A Worn Out Welcome

  • May 4, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Isaiah 1.12-15
12 When you come to appear before me,
    who has asked this of you,
    this trampling of my courts?
13 Stop bringing meaningless offerings!
    Your incense is detestable to me.
New Moons, Sabbaths and convocations—
    I cannot bear your worthless assemblies.
14 Your New Moon feasts and your appointed festivals
    I hate with all my being.
They have become a burden to me;
    I am weary of bearing them.
15 When you spread out your hands in prayer,
    I hide my eyes from you;
even when you offer many prayers,
    I am not listening.

Reflection: A Worn Out Welcome
By John Tillman

When we go into the house of the Lord, is God glad we have come? 

Much of Isaiah’s first chapter concerns how the worshipers in Judah had worn out their welcome in God’s house. God was actually weary of putting up with the very acts these worshipers thought were pleasing to God. 

To hear Isaiah’s words, one might assume that these were bad times in Judah. Far from it. All external indicators looked good, but the spiritual reality was quite different.

Many churches are considering plans to return to worshiping in their sanctuaries as bans on gatherings are relaxed. But before we start singing, “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go into the house of the Lord,” perhaps we need to consider Isaiah’s warnings to a prosperous and crowded Temple.

How can we tell if we have worn out our welcome in God’s house? Let’s look at the commands and warnings God gives through Isaiah. (Isaiah 1.16-17)

Are you “clean?” 
“Your hands are full of blood!” (Isaiah 1.15) 
This is figurative blood of the suffering these worshipers are responsible for. Are your accounts lined with profit from taking advantage of the poor? Is your security more important than others’ oppression? Are you deaf to suffering? Are you hard-hearted? Are you close-handed with those in need?

Will you repent? 
“…stop doing wrong. Learn to do right…” (Isaiah 1.14-15)
To stop doing wrong you must learn to do what is right. You cannot repent of what you claim is not sin.

Will you seek righteousness? 
“…seek justice.” (Isaiah 1.15)
Do not misconstrue righteousness as forcing others to live in obedience. Righteousness means surrendering your own sinful nature to be killed and replaced with Christ’s righteousness.

Who will you defend? 
“Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1.15)
Will you take up the cause of the oppressed, the fatherless, the widow? Will you expand your definition of the oppressed to include not only the oppressed people you are comfortable with, but the ones who make you uncomfortable?

Who will you correct? 
“Defend the oppressed.” (Isaiah 1.15)
“Defend the oppressed” can also be translated as “correct the oppressor.” Will you confront the powerful? And not just powerful enemies? Will you confront powerful friends, as Nathan confronted David?

When what we say and do outside God’s house misrepresents God’s identity, our worship is wearisome rather than welcomed. As Jesus says, “Why do you call me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ but not do what I say.” 

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer. — Psalm 19.14

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis TickleToday’s Readings
Isaiah 1 (Listen – 4:36) 
Hebrews 9 (Listen 4:40)

Read more about Confession as a Crucible
The crucible of COVID-19 is revealing in our society and ourselves the ugliest most sinful parts of our nature.

Confession as a Crucible

Read more about Humble, Welcoming Servants
Help us to be servants to all-comers, not contestants against all-comers.

Humble, Welcoming Servants :: A Guided Prayer

Tabernacling While Quarantined

  • April 28, 2020
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  • John Tillman

Scripture Focus: Hebrews 3.6, 13-14
6 But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are his house, if indeed we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope in which we glory…13 But encourage one another daily, as long as it is called “Today,” so that none of you may be hardened by sin’s deceitfulness. 14 We have come to share in Christ, if indeed we hold our original conviction firmly to the very end.

John 7.37-39
37 On the last and greatest day of the festival, Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. 38 Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.” 39 By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.

Isaiah 55.1 (the scripture Jesus is quoting in the above passage)
“Come, all you who are thirsty, 
come to the waters; 
you who have no money, 
buy and eat! 
buy wine and milk
without money and without cost.

Reflection: Tabernacling While Quarantined
By John Tillman

Hebrews tells us that we are God’s “house” which Jesus has been placed over. The concept is a repeated theme in other New Testament writings (1 Corinthians 3.16; 1 Timothy 3.15). 

No matter what the atmosphere of our quarantine, we can remember that Jesus dwells or “tabernacles” with us. (Leviticus 26.11; Ezekiel 37.27; John 1.14; Revelation 21.3) Whatever suffering we endure, he feels it with us. Whatever joys we experience, he is celebrating with us. 

In John 7, we read of a Feast of Tabernacles celebration during Jesus’ ministry. The Feast of Tabernacles was a reminder to Israel of their dependence on God in the wilderness. It recalled the years of wandering and being a people who dwelled in tents and who worshiped a God who dwelled in tents with them.

Jesus entered this festival secretly. He misled his brothers who did not believe in him, telling them that he would not go. Then he snuck in. He then revealed himself to call attention to elements of the festival that pointed to him.

In particular, Jesus called attention to one new element. Priests would dip water from the pool of Siloam and pour it on the altar in the Temple. This symbolized salvation through the water from the rock in the desert.

In our “tents,” our quarantined homes, we may feel as if we are isolated in the wilderness. Like Israel we long for Egypt. In Egypt they didn’t know thirst. They didn’t know hunger. In the desert, Israel reevaluates Egypt. How bad was the subjugation and slavery really? 

We aren’t enslaved in our vocations in the same way Israel was. Our culture enslaves us with consumerism and greed, among other idols. We hang the carrot in front of ourselves on the treadmill and run ourselves to death. We forget our chains in our longing for chain restaurants. 

In the desert and in the Temple, Israel is offered something better. Water from the rock. The water of life. Jesus stands among us wanting to quench our thirst with Living Water. “Come to me!” Jesus cries. While we are tabernacled with him, take time to drink what he offers.

As with Jesus’ brothers, Jesus may sneak up on us and sneak into our “tabernacle.” Are we aware of him? Are we trusting in him? Will we come to him and drink?

Divine Hours Prayer: The Request for Presence
Let all who seek you rejoice and be glad in you; let those who love your salvation say for ever, “Great is the Lord!” — Psalm 70.4

– Divine Hours prayers from The Divine Hours: Prayers for Springtime by Phyllis Tickle.Today’s Readings
Song of Songs 3 (Listen – 1:48) 
Hebrews 3 (Listen -2:25)

Read more about Presence is Precious
Practicing the presence of God means living as a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit, making everywhere you set your feet holy ground.

Presence is Precious

Read more about Prayer, Our Tent of Meeting
Prayer is our tent of meeting, where the deepest thirsts of our souls may be satisfied.

Prayer, Our Tent of Meeting


Cry, Creator, Cry!

  • April 10, 2020
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  • John Tillman


Scripture Focus: Isaiah 53.10
Yet it was the Lord’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
    and though the Lord makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
    and the will of the Lord will prosper in his hand.

Proverbs 28.13-14
Whoever conceals their sins does not prosper,
    but the one who confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
Blessed is the one who always trembles before God,
    but whoever hardens their heart falls into trouble.

Luke 29.41-43
We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong.”
Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”
Jesus answered him, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in paradise.”

Reflection: Cry, Creator, Cry!
By John Tillman

The cross is not necessarily the only way Jesus might have died. As an exercise of theological hypothesis, one can entertain the question, “What if Jesus had died another way?” 

In his moving epic poem, The Singer, author, pastor, and professor, Dr. Calvin Miller reimagined Jesus as The Singer, who sang the song of Earthmaker, the Father-Spirit. During his trial, The Singer’s lyre and his hands with which he played Earthmaker’s song are crushed by a mallet. Then, with his musical hands crushed into inoperability and unrecognizable form, he is stretched by a machine of death built into the wall of the city.

The people of the city toss into a hopper great stones representing the sins and crimes The Singer is accused of and the weight of them turns the great, geared, machine which, through cogs and levers, tightens the cables, stretching The Singer’s body until he dies.

The World Hater, Miller’s analogue for Satan, dances on the cables of the machine, crying out to the Creator with mockery:

“Look how he dies. Cry, Creator, Cry!
This is my day to stand upon the 
breast of God and claim my victory 
over love. You lost the gamble. In 
but an hour your lover will be pulp 
upon the gallows. Did you tell him 
when his fingers formed the world, 
that he would die on Terra, groaning 
with his hands crushed and whimpering 
in my great machine?”

Today on Good Friday, the crosshairs of the cross seemed to be centered on Jesus. Sin’s weight is heavy upon him as the hammer of God’s wrath comes down. But the target of God’s wrath is Sin. Sin dies in the crosshairs of the cross. Yes, Jesus dies, too. But for Jesus and for us, Sunday is coming. Resurrection Day. The Eighth Day. The first day of the New Creation.

But until that day comes, we sit mourning in the chaos and darkness. What we mourn, if we do so with proper understanding, is not a man’s death or a failed rebellion. What we mourn is our own participation in his trial. We mourn our own sin upon his back. We mourn our hands upon the nails and the hammer and our hands forcing bitter drink into his mouth.

What is coming is the most important morning since God first said, “let there be light.”
So, let us mourn tonight. For joy comes in the morning.

Divine Hours Prayer: The Refrain for the Morning Lessons
My God, my God, why have you forsaken me? And are so far from my cry and from the words of my distress? — Psalm 22.1

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

Today’s Readings
Proverbs 28 (Listen 3:07) 
2 Thessalonians 2 (Listen -2:32)

This Weekend’s Readings
Proverbs 29 (Listen 2:44), 2 Thessalonians 3 (Listen -2:16)
Proverbs 30 (Listen 3:51), 1 Timothy 1 (Listen -2:59)

Read more about The Prayer From the Cross
So, on this Good Friday, we will join Christ in his suffering, praying excerpts from this psalm prayed on the cross.

The Prayer From the Cross

Read more about Choose to Hope in the Cross
The two thieves represent two choices…These choices stand as constant reminders that the cross of Christ demands a response.

Choose to Hope in the Cross

Celebrating Earthly Kingdoms

  • July 3, 2018
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture: Isaiah 65.1-2
To a nation that did not call on my name,
I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’
All day long I have held out my hands
to an obstinate people,
who walk in ways not good,
pursuing their own imaginations.

 Reflection: Celebrating Earthly Kingdoms
By John Tillman

Celebrating the country in which one lives is not un-biblical but it can be a dangerous, idolatrous trap. In American churches, this past weekend (the closest to July 4th) many worshipers sang patriotic anthems with questionable theology or, in some cases, completely absent theology.

Hymnody has a long history of politically motivated and theologically dubious lyrics, usually expressing God’s divine blessing on the nation of the hymn writer. In 1778, New England hymn writer, William Billings, published this hymn as a declaration that the colonies were winning the war due to divine intervention. It’s a view that still survives in some quarters.

Let tyrants shake their iron rods
And slavery clank her galling chains
We see them not; we trust in God
New England’s God forever reigns.

Patriotism based on national pride is an easy idol to fall victim to. So is anti-patriotism. This is true whether anti-patriotism is based on national cynicism or idolatry of party instead of nation. Christians must avoid all of these.

In 1932 Germany, Dietrich Bonhoeffer struggled in a Memorial Day sermon with how patriotic days should be celebrated in his Berlin church.

When the church observes Memorial Day, it must have something special to say. It cannot be one voice in the chorus of others who loudly raise the cry of mourning for the lost sons of the nation across the land, and by such cries of mourning call us to new deeds and great courage.

It cannot, like the ancient singers of great heroic deeds, wander about and sing the song of praise of battle and the death of the heroes to the listening ears of enthralled young people.

Memorial Day in the church! What does that mean? It means holding up the one great hope from which we all live, the preaching of the kingdom of God.

No matter our country or party, by echoing jingoistic patriotic divisiveness we risk diluting the gospel of Christ. We must not be too enamored of any earthly kingdom. As Jesus said, our “kingdom is from another place.”

Wherever we live, we are in exile.
When we pray for our city, we are praying for the city of our exile.
When we pray for our country, we are praying for the country in which we are aliens, not citizens.

May we never settle for earthly kingdoms. May we yearn and long instead for Christ’s kingdom to come.

Prayer: The Morning Psalm
They bluster in their insolence; all evildoers are full of boasting. They crush your people, O Lord, and afflict your chosen nation. They murder the widow and the stranger and put the orphans to death…He who admonishes nations, will he not punish? — Psalm 94.3-5, 10

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 65 (Listen – 5:00)
Matthew 13 (Listen – 7:23)

Additional Reading
Read More about Temporary Victory
Elevating political victory to supreme importance is to confess functional atheism.

Read More about The Seductive Idolatry of Politics
We must make sure we are pursuing actions that please Christ rather than pleasing human political kingdoms.

Family Tree

  • July 2, 2018
  • /
  • John Tillman

Scripture: Matthew 12.33
Make a tree good and its fruit will be good, or make a tree bad and its fruit will be bad, for a tree is recognized by its fruit.

 Reflection: Family Tree
By John Tillman

God’s relationship to humanity has often been best expressed in terms of family.

He bore us like his children. He bears with our stubbornness and willfulness just as we bear with that of natural children. He, as Jesus, bore the burden of sin that we could not, so that we could be restored to our position as God’s children.

Family becomes a part of your identity. Jesus spoke of God as father, but he also identified God by association with the family of the patriarchs—speaking of God as the “God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.”

Christ is clear that his definition of family goes beyond biology, beyond tribe, and beyond legal guardianship or rights of inheritance. For Jesus, family is defined by doing the will of God.

This should have been good news for the Pharisees. No one tried harder to do God’s will according to the scriptures than they did. The problem with casting the Pharisees as the villains of the New Testament is that they are the people most like modern Christians.

The Pharisees’ system of regulations was designed to ensure inner righteousness through stringent outer adherence to rules, preventatives, and traditions. Their intentions were to live a godly and righteous life. To do this they constructed rules around their rules, to ensure they’d never get close enough to actually break one.

Most modern Christians have done exactly this at one time or another. We would probably get on well with most Pharisees. We love rules, preventatives, and traditions that protect us from the possibilities of outward sin. It’s hard not to admit their practicality.

But Jesus rejects their systems and ours, pointing out once again that it is inner nature that determines what fruit our lives produce. Our systems, no matter how robust, cannot prevent sin, because sin is already within us.

Our family tree is sick at heart and only sickened fruit can come from us without Christ’s intervention. However, we can be grafted in to the family tree of Christ and bear the same fruit that he wants to bring about in our lives.

Ask the Holy Spirit to work in you. Pray Christ’s words over your life. “Make a tree good and its fruit will be good.”

Prayer: The Request for Presence
Test me, O Lord, and try me; examine my heart and mind. — Psalm 26.2

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

Full prayer available online and in print.

Today’s Readings
Isaiah 64 (Listen – 2:01)
Matthew 12 (Listen – 6:41)

Additional Reading
Read More about Extremism as a Discipleship Problem
Like the Pharisees, we are not ashamed to make embarrassing political alliances to ensure that we don’t lose our place of cultural influence.

Read More about Sight for the Blind
The Pharisees are easy for us to dislike when we read about their opposition to Jesus in the New Testament, but modern Christians share much more in common with the Pharisees than with Christ’s disciples.