Blog Archives

ELOGOS for Wednesday

2/28/2018

Psalm 19:14
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, O Lord, my rock and my redeemer.
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There is a folk tale about a little boy who found himself with nothing to offer to the Madonna and the Christ Child in a Christmas pageant. He decided to offer what he had, or rather a gift that he had to give. He could juggle brightly color balls and one golden one he called "the sun in the heavens." So he juggled. I recall making a trip to visit my writing professor a couple years after I graduated college. I had chosen not to be a writer but was being tugged to serve the Church. I confessed to her that I felt like I was abandoning the writing profession and felt conflicted. Beulah was so kind to me and wise. She assured me in a knowing way that the God who gave me gifts to use would not expect me to set them aside. I look at times at others who serve the Church and I covet the gifts they bring. I confess there are many days when I feel a certain poverty of gifts, an inadequacy to the task. So I look to what I have, to what is rolling about in my heart and mind and I juggle. May you discover what you have been given and offer it with joy.
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May all your beloved ones, Lord, discover their place in your story. Amen.

ELOGOS for Tuesday

2/27/2018

Romans 4: 20-22
No distrust made him waver concerning the promise of God, but he grew strong in his faith as he gave glory to God, being fully convinced that God was able to do what he had promised. Therefore his faith “was reckoned to him as righteousness.”
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Abraham's faith was remarkable. Without prior history, without revered elders telling stories around night fires in the desert, without a legacy of promises, Abraham stood at the tent flap, wrapped in bedouin cloths, looking at a jeweled velvet night and said, you've got me. How he lived out that faith would be much less than perfect, but it wasn't about being perfectly faithful and doing things right. It is how we respond when someone nudges you or pokes you. Our instinct says to flee. Faith leans in and says, okay...you've got me. Let's walk this piece of road together. Even if it feels like wandering for a time, it still is not the destination, but the ones who we are granted the privilege of knowing and to whom we allow ourselves to be known. God is good.
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Holy God, you've got me. Amen.

ELOGOS for Monday

2/26/2018

John 2: 18-21
The Jews then said to him, “What sign can you show us for doing this?” Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The Jews then said, “This temple has been under construction for forty-six years, and will you raise it up in three days?” But he was speaking of the temple of his body.
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"Under construction," how often over the course of these days I have used that phrase. "Be careful moving around in the building. Remember we are under construction." "No, your group cannot book our fellowship hall yet for a luncheon. We have no kitchen. We are still under construction." "Yes, you can use our restroom but it is pretty basic. We are under construction." We put the same labels on children to give them the grace they need to grow. I worked with college students and told people who were impatient with them to remember the students are adults too - they are just new at it. In other words, be patient, they are under construction. But sadly, it has given me the impression that the construction process ends, that I am a completed project and I have no good excuse for being less than perfect. We are all a construction project experiencing moments of emptiness waiting for the next idea, messiness with all the parts disconnected in piles around us, filthiness with the debris of bad decisions, delicious joy of the beauty of creation shining through us for others. The critics in the Gospel story were busy with the construction project of the Jerusalem temple but forgot why they were building it. Christ did not forget. We are under construction to be in communion with God and with one another. The amazing part is that we don't have to have a finished building, or a perfect, finished life to experience that for ourselves nor do we have to wait to invite others into our hearts.
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Today, Lord, grant us the grace with you and each other to be under construction. Amen.

ELOGOS for Tuesday

2/21/2018

Psalm 22: 29
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down; before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
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For five months I had the extraordinary privilege of leading worship side by side with my Episcopal colleague whose hospitality gave my congregation a place of rest and healing while we began the long road of recovery from the storm damage to our buildings and our lives. I learned that Episcopals bow. Lutherans not so much. As we stood shoulder to shoulder in the sanctuary, she would bow because it was an intimate and holy gesture of gratitude. I bowed awkwardly like a reluctant teenager might having been forced to hug an obnoxious relative. My colleague never expected me or forced me to do anything I was uncomfortable doing. She and I came to enjoy the goofy moment of bowing - her in a tender teaching mode and me, rolling my eyes. Last Sunday I filled in at her former parish for she has now left that parish for a new call. I stood before the altar and bowed because I wanted to express with a holy and intimate gesture my gratitude to God in a way that would honor God and the gift of relationships that deepen our lives. My friend taught me a new way to say, "Thank you."
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Deep bow. Amen.
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ELOGOS for Monday

2/19/2018

Mark 8:31-33
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
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What Peter and those first disciples had must have been exhilarating. What an adrenaline rush every day to be walking from village to village without more deeper responsibilities than listening, learning, perhaps arranging for lodging and a meal. What a luxury to be a sponge to soak up the presence of Jesus! But when Jesus got transparent about what was ahead, Peter balked. Jesus had purposes that were much bigger and wide-reaching that their little band of merry men and women. As much as I envy those who experience community as a band of brothers or sisters, I am keenly aware of the fluidity of our existence. How quickly it slips through our fingers. Quite simply, how short life truly is. When we move from a place of safety to life of uncertainty, it is understandable to want to pull away from the abyss of change. I am no better at it than Peter. I would have been soundly rebuked at wanting to keep things as they were. The words that Jesus would rise again did not seem to register with Peter at the time. I wonder when they finally sunk in? I wonder sometimes when it will finally sink in for us.
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Spirit, grant us courage and hope for the living of these days. Amen.

ELOGOS for Ash Wednesday

2/14/2018

I Corinthians 1:18
For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
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Just now I had a hair stuck in the hinge of my glasses. I pulled it out and looked at it. For a nanosecond, I was surprised it wasn't brown. I have a headful of gray hair that I see in the mirror every day and yet, I forget from time to time I forget that time does indeed march through the cells of my body sucking the color out of it. The fact is that we are all perishing. The message of the cross is that death happens and that there's something bigger than death. The color of the hair on my head surprised me because death happens and I have Easter on my mind.
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Holy God, ashes to Easter and beyond! Amen.
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ELOGOS for Tuesday

2/13/2018

I Peter 3: 14b-16a
Do not fear what they fear, and do not be intimidated, but in your hearts sanctify Christ as Lord. Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and reverence.
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I enter into this Lenten season in a pastoral quandary. I don't want to force the message of Lent on a people who are already suffering. The people whom I am called to serve have been in a Lenten-type of journey for months in the time of recovery from the hurricane flooding. Thousands are still unable to return to their homes or are living in difficult conditions. They have been forced to deal with their loss of possessions, accumulation of things and take a hard look at what they value. Some are penitent ....some are not. But that is the way the Lenten season comes and goes. We look at our selves. We look to Christ. Some grow. Some don't. I asked a small group the other day what they needed to hear from me this Lent. They said, "Hope." May we all enter this season not with fear but a gentle willingness account for the hope that is within us.
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Help us speak the hope within us, Lord, even when we are afraid. Amen.

ELOGOS for Monday

2/12/2018

Mark 1: 11
And a voice came from heaven, “You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.” And the Spirit immediately drove him out into the wilderness. He was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.
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I truly love Mark's Gospel. He doesn't mince words. He condenses the discipleship experience of coming to know Jesus into "need to know" powerpoints. You can't read Mark without feeling like you are walking along a path and someone is shoving your shoulder from behind saying, "Keep going. There's more, much more. Keep going."
But....but...but, my soul says I wanted to marinate in the blissful hot tub spa of "You are Beloved, with you I am well pleased." That which was spoken to Jesus is also the promise of my baptism before I accomplished anything or failed at many things. Mark's urgency seems to say, "Grab your towel, get dressed, of course, you are beloved now let's take that out on the road and really open her up!" Pedal to the metal and off we go into the wilderness. Always beloved....always dealing with the constant presence of fear.....never, ever more than a breath away from the wings of grace. I forget sometimes what an adventure this is....until someone pokes us in the shoulder.
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May we rise up in this day confident of God's love and prepared for the adventure. Amen.

ELOGOS for Friday

2/9/2018

2 Kings 2:
Elijah said to him, “Elisha, stay here; for the Lord has sent me to Jericho.” But he said, “As the Lord lives, and as you yourself live, I will not leave you.”
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I grieve what the current political climate has done to the concept of loyalty. In the mudslinging wasteland of power plays, loyalty is the coin of the realm to be paid for entrance into the court of fools and the cardboard castle of the clown king. Loyalty has become a greedy slob demanding and offering nothing. It is cruel. Abusive. A weapon in the hands of those who think loyalty can be monetized and transacted. The truth of loyalty is not in the hands, however, of the powerful. True loyalty is the response of the heart. It is the neurons that fire to life when love and wisdom happen to vibrate the dusty strings of a forgotten instrument. Loyalty is a gift that when it is given creates a new stringed instrument that offers the gift of new sound to those traveling nearby. You know if something is born of the Spirit of God if it overflows....if it splashes beyond the boundaries of the fountain....if the sound of it leaks into closed rooms and scatters the dust with its truth. The history of the people of God rode on the delicate, vulnerable thread of music created when people - often just a couple of people like Elijah and Elisha - recognized in each other the measures of the song playing over and over again in their soul's basement and, for as the Lord lives and they live, they walked with each other. On that tender thread, vibrates the song of a new world. God recreates and heals the discordant, shattered music with a tuning instrument of loyalty that helps us recognize the sound of truth when we finally hear it. Even at the pace of one person at a time to the next, God is weaving together the threads of a lost symphony.
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Tell out my soul, the greatness of the Lord. Amen

ELOGOS for Thursday

2/8/2018

Psalm 50:1-3
The mighty one, God the Lord, speaks and summons the earth from the rising of the sun to its setting.
Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth.
Our God comes and does not keep silence, before him is a devouring fire, and a mighty tempest all around him.
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Okay, Lord, I could have stopped reading at "perfection of beauty, God shines forth" today because that is what I need. I need the rising sun to reveal the absolute beauty of God. That retina-melting experience when the dirt and the smudges and the projectile-created cracks on the lens of my life disappear into crystal clarity to reveal pure color and light. Ha! I get that but this God does not keep silence.....there is a tempest all around. So with God we get beauty and tempest. Clarity and mess. Purity and the brutality of refinement. Beauty and Tempest. What better and more sublime definition of humanity. What better and more sublime definition of the God who created us in that image. The challenge for humanity is to be at peace with it. For now, anyway.
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God of the Tempest and all that is Beautiful, can we tawk? Amen.
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