Today's Scripture Readings
Psalm 124 (BCP,. p. 781)
Blog Reflection
Did you notice something missing in the reading from Esther? The story is quite amazing. Kings and queens discussing and negotiating. A villain getting what he deserved. A people destined to be destroyed, saved, and an innocent man rescued from a hanging. Wow!! What an incredible account. But, there is something missing. A word almost always used in every book in the Bible, but this one. Not one place through out this reading is God ever mentioned. Yet, is God really missing from what is going on?
In our day of the arguments over whether or not religious freedom is endangered, to read this account, one could easily deduce from it, that God might not have been so important to whomever the author or translator was. But, maybe what we are meant to do is see God acting between the lines of what is being said and done. This story is filled with violence and retribution. Something that many of us in this day and age, find very difficult to stomach. And, for good reason. Just because we do not read the Name of the Lord, our God in this story, does not mean God is not acting nor conversing with us through the Holy Spirit. In fact, God may be speaking quite clearly to us. Could God be telling us to pay attention to things going on around us, and to search for God and love God when we find God? Even with events going on around us, that seem like God could not possibly be doing anything. Are we listening for God to speak to us? Are we waiting for God to call out to us on our own terms, or are we open to God searching for us through people and circumstances, especially those that seem foreign to us?
Even if we were to discover that we really are not searching and listening for God in the way we should; the Church is the place for everyone. The writer of James tells us that the Christian Community is a place for healing and reconciliation, as we draw together to love and pray for each other. Our sins of exclusion and social injustice, however backwards and violent they may be; God is able to forgive us and extend God's mercy to us, individually and collectively Have you ever wondered why when we pray the Confession on page 360 in The Book of Common Prayer that we always pray: "we confess that we have sinned against you...."? It is because all of us are sinners in need of God's saving grace. We all walk past someone we should help. We all say things to people that we shouldn't have said. Everyone of us loses control and gives the middle finger to the driver that cuts us off, or the politician campaigning to take away our health care. The Church is not so much a museum for the saints, as much as it is a hospital for sinners. Just as a hospital that cares for the body, develops a better understanding of diseases that have always existed, and seeking better ways of curing or treating them; so the Church by the Holy Spirit learns better ways of loving people that we once condemned or treated as if there was no hope for them. We all have to seek the help of the Physician of the Soul, to heal us of the spiritual and social diseases of racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, Jewish phobia, and/or phobia of Atheists and Unitarians. We need Jesus, to forgive us for not doing more to help people who are poor, disenfranchised from voting, losing their collective bargaining rights for better wages, health care and benefits, and allowing the horrible political rhetoric to divide us from one another. The Church is the place where we come before God and seek new ways of understanding, behaving and helping others and ourselves to know God better.
The Rev. Ian McAlister wrote some very important insights concerning today's Gospel in Speaking to the Soul.
One of the greatest challenges for Christians is to be open to the movement of God in someone of a different faith tradition, or someone with no religious practice or belief at all, and honor that person. These challenges are as difficult for me as they are for anyone else. As an Anglican/Episcopalian, I think our rich tradition of Liturgy, prayer, theology and view of Scripture, Tradition and Reason are beyond description. Yet, there are many who do not share my appreciation. And, it is so difficult at times for me to put all of that down, and just love someone without looking to injecting my agenda into that person. I do believe I learned that from my years in both Protestant Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism and as a conservative Catholic. Yet, I also know, that I would not have all of the wonderful things I enjoy today, if it weren't for the time I spent in those traditions. Therefore, I have to learn that everyone is who they are, where they are, because of whatever circumstances, however I might like or dislike those things. The Gospel calls upon me to love a person I consider an "other" with the same love, by which God loves me. I may pray that I will love God when I find God, but that same God knows how difficult that challenge is. At times, I listen well. At others, I fail miserably. So it is as we work to be rid of our prejudices and attitudes towards those who are different from ourselves.
As we here in Minnesota are working to defeat the marriage amendment that would strip LGBT people from the possibility of marriage equality, the diversity that is coming together to oppose it is more than amazing. Minnesotans United for All Families is the official campaign working to defeat the amendment. A coalition of religious communities, political parties, businesses, labor unions, attorneys, individuals from all over Minnesota and the USA, organizations of varying purposes have all come together to encourage Minnesota to vote NO. Each have found their voice in speaking up for the opportunity for LGBT people to marry the person they love. Yet, as difficult as it is, we are also being challenged to love and respect those who are voting yes. Even with the Catholic Archbishop working against us. As wicked as I believe his actions are, I still must welcome and love him as a brother in Christ. I will disagree and even challenge him at the voting booth or by other means, but, I still have no right or business to fail to honor his dignity as a human being. I still have to bring myself and him before God in prayer, and ask for him to know the common good of God's love, as I do for those who support marriage equality, by voting NO. This alone, immediately for many, will put me at odds with many in the LGBT communities, who are rightly angry and wounded by the actions of the Archbishop. Many who are Atheists or do not believe in Christ as one with God, who just would rather glitter him in retaliation. I cannot condone that sort of thing, yet, I must love them too. I must pray for and seek to love and serve God who is present even in them. Man, is it a challenge. At times, I sure do mess up.
The good news today, is that regardless of where we are whether people of deep personal faith, or not, God loves each and every one of us, Unconditionally and all-inclusively. We are all made perfect in the image and likeness of God. We have all been placed in this world to serve a common purpose, each in our own way. However, differently we may all be, and feel towards each other, the best thing we can do is always seek the common good for one another. It is a challenge that we need to be open to hourly, daily, etc. Because today and this moment, is all we have. There is work to be done. God has placed us here to do the work. So, let's get started.
Amen.
Prayers
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
The king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me-- that is my petition-- and the lives of my people-- that is my request. For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated.
Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
Psalm 124 (BCP,. p. 781)
James 5:13-20 (NRSV)
Are any among you suffering? They should pray. Are any cheerful? They should sing songs of praise. Are any among you sick? They should call for the elders of the church and have them pray over them, anointing them with oil in the name of the Lord. The prayer of faith will save the sick, and the Lord will raise them up; and anyone who has committed sins will be forgiven. Therefore confess your sins to one another, and pray for one another, so that you may be healed. The prayer of the righteous is powerful and effective. Elijah was a human being like us, and he prayed fervently that it might not rain, and for three years and six months it did not rain on the earth. Then he prayed again, and the heaven gave rain and the earth yielded its harvest.
My brothers and sisters, if anyone among you wanders from the truth and is brought back by another, you should know that whoever brings back a sinner from wandering will save the sinner's soul from death and will cover a multitude of sins.
Mark 9:38-50 (NRSV)
John said to Jesus, "Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us." But Jesus said, "Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me. Whoever is not against us is for us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no means lose the reward.
"If any of you put a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you if a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown into the sea. If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life maimed than to have two hands and to go to hell, to the unquenchable fire. And if your foot causes you to stumble, cut it off; it is better for you to enter life lame than to have two feet and to be thrown into hell., And if your eye causes you to stumble, tear it out; it is better for you to enter the kingdom of God with one eye than to have two eyes and to be thrown into hell, where their worm never dies, and the fire is never quenched.
"For everyone will be salted with fire. Salt is good; but if salt has lost its saltiness, how can you season it? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another."
Blog Reflection
Did you notice something missing in the reading from Esther? The story is quite amazing. Kings and queens discussing and negotiating. A villain getting what he deserved. A people destined to be destroyed, saved, and an innocent man rescued from a hanging. Wow!! What an incredible account. But, there is something missing. A word almost always used in every book in the Bible, but this one. Not one place through out this reading is God ever mentioned. Yet, is God really missing from what is going on?
In our day of the arguments over whether or not religious freedom is endangered, to read this account, one could easily deduce from it, that God might not have been so important to whomever the author or translator was. But, maybe what we are meant to do is see God acting between the lines of what is being said and done. This story is filled with violence and retribution. Something that many of us in this day and age, find very difficult to stomach. And, for good reason. Just because we do not read the Name of the Lord, our God in this story, does not mean God is not acting nor conversing with us through the Holy Spirit. In fact, God may be speaking quite clearly to us. Could God be telling us to pay attention to things going on around us, and to search for God and love God when we find God? Even with events going on around us, that seem like God could not possibly be doing anything. Are we listening for God to speak to us? Are we waiting for God to call out to us on our own terms, or are we open to God searching for us through people and circumstances, especially those that seem foreign to us?
Even if we were to discover that we really are not searching and listening for God in the way we should; the Church is the place for everyone. The writer of James tells us that the Christian Community is a place for healing and reconciliation, as we draw together to love and pray for each other. Our sins of exclusion and social injustice, however backwards and violent they may be; God is able to forgive us and extend God's mercy to us, individually and collectively Have you ever wondered why when we pray the Confession on page 360 in The Book of Common Prayer that we always pray: "we confess that we have sinned against you...."? It is because all of us are sinners in need of God's saving grace. We all walk past someone we should help. We all say things to people that we shouldn't have said. Everyone of us loses control and gives the middle finger to the driver that cuts us off, or the politician campaigning to take away our health care. The Church is not so much a museum for the saints, as much as it is a hospital for sinners. Just as a hospital that cares for the body, develops a better understanding of diseases that have always existed, and seeking better ways of curing or treating them; so the Church by the Holy Spirit learns better ways of loving people that we once condemned or treated as if there was no hope for them. We all have to seek the help of the Physician of the Soul, to heal us of the spiritual and social diseases of racism, sexism, heterosexism, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia, Jewish phobia, and/or phobia of Atheists and Unitarians. We need Jesus, to forgive us for not doing more to help people who are poor, disenfranchised from voting, losing their collective bargaining rights for better wages, health care and benefits, and allowing the horrible political rhetoric to divide us from one another. The Church is the place where we come before God and seek new ways of understanding, behaving and helping others and ourselves to know God better.
The Rev. Ian McAlister wrote some very important insights concerning today's Gospel in Speaking to the Soul.
Each of us has one (or the other). We share having it and it connects us, past, present and future with the whole of humanity. It crosses racial, ethnic, cultural, physical, age and gender boundaries.
No matter who we are or where we live or what school we went to or what our job is or what colour our hair, eyes or skin happens to be, we humans have this in common: we have an extraordinary ability to create two groups of people, usually labelled Us (or me) and Them.
We see the results of this ability whenever Grand Final footy is played, or a boat load of refugees appears near Java, or a person makes a video belittling someone else’s faith, or a host of other circumstances.
As I say, it doesn’t take much for us to draw boundaries. The results of boundary-drawing are neither particularly pleasing to the eye or to the emotions, except if the Bulldogs beat the Storm this weekend.
What’s worse is the accompanying desire we have to let someone else sort out the difficulties: for some bureaucracy to come in and enforce conformity to manage our anxieties.
In the Gospel for this week, Jesus gets confronted with this line drawing, Innie v Outtie, battle. His disciples were getting twitchy; they want him to stop another bloke from casting out demons in his name because (horror of horrors) he wasn’t one of them.
I am not surprised that Jesus didn’t buy into this. It doesn’t surprise me that He goes on to point out that anyone who does a good work in his name will have a hard job doing anything against his name in the future.
It’s almost as if we are hard-wired to make lines, whether they’re racial, ethnic, linguistic, political, sexual, physical or religious. Truth is, religious lines are particularly well drawn and so simple.
As I contemplate this Gospel passage, I wonder whether it could shape or re-shape how we might think about those who see God differently from us, if they see him at all.
One of the greatest challenges for Christians is to be open to the movement of God in someone of a different faith tradition, or someone with no religious practice or belief at all, and honor that person. These challenges are as difficult for me as they are for anyone else. As an Anglican/Episcopalian, I think our rich tradition of Liturgy, prayer, theology and view of Scripture, Tradition and Reason are beyond description. Yet, there are many who do not share my appreciation. And, it is so difficult at times for me to put all of that down, and just love someone without looking to injecting my agenda into that person. I do believe I learned that from my years in both Protestant Evangelicalism/Fundamentalism and as a conservative Catholic. Yet, I also know, that I would not have all of the wonderful things I enjoy today, if it weren't for the time I spent in those traditions. Therefore, I have to learn that everyone is who they are, where they are, because of whatever circumstances, however I might like or dislike those things. The Gospel calls upon me to love a person I consider an "other" with the same love, by which God loves me. I may pray that I will love God when I find God, but that same God knows how difficult that challenge is. At times, I listen well. At others, I fail miserably. So it is as we work to be rid of our prejudices and attitudes towards those who are different from ourselves.
As we here in Minnesota are working to defeat the marriage amendment that would strip LGBT people from the possibility of marriage equality, the diversity that is coming together to oppose it is more than amazing. Minnesotans United for All Families is the official campaign working to defeat the amendment. A coalition of religious communities, political parties, businesses, labor unions, attorneys, individuals from all over Minnesota and the USA, organizations of varying purposes have all come together to encourage Minnesota to vote NO. Each have found their voice in speaking up for the opportunity for LGBT people to marry the person they love. Yet, as difficult as it is, we are also being challenged to love and respect those who are voting yes. Even with the Catholic Archbishop working against us. As wicked as I believe his actions are, I still must welcome and love him as a brother in Christ. I will disagree and even challenge him at the voting booth or by other means, but, I still have no right or business to fail to honor his dignity as a human being. I still have to bring myself and him before God in prayer, and ask for him to know the common good of God's love, as I do for those who support marriage equality, by voting NO. This alone, immediately for many, will put me at odds with many in the LGBT communities, who are rightly angry and wounded by the actions of the Archbishop. Many who are Atheists or do not believe in Christ as one with God, who just would rather glitter him in retaliation. I cannot condone that sort of thing, yet, I must love them too. I must pray for and seek to love and serve God who is present even in them. Man, is it a challenge. At times, I sure do mess up.
The good news today, is that regardless of where we are whether people of deep personal faith, or not, God loves each and every one of us, Unconditionally and all-inclusively. We are all made perfect in the image and likeness of God. We have all been placed in this world to serve a common purpose, each in our own way. However, differently we may all be, and feel towards each other, the best thing we can do is always seek the common good for one another. It is a challenge that we need to be open to hourly, daily, etc. Because today and this moment, is all we have. There is work to be done. God has placed us here to do the work. So, let's get started.
Amen.
Prayers
O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing
mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we,
running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of
your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who
lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for
ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 21, Book of Common Prayer, p. 234).
O God, you made us in your own image and redeemed us
through Jesus your Son: Look with compassion on the whole
human family; take away the arrogance and hatred which
infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us;
unite us in bonds of love; and work through our struggle and
confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth; that, in
your good time, all nations and races may serve you in
harmony around your heavenly throne; through Jesus Christ
our Lord. Amen. (Prayer for the Human Family, Book of Common Prayer, p. 815)
Gracious Father, we pray for they holy Catholic Church. Fill it
with all truth, in all truth with all peace. Where it is corrupt,
purify it; where it is in error, direct it; where in any thing it is
amiss, reform it. Where it is right, strengthen it; where it is in
want, provide for it; where it is divided, reunite it; for the sake
of Jesus Christ thy Son our Savior. Amen. (Prayer for the Church, Book of Common Prayer, p. 816).
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