For all the boots of the tramping warriors and all the garments rolled in blood shall be burned as fuel for the fire.
2 Peter 1:17
For he received honour and glory from God the Father when that voice was conveyed to him by the Majestic Glory, saying, ‘This is my Son, my Beloved, with whom I am well pleased.’
Words of Grace For Today
Passion Week.
The week we remember Jesus’ last week, with all its normal human agony, scapegoating, and corruption leading to innocent death … and God’s response to all human sin.
We humans struggle against each other for advantage and privilege and comforts, struggling until violence consumes us and blood covers the boots of those fighting for us, often covering our own boots as we try to provide our own future advantages.
God promises that those boots and the blood on them will be burned as fuel for a fire. The fire of God’s triumph over evil and our sinful ways.
We still struggle against each other no matter how much God promises, no matter how many blood covered boots burn. God sends his son, and blesses him. God is pleased with Jesus, for Jesus is a word that we humans can understand, a life, a death, a resurrection. God’s NO to scapegoating. God’s YES to life no matter what comes our way.
We still struggle against each other.
So we remember.
We remember the last week of Jesus’.
We remember how God gives everything to demonstrate to us how much God loves us, forgives us, and gives us renewed abundant life.
Every day we have the ability to share that love, forgiveness, and abundant life with all people.
The Lord will become king over all the earth; on that day the Lord will be one and his name one.
Revelation 22:3-4
Nothing accursed will be found there any more. But the throne of God and of the Lamb will be in it, and his servants will worship him; they will see his face, and his name will be on their foreheads.
Words of Grace For Today
The Day of the Lord has many names. It is the day when all the wrong, sin, and evil that humans have perpetrated against each other and against creation and against God will cease and the after-effects will cease as well.
In human terms the rule of unjust humans over others will cease, and God will be king over all the earth and over all people; justice and truth, mercy and compassion, forgiveness and life-giving love will be the way humans will interact with each other.
In divine terms, all that is accursed will no longer exist. The city of God, the New Jerusalem, will be founded (or revealed to us). Jesus is the sacrificial lamb, given to convince us in terms we understand, that God forgives and loves us unconditionally – and that there is no limit to the lengths God will go to to forgive us and more, to convince us we are forgiven. Except God will not violate our freewill as beings capable of love. God will love us, forgive us, walk with us, stand by us, care for us, guide us … but God will not take away our ability to love ourselves, each other, all creation, and God.
This Jesus will no longer be a sacrificial lamb. He will be raised to the most exalted position, to sit on God’s throne, ruling with sacrificial love, over all the universe.
The Day of the Lord has many names and many images and many hopes expressed in them.
The Day of the Lord is the day when all that is wrong will be set right.
Those who benefit from the wrong that is now perpetrated and live lives of comfort will cease to live in comfort. They rightly fear and deny that the Day of the Lord will ever come.
The great majority of humans who have ever lived, and the great majority of those who live on earth now, will no longer suffer the ignominy of being forced to provide comforts and luxuries for others at the expense of the basic necessities of life, and even their lives. For the great majority of humans the Day of the Lord is the expression of hope that provides the little comfort available to them; on that day all will be set right, and those responsible and blithely benefiting from the wrong will no longer exist.
The Day of the Lord has been anticipated for generation upon generation … and is yet to come to be. Still we do not give up hope that God will set right all the wrongs that are done against us. We do not give up hope that God will set right the little wrongs (and not so little) that we do to each other.
Freedom. Hope. Life based solely on forgiveness and love.
We are not yet at the Day of the Lord.
For now, our sins give witness to God’s response to our failings: God forgives and loves and renews us.
For now, we get to be bearers of the Good News that God has placed before us in many and various ways, and in Jesus’ life, death and resurrection: namely that the substance of life is love, and the glue that holds it together, and the lubricant that makes it still move is unconditional forgiveness and love.
For now we have quite the life to live and to live that life in the full expectation of the Day of the Lord pulling us forward through each day’s challenges (including all that Covid 19 makes more obvious.)
Deliverance belongs to the Lord; may your blessing be on your people! Selah
Matthew 9:35
Then Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness.
Words of Grace For Today
God delivers people … everyday …
and sends us who have been delivered out into the world
to deliver others
by proclaiming God’s Grace
and providing healing for all kinds of illness and disease (and dis-ease with God’s love as that which holds the world together.
Palm Passion Sunday and it’s been a year or more since we’ve had in person worship.
God delivers us …
from the anchors of old diseased habits of worship
and allows us a fresh start, thinking about what is healing in worship, what is proclaiming in worship, what is short term and long term ‘good order’ and instilling and inspiring of good faith in us.
What a challenge this last year has been, or rather what a collection of challenges, some overwhelmingly so.
What an opportunity this last year has been, or rather a collection of opportunities, some astoundingly, refreshingly life-giving (that is, healing of mind, body, and spirit.)
Thanks be to God, to whom deliverance belongs, and who has delivered us with love demonstrated at great cost … so that we might comprehend the vastness of God’s Grace and Love.
On that we can ground all hope, no matter the challenges that overwhelm us!
Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
Luke 23:42-43
Then he said, ‘Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.’ He replied, ‘Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.’
Words of Grace For Today
While the challenges of life and the challenges to life rise up against us, and enemies lay in wait and attack and remain ever ready to destroy us with violence, gaslighting, and/or false witness, there is no shortage of our own sins (having nothing to do with the false convictions made by false witness and dishonest, dishonourable, and lying judges, the gaslighting, or our enemies lies about us) which are the real threat to our very lives.
Others’ attacks can physically harm us and even end our lives on earth. Others’ gaslighting can nearly drive us mad as we grapple with what is actually real and what is not, which is a whole other kind of hell to live through. False witness and false convictions and judges’ dishonest rulings can put our lives in jeopardy in jail, ruin our reputations, and make life very lonely as friends turn their backs on us and even our pastors refuse to communicate with us.
These are all terrible.
Still the worst thing that threatens our lives is not from outside ourselves. It is always from within. It is our own sins which can lead us to doubt God’s grace and to fear that God will turn from us.
Our own sins bring on the valleys of the shadows of death that threaten not only our physical life, not only our sanity, but our very souls … so that there is nothing left of life, and indeed of us. These experiences are when we lose our love of God and fear that God no longer loves us … and we only fear God.
We cry out.
We cry out if we are even still that capable: Do not hide your face from me. Do not turn your servant away in anger, you who have been my help. Do not cast me off, do not forsake me, O God of my salvation!
The valleys of the shadows of death are no illusion. They are certainly the work of the Devil himself/herself/themselves [in these valleys the gender is irrelevant!]
Our fear of God is no illusion.
Our cries are not illusions.
Always, always, always God answers us as he answered the criminal that hung on a cross with Jesus and cried out to Jesus for help: Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.
Today.
No waiting.
No delay.
Today, though we suffer greatly in these valleys, today we will be in paradise with Jesus.
These are the words that again and again usher us out of the valleys of the shadows of death and back into the Grace which gives us life, light, and hope. These words stymie the wishes and efforts of all our enemies. These words usher us back into abundant life.
God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth.’
1 Corinthians 3:22-23
Whether Paul or Apollos or Cephas or the world or life or death or the present or the future—all belong to you [as God’s Temple, God’s Spirit dwelling in you], and you belong to Christ, and Christ belongs to God.
Words of Grace For Today
1 Corinthians 2:18 reads: Do not deceive yourselves. If you think that you are wise in this age, you should become fools so that you may become wise. For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God.
Blessed to have dominion over every living thing we humans have thoroughly deceived ourselves as if we owned and could do with the creatures and creation what we pleased, even if that meant ruining earth as a habitable planet for other species and even ourselves.
Everything is from God.
We are all God’s.
God’s Spirit lives in us.
We are blessed to be blessings to others, not to wreak havoc on others and the rest of creation.
Our dominion over anything is always as stewards, and stewards for a God that created everything, declared it GOOD!, and loves creation and all creatures in it.
It’s all about reality.
First and ultimate always is we are God’s.
We are not some other human’s possession or work.
We are not independent beings.
We are ALL in this together, as Covid 19 has taught us.
While we are not in the same boat, some are in a few people in each luxury yacht and some are bailing to save everyone in their overloaded leaky dinghies, and some are hanging on to flotsam for dear life.
God gives us dominion in order that everyone can live even through a pandemic (when the circumstances of life for each and all become more obvious) in a save boat.
We have lots to do, and always it is futile to proceed as if we were anything less or more or other than God’s stewards.
The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear him, and delivers them.
Luke 11:10
For everyone who asks receives, and everyone who searches finds, and for everyone who knocks, the door will be opened.
Words of Grace For Today
There are enough challenges to everyday,
even ordinary everyday days.
Through in upheaval like a pandemic, or injustice focused at oneself, or … [fill in the extraordinary upheaval that meets every life] the challenges can seem to be a bit overwhelming.
Then it is good to know that God’s Angels ‘encamp’ around we who fear and love God.
Then it is good to know that when we ask, God provides (what we need, not necessarily what we ask for). When we search, God guides us to find (what we need, not necessarily what we thought we sought). When we knock, God opens (the door that God knows we need to have opened, not necessarily the door we were banging away on).
To fear and love God.
To fear and love God is the beginning of everything good.
To fear and love God is the beginning of every good day, every good hour, every good minute.
To fear and love God is the beginning of every good relationship, project, or yearning.
Help us, we pray, to fear and love God before all else, (more than all the things that threaten to and do upend our lives.)
Help us, we pray, to trust God’s Angels are with us, (no matter what threatens to and does upend our lives.)
My hand laid the foundation of the earth, and my right hand spread out the heavens; when I summon them, they stand at attention.
John 1:1-3
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being.
Words of Grace For Today
God, who comes to our rescue, who delivers us again and again, who sanctifies us making us holy and thus wholly capable of bearing the Good News of Grace to all people … God, who loves us, is the One who spoke a Word in the beginning before anything including time, spread out a right hand to create the heavens, laid the foundation of the earth.
The universe was not created by some godlet. Nor is our God some inconsequential being, to be ignored or dismissed.
It’s more than ‘turtles all the way down’ that the earth is founded on; it is founded on unconditional love.
In the beginning was the Word. We later came to know this Word as Jesus, the communication from God in a human life; the language we can understand.
The heavens and earth may come to attention when God summons them. God did not create us so bound to God’s Word. We get to really mess up terribly, ignoring the Creator and the Word if we so choose … which we humans do all too often.
The Word came to communicate that God accounted for our rebellion and sin and evil. God forgives us our rebellion and sin and evil, and sets us right with God our Creator and Sustainer. Thus we may forge ahead each day, each minute, not hounded and horrified by the depth and breadth of our past rebellion and sin and evil. We may live free of that, and bind ourselves anew to receiving God’s blessings in such an abundance that they spill off us to those around us; they flow through us to others even emptying us … purifying us and taking the life right out of us as we become the bearers of God’s Good News of Grace to all people: God loves us!
Now with God standing with us, why would not the hoards of armies surrender to us making noise? Why would the walls of Jericho not crumble at our trumpets’ calls? Why would the chaos of un-creation void (the ocean waters) and the storms of chaos breaking in through the heavens not obey the Word spoken: ‘Be still!’
May our hearts be also stilled this and each day, from the chaos of fear, false pride, jealousy, and greed, so that we can calmly face the challenges of each day, even if it is one day among many of a pandemic.
Breathe deeply
Relax
Meet the challenges with patience and assurance that God is with us, saving us, guiding us, inspiring us to do holy things for all peoples.
Keep my statutes, and observe them; I am the Lord; I sanctify you.
Matthew 7:24
Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock.
Words of Grace For Today
God gives commands.
People receive the commands and reinterpret them as the necessary things to be done to be acceptable to God.
God corrects the reinterpretations back to God’s Grace: God acts for us first, bridging the whole gap between divine and finite humans. Then we get to act as sanctified people … and we still sin.
How do we wish to live, always running from goodness, or in a house built on a rock, the rock of God’s Grace for us?
The human mind plans the way, but the Lord directs the steps.
2 Corinthians 3:5
Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us; our competence is from God.
Words of Grace For Today
Who are we?
We are fallible and arrogant, needing reminders regularly of how fragile our grasp on reality, truth, and goodness are.
We are able to give God all God is due: our lives in service to others so that they may experience and know the Grace of God which gives us renewed life, even though we deserve nothing but condemnation and expulsion to the emptiness of the Void.
Rather than giving us what we are due, God forgives us, redeems us, renews us and sanctifies us so that we can reflect the Light of the World to all in need.
It is only because God so constantly renews us and makes us holy (sanctifies us) that we are able to do anything good.
The human tendency is to forget God, God’s gifts, and claim all that is good is our own doing. This is a foolish error that costs us so much each day, and it costs so many other people so much each day.
We may think we make plans that we are capable of carrying out. So it is only with sinful plans! Any good plans we make, as well as the steps we take, are possible only because God has saved us from ourselves and through the Holy Spirit permeating our being inspires us to things so much better than we could ever do or imagine on our own.
God does not control us like a puppeteer. God inspires us, and if Luther is correct, we can at most surrender to doing what God asks of us and moves us to be and do. We, on the other hand, have free will (not to do good) only to do sinful and evil things, selfish things, destructive things, common things … and then lie to ourselves about how ‘good’ our evil ways are.
Oh, God, save us from our own sin, and the deceptions that allow us to think we can be anything without you! (Like thinking we can plan our own good way.)
God, help us to see the wonders of being and doing as you inspire and enable us.
God, help us extend this same Grace to all other people, sinful and evil as they are.
