Meditation for the Third Sunday in Lent

Faith and Art features this meditation for Lent based on the text of Luke 13.  This contemporary art work borrows from the Greek Orthodox icons to bring hope and salvation to the story of the fig tree in a compelling new way.

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Jesus is Lord: How this early Christian confession shapes the epistle Lectionary readings

courtesy of the Vanderbilt Divinity Library 

In 1 Cor 10:1-13, Paul is reminding his readers of the events that occurred during the wilderness wanderings of the people of God under Moses' leadership.  It stands as a reminder of the spiritual failure of humanity.  It isn't that we are any better than they are, in fact, that is the point.  Just as Israel was baptized together, fed by the same spiritual food, and drank from the same spiritual drink, they were led by the Christ as well.  Yet an entire generation was lost.  That generation failed to achieve the goal of resettling in a new land.  That was left to the next generation.  The failures, which included the rejection of Moses which really was a rejection of God's leadership, the negative report of the spies, turned the people from their objective.  They repeatedly refused to get in line with what God had called them to do.  Isn't this really what we do?  Yet there is a way out for us as there was for them.  The warning from Paul to be careful lest the Corinthian let the same history repeat itself.  We as humans are all under the exact same condition.  We tend to allow fear and anxiety control our lives and therefore fail to have the courage to live as God has called us to live.  Yet the "exit", the way out that exists, the exodus is still found in the faithfulness of God.  During Lent, we focus on Jesus in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that Jesus demonstrates what we often fail to do.  A selfless obedience to God's will.  Keeping in mind his mission, to proclaim the gospel of God's grace and to face the cross, Jesus continues undeterred.  Jesus is Lord, because Jesus is successful where we fail.  He alone lives in complete obedience to his Father's will.  In doing so, Jesus as the Christ become the one able to guide us in our own wilderness.  In the church, we also have been given spiritual guidance.  We are given spiritual nurture in our fellowship, in Holy Communion, in the ministry of the Word.  Yet we must remember that these all focus and point us to living a life in the light of the cross of Jesus.  Refocusing our own reasons for living that point us away from our own agendas in life, to a life lived by the grace, mercy, love and peace of God.

Meditation for the Second Sunday in Lent

Click on the link above to watch the video from the Faith and Art web site as a meditation on the lectionary text for this second Sunday in Lent.

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Jesus is Lord: How this early Christian confession shapes the Lectionary epistle readings for Lent 3C

Jesus is Lord.  This early Christian confession is seen peppered throughout Paul's epistles, it is perhaps one of the earliest confessions of the church and it is revolutionary in nature.  In the Philippians 3-4 passage for this week, Paul is reminding the Philippian believers that just as Philippi is a Roman colony and its citizens share Roman citizenship, so Christians who confess that Jesus is Lord are given a new identity and citizenship, one that is heavenly.  This does not in anyway mean that Christians do not have a vested interest in this earth, or that Paul is encouraging a spiritualization of our lives.  Instead, Paul is setting up a contrast between a life that is lived primarily from our physical appetites to the recognition that Jesus calls us to a life oriented on God and others.  

His calls to "imitate me" is not a proclamation that he has somehow reached a state of perfection nor that he is an example of morality, but rather that he recognizes the transforming (3:21) power of Christ as the ruler of all.  It is through the power of Christ who is now Lord of all, that Christians are transformed.  We stand fast not in our performance, but in Christ's current work in our lives.  If the Roman passages last week encourages us to recognize that we are now constituted as a new people of God, this passage encourages us to stand fast in the fact that as recipients of new citizenship we are learning a new culture and language as we are gradually transformed into the people that show the love, grace and mercy of God.  

Meditation for the First Sunday in Lent 3C

click on the video link to hear a meditation for the First Sunday in Lent, and visit the Faith and Art website for a full videos, curriculum, arts and crafts for children and more. 


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Jesus is Lord: How this early confession shapes the Lectionary epistle readings

Jesus is Lord.  This is an early confession of the church and it comes across as an important theme in Paul's theology and in the lectionary epistle readings for Year C.  The readings beginning on the First Sunday in Lent leading up to Palm Sunday are as follows (Rom 10:8-13, Phil 3:17-4:1, 1 Cor 10:1-3, 2 Cor 5:15-21, Phil 3:4-14, Phil 2:5-11) in the RCL.  The First Sunday in Lent the Rom 3:8-13 poses a challenging interpretation.  It is easy for us as modern Christians to pick out the phrases "confess Jesus Christ as Lord" and "be saved" and interpret these individualistically.  While it is true that Jesus comes to bring us into a relationship with God that is personal, that relationship cannot be understood outside of the context of the covenant relationship that we enter into by faith into the community of faith.  This is the text:

 But what does it say?

8  “The word is near you,

on your lips and in your heart” 

(that is, the word of faith that we proclaim);  9 because if you confess with your lips that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.  10 For one believes with the heart and so is justified, and one confesses with the mouth and so is saved.  11 The scripture says, “No one who believes in him will be put to shame.”  12 For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all and is generous to all who call on him.  13 For, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” Rom 10:8-13.

I strongly recommend the treatment of this text by N.T. Wright in his book "Justification: God's Plan and Paul's Vision".   Wright correctly directs his readers into an understanding of justification, as God's eschatological definition, of who in fact are part of his chosen people.  This lectionary reading leaves out v 5 which is critical to Paul's line of reasoning, it is a quote from Deut 30 where God  reinstates the covenant with Israel.  The lines in v8 are also taken from this Old Testament passage. The context is the covenant relationship of Israel.  Admittance into that covenant is the confession that Jesus is Lord, and that that God has raised him from the dead.  This is why the "everyone" is so important and why the irrelevance of ones ethnicity, "there is no distinction between Jew and Greek; the same Lord is Lord of all" is such a dramatic statement.  Admission into the covenant people will no longer be limited only to those that keep the law, or are ethnically part of one group or another.  Jesus having fulfilled the requirements of the law offers salvation to all who will come.  

More importantly for us today has been our tendency to think of church as something that is nice to go to, but certainly not essential to salvation.  This thinking is detrimental to our spiritual life.  Entrance into the community according to this text is through the confession that Jesus is the Christ and that God has raised him from the dead.  This is signified via the water's of baptism (both the Ethiopian eunuch story as well as Peter's Pentecost sermon illustrates this) and we are sustained by the Presence of Christ at the Table in Holy Communion.  The importance of being part of the assembly, the church, goes beyond any socialization, teaching, or experience in worship we may enjoy.   It is grounded in the reality that it is through the church that we are spiritually nourished and sustained because we are exhibiting what it means to be the body of Christ in the world.  We are part of the new covenant people of God.  This confession that Jesus and the resurrection of Jesus is what now through faith binds us together as Christians.  

Ash Wednesday Meditation 2016

John Berney Crome’s Great Gale at Yarmouth on Ash Wednesday invites us into the Lenten season with a story told in the visual language of romanticism. This style of painting often showcased strong emotion through the power and majesty of nature. Crome preferred marine and coastal scenes, as in the case of this turbulent depiction of clouds and waves converging on the coast of Yarmouth...Ash Wednesday’s second reading calls out with urgency: “now is the acceptable time…now is the day of salvation.” Lent calls us to conversion, and conversion without delay...the path to the Easter font goes through the turbulent waters of Golgotha.  

click on the video link to hear this years Ash Wednesday meditation and visit the Faith and Art website for a full videos, curriculum, arts and crafts for children and more. 

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Lamentations 3:44 An Exegesis

You have wrapped yourself with a cloud

so that no prayer can pass through. 

Who hasn't felt this way?  Several years ago, after Mother Teresa's death, it was revealed that for a good part of her life, she felt wrapped in a dark lonely silence, abandoned by God.  The more she longed to feel God, the more she felt a forsaken despair.  This is the prayer expressed in Lamentations 3:44.  It is similar to the cry of Jesus on the cross when he cried "My God, My God, why have you forsaken me?  St. John of the cross wrote, "...there is that separation, that terrible emptiness, that feeling of absence of God.

In this video exegesis, a friend of mine, Ed Sackett and several student at Austin Theological Seminary tackle an exegesis of this text in a video format.  I don't know that I have ever watched a video exegesis before.  Exegesis has been in my experience a task presented only in print form.  This is exegesis begins to engage this critical question of the distance of God in Lam 3:44.  

We are now beginning the season of Lent.  This Sunday we will celebrate Transfiguration Sunday, the day when the cloud was pulled back and just for one moment, the disciples witness a miraculous 'transfiguration', a pulling back of the darkness to witness Jesus in His glory.  Yet too often, after those moments of illumination we feel like the disciples must have, after the vision passes, and Jesus is left standing alone again, with his disciples, walking down into the valley and towards Golgotha.  It will be during the crucifixion that the mystery of the silence of God confronts us.  

Our natural tendency may be to dismiss this question, yet its amazing how often this question is asked in scripture, put out there waiting for us to pick it up if we have not already encountered it.  Yet we are reminded by the transfiguration story, that we must again and again, focus our eyes, on the chosen One, on the one who comes in the name of the Lord, the one who comes through suffering and death, who also knew abandonment and loneliness, to bring us into the Presence of God and into the Communion of the Saints even in our own dark night of the soul.