so I send you…

John 20 19 When it was evening on that day, the first day of the week, and the doors of the house where the disciples had met were locked for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said, ‘Peace be with you.’ 20After he said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples rejoiced when they saw the Lord. 21Jesus said to them again, ‘Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, so I send you.’22When he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit. 23If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.’

Jesus returns from the grave, and immediately He gives the marching orders for troops…

Jesus came to teach us how to live and what it means to follow God, and here He gives the disciples, the Spirit, the breath of life. He breaths on them and send them out. Just as God sent Him here to teach us, now He sends out the disciples to teach the world how to live and love as Jesus did. It is Life 101 if you will! It is the way we should live. Sent!

We are a group of people so filled with God that we have something we have to share. We have something we know is so good that we have to share it. And that is what God does, He sent Jesus, and now He is sending us.

So go, and tell. You are sealed and filled to be His messenger. So go and tell everyone that Jesus was born, died and was raised from the dead, and He is coming again to take us with Him.

So go sent one!

Body parts…

Today’s lectionary reading continues the passage from 1 Corinthians 12, where Paul tells the Corinthians about the gifts we are given and how we are knit together.

No one is any more important than the other. “and those members of the body that we think less honourable we clothe with greater honour, and our less respectable members are treated with greater respect;” Paul tells us that the lowly members are given more respect. The members that think they are all that really aren’t and need the rest of the body. The ear can’t say I’m the best and only part you need… No part is able to be the body by itself…

“But God has so arranged the body, giving the greater honour to the inferior member, 25that there may be no dissension within the body, but the members may have the same care for one another.” God arranged the body so that we are all put on a level playing field and no one can hoard power over another, no body part can claim to be the lead and the one who calls the shots. We are all to have the same care for one another. We all need to care for each other. This means that any member of the body we cut down, or put down, we are only cutting down and putting down ourselves! We are not helping them, as many will say, but we are hurting ourselves. God through Jesus went ans was with people. He loved them where they were and gave them the love and grace that each of us received that we did not deserve… He loved everyone where they were. Yes He did say to them, “Go and sin no more.” After someone more religious pointed out their sin, which He says to us and we ignore or our flesh takes over. By claiming to be better than someone else and pointing out how they are wrong with God is not helping the body, but hurting us all…

Take care of the body, love as you have been loved… and remember you can not go it allow, and you are no better than anyone else.

Gifts…

I watched the first Tinkerbell movie last night with my girls… I was struck by the opening seen where Tinkerbell has to find her gift, what her talent is. She looks at the people and judges them by appearance and walks past the hammer which is for the tinker fairies… She does not want this to be her gift and spends the majority of the movie trying to learn a different talent even though the glowing hammer was more than any other fairy. It was her gift and that is what she needed to do. Once she figured that our she was the most productive and able to restore the chaos that she had caused by trying to be something she was not. That is what Paul tells the Corinthians and us in 1 Corinthians 12, that we all have a gift and it is our responsibility to do that function for the body and only we can do it. And ear can not be a foot, or a hand can not be an eye. The stomach has the job it has because that is what it’s gift is… do not try to be someone or something you are not. Be who you are. You will be the best you there is!

“Your talent makes you who you are, you should be proud of it.” ~ Tinker Bell

Dry Bones Past 2… (A different take)

A wonderful song that I forgot about but just heard again… May we all be filled with the Spirit Wind!

Dry Bones…

Pentecost is the time we celebrate 50 days from the Exodus and 50 days form the resurrection of Jesus…

Acts 2 tells us the story of the Jews coming to Jerusalem to celebrate the Festival of Weeks, and when this happens the 12 disciples were showered with the Holy Spirit and the Spirit moves the church and all hell breaks lose! It is something they had never before seen, and they really did not know how to handle this…

And think for a moment, if you heard someone you knew did not speak you language speaking and you understood them perfectly what would you think? How would you react? This was not seen before and still to this day I have not heard of it again! The Spirit moved in and through them to do something new to spread the awesome reality that God has done, is doing and will always be doing a mighty and different thing to help us all know how much we are loved.

And another story for Pentecost is equally scary and dumbfounding…

Ezekiel’s depiction of the dry bones that grow tendons and flesh and come together and have life breathed into them… I do not know about you but if I was Ezekiel, and I saw this I would (to quote Chicken Little’s Father) run away and scream like a little girl. This would have scared me silly! I mean come on I know God is capable of this, but really have you ever seen anything like this? God can do and does whatever he wants, but we don’t expect to see it. We don’t expect to be witnesses of it.

And that my friends is the problem! The Spirit is moving and wanting to do wonderful things, but we are not ready and willing to follow and do. We need to realize that we are almost always the hindrance to God’s mission moving forward, because we want things to be as they always were. We are comfortable in the same old things,  and don’t like change, but God is not satisfied with the same old thing we are comfortable with and neither is society. The pews are empty because the niche we have found and follow is not what the community around us is seeking…

SO branch out and step out in faith, and allow the spirit to bring together dry bones and rest on your heads as tongues of fire and to lead you to new and exciting things, because with God all things are possible.

Rivers of living water…

Who ever is thirsty come to me and out if his heart will flow streams of living water Jesus said in the 7th chapter of John.

Living water. This is the Spirit, John tells us, who has not yet come because Jesus has not yet been glorified.

Living water. This is different than dead stagnate water. Living water is flowing always moving. It does not have time to collect muck or grime or anything bad because it is pushing it away down the flow as it goes. It streams the bad stuff away and brings life to what it touches. Dead water is stagnate and still, it is muddy and dirty and filled with impurities. And that is where we will drink. As sheep we will seek the stagnate water because it is not flowing and does not scare us. But the shepherd knows the living water is moving even when we can not perceive it. That is why He leads us beside still waters. He helps us to find the living water. He will give us the living water. And it will flow from you and feed and nourish all who it touches.

So go to Jesus and get the living water and feed the weary souls around you.

do not be afraid…

All of us have something we are afraid of. And these things change from time to time.

Like when we are young many of us are afraid of the dark.

Some of us are afraid of spiders, roaches, bugs, lizards, snakes…

We are afraid of abandonment.

We are afraid of losing those we love.

We are afraid of not being able to provide for our family.

We are afraid we will let people down.

We are afraid that we have not done enough.

We are afraid that everything is all our fault.

We are afraid we will/have failed.

We are afraid we will not/don’t amount to anything…

The list could go on and on…

Why does fear grip us and hold us? It is something inside of us. We are so worried about what others think and say about us. When really it is not about anybody else. The only person we really have to impress is ourselves, and we will actually never be able to do that either. But in reality we do not have to impress ourselves. God knows all about us and loves us warts and all. He has chosen you and named you and set you as a prophet before the nations. And even when you stumble and fall and stutter and don’t know what to do or say, you do not need to fear, because He will put the words in your mouth and the actions in your hands, and He will deliver you from anyone who would come against you. He has a plan for you for your well being and He is the creator of all things and has all of the world in His hands…

You see we have no reason to fear anything. God, the creator of everything, has called you by name and set you apart for His good purpose, and He will use you a worthless worm, redeemed by Him not because of what you have done or will do, but because He is and He loves you!

So be not afraid to go and do as He has called you to, because He will be the one doing the doing, you just get to go along for the ride of your life!

Worthless worms…

How many of you remember Hercules the Disney movie from a few years back?

In it is a scene where Pain and Panic, Hades minions tell Hades, “We are worms, worthless worms.”

They are like we are when we come before God. And that is where Ezra is today, “O my God, I am too ashamed and embarrassed to lift my face to you, my God, for our iniquities have risen higher than our heads, and our guilt has mounted up to the heavens.” We are too hung low in our state to look up to God to see where our help is, to look for the redeemer of the world to give you the mercy you do not deserve.

We as Lutherans are in that dichotomy of saint and sinner…

Sinner-Saint-Ambigram-tattoo-39646

We live in the need for God but know we can not possibly come to, approach, or expect anything from God, because He would have to hate us because of all the sin we have committed and the lives we live. As Ezra says, “From the days of our ancestors to this day we have been deep in guilt, and for our iniquities we, our kings, and our priests have been handed over to the kings of the lands, to the sword, to captivity, to plundering, and to utter shame, as is now the case.” We do not deserve His favor, but He gives it to us, because He loves us.

So you are not a worm, and you do not deserve to stand before God, but He is giving you favor, and mercy, and grace. Because of who He is, not because of what you have done.