Scripture: Matthew 26.13
Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.

Reflection: The Fragrance of Faith
By John Tillman

Mary of Bethany’s anointing of Christ on his last trip to Jerusalem is intimately connected to the gospel—Christ said that it would be.

What makes Mary’s extravagant offering in any way related to the gospel?

It was a sacrificial gift. The most obvious reason is the extravagance of the gift itself—it was worth a year’s wages. (2016 median earnings for men in the United States were $51,640 and $41,554 for women .) This jar was very likely an heirloom given to Mary to ensure financial stability and independence. It may even have passed to her when Lazarus died as a part of his provision for her.

Many would give $50,000 to a practical need, like a loved one’s surgery, to feed the homeless, or to dig a well. But few would give so much to bless an intentional loss—to anoint a dead man walking.

But Mary’s gift wasn’t practical. It was prophetic.

In John’s gospel, Jesus makes clear that Mary has fulfilled the prophetic purpose of the gift as, “It was intended…for the day of my burial.“ Mary alone among the disciples has understood Christ’s prophecies. She anoints him with the same fragrance that is offered before the Lord in the Temple, because she knows that he is the the final priest, the final offering, the final sacrifice.

It was a lasting gift. Nard in this form, especially when applied to the hair and body is a long lasting fragrance. Throughout his ordeal over the next 48 hours, the gift of Mary’s faith would hang about Christ—the fragrance of her faith.

When they ripped out his beard, they would stir up the perfume. When they flogged the skin from his back, the scent would rise as his blood fell. When they pressed the thorns into his head, his hair would release more of the fragrance. When he choked on vinegar to drink, the smell of her gift would still be there.

She sacrificed her only security in this world, for the security of the next. She placed her full self on the altar with Christ. She gave up her agency in the world, gave up her ability to provide for herself, and provided Christ with a remembrance of the disciple who understood.

May we make extravagant, prophetic, and lasting gifts to Christ and to the spreading of this gospel, like a fragrance, throughout the world.

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit, and a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise. — Psalm 51.18

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 12 (Listen – 3:06)
Matthew 26 (Listen – 10:01)

Additional Reading
Read More about Sacrifice of Self
Ultimately we have been called to imitate our self-sacrificing savior, Jesus, by giving of ourselves to do good for the benefit of others. 

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post comforted you?

Scripture: Jeremiah 9.17-18
This is what the Lord Almighty says:

“Consider now! Call for the wailing women to come;
send for the most skillful of them.
Let them come quickly
and wail over us
till our eyes overflow with tears
and water streams from our eyelids.

Guided prayers and meditations are a common part of Christian spiritual practice. Return to this prayer through the day or over the weekend, as it will be a different experience based on your mood and surroundings. — John

Reflection: Prayers of Woe and Weeping :: Guided Prayer
By John Tillman

If prayer is relationship then when God weeps, we should join. What friend would weep, whom we would not join in weeping? Weeping for our own hurts and harms is one thing. Weeping for what grieves God is a prophetic task and a work of faith.

Weep in prayer with the weeping prophet. Jeremiah’s tears, just like his words, are not his own. They are as much a part of the revelation of God as the words he writes.

Oh, that my head were a spring of water
and my eyes a fountain of tears!
I would weep day and night
for the slain of my people. — Jeremiah 9.1

Jeremiah expresses our desire to escape evil—fleeing to the desert to be away from wrongdoers.

Oh, that I had in the desert
a lodging place for travelers,
so that I might leave my people
and go away from them;
for they are all adulterers,
a crowd of unfaithful people. — Jeremiah 9.2

We confess we are part of a culture that seeks out its own version of truth.
We confess that we live in echo-chambers of the lies we prefer rather than the truth. Any lie or obfuscation is acceptable as long as it can be weaponized to help us win.

“They make ready their tongue
like a bow, to shoot lies;
it is not by truth
that they triumph in the land.
They go from one sin to another;
they do not acknowledge me,”
declares the Lord. — Jeremiah 9.3

Weep with Christ prophetically. He weeps that our hypocrisy not only harms us, but blocks the path of redemption for others.

“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to. — Matthew 23.13

“And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.” — Matthew 23.35-36

More specifically, judgment would fall within the next week. And more personally, it would fall on Christ himself.

Christ can weep with us and wipe away our tears because he took the just payment for their cause.

Prayer: The Greeting
For your Name’s sake, O Lord, forgive my sin, for it is great. — Psalm 50.3

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 9 (Listen – 4:38)
Matthew 23 (Listen – 4:53)

Additional Reading
Read More about Purpose
If only men and women viewed their call to suffer as Christ suffered, to live as Christ lived, and to serve as Christ served.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post made want to share?

Scripture: Matthew 22.30-32
“At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”

 Reflection: A New Life, Not an Afterlife
By John Tillman

A key error that we often make regarding Heaven is thinking it will be the same as our lives now, but without without the worries and problems caused by sin.

We misinterpret Christ’s statement that we will be “like the angels” and imagine getting a halo and an angelic job to do—working under fussy supervisors and trying to earn our “angel wings” promotions.

The art we make confesses that our culture believes this misconception very strongly. Hollywood’s visions of afterlife trend toward squeaky clean neighborhoods and office buildings from idealistic 1950s television shows.

These kinds of ideas about afterlife as an extension or continuance of this life come more from Greek and Roman myth and other pagan religions than Judeo-Christian ideas.

Perhaps the Sadducees had these types of myth in mind when they challenged Jesus. The Sadducees did not believe in resurrection. The point of their hyperbolic, hypothetical story was to prove that resurrection was a foolish (and perhaps in this case, scandalous) concept.

But Jesus responded that the only foolish concept was that Heaven would be just like Earth.

When God says that He is bringing a new Heaven and and new Earth and that the old will pass away, he means both parts of that statement. The part we often forget is that the old will pass away. The new Heaven and the new Earth will be new—not recycled.

Christians don’t believe in an afterlife as most imagine it. We believe in a new life.

The new Heaven and Earth will be created for us by the same creator who made the beauty we see in the best of the earth we live in now, and the same creator who we see reflected in the best of the relationships that we have now.

Jesus is clear that even the “best things” of this life (like marriage relationships) aren’t the same in the new Heaven and Earth. They pass away and are replaced, reinvented, and changed. We, and everyone we know and love there, will be made new.

Thank God that Heaven won’t be more of the same! It will be new!

What earthly things might you have been, consciously or unconsciously, counting on being in Heaven?

Prayer: The Small Verse
My soul thirsts for the strong, living God and all that is within me cries out to him.

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 8 (Listen – 3:52)
Matthew 22 (Listen – 4:56)

Additional Reading
Read More about The Eighth Day
The day of the Lord will be like the scraping of an old canvas to repaint a new landscape, or the burning and tilling under of a harvested field so a new kind of crop can be planted.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post made want to share?

Scripture: Jeremiah 7.9-11
“Will you steal and murder, commit adultery and perjury,…and then come and stand before me in this house, which bears my Name, and say, “We are safe”—safe to do all these detestable things? Has this house, which bears my Name, become a den of robbers to you?”

 Reflection: Prayers God Hates
By John Tillman

We read two passages today about what makes our prayers worthless and detestable to God.

The first passage is Jesus, in anger, clearing out the temple. The second passage is the portion of Jeremiah which Jesus is referencing when he says “My house will be called a house of prayer,’ but you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”

So what makes the temple a den of robbers? What makes prayers pointless—detested by God? (It’s not book shops in the foyer.)

God sends Jeremiah to the temple with a list of sins from which Israel must repent. The sin at the top of the list is, perhaps, surprising. It isn’t adultery or any sexual sin. It isn’t idolatry—not in a traditional sense. It isn’t related to religious practices.

The sin at the top of God’s list is systemic oppression of the most vulnerable members of society through economic and violent means. Specifically, top of the list is oppression and mistreatment of foreigners. Second is oppression of the fatherless. Third is oppression of widows.

So what about Jesus? He was mad about the merchants, wasn’t he?

The merchants were taking up space in the temple that was intended by God for foreigners. The rest of God’s temple was segregated by race and this was the only place foreigners could approach God to pray. Jesus was reclaiming what was stolen from foreigners.

Jesus, like Jeremiah, was concerned about oppression. We see this not only by who is driven out, but by who Christ calls in their place. The blind. The lame. The children. Christ makes room for the marginalized and the oppressed, and in they come.

The primary sins of those condemned by Jeremiah were financial. Even the pagan worship of idols (and the sexual sins committed as part of the ceremonies) were the result of Israel seeking financial blessing from false gods of prosperity and fertility—greed in religious guise.

The primary sin of those condemned by Christ was exclusion and oppression. They refused to make room for the foreigners in the land and to allow all people to approach God in the Temple as he designed.

What makes our prayers detestable is our actions outside of worship.

If we would be heard by God, we must welcome those he welcomes.
If we would worship God, we must do so alongside all of those whom he has called.

Prayer: The Call to Prayer
Bless the Lord, you angels of his, you mighty ones who do his bidding, and hearken to the voice of his word… — Psalm 103.20

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 7 (Listen – 5:18)
Matthew 21 (Listen – 7:10)

Additional Reading
Read More about Radical Outreach to Outcasts
The characters Jesus holds up as examples of the types of people who would experience “the year of the Lord’s favor” represented everything his audience feared as “other.”

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post made you think?

Scripture: Matthew 20.25-26
Jesus called them together and said, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their high officials exercise authority over them. Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant.”

 Reflection: Prayer as Vocation
By John Tillman

In his book, Letters to Malcolm, Chiefly on Prayer, C.S. Lewis complains that he finds it ironically unhelpful to turn into a church for midday prayers.

There always seems to be someone practicing the organ or noisily going about cleaning and mopping. “Of course, blessings on her,” Lewis says. “‘Work is prayer,’ and her enacted oratio is probably worth ten times my spoken one.”

We have not held tightly to the concept of work as prayer. We see work as occupation—something that takes time we would spend elsewhere. Christians have the unique opportunity to see work as vocation—choosing to give to others on behalf of Christ.

To some, it might be a surprise that one of the primary definitions of the word “vocation” is a divine calling. One does not have to be a staff member of a church or an employee of a Christian ministry (or even a volunteer, noisily cleaning up the sanctuary and disturbing an Oxford don’s prayers) to turn grudging occupation into prayerful vocation.

One prominent example of prayerful, secular work is Fred Rogers. Despite the lack of overt religious expression on his show, Mister Rogers was an ordained minister whose specific assignment was to serve children and families through mass media. And serve them he did.

Paying tribute to Rogers’ on NBC Nightly News, reporter Bob Faw said, “The real Mister Rogers never preached…he never had to.” Following his spiritual calling in no way interfered with Rogers becoming one of the most successful and respected television professionals of all time.

For every believer, the gospel is our vocation. We learn to express it through our occupations.

Rogers’ spiritual discipline and sensitivity to the Holy Spirit made his show a vehicle for the gospel without explicit language of faith. Many of our readers work in faith-negative environments where faith is unwelcome, but that doesn’t mean each action can’t communicate a gospel-filled love to others.

In our careers we have a choice between the drudgery of meaningless tasks and the honor of serving others around us in Christ’s name. If we need a picture of what that looks like, it may be helpful to us to turn on an episode of the neighborhood.

May we make our work our prayer.
By every action may we pray for our co-workers, for our customers, for our city, and for our world.

Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Yours are the heavens, the earth is also yours; you laid the foundations of the world and all that is in it. — Psalm 89.11

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Jeremiah 6 (Listen – 5:10)
Matthew 20 (Listen – 4:22)

Additional Reading
Read More about Praying Through the Stress of Work
In his journals Jonathan Edwards reveals the way his spiritual life is burdened by stresses of his vocation.

Readers’ Choice
In August we will look back at our readers’ favorite posts of the year. Submit a Readers Choice post
Tell us about a post and what it meant to you. What post helped you connect faith to your work?