Monday of Pentecost 25 - Collect of the Day

Almighty and ever-living God, You have given exceedingly great and precious promises to those who trust in You. Grant us so firmly to believe in Your Son Jesus that our faith may never be found wanting; through the same Jesus Christ, our Lord, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and forever. “So, what are the promises of God which are exceedingly great and precious?” I asked that question of a Bible study many years ago and got a bunch of blank stares. We talked it over a little, they could come up with a few after thinking about it: Eternal life, Christ’s presence, and... It rather petered out at that point. If you are looking for something to do today, make a list of the exceedingly great and precious promises that God has made for you. Write them down. Put it on a mirror or somewhere else that you can see it every day. You will be better for it and you will be encouraged by it. If you cannot come up with a list, start reading the Bible anew. I would suggest Ephesians, Philippians, Isaiah 40-66, and the Psalms, as you read, note the promises which God is making to you.

Tuesday of Pentecost 25 - I Kings 17:8-16

8  Then the word of the Lord came to him, 9  “Arise, go to Zarephath, which belongs to Sidon, and dwell there. Behold, I have commanded a widow there to feed you.” 10  So he arose and went to Zarephath. And when he came to the gate of the city, behold, a widow was there gathering sticks. And he called to her and said, “Bring me a little water in a vessel, that I may drink.” 11  And as she was going to bring it, he called to her and said, “Bring me a morsel of bread in your hand.” 12  And she said, “As the Lord your God lives, I have nothing baked, only a handful of flour in a jar and a little oil in a jug. And now I am gathering a couple of sticks that I may go in and prepare it for myself and my son, that we may eat it and die.” 13  And Elijah said to her, “Do not fear; go and do as you have said. But first make me a little cake of it and bring it to me, and afterward make something for yourself and your son. 14  For thus says the Lord, the God of Israel, ‘The jar of flour shall not be spent, and the jug of oil shall not be empty, until the day that the Lord sends rain upon the earth.’” 15  And she went and did as Elijah said. And she and he and her household ate for many days. 16  The jar of flour was not spent, neither did the jug of oil become empty, according to the word of the Lord that he spoke by Elijah. I had grown up in a large parish in the Midwest. My father preached to about 300 folks every Sunday, often more. I met my wife in college where we worshipped at St. John’s in Seward with hundreds more than that. My fieldwork parish in St. Louis routinely saw over 1000 on a Sunday morning and my vicarage congregation saw 600. I was used to large parishes. My first call was to Bountiful, Utah. That first Sunday we saw 28 folks in church, including the preacher, the preacher’s wife, and the organist. My wife came home and questioned her decision to unpack our moving boxes. We both wondered if this was going to work. But we trusted God and He did not disappoint us. For nearly 10 years we labored there, and God richly blessed us. It was not always easy and sometimes I wondered. One year we transferred 12 households out to other states as people moved away. That was by then over one third of the members of the parish. But God sent new folk, good folk who were often just what we needed. We had to trust Him. I cannot but wonder what Elijah thought God was up to in sending him to this widow. What did the widow think when this strange man from another country, speaking with an accent and probably not so fluently in her language, asked her for a bite of her last meal. They both had to trust God that day. They did. He did not disappoint them. Trust God. He makes promises and keeps them.

Wednesday of Pentecost 25 - Psalm 146

1 Praise the Lord!

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

2  I will praise the Lord as long as I live;

    I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.

3  Put not your trust in princes,

    in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.

4  When his breath departs, he returns to the earth;

    on that very day his plans perish.

5  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob,

    whose hope is in the Lord his God,

6  who made heaven and earth,

    the sea, and all that is in them,

who keeps faith forever;

7      who executes justice for the oppressed,

    who gives food to the hungry.

The Lord sets the prisoners free;

8      the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.

The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down;

    the Lord loves the righteous.

9  The Lord watches over the sojourners;

    he upholds the widow and the fatherless,

    but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.

10  The Lord will reign forever,

    your God, O Zion, to all generations.

Praise the Lord!

This psalm comes to us immediately after a national election day. Last week the votes were received and by now they should all be tallied, and we know who the next president of the United States will be along with congress members, Senators and a slew of other officers. The rhetoric of elections is often overheated, and this year has been no exception. The psalmist urges the follower of God to bit of circumspection. He not tells us not to trust in the prince or the princess, the ruler of this time and place. They too are mortal. Their breath departs and they come to nothing. The psalmist wisely exhorts us to trust in God and not those whom we have elected. The Christian is therefore somewhat detached from the political results. It is part of God’s governance of this world, but it is not the whole of governance. Yes, we vote, we engage in the processes of this world, and we work for what is right and good for all. But we also know that such efforts are at best helpful, but not salvific. They don’t ultimately solve the problem. That belongs to God alone. We can make a fairer economic system or we can improve our health care, but it is God who creates heaven and who raises the dead and who rights every wrong.

Thursday of Pentecost 25 - Hebrews 9:24-28

24  For Christ has entered, not into holy places made with hands, which are copies of the true things, but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. 25  Nor was it to offer himself repeatedly, as the high priest enters the holy places every year with blood not his own, 26  for then he would have had to suffer repeatedly since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the ages to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. 27  And just as it is appointed for man to die once, and after that comes judgment, 28  so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

Orson Scott Card wrote a number of novels, but he is most famous for an early work of his called Ender’s Game. It has been made into a movie, but it is not entirely faithful to the book, which I think is much better. In the novel an alien race is threatening humanity’s existence, and a special school is formed to train the next military leaders. Children are identified with certain skills and put through a rigorously competitive series of games which are intended to hone skills and weed out the unfit. It ends with the protagonist and a team of friends who are playing against what they believe to be the computer as part of their final preparation it is only after their final triumph in the computer game that they are told that it was not a game. While they thought they were controlling virtual ships in a digital environment, in truth they were controlling real ships with real men firing real weapons. They had not merely beaten the game. They had won the war. The writer to the Hebrews wants us to have a similar sort of jarring realization here. The ancient Jewish folk had reconciled their sacrificial system by thinking it to be the virtual reality which reflected a true reality in heaven. But the author of this letter wants them and us to see something vitally important. The sacrifices of old, the lambs of a thousand years of the Old Testament were connected not to some distant heavenly but to the death of the Lamb of God, Jesus of Nazareth. It is not some other place, but this place, this world in which we live, which is the true reality. It was the real, red, salty, and sticky blood which Jesus shed on Good Friday which paid sin’s price, once and for all time. Look nowhere else.

Friday of Pentecost 25 - Mark 12: 38-44

38  And in his teaching he said, “Beware of the scribes, who like to walk around in long robes and like greetings in the marketplaces 39  and have the best seats in the synagogues and the places of honor at feasts, 40  who devour widows; houses and for a pretense make long prayers. They will receive the greater condemnation.” 41  And he sat down opposite the treasury and watched the people putting money into the offering box. Many rich people put in large sums. 42  And a poor widow came and put in two small copper coins, which make a penny. 43  And he called his disciples to him and said to them, “Truly, I say to you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the offering box. 44  For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

She often asked the question, “Why am I here?” She had been productive once. She had held a job, been a wife and a mother. She had served on the altar guild and been a faithful member of the LWML. But now the Jewish lady across the hall did not really want to hear about her Jesus. And her legs would hardly carry her to the dining area anymore in the facility where she lived. She felt isolated and, if you asked her, she felt useless. She missed her husband. She missed her children who rarely saw her. When her pastor came, she asked, “Why am I here?” I did not have a great answer for her, I must admit. I was young and she was old. I was there to bring her the Lord’s Supper and have a little devotional time in the Word of God. Why was she there? I would only find out later, when we gathered to grieve her passing. A young woman approached me and spoke of her. She was a staff person, one of the folks in the facility who took care of my friend. She did not know it, but her much diminished life was in fact a tremendous blessing to this young woman who looked forward every day to coming to visit with her. They did not talk of profound or deep things. But this young woman was facing some difficult things and this old woman, who could do so little, always says she would pray for her. And she did. And God answered those prayers. Jesus has his eyes on all His people. He measures not their gifts or their talents as we might measure them. He sees all. Praise Him for His work in our smallest deeds.