Decorated Christmas Tree in Buffalo's Worship Center
This Little Thing (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 27 December 2023)
Scripture: When the angels left them, the shepherds said to one another, “Let us go to Bethlehem to see this thing that has taken place.” ~Luke 2:15 (NRSV, abridged)
IN HUMAN TERMS, this thing that took place in Bethlehem isn’t much. A young couple had a baby. It happens every second on this spinning earth. Despite the angels’ sky-exploding bombast, it’s a little thing. And I wonder if the hastening shepherds might not have been a tad disappointed when they got there and found something so modest, like when you go see a show your friends have been gushing about, and you try to like it because, well, it’s amazing, right? But it’s sort of meh, and you’re embarrassed that maybe you missed something, so you just tell them, yeah, yeah, it was great. I wish sometimes that Luke hadn’t decided to tell us the Christmas story like a gushy reviewer, because when we read about heavenly pyrotechnics marking key moments of grace, we could start expecting them in our own lives with God. Then, when not much happens, we might wonder what we missed. Probably nothing. It’s just that when God works for our well-being, mostly it’s by little things, small moves, a rustle of a single wing, not a flapping sky-full of them. To set the world free for love, you have to start somewhere, somehow. It doesn’t need to be in shock and awe. A wee gesture will do, something modest and small, and lo and behold, that wee thing is everything, alpha and omega in a nutshell, the whole thing in a little thing. Like the Little Thing we adore this blessed morn, God’s slight initiative, a babe newborn and beautiful. {This devotion by Mary Luti was this year's Christmas Day posting to the Daily Devotional website.}
Prayer: Thank you, God, for Jesus, born this happy morning— your gesture of love, your slight initiative, your little thing, our everything. Amen.
Music: A YouTube performance of “O Holy Night” by Malakai Bayoh and Aled Jones. Perhaps because of the challenges of the melody’s vocal range, this hymn is not included in our Methodist Hymnal.
Buffalo's Altar: Lighting for the Taize Prayer and Music Service in November.
Kept Awake by Love (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 20 December 2023)
Scripture:Mary’s Song
And Mary said: “My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has been mindful of the humble state of his servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me— holy is his name. His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. He has performed mighty deeds with his arm; he has scattered those who are proud in their inmost thoughts. He has brought down rulers from their thrones but has lifted up the humble. He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful to Abraham and his descendants forever, just as he promised our ancestors.” ~Gospel of Luke: 1: 46-55
IN SPITE OF MY BEST INTENTIONS, somewhere around Halloween my ability to stay on top of things begins to unravel. It gets more and more difficult to wake up before the sun and harder to meet all the demands of each day, or even of the previous day. As things left undone accumulate and the hours of daylight diminish, a kind of lethargy sets in. I can feel it seep into the lives of everyone in my household, making it hard to start preparing homework or grade papers or cook a healthy meal. Even our cats seem to feel it, preferring to remain curled up on the couch like little cat doughnuts rather than bounding to the door to greet us. So when the first candle is lit and the voices of Advent sing out across the church—Wake up! It’s time to begin again!—it feels like the most graceful invitation I have ever heard. This, to me, is one of the greatest gifts of Christian life: that God never tires of offering us the opportunity to begin again. Advent reminds us that the kingdom announced by John the Baptist, the kingdom that has “come near,” is not like a train we either catch on its way through town or miss forever. The kingdom of heaven is more like a comet that blazes regularly into view, lighting up the sky and taking our breath away. It’s hard not to view time as an oppressive force, something to work against, something to stay ahead of, something to manage. But surely that is not God’s intention; surely God means for time to be a sign of God’s hope in us, God’s confidence that we can change. With each new year, God extends to us a fresh opportunity to become the people God intends us to be, to try again to be guided by love and mercy, to crave justice, be present to others, and to live fully awake to God’s presence. As one year gives away to another, we are invited to give way—to seek forgiveness, or to offer it, and to turn toward the mountain of God where weapons of war are reshaped as tools of human flourishing and violent ways are unlearned. The prophetic voices of Advent reach us in our lethargy and urge us to wake up and get moving, to travel inward toward greater understanding of the world inside us and outward toward a deeper engagement with the world all around us. In Advent, we are called to beat our swords into plowshares and to wait in patience. To walk in the light of the Lord and to rest in darkness. To resist injustice and to keep silent before mysteries we cannot fully understand. The prophetic voices of Advent remind us that the way in and the way out are the same way, that the life inside of us and the life all around us are animated by the same source. The woman in the Song of Songs is not among the prophetic voices to which we usually tune our ears during Advent, but if you’re looking for a prayer to carry you into the darkness of these days, read the second verse of the fifth chapter. As the woman lies in her bed, separated from her beloved, she sings, “I slept, but my heart was awake.” Even while sleeping, something inside of her is wakeful, some part of her is listening for the sound of her lover’s knock at her door. I slept, but my heart was awake. This quiet little sentence gets at something true about us, I think. Even when we feel more scattered than present in our own lives, even when we have let our world shrink to the size of our to-do list, even when we are asleep, some part of us is awake and waiting. No matter how tiny, no matter how hidden, God greets and addresses us in this hidden place during Advent—that part of us that stays awake longing and listening, and reaching out for God even when the rest is too distracted to notice. In Advent, we are invited to learn to be led by our wakeful hearts, to nudge our inner and outer lives into closer alignment, to be kept awake by love. This invitation does not come just once a year, of course. It comes with each new week, with each new day, with each new moment. It comes to us in what St. Teresa of Ávila once called the interior castle and what St. Catherine of Siena called the cell of self-knowledge. It comes to us in our relationships and in our bodies and in the world through which our bodies move. And it comes to us in the life of Jesus, whose story we prepare to enter once more from the beginning. Jesus, whose life was so wholly awake, whose inner and outer lives matched so completely that his one life promised new life for us all. {This devotion by Stephanie Paulsell was originally published by The Christian Century magazine in December 2009.}
Prayer: Even in our sleep, may our hearts remain awake.
Roses covered with ice at Buffalo's Labyrinth (December 2023)
Songs in the Night (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 13 December 2023)
Scripture: By day the Lord commands steadfast love, and at night God’s song is with me, a prayer to the God of my life. ~Psalm 42:8 (ESV, adapted)
HAD YOUR FILL of Christmas carols yet? Are you sated with unholy Muzak versions of “O Holy Night”? Do you wish “O Come, All Ye Faithful” would just go away? Or that the latest “First Noel” was the last you’d hear? Thank God, at least in the church we’re still in Advent, a season yet to be understood by Hallmark or Hollywood. And thank God for Advent carols and the truth they tell about what we really want—and this world needs—this Christmas:
• “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel” that sings to be freed from grief and loneliness, strife and quarrels. • “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus” that prays for release “from our fears and sins.” • “Watcher, Tell Us of the Night” that longs for the dawn and the light that the darkness has never overcome.
Advent carols sing, too, of the One who hears our longings and who comes with comfort and hope, peace and promise, steadfast love and even joy. “At night,” sings the psalmist, “God’s song is with me.” In Advent, God’s songs are with us, and if we let them, they will sing us through December’s lengthening nights to the dawn of Christmas Day. {This devotion by Talitha Arnold was posted on 14 December to the Daily Devotional website.}
Prayer: Day and night, in this season and every season, your songs are with us, O God. You give voice to our longing and you sing us through the shadows to your light. Thank you, God of our lives and all life. Amen.
Music: Two Youtube music video options: • A performance by CityChurchSF of “Come Thou Long-Expected Jesus” • For a more leisurely experience, a delightful 18-minute video on Advent music by Ben Maton (organist at Salisbury Cathedral in England) that contains an instruction to St. Andrew’s (a Norman church in Great Dumford) and a selection of Advent pieces played on the St. Andrew’s organ.
Blue Hippo in Buffalo's Playground
Really Ready (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 6 December 2023)
Scripture: “The messenger of the covenant, whom you look for so eagerly, is surely coming,” says the Lord of Heaven’s Armies. “ But who will be able to endure it when he comes? For he will be like a blazing fire that refines metal, or like a strong soap that bleaches clothes.” ~Malachi 3:1-2
HAVE YOU EVER BEEN READY FOR SOMETHING UNTIL YOU GOT IT … and then found out you were not really ready for it at all? Sometimes what we think we really want comes with changes we didn’t expect and are not prepared for. Everyone who thinks they’re ready for a pet may not be prepared to take care of one. The walks, the food, the medical care, the pet-sitting when you’re away. All these things and more come along with the advent of pets. Relationships, too, are much more than sentimental feelings. The constant communication and compromises require much more than sensual romantic episodes. And many of the professional promotions we are so eager to attain place increased demands on our time and concentration. With all our eager expectations, it behooves us to pause and consider what will be required of us when those expectations arrive. When our heart’s desire is delivered, how will it change our hearts? Advent is the time of joyous anticipation for the coming of the Messiah. But are we really ready? Are we really ready to be purged from the dross of elaborate but empty religiosity? Are we really ready for a deep dive of the Spirit into our personal contradictions? Are we really ready to be bleached and scoured into a newness of life? Much more than a glorious expectation, Advent requires real preparation. {This devotion by Pastor Kenneth Samuel of Decatur, Georgia, was published on The Daily Devotional website in December of 2022.}
Prayer: “Fix me for my starry crown. Fix me Jesus, fix me. Fix me for a higher ground. Fix me Jesus, fix me.”
Redeeming darkness (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 29 November 2023)
Scripture: "I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things." ~Isaiah 45: 6–7
AS I WRITE THIS, the end of daylight saving time is right around the corner. A week from now the sun will come up at 7 a.m. and set before 6 p.m., so that the day is more dark than light. Darkness is complete where I live, way out in the country at the end of a dirt road. When city people come to visit, they get jumpy after dark. Christian people do too, leading me to wonder where we got the idea that darkness exists chiefly to be vanquished. Biblically speaking, darkness is the pits. In the first testament, light stands for life and darkness for death. Sheol is dark as hell. When God is angry with people, they are plunged into darkness. Locusts darken the land. People grope in the dark without light, for the day of the Lord is darkness and not light. In the second testament, light stands for knowledge and darkness for ignorance. When the true light comes into the world, the world does not know him. He has come so that everyone who believes in him should not remain in the darkness, but they love darkness more than light. On the day he dies, darkness descends on the land from noon until three. First John sums it up: "God is light and in him there is no darkness at all." Or, in the vernacular of the Chattahoochee Baptist Church sign near my house, "If you cut God's light off, you'll be sitting in the dark with the devil." This strikes me as a problematic teaching on the verge of Advent, the church season of deepening darkness, when Christians are asked to remember that we measure time differently from the dominant culture in which we live. We begin our year when the days are getting darker, not lighter. We count sunset as the beginning of a new day. However things appear to our naked eyes, we trust that the seeds of light are planted in darkness, where they sprout and grow we know not how. This darkness is necessary to new life, even when it is uncomfortable and goes on too long. Ask any expectant mother if she wants her baby to come early and she will say no, she does not. As badly as her back hurts, as long as it has been since she has seen her toes, she is willing to wait because the baby is not ready yet. The eyelashes are ready, but not the fingernails. The kidneys are ready, but not the lungs. Those wing-shaped sacks are still preparing to make the leap from fluid to air. There is still more time to do in the dusky womb, where the baby is growing like a seed in the dark. The child's parents may never be ready, especially if this is their first. They want this; they are terrified of this. They planned for this; they cannot imagine how this happened. Meanwhile, they have a few baby-less weeks to go, which they can put to good use. They can make sure the nursery is ready. They can learn to sing some lullabies. They can think about what it means to bring a human being into the world, and what it will take to raise this child up into his or her full humanity. All they cannot do is hold a baby in the light, because the baby is still in the dark. The church waits like this during Advent—mulishly refusing to sing the songs pouring from loudspeakers at every shopping mall, stubbornly counting the days, puritanically declining to open any presents—because the baby is not ready yet, which means that we are not ready either. We have some time in the dark left to go. There is one word for darkness in the Bible that stands out from the rest. It shows up in the book of Exodus, at the foot of Mount Sinai, right after God has delivered Torah to the people: "Then the people stood at a distance, while Moses drew near to the thick darkness where God was" (20:21). This is araphel, my concordance says, the thick darkness that indicates God's presence as surely as the brightness of God's glory—something God later clarifies through the prophet Isaiah, in case anyone missed it earlier. "I am the Lord, and there is no other. I form light and create darkness, I make weal and create woe; I the Lord do all these things" (Isa. 45:6–7). Here is a helpful reminder to all who fear the dark. Darkness does not come from a different place than light; it is not presided over by a different God. The long nights of Advent and the early mornings of Easter both point us toward the God for whom darkness and light are alike. Both are fertile seasons for those who walk by faith and not by sight. Even in the dark, the seed sprouts and grows—we know not how—while God goes on giving birth to the truly human in Christ and in us. {This Advent devotion was written by Barbara Brown Taylor and first posted to The Christian Century website in November 2010.}
Prayer: O God, who has come into this world as a sign of hope, help us find that hope in you and bear that hope to others. Amen.
After Worship Service at Buffalo on Sunday, 19 November
Gratitude (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, 22 November 2023)
Scripture: The LORD is my strength and my shield; in him my heart trusts, and I am helped; my heart exults, and with my song I give thanks to him. ~Psalm 28: 7
You can click on this link to video by Rev. Shalom Agtarap, a Methodist pastor in Seattle, who discusses the concept of gratitude and its importance in our lives. Gratitude is not just a feeling, but also a practice and a way of seeing the world. Pastor Shalom reflects on the tendency to take things for granted, and how this hinders our ability to fully appreciate and express gratitude.
A transcript of Pastor Shalom’s remarks: My name is Shalom Agtarap, a pastor here in Seattle, Washington. I was asked to ponder practices of gratitude. But first, what is it? What is gratitude? One of my most favorite books is called "Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer" because it has impacted my life in such an enormous way. Brother David talks about gratitude as a posture. It's a feeling but it's also a practice. It's a way of seeing the world. Gratitude, he says, is prayer. When I see everything in the world as given, then my whole being feels like it has received a gift and the only appropriate response is "thank you." Meister Eckhart said, "If the only prayer we ever say is 'thanks', that would be enough." But often, I say thank you from only one part of myself. If someone holds the door open for me, I have been conditioned to say "thank you." But sometimes I do it without making eye contact. And sometimes I say it in such a low and hurried tone, they may not have even heard me. Is this what it means to be grateful? What keeps us from saying, "thank you" to all that we find, with our whole being? What keeps us from having a heart of gratitude? I believe the key element to gratitude is surprise. When I believe I could not be more unimpressed by something, that, "it's what I expect, why should it surprise me?" When I assume that I am entitled to something, then it's as if all sense of mystery evaporates. The thing that stifles gratitude is when we move through the world as if everything were planned out, as if nothing out of the ordinary can or should happen, and we were entitled to everything good thing. You know, people who've lived through close calls; near death experiences; almost losing a loved one, these folks know we are not entitled to anything. And often they'll live differently as a result of that experience. When we wake up to what is present all around us, what's bubbling up within us day to day, minute to minute, we find everything to be a gift. When we take nothing for granted, we receive life itself as a gift. When I receive the kind note in my mailbox as a gift, I then realize my friendship with the person who sent it is a gift. And when I think about my friendship with that one person, it becomes easy to remember my friendship with others. It's as if you are throwing gratitude stones into a lake and as these ripples expand to ever-widening circles of gratitude, I believe we become fully alive.
Prayer Reminder: "If the only prayer we ever say is 'thanks', that would be enough." ~Meister Eckhart (13th-century theologian & mystic)
Remember the Beginning (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 15 November 2023)
Scripture: Moses said to the people, “Remember this day on which you came out of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; no leavened bread shall be eaten. Today, in the month of Abib, you are going out. When the [Sovereign] brings you into a land flowing with milk and honey, you shall keep this observance in this month.” ~Exodus 13:3-5 (NRSV, abridged)
THE ANCIENT ISRAELITES resided in Egypt for four hundred thirty years (Exodus 12:40). That’s four hundred thirty years of separation from their ancestral home. Four hundred thirty years of agony and violence. Four hundred thirty years of bearing down through the pain just to survive. Four hundred thirty years of generational trauma. Four hundred thirty years that could not be “fixed” in one day. And yet on that day when Pharaoh said “Go!” and the people fled Egypt, Moses instructed them, “Remember this day.” Remember this one day in this one particular month. Remember this day when healing began. Remember this day when freedom started its journey. Remember this one day when the food tasted different, when time seemed to stand still, when new possibilities broke open before you. Remember the beginning. When the land is dry and your tongue cries out for milk. When your feet are weary and your skin thirsts for oil. When your soul imagines a bitter end and your heart does not remember the taste of honey. Remember the beginning. At the beginning, God strengthened you against fear and doubt, despite all the hardships you had known. You had every reason to avoid risk, to stay with the familiar, but God drew you out into the beautiful unknown. Even when the unknown is overwhelming, even when trouble finds you, you will remember the story of what is possible. And when you reach the end in all its satisfaction, remember and celebrate the beginning through which God brought you here. [This devotion by Rachel Hackenberg was posted to her blog Faith and Water on 13 September.]
Prayer: When I forget the story, O God, tell it to me again from the beginning.
Music:A performance by The Sixteen of “Turn Our Captivity O Lord” by the English Renaissance composer William Byrd. The acoustics of the All Hallows' Church, Gospel Oak, in London, are ideal for this recording by a superb choral ensemble. The text is from Psalm 126: "Turne our captivitie, O Lord, as a brooke in the South. They that sowe in teares, shall reap in joyfulness. Going they went and wept, casting their seeds. But comming, they shall come with jolitie, carrying their sheaves with them."
Black-eyed Susan flowers in Buffalo rain garden (August 2023)
Reflecting on the Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 8 November 2023
Scripture: Parable of the Ten Bridesmaids The Kingdom of Heaven will be like ten bridesmaids who took their lamps and went to meet the bridegroom. Five of them were foolish, and five were wise. The five who were foolish didn’t take enough olive oil for their lamps, but the other five were wise enough to take along extra oil. When the bridegroom was delayed, they all became drowsy and fell asleep. At midnight they were roused by the shout, ‘Look, the bridegroom is coming! Come out and meet him!’ All the bridesmaids got up and prepared their lamps. Then the five foolish ones asked the others, ‘Please give us some of your oil because our lamps are going out.’ But the others replied, ‘We don’t have enough for all of us. Go to a shop and buy some for yourselves.’ But while they were gone to buy oil, the bridegroom came. Then those who were ready went in with him to the marriage feast, and the door was locked. Later, when the other five bridesmaids returned, they stood outside, calling, ‘Lord! Lord! Open the door for us!’ But he called back, ‘Believe me, I don’t know you!’ So you, too, must keep watch! For you do not know the day or hour of my return. ~Matthew 25: 1-13
I LOVE BEING FREE. I especially love autonomous freedom—the delight of pursuing and doing what I want. As a person of privilege, I can use this freedom to bless or to curse. At times I use it for something that gives life, but at other times I use if for something that diminishes or even squanders life. I can make decisions that waste the hours others need just to find and carry water to their families. If I'm out for a walk, my discretionary income allows me to buy a latte or a shirt just because I want one; my family will still eat and have shelter. As a pastor, I may use leadership to get my way just because I am trusted and given freedom of expression. The problem is that autonomous freedom is near the root of what the Bible calls sin: life autonomous from God, autonomous from others. Remarkably, even though God knows our human instinct for turning the honor of interdependent freedom into the indulgence of autonomous freedom, God does not withdraw our freedom. Instead, God simply holds us accountable. This tension is central to Matthew's parable. Freedom is implicit in this equal-opportunity parable: ten bridesmaids with ten lamps await the bridegroom. Since many of Jesus' parables involve premises of inequality, this equality parable stands out. Though all ten maidens stand in the same place with the same possibilities, their stories diverge dramatically. Their choices bring consequences. Five of the maidens were wise and five were fools—this is measured by one criterion: action. It's what they did with their freedom and how they enacted their responsibility that matters. While we are not told why some had oil and some did not, their different choices reveal wisdom and foolishness. When they heard news of the groom's impending arrival, all of the bridesmaids arose and began to trim their lamps. But only five bridesmaids had brought oil. When the five bridesmaids with no oil asked the other five women if they could borrow some, they were told to go and get the oil themselves. Though it was midnight, the maids went out to find the oil they needed. This meant that at the moment that really mattered, the foolish maids did not have their minds on the bridegroom but on the oil. This mattered. We may hate this piece of the story, but it's true. The five wise maids went with the groom into the wedding while the other five were shut out because of their foolishness. We may find ourselves sputtering about good intentions, about the five foolish women just being human, about demands of grace. But Jesus ends the story by saying that those shut out were not victims of an officious wedding guardian; it was the groom himself who declared that he did "not know them." Though all the maids were equally free as they waited, they did not all use their freedom in the same ways. They all had the same opportunity to be in the right place, with the right intention, at the right time, but the readiness was up to them. We may feel the need to rush in and soften this text, to surround it with wider New Testament themes and to offer assurance that this can't be the final word. This is a legitimate and urgent response. But if we let this text make its point, the parable presses us to search and measure our intentions. Are we preparing for the kingdom? We can choose autonomous freedom, understanding that ultimately there is a severe price, or we can choose to invest our freedom by preparing light to shine when and where it will be needed. I've married many young men and women who could tell me—even before their wedding day—how their future spouse might abuse freedom and end their marriage. I recently sat with a man who tearfully explained that he'd felt justified in pursuing what mattered to him even as he ignored what mattered to his wife and daughter. "It was a very big mistake," he said in tears. "I was absorbed. I was blind. I lost them." The price can be worse than we imagine. I have seen churches exercise their freedom, get lost in themselves and forget their neighbors. When they belatedly reach out, those around them reply, "Too little, too late." It's the pain of wasted freedom. The foolish maids failed to have what was essential. In Jesus' teaching, waiting or being ready never seems to be about chronological speculation or theological musings but about how we choose to live. The wise maids chose to act on what they could influence (whether or not they had oil) rather than worry about what they could not determine (the groom's arrival) or presume on others by borrowing. We begin the story thinking that the mystery is the timing of the bridegroom's arrival, but as the parable unfolds, the central mystery instead is why some maids didn't bring oil. They failed to use their freedom wisely. What is our freedom for? It's meant to show our readiness in action: to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. This is the essence of lamp-ready lives. [This devotion by Mark Labberton was published by the Christian Century in November, 2011.]
Prayer: We pray that we may be worthy of the freedom given to us by God, that we might learn to love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength.
Milkweed blossoms & seed pods in a Buffalo rain garden.
Moving Past the Past (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 1 November 2023)
Scripture: Some of the people who lived there in Jerusalem said among themselves, “Can it be that our leaders have learned after all, that he really is the Messiah? But how could he be? For we know where this man was born; when Christ comes, he will appear and no one will know where he comes from.” ~John 7:25-27 (TLB, excerpted)
IT IS OFTEN SAID that familiarity breeds contempt, and unfortunately it is true in many cases. People feel that knowledge of our past gives them a certain license to determine our character and to prescribe our future. Our credit history determines our present credit worthiness. Past relationships are often viewed as indicators of our current suitability status. Voters are always looking for the “different” breed of candidate not cut from the same cloth of “politics as usual.” Even the history of one’s ethnic group is sometimes used as an assessment of one’s potential. Some of Jesus’ contemporaries dismissed the possibility of his identity as the Messiah on the sole basis of their presumed knowledge of his background. They knew of the rather nondescript, unimpressive vicinity of Nazareth where Jesus was reared. They knew of his working class, pedestrian parents. They may have even known something about the scandal that circulated around his birth. People assumed that the person sent to save them could not possibly share any common origins with them. In the minds of many, the Messiah had to be shrouded in mystery; a person’s value could only be recognized in a person’s non-disclosure. Our challenge today is to maintain respect for the people we’ve come to know intimately. Our challenge is to never lose courtesy, kindness or consideration for the people who are closest to us. Our challenge is to never get so familiar with anyone—or with anyone’s past—that we categorize them, lock them into profiles, prejudge them, or take them for granted. Our challenge is to discover divinity in the vicinity of our own backgrounds. Knowledge of a person’s past is never tantamount to knowing the person. Anonymity should never be the price of anyone’s acceptance. [This devotion by Kenneth Samuel, a pastor in Decatur, Georgia, was copied from the Daily Devotional website.]
Prayer: Gracious God, help us to remember this: “What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us” (Ralph Waldo Emerson). Amen.
Music: A recording of Agnus Dei by Samuel Barber, performed by the Flemish Radio Choir. This choral composition is Barber’s own arrangement of his Adagio for Strings (1936), certainly one of the most beautiful musical compositions by an American composer. In 1967 Barber set the Latin words of the liturgical Agnus Dei for mixed chorus, with an optional organ or piano accompaniment. This should be an ideal choice of music for November 1, All Saints' Day.
Translation of the Agnus Dei The simplicity of Agnus Dei makes it an easy one to remember, even if you know little or no Latin. It begins with a repeating invocation and ends with a different request. LatinEnglish Agnus Dei, Lamb of God, qui tolis peccata mundi, who takes away the sins of the world, miserere nobis. have mercy on us. Agnus Dei, Lamb of God, qui tolis peccata mundi, who takes away the sins of the world, dona nobis pacem. grant us peace.
In a Buffalo rain garden, Rudbeckia blooming (with orange Asclepias blooms in the background).
This I Know (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 4 October 2023)
Scripture: But as for you, continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus. ~2 Timothy 3:14-15 (NRSV)
MRS. HARRISON IS THE FIRST TEACHER I REMEMBER. I graduated from the Cradle Roll to the Nursery and then, when I turned 3, I left the baby toys behind and went across the hall to Sunday school, where we sat in little chairs at little tables and shared juice and crackers, and we learned from Mrs. Harrison. She had a gentle smile and a modest bouffant, and she sat at the tiny tables in those 1960s sheath dresses and high heels, with her lipstick on right, and she made sure I learned the song that taught the most important thing. “Jesus loves me,” she sang, and I sang with her, and I believed he did. It must be true if Mrs. Harrison thought so. Twenty-five years later I went back to visit and brought my 3-year-old son. When it was time for Sunday school, someone pointed us to the familiar room. My heart felt big enough to burst when I saw Mrs. Harrison standing there, as glad to see me as I was to see her. Her hair was grey, and not as high. Her lipstick was still on right. I left my son sitting on a little chair, looking up at her with a serious expression while she beamed back at him. As I turned the corner at the end of the hall, I could hear them singing. [This devotion was written by Martha Spong, a UCC pastor, and was posted to the Daily Devotional website on 30 September.]
Prayer: We give thanks, Holy God, for the people who first taught us about Jesus and gave us a sense of belonging, to the church and to you. Amen.
Music: A performance of “Jesus Loves Me” by the Gaither Vocal Band, The Oak Ridge Boys, and The Gatlin Brothers
Note to readers: The next Midweek Devotion will be posted the last week in October.
Blooms on a Tall Stonecrop at Buffalo (August 2023)
The Enlivening Message of Grace (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 27 September 2023)
Scripture: For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- not by works, so that no one can boast. ~Ephesians 2: 8-9
RECENTLY, A LETTER ABOUNDED AROUND SOCIAL MEDIA. It was a missive from a minister noting the many reasons why he was leaving the ministry. The note struck a nerve, no doubt, because the soon-to-be-former-pastor was correct in many of his critiques. Too many clergy, churches, and denominations have capitulated to the demands of the market, configuring the Body’s ministry in ways that are both unmanageable and, frankly, unbiblical (i.e., Pastor as CEO/Counselor/Fundraiser/Human Resources Director). Candidly though, I read this colleague’s epistle and I lamented how little mention he made of the gospel and its enlivening message of grace. In his characteristic bluntness, Martin Luther insists in his lectures on Galatians that only those on fire for the gospel, who are also absolutely convinced their lives have been hijacked by the Risen Christ, should ever dare preach. The call cannot be a summons vaguely felt or reluctantly followed. Reading this letter that was making the rounds on the Christian internet, I thought of Dr. Robert Dykstra, my Jedi Master from Princeton. Just before I graduated, “Bob” lamented that I was about to serve in a denomination whose system of appointing pastors “contradicts everything we know about psychology.” I asked what he meant and he replied by explaining how it’s a given that people in congregations wear masks, keep up pretenses, and are reluctant to let others see what’s behind the curtain of the self they show others. He then offered me this wisdom: “If you’re going to stay a Methodist, then you should tell your bishop you’ll serve wherever they send you so long as they’re willing to leave you there for at least seven years. It takes that long for people to reveal who they are behind their masks, warts and all.” In other words, it takes time to see grace at work in people’s lives. It takes patience to bear witness to the slow ways God works in the world. But seen it I have, and that — by a long shot and then some — is not only the best thing about ministry, it’s what keeps me at it. The truth of the gospel is not self-evident. It requires exemplification. So, for instance, I could tell you about the woman who I knew for a decade before Jesus made her a completely different person in the last years of her life. Her name is Shirley. To be honest, our relationship back then was often marked by mutual frustration. Today, though she’s joined the company of heaven, I think of her as something of a cross between a friend and a surrogate grandmother. What accounts for the change in her? She credits it with a spiritual discipline she started practicing a couple of years ago, intentionally praying the shema every day and daily committing herself to loving Christ and through him, others. Grace has changed her. Maybe that doesn’t strike you as a Road to Damascus type of story but it’s real and it’s just one example of many I could give. I could tell you about the woman who, having been cared for tenderly by a black nurse, at the end of her life confessed and repented of her racism. I could tell you about husbands and wives who, after much painful work, have forgiven one another of adultery, abuse, addiction. You name it. I could tell you about prodigals who’ve come home, mothers and fathers who’ve worked at welcoming them and elder brothers who’ve looked themselves in the mirror to finally confront the nasty self-righteousness in them. I could tell you about people who’ve come to faith by dirtying their hands serving the poor, and I can tell you about individuals who’ve given over hundreds of thousands of dollars for the poor because God Christ has been generous to them. I could tell you about people who’ve lost a child. And lost their faith. And found it again. Even then, I’d only be scratching the surface of what I could tell you. Not only was Dr Dykstra right. His point has turned out to be the best thing about being a pastor. If you give it time, you do get to see. I can’t prove God exists. Any God worthy of our worship is a God who can only be known through self-revelation. And, sure, I count myself under Luther’s criteria for preachers; nevertheless, there are those dark days and dark moods — usually when the caskets are four feet long or less — when I wrestle with my doubts and fear I’ve given my life to a fool’s errand. But what I can prove, what I can point to and say “See, there it is,” what I know without ever a day of doubt, is that grace is real. It happens. And so I persist. [This devotion by Jason Micheli was posted to the Mockingbird website on 19 September.]
Prayer: We give thanks for this perfect gift of grace available in God’s irrevocable love. Amen.
Music: There are dozens of performances of "Amazing Grace" on the internet. Here are links to two of them, a recording by Celtic Woman and the second is Andrea Bocelli’s Easter Sunday performance on April 12, 2020 from the Duomo Cathedral, Milan during the darkest days of the COVID-19 pandemic.
And, finally, we would be remiss not to include a link to President Barack Obama singing Amazing Grace at the Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston at the memorial service for Reverend Clementa Pinckney in 2015, a moment that includes a powerful evocation of the power of grace and the "reservoir of goodness" that exists in our world.
Purple Coneflower at Buffalo (August 2023)
Why God Is Jealous (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 20 September 2023)
Scripture: The Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard
For the kingdom of heaven is like a landowner who went out early in the morning to hire workers for his vineyard. He agreed to pay them a denarius for the day and sent them into his vineyard. About nine in the morning he went out and saw others standing in the marketplace doing nothing. He told them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard, and I will pay you whatever is right.’ So they went. He went out again about noon and about three in the afternoon and did the same thing. About five in the afternoon he went out and found still others standing around. He asked them, ‘Why have you been standing here all day long doing nothing?’ ‘Because no one has hired us,’ they answered. He said to them, ‘You also go and work in my vineyard.’ When evening came, the owner of the vineyard said to his foreman, ‘Call the workers and pay them their wages, beginning with the last ones hired and going on to the first.’ The workers who were hired about five in the afternoon came and each received a denarius. So when those came who were hired first, they expected to receive more. But each one of them also received a denarius. When they received it, they began to grumble against the landowner. ‘These who were hired last worked only one hour,’ they said, ‘and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the work and the heat of the day.’ But he answered one of them, ‘I am not being unfair to you, friend. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the one who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’
What if the agreed daily wage is forgiveness and eternal life?
I USED TO RUN PARISH FAMILY RETREAT WEEKENDS. My favorite icebreaker was to set out a hundred photographs, each one of a person showing a strong emotion. I’d invite each participant to choose a photo and say, in a couple of sentences, why he or she had selected it. I’ve never forgotten a burly man, age around 30, who picked out a photograph of a smiling child who was tightly embracing a tub of candy. The man explained that he’d been married a year or two and felt he’d received the most fabulous gift in the world. It was clear he wasn’t a high achiever or high earner or high anything much. But you couldn’t match his smile. His wife looked pretty happy too. There wasn’t a hint of boasting: there was just effervescent joy. When you’re a pastor who’s spent countless hours with couples who’ve come to see each another as a threat and a curse, you don’t forget such a smile. Later in the weekend I spoke with a man from the retreat who remembered the incident. This man seemed extremely restless and staccato of speech. He needed to share, so I said to him, “Go on, let it all out.” What came out was this: “I hate that man for having what I don’t have. It feels so unfair—I’m attractive, I’m kind, I’m hard-working, I’m even a virgin, if that helps—so why can’t I smile with that kind of joy?” That was the day I learned the difference between envy and jealousy. In everyday speech the words are often used interchangeably. But they’re not the same. The difference is subtle, but vital. Jealousy is the anxiety of losing what you rightly have. Envy is the yearning to acquire what you don’t have, but somebody else has. The smiling man was jealous: he loved what he had and was not the least bit embarrassed about it. My visitor was envious—he wanted what the smiling man had. Badly. We frequently read in scripture that our God is a jealous God. If envy and jealousy were the same thing, that would be an absurd statement. What—God looking at other gods and thinking they do better miracles or came up with a better idea than creation? Don’t be silly. But if jealousy means being like the smiling man, then yes, God is like that. God treasures us with that unselfconscious smile of effervescent joy and does not mind who sees and who knows. God will hold on to us with that strong embrace and, if we go missing or astray, God will go to any lengths to come looking for us. A jealous God is part of the wonder of grace: God doesn’t want a hundred other things—God wants us. But we are envious. We just can’t be glad for what we have. We compulsively look at what others have and feel impoverished by the comparison. In so doing we objectify their lives, seeing them as a series of commodities we could somehow acquire or that we feel entitled to. Meanwhile we diminish our own lives by seeing only their scarcity, never their plenitude. Witness the parable of the late-hired laborers in Matthew 20:1–15. The early-hired laborers are envious. They don’t see why they shouldn’t get more—a lot more—than those hired late in the day. Our sympathies are with them; whether you see them as Jews and gentiles, lifelong believers and deathbed converts, or as exploited laborers in many parts of the world today, the issue seems one of pure justice: if you work hard and long you get rewarded; if you work just as hard and twice as long you get doubly rewarded. But what if the agreed daily wage is forgiveness and eternal life? The only response is overflowing gratitude and indescribable joy. God’s grace can’t be halved or multiplied. It’s ridiculous to demand “double eternal life” or “triple forgiveness.” There’s only one reason we’d ask for such a thing—even demand it—and that’s because our envy has so consumed us that we can’t enjoy what we have for fear that someone else might have something better. It’s no small thing to have forgotten the difference between envy and jealousy. The economy depends on us desiring what we don’t have and acquiring something similar or better of our own. Perhaps it’s time for the rehabilitation of jealousy. If our sense of God’s grace is so precious, we should guard it jealously, nurture it, foster it, and seek ways to deepen and enrich it. The time spent comparing ourselves with others is time wasted. In the end we shall come face to face with God and say, “I took you for an envious God, constantly looking around at others, and so I became an envious person, restlessly comparing, assuming others had it so good. All the time I was looking here, there and everywhere, thinking you were the same. But now, standing here before you, seeing your piercing and utterly loving gaze, I understand I was wrong. You’re a jealous God: all the time you were just looking at me.” [This devotion was written by Samuel Wells and originally published by The Christian Century in October, 2014.]
Prayer: Dear God, may we understand that your grace is precious and we should guard it jealously, nurture it, foster it, and seek ways to deepen and enrich it.
Music: A YouTube performance of a hymn we sang last Sunday in Buffalo’s Worship Service: Come and Find the Quiet Center, performed by the Kirk Marcy, Bothell High School Combined Choirs
Plaque next to the entrance to Buffalo UMC
Our House Was a Point of Entry (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 13 September 2023)
Scripture: “Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God.” ~Romans 15:7 (NRSV)
“OUR HOUSE WAS A PORT OF ENTRY,” my friend Rudy said of his childhood in a Midwestern industrial town, where his dad worked one good job for a lifetime at the steel mill. Rudy recalled union picnics and church Christmas programs. They weren’t just for union members or church folk. Free food, acrobats, Christmas presents, were for everybody, including those new to town. For while Rudy was raised in one small town in Indiana, his mother was raised in another small town in Mexico, and she did not leave that behind. Rudy recalled how his mother’s relatives from Mexico came to stay with them in Indiana, for months at a time, as they began new lives. He talked about how much bigger his world became because of the cousins who came through their home, saying again, “Our house was a point of entry!” I felt convicted because I do not think of my home that way. When I am out speaking, when I drive on the highway, when I stand in line at a crowded store, I know I have to share space with strangers. But as an introvert, I’m always longing for that moment when I finally get to close the door on the people I do not know, and settle into my small fortress of the familiar. When I think of points of entry, I picture the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island and other places that are definitely not my house. To be honest, even the phrase conjures up anxiety of standing in long lines at airports, where officers checking passports make me feel like I’m doing something wrong. Then, I rage at the brutality of my own nation’s border, where some offer each other water but more just yell from afar for taller walls. But what about all the other points of entry, the intimate ones, that are right in front of me? What if I thought of my home, or my church home, as a point of entry? Rather than being a safe place for me and mine, its purpose would be transformed to something better and more Biblical: a point of entry for the one who has yet to arrive. [This devotion was written by Lillian Daniel and posted to The Daily Devotional website.]
Prayer: Make my sacred space a point of entry, welcoming Christ, whether I’m ready for that or not. Amen.
Coreopsis blooming in a Buffalo rain garden (August 2023)
Getting Forgiveness (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 6 September 2023)
Scripture: “If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” ~Matthew 18: 15-20
Christ’s love binds up our broken hearts and broken ways.
ANGIE CALLED IN A PANIC. “Can you come to the hospital? The nurse says dad doesn’t have long. He wants to see you.” Angie’s parents were lifelong members of the Lutheran congregation I serve as pastor. Betty had died six months earlier, and through that crucible of care and mourning I had become well acquainted with Angie and her father, Earl. I arrived at the hospital. Angie hugged me at the door of Earl’s room and then stepped into the hallway to give us privacy. Earl sat propped up in the hospital bed, his eyes glassy but relatively alert. He nodded to me in recognition as I pulled a chair to his bedside. I got right to the point. “Hi, Earl. Angie said you wanted to see me.” His eyes welled with tears as he confessed, “I need forgiveness, but I can’t get it.” I reached for his hand and smiled reassuringly, “Oh, Earl. God’s forgiveness is a gift. You can always ask for and receive God’s free gift of mercy and forgiveness.” Earl shook his head, no. “I need forgiveness from Betty. I missed my chance to say I’m sorry and make it up to her. What if she’s mad at me when I see her in heaven?” I didn’t know what to say. We sat in silence for a moment. “Well,” I said, tentatively, “perhaps we could imagine her here, in this room. You could confess what’s on your mind. You could ask for God’s forgiveness.” Earl shifted his gaze from me to the corner of the room. “Can you see her?” I asked. Earl nodded. “What would you like to say?” A gush of words flowed from Earl, cataloguing his regrets and missteps in their life together: moments of shame, missed opportunities to do right, and words he regretted saying. I listened calmly, a witness to his pain and human brokenness, absorbing his words of confession. As his words trickled to a stop, he concluded, “I’m so sorry.” Holding his right hand in my left and placing my right hand on his shoulder, I spoke slowly and firmly, “Earl, on behalf of God in Christ, I declare to you the entire forgiveness of all your sins. Depart in peace.” Earl squeezed my hand in a nonverbal amen. We sat silently for a few moments, as the mid-afternoon sun filled the room with warmth and light. I caught Earl’s eye and made a confession of my own. “Earl, I’m not sure how heaven works, but I have a feeling that although forgiveness is a gift, reconciliation is a job. You and Betty have some work to do in heaven.” Earl smiled, “I’m ready.” The work of holy reconciliation in Matthew 18 finds its roots in the gracious gift of God’s mercy. Christ’s love binds up our broken hearts and broken ways. It frees us to reconnect with one another, even when we fail again and again. Till our final breath, God is in our midst and calls us to persistent creativity in reuniting. A few hours later, Angie called to say that Earl had died. I imagined that what he had bound on earth would be bound in heaven. [This devotion by Amy Ziettlow, pastor of Holy Cross Lutheran Church in Decatur, Illinois, was published by The Christian Century in September, 2017. All names and some identifying details have been changed. ]
Prayer: Although we fail again and again, we give thanks for Christ’s love that heals our broken hearts, that mends our broken ways, that frees us to join together with one another.
Music: Three options for listening to the old-time hymn “In the Sweet Bye and Bye.”
Hoary Alyssum: the beautiful white flowers of a tough weed growing in Buffalo's lawn.
Following Jesus Means the Human Things and the Divine Things Will Overlap (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 30 August 2023)
Scripture
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on the third day be raised to life. Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. “Never, Lord!” he said. “This shall never happen to you!” Jesus turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; you do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.” Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul? For the Son of Man is going to come in his Father’s glory with his angels, and then he will reward each person according to what they have done. “Truly I tell you, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.” ~Gospel of Matthew 16: 21-28
WHEN I TAUGHT sixth-grade language arts, I used a set of diagrams called graphic organizers to help my students organize their thoughts. We used Venn diagrams to compare and contrast, writing differences in the outside portions of the overlapping circles and similarities in the center where the two circles meet. To sort ideas into categories, we used a very simple kind of graphic organizer: two columns. One column might be titled “books of the Old Testament” and the other “books of the New Testament.” They’re mutually exclusive. The divisions are clear. To confuse these columns, to put items meant for one column into the other, is to commit what philosopher Gilbert Ryle called a category mistake. If you’ve mentally sorted bats into the category “birds,” for example, you might waste a lot of time searching for their feathers. Most of the time, category mistakes result in mere confusion, not in loud condemnations from the Son of God. But poor Peter! Mere moments after Jesus praises him as a star pupil, the foundation from which every generation of believers will be built, Peter messes up in grand fashion. He refuses to believe that Jesus’ ministry will end with betrayal and crucifixion, and he begs Jesus not to speak of such nonsense anymore. Jesus lights into him, accusing the rock of being a stumbling block. “You are setting your mind not on divine things,” Jesus tells him, “but on human things.” One column for divine, one for human. Peter is sure he knows what goes in the “divine” column. Soaring prayers in immaculate temples, for instance. Unstoppable strength and miraculous power. Radiant glory and endless ease. Surely, these are the qualities of the Messiah; surely, aiming toward these spotless ideals will bring disciples closer to God. And in the “human” column? That’s where grief and pain belong; that’s where conflict and brokenness should go. All the grittiness and sorrow of this world: that’s what human must mean. But Jesus’ sharp rebuke shows how wrong Peter is. In his attempt to protect his beloved teacher, Peter makes a category mistake, swapping the titles at the top of the two columns. It turns out that Peter’s daydreams of the divine are, instead, human things: our own projection of who God is. Like Peter, we imagine a God who is remote and magical, invincible and impeccable. A God far removed from our concerns, perpetually triumphant. This is not the God revealed by and in Jesus: instead, it’s a work of our human imagination. Jesus calls us, instead, to define divine things differently. As Jesus names them, divine things include the experiences of betrayal and hypocrisy, the pain of suffering and death, and submission to resurrection mystery outside our control and beyond our understanding. The hardest and lowest things, the inescapable realities of human life: by paradox, these are actually the most divine. To understand God, to set our aim true, we must grasp incarnation: not only in its adorable Christmas swaddling clothes but also here on the road to Jerusalem. We must cope with the scandalous truth that in Christ, God enters into every mean and awful thing, so that what seems like the worst of our world might be the very places where we meet the most holy. And since Jesus goes before us into these rough divine places, we might follow him there, knowing that we do not go alone. We can pick up a cross, feeling a weight across our shoulders and splinters in the palms of our hands, knowing that we are not the first nor the only ones to carry it. We can lose the lives we’ve known, with their glib answers and careful plans, and find a new life over which we have no control, trusting that Jesus too went forward on a way full of peril and mystery. We follow him not out of masochistic delight in pain, nor from a grim abstinence from comfort. Instead, we risk sacrifice and trouble because we trust that God is present in these divine things—and that the life we find there will be the only life worth having. Not long after this exchange with Peter, Jesus offers his disciple a still different perspective, inviting him to come along on a hike up a mountaintop. At the summit, Peter suddenly sees Jesus more powerfully transfigured than even his old imaginings could have dreamed. His Savior shines, radiant and bright. The great heroes of the faith surround him. God’s own voice comes like a thunderclap from heaven. The vision does not last; it cannot last—work awaits down the mountain. But for just a moment, the thick line between the divine and human columns blurs. It turns out that to tell the story of Jesus, the best graphic organizer might not be shaped like two columns after all. Instead, we need the Venn diagram, where human things and divine things can overlap. In that doubled circle, we find glory and suffering, power and vulnerability, death and new life. We find the one who tells us to set our mind on what’s divine, knowing that what’s most divine is also most human. [This commentary on a passage from the Gospel of Matthew was written by Liddy Barlow and published by The Christian Century in August, 2020.]
Prayer: Lord, help us to trust in those moments when we witness how the divine and the human blend together. Give us the courage to accept how the glory and the suffering are so intimately yoked together.
In a Buffalo rain garden August blooms of Rudbeckia and Asclepias.
Look to the Rock (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 23 August 2023)
Scripture: Isaiah invites us to remember our origins.
Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.
Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him,but I blessed him and made him many.
For the Lord will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.
Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples.
I will bring near my deliverance swiftly, my salvation has gone out and my arms will rule the peoples; the coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope.
Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended. ~Isaiah 51:1-6
“Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug.”
LOOK TO THE EARTH, TO NATURE. Look to the larger environment. This imagery in Isaiah suggests how the life of faith is interconnected with all of God’s creation—rocks, quarries, humans, deserts, gardens, coastlands, the heavens and the earth. The reader’s attention is turned first to the rock; only then we are told to look to Abraham and Sarah as well. The material creation is primary as the source of our birth, the thing from which we were hewn and dug. This passage cries out for environmental respect and care, for a sustainability theology. Even if the writer doesn’t mean that we literally come from rocks and quarries, the metaphor reminds us how our genesis in the book of Genesis, when God created, was good. “God saw that it was good” when God created the world and everything in it. In talking about where people come from, Isaiah invites them to remember their beginnings, their roots, looking back to move forward. It is a biblical sankofa, an African word from the Akan tribe in Ghana that is translated literally as, “it is not taboo to fetch what is at risk of being left behind.” Isaiah reminds the people what God has done in the past in order to affirm that God will provide again in the future (“The LORD will comfort Zion”). And the future includes the past, as there is another Eden: God “will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD.” The echoes of nature and creation, even “heavens and the earth,” hearken back to the beginning to help us see the ending. Sight is important—“look.” Hearing is significant—“listen.” The created order is included, even our bodies. . . . It takes a holistic, sensory approach—the whole heavens and the earth—to understand and serve God. Minds aren’t sufficient to capture the fullness of God. We need our bodies and all of creation to show us God, to help us hear God. “Going green” is not just about environmental sustainability. It is about God’s proclivity for loving the entire good world from the beginning until the ending. (This devotion was written by Luke A. Powery, dean of the chapel and associate professor of the practice of homiletics at Duke University.)
Prayer: Let us all join together and lift up our eyes to the heavens and look at the earth beneath. In that moment of joy and thanksgiving, we will truly know that our salvation will be forever, and our deliverance will never be ended.
Music: One of the hymns we sang last Saturday at our old-fashioned Hymn Sing was Have Thine Own Way, Lord.
Veronica blooms at Buffalo (August 2023)
Praise Among All the People (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, 16 August 2023)
Scripture: May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine on us-- so that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. May the nations be glad and sing for joy, for you rule the peoples with equity and guide the nations of the earth. May the peoples praise you, God; may all the peoples praise you. The land yields its harvest; God, our God, blesses us. May God bless us still, so that all the ends of the earth will fear him. ~Psalm 67
The psalmist calls for something that is hard for us to imagine.
THERE IS NOTHING BETTER than seeing people who are different come together for a common purpose. We see a glimpse of this when we gather for worship. People come together with different experiences and at different ages and stages of life. It is so fulfilling to hear voices raised for a collective confession, a communal prayer, and a congregational hymn. It makes sense for the gathered people of God to be of one accord in worship. The common goal is understood by the people of God. We come to praise God and to leave a little different than the way we entered the space. Hearts are transformed through the preaching of the word and through the self-offering that comes by way of the grace and generosity we bestow on others. The psalmist calls for the entire nation to come together to praise God. The nation gathers to proclaim a central message that God is good and has blessed the people. The unified nation comes together for a common purpose and a visible witness. Through public praise to the only wise and loving God, the nation bears witness to the character of that God—a God of hope, mercy, compassion, and justice. It is hard for us to imagine a nation coming together for cohesive and collective praise. It is easier to conceive of a small community or congregation glorifying God in unity. In this day and age, there are many times when the public Christian witness is polarized and divided. There are denominational differences, various theological perspectives, and arguments about what it means to be a disciple of Jesus Christ. There are days when it is hard to tell by our work and our worship if we are all talking about the same faith. I would imagine that in the psalmist’s day there was human division and strife among the nations as well. And yet this nation of God’s own people are being called upon to lift up united voices of praise. Perhaps the truth here is that in the face of brokenness and discord, praise is what has the power to bring us together. If we begin our days and end our evenings with gratitude to our God, maybe, just maybe, we can find a common thread. If we give praise for life, for health, for strength, for resources, for love, and for each new moment, maybe praise will help us to understand that life is precious and we are all precious in God’s sight. The call for the nations to come together to glorify God is a call that reminds us what really matters. God must be at the center so that our lives can be centered and re-centered around love, peace, compassion, hope, and justice. If we don’t praise God together, we may be tempted to praise our own efforts—and to stay fixated on circling the wagons of people who are just like us. But if we praise our God, our God who draws the circles wider than we could ever imagine, maybe we will be held together by God’s grace as a holy nation and royal priesthood filled with humility and hope. [This devotion by Aisha Brooks-Lytle, executive presbyter at the Presbytery of Greater Atlanta, was originally published by The Christian Century in May of 2019.]
Prayer: O Lord of my heart, be thou my vision; naught be all else to me, save that thou art. Thou my best thought, by day or by night, waking or sleeping, thy presence my light.
Purple Coneflower blooming in one of the rain gardens at Buffalo (August 2023)
Open Wider (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 9 August 2023)
Scripture: While they were eating, Jesus took a loaf of bread, and after blessing it he broke it, gave it to the disciples, and said, “Take, eat; this is my body.” ~Matthew 26:26
ONE SUNDAY IN WORSHIP, the head usher rushed over to me during a hymn, leaned in close, and whispered, “We don’t have anyone to serve communion.” Communion servers were part of this church’s complicated but effective system known as The Grid, ensuring all volunteer roles were fulfilled each week. Rare is a Sunday without someone at their assigned station, but apparently that day this critical task was omitted from the spreadsheet. As communion began, I fessed up to the error and asked if anyone was willing to join me at the table. A surplus of volunteers eagerly came forward. I was surprised that they were three newer members and an elementary aged kiddo, none of whom were in The Grid. With one open invitation, we went from a scarcity of servers to an abundance of willing servants. As the congregation came forward to eat and drink, I watched as each server’s face glowed with pride every time they offered a blessing to the same church members that had so recently welcomed them in and affirmed God’s love for them. In that moment, I realized that our promise of a communion table open to all was half fulfilled. Our desire for preparedness and order created a barrier to those most eager to serve. The danger in feeding those who long to know Christ is that they may become inspired to feed others in return. Thus began a new Spirit-led practice of inviting whoever felt called to serve to come to the table, no spreadsheet necessary. After all, who are we to stand in Love’s way? [This devotion by Liz Miller, pastor of a Congregational Church, was originally posted to the UCC’s Daily Devotional website.]
Prayer: Prepare us for the abundance that follows whenever extravagant hospitality is practiced.
Sacred Poetry: Full flower moon by Julie L. Moore (first published in the January 12, 2017 issue of The Christian Century)
The moon tonight smells like linen, clean & pressed, spreading its blue fabric over not just May’s fields
but the willow by the pond, the hens in the one-window coop, the Lab on the lawn,
poking her nose into the myrtle. The sky tastes like a mug of tea, warm & smooth with cream,
served at a welcoming table. Should God suddenly speak, the phlox would not be flummoxed
or the red-tailed fox baffled. After all, green already pulses through everything,
its rhythm in sync with this full flower moon and the worm below, writing a new word in dirt.
Would it really be so strange if the still, small voice broke open like a bulb beneath the earth,
then aired something sensible as the strong stem lifting high its lit lantern, signaling us
to join in, do what we were made to do?
Music: A performance of the hymn One Bread, One Body by the choir of the St. Thomas Episcopal Church in Overland Park, Kansas.
Flowering Milkweed (Asclepias tuberosa) in one of Buffalo's rain gardens (August 2023)
A Miracle Among Us (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 2 August 2023)
Scripture Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a deserted place, and the hour is now late; send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” Jesus said to them, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” They replied, “We have nothing here but five loaves and two fish.” And he said, “Bring them here to me.” Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven, and blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled; and they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve baskets full. And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. ~Matthew 14:13–21 (a lectionary reading for this coming Sunday)
I LOVE THE GOSPEL STORIES that fall during ordinary time. When summer days are long with light and a more leisurely pace is heated lush with joy. When gardens and lawns are draped in the wonder of liturgical green and bloom. It’s the graduations and weddings and pool days and sports camps and cookouts and line dances and happy hours and ice cream trucks for me. And the subtle reminders throughout the Gospels that Jesus and the disciples and all of those in the throngs of followers we read about also lived lives and were full of stories with their seasons and rhythms, too. And that Christ doesn’t only come when we most expect: God is present in an ever-evolving and fresh web, the intricate design of the mundane and the miraculous held out each day. The story, then, of Jesus feeding thousands from what seems to be only enough for two fish sandwiches and an extra piece of bread (an image forever etched in my mind thanks to Candace Simpson’s indelible descriptions), feels familiar and welcome in the midst of life spent with meals and fellowship (at least in the northern hemisphere season) among the blankets and grass. It’s a reminder that the cupboards are never bare in heaven, and that a little of this and a little of that might still make for a wacky cake or a quiche or a charcuterie board. That food, at least in my experience, tastes better and fills faster when it’s shared among friends. And that on occasions when we gather together in community, we can all receive God’s abundance. It seems a critical message among critical messages, given there is at least one version of this story in each of the Gospels. And in all of the synoptic accounts, certainly in today’s, Jesus is clear that the disciples should be involved in the feeding: “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” God invites us to eat—a miracle. But God also invites us to serve. It’s a mindset that empowers us to rebuke the imposed limits of deficit, need, scarcity, and lack—and asks us to look more closely at what we have and hold together. It is as if Jesus is sharing a message akin to a certain kind of asset-based community fellowship. What is it to consider the miracle of this moment as also taking seriously a mindset of the resources, gifts, talents, and people already in community, with an approach that is based in place and starts with relationships and relationality, that works inclusively to make sure that everyone is involved and no one is left to the periphery? It sounds not only like the story but like a vision of the miraculous that can manifest among us now. To think–we can be hosts of God’s presence, because God is already here, with us. And what then of this perspective for the church? What would it look like to start not necessarily with the “Jesus-shaped hole in your heart” but instead with the theology of shared meals and sunsets and summer lawns together? To learn to look to the lessons of being present to where we are, with the baseline assumption that there is already enough? To be a body of Christ that magnifies and multiplies the resources of what we’ve already been blessed with from his hand to begin with? What if we are already the miracle in God’s hands, and what if we took seriously the instructions to give one another something to eat? [This devotional by Amey Victoria Adkins-Jones was posted to The Christian Century’s Sunday’s Coming Premium website.]
Prayer: Give thanks in all circumstances; for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus." ~1 Thessalonians 5:18
Sighs for Help (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 26 July 2023)
Scripture In the same way, the Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans. And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because the Spirit intercedes for God’s people in accordance with the will of God.
And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.
What, then, shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare his own Son, but gave him up for us all-- how will he not also, along with him, graciously give us all things? Who will bring any charge against those whom God has chosen? It is God who justifies. Who then is the one who condemns? No one. Christ Jesus who died—more than that, who was raised to life-- is at the right hand of God and is also interceding for us. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or hardship or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword? As it is written:
“For your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”
No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord. ~Romans 8: 26-30 (one of the lectionary readings for the last Sunday in July)
I REMEMBER WHEN MY MOTHER was diagnosed with kidney cancer early in 1982. My wife, Nancy, and I had been married for less than 2½ years. We were still really just settling down and getting used to being married to each other. And then bam! Your mother has cancer – and, it doesn’t look good. My folks lived in Mt. Pleasant then, and my wife and I lived “up” in Oskaloosa 75 miles away. So, my father and my Aunt Alaire were the ones who ended up caring for my mother. Caring for a sick relative is not easy. You are on-call 24-hours a day. And, back then, there was no respite care – no breaks to catch your breath. You just did what you had to do and you plowed ahead the best you could. I’m sure that a number of you either are now or have been in a similar situation. And I remember that both my father and my Aunt – on different days and in different circumstances – took me aside and shared with me how weary they were. My Aunt was not an overtly religious woman. Although she did have a faith that was pretty deep, she simply kept it well hidden. So her comment to me was simply that she was dog tired, but that she would keep going because Betty needed her. My father was a man who shared and lived his faith openly. I learned a lot about my own faith from him. So, when he took me aside his comments were different. He told me that he was tired – not just physically – he was tired spiritually as well. As my wife and I drove back from Mt. Pleasant on both of those days I don’t remember forming any words as I drove, but I do remember sighing a lot. I don’t remember that I was intentionally praying, but I do remember sensing that I was crying out to God in my heart. Many minutes of silence passed and then, just as we were coming to the outskirts of Oskaloosa, these words came to me: “My grace is sufficient for you” (2 Cor. 12:9a RSV–the NRSV hadn’t come out yet). It was the answer to a prayer I didn’t even know that I had offered. And, it was precisely the answer that I needed. I wasn’t the one who was tired. My sighs were for my Aunt and my father. But God’s answer was for them – as well as for me. I was assured that God was present with them and with me at that moment. I couldn’t know the future, but I could trust that God would give us what we needed at the exact time that we needed it. This was a promise that I carried with me in the days, weeks, and months that followed. It was an assurance that I held on to through my mother’s illness. And it is an assurance that I still cling to more than 40 years after her death. The eighth chapter of the book of Romans is perhaps my favorite chapter in all of Scripture. It offers words of comfort and reassurance to those of us who carry heavy burdens. At times, we are all too aware of the brokenness of our world. We know that our lives are marred by sin, and we experience suffering in our daily lives. We experience physical illness or loss. We endure the pain of broken relationships. We come across stories of violence, economic need, and hopelessness. There seem to a never-ending string of reports of gun violence and deaths in our country. As we look around us, it is easy to become discouraged, overwhelmed, and uncertain of the future. I believe that Paul addressed these words to people like us. They show Paul’s heart trying to encourage a community in the midst of some of the most devastating trials that life has to offer. In the verses previous to today’s text, Paul has spoken of the suffering that not only we, but also all of creation experiences. He writes that: “The whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now” (Romans 8:22 NRSV). Suffering is a reality that we live with each day. It is evident not only in our human struggles, but also throughout the created order. Although, as people of faith, we know that God’s glory will one day be revealed, we find ourselves crying – “How long, O Lord?” Sometimes, as on those trips back from Mt. Pleasant, it becomes too much. There are moments in life when we are literally rendered speechless. How do we begin to express the depth of our sorrow as we realize our deep need for God’s help? How do we find the words to cry out for our redemption? Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we can’t. These are the places where God’s grace breaks into our lives most powerfully. “Likewise the Spirit helps us in our weakness; for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with sighs too deep for words” (8:26 NRSV). What a wonderful gift God has given to us. That, even when our words fail, God’s Spirit is present in ways beyond our human understanding. The wonder and the grace of prayer is that many times we can’t offer a prayer in our own strength. Prayer, as the early church fathers and mothers taught us, is often a heartrending struggle. Yet it is in these moments that we can receive what is most needed for the journey. We can be offered that assurance of God’s love and grace in a more powerful way because all the words, all the human certainty, and the illusion of control are stripped away. We receive what we need the most. “Because the Spirit intercedes for the saints according to the will of God” (8:27 NRSV). When I was in CPE, one of my classmates was a candidate to be an Episcopalian priest. And, one of the things that kept getting in her way was whether she would have the right words to pray when the need arose. She wouldn’t have the time to search through the Book of Common Prayer and would be left on her own. Our supervisor very gently pointed out to her that most often people don’t really listen to what the chaplain or pastor is saying. Really it is the Spirit of God that prays in these circumstances. And, what we all need to do is to open ourselves to God’s Spirit. Then, she pointed to this Scripture. The Spirit of God does intercede for us, and the Spirit also reminds us of the great love of God our creator. Our lives, the lives of those we love, the life of the world may still be broken, but our concerns are brought into the presence of God and we are reminded again of the future that God has in store for us. We are reminded that God works for our good in all things. Paul knew the power of the gifts received through God’s Spirit. He knew them because he had experienced them. And when the words returned, it was sheer praise. “No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:37-39 NRSV) [This devotion by Reverend Paul I. Burrow was recently posted to the Iowa UMC Conference website; a retired elder in the Iowa Annual Conference Rev. Burrow lives in Indianola and serves two small churches.]
Music: A YouTube recording of "How Great Thou Art" performed by the Vocal Majority, an all-male choir singing at a Barbershop Harmony Society Convention in 2015.
Flowers at Buffalo: under the church bell (May 2023)
Get Your Feet Wet (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 19 July 2023)
Scripture: “No!” Peter said. “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus replied, “Unless I wash you, you won’t have a place with me.” ~Gospel of John 13:8
PETER WAS SHOCKED – appalled! – that Jesus would stoop so low as to wash Peter’s dirty, dusty, musty feet. Yet here’s the Great Teacher, the Sovereign One, the Messiah saving souls by bathing soles. It’s backwards, awkward, an affront to the established order. This prophetic pedicure presents a double-sided challenge: serving someone when you’re accustomed to being served, and allowing someone to serve you when you’re accustomed to serving. Whichever way you flip it, it’s a disruption of power dynamics requiring humility, and that can feel like humiliation to the one who holds power. Could our reluctance to serve or be served be tied to how we view “servants?” If we equate service with exploitation, then we confuse the humility of servanthood with the exploitation of servitude. Humility is essential to discipleship, and discipleship calls us into mutual service, opening us to witness one another’s humanity as well as our own. Jesus teaches that discipleship requires us both to serve and be served. We might be more comfortable in one role over the other. Stepping beyond comfort and reversing the roles is spiritually cleansing, and draws us closer alongside Jesus, the great servant leader. If we are to “have a place” with Jesus, then sometimes we’ll be the one serving – washing the feet of others. And sometimes we’ll be the one who is served. Discipleship means getting both our hands and our feet wet. [This devotion by Chris Mereschuk was posted to the Daily Devotional website on July 12.]
Prayer: Wash away the grit and grime that prevents my servant heart from shining out, sparkling clean. Bathe me in humility so that I might serve and be served. Amen.
Music: The O’Neill Brothers Group performs On Holy Ground
A Parable About Itself (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 12 July 2023)
Scripture: The Parable of the Sower That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop-- a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. Whoever has ears, let them hear.” ~Gospel of Matthew 13: 1-9
IN BAPTIZED WE LIVE, Dan Erlander defines the “Living Word” in contrast to a “Dead Word.” He writes, “Scripture as ‘Dead Word’ is truth packaged in propositions with which we can argue, agree or disagree. . . . But scripture as ‘Living Word’ is truth manifest in an event, a story or an encounter through which God addresses us and calls for repentance, revolution, a redirection of life.” Parables are one of the best examples of how scripture is a living word. In the Parable of the Sower, Jesus calls the disciples to reflect upon the kind of soil they hope to be and makes it plain that they want to be the kind of person who “hears the word and understands it, who indeed bears fruit and yields, in one case a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty.” This story is unique in that it is the only one of Jesus’ parables that is explicitly about itself: it is about the word of God. It has an autobiographical quality that gives Jesus’ disciples, then and now, an invitation and some instructions as to how to receive everything Jesus has to say. It gives the preacher an opportunity to teach about the gift of parables themselves and the interpretive creativity they generate. Using images of a farmer, seeds, and soil, Jesus names the realities of his disciples’ everyday lives and points to the range of possibilities that he and his early followers encounter as they follow him and preach his message. For Matthew’s audience it is likely descriptive (and inclusive) of the various kinds of people who are part of his community. But it also sets a prescriptive expectation the disciples can have for themselves and others as they hear the word of God and heed, in varying degrees, the teachings of Jesus. I appreciate how the four soils/responses normalize not just differences among people but the ways that different teaching may be received (or not) by one individual. It is possible for a person to be all four different soils at various times. Using images of birds, sun, and thorns, Jesus points to the truth that the way we hear and receive the word of God is impacted by more than our own will and desire. There will always be circumstances beyond our control that keep us from being the good soil we hope to be. This reminds us to be cautious with our moralizing and judgment against others and ourselves. There is much we can do to be good soil, but Jesus knows that all the individual effort in the world will sometimes succumb to greater forces. In a culture steeped in the myth of the individual’s responsibility to shape their destiny, amplifying Jesus’ teaching about the greater forces that impact us will be heard as a word of relief and grace. [This devotion by Libby Howe was posted to the Christian Century Newsletter website earlier this month.]
Prayer: May we find ways to become the good soil, to create a community that fosters love and bears fruit.
Music: During last Sunday’s Worship Service at Buffalo we sang “Are Ye Able,” a hymn written in the 1920s by Earl Marlatt and Harry S. Mason that has long been popular with Methodist congregations. For this midweek devotion, we have a YouTube recording of the hymn by the HBBC Choir in the Philippines. The video may initially be blurry, but after about 25 seconds the video and the words should become much clearer.
Flag Iris at Buffalo UMC (May 2023)
Sabbath Living (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 5 July 2023)
Scripture: At that time Jesus said, “I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children. Yes, Father, for this is what you were pleased to do. All things have been committed to me by my Father. No one knows the Son except the Father, and no one knows the Father except the Son and those to whom the Son chooses to reveal him. Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” ~Matthew 11: 25-30
JESUS’ INVITATION IN MATTHEW 11 may be one of the most comforting passages in scripture: “Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” It is an invitation to sabbath living. Much of the chapter leading up to this consists of Jesus teaching about ways of knowing God outside theological training and strict religiosity. The scene that follows in the next chapter shows Jesus in conflict with religious leaders over rules for the sabbath. The invitation extends in both directions, to those of a misguided generation seeking the wisdom of God and to those who would seek to govern when and how to find it. Illustration of peach tree and bees pollinating tree Eugene Peterson helpfully paraphrases this invitation to the modern world in The Message: Are you tired? Worn out? Burned out on religion? Come to me. Get away with me and you’ll recover your life. I’ll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me—watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won’t lay anything heavy or ill-fitting on you. Keep company with me and you’ll learn to live freely and lightly. Notice that these words say as much about what kind of work makes for sabbath living as they do about rest itself. This kind of work allows for and honors real rest. It is naturally in rhythm with rest. It is what many are striving for when they talk of work-life balance. But work-life balance presumes work that is forever trying to consume more of one’s time and energy. And it puts the focus on balance, or quantity, of work and rest, rather than on quality. Wendell Berry is undoubtedly a prophet for our times on this subject. His poetry, prose, and fiction are infused as much with talk of work done rightly as they are with ecology, economy, nature, and farming. In A Timbered Choir, his first book of sabbath poems, he writes:
Be thankful and repay Growth with good work and care. Work done in gratitude, Kindly, and well, is prayer.
In How It Went, Berry’s latest collection of stories set in the fictional Port William, Kentucky, the aging Andy Catlett, often considered a stand-in for Berry, must resort to repairing a fencerow himself after the men he hired carelessly botch the job and leave a mess. He implores his student helper on the necessity of knowing how to do physical work well: Now we’re practicing the art of loading brush. It is a fundamental art. An indispensable art. Now I know about your “fine arts,” your music and literature and all that—I’ve been to school too—and I’m telling you they’re optional. The art of loading brush is not optional.
In recent years I have come to understand firsthand the difference between striving for work-life balance and sabbath living. Several years ago my family moved to a small farm, and suddenly the weekly rhythms of our lives necessarily included many hours spent mowing, trimming trees, feeding and tending goats and chickens, rebuilding fences, and the like. The move reawakened my joy and satisfaction in working with my hands.
At the same time, I grew weary of recent turns in my nonprofit career that seemed always to result in yet longer days spent tied to a computer screen, relentless email, and a packed meeting schedule. After pandemic stresses became too much, I left an executive role in a large regional nonprofit, and now I spend half my time leading a small, grassroots housing organization and half my time self-employed as a carpenter-builder. I traded more stress and money for more time outside and working with my hands. I am happier and healthier than I have ever been in my professional life. Earlier this year the Washington Post reported on new findings from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey. The data shows clearly that when rated for a mix of happiness, meaning, and a lack of stress, jobs in agriculture, logging, and forestry work top the list, with construction not far behind. Though all of this work is physically taxing and involves a higher risk for injury, it apparently brings the highest level of satisfaction as well. Clearly not all of us can become farmers and foresters. Yet we can all respond to Jesus’ call to a way of walking and working in the world that is less about striving and more about gratitude. We can advocate for systems that create space for real rest. We can keep company that helps us learn to live more freely and lightly. [This devotion by Chad Martin--a carpenter, dabbling farmer, and executive director of Chestnut Housing in Lancaster, Pennsylvania–was posted to The Christian Century website on July 3.]
Prayer: May we all learn a way of walking and working in the world that is less about striving and more about gratitude. May we experience the joys of living and working in a community that enables us to live more freely, abundant in love and grace.
Music: A YouTube performance by the Choir of Westminster Abbey of “Let All the World in Every Corner Sing” by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams. The text for the hymn (copied below) is a poem written by the 17th-century poet George Herbert. Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, "My God and King!" The heav'ns are not too high, God's praise may thither fly; the earth is not too low, God's praises there may grow. Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, "My God and King!"
Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, "My God and King!" The church with psalms must shout: no door can keep them out. But, more than all, the heart must bear the longest part. Let all the world in ev'ry corner sing, "My God and King!”
A banner hanging in Buffalo's Worship Center
Space for Grief (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 28 June 2023)
Scripture: Sarah lived one hundred twenty-seven years, and Sarah died at Kiriath-arba. Abraham said to the Hittites, “I am a stranger residing among you; give me property for a price so that I may bury my dead. Entreat Ephron for me, so that he might give me the cave of Machpelah at the end of his field.” Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham, “I give you the field and the cave that is in it. Bury your dead.” – Genesis 23:1-11 (abridged)
THE EMOTION OF GRIEF needs physical space, I’ve learned. It’s why cemeteries are ideal for finding solace: those wide-open spaces where the sky can bear witness to pain, the quiet enshrined places where shadows provide comfort for tears, the unmarked favorite spaces where memories paint the landscape with love. It’s why Abraham desired space to bury Sarah, even in a land where he and his family lived as foreigners. With the purchase of a field and a cave, Abraham guaranteed a spatial touchstone for generations to come—where Sarah could be remembered, where family stories could be retold, where those stories could be wrestled with and lamented, where the frailty of human experience could find perspective alongside ageless stone and seasonal harvest. Grief needs space that has touchstones, so its chasms do not swallow all of life. Grief needs space where it can go for peace, so its tensions can be stretched and uncoiled from the body. Grief needs space that is rich in love, so its heart does not become hardened. This is true not only of grief that follows the death of a loved one, but also of grief that follows change and grief that follows disappointment and grief that follows endings. The spirit needs touchstones. The body needs peace. The heart needs love. With these three, we can grieve well. With these three, we can bury our dead. [This devotion by Rachel Hackenberg, author of Writing to God, was posted on June 22 to the Daily Devotional website.]
Prayer: God, have mercy: I am too tempted to harden my heart against sorrow. I am too quick to surrender hope in the face of uncertainty. I am too combative to be at peace with grief. Have mercy, O God, through this foreign territory.
All God’s Children (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 21 June 2023)
Scripture: The child grew, and was weaned; and Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. But Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, playing with her son Isaac. So she said to Abraham, “Cast out this slave woman with her son; for the son of this slave woman shall not inherit along with my son Isaac.” The matter was very distressing to Abraham on account of his son. But God said to Abraham, “Do not be distressed because of the boy and because of your slave woman; whatever Sarah says to you, do as she tells you, for it is through Isaac that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman, I will make a nation of him also, because he is your offspring.”
So Abraham rose early in the morning, and took bread and a skin of water, and gave it to Hagar, putting it on her shoulder, along with the child, and sent her away. And she departed, and wandered about in the wilderness of Beer-sheba. When the water in the skin was gone, she cast the child under one of the bushes. Then she went and sat down opposite him a good way off, about the distance of a bowshot; for she said, “Do not let me look on the death of the child.” And as she sat opposite him, she lifted up her voice and wept. And God heard the voice of the boy; and the angel of God called to Hagar from heaven, and said to her, “What troubles you, Hagar? Do not be afraid; for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come, lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand, for I will make a great nation of him.” Then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. She went, and filled the skin with water, and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy, and he grew up; he lived in the wilderness, and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran; and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. ~Genesis 21:8-21
AN AMAZING THING HAPPENED to me one morning. As I started to wake up, I heard an inner voice say, “Good morning, child of God.” Though not an audible voice, the pronouncement startled me with its clarity and directness. I remained in bed thinking about what I had just heard. What did it mean? Where did it come from? I kept replaying the strange, powerful greeting in my mind, each time grasping more deeply the potent potential of its affirming message. Moments later, while preparing to shave, I stared at the face in the mirror longer than usual. Soon, I heard the greeting again: “Good morning, child of God.” This time the voice was audible; the voice was my own. Hagar and her son are dismissed from family and friends. But to be dismissed by some is never to be dismissed by somebody greater. No one is ever outside God’s grace. However, we can be outside the awareness of such. Our salvation is in our awareness and acceptance. “Just to be is a blessing,” declared Abraham Heschel. “Just to live is holy.” Such sacred worthiness is grace on grace. It is not bought, earned, or won. This worthiness is the birthright of us all. Jesus hints at the same hallelujah reality: “The kingdom of God is within you.” There is something of ultimate significance residing in you that you had nothing to do with creating. It is pure gift. The late singer, pianist, and composer Donny Hathaway created music that resonates with pathos and passion. His songs—especially when he is the one presenting them—can make you cry, shout, and everything in between. Hathaway began singing at the age of three. He offered up what was welling up inside of him. At six he told his grandmother, “You should hear the music I’m hearing in my head.” Can you hear the music within you? Before you have planned or accomplished anything at all, can you feel something within that is pure, pleasing blessing? Listen for it, and once you hear it, dare to repeat it as often as you feel led to: Good morning, child of God. [This devotion by Kirk Byron Jones was posted this past Monday to The Christian Century Sunday’s Coming Premium website.]
Prayer: Let us here the music within us. Let us be renewed by the words of Jesus–the Kingdom of God is within us.
Music: Since the devotional text refers to the musician Donny Hathaway, this week’s YouTube musical selection is a performance of his "Some Day We’ll All Be Free" by a choir at the First Presbyterian Church of Oakland in November 2022.
Blooms on Snow in Summer, Cerastium tomentosum, under Buffalo's bell tower (May '23 photo).
Holy Wild Card (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 14 June 2023)
Scripture:
I love the Lord, for he heard my voice; he heard my cry for mercy. Because he turned his ear to me, I will call on him as long as I live. . . . What shall I return to the Lord for all his goodness to me? I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people. Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his faithful servants. Truly I am your servant, Lord; I serve you just as my mother did; you have freed me from my chains. I will sacrifice a thank offering to you and call on the name of the Lord. I will fulfill my vows to the Lord in the presence of all his people, in the courts of the house of the Lord-- in your midst, Jerusalem. ~Psalm 116:1-2, 12-19
LEGENDARY PASTOR, TEACHER, AND WRITER HOWARD THURMAN might have dedicated his autobiography to any of a number of great luminaries who first encountered him while they were still students, such as Barbara Jordan, Alice Walker, and Martin Luther King Jr. It would have been a deeply meaningful gesture to dedicate it to his beloved grandmother. Instead, With Head and Heart is dedicated to an unknown stranger, without whom Thurman’s sterling career would never have commenced. “To the stranger in the railroad station in Daytona Beach,” writes Thurman, “who restored my broken dream sixty-five years ago.” Young Thurman needed additional funds to cover the transport of his trunk in order to make the journey by train to attend high school. He writes: I sat down on the steps of the railway station and cried my heart out. Presently I opened my eyes and saw before me a large pair of work shoes. My eyes crawled upward until I saw the man’s face. He was a black man, dressed in overalls and a denim cap. As he looked down at me he rolled a cigarette and lit it. Then he said, “Boy, what in hell are you crying about?” And I told him. “If you’re trying to get out of this damn town to get an education, the least I can do is to help you. Come with me,” he said. He took me around to the agent and asked, “How much does it take to send this boy’s trunk to Jacksonville?” Then he took out his rawhide money bag and counted the money out. When the agent handed him the receipt, he handed it to me. Then, without a word, he turned and disappeared down the railroad track. I never saw him again.
Don’t let the low places fool you. Believing that God is everywhere invites us to be open to dynamic creative potential anywhere, including the valley of disappointment and discouragement. Remaining fixed on this hopeful perspective is essential to our not letting low places and feelings define and overwhelm us. Some of God’s best blessings are found in the spaces of our disdain. And there are gems in the valley that cannot be found on the mountaintop. The holy wild card is this: In any given moment, God can be as direct and personal as God is mysterious. [This piece by Kirk Byron Jones was posted to this week’s Christian Century digital newsletter Sunday’s Coming Premium.]
Prayer: Enable us to become the stranger who makes a difference in someone's life.
"And All That I Have Is Thine" (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 7 June 2023)
Scripture: “What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” ~Romans 8:30–31)
LISTEN TO HIM, MY CHILDREN. He speaks to you, he teaches you in a thousand ways every day. Through the love of those who love you and live to help you, he touches you, and he speaks to you. In the sunrise and the sunset, and in moonlight, through the loveliness of the things that he has made, through the thousand joys that he plans for every one of you, through the sorrows that come, too – in all these things, through all these things, he who loved you unto death is speaking to you. Listen; do not be deaf and blind to him; as you keep quiet and listen, you will know deep down in your heart that you are loved. As the air is round about you, so is his love round about you now. It is enough. Trust that love to guide your lives. It will never, never fail. Outside my room in Dohnavur a sunbird has hung her nest from a spray of valaris. The spray is as light as a spray of honeysuckle and grows in much the same careless way. The nest is attached to the spray by a few threads of cobweb, but so delicately that the touch of a child would detach it; a cupful of water thrown at it would sweep it down. It is a mere nothing of a nest. But it took a week of patient mothercraft to make it. It is roofed, it has a porch, and set deep within is a bed of silky down. We know now that we were foolish, but we could not help being anxious about the fate of that wee home; for our northeast monsoon was due, and the nest hung in the eye of the wind and beyond the eaves of the house. There was no shelter from the wind and the rain. And how would the tiny mother find her food in the weather that would soon be upon us? The father bird would feed her if he could, but in rain the convolvulus and other nectar-carrying flowers are dashed and sodden. How could those little jewels on wings survive, much less bring up a family? It seemed as if bird wisdom for once were at fault. The day the mother began to sit upon the two or three comfits that are her eggs, the monsoon broke. First came the wind; the spray swung from the branch and the nest swung from the spray. The wind did it no harm. Then the rain poured down in sheets; and still it swung in peace, for the four narrow leaves from whose axil the nest depended were so disposed that they turned into green gutters and carried off the water as quickly as it fell. Exactly where no rain could hurt it, that nest hung; and the little mother sat calmly through those floods, her dainty head resting on the threshold of the porch which she had made on the south side – the sheltered side. If a drop of water fell on her long, curved beak, she sucked it up as though it had been honey. And always, somehow, she was fed. I think to more than one of us the Father spoke then. There is something very precious about a little bird and her nest, but “Ye are of more value than many sparrows” – than many sunbirds. I want to learn to pour out each several cupful of natural longing as well as natural love before the Lord. Almost every day gives a chance to do that. If monotony tries me, and I cannot stand drudgery; if stupid people fret me and little ruffles set me on edge; if I make much of the trifles of life, then I know nothing of Calvary love. If I am inconsiderate about the comfort of others, or their feelings, or even of their little weaknesses; if I am careless about their little hurts and miss opportunities to smooth their way; if I make the sweet running of household wheels more difficult to accomplish, then I know nothing of Calvary love. We cannot be less than an empty shell lying on the beach. But the sea can flow over that shell and fill it full. If interruptions annoy me and private cares make me impatient; if I shadow the souls about me because I myself am shadowed, then I know nothing of Calvary love. If souls can suffer alongside, and I hardly know it, because the spirit of discernment is not in me, then I know nothing of Calvary love. . . . We have all known the gentle solace of human love. There has been a trouble, and we have braced ourselves to live through the day without letting anyone know. And then there was just a touch of a hand, or a word, or a penciled note – such a trifle; but that trifling thing was so unexpected, so undeserved, so brimful of what our beautiful old English calls tender mercies, that the heart melted before it, all the hurt gone. And there was a sense of something more. “Lord Jesus, what was it?” “My child, it was I; it is I.” I think often we miss much by not being simple enough. Don’t you think so? The little-child confidence is what God wants. It is true we are nothing, just nothing, but then he doesn’t love us because we are something. He has called you. Of that I have not one atom of doubt, and whom he calls he justifies … And go on, it is simply wonderful. “What shall we say then to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us?” (Rom. 8:30–31). . . . “But when he was yet a great way off, his Father saw him and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20). So does our Father see and run (O word of mystery!) to meet our heart’s deep longing; so does his love embrace. For he meets us everywhere. If I am in trouble because of my sin, there is forgiveness with thee, O my Father; if I am cast down, with thee is lifting up; if I am athirst, with thee is eternal refreshment. Always thy word to me is that tender word, “Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine” (Luke 15:31). [This devotion by Amy Carmichael is an excerpt from a chapter in her book That Way and No Other: Following God through Storm and Drought.]
Prayer: Give us the confidence to believe in Paul’s wise counsel: If God be for us, who can be against us?
Music: The hymn O How He Loves You and Me, performed by a choir of Seventh-Day Adventist students at the University of Nairobi.
Baked goods at the Annual Pancake Breakfast and Bake Sale (April 2023)
From Babel to Pentecost (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 30 May 2023)
Scripture:The Lord said, “Come let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” ~Genesis 11:7 (NIV)
OUT IN THE VAST DESERTS of present-day Iraq, there existed a plain called Babel. At Babel, God confused the language of a people who had united together to build a city tower that would glorify their names. Some assume God confused the people’s language by interposing new and different languages among them. But most translations of the original Hebrew simply say that God confused or confounded their language. Even without the introduction of a different language, people who speak the same language are often confused. I recently thought I’d booked a round-trip airline ticket from Atlanta to Miami, by phone. But when I reviewed my email confirmation, I discovered that the round-trip ticket wasn’t from Atlanta to Miami, it was from Miami to Atlanta. The booking agent and I both spoke the same language, but our common language did not prevent confusion. There is no greater confusion than people who speak the same language, but who mean different things when they speak it. Words like freedom … patriot … righteous … race… all mean very different things among people who speak the same language. Perhaps the confusion at Babel was not to punish the people’s common language, but to punish the disconnect of people’s values. Perhaps the dispersion of the people was a result of their own unwillingness to move past common words toward a greater common understanding. In our communities today, common language is not the problem. The problem is failure to value one another’s history and identity. The problem is failure to listen past common language in order to recognize echoes of common ideals. [This devotion was written by Kenneth L. Samuel, a pastor in Decatur, Georgia.]
Prayer: Lord, let me perceive meanings beyond words and values beyond verbiage. Amen.
Flag iris in bloom (23 May) at Buffalo, transplanted from the old Buffalo church on Blairs Ferry.
Where Do You Pray? (Meditation for Wednesday, 24 May 2023)
Scripture: Sing praises to God, sing praises; sing praises to our King, sing praises. For God is the king of all the earth; sing praises with a psalm. ~Psalm 47: 6-7
YEARS AGO, I spent three weeks in Egypt, exploring church life in a predominantly Muslim country. The group I was with visited an array of Coptic and Protestant churches in Cairo and Alexandria and in country villages. One of the most memorable moments came when we were talking to a sagacious priest. He summarized the difference between Egypt and America in two divergent images. The image of America is the rocket ship, blasting off into unknown realms, going places no human has been before. America is focused on the future and always looking ahead. The image of Egypt, he said, is the pyramids, thousands of years old and still standing in the sands outside Cairo. Rooted in a deep history, Egypt is focused on the past and the importance of tradition. As interesting and revealing as that conversation was, another phrase stuck even more strongly in my mind, one that suggested a different approach to life in the church. In the U.S., if we want to know someone's church affiliation, we ask the straightforward, prosaic question, "Where do you go to church?" In Egypt, however, people ask, "Where do you pray?" The question threw me the first time or two. Doesn't a Christian pray anywhere and everywhere? But the context eventually made the query clearer to me—that and the fact that I actually heard the question properly answered. "Where do you pray?" was the same question I typically asked as "Where do you go to church?" So when an Egyptian Christian I had just met asked where I prayed, I knew to respond, "I pray at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois." I was soon enamored of the phrase. "Where do you pray?" has much to commend it over "Where do you go to church?" "Where do you go to church?" fits an individualistic and consumeristic mind-set. It suggests the model of church as a vendor of various goods or services. You find a place that offers the religious or spiritual programs you want and then you go there, just as you choose and go to a particular dentist or supermarket or gas station. "Where do you go to church?" also suggests nothing of the purpose of going to church. Compared to "Where do you pray?" it's an anemic and underdetermined question. "Where do you pray?" is the more substantive query. It denotes the central reason one attends church. The consumeristic mind-set prefers to leave open the purpose of any activity, including that of going to church. You go to church for your reasons, I go for mine. But "where do you pray?" uninhibitedly declares that one goes to church to worship, first and last. "Where do you pray?" also suggests a rich theology of prayer. Prayer is not something we do first and foremost on our own, by ourselves. Instead we do it primarily with other Christians. Prayer is preeminently a communal rather than an individual activity. We learn to pray at church and as part of the church. At church and as part of the church we continue to practice prayer, through a lifetime. When Jesus taught the disciples how to pray, he taught them as a group. "Our Father . . . Give us our daily bread . . . Forgive us our debts . . ." Likewise, the apostle Paul saw believers as incomplete without one another. They become one mind and one body when they bring their various gifts to worship, to prayer, and share them with one another. "Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit," wrote Paul, "and there are varieties of services, but the same Lord; and there are varieties of activities, but it is the same God who activates all of them in everyone. To each is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good" (1 Cor 12: 4–7). Of course, none of this means we only pray at church, that individual prayers away from church, at home, work or wherever, should be eschewed. It's simply a matter of priorities and understanding what is basic. My most formative and basic prayer is done communally—this communal prayer forms, informs and undergirds my individual prayer. "Where do you pray?" is the right question to ask and the right way to ask it. [This devotion by Rodney Clapp originally appeared in September, 2011 in The Christian Century.]
Tete a Tete daffodils in the lawn at Buffalo (April 2023)
Jesus Prays for Us (Mediation for Wednesday, 17 May 2023)
Scripture: Jesus looked toward heaven and prayed:
“Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son may glorify you. For you granted him authority over all people that he might give eternal life to all those you have given him. Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent. I have brought you glory on earth by finishing the work you gave me to do. And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.
“I have revealed you to those whom you gave me out of the world. They were yours; you gave them to me and they have obeyed your word. Now they know that everything you have given me comes from you. For I gave them the words you gave me and they accepted them. They knew with certainty that I came from you, and they believed that you sent me. I pray for them. I am not praying for the world, but for those you have given me, for they are yours. All I have is yours, and all you have is mine. And glory has come to me through them. I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as we are one. ~Gospel of John 17: 1-11
EACH YEAR THE GOSPEL READING for the Seventh Sunday of Easter is taken from Jesus’ great prayer in John 17, the conclusion of his farewell discourse. Jesus invites us into what Raymond Brown describes as a "heavenly family conversation" between himself and God. This prayer, like Jesus’ other prayers (John 11:41-42 and 12:27-28), is meant to be overheard by us. It witnesses to Jesus’ return to God (his “glorification”) and to his deep love for his followers. Everything he has he now gives to us, as he is returning back to God. While it has become fashionable to excerpt John 17:21 as an ecumenical program exhorting denominational unity, Jesus’ words are more mystical than programmatic. In the logic of comparison (kathos, “just as,” vv. 14, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23) so central to this entire prayer, Jesus proclaims in v. 23 that God will now love us with the very same love God had for Jesus. God’s glory bathes this prayer. We are permitted to “behold Jesus’ glory”—recall the reference to the word become flesh whom we behold in John 1:14—a glory given to Jesus in love before the foundation of the world. This is a glory that Jesus now gives also to all of us (v. 22). How powerful it is to know that Jesus has prayed to God on our behalf! There is no one for whom Jesus did not pray on his last night. Like the prayer of a parent overhead by the child for whom one intercedes, what this prayer reveals is Jesus’ deep love for the disciples. The great prayer of John 17 evokes longing in us to be fully “one” with Jesus, in the mystical communion of prayer, so that his prayer of love for us becomes not a farewell but rather a homecoming. How do we learn to pray with such oneness in the heart of God? In Diary of an Old Soul, George MacDonald draws on imagery from the leaves of the tree of life from Revelation 22, today’s second lesson: Sometimes, hard-trying, it seems I cannot pray for doubt and pain and anger and all strife. Yet some half-fledged prayer-bird from the nest may fall, flit, fly, perch—crouch in the bowery breast of the large, nation-healing tree of life. Moveless there sit through the burning day, and on my heart at night a fresh leaf cooling lay. In this Easter season, when so many of us long to pray, perhaps these texts and Revelation’s tree of life can provide a canopy under which we can learn how to pray, in the spirit of Jesus who intercedes for us. [This devotion was written by Barbara Rossing, a professor of New Testament at the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.]
Music: A performance by the Brussels Choral Society and Ensemble Orchestral de Bruxelles of Handel’s "Glory of the Lord" from the Messiah.
Daffodils at Buffalo; playground in the background (April 2023)
Too Much (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, 10 May 2023)
Scripture: When Jesus had finished speaking, he said to Simon, “Put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Simon answered, “Master, we have worked all night long but have caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets.” When they had done this, they caught so many fish that their nets were beginning to break. - Luke 5:4-6 (NRSV)
ONCE, SEVERAL YEARS AGO, my dad was sent to the store for $20 worth of shrimp. He got confused and returned with 20 pounds of shrimp. A lot for four people. Whenever the story gets told (which is regularly), my mom is sure to ask, “It never occurred to you when you saw all that shrimp that it might be too much?” But the answer is self-evident: no. In my mind, those 20 pounds of shrimp have become a symbol of God’s net-bursting, alabaster-jar-breaking, cup-overflowing grace. Just ask Simon. He and his fellow fishers receive a blessing completely out of proportion from what they’re expecting, from what they’re hoping, from even their wildest imaginings. Exhausted after a disappointing night, they put back out to sea begrudgingly. They would rather go home and sleep, but maybe Jesus can help them catch at least enough to feed their families. But from the first tug on the nets, they know it’s so much more. Too much for their families. Enough for every family in town. That’s the way it is with God’s grace, God’s love, God’s welcome. Too much to bring in alone. Too much to keep to yourself. More than enough to share. [This devotion and prayer by Vince Amlin, co-pastor of Bethany UCC in Chicago, was posted to the Daily Devotional website in April.]
Prayer: God, didn’t it ever occur to you that this was too much? Thank you for answering, “no.”
Music: A beautiful performance of the hymn "Precious Lord Take My Hand" by the Kyiv Symphony Orchestra & Chorus.
Blooms on a Serviceberry at Buffalo (photo shot in April 2023)
What the Climate Teaches Us about Prayer (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 3 May 2023)
Scripture: You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise; you perceive my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down; you are familiar with all my ways.
Before a word is on my tongue you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain.
Where can I go from your Spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there; if I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me, your right hand will hold me fast. ~from Psalm 139
Seeker: What, then, is true prayer? Sadhu: When we see a crane or heron standing motionless on the shore of a lake or pond, we might think it is meditating on the beauty of the water. But this is not so! The bird stands there for hours without moving, but as soon as it sees a frog or small fish, it darts forward and greedily snatches it. Many people have the same approach to prayer and meditation. Seated on the shore of the boundless ocean of God’s love, they actually give no thought to his majesty or to the divine grace that cleanses us from sin and satisfies the hungry soul. Instead, they are consumed by the thought of receiving something for themselves, some morsel to gratify their self-indulgence. Having visited the very source of true peace and bliss, they fail to appreciate it and instead give themselves to fleeting pleasures. The essence of prayer does not consist in asking for things but in opening one’s heart to God. Prayer is continual abandonment to God. It is the desire for God himself, the giver of life. Prayer is communion with God, receiving him who is the giver of all good gifts, living a life of fellowship with him. It is breathing and living in God. A little child will run to his mother exclaiming: “Mother! Mother!” The child does not necessarily want anything in particular. He only wants to be near his mother, to sit on her lap, or to follow her about the house. The child longs for the sheer pleasure of being near her, talking to her, hearing her voice. This is what makes him happy. It is just the same with those who are truly God’s children. They do not trouble themselves with asking for spiritual blessings. They only want to sit at the Master’s feet, to be in living touch with him; then they are supremely content. Prayer is communion with God, receiving him who is the giver of all good gifts, living a life of fellowship with him. Climate affects the form, color, and growth patterns of plants and flowers. In the jungle we often see insects that have taken on the form and color of the grass and green leaves on which they feed. In the snow of the North the polar bear’s fur has the same snowy whiteness. The Bengal tiger wears stripes on its skin like the reeds where it lives. Our spiritual environment similarly affects us. If we remain in communion with God, our habits and disposition – even our appearance – are all changed. To pray means to be on speaking terms with God, to be in communion with him and to be transformed into his likeness. We begin to take on a glorious and incorruptible spiritual nature. . . . A sponge lies in the water, and the water fills the sponge, but the water is not the sponge, and the sponge is not the water. It is the same when I immerse myself in God. God fills my heart, and I am in complete union with God, but I am not God, and God is not I. We are distinct though not separate. People are very different from one another – in character, temperament, and abilities – even though we are all created in the image of God. Indeed, if all the flowers in the world were of the same color and scent, the very face of the earth would lose its charm. When the sun’s rays pass through colored glass, the color does not change, but the sun highlights and reveals its varied hues, its true charm. So the sun of righteousness shines through the varied characters of spiritual men and women, revealing God’s boundless glory and love. [This reflection on the essence of prayer is from Wisdom of the Sadhu: Teachings of Sundar Singh.]
Prayer: Enable us understand that communion with God requires living and breathing in God, not hunting for a blessing or a fleeting pleasure from God.
You Do Not Answer (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 26 April 2023)
Scripture:Why have you forsaken me? I cry by day, but you do not answer; and by night, but find no rest. ~Psalm 22:1-2 excerpt (NRSV)
SOME PEOPLE THINK that the goal of spiritual practice is to experience God with them and within them. But not everyone feels God’s presence, no matter how much they want to, no matter how hard they try to. Many faithful people feel only the ache of absence. They know a God who is silent, hidden, and distant—so much so that it can be painful for them to be around people for whom God is close and warm. There’s an old saying, “If God seems far away, guess who moved?” You’re supposed to answer, “Not God.” You’re supposed to believe it’s your fault. But whoever thought that up never read the psalms. Jesus, who probably loved saying “Surely goodness and kindness will follow me all the days of my life” as much as we do, didn’t pray Psalm 23 on the cross. He prayed Psalm 22: “I cry to you, but you do not answer.” I don’t think Jesus moved, do you? The Christian life isn’t about feeling feelings or having “powerful” spiritual experiences. Baptism ushers us into a life of greater depth than that—a life of faith. And at some point in every life, faith is a journey through the desert and the shadows. If you don’t feel God right now, you’re not failing. You’re not a second-class Christian. You have a gift. A hard gift, but a gift all the same. It’s your heartache—faith’s heartache. And like nothing else, it can lead you straight to the heartache of others, to neighbors whose abandonment is human, not divine. For them you can be company. With them you can outwait the night until the Coming Day. [This devotion by Mary Luti, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way, was posted on April 21 to the Daily Devotional website.]
Prayer: Hidden One, they say you are still speaking, but if it isn’t to me right now, let me at least trust that you are as close to me as the suffering, as audible as the cry of the abandoned. Let me find you with them.
On the Road to Emmaus (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 19 April 2023)
Scripture Now that same day two of them were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem. They were talking with each other about everything that had happened. As they talked and discussed these things with each other, Jesus himself came up and walked along with them; but they were kept from recognizing him. He asked them, “What are you discussing together as you walk along?” They stood still, their faces downcast. One of them, named Cleopas, asked him, “Are you the only one visiting Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there in these days?” “What things?” he asked. “About Jesus of Nazareth,” they replied. “He was a prophet, powerful in word and deed before God and all the people. The chief priests and our rulers handed him over to be sentenced to death, and they crucified him; but we had hoped that he was the one who was going to redeem Israel. And what is more, it is the third day since all this took place. In addition, some of our women amazed us. They went to the tomb early this morning but didn’t find his body. They came and told us that they had seen a vision of angels, who said he was alive. Then some of our companions went to the tomb and found it just as the women had said, but they did not see Jesus.” He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow to believe all that the prophets have spoken! Did not the Messiah have to suffer these things and then enter his glory?” And beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself. As they approached the village to which they were going, Jesus continued on as if he were going farther. But they urged him strongly, “Stay with us, for it is nearly evening; the day is almost over.” So he went in to stay with them. When he was at the table with them, he took bread, gave thanks, broke it and began to give it to them. Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him, and he disappeared from their sight. They asked each other, “Were not our hearts burning within us while he talked with us on the road and opened the Scriptures to us?” They got up and returned at once to Jerusalem. There they found the Eleven and those with them, assembled together and saying, “It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon.” Then the two told what had happened on the way, and how Jesus was recognized by them when he broke the bread. ~Luke 24:13-35
IVANKA DEMCHUK HAS A PAINTING called Road to Emmaus. The Ukrainian artist’s work is influenced by the techniques and aesthetics of iconography. Here we see Christ, in white, facing the two disciples on the road: The gold filament, layered in a way that draws the eye immediately to it, is positioned on the disciples’ torso region. Demchuk portrays that most significant phrase in the passage, “Were our hearts not burning in us as he spoke to us?” Her use of gold, against the back layers of white, effectively lights up the scene, as if there is a ball of embers in their chests. I love the image, both in the text and in this artwork, of hearts burning within us. It is, in this story, so good, such an indicator of trueness and of life. We often think of the word burning in negative terms: it can mean destruction, annihilation, discomfort, or anxiety. When we were kids, we would say a verbal insult was a “burn.” But on the road to Emmaus, the hearts burning within the disciples are a sign, they realize, of their standing in the presence of a spirit of truth, of being witness to an exciting revelation, of their minds being opened and coming into the light. In his sonnet “Emmaus 1,” Malcolm Guite takes the image of burning and depicts how Christ transforms its essence into the wonder and truth of his revelation on the Road to Emmaus: And yet you know my darkness from within, My cry of dereliction is your own, You bore the isolation of my sin Alone, that I need never be alone. Now you reveal the meaning of my story That I, who burn with shame, might blaze with glory. This is the resurrection joy, told so beautifully on the road to Emmaus. The burn of shame turns into a blaze of glory. Where spirits were downcast in a dark world, the light was, in fact, to be found in a fellow traveler on the road. What was initially a story of fear and death in the wake of the crucifixion of a beloved friend and teacher concluded in the risen Lord burning their hearts in gold embers of life and truth. [This devotion by Jenna Smith was posted to the Christian Century website earlier this month.]
Prayer: We all experience moments when our spirits are downcast, but we given thanks that those moments of darkness often enable to see the light. And then we know we do not travel alone. There is always a fellow traveler on the road with us. Amen.
Siberian Squill blooming in Buffalo lawn (April 2023)
Hallelujah Is Forever (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 12 April 2023)
Scripture: God’s anger is but for a moment; God’s favor is for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. ~Psalm 30:5 (NRSV)
The other day, my wife made her famous apple pie. Only it wasn’t. She took the recipe from a different place, thinking it was the usual. When the pie came out, she knew something wasn’t right. The apples had overcooked. The crust wasn’t flaky. It tasted like nothing. The next week she tried again and discovered her mistake. The two recipes were nearly identical. The difference just 1/4 cup of flour and 1/12 cup of shortening. But from our first bites of the second pie, we knew: Yes! That’s the way it’s supposed to be. Baking is a delicate balance. So is faith. Easter, like Lent, is supposed to be a season: 50 days stretching to Pentecost; 7 weeks of celebration, resurrection, and joy. It’s called Eastertide. Don’t feel bad if you didn’t know. No one does. Many of us observe 40 days of solemn introspection at Lent. We give things up. We take things on. We remember we are dust. We bury our hallelujahs. Then, for one glorious morning, it’s lilies, and trumpets, and candy-filled plastic eggs: 40 parts Lent to 1 part Easter. That’s the wrong recipe. The original calls for 50x as much! 50x as many rolled away stones! 50x as many empty tombs! 50x as much death-defeating love! Imagine the difference. In your life. In your church. In our world. The balance is off. It’s time to switch recipes. Welcome to Eastertide. God’s anger is for a moment. God’s favor for a lifetime. Weeping may linger for the night, but joy comes in the morning. (This devotion by Vince Amlin was originally posted to the Daily Devotional website on April 10.)
Prayer: Death has had its day. Hallelujah, forever!
Striped Squill blooming in Buffalo's lawn (photo shot 3 April 2023)
Your Life Is Hidden With Christ (Meditation for Wednesday, 5 April 2023)
Scripture:Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. Let Israel say: “His love endures forever.” Let the house of Aaron say: “His love endures forever.” Let those who fear the Lord say: “His love endures forever.”
When hard pressed, I cried to the Lord; he brought me into a spacious place. The Lord is with me; I will not be afraid. What can mere mortals do to me? The Lord is with me; he is my helper. I look in triumph on my enemies. . . .
The Lord is my strength and my defense; he has become my salvation. Shouts of joy and victory resound in the tents of the righteous: “The Lord’s right hand has done mighty things! The Lord’s right hand is lifted high; the Lord’s right hand has done mighty things!”
I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done. The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death. Open for me the gates of the righteous; I will enter and give thanks to the Lord. . . .
The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. . . .
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. From the house of the Lord we bless you. The Lord is God, and he has made his light shine on us. With boughs in hand, join in the festal procession up to the horns of the altar. You are my God, and I will praise you; you are my God, and I will exalt you. Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; his love endures forever. ~Verses from Psalm 118
"You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God.”
I have no idea what this means. After reading this Colossians passage over and over, studying the Greek, and reviewing commentaries, I still don’t. I believe, however, that this is like “the peace of God, which passes all understanding” in Philippians or “I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly” in John. It’s one of those distilled, cryptic passages that draw us into so much more than we can imagine. We never exhaust the meaning or the riches of such verses. Instead, they expand our capacity to wonder and give praise. They are invitations into God’s mystery. Easter services are often pretty scripted, but Psalm 118 reminds us that Easter should be startling, mysterious: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone.” The experts are clueless; normal standards are askew. Speaking elsewhere of death and resurrection, Paul declares, “Behold! I tell you a mystery.” Mysterion appears in Colossians several times, too. “You have died, and your life is hidden with Christ in God” strikes me as a beautiful, inviting mysterion. My mother, a United Methodist minister, died from Alzheimer’s disease. She wore not the white alb that she’d worn on many Easters but rather a blue hospital gown. When she was dying, our family gathered for the vigil. We didn’t know what to do, so we decided to read psalms. I remember wondering which psalms we should read. Psalm 118 might have been a terrific choice. It celebrates God’s victory over death, calling us all to celebrate the steadfast love of the Lord and to rejoice in the day the Lord has made. But maybe she needed a psalm of lament, such as Psalm 22. “My tongue clings to my jaws”—how often had we moistened her parched lips with a sponge? Or a psalm of confession, since she knew she depended on God’s mercy. We decided to read through all the psalms. We trusted that God’s Spirit would be at work as needed and that the fullness of my mother’s life with God—joy, lament, confession, and all—had not been defeated by tangles and plaques in her brain. Her life was hidden with Christ, hidden to us but still fully with Christ. And when “Christ who is [her] life is revealed, then [she] also will be revealed with him in glory.” I think of friends and parishioners who are chronically lost or desperate, or who make the wrong choice time after time, despite the best efforts of others—the ones who the rest of us are ready to give up on. We see their lives quite plainly—there is nothing hidden or mysterious about their failure to enjoy the abundant life of Jesus. We have given suggestion after suggestion. Perhaps we have offered money or space in our homes. We grow disappointed, partly because we feel helpless, even betrayed. We are frustrated because there are some situations that are beyond our efforts, so we cut our losses. We make peace with what is—and we hope that this “peace” does not upset our own enjoyment of the peace which passes all understanding. In a way, these people have died to us. But what if their lives really are hidden with Christ in God? What if our Lord sees them not as hapless ne’er-do-wells but as children of glory, just like us? In the Greek, the your is plural, and life is singular—we share a common life, and this life together is hidden with Christ in God. When Christ is revealed, what will he reveal? That we, who appear to be alive, desperately need resurrection? At a Quaker service, I heard about a prisoner. Out of the mysterious silence a young lawyer spoke, sharing with the assembly the story of his recent visit with this man. The lawyer was known among the prison staff as a spiritual person, so a corrections officer asked him to try to get through to this distressed perpetual convict. He recounted that he simply sat with the prisoner and told him that he believed with all his heart that God already dwelled in this prisoner’s heart. That was all—no sermon, no extensive prayers. The prisoner began to weep. The lawyer did not cite Colossians 3, but he understood that the prisoner did not see that his life was indeed in Christ. Perhaps it was so deeply hidden beneath all kinds of mistakes, crimes, and sins that few could see it. The lawyer revealed a mysterion, and the prisoner was overcome by a glimpse of it. So many lives are so deeply hidden with Christ in God. The Greek word for hidden is crypto—hidden, concealed, secret, or not noticed. Not noticed. Not noticed by others, perhaps not noticed even by themselves. We who are busily preparing for Easter—this mysterion addresses us as well. What are we failing to notice as we get ready? How might it be that the abundant lives that we have with Jesus remain just as concealed to us as the lives of Alzheimer’s patients? The mystery of this passage is that we are just beginning to see the faintest glimpses of our lives with Christ and with one another. When Jesus died his life, too, was hidden. Now he lives and reigns in glory, and our life is hidden with him. We are destined for glory. I’ve looked glory up, too, but I have no idea what it actually means or what it’s going to look like. I’ll probably have to settle for glimpses—but I plan to peek into that mystery whenever I can. [This meditation by David Keck was published in 2014 in The Christian Century.]
Prayer: As we prepare for Easter, we must keep asking ourselves, “What are we failing to notice?” May we come to realize the abundant lives that we all have with Jesus.
Music: The United Methodist Church’s Worldwide Virtual Easter Choir sings Christ the Lord Is Risen Today, written by Charles Wesley in 1739.
Cornerstone of old Buffalo church on Blairs Ferry
The Servant Who Perseveres (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 29 March 2023)
Scripture: The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens-- wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord God has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward.
I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.
The Lord God helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame;
he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me.
It is the Lord God who helps me; who will declare me guilty? ~Isaiah 50:4-9a
IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY I Never Had it Made, Jackie Robinson describes a “wild and rage-crazed minute” in his first, most traumatic and abusive season as the first black Major League baseball player. Under vicious heckling from the opposing dugout, he thinks, To hell with the image of the patient black freak I was supposed to create. I could throw down my bat, stride over to that Phillies dugout, grab one of those white sons of bitches and smash his teeth in with my despised black fist. Then I could walk away from it all. I’d never become a sports star. But my son could tell his son someday what his daddy could have been if he hadn’t been too much of a man. The moment passed, and Robinson continued to pay the price of excruciating equanimity—required of no one else in his game—in order to play. As his own recollections and subsequent experience made clear, however, this was not a story of mere forbearance and uplift. The patient suffering of the servant in today’s Isaiah passage is similarly ambivalent, and it plays on our own ambivalent ideas about violence, passivity, and retribution: “I gave my back to those who struck me, and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” Yet this is not just meekness, and it is not even charity: “I have set my face like flint...Who will contend with me?” The moral strength of the prophet here is not a human virtue, but a divine gift. It is not an idealization of suffering in the abstract, or of passivity in the face of cruelty or injustice. The servant’s endurance may be the only path open to him. It has been easy, in American history, to construe the nonviolence of the powerless as an obligatory virtue rather than a desperate necessity. The servant has a natural right, so to say, to resist his tormentors, just as Jackie Robinson had a natural right to fight back against vicious taunts. Just as Jesus had a natural right to evade or resist the dehumanizing horror of crucifixion. So the refusal to do so does not disclose a new command. It points to something other and greater than the virtue of simply absorbing punishment. The servant, after all, expects to be vindicated. And the servant has a job to do—to “sustain the weary with a word.” The perseverance of the servant is a powerful witness, to the weary and the persecutor alike. In the context of Palm/Passion Sunday, we are of course invited to hear Jesus in this passage. And so Jesus is more than one who submits to the blows. In doing so he affirms his identification with all those to whom the servant is sent—not just the ones who choose not to fight back against their oppressor, but the ones who have no way to do so. [This devotion was written by Benjamin J. Dueholm, pastor of Christ Lutheran Church in Dallas, Texas, and posted to The Christian Century website on March 23.]
Prayer: Help us gain the wisdom and strength to fulfill our mission as servants--to sustain the weary with our words and actions.
Take (My) Heart (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 22 March 2023)
Scripture:I am longing to see you so that I may share with you some spiritual gift to strengthen you—or rather so that we may be mutually encouraged by each other’s faith, both yours and mine.” – Romans 1:11-12 (NRSV)
HALF THE TIME we don’t even know we’re doing it. We’re just being our unremarkable Christian selves. And if someone were to tell us that something we did or said made their soul wiser, their faith stronger, gave them a reason to start again, or conveyed God’s grace to them like a holy sacrament, we’d be flummoxed. Maybe even embarrassed. After all, we’re as fallible as the next person, not saints or deep thinkers, just us. No, half the time we’re not even in on the secret of just how many gifts we have and just how generously we give them away. Such calculation is rarely on our minds as we routinely encourage each other and routinely receive encouragement. As a colleague once noted, it’s a team sport, our life in Christ, a pooling of strengths. It’s mutual, Paul says, a communion. We have a single shared heart. We may not always know that we’re encouraging each other, but heaven knows. The hovering angels see. They bow in praise each time—mindful or unknowing—we put our arms around a flagging heart to say, “The road is long, dear sibling, dear friend; the road is long, and the times are hard. We go on, for the sake of promised joy. One step at a time. And the best thing? You’re beside me. And I’m with you. And in our sharing, God is near. Take heart. Take heart. Take mine.” [This devotion was written by Mary Luti, author of Teresa of Avila’s Way and founding member of The Daughters of Abraham; it was posted to the Daily Devotional website on 21 March.]
Prayer: For encouragement and for encouragers, I thank you, God. For one shared heart in Christ, I bow in praise.
Warner Sallman's painting Christ at Heart's Door in Buffalo's Meeting Room
The Most Beautiful Boat (Meditation for Wednesday, 15 March 2023)
Scripture: Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another. ~Proverbs: 27: 17
HE IS NINE AND I AM TEN. We are brothers. We share a room upstairs. Our beds are six feet apart. His bed is under the window because he likes to look at the shoulders and fingers of the burly maple trees outside. He will go on to spend his life working with trees and wood. My bed is in the corner because I like to curl up and read the Hardy Boys and Tom Swift and Jack London. I will go on to spend my life with stories and books. We spend a lot of time upstairs. Upstairs is for dreaming and downstairs is for everything else. Today upstairs is the Pacific Ocean and we are building a boat using the slats of our beds, which we are not supposed to take out from under the mattresses, but we take them out from under the mattresses carefully, noting how they were laid under the mattresses so we can return them properly and not get that look from dad. Our older brother says darkly that this look from dad can stop time and quell hurricanes and frighten warlords in faraway jungles, and this may be so. We use my mattress as the bed of the boat, and we erect masts made of slats, and we rig sails made of sheets and blankets, and somehow it all hangs together without collapsing, because my brother is already a wizard with things made of wood. Wood obeys his hands when he asks it gently to work with him. In later years he will ask wood to assume all sorts of forms and shapes, and each time wood assents with apparent pleasure, changing form with alacrity and grace. It’s almost like the wood is delighted or thrilled to work with him, and the wood strains a little to be the best wood ever when he asks it to be his partner. In later years sometimes this will happen to me with words and sentences and paragraphs. In later years I will learn not to command or dictate to the language but to ask it gently to assume shapes and forms that I dream about but cannot quite articulate, so I ask the language for help, and sometimes the language is delighted at the chance, and we sprint off together grinning and a little amazed at what was built on the page. This does not always happen but it happens enough that you never stop hoping it will happen again. Often I think my books are like the chairs and tables and desks and beds and houses my brother has milled and planed and carved and joined and fitted and oiled and polished. In his case he gently asked trees to lend him their bones and sinews, and then he asked the wood to assume all sorts of lovely forms and shapes, and the wood did so, pleased to be working with such a patient wizard. In my case I went hat in hand to the house of language and asked if it could come and play, and many mornings out flew hundreds of words which spun and whirled and leapt and arranged themselves into laughing or snarling or dreaming parades and processions unlike they had ever done before for anyone else ever. We take for granted that every piece is new in the world. Often I think that I am always ten and my brother nine and we are startled and awed and amazed at the boat we built. We still build boats, he and I, of wood and words; and if I know my brother, which I believe I do, he is exactly like me, and we stand in our workshops and stare at our work and think with amazement that this work was never done before in quite this way, and isn’t that astonishing? Isn’t that some sort of holy? Soon we will take down the sails, and slip the slats back under the mattresses, and restore the beds to satisfactory condition, so that our dad does not have to quell hurricanes and frighten warlords, but for a minute we will stand together and admire the boat we built. Someone sensible would say it was just parts of a bed but we know it is the most beautiful graceful boat there ever was. [Brian Doyle, the author of this meditation, died of cancer at age 69 in 2017; he was the editor of the Portland magazine at the University of Portland.]
Prayer: Let us find ways to find the holy in our lives while we stir up one another to love and good works. Let us not neglect to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encourage one another all the more as we see the new day drawing near.
Music: YouTube recording of the first three verses of the hymn "When Love Is Found" The hymn's lyrics: When love is found and hope comes home, sing and be glad that two are one. When love explodes and fills the sky, praise God, and share our Maker's joy. When love has flowered in trust and care, build both each day, that love may dare to reach beyond home's warmth and light, to serve and strive for truth and right. When love is tried as loved-ones change, hold still to hope, though all seems strange, till ease returns and love grows wise through listening ears and opened eyes.
Buffalo's Cross and Flame
Unlikely Messenger (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 8 March 2023)
This is not a metaphorical desert. Left alone here at high noon, Jesus could die without water.
Scripture (Gospel of John 4: 5-42)
So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of ground Jacob had given to his son Joseph. Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, “Will you give me a drink?” (His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) The Samaritan woman said to him, “You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water.” “Sir,” the woman said, “you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? 12 Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” “Sir,” the woman said, “I can see that you are a prophet. Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem.” “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” The woman said, “I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.” Then Jesus declared, “I, the one speaking to you—I am he.” Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?” Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” They came out of the town and made their way toward him. Meanwhile his disciples urged him, “Rabbi, eat something.” But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you know nothing about.” Then his disciples said to each other, “Could someone have brought him food?” “My food,” said Jesus, “is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work. Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest’? I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They are ripe for harvest. Even now the one who reaps draws a wage and harvests a crop for eternal life, so that the sower and the reaper may be glad together. Thus the saying ‘One sows and another reaps’ is true. I sent you to reap what you have not worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you have reaped the benefits of their labor.” Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I ever did.” So when the Samaritans came to him, they urged him to stay with them, and he stayed two days. And because of his words many more became believers.
TIRED FROM HIS JOURNEY, Jesus sits down at Jacob’s well, then realizes that he has no cup or bucket with which to draw water. The disciples have gone off to buy food and he is alone. But someone else is out in this desert heat, and she’s carrying a bucket. She may be the last person on earth Jesus wants to encounter, because not only is she a woman, she is a divorced woman. A woman with a shady past. A Samaritan. By custom, Rabbi Jesus ought not even speak with her in public, let alone drink from her Samaritan bucket. It is about noon, the sixth hour. There are no shadows, there is no protective cover, no nighttime leisure for theological exchange and reflection. There is only this woman, and she is insolent, defensive, strong and determined. What transpires between these two is nothing short of miraculous. These strangers, these enemies—whose worlds would ordinarily never connect—discover at the well that they need each other. It’s hard to imagine that this is a chance encounter. Apparently, Jesus had told the disciples to journey directly into enemy territory, when most Jews would have taken an extra nine hours or so to go around Samaria, which was unclean, enemy territory. Perhaps Jesus was intentionally seeking to break down barriers between people by making himself a bridge. He put himself in a place where he would have to encounter the people his people hated. And who hated them. For the sake of healing, Jesus follows the lead of the Holy Spirit and makes himself vulnerable. He is tired and alone in the heat of the noonday sun with no water. It is not a metaphorical desert. Left alone here at high noon, he could die without water. But someone has joined him at the well—the Other, the Stranger, the Enemy. And she holds the cup that can quench his thirst. We don’t know why the disciples left Jesus alone in the desert. But the woman, whose name is never revealed, is out in the heat of noonday because she has been ostracized and shunned, and is on her own to provide for her most basic needs. No father, husband, brother or son is around to look after her. And there is no group of women to share her story, wipe her tears or help her to laugh. Jesus needs to drink fresh water to live. The woman also needs a drink: she needs the fresh, living water of grace and truth only Jesus can provide to drink deep of healing and wholeness and a new life. And in their various needs, these two affirm their mutual humanity. They share in the holy Source of Life that transcends all boundary, custom, hatred, fear and scarcity. . . . As they are transfigured in the light of the noonday sun, each enemy sees the face of a friend. Distance dissolves into relationship. Enmity melts into mutuality. They glimpse a spiritual wholeness, a new healing reality. Jesus models a barrier-breaking relationship of mutuality and compassion. The woman is bold enough to both remind Jesus of what separates them—he a Jew and she a Samaritan—and of what connects them—their ancestor Jacob. She is audacious and spars verbally with this strange man. In their truth-telling, she experiences him as prophet and in turn she is acclaimed for speaking the word. To this day, the Samaritan woman is honored in many cultures. In southern Mexico, La Samaritana is remembered on the fourth Friday in Lent, when water flavored with chilacoyota, tamarindo, jamaice and horchata is given to commemorate her gift of water to Jesus. The Orthodox know her as St. Photini, or Svetlana in Russian. Her name means “equal to the apostles,” and she is honored as apostle and martyr on the Feast of the Samaritan Woman. The gospel witnesses to the gift of God for all God’s children. . . . Jesus shows us a new way to learn about one another, learn the truth of one another, and learn that we need one another. True worship takes place not at a sacred mountain or even a shared ancestral well, but in a relationship with the person of Christ, who is the wellspring and mountaintop of hope and peace. On another day, also about noon, Jesus will face death and again confess his thirst. On that day, only vinegar will be offered—in mockery. The gift of his living water will not be apparent to the one holding that sour sponge. But today, when Jesus and the Samaritan woman meet, they conspire to bring life out of death. The water they offer each other, water that quenches the thirst of body and soul, holds the gift of life for all. [This commentary by Patricia Farris on the 4th chapter of John was originally published by Christianity Today on February 13, 2002.]
Young White Pine in January, one of 26 trees planted at Buffalo in the last two years.
We All Need a Tree (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, 1 March 2023)
Scripture: Humble yourselves, therefore, under God’s mighty hand, that he may lift you up in due time. Cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you. ~1Peter 5: 6-7
I HIRED A PLUMBER to help me restore an old farmhouse, and he experienced a rough first day on the job: a flat tire made him lose an hour of work, his electric drill quit, and his ancient one-ton truck refused to start. While I drove him home, he sat in stony silence. On arriving, he invited me in to meet his family. As we walked toward the front door, he paused briefly at a small tree, touching the tips of the branches with both hands. When opening the door he underwent an amazing transformation. His face was wreathed in smiles. He hugged his two small children and gave his wife a kiss. Afterward, as he was walking me to the car, we passed the tree and my curiosity got the better of me. I asked him about what I had seen him do earlier. “Oh, that's my trouble tree,” he replied. “I know I can't help having troubles on the job, but one thing's for sure, those troubles don't belong in the house with my wife and the children. So I just hang them up on the tree every night when I come home and ask God to take care of them.” The next morning when I picked him up, he told me, “Funny thing is, when I come out in the morning to pick up my troubles, there aren't nearly as many as I remember hanging up the night before.” Life may not be the party we hoped for, but while we are here we might as well dance. We all need a Tree. [Revised version of an anonymous text posted to the Quora website on February 18.]
Prayer: Thou who art over us, Thou who art one of us, Thou who art: Give me a pure heart, that I may see thee; a humble heart, that I may hear thee; a heart of love, that I may serve thee; a heart of faith, that I may abide in thee. Amen.
Music: The hymn Spirit of the Living God, performed and recorded in a silo by Sounds Like Reign.
Wind Chimes at Buffalo's Labyrinth
A Small, Beautiful Thing: Making a Difference; Changing the World (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, 22 February 2023)
Scripture: In you, Lord, I have taken refuge; let me never be put to shame; deliver me in your righteousness. Turn your ear to me, come quickly to my rescue; be my rock of refuge, a strong fortress to save me. Since you are my rock and my fortress, for the sake of your name lead and guide me. Keep me free from the trap that is set for me, for you are my refuge. Into your hands I commit my spirit; deliver me, Lord, my faithful God. ~Psalm 31: 1-5
YEARS AGO, WHEN I HAD JUST BEGUN TEACHING and wondered what kind of contribution I might make to the great world of scholarship, I spoke with a teacher and scholar whose work I very much admired. She had translated neglected works by medieval woman writers, written important articles on medieval women’s religious lives, and made influential contributions to the theory and practice of teaching history. What she had not done was write “the big book,” the monograph that laid out her theory of everything. I asked her if she planned to write such a book. “Oh,” she replied, “I prefer to do the small, beautiful thing.” I’ve never forgotten her way of describing the kind of scholarship to which she is drawn: the small, beautiful thing. It is a good description of her work: every idea pursued down to the ground, every story told richly and every sentence polished until it glows. The small, beautiful thing has been the doorway through which she has felt herself invited into large, broad places where she could think her best thoughts and do her best work. “You have set my feet in a broad place,” the psalmist sings in Psalm 31. Isn’t this what we all long for? A broad place in which to stand and stretch and look about us, a vantage point from which to make the best choices about how to spend our life’s energies? A place with room for our engagement with God, the world and one another to take root and grow? It’s what I want. But too often I find myself stuck in narrow places, unable to imagine a way out. Psalm 31 names some of the nets that trap us: shame, entanglement, misplaced trust, affliction. But sometimes getting stuck is as simple as feeling that setting our feet in an increasingly narrow groove is the only way to get from one end of our commitments to another. God longs to draw us from narrow places into more spacious ones. “God speaks,” the psalmist says, “and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.” Coming as it does in every moment of every day, God’s call is present not only in extraordinary moments, but also in the ordinary negotiations of our life in community. Our most mundane Lenten renunciations—a daily commitment to prayer, a daily commitment to be present to every person we encounter—are small, beautiful things that lift us from the groove of anxiety and busyness, production and achievement, and reorient us to the gift of our life. C. S. Lewis begins his autobiography with a story of a small, beautiful thing. When he was a little boy, his brother, Warren, brought him a tiny garden he had created in the lid of a biscuit tin. “As long as I live,” Lewis writes, “my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother’s toy garden.” At its best, the life of faith gives an account of some small bit of the world—a bit of moss and twig and flower, a little bread, a little wine—and returns it to us as something larger, broader, more spacious. Religious traditions are full of stories in which something small repays practices of loving attention by cracking the world wide open. C. S. Lewis’s brother creates a toy garden in which his brother sees paradise. A young woman in the 13th century studies one line of scripture until light pours from the page. The nurse of the child Krishna pries open his mouth to remove a bit of dirt and finds inside the world spread out in glory. I have noticed, however, that some of my students shift uncomfortably in their seats when I talk about this. They are in school to learn how to change the world. When I say small, they hear irrelevant, ineffectual. When I say beautiful, they hear decorative. A middle-class consolation, like Tivo or a trip to the beach. At the beginning of Lent I feel those worries too. What are these Lenten sacrifices for, anyway? Who cherishes these small renunciations? Surely God has bigger fish to fry in this world. Does God really care, or even notice, if I give up that glass of wine, that cup of coffee, that piece of cake? But the small gestures that we are invited to embrace each Lent help us experiment with our lives; they help us try on different ways of living. Last year, a nine-year-old friend of my daughter told her, “I’m giving up sarcasm for Lent. And it’s really hard.” Think of what that child stood to learn in her attempt to renounce sarcasm for 40 days. She already knew what it feels like to have a great, sarcastic rejoinder well up inside of her, a comeback that draws the attention of others to her, makes them laugh at her cleverness. But her Lenten practice taught her what it feels like to have that sarcastic reply come to mind, and then to wait and let it pass. Perhaps she learned that to say no to a sarcastic remark opens a space for other kinds of conversation. Perhaps she learned to cherish the anticipation of what might be said instead. And perhaps, through her learning to say no to a small, destructive force, her ability to resist larger destructive forces increased. I’ve been thinking lately about how much the vocation of the Christian has in common with the vocation of the poet, especially if we understand the latter vocation the way the poet C. D. Wright does. In Cooling Time: An American Poetry Vigil she writes, “everything has its meaning, / every thing matters; no one a means every one an end.” If everything and every person matters, then the small, beautiful thing is never decorative, never icing on the cake. It is the thing itself. It makes a difference. It changes the world. [This devotion by Stephanie Paulsell, a professor at Harvard Divinity School, was published by the The Christian Century on March 20, 2007.]
Prayer: O Lord God, let us all come to know that everything matters, every person matters. The small and beautiful things are not decorations. The beautiful things make a difference. They can change the world.
Music: A performance of the American Folk Hymn “What Wondrous Love Is This” by Blue Highway, an American contemporary bluegrass band.
Stonecrop Seedhead after snowfall at Buffalo
Repentance (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, February 15, 2023)
Scripture: Have mercy upon me, O God, According to Your loving kindness; According to the multitude of Your tender mercies, Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity, And cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions, And my sin is always before me. Against You, You only, have I sinned, And done this evil in Your sight-- That You may be found just when You speak, And blameless when You judge. ~Psalm 51: 1-4
WHEN I'M WORKING AS AN ARTIST-IN-RESIDENCE AT PAROCHIAL SCHOOLS, I like to read the psalms our loud to inspire the students, who are usually not aware that the snippets they sing at Mass are among the greatest poems in the world. But I have found that when I have asked children to write their own psalms, their poems often have an emotional directness that is similar to that of the biblical psalter. They know what it’s like to be small in a world designed for big people, to feel lost and abandoned. Children are frequently astonished to discover that the psalmists so freely express the more unacceptable emotions, sadness and even anger, even anger at God, and that all of this is in the Bible that they hear read in church on Sunday morning. Children who are picked on by their big brothers and sisters can be remarkably adept when it comes to writing cursing psalms, and I believe that the writing process offers them a safe haven in which to work through their desires for vengeance in a healthy way. Once a little boy wrote a poem called “The Monster Who Was Sorry.” He began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the whole town. The poem concludes: “Then I sit in my messy house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done all that’.” “My messy house” says it all: with more honesty than most adults could have mustered, the boy made a metaphor for himself that admitted the depth of his rage and also gave him a way out. If that boy had been a novice in a fourth-century monastic desert, his elders might have told him that he was well on the way toward repentance, not such a monster after all, but only human. If the house is messy, they might have said, why not clean it up, why not make it into a place where God might wish to dwell? [This devotion by Kathleen Norris comes from her book Amazing Grace.]
Prayer: Lord, Why do You forgive us? We say we love You, but we so often fail to share that love with others. Why do You forgive us? We spend time in prayer thanking You for your blessings and then we refuse to bless others. Why do You forgive us? We must learn to be truly thankful for your endless supply of forgiveness, a gift beyond our understanding. It is an amazing grace available to us.
Releasing Our Grip (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 8 February 2023)
Scripture: See, I set before you today life and prosperity, death and destruction. For I command you today to love the Lord your God, to walk in obedience to him, and to keep his commands, decrees and laws; then you will live and increase, and the Lord your God will bless you in the land you are entering to possess.
But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed. You will not live long in the land you are crossing the Jordan to enter and possess.
This day I call the heavens and the earth as witnesses against you that I have set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live and that you may love the Lord your God, listen to his voice, and hold fast to him. For the Lord is your life, and he will give you many years in the land he swore to give to your fathers, Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. ~Deuteronomy 30: 15-20
“IT'S THE OLD BURMESE MONKEY TRAP," MY FRIEND TOLD ME.
He was referring to what Robert Pirsig, in his philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, calls the old South Indian monkey trap. Picture a coconut chained to a stake. There’s a bit of rice inside that can be grabbed through a small hole, which fits the monkey’s hand exactly. But when the monkey makes a fist to grab the food and run, he can’t get his hand back out. “You’re only caught in the trap,” my friend said, “because you won’t release your grip. But is that little scrap of food you’re holding onto really worth being stuck?” The image haunted me. I thought of C.S. Lewis’s observation that the gates of hell are locked from the inside; leaving is as simple as throwing the latch. I’m not preaching a prosperity Gospel. Not every circumstance is of our own choosing. But after that conversation I began to wonder if what I was holding onto was life-giving or death-dealing. It was a new year, and I noticed people were choosing words to guide their annual intentions, rather than making resolutions. I chose the word release. I often wrote it on the inside of my wrist, a reminder to unclench my fist. I began to question what was really in the coconut. I started to release my grip on some false notions that had kept me trapped for years. This week’s Old Testament readings [from Sirach and Deuteronomy] present us with choices. Life and death. Prosperity and adversity. Fire and water. Surely nobody chooses the fire. Reading them I thought again of the rice in the coconut. I thought of how rarely I have broken bad with real intention. More often I have chosen what I believe, in the moment, is life. I have had a false notion, like the monkey does, that I must hold onto what in reality was only a scrap. I have believed that my existence depends upon having the ball of rice, when it was not the nourishment I needed. At times what I insisted on having would have been my own death sentence. “Whichever one he chooses he will be given,” the scripture says. So often we are trapped by our own imaginations. We have the wrong idea. Our limited understanding and deeply held assumptions lock the door from the inside. I am learning to accept the limits of what I desire and even what my imagination can apprehend, to hold what I want loosely, and even to let it go.
[This devotional by Jessica Mesman appeared in this week's The Christian Century's "Sunday's Coming" Newsletter.]
Prayer: God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Rudbeckia Seedheads in Buffalo Rain Garden after January Snow
Only by Division Will Hope Increase (Midweek devotion for Wednesday, February 1 2023]
Scripture
Blessed are those who fear the Lord, who find great delight in his commands. . . . Even in darkness light dawns for the upright, for those who are gracious and compassionate and righteous. Good will come to those who are generous and lend freely, who conduct their affairs with justice. ~From Psalm 112 (lectionary text for fifth Sunday after Epiphany)
I HAVE A SMALL GRAIN OF HOPE– one small crystal that gleams clear colors out of transparency.
I need more.
I break off a fragment to send you.
Please take this grain of a grain of hope so that mine won’t shrink.
Please share your fragment so that yours will grow.
Only so, by division, will hope increase,
like a clump of irises, which will cease to flower unless you distribute the clustered roots, unlikely source– clumsy and earth-covered– of grace.
[“For the New Year, 1981" by the American poet Denise Levertov]
Music: A marvelous 12-minute jazz rendition of A Closer Walk with Thee, performed by a group that includes Taj Mahal (vocals), Wynton Marsalis (trumpet), and Eric Clapton (guitar).
Hahn Memorial Sculpture at Buffalo
Be Strong and Courageous
(Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 25 January 2023)
Scripture: “I, even I, am he who comforts you. Who are you that you fear mere mortals, human beings who are but grass, that you forget the Lord your Maker, who stretches out the heavens and who lays the foundations of the earth, that you live in constant terror every day because of the wrath of the oppressor, who is bent on destruction? For where is the wrath of the oppressor? The cowering prisoners will soon be set free; they will not die in their dungeon, nor will they lack bread. For I am the Lord your God, who stirs up the sea so that its waves roar-- the Lord Almighty is his name. I have put my words in your mouth and covered you with the shadow of my hand-- I who set the heavens in place, who laid the foundations of the earth, and who say to Zion, ‘You are my people.’” ~Isaiah 51:12-16
For the believer, fear is always God-forgetful. If God is sovereign and his rule is complete, wise, righteous, and good, why would you fear?
THE WORDS OF HEZEKIAH, king of Judah, ring as true today as they did in the scary moment centuries and centuries ago when they were first spoken. Judah had been invaded by the powerful king of Assyria, Sennacherib. Hezekiah prepared and armed Judah for battle, but that is not all he did. He addressed the people with a more significant issue. He knew that in these moments God’s people were often given to fear, and he knew where that fear came from. Often in these moments of challenge the people of God would panic because they were identity amnesiacs. They would forget who they were as the children of God and they would forget who God is in all his almighty power and glory. So at this moment, Hezekiah knew that he couldn’t just be a good king and a skilled general; he must also be a wise pastor to his people.
As they were preparing for the Assyrian onslaught, Hezekiah didn’t want the people of Judah to think that they were left to their battle courage, their war experience, and their skill with weapons. He wanted them to know that they had been amazingly blessed with another ingredient, one that they could not, must not forget. So he said: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid or dismayed before the king of Assyria and all the horde that is with him. . . . With him is an arm of flesh, but with us is the Lord our God, to help us and to fight our battles” (2 Chron. 32:7–8).
There will be a moment when you will ask, “Where is courage to be found to face what I am facing?” Hezekiah gives you your answer: “Look up and remember your God.” As God’s child, you are never left to battle on your own. For further study and encouragement: Isaiah 51:12–16
[This week’s devotion is from New Morning Mercies by Paul David Tripp.]
Prayer: Let us give thanks that God is here to help us "fight our battles" and His Son to walk with us "in the garden."
Music: Anne Murray singing the hymn “In the Garden.” This hymn, one of Marlene Himes’ favorites, was sung at her funeral earlier this month.
Gazania Blooming in Buffalo Flower Garden
Lesson of the Flowers (Midweek Devotion for Wednesday, 18 January 2023)
Scripture: “The grass withers, and the flower falls, but the word of the Living God abides forever.” ~1 Peter 1:24b-25a (NRSV)
A FLOWER PRODUCES POLLEN, something helps it move. If the pollen reaches a receptive flower, it pollinates, and maybe it’ll fertilize, and then maybe it forms a seed. A lot has to happen right for this little vessel of potential life to come about. Then: the seed has to go. It can’t stay where it was, because if it did, the new life would compete with the old. So instead, the flowering plant depends on others to get those seeds moving to a new place. Suitable ground allows that seed to break open. Only in that opening can the seed grow. The opening is called germination. Then: it must dig roots. Roots pick up those essential life elements: water. Nutrients to grow. Only when the root structure is sufficient is the plant ready to produce a shoot and emerge from the soil. That shoot turns into a stem, which carries the nutrients up from the earth as the plant starts to reach towards the light. From the stem, the plant grows leaves, which pull in the light and turn it into sugar. And as they do, they release oxygen. That’s photosynthesis. And, when the time is right and the plant reaches a certain point of maturity, it’s ready to develop its beautiful flower, which is where this process starts again. A mature plant is productive and moves through these cycles as long as its own life continues. But its seeds endure. As do their seeds. As do you.
[This devotion written by Kaji Douša was posted to the Daily Devotional website on 17 January 2023. Rev. Douša is the Senior Pastor of The Park Avenue Christian Church in New York City.]
Prayer: May my soul dance to the flower’s rhythm, O God.
Music: Two performances of "Sois la Semilla" ("You are the Seed"), a hymn we will be singing in our Sunday Morning Worship Service on January 29. Sois la Semilla (performed in Spanish) You are the Seed (performed in English)
Warner Stallman painting of Jesus as the Good Shepherd in the Buffalo Worship Center
A Devotion in Memory of Marlene Himes (1936-2023) [a devotion for 11 January 2023]
The Journey Through Grief
On Monday we received a dreaded phone call we knew was inevitable--our Pastor informing us that Marlene had passed away. In Buffalo’s 146-year history, there has never been a member of this congregation more loved and admired. She was a beautiful person who made innumerable contributions to this congregation during decades of service. This midweek devotion is dedicated to her memory as we reflect on how to deal with the sense of loss and grief we are experiencing. The text is taken from Grieving the Loss of a Loved One by Lorene Hanley Duquin.
Grief is like a long valley, a winding valley where any bend may reveal a totally new landscape. ~C. S. Lewis
GRIEF IS THE PAINFUL JOURNEY that we embark upon when someone we love dies. It is not unlike the recovery period after a serious surgery, when our bodies need time to heal and our muscles need time to regenerate. When we lose a loved one, a significant part of our lives is torn away. In trying to describe the severity of the loss, Madeleine L’Engle wrote: “The death of a beloved is an amputation.” But unlike a physical amputation, where we lose a limb, the death of a loved one is an emotional amputation, where we lose a person that we loved deeply. Grief is the process by which we allow ourselves to come to grips with our loss. It is a journey that will be different for each of us, depending on our personalities and our relationship with the person who died. Some of us will travel through the classic stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, sadness, and gradual acceptance. Others will jump back and forth from one stage to another. Some of us may skip some of the stages entirely. There is no right or wrong way to move through grief. Grief is not an illness or an abnormality. It is a natural process. We grieve deeply because we loved deeply. Grief is also a holy process. In his Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells us: “Blessed are they who mourn, for they will be comforted” (Mt 5:4). Jesus is telling us that we are blessed, not because the loss of a loved one was a blessing, but because we will be comforted in our loss. Jesus doesn’t tell us how we will be comforted. He only promises that he will help us through this difficult time. Is our faith strong enough to believe in that promise?
Prayer: Lord, be my comfort and my strength as I journey through grief. You know the depths of pain in my heart. You know how lost and weak I feel. Guide me through each stage of this journey. Strengthen my faith and my trust in you. Never let me be separated from you. Amen.
Scripture:When you pass through waters, I will be with you; through rivers, you shall not be swept away. When you walk through fire, you shall not be burned, nor will flames consume you. For I, the Lord, am your God, the Holy One of Israel, your savior. (Isaiah 43:2-3)
A Radical Resolution (A meditation for the beginning of a New Year)
Scripture: I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. God has made everything suitable for its time; moreover God has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. - Ecclesiastes 3:10-11 (NRSV)
MY FAMILY LIVES A BLOCK FROM TIMES SQUARE. From our window, we can see “half” the ball drop. Actually, what we see is the number 20. A tall building blocks our view of the year—so we have to trust that it moved from 2022 to 2023 last night.
I like to think of time as one aspect of God’s creation. It is too wonderful and mysterious to fully comprehend. Sometimes I’ll look out the window and imagine that it’s a different year: remembering a time in the past or dreaming about what it might be like far into the future.
Hey—as long as the year starts with 20, anything is possible with our view of the ball drop. It could be 2001 or 2099 for all we know. Time itself is so broad and deep and wide for me to begin to understand it. I’m in awe of astrophysicists who seem to understand so much more than I might imagine.
God has “made everything suitable for its time.” Today we begin 2023. God has made everything suitable for today. Even the astrophysicists can’t fully know what God has done from the beginning to the end. For today, we can rest in the assurance that God is present with us. You can resolve to be present in the moment today—neither yearning for the past nor planning for the future. Perhaps that’s the most radical of resolutions.
Prayer: Thank you, God, for the mystery of time. Be present with me today as I seek to be present with you. Amen. [This text by Ann Kansfield, Chaplain for the NYC Fire Department, was posted to the Daily Devotional website on January 1, 2023.]
Music: The Piano Guys in a jazzy version of the hymn We Three Kings, surrounded by skaters on an ice rink.
Buffalo Worship Center
Altar and Cross at Night
Sitting High … Looking Low (Meditation for 28 December 2022)
Scripture:Who is like the Lord our God, the One who sits enthroned on high, who stoops down to look on the heavens and the earth? He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap. - Psalm 113:5-7 (NIV)
ABOUT SIX YEARS AGO, our church sponsored a youth trip to our nation’s capital. While touring the capital buildings, we ran into Congressman John Lewis. The Congressman John Lewis. The Civil Right’s icon. The Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient. The moral conscience of the U.S. Congress. We had no appointment with the Congressman, and our church is not located in his district. But upon introducing myself and our youth group, he invited us (a group of 30) to his office. His staff scrambled to find chairs for all of us and supplied us with plenty Georgia peanuts, fruit, and water. Then we listened as Congressman Lewis talked to us about how our nation has been lifted through the rich contributions and profound sacrifices of those who fight for racial equality. We looked at pictures of the Congressman leading historic marches and shaking hands with presidents, celebrities, and several world leaders. Then the Congressman answered questions from the youth and challenged them to give their best in every struggle for justice. I’ve often reflected on how amazing our time with Congressman Lewis was. Greatness and accessibility are not usually in sync in our society. The greater a person’s elevation, the less available they become to everyday people. The psalmist tells us God’s throne is so high that God stoops down to reach the heavens above. And God stoops even further to gaze upon the earthly affairs of you and me, with love and compassion.
Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for the high exaltation and the lowly compassion exemplified in your advent. Amen. [This medication was written by Kenneth L. Samuel, Pastor of Victory for the World Church in Decatur Georgia, and posted to the UCC’s Daily Devotional website on December 21.]
Music: Performance of Silent Night by the Salt Lake Symphonic Choir
Nativity banner in Buffalo's Worship Center
Final Advent Meditation: "Zealous Hopes" (Meditation for 21 December 22)
I LEARNED SOMETHING ABOUT WHAT IS POSSIBLE at St. John’s Abbey in Minnesota, just after morning prayer. I had told another resident of the Ecumenical Institute that the monks had begun 1 Corinthians, in case she wanted an opportunity to hear the letter read aloud. Her doctoral thesis had been on a passage from the epistle, and she was in the process of turning it into a book. This text had engaged her for more than ten years. She had made a pilgrimage to Corinth and knew Paul’s words in Greek, in German and in many English translations. But as she listened in the abbey church, something caught her attention that she had never noticed before. It was a revelation that left her gasping for breath, and I believe she left the church that morning amazed, not a little discomfited, and above all grateful to have been granted a new sense of the Bible’s power. We have many defenses against hearing the Christmas readings and taking them to heart. The images are resoundingly familiar—“The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light”—and the nativity story is so colored by nostalgia that listening takes considerable effort. It’s hard for us to remember that, as is always the case with scripture, we are continually invited to hear “a new song,” words full of possibilities we have not yet seen and can’t imagine. All we need are the ears to hear, but our tired old ears resist us at every turn. As the magnificent titles that Isaiah foresees are proclaimed—“Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace”—we may suddenly remember that we forgot to take the rolls out to thaw, and this means that our despised sister-in-law will have gained another weapon in her war of one-upmanship on the domestic front. Or our listening is interrupted when our child comes to us in tears because another child bent the halo she is wearing in the pageant, and we must fix it, right now. I tend to enjoy Advent, with all of its mystery and waiting, but find it difficult to muster much enthusiasm when Christmas Eve comes around. I know I’m cheating myself, succumbing to my usual temptation to sloth, which Christian tradition understands as not mere laziness but as the perverse refusal of a possible joy. The ancient monks saw zeal as the virtue opposed to sloth, and in the Christmas readings we find the “zeal of the Lord” invoked by both the prophet Isaiah and the author of the letter to Titus. After naming the many promises made by God that are to be fulfilled by the Messiah—the lifting of oppression, the end of warfare and the establishment of “endless peace”—Isaiah states that it is the “zeal of the Lord” that will accomplish it. In the letter to Titus we are told that Jesus gave himself for us in order to create a people worthy of his name, a people who are zealous for the good. But zeal makes us nervous. It is out of fashion. We prefer the protective detachment of irony or sarcasm, and regard zeal as pathetic if not pathological. When a person exhibits too much passion over anything—God, a political movement, the latest in tattoos or a popular television show—we label that person as obsessive or compulsive, and mutter, “Get a life!” Might we better understand zeal as Isaiah does, as the prerogative of God, who, despite the mess we’ve made of things, still chooses to care for this battered creation and our faulty selves? If God can do this, why not just go along with it and catch that wild transition, seeing the “bloody garments” of humanity’s violent history burned in a fire, all because—take a breath—“a child has been born to us”? Something so small and seemingly ordinary as that? Why not sing as the psalm commands us, joining in with the roar of the sea and the trees of the forest? The God who has created it all will come again to set things right, to judge in righteousness and truth, and even our most zealous hopes will not have been in vain. The zealous love of this God has already appeared among us in the flesh to train us for a new life and teach us how to welcome him when he comes again in glory. Our gospel is the unlikely tale that begins with an emperor’s folly, for in setting out to register “all the world,” Augustus and his governor Quirinius put something into motion that transcends all earthly power. We know the story and how it comes out, but let’s try to see ourselves in the shepherds’ place, afraid to open ourselves to God and in need of reassurance, of being told not to fear. Let’s be willing, like Mary, to take the words in, to treasure and ponder them, because so much is possible when we do. As these words wash over us they penetrate, despite our defenses and distractions. Their spirit can move us and change us, whether we will it or not. Simply being present is enough, for church is a place that allows this transformation to occur. If we feel utterly exhausted, drained of all feeling and weary with worldly chores and concerns, so much the better. Our weakness is God’s strength. Our emptiness means that there is room for God after all. [This meditation by Kathleen Norris was originally published by The Christian Century in December of 2005.]
Prayer: Precious Savior, breathlessly we wait for your coming. Come into our waiting hearts that we may celebrate the miraculous day of your birth. Welcome, Lord Jesus, for it is in your name, we pray. Amen
Fourth Sunday of Advent: Matthew 1:18–25 (Meditation for 14 December 2022)
Matthew's genealogy underscores that God has always worked through messy and broken families.
THERE ARE MULTIPLE GREEK WORDS FOR BIRTH that Matthew could use to begin his Gospel and describe the birth of Jesus. The one he uses is genesis. The genealogy that prefaces Matthew’s birth story seems as orderly as the first six days of creation. The names are what we expect, all the greatest heroes of Jewish history. Scratching the surface exposes more complicated truth. Abraham sets aside his oldest son, while Jacob cheats his brother out of his birthright. David murders a man to prevent a scandal. The women Matthew includes aren’t much better. Tamar plays prostitute; Rahab actually is one. Ruth is a foreigner. Yet all have their place in the new creation of Jesus. As Joseph enters the story, we are primed to hear of Jesus’ genesis in a new kind of way. By the time a direct descendant of Abraham finds his betrothed pregnant with a child not his own, the messiness of family life has been well established. Mary is “found with child,” and I can’t help but wonder who found her. Mary’s situation must have been known by some, perhaps by all: her parents, the village busybodies, maybe even the local rabbi. Joseph has to do something, but what? He has no good options. Divorcing Mary quietly might be the just thing to do, but it isn’t good. She might not be stoned to death, as Levitical law contends, but without a man to keep her she might well be reduced to begging or forced into prostitution. If instead Joseph marries a seemingly unfaithful woman, he himself is tainted by her sin. And that’s not the worst of it. Joseph runs the risk of nurturing an interloper in his own dynasty. In patriarchal terms, Mary’s son stands to inherit the birthright of Joseph’s own biological child. Joseph is still considering when an angel appears. The first words out of an angel’s mouth are almost always “Do not be afraid.” It may be that seeing an angel is frightening, but it seems just as likely that angels encounter people in situations where they are already afraid. Joseph in Matthew’s Gospel and Mary in Luke’s are no exception. On the cusp of marriage, they find themselves with a pregnancy they didn’t seek or expect. The very existence of this child may well threaten their place in their community, their synagogue, and their families. Their own relationship may be broken before it has even begun. In the face of this new beginning, fear seems reasonable. Yet maybe things aren’t as new as they seem. Matthew’s genealogy underscores that the more things change, the more they stay the same. God has always worked through messy and broken families, restoring them and bringing hope. Isaac will not be sacrificed; Judah will have sons. Rahab will save the people; Ruth will be claimed a matriarch by a people not her own. God will choose the unlikely one, the second son, the barren woman, the one who seemed beyond redeeming. Shame and heartache are not foreign to God. There is truly nothing new under the sun. For proof, note that God will help Joseph, son of Jacob, in the same way God helped another Joseph, another son of Jacob, farther back on the family tree. As then, a dream will illuminate an escape from shame and death. God will provide a path to salvation consistent with that which has come before. More than any other Gospel, Matthew views the Jesus story as the continuation of the Old Testament. Beyond the figures of the Pentateuch and the histories, Jesus fulfills the prophets’ vision. Eight times Matthew writes that Jesus “fulfills” what was spoken by the prophets; the first occurs in this week’s reading. Matthew’s explanation of the virgin birth, Joseph’s dream, the angel’s visit, and a new name are rooted firmly in the past. The virgin birth and the naming of Jesus are not original; they are the completion of what was once begun. God created the world in the beginning; now God creates it anew in Jesus. God who made the universe out of nothing decides to do something even harder: enter into a human family. Despite its messiness and failure, its sin and sorrow, its brokenness and despair, God will redeem Abraham’s line. God will fulfill the promise made to Abraham and his descendants, that through them God will bless all the families of the earth. And we are part of this genesis, this new creation. Through the waters of baptism, Jesus becomes our brother and we children of God. Consequently, just as God enters the story of Abraham’s family, God enters our own. Our genealogies—with their complexity, their secrets, and their shames—are now part of Jesus’ story too. Abraham and Isaac, Jacob and Joseph, Tamar and Rahab, Mary and Joseph—none of them is beyond God’s capacity to love and save. Neither are we. Christmas will be our confirmation. In these remaining days of Advent we look with hope and expectation for genesis. The child born into Mary and Joseph’s family is born into our family as well. God will make the world new through him—and, because of him, through us. [This meditation by Katie Hines-Shah, senior pastor of Redeemer Lutheran Church in Hinsdale, Illinois, was originally posted to the Christian Century website in November of 2016.]
Mary Brings Her Whole Story (Meditation for 7 December 2022)
Scripture: The Magnificat–the Song of Mary (a lectionary reading for this week in Advent)
And Mary said, My soul doth magnify the Lord, And my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour. For he hath regarded the low estate of his handmaiden: for, behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed. For he that is mighty hath done to me great things; and holy is his name. And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation. He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud in the imagination of their hearts. He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away. He hath helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy; As he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed for ever. ~Luke 1:46b-55
IN THE GOSPEL OF LUKE we encounter the Magnificat, Mary’s celebration song about her pregnancy. If anyone is expecting a lullaby, they better think again. Mary expresses a raw thankfulness for what the arrival of Jesus means for the liberation of oppressed peoples, and she uses language that reflects triumph over the powerful through protest and resistance. She includes vivid imagery and jaw-dropping linguistic effects in each line. It makes sense that this song appears in the lectionary as an alternative to a psalm, because like a psalm it carries the weight of generations long before and after the singer. And along with having significance for the broader community of faith, Mary’s song has a personal tone, as she celebrates that God has given her a significant role in the fulfillment of promises to Abraham’s descendants. When considering how to engage this passage in preaching and worship, I suggest giving attention to the way Mary embraces God’s invitation for her to bring her whole story to the life God is calling her to live. Here are three related directions to consider.
Mary’s holistic praise. Some translations begin the song with Mary claiming that her celebration comes from her “soul” and “spirit.” These terms might suggest to us a neglect for bodily experience, but that is not what they mean here, nor throughout the New Testament. I appreciate the way the Common English Bible translates the opening lines: “With all my heart I glorify the Lord! In the depths of who I am I rejoice in God my savior.” The depths of who we are includes our deepest joys and concerns, influential memories, connections to communities, and ideas that shape us even if we don’t know how to explain them. To rejoice from one’s depths is to bring all of oneself into the moment.
Mary’s embrace of her story. Throughout her song, Mary speaks of the way God pays attention to and liberates “the lowly.” She initially focuses on her own situation. When she sings that God has looked with favor upon her lowliness, this could also be translated as “humiliation.” Is she talking about her socio-economic status? She lives in Nazareth, a small town that is looked down upon in the region. Is she referring to what people will think about her pregnancy when she returns home from Elizabeth’s house? Mary is from an area where homes are so close to each other that it would be near impossible to keep her pregnancy a secret. In either case, Mary celebrates the freedom to be unashamed of where she is from, who she is a part of, and what her experience is. Moreover, she is happy for all generations to know her story.
Mary’s embrace of her community. The majority of Mary’s song refers to the lowliness of Israel—the people that make up her community of faith—and how God has mightily removed the powerful from their thrones to liberate and lift up this oppressed people of God. It is important to notice that Mary does not receive the invitation to be the mother of the Christ as an isolated calling or a path for escape. As blessed as she is, she is not trying to exalt herself up above her community. Rather, she recognizes, names, and embraces her community the whole way. [This meditation by Montague Williams was posted to the Christian Century newsletter Sunday’s Coming on December 5.]
An Advent Meditation: Waiting in Darkness (Meditation for 30 November 2022)
Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground, and righteousness will look down from the sky. ~Psalm 85:10–11
THE DARKNESS WILL NEVER TOTALLY GO AWAY. I’ve worked long enough in ministry to know that darkness isn’t going to disappear, but that, as John’s Gospel says, “the light shines on inside of the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome it” (1:5). Such is the Christian form of yin-yang, our own belief in paradox and mystery. We must all hope and work to eliminate darkness, especially in many of the great social issues of our time. We wish world hunger could be eliminated. We wish we could stop wasting the earth’s resources on armaments. We wish we could stop killing people from womb to tomb. But at a certain point, we have to surrender to the fact that the darkness has always been here, and the only real question is how to receive the light and spread the light. That is not capitulation any more than the cross was capitulation. It is real transformation into the absolutely unique character and program of the Risen Christ.
What we need to do is recognize what is, in fact, darkness and then learn how to live in creative and courageous relationship to it. In other words, don’t name darkness light. Don’t name darkness good, which is the seduction that has happened to many of our people. . . . The most common way to release our inner tension is to cease calling darkness darkness and to pretend it is passable light. Another way to release your inner tension is to stand angrily, obsessively against it, but then you become a mirror image of it. Everyone can usually see this but you! Our Christian wisdom is to name the darkness as darkness, and the Light as light, and to learn how to live and work in the Light so that the darkness does not overcome us. If we have a pie-in-the-sky, everything-is-beautiful attitude, we are in fact going to be trapped by the darkness because we are not seeing clearly enough to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Conversely, if we can only see the darkness and forget the more foundational Light, we will be destroyed by our own negativity and fanaticism, or we will naively think we are apart from the darkness. . . . Instead, we must wait and work with hope inside of the darkness—while never doubting the light that God always is—and that we are too (Matthew 5:14). That is the narrow birth canal of God into the world—through the darkness and into an ever-greater Light.
Reflect: In what parts of your life are you trying to push away darkness instead of living with it as a teacher and transformer?
[This meditation comes from Richard Rohr’s Preparing for Christmas: Daily Meditations for Advent, published by Franciscan Media in 2012.]
Music: A performance of an ancient hymn dating back over 1,000 years: O Come, O Come Emmanuel by Anna Hawkins; filmed in Israel, sung in Hebrew and English.
Entrance to the Buffalo Labyrinth
Midweek Meditation in Preparation for Thanksgiving: Who’s Coming to Dinner? (Meditation for 23 November 2022)
Scripture: “Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes?” - Matthew 6:25 (NIV)
DELICIOUS FOOD HAS MANY DESTINATIONS TONIGHT. Dinner tables across the country will be brimming with all kinds of culinary indulgences: sumptuous appetizers, rich entrees, delectable desserts. On this national day of feasting, many churches and service organizations are particularly mindful of the poor and homeless. Beyond our regular food programs, we make special efforts to provide hot meals for the indigent and to assemble food boxes stuffed with turkeys and fixings for seniors and struggling families. There is definitely a time for fasting, but for most of us, it’s not today. If there is one day when calorie counters feel they deserve a break, it’s today. In Black American culture, food is a prominent expression of cultural pride. Living through generations of poverty and scarcity undergirded by systemic racism, Black Americans find a certain self-affirmative jubilation in being able to dress our dinner tables with the savory delights of our creative cuisine that our communal struggles have never been able to stifle. But notwithstanding all the energy and attention we give to food preparation, food distribution, and food presentation today, we know viscerally that what’s on our tables is not nearly as important as who’s at our tables. Food is only the precursor to the persons who are the main ingredient at any dinner gathering. What satisfies us is not just the perfectly seared seafood or the delightful vegetables or the decadent sweets. What fills us is the presence of loved ones and friends who share with us another anniversary of gratitude for being alive and for being together. And more than the food on the table, we are filled by the spaces of loved ones who are no longer with us. Even if we dine alone tonight, the dinner is honored by the presence of our own thankfulness.
Prayer: Lord, feed us today with the peace of your presence. Amen.
[This meditation by Kenneth L. Samuel, Pastor of Victory for the World Church in Stone Mountain, Georgia, was posted on Thanksgiving Day last year to the Daily Devotional website.]
Christ the Artist, We the Portfolio (meditation for 16 November 22)
We are God’s artifacts—beautiful, incomplete, and mysterious.
I INHERITED AN IMPRESSIVE SEQUENCE OF ART COMMISSIONS from my predecessor at St. Martin’s. He not only conceived a number of projects but also gathered an expert panel of art consultants and found donors for a remarkable east window, two altars, a processional cross, and much more. I come from the strand of the church that tends to assume such things should be sold and the money given to the poor. So I’ve had to listen and learn about faith, art, and mission. I began with the words of Jeremiah: “The vessel he was making of clay was spoiled in the potter’s hand, and he reworked it into another vessel.” Here I found the essence of art and the essence of Christianity in one sentence. It’s the essence of art because art is the convergence of form, material, and ideas. The artist whom Jeremiah went to see is taking the material of clay, the form of the vessel, and the idea of God’s relationship with Israel. Like most artists, the potter finds that the first attempt wasn’t a huge success, and the original plan is research that leads to an improved outcome next time round. That’s how art works. Art doesn’t fundamentally lie in the creation of the material. The material is a given—to be understood, practiced upon, cherished, for sure, but not created. Art lies in the re-creation of that material in a new form, according to a governing idea or set of ideas. That’s what makes Jeremiah’s words the essence of Christianity. Christianity is not about imagining something perfect called creation and straining to get ourselves back to that ideal state; it’s about taking the material of humankind and the surrounding world and universe, exploring the form of a relationship between God and us, and contemplating the governing idea that God the artist will go to any lengths to restore that relationship. In the words of Athanasius, “When a portrait . . . becomes obliterated through external stains . . . the subject of the portrait has to come and sit for it again, and then the likeness is re-drawn on the same material.” This is the story of Christianity, that God does not throw us away as flawed but reworks us into something more beautiful. The agent of this remarkable artistic project is Jesus. We are his portfolio. Vincent van Gogh wrote: “Christ lived serenely, as a greater artist, despising marble and clay as well as colour, working in living flesh . . . this matchless artist made neither statues nor pictures . . . [but] loudly proclaimed that he made . . . living people, immortals.” In other words, Jesus heals the diseased and comforts the distressed, and makes them icons of the beauty of God. Paul says that Jesus is “the image of the invisible God”: not that God the artist created Jesus the material and form, but that Jesus is the ultimate depiction of God’s way of turning us from formless material into works of glorious and eternal art. This is justification and is the work of Jesus. Continuing to work with the material that we are and redeeming the form according to the idea or pattern of God’s grace is called sanctification and is the work of the Holy Spirit. Augustine, describing our resurrected bodies, says that an artist who makes an unsatisfactory statue need not throw it away but simply moisten the material and remix it. He calls God the almighty artist who removes our shortcomings and makes us beautiful like never before.
[Samuel Wells, the author of this meditation, is the vicar of St. Martin-in-the-Fields in London and author of Humbler Faith, Bigger God. This meditation was originally published in January of 2017, and was recently re-posted on the Christian Century website.]
Prayer: We give thanks to God, the almighty artist, who transforms our shortcomings and gives us a grace and beauty we could never achieve on our own.
Music: The spiritual Steal Away performed by the King's Singers and recorded in St. Martin-in-the-Fields.
Little Bluestem at Buffalo UMC
Sacrificial Love (meditation for 9 November 2022)
Scripture:Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant. ~1 Corinthians 13:4
LAST SUMMER I TOURED SAINT JOHN'S ABBEY WOODWORKING where a small team of craftsmen (mostly monks) build furniture they describe as sustainable, long-lasting, and utilitarian. I think their designs are better described as artistic, sublimely gorgeous, and eat-your-heart-out-Ikea minimalist. On the tour, a woodworker explained that they had long outgrown their workshop. Soon they would be tearing down their buildings and creating a new, expansive workshop with space for all their tools, projects, and room still to grow. There was great anticipation about this long-dreamed-of woodworking shop. The final stop on the tour was the lumber shed, where high above planks of red oak and maple was a loft soaked in natural light, sunbeams beckoning for a passerby to climb up and explore. For over 50 years this loft was the studio of a monk who is a prolific painter. Nestled above the woodworkers he births vibrant works of art that end up in the Vatican and Parisian galleries alike. When the old workshop is demolished, his sacred space will also be torn down. The community helped the painter set up a new studio nearby. They assisted him in packing his canvases and brushes and gently unpacked his tools in the new space. They recognized that in the midst of the exciting growth for the rest of the community came this deeply personal loss for one among them. They grieved with him. They named and honored his sacrifice, just as the painter named and honored the need for a new woodworking shop. This is the commandment to love one another. To accompany each other rather than insist on our own way. To tell truthful, tender stories rather than keep a record of wrongs.
Prayer:Together may we bear all things and endure all things. May Christ’s love never end.
[This devotional by Liz Miller was posted to the Daily Devotional website on November 6. Miller serves as the pastor of Edgewood United Church (UCC) in East Lansing, Michigan.]
Music Video: A performance of the beautiful "You Raise Me Up" by the Gracias Choir and Orchestra.
Leaves of a Tulip Tree in the Buffalo Labyrinth
The Birds Don’t Know They Have Names (meditation for 2 November 2022)
Scripture: But ask the animals, and they will teach you, or the birds in the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth, and it will teach you, or let the fish in the sea inform you. Which of all these does not know that the hand of the Lord has done this? In his hand is the life of every creature and the breath of all mankind. ~Job 12: 7-10
THE WARBLERS ARE COMING THROUGH NOW. Very hard to identify them all, even with field glasses and a bird book. (Have seen at least one that is definitely not in the bird book.) Watching one which I took to be a Tennessee warbler. A beautiful, neat, prim little thing–seeing this beautiful thing which people do not usually see, looking into this world of birds, which is not concerned with us or with our problems, I felt very close to God or felt religious anyway. Watching those birds was as food for meditation, or a mystical reading. Perhaps better. Also the beautiful, unidentified red flower or fruit I found on a bud yesterday. These things say so much more than words. Mark Van Doren [an American poet], when he was here, said, “The birds don’t know they have names.” Watching them I thought: who cares what they are called? But do I have the courage not to care? Why not be like Adam, in a new world of my own, and call them by my own names? That would still mean that I thought the names were important. No name and no word to identify the beauty and reality of those birds today is the gift of God to me in letting me see them. (And that name–God–is not a name? It is like a letter X or Y. Yahweh is a better name–it finally means Nameless One.)
[Meditation by the Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, from a journal entry written October 5, 1957 and published in A Year with Thomas Merton: Daily Meditations from His Journals, edited by Jonathan Montaldo.]
Prayer: God our Father, help us to participate in the life around and within us, restore us to your peace, renew us through your power, teach us to love all that you have created, inspire us to care for the earth as your gift and our home.
Music: Concluding this Midweek Devotion is a YouTube video, just recently posted, of Ethel Waters singing "His Eye is on the Sparrow" at a Billy Graham crusade in 1957 in New York City.
Milkweed seed pods in rain garden at Buffalo UMC
Another Meditation on Jumping In (meditation for 26 October 2022)
Scripture for this week: "For we live by faith, not by sight." ~2 Corinthians 5:7
IT CARRIES US AWAY. Outside of the cities we live in. Outside of ourselves. That is actually the definition of ecstasy: something that takes us outside of ourselves. The world needs more ecstatic people who live beyond themselves. The river is ecstatic. And with jumping in we risk everything. We risk losing ourselves. We risk not coming back. We risk sinking to the bottom. We risk allowing the Current to guide us rather than being guided by our own feet on the banks. From time to time I sit on the banks of the river that runs through my city. Those who first walked this land and those who first swam this river named it Toolpay Hanna, which in the language of the Lenape means “Turtle River.” Ah, turtles live in ponds and rivers–oceans too. Thank God they are everywhere! When the river was (re)discovered by the exploring Dutch, they named it the Schuylkill River, which means “Hidden River.” There is a Hidden River that carries us away. Protective and free and grace-filled like the turtle. The walk to this body of water is slightly longer from my desk, but I find my way to its banks. And sit. And dream. And imagine what it would be like to jump in. I’m a good swimmer. I’d be fine. But that isn’t going deeper. I want more than just a brief dip in the waters. Faith is jumping in and letting the Current take me where It wants. Submitting to the Wind and the Living Water and the “Ground beneath it all,” as Paul Tillich might call it. We (seem to) control our steps and our direction when journeying on the ground. Journeying in the River where the strong Current moves us, where the direction laid out by the River guides us toward our destination, is a very different path–one that calls for a deep trust and a deeper faith. It’s dangerous. There are painful rocks beneath the surface that we might strike a foot on. We might be bitten by something that dwells within. We might go over the waterfall. We might not come back out of the River. Traveling by River was never promised to be easy, but it is indeed holy. Submitting the direction of our lives to the Current is one of the most difficult endeavors we can undertake. But the walker who wants to go deeper must indeed jump in. With it comes love unimaginable. And while trusting and allowing the Current to guide us brings life and love, there is a cost. That cost is the forfeiture of our perceived control.
Questions to Hold • What makes you ecstatic? Both excited ecstatic and also “coming out of oneself” ecstatic? • What’s holding you back from jumping into the life that you sense the Current would like to lead you to? What can you do to overcome that fear? [This week's meditation is from Pond River Ocean Rain by Charles Lattimore Howard and published by Abindon Press.]
Maple tree at Buffalo UMC on a beautiful October afternoon.
Sometimes Miracles Occur Only When You Jump In (meditation for 19 October 2022)
Lectionary Scripture for This Week: You answer us with awesome and righteous deeds, God our Savior, the hope of all the ends of the earth and of the farthest seas, who formed the mountains by your power, having armed yourself with strength, who stilled the roaring of the seas, the roaring of their waves, and the turmoil of the nations. The whole earth is filled with awe at your wonders; where morning dawns, where evening fades, you call forth songs of joy. ~Psalm 65: 5-8
THE EGYPTIANS SOLDIERS WERE CLOSING IN and Moses and his followers were stuck at the shore. It was only a matter of time before every one of them would be slaughtered. Naturally, Moses and his followers were panicking. No one knew what to do. And then, just before the Egyptian army caught up to them, a Hebrew named Nachshon did something unexpected. He simply walked into the Red Sea. He waded up to his ankles, then his knees, then his waist, then his shoulders. And right when the water was about to get up to his nostrils, it happened: the sea parted. The point, said Rabbi Bachman, is that “sometimes miracles occur only when you jump in.”
The Bible has a way of reaching out and grabbing us when we least expect it. Even a snippet of a verse can stop us in our tracks. When I visited the memorial to Martin Luther King in Memphis, Tennessee, at the motel where he was murdered, I found a simple stone placed under the balcony made famous by the photos of King’s companions pointing to the boardinghouse from where the shots had been fired. A plaque on the stone reads: “Behold, here cometh the dreamer, let us slay him . . . and we shall see what will become of his dreams.” That is from the Book of Genesis, one of Joseph’s brothers speaking, plotting to murder the family’s favored younger son and leave his body in the desert. When I was a child, that story was my introduction to the notion of betrayal. I felt sure that my older brother would never do such a thing to me, but here was a story suggesting that it was possible. Standing below that balcony at the Lorraine Motel, I found these ancient words taking on new life, revealing the terrible things we do to one another when we forget our common humanity. If we allow ideology and prejudice to take hold of us, we can forget that we are brothers and sisters under the skin. We find ways to kill each other, literally and figuratively. But the dreamers among us refuse to die. Their dreams, like seeds, give us a chance to grow into better people, a better society, and remind us that hatred does not have the last word.
And I think this is what the Bible is for. It is meant to keep reaching out to us and, despite our inattention and indifference and infernal self-absorption, every now and then hit us in the gut. Prophets like Amos, Jeremiah, and Isaiah challenge us in our complacency, reminding us of our calling to be God’s witnesses, but also comforting us when we need it most, when we’re in the desert and there seems no way out. This week’s meditation by Kathleen Norris, excerpted from The Good Book: Writers Reflect on Favorite Bible Passages.
Prayer: We seek in these moments of reflection and prayer to be attuned to your Word. Grant us strength to persevere in our witness, to catch a vision of the joy you offer to all who serve you. Amen.
Music: “He Leadeth Me,” one of the hymns we sang in our Worship Service on 16 October. Note: no video, just music with lyrics.
Buffalo's Little Free Library
Be Afraid, Be Very Afraid (12 October 2022)
"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face."~Eleanor Roosevelt
Scripture:The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. - Psalm 111:10
WITH UTMOST RESPECT to the heavenly angels who make a name for themselves by careening into some unsuspecting person’s life and proclaiming, “Be not afraid”: it’s okay to be afraid. Those angels can keep their proclamations and see themselves to the door. We need a little fear in our lives.
If all we are told is to be brave and forget our fear, we might miss out on the opportunity to get to know it: what fear feels like, why it shows up when it does, and how we might use it. Fear is the threshold we have to cross to make our way to courage. It’s the signal our bodies send whenever we’re about to take a risk or do something new.
Whenever I publicly push back against the powers that be, whether with my words or with my body in the street, my muscles tense and I break out in a sweat. Right before I reveal my tender, vulnerable self to another person, my stomach starts flip-flopping and my pulse races. This is fear’s way of saying, “Pay attention! Something consequential is happening here!”
And when you feel afraid of God? Perhaps you’re being asked to follow a call so important it gives you the chills. Perhaps you should be on alert for what direction the Holy Spirit is moving in your midst. Perhaps you should lean into the dis-comforting mystery of the sacred instead of settling for your comfort zone where nothing startles, nothing alarms, and there’s nothing to be afraid of because nothing ever changes.
[This devotional was written by Liz Miller (pastor of the Edgewood United Church in East Lansing, Michigan) and posted to the Daily Devotional website on October 6.]
Prayer: Dear God, I recognize you in my joy and in my grief. Give me the courage to find you in my fear.
Sacred Music: A link to a Celtic-style performance by Morningtide of the hymn Blessed Assurance.
EL - The Lord (4 October 2022)
Scripture (from this Sunday’s lectionary) In the Lord I take refuge. How then can you say to me: “Flee like a bird to your mountain. For look, the wicked bend their bows; they set their arrows against the strings to shoot from the shadows at the upright in heart. When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” The Lord is in his holy temple; the Lord is on his heavenly throne. He observes everyone on earth. . . . For the Lord is righteous, he loves justice; the upright will see his face. ~from Psalm 11
ONE OF THE EARLY WORDS by which the ancient Hebrews knew God was El. El–the Lord. Beth-el, for instance, means the house of God. So I find it helpful, wherever and whenever possible, to call God El, or el, rather than using the masculine or feminine pronoun, because the name “el” lifts the Creator beyond all our sexisms and chauvinisms and anthropomorphisms. We human creatures, made in the image of God, in church as well as out, too often reject instead of affirming the Word which has proven to be the cornerstone. And we worry, too often, about peripheral things. Like baptism: is dunking more valid than sprinkling? And we are continuing to worry about sexist words to the point where we are coming close to destroying language. To call God either him or her, he or she, is in both cases to miss the wholeness of the Creator. And so we lose all sense of proportion, and try to clamp God once again within our own broken image. And so I return to the reality of our trinitarian God of creation, el. El. That power of love. That holy thing. Do we believe that it was a power of love which created everything and saw it was good? Is creation purposeful? Or is it some kind of cosmic accident? Do our fragments of lives have meaning? Or are we poor human beings no more than a skin disease on the face of an unfortunate plane? Can we see the pattern and beauty which is an affirmation of the value of all creation?
[Devotion written by Madeleine L’Engle, author of the Newberry Award-winning children’s classic A Wrinkle in Time. This passage on El was first published in Episcopal Life and reprinted in Glimpses of Grace.]
Since Loretta Lynn’s passing was announced earlier today, it seems appropriate that this devotion be concluded with her performance of “Peace in the Valley.”
The Everyday is Replete with Meaning (27 September 2022)
Scripture: He heals the brokenhearted, and binds up their wounds. ~Psalm 147:1
From the Introduction to The Courage to See by Greg Garrett and Sabrina Fountain:
. . . the everyday is replete with meaning, if only we will pay attention to it. Great art, whether visual, musical, written, or otherwise, ushers us toward this kind of attention. The Marilynne Robinson quote from which the title of this book comes reminds us: “Wherever you turn your eyes the world can shine like transfiguration. You don’t have to bring a thing to it except a little willingness to see. Only, who could have the courage to see it?”
Garrett and Fountain’s book contains a series of devotions based on passages from world literature. One of their first quotes is from Little Women by Louisa May Alcott:
Jo did not recognize her good angels at once, because they wore familiar shapes, and used the simple spells best fitted to poor humanity. . . . Her mother came to comfort her, not with words only, but the patient tenderness that soothes by a touch, tears that were mute reminders of a greater grief than Jo’s, and broken whispers, more eloquent than prayers, because hopeful resignation went hand in hand with natural sorrow.
Prayer: Our Father, when we are broken and filled with sorrow, may we know in the deep places of our hearts that you are the God who suffers with us.
Escapist Realities [Devotion by Chris Mereschuk, an "Unsettled Pastor in the Southern New England Conference"; posted to the United Church of Christ "Daily Devotional Website" on 17 September 2022.]
Scripture: O that I had in the desert a traveler’s lodging place, that I might leave my people and go away from them! - Jeremiah 9:2a (NRSVUE)
I CONSIDER A STROLL on the bike path to be an accomplishment, so I’m in awe of my friend who’s through-hiking the Appalachian Trail. Though she’s hiking mostly solo, occasional fellow sojourners help ease the journey. Through social media updates, she shares miles logged, stunning photos, observations, obstacles, and her daily quest for shelter. Trailside hostels serve as lodging places with hot meals, showers, and clean water. When the trail is less generous, she seeks a safe camping spot, hoping for good enough rest. Because, come sunrise, she wakes up and does it all again. Though my friend’s adventure is beyond my abilities, escaping into the wilderness to find a “traveler’s lodging place” plays into my escapist fantasies. In reality, that escape is only a brief pause. Each new day brings new rugged terrain to traverse. Exhausted from the journey, God desired a traveler’s lodging place to rest and escape God’s own careless, belligerent, cruel people. But God can’t escape the people any more than the people can escape God. Not for long. I feel you on this one, God. O that I could escape the chaos and cruelty of far too many of your people! Alas, I know this is an escapist fantasy, and I can’t escape forever to a hermit’s shack. But maybe, God, you and I can find a traveler’s lodging place so we can get some good enough rest before we rise again for the journey together. The trail is easier when you hike with friends. Prayer: Sojourning God: if we can’t escape forever, let’s find a traveler’s lodging place to rest for the journey together. Amen.