Category: Christian Spirituality Blog

Let Go and Give (Isaiah 58:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

“Shout it aloud, do not hold back.
    Raise your voice like a trumpet.
Declare to my people their rebellion
    and to the descendants of Jacob their sins.
For day after day they seek me out;
    they seem eager to know my ways,
as if they were a nation that does what is right
    and has not forsaken the commands of its God.
They ask me for just decisions
    and seem eager for God to come near them.
‘Why have we fasted,’ they say,
    ‘and you have not seen it?
Why have we humbled ourselves,
    and you have not noticed?’

“Yet on the day of your fasting, you do as you please
    and exploit all your workers.
Your fasting ends in quarreling and strife,
    and in striking each other with wicked fists.
You cannot fast as you do today
    and expect your voice to be heard on high.
Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
    only a day for people to humble themselves?
Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
    and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
Is that what you call a fast,
    a day acceptable to the Lord?

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
    and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
    and break every yoke?
Is it not to share your food with the hungry
    and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
    and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
    and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteousness will go before you,
    and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
    you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.

“If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
    with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
    and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
    and your night will become like the noonday.
The Lord will guide you always;
    he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
    and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
    like a spring whose waters never fail.
Your people will rebuild the ancient ruins
    and will raise up the age-old foundations;
you will be called Repairer of Broken Walls,
    Restorer of Streets with Dwellings. (New International Version)

Let Go of the Hypocrisy and Get Real

Isaiah’s prophecy came to a community in conflict. The root of the issue was a hypocritical gap between the people’s conduct and their worship. They wondered why God had not noticed their pious fasting – why their actions before the Lord had gone unseen. Isaiah made it clear that their practice of fasting and their rituals of worship were ineffective because it was all self-serving instead of serving others.

Let Go of the Food and Get Generous

True fasting does not abstain from food just to get noticed (by God and/or others) but has the aim of a generous spirit and a giving heart. Both abstinence and generosity are necessary in the practice of fasting. 

Fasting is a much neglected spiritual practice today, so we need to make sense of the reason to do without food for a set amount of time. Fasting ought to put us in touch with our vulnerability; it should remind us of our mortality and our frailties. That’s why fasting is so often associated with the upcoming season of Lent.

Through fasting we remember that if we are not fed, we will die. Standing before God hungry, we realize that we are dependent creatures in desperate need of the Lord. By fasting, we discern that we are poor, and called to be rich in a way the world does not understand.

We are empty, called to be filled with the fullness of God. We are physically hungry, called to taste the goodness that can be ours in Christ, as we get in touch with a hunger for God.

Fasting, however, does not end with abstinence from food; and it is not merely a private individual thing. The spiritual discipline of fasting is meant to open our eyes and our hearts to the truly needy among us and in the world.  We are to be open to both the spiritual needs of people, and their very real material needs.

“When you see people freezing outside in the frigidity of unbelief, without the warmth of faith, impoverished and homeless, lead them home to the church and clothe them with the work of incorruption, so that, wrapped in the mantle of Christ, they will not remain in the grave.”

St. Jerome (347-430, C.E.)

Isaiah also addresses the very real daily tangible needs of people for the basic necessities of life. The message is this: Fasting is to personally abstain from food in order to provide food for another. 

Let Go of the Ego and Get to Praying & Repenting

Just as abstinence from and provision for food are two sides of the same coin, so fasting and prayer are, as well. We are to stop eating in order to take that time to pray and to give. Letting go of a meal puts the food that would have been eaten into the pantry for the needy. Fasting from lunch at our jobs can be done, not just to get more work accomplished, but so that we might share both our food and our friendship with those in need.

The prophecy of Isaiah has intimate connections between worship, fasting, justice, and reconciliation. They are meant to be a seamless whole, indivisible, enjoying a close bond that makes for powerful and effective ministry. All of this enables us to get back in touch with the real meaning of repentance:

  • To repair a broken relationship with God or with another person
  • To grieve over the reality of a certain situation
  • To devote oneself to service
  • To experience new life and spiritual growth

Isaiah wanted people to repent of both their individual sins and their social sins. Truth be told, we must all deal openly and honestly with our own complicity in the sins of our world, our nation, our church, and our families. The worship that God desires is inescapably corporate as well as compellingly personal. To ensure that all people around us flourish as human beings is both an obligation and a necessity to our collective fulfillment as God’s people.

The result of true fasting is a repentance that produces the fruit of renewal and restoration. Fasting connects us to God, and then leads us to repair and rebuild what has been broken and torn down. 

Let Go of Your “Precious” and Get Committed to God and Others

We fast to practice repentance, attach ourselves to God, and become more generous toward others. In the Lord of the Rings movies, Smeagol was much too attached to the power of the ring; it was his “precious,” and he was willing to do anything not to lose it or let it go.

Yet, we must all decide that we are going to let that precious thing go, at least for a time, whatever it may be. Each year at this time, before Ash Wednesday and the season of Lent, I decide in what ways I will practice fasting. In past years, I have abstained from buying certain things or watching TV. This year, however, I am going to do what fasting really is: abstaining from food for a set time. 

For most of the history of the church, Christians were expected to observe regular fasts on Wednesdays and Fridays, every week, year round.  When the season of Lent came, the church was united in their commitment to use the forty days as a time of introspection, confession, and fasting in order to prepare for the miracle of forgiveness on Good Friday and its life-giving power on Easter. It was understood to be a time of confronting sin, purging bad desires, yearning for forgiveness, and developing godly habits of living.   

For me, I think the least I can do is fast two meals a week – one on Wednesday and one on Friday (if not the whole days) to not only be in solidarity with the faithful that have gone before us, but in order to let the season of Lent do what it is intended to do.

I encourage you to consider implementing some sort of regular fast through Lent, if for no other reason, to fulfill the spirit and intent of Isaiah’s message to us so that we all connect deeply with Christ in purposeful Christian living.

Merciful God and Father, we have erred and strayed from your ways like lost sheep. We have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts. We have offended against Your holy laws. We have left undone those things which we ought to have done; and we have done those things which we ought not to have done – leaving us bereft of good. O Lord, have mercy upon us and restore us according to your grace, through Jesus Christ our Savior and Lord. Amen.

Exposing Hypocrisy (Mark 7:1-8)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
Old Men and Christ by Ivan Filichev, 1992

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles.)

So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

He replied, “Isaiah was right when he prophesied about you hypocrites; as it is written:

“‘These people honor me with their lips,
    but their hearts are far from me.
They worship me in vain;
    their teachings are merely human rules.’

You have let go of the commands of God and are holding on to human traditions.” (New International Version)

Reading the Gospel text for today, I try to imagine what emotions Jesus might have experienced when confronted by some religious leaders about his lack of attention to traditional and ritual hand washings – maybe frustration, anger, sadness, exasperation, disappointment, irritation, aggravation, or discouragement.

Perhaps Christ felt all those emotions. Whatever Jesus was feeling at the time, I can easily see him taking a deep breath and exhaling a great big *sigh* over the hypocrisy displayed in front of him.

Hypocrisy is a disconnect between espoused values and actual behavior. Whenever there is an incongruence between what we say is important and how we really live, this is being two-faced and duplicitous.

The men who came to see Jesus were plain old insincere hacks who practiced religious quackery. And Jesus saw right through their fake pretention of righteousness.

First off, this narrative is neither a blanket condemnation of Pharisees nor a dig on rituals themselves. Instead, Christ’s words were directed to specific persons using their rituals to leverage an appearance of religious superiority over others.

That type of motivation for engaging traditional rituals completely ignores the ethical and moral intention of those practices.

Sometimes folks can get so doggone wrapped up in how faith is represented that they lose sight of the faith itself.

Jesus and Old Men by Ivan Filichev, 1993

Hypocrisy has to do with our motives – not so much what we do but why we do it. Rituals themselves are good. Why we do them, or not, or how we go about doing them, gets at the heart of our objectives for engaging religious practices.

We need to ask ourselves:

Are our spiritual practices truly a worship offering to God, or are they merely mechanisms for keeping up the appearance of holiness?

Hypocrisy is acting a part which is not our true self. It is, instead, to live from the false self through the attempt of providing an idealized person to the public. What we ought to be doing is embracing the true self and realizing our common humanity with one another in genuine devotion to God and service to others.

Religious hypocrisy is particularly insidious because it uses what is sacred for selfish purposes. It damages the credibility of the religion, creates idolatry, and papers over hate with a veneer of pretentious piety.

The hypocrite is one who is a bundle of disparate parts. They have a massive need of integration to a whole and real self. The cost to facing this is the vulnerability of exposing oneself as flawed, imperfect, even ugly. Many persons have no willingness to be viewed by others as such, and so they maintain their play-acting and continue to seek the attention and accolades as a model religious person.

We all must come to grips with the reality that God cares a whole lot about why we do what we do.

If and when the forms of faith become tools of oppression to place heavy burdens upon others backs, then those forms have supplanted the faith itself.

Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks, and from the heart the hands and feet move. Whenever we care more about being and appearing right than getting it right and becoming better, then we have a heart problem. The heart of the issue is the heart itself. Clean up the heart, and everything else follows – not the other way around.

The probity of today’s Gospel lesson is that we might misinterpret what is important to God. We may be playing the hypocrite yet have the belief we are genuine. The capacity for our hearts to enlarge with love is in direct relation to an awareness of the hidden motives buried within those hearts.

Evil intentions and motivations are what separate us from God – not our race, class, age, gender, religion, ethnicity, behavior, rituals, or anything else on the outside.

If we find ourselves being nit-picky of others, this is usually a clue that the unconscious self is trying to protect us from facing the pain of our own sins by projecting and focusing on another’s supposed missteps with tradition or ritual.

Fortunately, Jesus came to this earth full of grace and truth. There were times that Christ set aside niceness and decorum to go for the heart. In shining a light on the motives behind the deeds of people, some repented and received the good news of the kingdom of God; and others resisted to maintain their illusion of control and superiority.

Nobody could ride the fence with Jesus around. You either loved him or hated him.

The beauty of grace is that when we squarely and uncompromisingly face our sins and let go of the things we consider so important, and turn to God with authenticity, we are welcome at his Table.

Most holy and merciful Father, we acknowledge and confess before you our sinful nature, prone to evil and slow to do good, and all our shortcomings, offenses, and malevolent motives. You alone know how often we have sinned in wandering from Christ’s way of grace and truth, in wasting your gifts of compassion and justice, and in forgetting your love.

O Lord have mercy on us. We are ashamed and sorry for all the ways we have displeased you. Teach us to hate our errors; cleanse us from our secret faults; and forgive us our sins; for the sake of your dear Son, our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.

Get a Different Perspective (Isaiah 29:1-12)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Woe to you, Ariel, Ariel,
    the city where David settled!
Add year to year
    and let your cycle of festivals go on.
Yet I will besiege Ariel;
    she will mourn and lament,
    she will be to me like an altar hearth.
I will encamp against you on all sides;
    I will encircle you with towers
    and set up my siege works against you.
Brought low, you will speak from the ground;
    your speech will mumble out of the dust.
Your voice will come ghostlike from the earth;
    out of the dust your speech will whisper.

But your many enemies will become like fine dust,
    the ruthless hordes like blown chaff.
Suddenly, in an instant,
    the Lord Almighty will come
with thunder and earthquake and great noise,
    with windstorm and tempest and flames of a devouring fire.
Then the hordes of all the nations that fight against Ariel,
    that attack her and her fortress and besiege her,
will be as it is with a dream,
    with a vision in the night—
as when a hungry person dreams of eating,
    but awakens hungry still;
as when a thirsty person dreams of drinking,
    but awakens faint and thirsty still.
So will it be with the hordes of all the nations
    that fight against Mount Zion.

Be stunned and amazed,
    blind yourselves and be sightless;
be drunk, but not from wine,
    stagger, but not from beer.
The Lord has brought over you a deep sleep:
    He has sealed your eyes (the prophets);
    he has covered your heads (the seers).

For you this whole vision is nothing but words sealed in a scroll. And if you give the scroll to someone who can read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I can’t; it is sealed.” Or if you give the scroll to someone who cannot read, and say, “Read this, please,” they will answer, “I don’t know how to read.” (New International Version)

Reading the Bible may sometimes feel like a weird Catch-22. We’re supposed to read, observe, and obey the contents of Holy Scripture; yet there is so much within it that we often just plain don’t understand – and even are not going to understand, at least on this side of heaven.

For many people, this is maddening. It may even cause them to throw up their hands and say that God is some mad scientist who merely tinkers and experiments with people like mice in laboratory.

I understand how some could think that way. The Lord comes along and does a mysterious dance of proclaiming judgment, then pivoting quickly around to assure deliverance. Reading through any prophetic book of the Old Testament is likely to make our heads spin with questions and our hearts to reel. No matter how you slice it, there are a lot of difficult passages in Holy Scripture.

So, I invite you to take a few differing perspectives.

First, if God is a Being who is infinitely higher and greater – the Creator who has made all things – then we are the creatures who are neither privy to all God’s reasonings nor even able to understand such a Being who is other than us.

Second, it seems we rarely even attempt to try and see things from God’s angle. We see our own situations, many of them confusing, and we wonder why the Lord doesn’t just step in and fix all the crud. However, none of us has the full picture, as God does – which is why we are continually invited to pray for wisdom, to see our life, relationships, and circumstances from a divine perspective. (James 1:2-5)

The prophet Isaiah, along with the other prophets, proclaims a double message of judgment and deliverance. Indeed, it appears there is a continual rhythm of identifying guilt and giving grace throughout a large chunk of the Old Testament.

And that is perhaps where we need to pay attention. People have a great predilection for saying and doing things (or failing to say and do things) which bring guilt. Our guilty actions and inactions are not okay; they cannot simply be dismissed as stuff that people do, as if we were just silly folks who don’t know any better.

Maybe we would like to view God as some geriatric grandfather who lets everyone do what they want, but that’s not the God we get in the Bible.

No, our words and actions have real impact and consequences for others. And the Lord is a real force to contend with, for whom we cannot escape nor ignore for long.

In Isaiah’s day, the people were called to account for their abject callousness toward their fellow humanity. God’s commands all have to do with living in harmony with creation. Chaos, disorder, and systemic evil result whenever the creature rebels against the Creator by trying to be a little god of their own making – taking the perspective of using people rather than serving them.

The Lord will have none of it; God will intervene. Hence, the judgment portions of Scripture. Yet, because God is gracious and loving, the judgment doesn’t last forever; mercy takes hold and overwhelms the guilty sinner.

If we could understand everything God does or doesn’t do, then God wouldn’t be God. But the very fact that God is mysterious, and in some ways unknowable, tells us that there is indeed a God.

Our task is not to take over God’s job because the Lord isn’t doing what we want. Our mandate is to reflect the image of God placed within us by loving the Lord and loving our neighbor as ourselves.

Yes, we are all guilty of a great many things. Yet, grace always has the last word, and not judgment. This, then, gives way to a life of gratitude that has learned to sync one’s heart with the heart of God.

Catch-22’s are certainly maddening… if we are truly in one to begin with. It could be that we just haven’t yet gained a different perspective on our situation, learned to accept it, and made the choice to live in harmony with the world as it is, rather than the world as we think it ought to be.

Most merciful God, we confess that we have sinned against you in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done, and by what we have left undone. We have not loved you with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We are truly sorry and we humbly repent. For the sake of your Son Jesus Christ, have mercy on us and forgive us; that we may delight in your will, and walk in your ways, to the glory of your Name. Amen.

How To Live Well (Psalm 112:1-9)

On By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment
By Stushie Art

Praise the Lord!
    Those who honor the Lord,
    who adore God’s commandments, are truly happy!
Their descendants will be strong throughout the land.
    The offspring of those who do right will be blessed;
    wealth and riches will be in their houses.
    Their righteousness stands forever.
They shine in the dark for others who do right.
    They are merciful, compassionate, and righteous.
Those who lend generously are good people—
    as are those who conduct their affairs with justice.
Yes, these sorts of people will never be shaken;
    the righteous will be remembered forever!
They won’t be frightened at bad news.
    Their hearts are steady, trusting in the Lord.
Their hearts are firm; they aren’t afraid.
    In the end, they will witness their enemies’ defeat.
They give freely to those in need.
    Their righteousness stands forever.
    Their strength increases gloriously. (Common English Bible)

To live well is to obey well. Well, that’s a thought! And a deep subject it is.

It’s a matter of whether we’ll take our cues for living from S. Hiney Wells or his brother, Russ T. Wells.

S. Hiney tells us this:

“Listen, my friends, the Lord’s commands are not made for drudgery. They’re how to be happy in this here life. Obeying what God says leads to blessings of family, security, contentment, and peace. God’s never failed to keep bacon in my frying pan, folks to help me out in a pinch, and a heap of hope for when I’m lower than a snake’s belly in a wagon rut.”

Russ T. tells us:

“Well, the world ain’t shiny at all. It’s all dark and covered in rust so thick you’d think nuthin’ good’s been used fer a coon’s age.”

S. Hiney responds: “Well, Russ T., there’s certainly a powerful lot of darkness everywhere; but that don’t mean there’s no light! Even a few little lightnin’ bugs helps us to see where we are in the night.”

Russ T. retorts: “Well, S. Hiney, them little bugs don’t help none when I’m brinin’ away in pickle barrel so full of vinegar that I don’t know whether I’m in the field or the henhouse.”

S. Hiney: “Well, now, fortunately we’ve got more than a few matches in our pockets. God’s own light shines so bright that it lights up the whole earth, a world-illuminating light that keeps every old fox away from the barn.”


Russ T.: “Well, that’d be mighty nice. But if that light’s so all-powerful, I ought to be able to see my hand in front of my face! All’s I see is a bunch o’ nasty weasels lurkin’ about, givin’ me a headache bigger than the Ozark Mountain Daredevils singin’ and playin’ on my tin roof while I’m tryin’ to sleep.”

S. Hiney: “Well, Russ T., I see it every time I lend money without any expectation of interest or return. I see it in my neighbor’s generous hand and sharing her prize winnin’ tomatoes and blue ribbon apple pies. And I mostly saw it with our dear mama’s teaching to “give until it’s gone, boys, not until it hurts,” rest her soul.

Russ T.: “I obeyed mama, bless her heart; she was one of the good ones. And I certainly didn’t wanna be on her bad side!”

S. Hiney: “Me, too. Her words of affirmation felt a lot better than those times when I was disobedient and found a willow switch on my behind! So, Russ T., were you happy listening to mama and doing what she said?”

Russ T.: “Well, now, I reckon I was. Things was a lot simpler and a lot less complicated when I listened to her. Whenever I didn’t, I felt like I was a polecat in the chicken house, like I didn’t much belong.”

S. Hiney: “My heart’s calculatin’ that your true love, the Lord God, is presently waitin’ on you to shake all that rust off so that he can give you a good shine on that soul of yours. But yer goin’ to have to listen, to obey what you hear, brother.”

Maybe because we tend to be all or nothing people, we often get hung up on either being perfect or being a failure. In reality, we are neither. We’re just simple folk trying to do our best in loving and serving the Lord with an obedient heart.

Christianity takes its cues in reading the psalms from Christ’s illumination. Jesus embodied the ideals of humanity, having neither material wealth nor actual physical descendants; yet he distributed gifts more generously than anyone ever did; and he has more spiritual progeny than anybody else.

Following in the way of Christ, we live in such a way that it is possible to be:

  • Poor and rich
  • Compassionate and competent
  • Gentle and shrewd
  • Gracious and tough
  • Giving and receiving
  • Faithful and doubting
  • Light and dark
  • Happy and sad
  • Vulnerable and powerful
  • Confident and scared
  • Brave and hesitant
  • Generous and just
  • Consistent and unpredictable
  • Mindful and forgetful
  • Weak and strong
  • Loving and questioning
  • Open to change and immovable

Living well means obeying well enough to see the best in others, seek the common good of everyone, and be resilient to deal with our personal foibles and the unforeseen pitfalls we sometimes experience.

What will you do when you’re in a pickle?

O God, whose blessed Son came into the world that he might destroy the works of the devil and make us children of God and heirs of eternal life: Grant that, having this hope, we may purify ourselves as he is pure; that, when he comes again with power and great glory, we may be made like him in his eternal and glorious kingdom; where he lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.