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Keep Awake

1st Sunday in Advent, year B: Mark 13:24-37

We are in a time of waiting right now, and it unfortunately doesn’t have much to do with Advent, or the second coming of our Lord. It has to do with the pandemic. We are waiting to get a job back, or a new job to come. We are waiting for school to go back to normal. We are waiting to worship together indoors, without masks.

We are waiting.

But are we awake? Sometimes I feel like I’m just moving from one day to the next, not really being awake. I’m getting things done. Emails get sent. School work gets turned in. Meetings are attended. But I’m not sure I’m awake for all of it.

Mark’s gospel is the one synoptic Gospels, or gospels written from a similar point of view, but Mark skips the birth story, and focuses on the second coming of Jesus. Because the season of advent preparing for the birth of Jesus has already come, that was done long ago. Our season (or seasons) of advent are awaiting the coming of Christ again.

In Mark 13:37 the author says “And what I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” What does keeping awake look like for you in this unprecedented season of Advent 2020? Perhaps it looks like focusing on your faith, through practices like reading scripture, prayer, or attending a Bible study. Perhaps it looks like taking care of yourself, making sure you are getting enough to eat and drink, and taking care of your health.

No matter how we keep awake this season, remember this. God promises to be with us. God came to be with us in the form of the baby Jesus so many years ago, walked with us, ministered with us, cried with us, died for us, and not even death kept him from us.

Therefore, God is with us in the waiting. Keep awake friends.

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And YOU Shall Name Him Jesus

4th Sunday of Advent Year A, Matthew 1:18-25.

Many of us are pretty familiar with the story of the Holy Family by now. The story of angelic pronouncements, decisions to be made, and a new family formed. One character in this familial tale that sometimes gets glossed over is that of Joseph.

We know about how righteous Joseph was, that he married Mary anyway, and that he was a carpenter. But an often overlooked part of the story is this.

1:21 She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus

Joseph names the infant Messiah Jesus. This might seem strange to us, but under the law, Joseph naming Jesus meant he claimed him. He was legally his child. Joseph was claiming Jesus as his own. This is huge.

He didn’t have to do this. He could have gone on with his plan to let Mary go quietly, and his reputation would have stayed in tact. But people would talk, and I’m sure they talked plenty. They would guess that this child wasn’t really his, but he claimed him anyway.

What a message of grace and love from such an overlooked character! To take a child and claim him as his own. Sounds a lot like what happens to us in baptism. God names us and claims us as God’s own. We can learn a lot from Joseph, the father of Christ.

Shalom.

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Love is…

Fourth Sunday after Epiphany 2nd Reading 1 Corinthians 13.

Love is patient, love is kind…

Flash back to any weddings yet? I think sometimes those of us who work in churches roll our eyes at how often this passage gets used in wedding ceremonies, valentines day social media posts, and everywhere surrounding romantic love.

But Paul isn’t talking about romantic love. There’s a word for romantic love in Greek, and that word is eros. Here Paul is talking about agape love. Agape is the love that God has for us, and that we have for God. Its not bound by attraction or mutual affection. Agape is the kind of love that is unconditional, that we can’t earn or deserve, but is freely offered.

Sometimes I see all of the things listed in chapter 13 of 1 Corinthians and I think “yeah, that sounds great, but is love really like that? Are we capable of that?”

I truly believe we are. We catch glimpses of Agape love between people all the time, we just need to be paying attention. I asked some social media pals what they think Agape love is, you’ll find some of their answers below, mixed in with my own musings.

Love is…

When someone stops to help a stranger change a tire, knowing it will be an inconvenience.

Listening.

Showing up week after week to teach Sunday school when you’ve had it up to your neck, because kids deserve someone who loves them.

Selfless

Doing the dishes, and not bragging about it.

Opening every cabinet door in the fellowship hall kitchen with a 2nd grader, because he needs to do that with you instead of sitting in children’s church.

Being present.

Choosing a career that serves others, over the ever driving appeal of wealth.

Giving of oneself.

Not abandoning a teenager who has done everything to push you away.

Sacrificial

Sitting at someones bedside, even if they no longer know you are there, or who you are.

Always looking for the good.

Telling your spouse they will go to every inter-generational event at church because those kids are going to know you love them gosh darn it.

The way. The way of God because God is love. If it’s not agape love, it’s not of God.

Ultimately, love is hard. Its hard because we are human, and we are sinners. We mess up, we make each other mad, we hurt feelings, and we break relationships. But luckily, that love that is of God is the way. Its the way back to restoration, the way back to wholeness, the way back to Shalom.

The greatest of these is Love my friends, the greatest of these is Love.

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Listening for God’s Plan: A devotional

God's Plan Devotional

I’m a planner. I like to plan out my day, my vacations (thanks mom), my possible job opportunities including the rental costs associated with each job in each city. Planning comforts me, it makes me feel like everything is going to be ok.

But sometimes we don’t get to plan it all out do we? Or if we do, it doesn’t always go the way we planned. My husband recently lost his job at the church where he served as the youth minister. I still have one more year of seminary, so moving wasn’t an option for our whole family, but ministry jobs were scarce in our area.

Continue reading “Listening for God’s Plan: A devotional” →

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Must Be Nice

This is the last of my four devotionals written for the Young People’s Ministry. If you’d like to read more great devotionals, please visit their website and read from the other great contributors. 

Global Young People Devotions

Must Be Nice…

If you do a Google search for bible verses about money, you’ll find an abundance of them.

“For the love of money is the root of all evil” – 1 Timothy 6:10

“Whoever loves money never has enough, whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income” – Ecclesiastes 5:10

“For where your treasure is there your heart will be also” – Matthew 6:21

Continue reading “Must Be Nice” →

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Just Say No: A Young Adult Devotional

This devotional is the third of four I wrote for the Young People’s Ministries of the United Methodist Church. If you care to read all of them together, you can find them under the Devotional page here or follow the link below to the Young People’s Ministries webpage and you can read not only mine but other young writers.

Global Young People

When I was in elementary school we were expected to participate in the D.A.R.E. program. If you are unfamiliar with the program, D.A.R.E. stands for Drug and Alcohol Resistance Education, and was implemented as a program to get us to Just Say No to drugs. To our suburban selves this seemed pretty obvious. This idea of just saying no was really easy because it wasn’t ever a temptation. Nobody we knew did drugs, no one offered us drugs, so it was pretty easy to just say no.

Continue reading “Just Say No: A Young Adult Devotional” →

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Caring for Those who Journey With Us

Here is another link to my 2nd devotional written for Young People’s Ministries of the United Methodist Church. Hope you enjoy it.

Caring for Those who Journey With Us

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Ashes in the Mirror

We have embarked upon that season in the church once again. That season of fasting, prayer, and waiting we call Lent. Those 46 days when we remember when Jesus was tempted by the Devil in the wilderness, that lead up to the festivities of Holy Week.

We start off Lent with the Ash Wednesday service, by receiving the imposition of ashes on of foreheads while the Pastor says something like “remember you are dust and to dust you shall return” (if you’ve never understood that reference these are the words God spoke to Adam and Eve after the fall Genesis 3:19, as well as many other references to ashes throughout scripture).

I remember growing up in the church with anticipation for the Ash Wednesday service, not because Lent held some deep special meaning for me, but because we were going to church on a Wednesday, in the dark! Obviously I did not grow up where it was common to have Wednesday evening activities. We would go to church and it would be very quiet, we would sing the liturgy, take communion, receive the imposition of those burnt palm branches in the form of those dark grey-black ashes, and then we would quietly leave. I remember going home and looking at myself in the mirror, scrunching my forehead to make the cross move around, and wanting to keep in there for when I would go back to school the following day, but my mom always made me wash them off.

I look back on myself staring in the mirror looking at those ashes and it reminds me about how we take this season of lent to reflect on our lives, and our relationship with God. We fast, we take something on, we give something up, all in an effort to draw closer to our creator.

I sometimes wonder if many of us would rather just skip Lent all together and get on with the jubilant celebration of the resurrected Christ. I mean, that’s the fun part, right? The pretty dresses, the boys in little bow ties and vests, and the singing Alleluia, this is our big show in the Christian community. But to get to Easter, we have to start with the ashes, and then pass through the suffering and betrayal that is Holy week.

We get nervous when asked to self-reflect, because we are afraid of what we will see. Our lives aren’t all Easter dresses and Alleluias, many times our lives reflect those ashes, those ashes that tell us we came from dust and from dust we shall return. Those ashes confront the reality that we don’t really have it all together. The accomplishments of this life, and the busyness with which we surround ourselves, won’t overcome our own mortality. The ashes of suffering, sickness, grief, and hunger aren’t as easily washed away as the ashes on Wednesday night from the scrunched up forehead of a little girl.

But, as always with the Gospel, there is good news! Those same ashes lead us into the season we love so much, they lead us to be an Easter people. Because Jesus suffers and overcomes death so that we don’t need to fear our return to dust, because we have abundant life in Him.  So in this time of reflection, I pray you can reflect on those ashes in the mirror, and that with celebration you can begin to wash them away in the knowledge that we are truly an Easter people, even in this time of waiting.

Peace be with you.

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