One little phrase of Psalm 5:4 caught my attention and I can’t let it go. Speaking of God, the psalmist says:

“evil will not sojourn with you.”

A sojourn is a temporary stay, like taking a road trip and camping out on a friend’s couch for a few days until you move on further west. Evil will not sojourn with God. No welcoming couch, no open arms, no table set for evil itself.

Or, perhaps, there is a welcoming couch, open arms and a set table, but evil can’t sojourn because if it rested in God, evil itself would become saved and no longer be evil. Evil can’t visit with God because evil is the opposite of good (and in scripture we read that only God is good). In one of my favorite books, A Wind in the Door, written for teenagers by Madeline L’engle, Meg has learned that she is a Namer. It is up to her to save her younger brother’s life. He is dying, infected by Ecthroi. Meg is desperate, not understanding her calling to Name things, until the moment when all she has left to fight the evil Ecthroi is to Name them. To Name means to affirm them, to acknowledge existence, to call them into their fullest being. In other words, to Name is to love. In a moving passage she does just this: she calls them Ecthroi, addresses them by name, calls them into being.

And they disappear. So in this story, when evil beings are loved, they become nothing. If evil is against all that is good and true and beautiful, then to be good and true and beautiful means evil disappears and no longer exists.

So evil will not sojourn with God.

I used to try and make people comfortable around me when they found out that I was a pastor and they got all nervous. Some folks immediately apologize for language, especially. My habit was always to say “oh, no problem at all,” and truthfully it wasn’t and isn’t. But I have come to realize over the past years that being a pastor marks off a certain space where some things – good things, we hope – have a safe space and other things don’t. This is why corrupt religious leaders are a blight: they have allowed evil to sojourn with them. Evil is on a road trip and stops by for a few days or for quite a few years.

My point here is not to play the blame game, or to accuse others as though I myself am blameless and evil has not sojourned with me, for like everyone else, I too have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. But there is a sense in which to be the people of God means that by the help of God we become people that evil passes by. As congregations I suppose we never reach perfection on this. But here I sit, realizing that this particular congregation has shown me how to live in such a way that certain evils don’t sojourn. In the body of Christ we help each other become better people because we are growing into the body of Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Evil will not sojourn with God. If we sojourn with one another and God – that is, if we love the Lord our God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and our neighbor as ourselves – then evil doesn’t have a home. In 1 John we read that perfect love casts out fear. We can be like Meg this week, perhaps: casting out the fears in our lives, the evils that might try to sojourn with us, by returning always and again to love.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Books, Literature, and Poetry, Monday Morning Meditation

Every once in a while you have heard me talk about St. Benedict. He wrote a Rule – The Rule of St. Benedict is a way for monks to live together in community. That way of life has been kept alive for centuries in the Catholic Church, especially in convents and monasteries where nuns and monks live in accordance with the Rule.

But we have to free ourselves from strict notions of a what a rule is in order to understand the Rule. We tend to think of rules as things that can’t be broken. Rules are strict and govern very specific things. Some of us are raised to respect rules, so much so that when we even think we just might be breaking one, we get a little anxious.

But for the Rule of St. Benedict, “rule” means something much more like a guide, or a guardrail. On roads, guardrails help us to see the edges of the road, especially when to go off the shoulder would be dangerous, like on a curve or next to a ravine. Guardrails help us keep on the road, so we don’t go off to the left or the right, but stay on the road, moving along toward our destination.

For Christians, this distinction between rules as strict orders and a rule as a guard for our way is vital. Because as Christians we are walking with and following God, not rules. Indeed, sometimes we can be idolatrous, making the rules or the commandments more important than God. John Calvin and Martin Luther (and the apostle Paul!) understood that in a very important way God’s law keeps us on a path towards fellowship with God and God’s people. But if we substitute the law for God, instead of following God who gives the law as a gift for our life, we are actually turning our back on God.

In Joshua 1, we hear God speaking to Joshua after Moses has died:

…”7Only be strong and very courageous, being careful to act in accordance with all the law that my servant Moses commanded you; do not turn from it to the right hand or to the left, so that you may be successful wherever you go. 8This book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth; you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to act in accordance with all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall be successful. 9I hereby command you: Be strong and courageous; do not be frightened or dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go.”

Our way will be prosperous and we will be successful if we stay on the road, if we meditate on the law, God’s gift for our journey of fellowship. As we all know, prosperous and successful might not mean money or prestige, but it certainly means being ever more deeply rooted in our God who loves us, following God with more vigor the longer we follow even if we become more physically weak and tired. No wonder we are called to be strong and courageous: we will face things that frighten and dismay us, for sure, and the vast majority of us have faced such trials. But the Lord our God is with us wherever we go. So we watch the guardrails on the left and the right and do not depart from God’s law.

All the law and prophets hang on two commandments, Jesus said: to love the Lord our God and our neighbor as ourselves. If we attend to this rule, this guard, and if we get back up on the road when we slip, we are following God.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation
Tags: Benedictine life

Take a deep breath. A deep, slow breath.

Psalm 46 is a gift to us, written for us before we or our parents were ever stepping foot on this earth. Our lives are full of joys, delights, good times shared with friends and family. And our lives are busy, crammed with work and responsibilities, sometimes to the point where we can’t slow down, and worry is with us all the time. But the very first verse of Psalm 46 reminds us that God is a very present help in times of trouble.

Very present.

What does it mean to be very present? It would seem that either we are present or we’re not: we’re either present or absent. But in this verse we read that God is very present. Not just present – very present. Present to us an our trouble, with us and attentive, our refuge and our help. God is in the very midst of our life, according to this psalm. God is not just around, in the general area, but facing us, side by side with us.

And then towards the end of the psalm, we who are in the midst of troubles – of busyness, fear, worry, sadness, confusion – are told to be still. Be still and “know that I am God.” Take a very deep, slow breath and still yourself. “Know that I am God,” very present to you, right here and right now, your refuge and your strength.

For God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit who has been given to us (Romans 5:5). God is in the midst of us, and to take that deep breath in, let it settle into our lungs, and then let it out slowly is to slow ourselves down for a moment in wordless prayer. In that prayer we can be still and know that God is God, very present in the midst of our troubles, whatever they may be today or this week or ever.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

I came across this article yesterday in the New York Times, an article that points to the corruption than can do terrible damage to human beings as well as to the institution of the church. But wisely, the author makes us well aware that the church is much more than its leaders. Krugman is referring to the Roman Catholic Church. But what he says is true about any organized church.

We Christians are sinners, sure enough. When power collides with sin one of the effects is corruption and abuse. This has always been the case, and it is always offensive and it is always unjust. Krugman does not mince any words about this. But he says that the true breadth and depth of the church is not in its official leaders. It is in the average, everyday people who are about the work of Jesus in everyday life, sometimes in dangerous circumstances. These everyday people, with no glamour or glory, have the power of ministering in Jesus’ name in deed, perhaps more than in words. If you click on the article link you will read about nuns and priests that are living in the middle of the Sudan, trying to help the people there gain a foothold on life in the midst of their suffering.

There are stories about all sorts of Christians doing this kind of work, in all sorts of countries, in all sorts of places, right here in the United States, in Kentucky and Indiana. It’s just that we don’t know most of these stories because they are without glamour or glory. They are folks who are salt and light.

In Matthew 5 we read:

13“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. 14“You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. 15No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house.16In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.

Salt adds a taste that is pleasing, and it enhances the flavor of so many foods. This is one thing Jesus tells us we are: we make things taste good. Of course, I can easily make a reference to our church pitch-ins, and all the labor that goes into those wonderful dishes is salt itself. The commitment and time receive no glamour or glory, but they do make life taste better when people can gather together and share in a fellowship and a feast. We make life taste better for others when we demonstrate Christ’s love anywhere we go: sports events, school, work, visiting family and friends, running errands.

Light hangs in the air. It seems to have no substance, but it makes all the difference in a house that is dark. When the light is turned on, we can find our way, see each other, read, or tend to tasks. We don’t light a lamp and then hide it: we light the lamp so that the light finds its way into every dark corner.

If we are salt and light like these nuns and priests, like Christians of every time and place, then we too are about the work of bringing flavor and light to those around us. We might not be noticed for what we do. But then, it seems that Jesus isn’t so concerned that we get attention. Jesus seems more concerned that the world God loves is a world where the good news is made concrete for everyone, a place where everyone gets a taste and a glimpse of Christ’s love for them.

Blessings to you all, who are salt and light,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation, Spirituality, Faith, and Ethics

I woke up this morning thinking about a friend of mine who was just diagnosed with breast cancer. When I was growing up, cancer was rarer than it was today – at least I think it was – and it was almost always a death sentence.

Today, however, treatment of cancer has progressed so far that it very often is more like a major illness that people have to work through. Many people survive cancer, sometimes even in better health than before they were diagnosed.

But it is still a very scary diagnosis. Very scary. And that’s because while we have better treatments than ever for cancer, we still can’t control it. All sorts of different mutations pop up, or people have complications that make treatment difficult, or the cancer that was originally diagnosed turns out to be something much different and much more difficult to treat. Cancer reminds us of how very, very fragile we human beings are, even when we’re resilient and strong. A diagnosis of cancer is very scary because we never know what will happen.

We human beings are fragile like glass. Sometimes we drop a glass on the floor and it just bounces. The next day we could drop the same glass and it shatters. Being fragile and being strong can go together, and they do in just about all of us. That’s why the scary times in life – whether they be kids going off to college, cancer, loss of work, deep sadness, other illness – are times worth worrying about. By worry I don’t mean to say that we should just fret and fret. It’s more that we should be concerned, because even though people very often come through hard times and are the better for it, we are all well aware that sometimes things go from bad to worse.

We human beings are fragile. When things are fragile we protect them as best we can so that they don’t break and we preserve their beauty. This is one of our highest callings as Christians: that is the call to support those who are in times of hardship, times that demand their strength. We are there to lift them up and protect the fragile nature of their lives, knowing that through our support, they might receive some of the strength they need to make it through this rough patch. Loving our neighbors as ourselves entails supporting them. As Christians we understand that each human being is precious and beloved by God. Fragile and strong, we are called to protect vulnerabilities of others, and to strengthen them with compassion. We cook for them, run errands for them, pray for them, laugh with them, listen to them. After all, the strength that flows through all of us is the strength of Christ, the Risen One who did die on the cross, fragile himself. But strong into new life!

Today and for the rest of this week, we would do well to remember that each and every human being we run into is someone who is loved by God, someone who is fragile, someone who has strength. May we have respect for their existence as God’s creatures, and remember that we are called to love them, whoever they are.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

Sometimes it is tempting to think that we Christian church folk are facing an uphill battle. We may think we are surrounded by people who don’t believe in God, who don’t know Jesus Christ, and subsequently we may think we are alone.

But here is what I can bear witness to after all my flights and meetings of the past week – there are Christians all over the place, and they are going all over the world to love the Lord their God and their neighbors as themselves. I connected with Christians on each flight and in each waiting area. I spent time in meetings with other Presbyterians who are excited about what is going in their congregations all over our country and in other nations. So much shared prayer, so many shared endeavors. I find myself this morning to be very encouraged.

Because running into all these people brought two very important things to my mind:

First, all the Christians I met were embodying the fruits of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22 and 23). They were kind, patient, joyful, peaceable people. They treated the flight agents and wait staffs with respect and gratitude. They were courteous to rude strangers. So, …..

Second, I was reminded that the church we are is not our church. The body of Christ of which we are members is not a body we decided should exist. We are not people who gather together like we decided a church would be a nifty organization. We are gathered together because of Jesus Christ. These people I met? The fruits they were bearing were the fruits of the Holy Spirit at work in them. The thing is, the church cannot be destroyed. Ever. The body of Christ is the body of the risen Jesus Christ, and exists because of Christ. Congregations and churches may change shape, and Christianity might be expressed in new and interesting forms. But the body of Christ will never fade, the fruits of the Spirit will grow everywhere, ripe and juicy on low-hanging branches for all to see. As we go about our daily lives, we are witnesses to God’s work in the world:

Therefore, my beloved, just as you have always obeyed me, not only in my presence, but much more now in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for his good pleasure.

Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent, children of God without blemish in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, in which you shine like stars in the world.

-Philippians 2:12-15

It is a miracle! We are the living body of the living Christ! Christ is risen and is lord over sin and death! The Triune God is at work in the world to reconcile all things in heaven and on earth in Jesus Christ! Therefore, we say with the faithful of every time and place who forever sing the glory of God’s name:

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

-Ephesians 3:20-21

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

There are many times when we don’t know what to do for the people we love. They make their own decisions and live their own lives, and we feel for them when things go badly, or when they’re weary or ill, or when they make what seem to us to be poor choices. We long for them to be happy and at rest and at peace. We want them to be safe.

There are also times when we don’t know how to pray for our country or the world. All the problems seem so immense: the decades it will take for recovery in Haiti, violence in the streets of Bangkok, the death of the president of Poland, starvation and poverty in so many countries (including our own), fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan and in other places as well.

And we can get twisted in knots praying for ourselves. We don’t want to be selfish, but we also want to be well and whole, and we want to pray for ourselves, that we will have strength and will experience the joy of God.

This is one of the reasons the letter of Ephesians has been such a blessing to me. It gives me prayers to pray when I don’t know what to pray, or how. So when you next find that you want to pray for your family members or friends, for your coworkers or fellow church members, for New Washington or Indiana or other places and people in the world, go to the well of Scripture and pull up this or another prayer, and feel the refreshing cool water:

I pray that, according to the riches of his glory, he may grant that you may be strengthened in your inner being with power through his Spirit,

and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love.

I pray that you may have the power to comprehend, with all the saints, what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, so that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.

Now to him who by the power at work within us is able to accomplish abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations, for ever and ever. Amen.

Ephesians 3:16-21

Yes! We want our loved ones and all people to be strengthened in their inner being, we want them to be rooted and grounded in love. We want them to understand the vastness of Christ’s love for them so that they may be filled with that love. And we want them to know that everything they can imagine or ask for can be accomplished abundantly beyond their own capabilities. We want all these things for ourselves.

Yes, here is a prayer for us to pray when we don’t know exactly what to pray. All we have to do is insert ourselves, or the names of our loved ones, or the people of Afghanistan or Haiti, and the words will just tumble out of us with joy and desire for all God wants to give them and us.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

On the day after Easter, we face a regular day with tasks and (this particular morning) gray skies and all the regular worries and joys that are part of our daily life. Christ’s resurrection from the dead does something vital for us: it changes our perspective. The vantage point we have is as people of the resurrection, people who know that dying with Christ we will also rise with him. As people of the resurrection, we know that God is at work creating a new heaven and a new earth, and that (as we read in Colossians) everything in heaven and on earth has been reconciled to God in Jesus Christ.

So we look at our days, our regular old days, with gardening and cleaning and working the fields and writing the papers, knowing that somehow God is at work reconciling all this as well. How can this be done? How can we understand it? While all of this remains a mystery to us, we are reassured by a powerful realization about God. God is always at work, always has been, and always will be, to weave everything together for our good, for God is the Creator of time. Our daily lives are important. they are not trivial. And God blesses them and works through them, not just in ways we realize, but in ways we don’t. For all of this regular day stuff is becoming, in God’s hands, a beautiful and shining new creation.

God is not just beyond time, though, but also in it with us. This, too, is the gift of Easter. The Lord we follow is the risen Lord, alive and pouring abundant life over us. So consider this passage from Ecclesiastes 3:

9 What gain have the workers from their toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. 15That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

We cannot measure God’s time, for God is Lord over time just as God is Lord over death and Lord over sin. We cannot get into God’s mind, God’s power, or God’s goodness. It is for us to receive. It is for us to receive grace and the pleasure of being happy and enjoying ourselves. For the God we worship, the risen Lord we follow, and the Holy Spirit that accompanies us, are bringing us to God’s new heaven and new earth in the midst of our everyday lives.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

In his writing called The Institutes of the Christian Religion, John Calvin points – with some vehemence – to the fact that if we don’t know that God is good, and good toward us, then we don’t know God.

That is, if all we know of God is that God is an angry judge dealing out punishment, a god who is mean or capricious, a god who cares nothing for us, then we really don’t know God at all. Furthermore, Calvin points out, why bother with such a god?

Instead, Calvin is eager for us to understand that scripture teaches us of the God who loves us. Consider these verses from Psalm 145:

8The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

9The Lord is good to all,and his compassion is over all that he has made.

The fact of the matter is that many of us act as though God is either mainly or only a judge, evaluating our every move and thought. When we think of ourselves in relation to God, many of us start criticizing ourselves first, as though we can protect ourselves by beating God to the punch. We think of everything we’ve done wrong, or everything we need to do better. If our understanding of God is that God is angry and full of judgment, then we can easily become people who think righteousness is being angry and judging all the time. If we are to be godly people, we might become angry in general, judging others. Or we might judge ourselves all the time.

But Calvin wants us to understand God differently, not just because it’s what he wants, but because it’s what he believes based on scripture. And more to the point, it’s what we find in scripture.

Do we read passages that tell of God’s judgment? Of course we do. But if we consider the overall sweep of scripture, all its different stories and prophesies and poetry and wisdom and letters and gospel narrative, what we find, at bottom, I am convinced, is a God who is love and who does love us. Yes, our God challenges us, and yes, we learn about God’s love for us through awful circumstances sometimes. But that is because God is by our side in every moment.

And the God who is by our side in every moment is gracious and merciful towards us, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. God who is by our side in every moment is good to all, which includes us, and God’s compassion is over all that God has made. Including you and me.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation

On the day after Easter, we face a regular day with tasks and (this particular morning) gray skies and all the regular worries and joys that are part of our daily life. Christ’s resurrection from the dead does something vital for us: it changes our perspective. The vantage point we have is as people of the resurrection, people who know that dying with Christ we will also rise with him. As people of the resurrection, we know that God is at work creating a new heaven and a new earth, and that (as we read in Colossians) everything in heaven and on earth has been reconciled to God in Jesus Christ.

So we look at our days, our regular old days, with gardening and cleaning and working the fields and writing the papers, knowing that somehow God is at work reconciling all this as well. How can this be done? How can we understand it? While all of this remains a mystery to us, we are reassured by a powerful realization about God. God is always at work, always has been, and always will be, to weave everything together for our good, for God is the Creator of time. Our daily lives are important. they are not trivial. And God blesses them and works through them, not just in ways we realize, but in ways we don’t. For all of this regular day stuff is becoming, in God’s hands, a beautiful and shining new creation.

God is not just beyond time, though, but also in it with us. This, too, is the gift of Easter. The Lord we follow is the risen Lord, alive and pouring abundant life over us. So consider this passage from Ecclesiastes 3:

9 What gain have the workers from their toil? 10I have seen the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. 11He has made everything suitable for its time; moreover, he has put a sense of past and future into their minds, yet they cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end. 12I know that there is nothing better for them than to be happy and enjoy themselves as long as they live;13moreover, it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all their toil. 14I know that whatever God does endures for ever; nothing can be added to it, nor anything taken from it; God has done this, so that all should stand in awe before him. 15That which is, already has been; that which is to be, already is; and God seeks out what has gone by.

We cannot measure God’s time, for God is Lord over time just as God is Lord over death and Lord over sin. We cannot get into God’s mind, God’s power, or God’s goodness. It is for us to receive. It is for us to receive grace and the pleasure of being happy and enjoying ourselves. For the God we worship, the risen Lord we follow, and the Holy Spirit that accompanies us, are bringing us to God’s new heaven and new earth in the midst of our everyday lives.

Blessings to you all,

Michelle

Posted in Monday Morning Meditation