Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 17th:  Psalm 146; Isaiah 42:14-21; and Colossians 1:9-14.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today is a pretty famous day.  It’s even an official holiday from school and work in Boston.  No, not that day.  Today is Evacuation Day.  Henry Knox transported canons all the way from Ticonderoga, New York to Dorchester Heights, arriving in March 1776.  I still remember being released from school as a 15-year-old on the bicentennial anniversary of Knox’s achievement.  There was a reenactment of his journey from New York to Boston and it passed right down the street by my house in Westfield.  It was a pretty big deal 50 years ago.  From the vantage point above Boston, the Continental Army could threaten the land and sea forces of the occupying British troops.  This forced them to withdraw from Boston, thus ending their occupation of the city.  This March 17th withdrawal is the basis of the Evacuation Day holiday.  This was George Washington’s first victory in the war and a huge boost for the Patriot cause in all thirteen Colonies. 

In this month of March, Henry Steele Commager died at the age of 95 here in Amherst.  He was a professor at Amherst College from 1956 – 1992.  One of the books he authored was The Empire of Reason: How Europe Imagined and America Realized the Enlightenment.  He argued that the Unites States was founded upon and flourished because of an idea.  The idea is summarized in the Enlightenment philosophy that highlights and honours liberty, freedom and universal human rights regardless of nationality or background.  This idea proved more powerful and enduring than the military might of the Revolutionary War period’s superpower, England.  This is Commager’s thesis.  The United States for all its military power was defined as an “Empire of Reason.”  It was those ideas just mentioned above that powered our greatness.  It was those ideas that inspired people here and around the globe, especially in those lands where such ideas were outlawed.  It was those ideas that built an empire of allies, of peoples and nations that embraced with us liberty, freedom and human rights.  We were once not a nation that imposed ourselves on others simply because we were stronger.  We were an Empire of Reason because we convinced others that those ideas were not only imaginary, but that they could be real.  At our Bicentennial we celebrated those ideas as a nation.  50 years ago we honoured those ideas.

The nation of ancient Israel once celebrated and honoured those sorts of ideas.  Each person was respected.  Even the alien residing among them was promised dignity.  With the passage of centuries, however, ideas were replaced by an inadequate alternative of power, and Israel suffered civil war and eventually complete national annihilation.  The Psalms were composed originally for the private and corporate worship of ancient Israel.  They would be the hymns of the Jerusalem Temple, the royal temple, the temple of the kings.  With a fearlessness born of faith, the Psalmist proclaims from the Temple and even unto the king:  “The Lord sets the prisoners free; the Lord opens the eyes of the blind.  The Lord lifts up those who are bowed down; the Lord loves the righteous.  The Lord watches over the strangers; he upholds the orphan and the widow, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.”  This is a liturgical and prophetic call to transition from a reliance on power before it is too late, and to return to Israel’s origin where those ideas mentioned above were honoured and lived.  The kings did not listen.  They settled for the substitute of power.  And the nation of Israel was no more.

Second Isaiah, from which we read today, was written by an anonymous prophet who dwelled among the exiles who were forced to abandon their homeland and who were resettled in Babylon.  As the prophet looks back upon his nation’s decline and failure, and as he looks forward to its restoration, he urges his fellow exiles:  “Listen, you who are deaf, and you who are blind, look up and see!”  It was and it will be the power of an idea that raises Israel up because that idea makes Israel worthy of restoration.  And to “Look up and see” is to focus on God and God’s way, to focus on an idea not power. 

During these Lenten days of reflection, may we “Look up and see” again the power of those ideas celebrated by the Psalmist, realized at one time by the United States’ Empire of Reason, and proclaimed forever by a Saviour who showed us the dignity of every single person, and who would not back away from that gospel even when His own dignity and life were stolen by an empire based on power.  That empire of power lives in history books; the Christian idea lives among us.  Power lasts for a time; an idea lasts forever.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 16th:  Psalm 146; Isaiah 59:9-19; and Acts 9:1-20.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

One of the first references to the followers of Jesus was “the Way.”  To follow Jesus was not only to acknowledge Him as Saviour.  It was and is not enough to declare faith in who Jesus is theologically.  To follow Jesus requires following His example.  This is not new.  In today’s Isaiah passage, the prophet reminds his fellow Babylonian exiles that God was still acknowledged and worshiped by Israel, but this does not blunt the force of Yahweh’s accusation:  “The Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no justice.”  Israel may have kept the Temple sacrifices burning, but without living the faith outside of the sanctuary God was displeased.  The Sanctuary is not to lock God into one place so that religion lives there and there alone.  Sanctuaries are where God’s people are refreshed and reminded of what needs to be done in the world.  That there was no justice in the world was a moral and religious failing because the faith was not lived.  Yell “Jesus is Lord” till kingdom come, but don’t live in imitation of Jesus, and God is displeased.

In Acts of the Apostles, Saul – not yet named Paul – seeks permission to extend the persecution of Jesus’ followers beyond Jerusalem.  He asks permission to harass “any who belonged to the Way.”  On the road to Damascus, the glorified Jesus of heaven confronts Saul, and Saul is left blinded by the encounter.  In darkness he must be led by the hand.  Saul has been changed by this incident.  It’s such a famous story of religious conversion that the phrase “Road to Damascus” summarizes and expresses any experience of a sudden, dramatic, and complete transformation in a person's beliefs, attitudes, or behaviour, often triggered by a powerful or life-altering event.  This is the story behind that phrase.  Saul has been changed, but he must literally and figuratively be led because he does not know “the Way.”  He acknowledges Jesus because he’s had a direct experience of the heavenly Jesus, but Saul doesn’t know what it means to follow Jesus.  There’s more to believing than faith statements about who Jesus is.  Left alone, these pious words are like the Temple sacrifices that kept being offered, but Yahweh was displeased because there was no justice in the land.

Saul’s first lesson about “the Way,” comes from Ananias.  Let’s read again the important lesson that is being shared:  “But Ananias answered, ‘Lord, I have heard from many about this man, how much evil he has done to your saints in Jerusalem, and here he has authority from the chief priests to bind all who invoke your name.’ But the Lord said to him, ‘Go, for he is an instrument whom I have chosen to bring my name before gentiles and kings and before the people of Israel; I myself will show him how much he must suffer for the sake of my name.’ So Ananias went and entered the house. He laid his hands on Saul and said, ‘Brother Saul…’”  Ananias witnesses the heavenly Jesus in this prophetic conversation.  He knows who Jesus is.  He also knows who Saul is.  Ananias protests about helping this enemy of “the Way,” but Ananias moves past his fear because of his faith in Jesus.  When he meets Saul, the greeting is revelatory.  Ananias already calls him “Brother Saul.”  Ananias has welcomed him into “the Way.”  Ananias has lived his faith in Jesus.  He has moved from his fear of the other to an embrace of the other.  He has not only proven his faith by believing in Jesus, but by acting like Jesus.

Christianity is to constantly be on “the Way,” to consistently live to the best of our abilities in imitation of Christ.  Faith is not locked in a sanctuary hour on Sunday mornings.  Faith is constantly on the move.  May Lent’s extra attention to Jesus help us realize that Jesus is always calling us forward on “the Way,” always challenging us to live our faith more intentionally.

 If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 14th:  1 Samuel 15:32-34; Psalm 23; and John 1:1-9.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

Today, March 14th, abbreviated as 3/14, is Pi-Day because Pi is the mathematical designation for the unending, never repeating calculation of the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter.  This calculation’s answer begins with the three digits 3.14.  In honour of Pi-day, as of this very month, Pi (π) has been calculated to 300 trillion decimal digits, setting a new world record.  It begins with 3.14, but never ends, continues ad infinitum.

It never ends because a perfect circle is perfectly curved, while the diameter of the circle is a perfect line.  Its circumference can be analyzed by theoretically breaking the curve of the circle into ever smaller line segments, but no matter how fine the dissection, there is always a curve in the circle’s circumference.  The line of the diameter and the curve of the circle can never perfectly express each other.  They can come infinitesimally close, even down to 300 trillion line segments, but theoretically they can never be the same.

In yesterday’s Lenten Blog, we spoke of Ephesians’ challenge to imitate God.  What a noble and worthwhile goal, but it is always going to be a goal.  It is always going to be a standard we aim toward.  It’s sort of like π out to 300 trillion digits.  What an unimaginably long distance from 3.14, but still no closer to the end of an infinite equation.  This shouldn’t be frustrating to people of faith.  It should be challenging.

The World Baseball Classic is taking place right now.  I’ve read interviews with young Major League Baseball players who are excited to play on the same national team as their heroes.  They are excited to learn firsthand from the more experienced players.  They realize that to get better they need to be exposed to better players.  They could play against inferior teams and win every game, but who would care and how could that help them improve?  But to engage with the stars of the game, to learn from them, to imitate them, makes the younger players better even if they do not reach the same levels of acclaim.

To imitate God is not to replace God, which is as impossible as the line replacing the circle, it is to grow closer to God’s perfect self-revelation in Jesus.  One of the clearest and profoundest statements that Jesus is God’s self-revelation is found in the Prologue to John’s Gospel.  There we read:  “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overtake it.”  The Word is Jesus and the Word “was God.”  The Word is the source (“came into being through him”) and sustenance (“in him was life”) of all creation, including each of us.  We are made in God’s image and likeness, and we are called upon to grow into that noble character lived perfectly by Jesus.  We are called upon to imitate God because we are the sparks of God (“light of all people”). 

This is not to set an unreachable goal before us so that we grow disillusioned.  This is to excite us to what we can be.  And never being able to equal God, in no way entails not being with God.  God embraces us where we are.  Newlyweds are in love, but if they reach their 50th anniversary their love is different; they better understand the meaning of “the two shall become one.”  Lent is our sacred opportunity to grow closer to God, to walk further along an unending path toward God while becoming more godly with each and every step.

Tomorrow’s Gospel in church is the story of Jesus’ encounter with the man born blind.  The sermon will be about Jesus’ challenge to grow in God-like compassion.  I invite you to join us at worship at 9:30.  Please know that whoever you are, you are welcome among us.

 If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 13th:  1 Samuel 15:22-31; Psalm 23; and Ephesians 5:1-9.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

We have journeyed to our fourth Lenten Friday, especially solemn days within a solemn season.  And today is also the rare occasion when we are encountering the second month in a row of a Friday the 13th.  There are all sorts of fables behind the Friday the 13th superstition.  One that is intriguing is that Jesus chooses twelve disciples, and in every listing of the disciples in the Gospels, the last one mentioned is always Judas, and always with reference to his betrayal of Jesus.  Thus, Jesus plus twelve disciples equals thirteen, and the thirteenth is always Judas, and Judas betrays Jesus leading to his crucifixion on a Friday, and hence the superstition of Friday the 13th.

The superstition around Friday the 13th is that this is an unlucky and even unsettling day.  However, the Friday behind this superstition is what we call Good Friday.  Every time I have taught children about Good Friday some alert child has asked why in the world do we call it good.  Our fellow Christians in the Eastern Churches, in the Orthodox tradition, avoid this conundrum because they call Good Friday Great Friday, Holy Friday, or Great and Holy Friday. 

Our tradition of Good Friday is based on the theology that the crucifixion is good for us.  Jesus’ martyrdom, His final living witness (in Greek witness is μάρτυς, martys), is His death on the cross.  The cross testifies that nothing is more important to Jesus than His lived and spoken revelation, not even His very life.  And in Jesus we find the promise of both a better world and of eternal salvation.  This is why the day of Jesus’ suffering and death is referred to as Good Friday.

Good Friday can be understood in terms of redemption, but a less familiar tack is to approach it as regeneration, renewal, rebirth.  The former can be abused if it concentrates solely on Jesus’ sacrifice and discounts the believer’s response to that sacrifice.  The latter sees the life of Jesus that culminates on the cross as the perfect example that believers are called upon to follow … to imitate. 

This soteriology (the doctrine of salvation) is shared in today’s passage from Ephesians.  Redemption speaks of the cross as a sacrifice to God akin to an Old Testament sacrifice placed upon an altar and offered up to God.  Jesus is the perfect offering that takes away sins, and the cross is the altar.  Even in ancient Hebrew Scripture, though, there are warnings about isolating the sacrifice from a lived faith.  This occurs when the prophet Samuel chastises the Jewish king Saul:  “‘Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices as in obedience to the voice of the Lord?’”  The cross is not the end of the salvation road, for believers it’s a beginning.  For believers, it is to be imitated.

When Ephesians speaks of the cross, there remains the allusion to Old Testament sacrifice:  “… as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”  However, Ephesians connects redemption to regeneration:  “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love …”  Jesus does sacrifice His life, but the cross challenges us, as believers it should compel us, to be imitators of God.  What does such a high expectation even entail, this audacious idea to imitate God?  It is simple as in straight forward, but not simple as in easy.  To imitate God is not to be nailed to the cross like Jesus, but it is to “walk in love” like Jesus lived even unto death.  To approach the cross as regeneration is to be so moved by Jesus’ self-sacrificing devotion to us that we imitate Jesus’ example of to “walk in love.” 

This is why we can call the day of His death Good Friday.  May our Lenten journey help us to live up to Jesus’ expectations for all of us, and for the sake of all of us.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 12th:  1 Samuel 15:10-21; Psalm 23; and Ephesians 4:25-32.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

When I was a child in Sunday School, my teacher asked the class to memorize Psalm 23.  Almost six decades later, that Sunday School assignment still lives in my brain.  Neuroscientists say something about memories being stored by brain synapses between connected neurons.  Long term memories have fused those neurons together into a unit.  It may be completely imagined, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were and there’s no way to check, but I think I remember my seat next to the blackboard when I was asked to recite from memory Psalm 23.  When I hear those opening words, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want …” I’m reactivating some connected neurons that awaken a memory from a long time ago. 

I now also associate Psalm 23 with funerals.  I wish I could say that I’ve done as many baptisms as funerals, but the sad fact is that I have done a lot of funerals.  And I would venture to say that at just about every funeral Psalm 23 is recited either by myself or by all of us present.  Funerals are extremely meaningful to me, but maybe in a way different for many of you reading this.  I have attended many funerals for family and friends, and that is one emotion.  However, I also have led funerals as a pastor much more often, and that is a different emotion, but not a separate one.  The former influences the latter.  Whether the funeral is for a faithful church member who I have known and interacted with for a long time, or even if it’s a person I have never met, I recognize and appreciate the grief and sorrow of those who are mourning because I have been there. 

The power of Psalm 23 is that while it is written in the first person (all those my’s, I’s and me’s), it shares a common experience and emotion.  It speaks of God’s blessed presence in spite of danger or turmoil.  It offers both strength and hope.  I know a lot of people cherish the poem “Footprints” in which it is revealed that when the two sets of footprints turn into only one, it is because Jesus carries us.  I hear the same message in Psalm 23’s:  “For you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”  God supports us when we cannot make it on our own.  This is why Psalm 23 is a part of most every funeral.  When we are at our most vulnerable, when we mourn the passing of a loved one, when we are not sure how to move forward, we need to hear and trust that there is a divine shepherd who protects and guides us.

There are shared human emotions and experiences that should hold us together, help us to empathize with the other whoever they may be, that should be stronger than those evil and destructive powers that wish to separate us, to dehumanize the other.  In the Epistle to the Ephesians, we read today, “For we are members of one another.”  We share so much in common in spite of our differences, and our faith should nurture these connections.  When Jesus suffers and dies on the cross, it culminates a lived revelation that inspires those earliest Christians to proclaim:  “For we are members of one another.”  In a time of deep and dangerous divisions, may Jesus inspire us again to feel connected, and when needed may we recite Psalm 23’s, “For you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me.”

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 11th:  Psalm 81; Jeremiah 2:4-13; and John 7:14-31, 37-39.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

In 2004 I was adventurous enough to travel by bus to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.  I went there to see an exhibit of Byzantine Christian art from the Middle Ages when it was the seat of the Eastern Roman Empire and before Byzantium was conquered by the Muslims.  I came home with a print of an engraving that was incorporated in a lectionary, a book of readings based on the liturgical calendar.  The engraving imagines Luke at his writing table.  His hands are outstretched to receive a page of text being delivered by a heavenly bull (The bull is the ecclesiastical symbol for Luke’s Gospel).  The message of the artwork is that the Evangelist was copying verbatim the words that were revealed to him from heaven.  The inspired Word of God required only the hand of the Evangelist not his mind. 

I imagine many did, and still may do, believe that this is what a divine revelation looks like.  I personally tend toward a broader understanding of inspiration.  I think in Islam the Koran cannot be officially translated from the original Arabic because they believe that Mohammed received the text and then put it to pen without any alteration.  To translate the Koran would mean to interpret it, and this would then no longer be the official Koran.  Christians do not treat the Bible in this way.  We have a small Bible study group that meets on alternate weeks.  Even among this group, we bring to the table several translations of the Bible that are not exactly the same.  Textual Criticism goes back to the earliest extant texts and fragments of texts to discern the best approximation of the original, but even so differences remain.  All of this points away from inspiration being limited to the role of a secretary.

Inspiration, I can only imagine, wells up from a deep reservoir of faith.  The connection with God is so strong that it feels true and authentic for the prophet to speak in God’s name.  Right now in our Bible study group we are reading from the one book of Isaiah, but it is pretty obvious that there are three separate prophets writing under the same name, and they are each writing to a people in unique circumstance.  The concerns of First Isaiah are not those of Second Isaiah, and Third Isaiah is different again.  Their world and their relationship to God in that world helps define their prophecies.  They are not only copying heavenly texts; they are expressing an exceptionally profound relationship with God in a particular moment in time.

With this in mind, when we turn to today’s passage from Jeremiah, how poignant it is to hear and feel the prophet’s sense, the prophet’s revelation, of divine sorrow.  God is confused and saddened by the people’s abandonment:  “What wrong did your ancestors find in me that they went far from me …”  God cannot fathom being replaced by such inferior alternatives:  “For my people have committed two evils:  they have forsaken me, the fountain of living water, and dug out cisterns for themselves, cracked cisterns that can hold no water.”  Jeremiah feels God’s anguish as he witnesses the decay and dereliction of the people’s faith.  He hurts and he feels that God hurts.  There are heavenly consequences to the broken relationship of faith.  It is not only about sin, judgment and punishment.  It is about a rupture that surprises and saddens God, and leaves the once faithful with something much less satisfying.

During Lent, I cannot help but ponder the sadness and surprise of Jesus – betrayed, abandoned and crucified.  How it must have added to His pain when He was confronted with the apathy of those who passed Him by, the mocking of others, the spectacle of His loneliness as His body is tortured.  During the entirety of His ministry, He cared and loved others with an enthusiasm that we came to see as more than human, and yet when He needed it most, there was no care or love offered to Him.  “What wrong did we find in Him?”  I like to think that our Lenten journey lets Jesus know we have not taken His life or death for granted, that we do remember, and that we are grateful.  To believe or not believe is not about reward or punishment.  It is about acknowledging or ignoring all that Jesus did – and this must be in the first person for each of us – for me.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 10th:  Genesis 29:1-14; Psalm 81; and 1 Corinthians 10:1-4.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

On this day in 1876, Alexander Graham Bell placed the first successful telephone call saying, “Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you,” to his assistant Thomas Watson.  Bell could never have imagined the impact of his invention.  What began as a connection between two people in the same building has now made it possible to connect with the entire world.  Within 80 years, the first transatlantic telephone cables were laid on the ocean floor.  With this amazing fete, someone in Europe could hold a conversation with someone in North America.  Now with satellite phones people anywhere can talk to people everywhere.  News correspondents in the midst of natural disasters and wars can offer live coverage.  I’ve heard of people dying on Mount Everest who could hold conversations with their loved ones.  The telephone has made the world smaller because it offers us the ability to connect with each other. 

If we want to.

Even though the landline has morphed into the cell phone has morphed into the smart phone, even though communication has become so casual that we notice a lost cell phone much more quickly than a lost wallet, it seems people and peoples have grown further apart.  There was an idealistic hope that social media would bring the world together.  People would communicate and develop friendships and share enthusiasms, and the world would become a community.  What we’ve seen instead is the rise of troll farms, whose purpose is to deliberately spread disinformation and thus manipulate public opinion.  This has led to the weaponization of communication.  Much of the conversation has separated the people and peoples of the world into ever smaller cells of like-minded people.  Echo chambers emerge that make conversation with others more difficult.  Social media algorithms monetize people’s communication by drawing them deeper and deeper into a self-imposed isolation where one group will not converse with another group.  Their world becomes small in a negative.  Not small as in the possibility of engaging with others, but small as in self-imposed isolation.

150 years ago today the telephone became a part of our world.  We have the technology to communicate in ways never imagined by Bell, and I imagine in another century and a half communication will take place in ways we cannot now imagine.  I hope that we will have mastered the technology rather than the technology mastering us, but that is an open question. 

Paul today draws out the connection between Christians, whoever they are, and our faith’s ancestors the Jews.  He goes as far as to say, “They drank from the spiritual rock that followed them, and the rock was Christ.”  Paul sees Christianity as the uninterrupted progression that emerges as the people of Israel wander in the Exodus, going so far as to say Christ was there among them.  Trying to slide past some of the issues this may raise, Paul is voicing a theology of connection.  He’s trying to bring different people together.  And that’s a message I think is worthy of our attention.

However, this same passage can be read not as connection, but as replacement.  Then, this passage becomes hurtful.  It doesn’t bring people and peoples together; it keeps them apart.  The communication technology that Bell invented in 1876 can also either bring us together or keep us apart.  I think the humanity of the humans using the technology must guide the technology, and I honestly think that our humanity needs our connection with divinity to ensure our continuing humanity.  Without that communication with God, without that wisdom that reaches beyond knowledge, technology will define us.  So during this Season of Lent, may we listen to the words of the Psalmist who in today’s passage gives voice to God’s plaintive cry, “I hear a voice I had not known.”  The people had stopped turning to God, stopped the conversation with God, their voice had become unfamiliar.  May we heed that warning.  May Lent renew or heighten our conversation with God, for the sake of our souls, and also for the sake of our humanity.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.

Throughout the year, the Southern New England Conference of the United Church of Christ reproduces the Daily Lectionary for use by churches.  These are the suggested readings for March 9th:  Genesis 24:1-27; Psalm 81; and 2 John 1-13.  I would encourage you to read these short selections as part of your Lenten practice.

We just celebrated the Third Sunday of Lent yesterday, and there are only three more to go.  As we make steady progress on our Lenten journey, I hope you realize that you read an entire biblical book today.  The Second Epistle of John consists in its entirety of the 13 verses we just read.  Toward the end of the letter, “the elder” mentions to another Christian community in covenant with him, “I would rather not use paper and ink; instead, I hope to come to you and talk with you face to face.”  This is wonderful for the people being addressed, but it is so unfortunate for us in 2026.  Whatever was shared in person has been lost to history and what we’re left with are these rather cryptic 13 verses. 

Some books are read, some are read and remembered, and some are read and overpower you.  Raymond E. Brown’s The Community of the Beloved Disciple overpowered me.  It opened my eyes to a new way of reading the Bible.  Its formal name is the historical-critical method.  It seeks to understand the origins, context, and original meaning of biblical writings.  It became, for me at least, the most pious way to read the Bible.  It put the words in a historical context, a living context.  That interpretation of the words allowed me to carry the Word into my world. 

2 John, according to Brown, is part of the correspondence of a highly charismatic church, or better a highly charismatic community.  This is why there is such an emphasis upon truth:  “The elder to the elect lady and her children, whom I love in the truth, and not only I but also all who know the truth, because of the truth that abides in us and will be with us forever.”  The truth is recognized by the faithful because it dwells within the faithful. This is what it means to be charismatic.  There’s a grace bestowed.

Apparently, however, a difference of opinion arose over the definition of the truth.  2 John’s elder calls such believers deceivers and even the antichrist, and he warns those who will still listen to him that they must not be swayed.  Since this is such a charismatic church, one where each individual decides for themselves, opposing interpretations of truth are almost inevitable. 

The alternate truth is explained in this way:  “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh.”  One of Christianity’s first divisions was Docetism.  This teaching proclaimed that Jesus was never actually human, that He only appeared to be physically human.  It emerged because some of those first generations of believers could not manage to believe that Jesus actually suffered and actually died on the cross.  The thought that the Son of God could suffer so terribly was so offensive that they judged it false.  Docetism offered the alternative that on the cross there was an avatar Jesus while the real Jesus was at a safe distance watching it all take place.  This protected the believer from the scandal of a crucified Saviour and a crucified God.

This is the deception that the elder hoped to discredit.  From an historical perspective this is fascinating, but from that historical situation emerges spiritual meaning for today.  Many believers still shy away from the reality of Jesus’ suffering.  We surround ourselves with crosses.  The bigger the better it seems.  At the time of actual Roman crucifixions, however, the practice was so heinous that Christians refused to depict it in their artwork.  It was too much to bear; it was an emotion born of a similar sentiment to that which inspired the deceivers in 2 John.  The earliest known crucifixion imagery in a Christian church is the door panel from Santa Sabina in Rome, dating to approximately 430–435 CE. This is among the first surviving examples of a crucifixion scene within a mainstream Christian setting anywhere.  There were hashmark crosses in Christian antiquity, but not crucifixes, not crosses with the body of Jesus on them, not for four centuries.

Lent asks of us to contemplate what some early Christians had to draw back from in their faith lives.  Lent asks us to meditate upon the meaning of the actual suffering and torturous death of the Saviour.  What does this say about Jesus, about God?  What does this expect of us as followers of Christ when Jesus accepted this scandalous execution rather than reject His gospel of love, peace and forgiveness offered unconditionally?  May these meditations help us walk further along on our Lenten journey.

If you would like to join us for our online Bible study, please send an email to [email protected] for the Zoom logins.
​
If you’d like, here is the link to the Southern New England Conference’s daily reading schedule:  www.sneucc.org/lectionary.