Israel Forsakes God

15th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture: Jeremiah 2:4-13

Jeremiah was a young priest who God sent to His fallen children, the Israelites, seeking to draw then back into His fold.

They had strayed far, far from His presence and He longed to have them back.

Jeremiah’s whole ministry was a challenge and an opportunity to draw them back into a covenant relationship with God. God promised them, “I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God.”

Throughout Israel’s long history, time and time again they strayed from God’s loving presence. Still, God always kept a remnant of them, offering them chance after chance to be redeemed. He offered them the promise land, a land flowing with milk and honey. Praise God! He is slow to anger and full of patience with them, as well as with you and me yet today.

I believe that God allows us to stray not because He wants us to, but because He created us with free will. And because of that free will, we want to do our thing, our desires and not the will of God; however, there will be a day of judgment for our behavior.

I’m going to take a big step here and ask this:

Are we so busy today with the world so full of noise that we don’t hear the voice of God speaking to us?

Paul was so bent to destroy the Christian movement that he was seeking Christians to take back to Rome to be crucified. As he was traveling, God struck him down on the road to Damascus. Paul’s words were, “Who are you, Lord?”

I sense with all my heart that we are a special chosen vessel of the Lord today, intended to share His message of love and forgiveness to the whole world. He has planted us in his promised land. But like the chosen people of Israel, we have forsaken God’s desire for our own. We have raped our land of its rich minerals for the sake of a profit while not doing God’s will. We have allowed society to cripple the church’s witness and time with God for one or two hours of time a week in our lives. Look at the church’s services today compared to what it was 50 years ago.

Commerce today is 24/7 today. The church has no control or voice in our world. If someone goes to the corner of our streets, crying out the love of God, they are labeled a religious freak or fanatic.

Yes, I know the Lord is slow to anger and patient, but let us wake up to the potential to see the judgment that I spoke of. It is more than 2000 years closer to us than when Christ walked among us on the earth.

Let us pray!

Not Peace, but Division

13th Sunday of Pentecost
Scripture: St. Luke 12:49-59

We all love a gentle Jesus. Recall these images of our Lord:
· A soft, glowing headshot
· A man holding a lamb on His shoulders
· Jesus sitting among the little children, holding one on His lap
· A tiny baby cuddling in His mother’s arms

Yet there are also the images of Jesus being crucified and suffering and dying on a cross. We don’t often envision Him as an angry, irate, and temperamental one, but there is the image of Him chasing the money chargers from the temple with a raised whip in His hands. He used a raise voice to call the Pharisees and Sadducees a “brood of vipers.”

And we gloss over these words of our Savior: “Do you think I have come to bring peace to the world. No, I tell you, but rather division.

We don’t care for a Jesus who stirs up divisions and irritates us, yet He speaks truth to the power of this world, both political and religious, and to all others. For there will be a final judgment for all our human actions.

Life can be a terrible experience through one must pass, a life full of decisions until we pass through and emerge triumphantly from them, until we climb the golden stairs to the heavenly kingdom.
Jesus had the cross ever before His eyes and mind.

Oh yes, there will be divisions between mankind, even members of our family and members of the world’s family.

The story of the vineyard in Isaiah 5 comes to mind. Even when the vinekeeper does everything right, the outcome might not be a harvest one hopes for.

A man built a vineyard on a fertile hillside and removed the stones from it, dug in the soil, and planted choice vines. He hoped for a harvest and built a fence around it and a winepress for the fruits. In the fullest of times, he went to see the fruits of his labors. The grapes were unfit for wine.
We are God’s chosen ones today, and we have a choice: whether to accept Him and engage in a spiritual rebirth and “Awakening” to encounter a new life with Him.

But created with free will, our lifestyle may be like that vineyard’s, producing unfit grapes or unfit actions by our behavior for the Lord. We yield to the lower side of humanity and its lifestyle.
Satan slips in and drives a wedge between us and our Lord, rendering us unfit to produce blessings for our Lord.

May we see that divisions between us are not always bad, for it may be division that awakes a spiritual awakening and revival in our lives. The Lord can open the doors of our lives open to deeper love in Him.

It’s like the person who said cancer was the best thing that ever happened to him. Not the illness, but the awakening to what is important in his life: his loved ones and realization of love and need for his Lord.

May we take the divisions that happen in our life not to separate us from one another or the Lord, but as a spiritually awakening growth that happens in our lives, awaking us to the fullness of this life and the life that awaits us in the heavenly kingdom.

Let us pray!

No Room in Heaven for Earthly Things

12th Sunday after Pentecost

Scripture: St. Luke 12:13-21

Two things stand out about this rich man in our scriptures in this parable.

First, he never saw beyond himself. Second, he never saw the need for the eternal kingdom that is open to all who believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

We go into God’s closet and are shown a brand new pair of threads that are made just for us. Are we lost in the material things of this world?

In Christ, we are dressed in a new wardrobe. Every item in our new way of life is custom-made by our Creator with His label. A new Easter outfit cannot be worn with our old, smelly tennis shoes. Our new clothes of renewal cannot be worn out with our shoes and stinky socks of anger, malice, and slander. Once we put on the garments God has created for us, we must rid ourselves of the filthy garments of this world.

The image of filthy rags works for this present world only. We think very highly of our closets overflowing with the latest styles for today. However, in this parable Luke turns our attention away from our earthly positions to the eternal treasures that are meant to define our labors for the Lord. Even new Easter clothes don’t make it into the eternal kingdom of God.

We are to turn our hearts to labor to cultivate the true eternal gifts of our Lord. The scriptures from Luke and 2 Colossians 3:1-11 could not be more aligned in their meaning. The scriptures tell us to set our minds on the things that are above, not on the things of this earth. We are, therefore, to store treasures that are rich in God’s love for us in abundance.

The rich fools’ total lives and labors are totally centered on the material labors of this life.

His words were on himself: I, me, my, mine

A schoolboy was asked what part of speech is “my” or “mine.” He answered, “Aggressive pronouns.” The rich fool was aggressively self-centered.

· “my crops”

· “my barn”

· “I know”

· “I’ll tear down”

· “my small barns and build bigger ones”

· “then I’ll sit back and live the good life”

But the Lord said to him, “Fool, your life will be taken from you this very night. Then, who will get all your earthly treasures.”

While not many of us think we are rich fools, when we are compared with people in our community and the world who have little or nothing, we are living in abundance. How have we used our blessings to express our love unto the Lord? Are we still using our blessings for earthly things?

What is wrong is that there are more rich fools still seeking to tear down their little barns and build bigger ones to store up more? Jesus tells us not to be concerned about what we will eat or wear. If He feeds the flowers of the fields and the birds of the air, who neither sew nor reap, how much more are we taken care of than these creatures, us who were created in Jesus’ very image.

Let us pray!