one except Jesus, the Christ … who was God.
The Way of life that Jesus lead his followers to pursue, to endeavor to accomplish each day in their lives (and we in our lives) is to accept first one’s own sinfulness from which one cannot be free, to then trust God’s promise to love and forgive us even though we cannot deserve such love, to accept and trust that while we remain yet sinners God also makes us into saints who are capable of doing God’s work on earth. We remain able to choose to love God, all people, and all creation, even though we cannot help ourselves from choosing to turn from loving God, all people and all creation.
What this makes of our lives is not pre-determined by God. Our eternal end is offered to us by God, which is that we are God’s own children and God will bring us home, even as God will accompany us each day, each moment of our lives. As Christ is more and more revealed to us in our short lives and through all of history, so we will be more and more like him, for he has claimed us for God to be adopted as God’s own children.
What difference does this make for us and our endeavours each day?
We can trust that we can choose to bring life abundant to others with all God has provided us. This is the simple purpose of our lives. This is how our freewill can be directed by fearing and loving God above all else, loving all other people as (well as) ourselves, and even our enemies.
Ha! You who hide a plan too deep for the Lord, whose deeds are in the dark, and who say, ‘Who sees us? Who knows us?’ You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay?
Ephesians 5:13
Take no part in the unfruitful works of darkness … Everything exposed by the light becomes visible
Words of Grace For Today
The evil that fills the world comes from the hearts of humans.
As the heart chooses to turn from God, so the heart thinks it can hide such a choice from God, which multiples the sins and the evil that is wrought.
Always, sinful humans think they can hide from God, even though God has made them. They can hide nothing from God. No one can.
The light of Christ will shine always into every dark corner that we think we can hide in.
God sees everything that is us, that is a part of our lives: everything we think, everything we say and write, and everything we do.
This is the promise that undoes all evil and sets us free, for God knows us completely, good and evil that we are. Yet God loves us, all of us, and rescues us from sin, forgives us, and renews life in us.
I will give them one heart, and put a new spirit within them; I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh.
Acts 2:39
For the promise is for you, for your children, and for all who are far away, everyone whom the Lord our God calls to Godself.
Words of Grace For Today
God calls home, home to life as God created us to live it.
Home to live with lively hearts of flesh, and renewed spirits.
Home to leave behind our hearts that have grown hard as stone with the travails of life and the evil that has bombarded us, and the evil with which we have bombarded others.
God calls us home to live with new spirits and hearts that are shared among us all. Hearts the love one another because God first loves us, though we certainly do not deserve God’s love at all, not at all.
There is no greater promise than that God will renew our spirits and give us new hearts, for our spirits and our hearts are what we have to share with each other, with the strangers, and even with our enemies. In our hearts and in our spirits God’s image is made known to us and to others, as God created us, in God’s own image, thus able to choose to love and live and give without end generously to others so that they may live.
Come home, this morning, this day, this evening, this night.
The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart; the commandment of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eyes.
2 Timothy 3:16
All scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.
Words of Grace For Today
The Words recorded in scripture are long since recognized as instructive, inspired by God (though not written by anyone other than humans interpreting what God inspires), and providing health for the body, mind, and soul.
There is an idea that we can train ourselves in righteousness reflected in the words from the letter to Timothy.
Ah, yes, the age old turn of grace into something we must accomplish ourselves, even if it is only possible after God saves us.
What good does it do for us to think that after baptism we are more capable of being ‘trained’ to be righteous and do righteousness.
Paul’s comments on this (as opposed to pseudo-Paul, or letters written after Paul’s style), and Martin Luther’s are instructive: on our own we cannot do anything to make ourselves righteous before God, only God can bring us to righteousness. No matter how much we discipline ourselves, instruct ourselves, strive to change ourselves … there simply is no hope in or good result from such efforts. In fact they serve to blind us to the reality of who we are and who God is to us and who God makes us. We are, and always remain, sinners. Any effort to pretend it is otherwise only detracts from our faith, our trust in God, our hope in God’s Grace for us.
Grace.
Grace alone.
Then are we to simply allow ourselves to be as depraved and debauched as we can or would wont to be? Are we to focus on all that is sin and attempt to multiply our sins without end?
There is no good end to that, of course, as we destroy people and creation around us, and even ourselves.
As we acknowledge that we are sinners and will always remain sinners, and that only by Grace can God make us to be anything else, and in fact God makes us saints, holy people who reflect God’s Grace, Truth, and Love … THEN
Then we can choose to put aside sin (as best we can), and allow God’s Grace to flow through us, infusing our thoughts, words, and deeds with God’s free and unconditional love for all people.
Then we may just be the reflectors of God’s righteousness. BUT we fall into the Devil’s snare if and when we try to claim that we, made to reflect God’s Grace by God’s Grace alone working in us, have somehow accomplished this sainthood on our own merits (or even in part on our own merits.)
Scripture inspires us as God-made saints to reflect God’s Grace, and to confess daily or more often that we sin and cannot free ourselves … or even do anything good … except by God’s Grace working in and through us.
Scripture inspires us. That is it creates in us an awareness of God’s presence in, with, and through us. Scripture does not make us more or other than we are. Neither does scripture reflect God’s own thoughts. Scripture remains the result of sinful humans, interpreting and reflecting God’s presence in their imperfect lives.
Not perfect: neither us humans, nor the scriptures we produce by God’s inspiration. But they are the best it gets, kind of like us. We are the best it gets, until God works through us, and then we still are the best it gets.
Which as God’s Grace works in us can be awfully awesome and wondrous … which can also be the scariest and the most comforting experience we will ever have. The scariest it is because it exposes with great clarity the raw sin and evil in us that we otherwise would hide from and deny. The most comforting it is because that raw sin and evil (so horrid as it is) is dealt with by God and it needs no further effort on our part to be set to rest in our pasts.
