1 Corinthians 13:1-13

“If I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing … And now faith, hope, and love abide, these three, and the greatest of these is love.”

I rejoiced when I saw this reading for April 5 because it is such an eloquent expression of the essence of the Christian faith. What it means to be a Christian is to live your life with love, love of neighbors and enemies, as well as self.

If only the whole world could live by this mantra what a wonderful place it would be: without wars over religion or territory; without persecution of people of color, gender, religious preference; without laws that favor one group to the exclusion of others. Ah yes, but we humans are all the product of millions of years of evolutionary adaptation for survival by competing, hunting, and fighting with enemies to protect territory and relationships. The Christian faith is truly a difficult one to live up to, but as a familiar saying goes, “it only takes one person to change the world,” and we must all strive to do our part to contribute to changing the world by living as Jesus taught us.

Oh God, you know how hard it is to live our lives totally with love. Give us the will to improve the way we live our lives and to more fully follow your Son day by day. Amen.

~Tom R.

1 Corinthians 12:27

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.”

In the past year I’ve had the good fortune to visit two cultures foreign to my familiar Christian upbringing. In May I toured Turkey and witnessed over 3,000 years of history, including the Greco-Roman oracle at Didyma. In Istanbul I heard the mesmerizing Muslim call to prayer four times a day. Then in June I went to my nephew’s wedding to an Indian Sikh woman, and participated in the colorful ceremonies and wore a salwar kameez and then a sari at the festivities. How rich it was to be exposed to such diverse religious traditions.

But it made me wonder whether my allegiance to Christianity was warranted. How could it make sense that the Muslims were devoted to their prophet Muhammad, and that the Sikhs were devoted to their single Formless God? How could I be sure that Christ is the “right” answer if other people came up with a different answer to who their savior is?

After wrestling with these questions, I came to this answer. Instead of doubting Christ’s place in my heart, I feel energized by it. I am confident that His messages are trustworthy and truthful. I feel that He is part of a much bigger universe of knowledge and understanding that is still to be revealed to us. There’s a lot of mystery, a lot that is unknown, but that’s fine with me. Because, to paraphrase the scripture, I am a part of the body of Christ. And it’s great to belong.

Gracious God, thank you for the rich diversity you have brought to our Earth. Please give us the wisdom to appreciate and celebrate both our similarities and our differences. Amen.

~Maureen

1 Corinthians 12:12-26

“For just as the body is one and has many members, and all the members of the body, though many, are one body, so it is with Christ … the parts of the body which seem to be weaker are indispensable and those parts of the body which we think less honorable we invest with the greater honor.”

In this passage, Paul is using the human body as a metaphor for the church. When I read the passage, it struck me in a very physical, biological way.

If we extrapolate to our own bodies, I’m sure everyone can come up with an example of a “weak” or “less honorable” part. We can easily identify with an illness or an injury that led to a state of misery or an attitude or situation that made us unhappy. Just as I do my best to take care of myself, I typically fall short of my expectations. So our church and the wider church can also come up short of expectation. The church is, after all, a body with many parts.

What does the church gain from the weak and less honorable parts? The gifts of service, humility, acceptance and forgiveness; a reminder that we can’t easily remove from the church body a person, problem, or idea that we find disagreeable or challenging. If we do, the body will have to compensate somehow.

To extend the metaphor, this doesn’t give the church a free pass on all behaviors, ideologies and wrong-doing. Prayerful, thoughtful medicine and procedures are sometimes required for overall health and longevity.

Thinking of the church in this visceral sense was an interesting exercise and made me find a more personal empathy toward our congregation and the wider church. Just as I need to work on being forgiving of my body and personal intentions, I need to be forgiving of the church. It is an organic chimera of individuals that all have a place in the body, each contributing to the whole.

~Rhonney

1 Corinthians 12:1-11

In Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians he describes the spiritual gifts of the members of the new church and cautions them regarding their past behaviors, being led astray by false idols. Then he names the many varieties of “gift” from God that are given by the same “Spirit” and are inspired by
the Lord.

After reading this passage the first thing that came to my mind was the familiar Hymn, “We are one in the Spirit, we are one in the Lord, We pray that all unity may one day be restored…”

Paul tells us that each one of us has “the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” It is up to us to use our gifts of “wisdom, knowledge, healing, faith working of miracles, prophecy, tongues or the interpretation of tongues” for the betterment of all, for the same Spirit inspires them.

Certainly we see this played out in our congregation at West Concord Union Church as each member and friend of the church gives their own unique “gift” of themselves to the wider community for the benefit of the entire church. However, when we look more globally, at our politicians and the international conflicts between governments and religions it is more challenging to see where individual gifts might be united in one Spirit.

However, if we do as the Jason Upton suggests in his hymn, and pledge that “we will walk with each other, we will walk hand in hand … we will work side by side and guard each man’s dignity and save each man’s pride,” then it might be possible to make progress towards finding the common ground between us without focusing on what divides us. I think that both Paul and the writer of the hymn are calling us to do just that! We do not need to agree on all matters, but we must strive together for the betterment of all and remember that we are “one in the Spirit” and to do as Jesus taught us: above all else to love one another. I think that means all people of the earth and not just those that are similar to us. “All praise to the Spirit who makes us all one. Yes, they will know we are Christians by our love!”

Dear Lord, help all peoples of our world to use the gifts you have given us to find the common ground on which to build peace, unity and the dignity of all people. Remind us that your love and your Spirit resides in each of us. Amen.

~Candy

Genesis 49:29-50:14

Throughout this reading, in which Jacob lives out his last days and asks to be buried by his son, Joseph, in Canaan, there is a theme of tradition that seems odd in that it doesn’t reflect our modern lifestyle. When Jacob dies, he requests to be buried in his ancestral burial grounds. He takes great care to request a certain burial site, and in doing so maintains a longstanding family tradition. Nowadays, that tradition is much less prevalent. Why? Because in modern times, tradition is not as important. For the people of Biblical times family was critical and upholding traditions was honorable.

Today, people are more involved in their day-to-day lives and their immediate families. Extended families are dispersed. As a culture, we have become more interested in things we can hold in our hands than the idea of something we can’t grasp. People nowadays seem to crave knowledge more than traditions, too. In our quest to learn, we have forgotten some of our values, and become more distant from one another. In this way, this age of information could be an issue in the fragmentation of family bonds.

It is my hope, that with all that technology offers, we can find some way to use that technology to become closer to our family, close and extended. We may just need a little time to learn how, and no small amount of faith.

~Jack

Mark 7:24-37

Jesus has ventured out of Jewish territory and into the region of Tyre, perhaps to take a few hours’ rest. Jesus’ peace is broken as a Syrophoenician woman comes in. She is definitely not a Jew, but her humanity is laid bare. She is distraught about her daughter; we can relate to her pain, fear and helplessness. Her daughter is possessed. Whether it be seizures, mental illness or something more sinister, the mother seeks out Jesus, the foreign miracle worker, and begs him to intervene.

And what does Jesus do? Stretch out an arm and with a beatific smile assure the woman that her child has leapt off the bed and rushed out to do the dishes? No, Jesus insults her, “Should I give the children’s bread to the dogs?” (implying that the children are Israel, and Gentiles are like dogs). These are not the words of compassion and healing that we expect from Jesus. Jesus shocks me in his narrow-mindedness.

But the mother is not deterred. “Even the dogs under the table get to eat the crumbs” she replies. Perhaps this brings Jesus to his senses; he recognizes her wit, her audacity, her love for her child and maybe most of all, her common humanity. Her daughter is healed.

What do we make of this? Some have suggested that Jesus is offering the woman the opportunity to show her faith, her broad trust. That seems to let Jesus off the hook. There are times my jaw drops when I appreciate the unconditional love Jesus offers, but I also relate to a Jesus who can get angry, call out hypocrisy, knock down a few tables and scatter the temple coinage.

Although I wish Jesus had immediately reached out in love for the Syrophoenician woman, if I want my Christ to be fully human, it’s possible that I need to let him wrestle with what that means.

God, thank you for the gift of Scripture that guides us and inspires us, but does not give us all the answers. Help us to be gentle with those who carry great strain and sometimes fall short. Help us also to find a balance in our expectations for ourselves, and our need for reassurance when we struggle.

~Jean G.

John 9:1-41

Never Becomes Now

Sides drawn in debate over sin and fault,
He took a different tack, sidestepping the arguments
and stepping aside to anoint the man’s eyes
with mud made from saliva and earth,
common things fused with mystery and a washing in the pool.
No sin in that. Oh, but on the Sabbath.

And now the uproar,
not thrill for the man’s given sight,
but back to sin and assumptions,
threat to power, challenge to authority,
the miracle sidelined
by more orthodox headlines.

Let us cheer the man, applaud the healer,
delight in clear sight, mouths dropping in awe
as “never” becomes “now.”
However.
Whenever.

~Barbara

Psalm 90
Mark 7:1-23

“Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations … Teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom … May the favor of the Lord our God rest upon us; establish the work of our hands for us” (Psalm 90:1, 12, 17).

These are a few verses in this Psalm that promise hope. In between, we find a depiction of the shadow side of life, followed by pleading with God to fulfill the promise that mortality, failure and troubles are not the end of the story. What a span of life experience, written by one claiming to be Moses, moving from creation to death to beyond, from judgment to compassion, from sorrow to joy. The turning point in this Psalm is v. 12: Teach us to really see the days we are given, in order that our hearts may be wise.

In the gospel reading for today, Jesus, after being confronted by the Pharisees because his disciples were eating with unwashed hands, calls the religious leaders of his day hypocrites and then addresses the crowd with much the same message. This time the focus is on failure or sin. Jesus’ list of evils which make one truly unclean is all-encompassing—from specific behaviors to general attitudes (greed, envy, arrogance, malice). Once again, what is in our hearts is the key. Jesus repeats it twice: nothing outside of us can make us unacceptable—nothing anyone says or does, no circumstance in our experience, no rules someone else imposes. All that is important is the condition of our hearts!

Dear Lord, may my heart be filled with the wisdom of your Spirit, so that the work of my hands may be favorable in your sight.

~David St.

Psalms 88, 91, 92
Genesis 47:1-26
1 Corinthians 9:16-27
Mark 6:47-56

The Holy Scriptures always amaze me, particularly the range of expression and the feelings each reading produces. Psalm 88 is titled “Prayer for Help in Despondency”; Psalm 91 is titled “Assurance of God’s Protection”; Psalm 92 is titled “Thanksgiving for Vindication.” The feelings are all there in those Psalms—despair, relief, gratitude. In the Genesis reading, Joseph, who was sold into slavery by his family, “provided his father, his brothers and all his father’s household with food according to the number of their dependents.” In Corinthians, Paul, in a section on “The Rights of an Apostle,” says “nevertheless, we have not made use of this right, but we endure anything rather than put an obstacle in the way of the gospel of Christ.” Finally, in Mark, in a section titled “Jesus Walks on the Water,” Mark writes, “but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out. But immediately he spoke to them.” It’s all there—family relationships, rights and duties, supernatural events. What to make of it? It’s so human, so divine!

I often think of Lent as a time of reflection on experiences that are sad or painful. But these passages taken together reveal to me the infiniteness of God’s love, Agape. They show me the trustworthiness of God. To me, they reveal a truth: God created us to love us, over and over and over again—love without end.

O Holy One, You have given us the Scripture to reveal to us your eternal love for us and for all of our brothers and sisters (even the ones we do not like or those we fear). I thank you for your Word made flesh, Jesus Christ, and for the Scriptures that helps us to see the “big picture,” the Good News that Jesus is Love Incarnate! Amen.

~Tom B.

Psalm 86

“Incline your ear, O Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my life, for I am godly; save your servant, who trusts in you—you are my God. Be gracious to me, O Lord, for to you do I cry all the day. Gladden the soul of your servant, for to you, O Lord, do I lift up my soul.”

In this Prayer of David, we are reminded that our merciful God is always with us to guide us and strengthen us as we seek peace and grace to help us get though the trials and temptations of our daily lives. Our God is unconditional with love and grace and will forgive us our sins and failures to lead a life of good works if only we ask for forgiveness. If we stumble, God is there, if we need Divine support to work through moral, physical and emotional challenges, God is there—an omnipresent lifeline ready to listen, uplift, and give us courage if we will only take time to seek comfort and Holy sustenance. Even in our darkest hours, we trust that God is there to listen to our pleas. In fact, Psalm 86 tells us that the more oppressed we are, the more likely God is to respond. Verse 7 says it best: “In the day of my trouble, I will call upon Thee for thou wilt answer me.”

Holy and forgiving Lord. You are our everlasting rock and salvation. You provide support and love to all who believe and call upon you. Guide us, sustain us and forgive us always and grant us your steadfast love, wisdom, grace, strength and peace when we reach out to you in prayers of supplication and gratitude. Amen

~David C.