What We Do In Remembrance

  • May 25, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 4.19-21
19 We love because he first loved us. 20 Whoever claims to love God yet hates a brother or sister is a liar. For whoever does not love their brother and sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 And he has given us this command: Anyone who loves God must also love their brother and sister.

Reflection: What We Do In Remembrance
By John Tillman 

Holidays in a time of pandemic are strange, aren’t they?

Most have gone through Lent and now Eastertide without gathering or celebrating as normal, and now on Memorial Day in the United States, we attempt to remember those who gave their lives in active military service without the traditional large gatherings, family cookouts, and other, more formal solemnities. 

While military service members who have died are the focus of this day, it is difficult for our minds not to turn to the many doctors, nurses, and other medical personnel who are not active military members, but have died fighting a very real war against a very real virus. 

Medical personnel have been enduring stresses, schedules, and dangers similar to those they would experience in wartime. Their stresses and dangers are real and are exacerbated by the war-like tenor of public and political grandstanding by so many political leaders, and unfortunately some faith leaders, on the issues surrounding the crisis. 

So, on this Memorial Day let us remember that in word and in deed we are charged, commanded, and compelled by the Holy Spirit of God to enact and speak love in tangible ways to those around us. 

May we do so in remembrance of Jesus. We are called to strip ourselves of pride and clothe ourselves for service in ways that others deem unseemly or demeaning. We are charged to take up our cross and clothe ourselves not in “rights” but in righteousness.  

We do this not because we are loving people, but because He is a loving God. We love because of him (1 John 4.19) and hate in spite of him. If we do not or will not show love to others, we are in rebellion against God’s Holy Spirit (1 John 4.20) and are hardening our hearts, becoming more and more insensitive to His leading and to needs around us.

On this day, and on all the days to come, may we allow the Holy Spirit to re-soften our hearts toward his leading and toward our neighbors’ needs. May we be led toward loving actions and may loving and truthful words be placed on our tongues and on our keyboards. 

Divine Hours Prayer: The Prayer Appointed for the Week
Grant, O Lord, that the course of this world may be peaceably governed by your providence; and that your Church may joyfully serve you in confidence and serenity; through Jesus Christ our Lord who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, forever and ever. Amen.

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 26 (Listen – 2:58)
1 John 4 (Listen – 2:58)

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Whether in politics or in the church, so many of our leaders lead in the opposite way that Jesus described to his disciples, each lording their power over one another.

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Complete Our Joy — Guided Prayer

  • May 22, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 1 John 1.4
We write this to make our joy complete.

Reflection: Complete Our Joy — Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

John, the beloved disciple, was not writing in a time of peace, happiness, or good circumstances for the church, yet his writing rings with riotous joy. This joy permeated the church despite the pervasiveness of persecution and the pressures of the surrounding culture.

The church was threatened by attacks of all kinds. There were political threats from Rome. There were theological threats from multiple directions, including Greco/Roman philosophers denying the facts of Jesus’ physical incarnation, and pressure from Jews who wanted to keep enforcing Jewish customs. 

There were also threats from industry and business. Christianity’s ideological assault on idolatry, impacted a booming business both in material goods and travel. This caused riots by those whose livelihoods (and political positions) depended on idolatry. 

In some ways, our age is not that different. Like the ten plagues of Egypt were direct attacks on the pantheon of Egyptian gods and goddesses, every Christ-like principle attacks one of our cultures’ idols. Greed, selfishness, lust, materialism, radical individualism, and power, just to name a few, each have commercial industries that monetize them.

But despite the pressures and oppression surrounding the church today and despite the uncertainty and danger of threats both viral and political, we can join in praying a joy-filled poem based on the opening passage of John’s first epistle. The purpose of this writing, John states, is to complete our joy. May it do so.

Prayer to Complete Joy
From the beginning, Lord, you were
Maker of Earth
Painter of Sky
Speaker of Word

In humility, Lord, you stayed
To be touched
To be seen
To be heard

Suffering, Lord, you pursued
To bleed
To die
To rise

Joyful, Lord, we proclaim
Your words
Your death
Your life

In fellowship, Lord, make us
More holy
More loving
More true

We pray this to make our joy complete
In suffering
In struggle
In you

Divine Hours Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Search for the Lord and his strength; continually seek his face. — Psalm 105:4

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 23 (Listen – 2:50)
1 John 1 (Listen – 1:28)

This Weekend’s Readings
Isaiah 24 (Listen – 3:11), 1 John 2 (Listen – 4:04)
Isaiah 25 (Listen – 1:59), 1 John 3 (Listen – 3:21)

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Don’t be surprised if you are set at nought. It is part of the way of the Cross.

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You turned my wailing into dancing; you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy.

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Default Settings for Scripture

  • May 21, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: 2 Peter 3.16
He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Reflection: Default Settings for Scripture
By John Tillman

The “default settings” of our mindsets about scripture have a big effect on our ability to make use of them in the ways Paul and Peter intend. Here are three to adopt.

The Bible is not written to us as much as it is written for us.
The Bible is, in one context, written by God to us. Paul tells us all scripture is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness. (2 Timothy 3.16) But in another sense, texts are written by their authors to the audience they address. When Paul wrote 2nd Timothy, he was writing to Timothy in Ephesus, not to us. Paul also was not talking about the Bible that we have today. He was referring to the Tanakh and the versions of the gospels and church writings circulating at that time. Paul’s own writing is referred to by Peter as “scripture” so we know that early church leaders considered certain contemporary writings on a higher level than simple correspondence.

The Bible is not so much about us as it is about Jesus. 
We have a tendency to place ourselves in the stories of the Bible as we read them, experiencing them as we would literature. This can be helpful but we need caution and humility when placing ourselves in the story and we tend to overestimate how important our place in the story is. It is far more helpful to understand how the scripture relates to Jesus (as he explained to the Emmaus road disciples) than to understand how it relates to us.

The Bible speaks to us not only about the past, but about our future.
We will consistently misunderstand scripture if we do not labor first to understand its original meaning to its original readers. This means looking to the past. But scripture frequently speaks to us “from” the future when relating promises and prophecy that have yet to be fulfilled. We can look back and forward in the scripture at the same time.

Scripture is not written as much to us, about us, or about the past as it is for us, about Jesus, and about our future. 

These seemingly contradictory mindsets work together in tension. Just as a suspension bridge supports the weight of travelers through the tension between its anchoring points, scripture supports our spiritual journey by the tension between these truths.

May we walk in them.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Blessed are they who do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled. — Mathew 5.6

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 22 (Listen – 3:53)
2 Peter 3 (Listen – 3:21)

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God has equally difficult work ahead of him to fulfill his purpose in us. We are soaked in and blinded by our broken, post-truth world.

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Sufferings and False Prophets

  • May 20, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 21.3-4
3 At this my body is racked with pain,
    pangs seize me, like those of a woman in labor;
I am staggered by what I hear,
    I am bewildered by what I see.
4 My heart falters,
    fear makes me tremble;
the twilight I longed for
    has become a horror to me.

2 Peter 2.1-3
2 But there were also false prophets among the people, just as there will be false teachers among you…2 Many will follow their depraved conduct and will bring the way of truth into disrepute.

2 Peter 2.9-10
9…the Lord knows how to rescue the godly from trials and to hold the unrighteous for punishment on the day of judgment. 10 This is especially true of those who follow the corrupt desire of the flesh and despise authority.

Reflection: Sufferings and False Prophets
By John Tillman

Peter, in his time, warned of false prophets by looking back in history. We can learn from this method as well. In ancient times and today, when prophets warn of disaster, people often reject the simple, life-saving courses of action they recommend in favor of idolatry, conspiracies, and lies. 

Despite Isaiah’s repeated warnings, and those of his successors Jeremiah and Ezekiel, the people of Judah and Israel remained stubbornly in denial about the coming exile and suffering. 

False prophets of ancient Judah misled the people about the future, maintaining that Babylon would never conquer Jerusalem. They accused faithful prophets of being obsessed with gloom-and-doom. Some were maligned for being unpatriotic or hating their country. Some were arrested, killed, or accused of conspiracy against the king.

The false prophets of Peter’s day twisted the teachings of Christ to endorse radical individual freedom that rejected repentance, responsibility for actions, and personal morality. One of Peter’s main concerns was that the truth of the gospel would be maligned and brought into disrepute by these false teachers. 

False prophets we deal with today may be religious or political in nature but what they have in common is typically telling us exactly what we want most to hear. 

Like Isaiah, in a time of suffering we can set a watch, a lookout, trusting that, in the future, we will see justice done. Isaiah saw the eventual destruction of Babylon, including some of the details of the account of the fall of Babylon as experienced by Daniel. (Isaiah 21.5; Daniel 5.1-5) But rather than joy, Isaiah is physically sick and disturbed by the destruction. He had longed for the twilight of this kingdom that would take his people into exile, but when he saw the darkness fall, he was terrified and grief-stricken. 

We are confident, as Peter assures, (2 Peter 2.9) that God can both save and bring justice.

Like Isaiah, may we see beyond our current sufferings to God’s future for us. May we have confidence in the justice our God will bring on false prophets and the oppressors of today and tomorrow. And when we see their suffering, may we not rejoice, but weep.

Divine Hours Prayer: A Reading
Jesus taught us, saying: “So always treat others as you like them to treat you; that is the Law and the Prophets.” — Matthew 7:12

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 21 (Listen – 2:32)
2 Peter 2 (Listen – 3:52)

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Israel gained political freedom, yet were morally and spiritually fragile and prone to deceptions by Balaams and Ba’als and idols of the desert.

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Luke adds the woeful warning that when we are treated well, we are like the false prophets of old.

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Naked Humility, Unexpected Salvation

  • May 19, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 19.23-25
23 The Egyptians and Assyrians will worship together. 24 In that day Israel will be the third, along with Egypt and Assyria, a blessing on the earth. 25 The LORD Almighty will bless them, saying, “Blessed be Egypt my people, Assyria my handiwork, and Israel my inheritance.”

Reflection: Naked Humility, Unexpected Salvation
By John Tillman

When disaster or invasion or pandemic threatened, the people of Israel and Judah expected God to restore them, his chosen people. It isn’t that they did not expect judgment for sin. Rather, they, like many modern Christians, never recognized that the way they were conducting worship and politics was despised by God.

Despite being in denial about it, in a hypothetical exile, they would readily have expected salvation from God. But they would not have expected him to rescue anyone else. Isaiah’s pattern of referring to present judgment while holding on to future hope takes this inconceivable, unexpected turn in the concluding verses of chapter 19. 

Isaiah predicts something that no one in the ancient world would think possible. Egypt and Assyria united in worship as brothers in Israel? Unthinkable. These nations were not just Israel and Judah’s enemies—they were enemies of each other. The image Isaiah paints of the three countries—united by a highway, speaking a common language (of Hebrew faith), and attending a common place of worship—was a ludicrous impossibility.

We don’t live in that time just yet. We live a time when enemies, left and right, will strip naked and humiliate their opponents—a time of angrily bared teeth and shamefully bared buttocks. (Isaiah 20.4, 3.24)

How do we remain faithful without resorting to the weapons of shame or the strongarm tactics of anything-goes politics?

Isaiah models acceptance of derision, embodied humility, and expectant hope. Before Judah’s allies, the Egyptians, were humiliated and marched naked into captivity, Isaiah gave up his own freedom and swallowed his pride by going naked for three years, predicting the coming time of violence and shame.

Isaiah also shows us the power of accepting suffering as a discipline, while at the same time setting our hope on the future. Isaiah spends little time celebrating the downfall of others but focuses on Judah’s own religious sins and wretched political ethics.

May we practice naked humility, humbling ourselves before we are humbled and stripping away pride before it is stripped away.

May we expect, anticipate, and celebrate the unexpected grace and mercy of our God poured out on unexpected worshipers.

What kind of God brings peace to those perpetually at war with one another? Our God does.
What kind of God restores the unexpected and the undeserving? Our God does.
What kind of God saves people who are not his people? Our God does.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Greeting
I love you, O Lord my strength, O Lord my stronghold, my crag, and my haven. — Psalm 18.1

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 19-20 (Listen – 4:49)
2 Peter 1 (Listen – 3:06)

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Even among the destruction of what is coming to Judah in Isaiah’s prophecies, there is hope. God promises to place his glory over the remnant, like a tent or shelter.

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