Upcoming Devotional

Arborlawn produces a weekly devotional based on the scripture reading for that week’s sermon. I am writing my first one this week and I naturally want it to be good. However, the scripture has proven to be difficult. It is Hebrews 9:11-18 and it addresses the sacrificial nature of Christ death. This is a difficult concept for me for many reasons. Arguably, it depicts God as “blood thirsty” who seeks blood sacrifice in order to ratify a covenant and atone. Though I understand the theological argument in Hebrews I still struggle with it. All of this is to say, I have written the piece below and I am looking for some feedback. Anyone who has anything to say is welcome to comment.

This is not a scripture that a smart young pastor eagerly chooses to write his first devotional to his new church. However, assuming he ended up with this scripture, a smart young pastor would explain that his scripture was written to members of the early church with Jewish backgrounds who were struggling to understand why Christ died. The smart pastor would talk about the importance of animal sacrifice in ancient Jewish culture as a means of atonement or as a means of sealing a new covenant with God. He would talk about other times in scripture where covenants were made with God or when a sacrifice was made for the atonement of one’s sins. He might even mention that sacrifice was very much a part of many other ancient near eastern societies. Then he would explain how blood was viewed as the physical essence of life and since it was understood that God gave all creatures life, that the physical essence of life, blood, would be given back to God in a sacrifice. He might even point out how foreign this idea is to us today in the modern world, but to the Jewish persons to whom this letter was written, this would all make perfect sense. Then he would say that with the blood of Christ we are atoned of our sins and are received into a new covenant with God.

But I can’t seem to do this. This scripture and others like it trouble me greatly. They force me to deal with something I am not comfortable with, the tragic and humiliating death of Christ on a cross, and then attempt to justify this death as a means of fulfilling God’s need for sacrifice to atone for sins and to ratify a new covenant. And though I have some rudimentary understanding of the importance of sacrifice in the ancient Jewish community and have read some of the traditional theological interpretations of this event I still have trouble reconciling this image of God with my own understanding and experience of God. The truth of the matter is that this scripture makes no more sense to me today than it did years ago when I first began to wrestle with it. I still struggle with it. I still struggle with the significance of Christ death, and I believe many others do.

As a church we have been struggling with it for two thousand years. We struggle to find answers for the death of Jesus, a reason why it occurred. The people who received this letter were struggling with it, theologians throughout time have struggled with it, many of us may struggle with it now. I cannot offer a clear cut answer. I can only offer reassurance that you do not struggle alone.

Tuesday goodbye

Today was my last day at First UMC, a church that has been a part of my life for three years. I leave it with some sadness in my heart. It is a church where I cut my teeth as a pastor; a church where I made a lot of friendships, shared in the joys and tragedies of so many, and most importantly, married Jennifer. I leave it remembering the good (my mind is erasing some of the bad) and arrive at my new church, Arborlawn with excitement for the possibilities it holds and just a hint of nervousness at beginning anew. Though today has been a mixed bag I know that tomorrow will be good and I give thanks for new beginnings as well as old times.

Words cannot describe

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp/24999997#24999997

I saw this on the Today Show this morning.  I felt it imperative to share.  I have no commentary, no words at all really; I’m just wraught with despair at what we are all capable of.

Beginning routine

After posting a new entry five days a week throughout Lent I took a break.  My intention was to take a week or so off during which I would contemplate whether or not to continue blogging.  Naturally, weeks turned into months as I quickly fell out of the discipline of writing regularly and now I find myself in the first week of June having not made a single entry since March.  Within days, something that had become a significant part of my life, or at the very least a significant part of my routine, had been discarded rather unceremoniously.  I have justified it as either having run out of things to say or “burn out,” but neither excuse really suffices.  Really, it is probably a case of boredom.  I stopped writing because I got bored with the routine.  This happens far too often in my life.  I have far too often tried to maintain a spiritual discipline, regular scripture reading, prayer, meditation, fasting only to grow bored with them after a few short days or weeks.  And I don’t understand why.  Have I become so ADD, so driven by my insatiable desire to experience something new, that I am incapable of maintaining any spiritual discipline for longer than a few hours?  Can I honestly not participate in something that has been done by millions of people from different faith traditions for thousands of years?  This certainly can not be the case, but I can’t think of a time where I have been able to maintain some sort of regimented discipline for any length of time with the exception of working out and that even falls to the wayside as life gets complicated.   So today I change all of this.  I will begin bykeeping up the blog.  Two entries a week and all I ask is that you hold me accountable.

Day Forty One: Why We Did This

I’ve been saving this entry for the time when I could not think of anything to write. I expected for that time to occur much earlier in this process. It did not and since I doubt that I will be able to write anything until after Easter, I thought that I should share this now.

Why we’ve chosen not to buy anything
We’ve talked about it for some time. I think even before Jennifer went to Africa we had discussed not purchasing anything but the necessities. Jennifer recommended doing it for Lent, and I may have muttered some sort of noise which sounded like an agreement, but I was not seriously committed to the idea… until the wedding. Our friends and family were incredibly generous. We received gifts almost everyday two months prior to the wedding, so many in fact that we had to start opening them and using them before the wedding just so we would have some space to walk through the office. By the wedding I thought for sure we had received everything we were going to receive. We had certainly gotten most of the things on our rather long registry. I was wrong. You couldn’t see the floor in the office for all the gifts people brought to the wedding. It was incredibly overwhelming. After the honeymoon, we would spend a couple of hours a night opening gifts and finding a place in our house to put them. It took several days and it was overwhelming for me. I would be exhausted at the end of the evening from opening gifts. So much generosity. So many gifts from people who care about us. So much. Jen and I are blessed. Extremely blessed with good jobs, good health and a wonderful family. We don’t need. And this stands in stark contrast to the poverty Jen encountered in Africa, that I encountered in India, that we all encounter here in our local communities. Not buying anything was a means of reminding me of that. I do not expect to understand poverty any better, or to make a difference. I simply want to remember how blessed we really are and how little we really need.