New Rules for a New Society (Ephesians 4:25-32)

We are part of the same body. Stop lying and start telling each other the truth. Don’t get so angry that you sin. Don’t go to bed angry and don’t give the devil a chance.

If you are a thief, quit stealing. Be honest and work hard, so you will have something to give to people in need.

Stop all your dirty talk. Say the right thing at the right time and help others by what you say.

Don’t make God’s Spirit sad. The Spirit makes you sure that someday you will be free from your sins.

Stop being bitter and angry and mad at others. Don’t yell at one another or curse each other or ever be rude. Instead, be kind and merciful, and forgive others, just as God forgave you because of Christ. (Contemporary English Version)

New life means being a part of a new society; and a new society means new rules to live by which benefit and uplift the entire community. Old destructive practices must be replaced with new encouraging and supportive ways of being together. Stop taking the broad easy road to destruction and start walking the hard path to life and contentment.

Stop Lying and Start Telling the Truth

Lying exists because people believe that being truthful and transparent is too traumatic. Many people don’t think that being open, honest, real, vulnerable, and genuine is worth the risk. They have believed the lie that they won’t be accepted, that they’ll lose face with others, or that people will just gossip about me if they really knew about me. So, we hide from others and avoid the truth.

In truth, we are responsible for one another – to make and keep promises to each other because that is what God does with us. Churches that love truth will make a safe place for the awkwardness of confession, forgiveness, and healing.

Truthful communities are places of hospitality where we are safe to be real. No one ought to ever suffer in silence, cry alone, or wonder whether others will forsake them. We belong to one another. Therefore, to have union with Christ is to have union with one another; you can’t have one without the other.

Stop Stealing and Start Giving

Theft comes in many forms, especially in our contemporary age. Embezzlement, shoplifting, fraud, plagiarism, and robbery are just a few examples of the ways in which we humans steal from one another.

Embezzlement is the theft of assets (money or property) by a person who has been trusted to keep those assets safe. Instead of embezzling funds, we are to steward those assets well, distributing them with care and a conscience – using them for the benefit of others, not simply ourselves.

Shoplifting involves stealing goods from retail establishments. Some people steal because they are in dire need. Many more steal because they can and want to. We must stop taking things we want, and learn to be satisfied with what we have. And we will only do this by using our own money to buy things for others who are in need.

Fraud is stealing that involves convincing the victim to surrender their money or property under false pretenses. This is nothing more than manipulating someone to get what you want. Work hard to defend the defenseless and ensure their justice, rather than commit a gross injustice against them.

Plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own. It’s cheap. It’s easy. And don’t do it, period. Someone else worked very hard to create what you may nonchalantly use for your quick benefit. Take the pains to credit someone else’s work and document the sources you use.

Robbery is a theft that involves using violence, intimidation, or threats to obtain property. Put the threats, guns, and false confidence away. In it’s place, do whatever it takes to do things right, hold a job, and give something back to society.

Stop All the Unhelpful Talk and Start Encouraging

Corrupt or dirty talk is totally unnecessary. It’s unwholesome and benefits nobody. Rather, make it your aim to use your words for good by encouraging others.

Encouragement involves strongly urging someone to do something with an equal commitment to lovingly come alongside and help. This requires both verbal exhortations and tangible assistance. Encouragement is the glue which holds a people together. Without it, a society degenerates into watching-out-for-number-one, and destructive personal survival tactics which will say anything to get what one wants.

Stop the Bitterness and Start Forgiving

Forgiveness is choosing not to hold another’s persons offensive words or actions over their head. It is:

Specific to an event, action, or words.
A process: it takes time to truly forgive.
Something anybody can do, regardless of race, creed, religion, etc.
Hard.
Freeing.
Ongoing.
Gracious.

“To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.”
Lewis Smedes, Forgive and Forget: Healing the Hurts We Don’t Deserve

Bitterness, however, wants to hold onto a grudge and seeks to punish the one who has offended them. That’s the way of Satan, not God. Even if the person has set themselves up as your enemy, we have clear exhortations from Jesus to love our enemies and do good to them, not harm. (Matthew 5:43-48)

The world revolves on the axis of mercy, not judgment. The sooner we get in the groove of how things actually operate for us to live a good life, the better that our relationships and society will be.

Good and gracious God, we ask that you make our life journey safe as we choose integrity, not disintegration. Shed light on those who follow crooked paths. May their dishonesty be exposed so that corrections can be made before further damage occurs. Help our nations, neighborhoods, and faith communities choose a path of mercy and goodness, rather than the crooked way of lies, theft, vitriol, and grudge-bearing. May we see a new wave of integrity sweeping over our world, through Jesus Christ our Lord, by the power of your Holy Spirit. Amen.

On Mercy and Against Condemnation (John 7:53-8:11)

On March 8, 2023February 20, 2023 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

The woman caught in adultery, by Chinese artist He Qi

[The earliest manuscripts and many other ancient witnesses do not have John 7:53—8:11. A few manuscripts include these verses, wholly or in part, after John 7:36, John 21:25, Luke 21:38 or Luke 24:53.]

Then they all went home, but Jesus went to the Mount of Olives.

At dawn he appeared again in the temple courts, where all the people gathered around him, and he sat down to teach them. The teachers of the law and the Pharisees brought in a woman caught in adultery. They made her stand before the group and said to Jesus, “Teacher, this woman was caught in the act of adultery. In the Law Moses commanded us to stone such women. Now what do you say?” They were using this question as a trap, in order to have a basis for accusing him.

But Jesus bent down and started to write on the ground with his finger. When they kept on questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” Again he stooped down and wrote on the ground.

At this, those who heard began to go away one at a time, the older ones first, until only Jesus was left, with the woman still standing there. Jesus straightened up and asked her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?”

“No one, sir,” she said.

“Then neither do I condemn you,” Jesus declared. “Go now and leave your life of sin.” (New International Version)

“Do you ever wonder what the greatest gift is that has ever been given? It is this: mercy. If you wonder what this means, practice mercy and your questions will fade. Live into mercy and you will become what you love. For love unites us in our loving, not in our being. So give yourself to love and love yourself in giving. The rest will follow of its own.”
Meister Eckhart (1260–1328, C.E.)

Mercy is scandalous. I wish it weren’t. It seems crazy that this is the case. But here we are, living in an unmerciful world. And even more absurd is that many religious leaders want nothing to do with mercy. The leaders in Christ’s day were trying to get Jesus to depart from his normal routines of grace so that he would appear fickle, unsteady, and weak.

The religious leaders got together and decided to put a woman forward who was clearly a sinner, caught in the act. What to do with her? they asked Jesus. They were, of course, trying to trap him. On the one hand, if Jesus didn’t condemn her, the leaders could say Christ was not upholding the Law. And, on the other hand, if Christ acquiesced in killing the adulterous woman, then the leaders could say that Jesus was inconsistent and unreliable.

The response of Jesus was to stoop down and say nothing. I believe Christ was demonstrating how utterly unworthy the religious leaders were to be heard on the subject. I don’t think there’s anything to conjecture about writing in the sand. It was like taking the physical posture of turning his back on them or putting up a hand, as if he isn’t going to watch the silly circus scene that’s happening.

Jesus wasn’t about to be deterred from his ministry of mercy, from preaching grace, and from hobnobbing with “sinners.” But, since the religious leaders kept up their questioning like a pack of obnoxious yippee dogs, Jesus straightened up and decided to deal with this unmerciful display happening in front of him.

He simply stated that if they want judgment, not mercy, then the one who is without any sin ought to throw the first stone to kill the woman and execute judgment upon her. If innocence is so all-fired important, then it will take an innocent person to punish the guilty.

Whoever accuses another person ought to first look in the mirror to see if there is any innocence reflecting back. And the stark truth is that any old Tom, Dick, or Harry is not qualified to level judgment on another and condemn them. Christ is unmasking the hypocrite who flatter themselves with the supposed high ground of their innocence.

In reality, they are excessively severe and harsh, spiritual felons who have no right to censure others. There is a place for loving correction and appropriate judgment. However, there is never a place in the kingdom of God for eliminating mercy and punishing others with either our hands or our tongues.

Although the wicked and hypocritical religious leaders intended to entrap Jesus by their unholy shenanigans, the tables were quickly turned and their true shame was exposed for what it is – being so darned unmerciful and unloving. Their own guilt is proved by walking away from the scene.

No one has the right to be a jerk. And it is definitely not okay for any person, of all things, to tempt Jesus Christ! And yet, too many religious folk through the centuries have done just that.

None of this means that sin is okay and we can do whatever we want. No, Christ calls us to go and sin no more. Mercy frees us to do just that. Mercy is the key which unlocks the door of freedom and allows us to leave one room for another, to arise from the dark basement of disobedience and despair and enter the bright living room of forgiveness, grace, and life.

Let us then imbibe mercy as the elixir of life – because it is. The world cannot survive without mercy.

We are not the arbiters of who can or cannot have mercy. God said:

“I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” (Exodus 33:19, NIV)

The Lord has always been characterized as merciful:

Remember, Lord, your great mercy and love,
    for they are from of old.
Do not remember the sins of my youth
    and my rebellious ways;
according to your love remember me,
    for you, Lord, are good. (Psalm 25:6-7, NIV)

Mercy is of high value to God, who said:

“For I desire mercy, not sacrifice, and acknowledgment of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Hosea 6:6, NIV

Because God is merciful, the Lord calls people to show mercy, as well:

He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. (Micah 6:8, NIV)

“Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’” (Matthew 18:32-33, NIV)

Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom, because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. (James 2:12-13, NIV)

May the gracious and almighty God have mercy on you and forgive you all your sins through our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

The True Nature of Faith (Luke 7:1-10)

On March 4, 2023February 16, 2023 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year ALeave a comment

Jesus heals the servant of a Roman Centurion

After Jesus finished presenting all his words among the people, he entered Capernaum. A centurion had a servant who was very important to him, but the servant was ill and about to die. When the centurion heard about Jesus, he sent some Jewish elders to Jesus to ask him to come and heal his servant. When they came to Jesus, they earnestly pleaded with Jesus. “He deserves to have you do this for him,” they said. “He loves our people and he built our synagogue for us.”

Jesus went with them. He had almost reached the house when the centurion sent friends to say to Jesus, “Lord, don’t be bothered. I don’t deserve to have you come under my roof. In fact, I didn’t even consider myself worthy to come to you. Just say the word and my servant will be healed. I’m also a man appointed under authority, with soldiers under me. I say to one, ‘Go,’ and he goes, and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes. I say to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and the servant does it.”

When Jesus heard these words, he was impressed with the centurion. He turned to the crowd following him and said, “I tell you, even in Israel I haven’t found faith like this.” When the centurion’s friends returned to his house, they found the servant restored to health. (Common English Bible)

Jesus the Jew used his authority to heal and transform a Gentile.

This particular Gentile, a Roman Centurion, clearly understood his place and who Jesus was. The Centurion felt unworthy to even have the Lord Jesus come into his house. And his profession of faith amazed even Jesus. “Just say the word,” he said in recognition of Christ’s authority.

The power and authority of Jesus is big enough to heal without even being present. In the ancient Roman Empire, Centurions were the backbone of the Roman military machine, and so, were hated by the Jews. Yet, Jesus the Jew not only responded to the Centurion’s request, but he also affirmed this Gentile’s faith as greater than any he had seen amongst his own people.

Grace answers to need, and not to smug self-confidence. The Roman Centurion asked for healing, not for himself, but for his servant. And Jesus graciously and mercifully listened and answered.

The Centurion neither demanded nor claimed healing; but instead, he came in a spirit of humility and asked with confidence that Jesus could heal his servant if he wanted to. The Centurion simply threw himself on God’s mercy. So, Jesus lifted him up as a model of faith for us all.

Real and genuine faith always serves as a solemn warning to the self-righteous – that their lack of humility and their pretentious faith will land them outside of God’s benevolent realm. In a great reversal, the insiders will become the outsiders, and the outsiders become the insiders.

Independently proud folk do not experience healing and transformation because they don’t even know they are sick with sin. They see no need for an intervention by Jesus because they already have their righteous deeds to boast about. Such persons are more concerned about looking good and saving face, and so, are unaware of their own unworthiness.

The self-righteous approach to handling problems and difficult situations is to come up with good ideas and clever strategies. They rely on hard work, personal effort, and sheer willpower. Prayer may or may not happen after the plans are laid; there is no sense of addressing a problem or need with beseeching God.

These are merely delusional thoughts of personal autonomy; they only serve to separate us from the grace of God that we so desperately need.

There is a spiritual dimension to every situation and trouble we face – including sickness. If we only examine the medical end of physical problems, we may be dealing with symptoms instead of the root issue that plagues us.

Are you hurting? Pray. Do you feel great? Sing. Are you sick? Call the church leaders together to pray and anoint you with oil in the name of the Master. Believing-prayer will heal you, and Jesus will put you on your feet. And if you have sinned, you will be forgiven—healed inside and out. Make this your common practice: Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you can live together whole and healed. (James 5:13-16, MSG)

Jesus healed and transformed outsiders. So, followers of Christ need to consistently ask:

Who are the outsiders among us?
Do we care about strangers?
Are we willing to touch aliens and immigrants?
Will we intercede in prayer for those who are foreign to us?
Will we search for and pursue those on the periphery of society?
Do we believe the risen and ascended Christ can and will heal, deliver, and transform people?

Jesus cannot be domesticated into some figurehead which suits our desires and conforms to our ideas about how things ought to be.

Instead, Christ is portrayed as eager to heal, wanting to show grace to the least and the lowly among society.

Our Father in heaven,
    may your name be kept holy.
May your Kingdom come soon.
May your will be done on earth,
    as it is in heaven.
Give us today the food we need,
and forgive us our sins,
    as we have forgiven those who sin against us.
And don’t let us yield to temptation,
    but rescue us from the evil one. Amen. (Matthew 6:9-13, NLT)

Luke 6:6-11 – Every Day is Meant for Doing Good

On August 24, 2022July 20, 2022 By Tim EhrhardtIn Christian Spirituality Blog, Daily Bible Reading Blog, Year CLeave a comment

On another Sabbath, Jesus went into the synagogue and was teaching, and a man was there whose right hand was shriveled. The Pharisees and the teachers of the law were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus, so they watched him closely to see if he would heal on the Sabbath. But Jesus knew what they were thinking and said to the man with the shriveled hand, “Get up and stand in front of everyone.” So, he got up and stood there.

Then Jesus said to them, “I ask you, which is lawful on the Sabbath: to do good or to do evil, to save life or to destroy it?”

He looked around at them all, and then said to the man, “Stretch out your hand.” He did so, and his hand was completely restored. But the Pharisees and the teachers of the law were furious and began to discuss with one another what they might do to Jesus. (New International Version)

Lectio Divina is an ancient Latin term which means “spiritual reading.” It means to read Holy Scripture not just to know its contents, but to experience its power to restore, heal, transform, and draw close to God.

Lectio Divina is a simple way to prayerfully read Scripture, meditate on its message, and listen for what God may be saying for us to do. It can be done privately, or with a small group of people. The goal is to become more Christ-like.

Lectio Divina is based upon reading a selected text of Scripture three times. Each reading is followed by a period of silence after which each person is given the opportunity to briefly share what they are hearing as they listen to God (if done in a group).

For today’s Gospel lesson, I invite you to give it three different readings, as is common to a Lectio Divina approach:

In the first reading, read the text aloud slowly and carefully. Listen for a word, phrase or idea that captures you attention. As you recognize a word, phrase or idea, focus your attention on it, repeating it several times.
In the second reading, focus your attention on how the selected word, phrase or idea speaks to your life right now. What does it mean for you today? How is Christ speaking to you about your life through this word, phrase or idea?
In the third reading, focus on what God is calling you to do or to become. Experiencing God’s presence changes us. It calls us to something. What is that something?

So, here are my reflections from reading today’s Gospel lesson three times:

In my first reading, the phrase “watched him closely” stood out to me. As I sat and pondered this phrase, I thought about how there are always people watching us. How I live my life, and what I say, are continually on display. Mostly, this is a good thing, because I believe that modeling an authentic and devout life to Christ is important. Yet, whenever someone is watching us closely, in the sense of continually looking over our shoulder, or scrutinizing every word and action so as to find fault, this is a very bad thing.
In my second reading, I hear God speaking to me about how Jesus experienced this bad sort of watching, and yet, he did not let it deter him from doing good and following through on what is right by healing a man on the Sabbath. In fact, Christ confidently had the man with the shriveled hand stand up in front of everyone. He wanted the entire congregation, including those who were watching him with judgmental eyes, to see exactly what he was doing. Jesus neither healed him quietly nor waited till after the synagogue service was over; he was very open about what was happening.
In my third reading, I felt Jesus beside me – not looking for something to correct or chastise me about – but rather putting his arm around my shoulder, knowing exactly what it feels like to be the object of criticism, scorn, and malevolent plotting against. I sense my solidarity with Christ, my union with him, believing that nothing can separate me from the love of God in Christ, my Savior and Lord, who always has my back. I hear Jesus graciously calling me to stand firm and openly do what is good and right, every day, no matter who is watching or why they are watching.

Today’s Gospel lesson shows us Christ’s disapproval of those who focus so narrowly on the traditions and laws of religion that they end up losing sight of God’s message.

For the Christian, the message is a gospel of grace, not condemnation. Jesus challenges the legalistic way of keeping the Sabbath holy by asking a penetrating question: “Is it lawful to do good on the Sabbath rather than to do evil, to save life rather than to destroy it?”

By showing compassion to the man with the withered hand, Jesus points us to a way of holiness that’s a whole lot more than keeping the law and performing rituals.

By healing the man, Jesus teaches us to respond to God’s call to do good and save lives. Traditions should never interfere with our compassion for those in need.

“If anyone, then, knows the good they ought to do and doesn’t do it, it is sin for them.”
James 4:17

If you haven’t already done so, give the Lectio Divina a healthy try – because God is always speaking to us; we just need to be still and silent in order to hear.

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, and grant me your peace. Amen.

Rev. Tim Ehrhardt

Tag: christ's mercy