Prayer

 

My knowledge is imperfect now; then I will know even as I am known.  Please pray these words with me.  God, I don’t know everything, even with the internet at my fingertips.  Reconnect me with my humanness, which is to say, my humble/made of soil and stardust truth in my soul.  My knowledge has gotten me where I am, but might not help me get where I want to go.  So, help me find places where my curiosity and creativity can be shared openly in this art project of life.  God, You know me fully.  My blessedness and brokenness, my faithfulness and fragility, my boneheaded-ness and beloved-ness.  I don’t know how You can love my worries and warts, but I trust that You do.  Let Your love sketch on my heart, soul, words, and life.  God, pick up the crayons and color my life with Your presence to infuse the ways that I show up.  God, continue to create within me a desire to be part of what You are up to in these days.  And when my brain starts bossing and bullying me (wants to tell me it is foolish to be playful or naïve to be loving) help my shy soul softly say to my brain, “Don’t worry, I’ve got it from here, because Your love, God, has me, holds me, heals and helps me.”  May it be so, in all manner of things today, may Your love be so.  Amen. 

Be Child-Like...Not Childish

 

When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, and reason like a child.  But when I became an adult, I put childish ways aside.  Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we will see face to face. 

 

Go back and look at your drawing from Monday.  Look at the words you wrote inside your heart.  Where have you lived those words this week?  Look at the words outside the heart.  Did you have experiences of the Eternal this week that helped draw those words closer to you?  Were there any experiences that caused the initially objectionable words to inch closer to your heart?  In many ways, our inner child never tires of coloring on the canvas of life.  Our inner child loves to play and participate in this beautiful, if broken, world.  Our inner child knows that laughter is a prayer.  Our inner child knows that a cookie with milk is communion.  Our inner child knows that God is found in trees and birds and snails that have so much to teach us, if only we stop scrolling and staring at our phones.  Lacy Finn Borgo tells us that there is a difference between being childish and being childlike.  Childish is throwing temper tantrums (note how often adults do this at meetings and on social media).  Childish is always wanting your way.  Childish is thinking that the world revolves around you.  Child-like is to be lost in wonder, love, and praise.  Borgo writes, “Children possess a natural, unique to them, connective consciousness. It has not been chosen or even cultivated through hours of meditation or psychedelic trips. Instead, the plasticity of the developing brain offers connective wonder through a lack of previous experiences and an innocent openness to the world. God has wired each and every one of us for this.”  How can you let loose your inner child today?  What if you went back and read 1 Corinthians 13 with the whole box of crayons to permit your inner 5-year-old artist who loved to color before the art teacher started grading your effort?  What if you went and gazed at a lake with awe, noticing every inch?  What if you built with Legos?  What if you did what you loved to do when you were ten years old?  Let loose your inner child, who still has something to teach and tell your adult self.  May this experiment help you see deeper into the mirror of your life, where all the versions of yourself (from your earliest memory to today) are reflected in how you show up and speak up in such a time as this. Amen.

How do you know what you know?

 

Our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophesying is imperfect.  When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away. 

 

Yesterday, my inner defense attorney objected to the idea that “love never fails.”  Today, my inner know-it-all feels exposed.  I don’t know what I don’t know.  On Sunday, I spoke about the question, “How do we know what we know?”  Stop, what is the foundation of your explanations and exhortations?  We live in a Google-dominated world where we are convinced that we have it all figured out.  Brian McLaren says we are attracted to leaders who are confident even when they are not competent.  We like strong people, because we don’t believe Jesus saying that the peacemakers will inherit and usher in the realm of God.  We have tried for centuries to bomb our way to peace.  Even though it has never worked, we still go back to that as our first, last, and only resource.  Einstein was right: the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.  Faulkner was right, the past isn’t dead and isn’t even the past.  Today carries the brokenness of yesterday because we keep clinging to our way, rather than God’s way. 

 

As a recovering perfectionist, who is still in process, I shudder at the idea of the phrase, “when the perfect comes”.  Another word that could be faithfully substituted into the above translation is “whole”.  “When the whole comes, the incompleteness will pass away.”  This echoes the Lord’s Prayer, “Thy kin-dom/realm come, here on earth, fully, completely, wholly and holy”.  N.T. Wright says that the goal of religion is not to get your soul to heaven, but to get heaven into your soul here on earth to spread out from you to others.  The pathway to heaven isn’t only through your intellect.  You don’t need to write volumes of Church Theology arguing every point.  You need to let love be written in your life every day.  Karl Barth, who wrote 12 volumes of a book called “Church Dogmatics” (talk about thinking your way through faith!), was once asked to summarize those million words he had written.  He said, “Jesus loves me (and everyone), this I know for the Bible tells me so.”  May that truth challenge you, be lived in you.  May God continue to sketch, draw, and color in your life today.  Amen.

Failure of Love

 

Love never fails.  Prophecies will cease; tongues will be silent; knowledge will pass away. 

 

I hope you still have your drawing from yesterday, pull that out, and let’s dive in/dwell with this phrase.  If I only read Paul’s words with my rational brain, my inner defense attorney yells, “Objection!!  Of course, love fails!  Read the headlines, look at the number of marriages that come crashing and crumbling down.  Look at how people bully each other and the violence we cause to one another.  Then, I look at my heart, and wonder if those are not an example of love failing, but our human failing to love.  I know this may feel like I am playing games with words, but for love to be love, there is always freedom to choose to go ways I cannot control.  I cannot stop someone from hardening their hearts.  In the book of Exodus, we read that Pharaoh had a “hard heart” when he enslaved the Israelite people.  Pharaoh feared that the Israelites would become too numerous and overthrow his power.  On January 4^th, we heard how fear caused Herod to commit infanticide in response to the fear of hearing the Wise Ones say there was a new king of Israel.  Love will never force us to do something.  Love will never belittle or bully the belovedness of another.  It isn’t love that is failing; it is humans.  We have free will.  I can choose to show up with words of love or anger; with hope or with trying to score points to put Uncle Gus in his place; with peace or letting my words lash out like a whip; with joy or jolts of sarcasm meant to demean/dehumanize another.  While, yes, some Christians will claim that God told them to be a brash bully, we know that great truth of the hymn, “they will know we are Christians by our love.”  The church is not judged by our attendance numbers, not by our budgets or balance sheets, not by the number of likes this post receives on Facebook.  It isn’t that love fails, but that I fail to love.  That isn’t meant to shame or blame or rain guilt on you.  Because God pours out God’s love lavishly on you every day.  Jesus said that God is like a Gardener who scatters seeds into hearts that have thorns/thistles and dry ground that is harder than a rock (see Matthew 13 ~ Parable of the Sower).  Today, may your heart be open to receive God’s love that is unceasing and unconditional.  Today, may you let that love nourish you.  Today, may you let that love escape from you.  Not because it is popular or profitable, or promotable.  But because love never fails as a pathway for the faithful.  Let this truth be drawn in your heart and lived in your words this day.  Amen.

Written on the Heart

 

As we begin our fourth week of living and seeking to embody the words Paul wrote to the church in Corinth that was in conflict ~ living through divisiveness and anger ~ I invite you this morning to get out a piece of paper.  As you slowly read these words, I want you to draw images that come to mind.  If you think, “But, Wes, I am no Van Gogh!”  Please be assured that this is not about creating a museum masterpiece; this is about letting a different part of your brain process these powerful words. This is about allowing the poetry of these words to awaken your sacred imagination in a new way.  If you still feel reluctant or resistant, draw a heart.  Then, which of Paul’s words warms your heart?  Write those inside the heart.  Then, are there words or phrases that are like sandpaper to your soul?  Write those outside the heart, or try to rephrase/rewrite what Paul is saying.  There is no grade on this project, just like there is no grade on the art project of life.  This allows your heart to be expressed through your hand in a sketch that is your soul’s response.  Read and then draw with me.

 

Even if I can speak in all the tongues of earth – and those of the angels too – but do not have love, I am just a noisy gong, a clanging cymbal.  If I have the gift of prophecy such that I can comprehend all mysteries and all knowledge, or if I have faith great enough to move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing.  If I give away everything I won to feed those poorer than I, then hand over my body to be burned, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient; love is kind.  Love is not jealous, it does not put on airs, and it is not snobbish; it is never rude or self-seeking; it is not prone to anger, nor does it brood over injuries.  Love doesn’t rejoice in what is wrong, but rejoices in the truth.  There is no limit to love’s forbearance, to its truth, its hope, its power to endure. 

Love never fails.  Prophecies will cease; tongues will be silent; knowledge will pass away.  Our knowledge is imperfect, and our prophesying is imperfect.  When the perfect comes, the imperfect will pass away.  When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, and reason like a child.  But when I became an adult, I put childish ways aside.  Now we see indistinctly, as in a mirror; then we will see face to face.  My knowledge is imperfect now; then I will know even as I am known.  There are, in the end, three things that last: faith, hope, and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

 

Sit with your drawing today as a reflection and response of the Artist/Composer/Creator God who is still sketching in your life and mine.  Amen.

Prayer

 

Playful and Prayerful

 

But it (love) is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.

 

How do these words above land in your mind, heart, and soul this day?  I really want to know.  Are you finding this study of 1 Corinthians illuminating, exhausting, or a bit of both?  Are you growing weary of focusing on love because it takes so much energy and effort to show care to others?  Where are you at?  Love, Paul says, is happy with the truth.  So, be truthful with yourself and God.  Do you have questions, or want clarification, or would you like an exemption for loving that person, because believe me, I have a list of people in my heart today I would rather not be kind, patient, or believe God can unharden their hearts.  You are part of a community of interpreters who for centuries have sought to playfully and prayerfully wrestle with these words.  Note the two words, playfully and prayerfully.  Sometimes we get so serious and somber with the Bible.  Sometimes we act as if we just try harder, we can solve every mystery there is.

 

In the end, love is a mystery, just like God, who is love radiating and reverberating.  I cannot predict love.  I cannot control love.  I cannot tell love where to go or who to avoid.  Love is.  Period, full stop.  The moment I think I have love all figured out (which I am laughing right now at even writing that sentence because I have never had love all figured out), love will always evolve and expand and embrace a new space I thought wasn’t practical or possible. 

 

Take love out for a cup of coffee, tea, lunch, or on a walk.  I pray today you will risk letting love loose, especially in a situation you would never think that word is possible.  I pray most of all that you will pay attention to how love shows up in your life and sings to your soul.  May you and I both discover fun, faithful, and creative ways to be love-activated in the world, letting our belovedness loose.  Amen.

The Hug IS Real!!

 

Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done,

 

Yesterday, Paul described love positively; today, he tells us what love is not.  Today, he sets a boundary to help us distinguish what is out of bounds when it comes to expressing hesed (completely undeserved kindness and generosity) to others.  Yet, I don’t think Paul’s list was meant to be exhaustive or exclusive.  Paul is seeking to awaken our sacred imagination.  I invite you to ponder when a moment you recently felt unconditionally and unceasingly loved?  Who shared that love?  What stirred in you?  Try your best to recall and recreate the experience ~ the physical sensations, the emotional experience, and thoughts that still stir in response.  Hold and be held by that memory and moment. 

 

Now, bring to mind a time when you experienced judgment or the hurt from a fellow featherless biped.  Maybe someone was jealous and stole your good idea.  Maybe some walked into your life with their nose in the air ~ like the Sneetches on Beaches who had stars upon thars.  Maybe someone was arrogant, brash, and bullying.  Too much of what we hear on the news falls into the category of examples of what isn’t hesed, love.  This, in turn, activates the negativity part of our brain that wants to protect us.  After all, we reason, if that act of homophobia, racism, sexism, dead-naming, prejudice, or harmful hate happened to them, it could happen to us.  We end up fixated and focusing on the negative as a way to shelter and shield ourselves.  But it can also block and barricade the good from penetrating our hearts, souls, and lives.  The negativity in our mind becomes a brash bully that says, “What good is recalling a hug from a friend, that won’t help you in the ‘real’ world”.  Only that hug happened in the real world.  Life is complicated, contradictory, and complex. 

 

Today, ponder where love has shown up so far in your life this year.  May you trust in the goodness and God-ness who sets boundaries to explore and experiment with hesed still today.  Amen.  

More than our Gumption

 

Love is patient. Love is kind.

 

Paul begins a litany of describing and defining love with two words ~ patient and kind.  Fun Bible Nerd fact, the word “love” in Hebrew (that Paul would have learned as a Jewish lad) is hesed.  This is a word usually reserved to refer to God.  And the word, hesed, is difficult to translate into English or into some definitive definition ~ just like God.  God is always breaking and bursting out of boxes that we want to put God into, so we can control and comprehend God.  One Jewish scholar says that hesed, is “completely undeserved kindness and generosity.”  Hesed is not just a cozy and cuddly feeling that warms the cockles of our hearts like a mug of hot chocolate; Hesed is active.  Hesed is the restorative work in the world that goes beyond our human abilities and agendas.  Fun Bible Nerd fact (I know, two in one morning meditation, how lucky are you?), in the book of Ruth, Ruth embodies, embraces, and expresses a hesed love for Naomi, her mother-in-law, after the three tragic deaths of the men in the family.  Hesed is the willingness to show up again and again and again, trusting that God is not finished.  Hesed is willing to bravely and boldly be in the world in a way that doesn’t play by the rules and regulations of power or politics or even piety that is preached from pulpits.  Hesed isn’t interested in the balance sheet or transactions but wants to affirm the goodness and God-ness of all that was, is, and will be.  Paul had grown up hearing about Hesed, but Paul was a poor practitioner of this word.  He persecuted early followers of Jesus.  He was a brash bully, convinced of his own convictions rather than confessing his own vulnerability.  I see this play out too much in our world today.  We are echoes of the early Paul wanting to prove those “other people” wrong and foolish and the problem.  We get our paperwork for the permission to hate from the news networks of our choice and the invisible algorithms that control what pops up on social media.  Both patience and kindness take time and a lot of prayer.  Living the patient and kind hesed of God is more gumption than I have on my own.  Which is to say, both patience and kindness happen only with God’s gracious/self-giving Spirit.  Is there someone and somewhere today you need patient and kind love?  Name that, pray that, seek to breathe in God’s grace in new ways.  And may you feel supported and surrounded by a patient and kind God whose love has us and will never let us go.  Amen.

Letting Love Guide

 

Today, we honor the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  As we prayerfully ponder the ways his life and lingering message are meaningful to our hearts, I remind you of a few quotes from Dr. King:

 

“I have decided to stick with love.  Hate is too great a burden to bear.”

 

“Hatred paralyzes life; love releases it.  Hatred confuses life; love harmonizes it.  Hatred darkens life, love illuminates it.”

 

“Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic.  Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

 

As those quotes simmer and stir in your heart, read the words of Paul written to a contentious and cantankerous community ~ where people hurt and harmed one another (sound familiar?) ~ where people dehumanized and demoralized each other ~ where people did not dignify the divinity of each other.  Let Paul’s words play with Dr. King’s words today in your sacred imagination:

 

I may speak in the languages of humans and of angels. But if I don’t have love, I am a loud gong or a clashing cymbal. I may have the gift to speak what God has revealed, and I may understand all mysteries and have all knowledge. I may even have enough faith to move mountains. But if I don’t have love, I am nothing. I may even give away all that I have and give up my body to be burned. But if I don’t have love, none of these things will help me.

Love is patient. Love is kind. Love isn’t jealous. It doesn’t sing its own praises. It isn’t arrogant. It isn’t rude. It doesn’t think about itself. It isn’t irritable. It doesn’t keep track of wrongs. It isn’t happy when injustice is done, but it is happy with the truth. Love never stops being patient, never stops believing, never stops hoping, never gives up.

Love never comes to an end. There is the gift of speaking what God has revealed, but it will no longer be used. There is the gift of speaking in other languages, but it will stop by itself. There is the gift of knowledge, but it will no longer be used. Our knowledge is incomplete and our ability to speak what God has revealed is incomplete. But when what is complete comes, then what is incomplete will no longer be used. When I was a child, I spoke like a child, thought like a child, and reasoned like a child. When I became an adult, I no longer used childish ways. Now we see a blurred image in a mirror. Then we will see very clearly. Now my knowledge is incomplete. Then I will have complete knowledge as God has complete knowledge of me.

So these three things remain: faith, hope, and love. But the best one of these is love.

 

What is God’s love calling you to do right now?  Where is love calling you to risk, reminding you that love never guarantees success, fame, or fortune.  Rather, our faithfulness is to the One whose love radiates in life.  How might God’s love author your life today or just for a few minutes right now?  May your ponderings on this day infuse and inspire you to let God’s fierce and faithful love loose in the world.  Amen.

Prayer for Our Feeble Attempts

 

God of affection and attention, who invites us to align our hearts, souls, minds, might, and whole lives to You.  We confess this isn’t easy, God.  Have You been online recently?  Have you witnessed our leaders berate and belittle each other, and blame one another?  Have You seen how people’s identity is fed by bank account balance and politics, and being seen as in control/in charge?  Of course, You have God.  This teaching on love feels both difficult and demanding, yet also like the balm our souls need.  How can this be?  We don’t comprehend, but are compelled by the promise and possibility.  We trust, O God, You are not asking us to be perfect or get straight A’s every day at sharing love.  You ask us to try, and in our trying, You collaborate and conspire with us.  So God, take my life and let it be wrapped up in Your great mystery.  Take my efforts, faint and feeble, let me be part of working with You to let heaven loose here and now.  Take all I do and say and where I am, so that Your great love might expand and embrace more than I can imagine.  Take this day, and fuel my light to shine.  With God’s love to each and every one of you.  Amen. 

Concoction of Complexity

 

o, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

 

Paul is seeking to help us realize and recognize that God’s love fuels and feeds our lives.  Part of Paul’s point is that human beings, left to our own scheming and dreaming, will fail to enact and embody God’s love ethic alone.  This isn’t just a lack of knowledge, as Paul says.  It isn’t about increasing our faith like some commodities we control.  Paul is encouraging us to trust that God’s love has us, always.  Right now and every day this year.  Not that we won’t still be in the wilderness and wildness of life.  Not that we won’t be lured by other idols rather than the unconditional love of God. The passage this week asks us to reflect on life, what is beneath, why we do what we do.  The truth is, our brains are adept and agile enough to convince us we have altruistic motivation when we are just trying to earn the affection or attention of another.  To be sure, we are all a complex, complicated, contradictory, messy mixture.  We are all the baking soda and vinegar of the elementary science fair volcano, or a shaken soda bottle that could explode at any second now.  Did you catch what Paul says?   It doesn’t matter what you believe or do…that isn’t the point of faith, religion, or meaning in life.  Wait, what??  That statement can shake the foundations of much of what is found on churches' websites and preaching.  What does Paul mean, it doesn’t matter what I say/believe/do?  Paul is challenging our notion of what the means and ends of our life are.  Paul is challenging the direction and destination we are traveling.  If our means is to prove and earn God’s unconditional love and grace, we are still missing the point.  But if we let God’s unconditional and unceasing love be the jet fuel that propels our souls, we begin the wayless way of faith.  I invite you to sit with how counter-cultural this is.  I know for me, when I go chasing after what the world markets as a “good life”, I am often left empty or bankrupt.  When I strive for my own success rather than for the goodness and God-ness in life, my soul feels like it has a bad case of indigestion.  When I create litmus tests that another person must pass to be acceptable and earn my affection, the world shutters, and God sighs.  Hold this hard, holy truth as a light for your life and my life, and our life together in the world right now.  Amen.

Why Am I Doing that?!?

 

If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere.

 

Paul continues with the extreme examples of what our ego demands and decrees we do to be seen as amazing.  Yesterday, he said you could make a mountain jump, but without love, the action is empty.  You could walk on water, but if that is led/fed/fueled by a desire to be famous, then it is your ego that grows, not our capacity to love.  Today, he says, even if you give all your money away to the poor ~ which means you would be poor.  Even if you die, gulp ~ that got dark real quick ~, but if this is done for you to be revered, then we are stuck and stymied in the human realm.  We see all around us examples of Paul’s words.  We see billionaires wanting more money and giving away very little.  We see people hurting and harming others just for the sake of having the most clicks on social media, and our society is regressing.  We see a world where love can be curated with an AI-generated bot online, because human love is messy and hurtful and will ask our whole lives.  Today, where do you see human beings trying to feed their egos and not the common good?  Love is not sentimental or soft; love is more powerful than fame, fortune, and followers, but the gospel according to the World doesn’t preach that truth. 

 

Rewind and reflect on your past year. When did you do something out of love for another?  Maybe anonymously?   Maybe you opened your heart as wide as you could, prayed that would be enough, and by the grace of God, it was.  Not by my will, not by my planning, not because I had a fantastic strategic plan where my matrix was established and I hustled to get ahead.  In times of conflict, Paul is inviting us to be awake and aware of God’s movement in our lives.  We are invited to ask the hard and holy question: why am I doing what I am doing?  I pray that question stirs and swirls in your soul.  I pray you take that question with you today, let it interrupt you inconveniently, especially at a meeting or when responding to someone who pushes your buttons.  Let the question, why am I doing what I am doing, let that question interrupt you the way the Wise One’s question disrupted people thousands of years ago.   And may that question clear out the chaos and clutter of life for God to enter into that manger-shaped place you prepared and rediscovered at Christmas just a few weeks ago. Amen.  

Let Love Shift Your Soul

 

If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.

 

Paul is using exaggeration or extreme hyperbole, just like last week when we commented that we could understand “all mysteries”.  He is saying, even if you wear a Super Spiritual Superhero and Super-shero cape (which I wonder what color that cape would be?  Maybe chartreuse, just because that is fun to say).  Even if you could perform miracles that mystify the minds of people, even if you could cause world peace to happen in the blink of an eye as everyone joined hands to sing "Kumbaya," even if everyone thought you walked on water.  Paul proclaims you’ve missed the point.  You are not here for fame and fortune and followers on social.  If what I do/say/and how I show up is not fueled by love, then my efforts may fall short of releasing heaven from my soul.  Please note that the love Paul is describing here flows not from humans but flows first from God.  The love we need to feed and fuel our whole lives is a pure gift (unearned and undeserved) from God.  Paul is inviting people who are at each other’s throats to think about what is motivating and moving within them and between them.  Which is a good question for us: what is motivating you today?  Is it a divine love that needs to be let loose in the world?  Or is it the desire for respect and to be revered?  Is it to score points on an imaginary scoreboard of life?  What motivates us is complicated and contradictory, because we can say and even believe that we are moved by love, but really our ego is wearing a mask that wants our friends to admire and for us to feel like we achieved something. 

 

Paul is also being sarcastic here…because you and I know that we can’t know ALL mystery and make EVERYONE comprehend our point of view.  I have never moved a mountain or a rock or a pebble or a speck of dust.  I have never changed another with a sermon.  But I do believe, like a river slowly shaping a stone with its slow flow, love does change us.  I have been married to my best friend for 25 years now; her love has changed me.  I have served our church for 11 years, your love has changed me.  I have friends whose words spoken in love cause my shy soul to shift, not in spectacular or splashy ways, but slowly.  This is what Paul is saying.  You can aspire for great things and step on people to get to the top, or you can let great love (God’s love) guide you and ground you every day.  That is the invitation that challenges and changes us when we let it.  I pray today you fold up the chartreuse cape and be who God creates you to be ~ ordinary, beautiful, and especially loved.  Amen.  

Getting Heaven out of Your Soul

 

We continue to dwell on the words Paul wrote to Corinth, a church that was in the middle of a conflict.   It was a fierce and ferocious family fight.  Imagine a moment where people were bickering, belittling, boasting, and blaming.  Imagine people who wanted to rate and rank everything and everyone.  Imagine people who made The Real Housewives arguments look tame and lame in comparison.  Imagine the moments in your family when someone said something that hurt and harmed you.  Imagine the moments with friends when you could hear the sound of a rip and rupture as the friendship ended.  That is what and who Paul wrote to (not a wedding couple).  Paul still writes to ~ you and me and we today who still resemble this fight, flight, freeze, fawn, flock overload of our brains in response to the world today.  As we explored in the wilderness with Jesus yesterday, we are having a devil of a time.  So breathe and be.  Breathe and remember that humans have both the capacity to care and conflict.  Breathe and know that something in our mental hardwiring can have a short that sets ablaze all the normalcy we thought was stable and now feels like sinking sand.  Hold the headlines in your heartline and read these words from 1 Corinthians 13:

 

 If I speak with human eloquence and angelic ecstasy but don’t love, I’m nothing but the creaking of a rusty gate.  If I speak God’s Word with power, revealing all his mysteries and making everything plain as day, and if I have faith that says to a mountain, “Jump,” and it jumps, but I don’t love, I’m nothing.  If I give everything I own to the poor and even go to the stake to be burned as a martyr, but I don’t love, I’ve gotten nowhere. So, no matter what I say, what I believe, and what I do, I’m bankrupt without love.

Love never gives up.
Love cares more for others than for self.
Love doesn’t want what it doesn’t have.
Love doesn’t strut,
Doesn’t have a swelled head,
Doesn’t force itself on others,
Isn’t always “me first,”
Doesn’t fly off the handle,
Doesn’t keep score of the sins of others,
Doesn’t revel when others grovel,
Takes pleasure in the flowering of truth,
Puts up with anything,
Trusts God always,
Always looks for the best,
Never looks back,
But keeps going to the end.

Love never dies. Inspired speech will be over some day; praying in tongues will end; understanding will reach its limit. We know only a portion of the truth, and what we say about God is always incomplete. But when the Complete arrives, our incompletes will be canceled.

When I was an infant at my mother’s breast, I gurgled and cooed like any infant. When I grew up, I left those infant ways for good.  We don’t yet see things clearly. We’re squinting in a fog, peering through a mist. But it won’t be long before the weather clears and the sun shines bright! We’ll see it all then, see it all as clearly as God sees us, knowing him directly just as he knows us! But for right now, until that completeness, we have three things to do to lead us toward that consummation: Trust steadily in God, hope unswervingly, love extravagantly. And the best of the three is love.

 

Was there a word that leaped from the page/screen into your soul today?  Was there a sentence that your shy soul exclaimed, “Tell me more”.  Meditate, ruminate, and dance with these words, letting them weave their wisdom in living God’s realm today.  Into the invitation of faith to not just get our souls into heaven, but get heaven out of our souls into the world.  So let the love of God feed and fuel your life this new year, this first month of 2026, and especially this day.  Amen.

The Wayless Way of Love

 

Please pray with me these profound and powerful words of Thomas Merton:

My Lord God,

I have no idea where I am going.

I do not see the road ahead of me.

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.

But I believe that the desire to please you

does in fact please you.

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this you will lead me by the right road,

though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore will I trust you always though

I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death. 

I will not fear, for you are ever with me,

and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.

Amen.

The Mystery of the Love Ethic

 

What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries. 1 Corinthians 13:2

 

When we race and run through reading Scripture, we sometimes miss the subtle and subversive.  Take the sentence above.  There is one word that sticks out like a sore thumb ~ all.  I remember growing up, my grandmother cautioned me not to be a “Know-it-all”.  Don’t miss Paul’s jab here at thinking we can have “insight to all mysteries”.  We don’t know it all.  In fact, many people have said, “It seems the older I get, the less I know.”  Or with every birthday candle on my cake, the I realize there is more mystery to life than I will ever explore, experience, or exhaust.  This doesn’t mean I know nothing, but it does mean I continually question what I know, how I know it, and what bias might be dripping from my conclusions.  Brian McLaren points out a few ways we can be tripped up by and trapped by our own thinking:

Confirmation Bias: We judge new ideas based on the ease with which they fit in with and confirm the only standard we have: old ideas, old information, and trusted authorities. As a result, our framing story, belief system, or paradigm excludes whatever doesn’t fit. 

Complexity Bias: Our brains prefer a simple falsehood to a complex truth. 

Comfort or Complacency Bias: I prefer not to have my comfort disturbed. 

Confidence Bias: I am attracted to confidence, even if it is false. I often prefer the bold lie to the hesitant truth. 

Where do you and I find ourselves falling into one of these biases?  Is there a time we think we understand everything exactly as it is?  Or do we see how we want things to be?  I pray today you would notice where you are convinced, confident, comfortable, and shying away from the beautiful complexity and contradictions of God born in a barn.  May you and I learn to be open to the mystery of the Holy that moves and creates in ways we may never fully understand.  Amen.

Ethic of Love

 

What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. 1 Corinthians 13:1

 

Where do people today sound like clanging brass or crashing cymbals?  My first response is, “National, state, and local leaders!!”  My second response is, “Christians who preach hate, putting down beloved of God to push themselves/egos up!”  My third response, from my shy soul, is to softly say, “Um, sometimes me.”  Pastors sometimes love the sound of our own voices.  We love to wax poetic and go on and on ~ not only in sermons, but some pastors even post daily to a morning meditation online ~ can you imagine such a thing!  (Insert my face turning red with embarrassment here).  I can be a clanging brass and crashing cymbal, only I think I am playing beautiful music everyone should hear!

 

Remember, Paul is writing to a church, a community who were fighting and feuding about everything!  They were putting each other down, saying hurtful and hateful things.  There were factions in the church in Corinth.  Some elegantly said that Paul did the best baptism, while others said passionately that such a perspective was “Hogwash!”  Paul was shining a light on the behavior of people who thought they could convince each other through words and logic.  And two thousand years later, we are still stuck and stymied by the same mistake.  I invite you to meditate on this quote from Edwin Friedman: “The colossal misunderstanding of our time is the assumption that insight will work with people who are unmotivated to change. If you want your child, spouse, client, or boss to shape up, stay connected while changing yourself rather than trying to fix them.” 

 

To stay connected is to love, which will demand much of us.  May these words of Paul roam around your heart and inspire your living/speaking/words/presence this day and every day this year.  Amen.  

Ethic of Love

 

We are beginning the month of January by focusing on Paul’s words to the church, not a couple in love, but how the body of Christ is called to be in the world.  Today, I invite you to re-read 1 Corinthians 13 using Lectio Divina ~ or Divine Reading.  To review this prayer practice as described by Brian McLaren. “The first step is Lectio, where you read, which really means you deeply listen to the text, you try to take it in, you just try to let the text reach you. Second, is Meditatio. That's where we meditate, or we have an internal conversation. Respond to the text, ask questions about what you’ve read and imagine the response, summarize the text in one word or one short, succinct sentence. Third comes Aratio, which simply means prayer.  In this step, we turn our words and express ourselves to God in a conversation with God. In step three, we want to see what is evoked and provoked in us that speaks to the sacredness of desire. Step three is to name the desires that shape us from the scripture, shining a light on our lives. What do you desire after hearing this passage? And then you end with Contemplatio, which simply means contemplation to sit or rest in silence, sense marinate in what we have read and meditated upon.”  Today, move slowly through the above steps with this passage from 1 Corinthians 13:

 

What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries, or what if my faith is strong enough to scoop a mountain from its bedrock, yet I live without love? If so, I am nothing. I could give all that I have to feed the poor, I could surrender my body to be burned as a martyr, but if I do not live in love, I gain nothing by my selfless acts.

Love is patient; love is kind. Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag, or strut about. There’s no arrogance in love; it’s never rude, crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed. Love isn’t easily upset. Love doesn’t tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight! Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what. Love will never become obsolete. Now as for the prophetic gifts, they will not last; unknown languages will become silent, and the gift of knowledge will no longer be needed. Gifts of knowledge and prophecy are partial at best, at least for now, but when the perfection and fullness of God’s kingdom arrive, all the parts will end. When I was a child, I spoke, thought, and reasoned in childlike ways as we all do. But when I became a man, I left my childish ways behind. For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God. But now faith, hope, and love remain; these three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.

 

What was stirred, swirled, and spinning in your heart/mind/body/soul with these words?  What prayers did you pray during Aratio ~ I know I prayed, “Help!!!!” because I am not sure I can live this way on my own.  I think that is Paul’s point.  If left to our own scheming and dreaming, our humanness doesn’t naturally go this way.  But when we are inspired and invited by God, something shifts within us, and space opens for these words to sing to our soul.  Write down your thoughtful intentions and prayerful reflections on this passage as we continue to make the road by walking into this New Year.  Amen.

Ethic of Love

 

As we begin 2026, I invite us to focus on Paul’s vision of the ethic of love.  Remember, Paul is writing to a church that was divided and fighting about everything!  Can you imagine living in a time and with people who disagreed and dismissed one another, rather than from a foundation of dignity ~ that all are created in God’s image?  (note the sarcasm here).  Can you imagine living in a time and with people who claimed to follow Jesus but did not love their neighbor, enemy, or themselves?  Can you imagine living in a time where the air was suffocating from the toxicity of anger and fear?  I hear your shy soul saying, “Tell me more, and history is rubbing her forehead with a headache and a sigh, “I am tired of repeating myself.”  Paul’s letter to the church in Corinth is written to people then and now who were at each other’s throats and were failing to live the ethic of love.  Although 1 Corinthians 13 has become the “classic wedding verse”, it wasn’t meant for a couple ~ rather for a community.  It was written not to celebrate love, but to challenge the church to be the church.  Today, I invite you to think of our church.  Open your sacred imaginations to hear Paul’s words begin written to First Congregational UCC in Sarasota, FL.  All of us ~ you and me and we.  Slow chew on these words:

 

What if I speak in the most elegant languages of people or in the exotic languages of the heavenly messengers, but I live without love? Well then, anything I say is like the clanging of brass or a crashing cymbal. What if I have the gift of prophecy, am blessed with knowledge and insight to all the mysteries, or what if my faith is strong enough to scoop a mountain from its bedrock, yet I live without love? If so, I am nothing. I could give all that I have to feed the poor, I could surrender my body to be burned as a martyr, but if I do not live in love, I gain nothing by my selfless acts.  Love is patient; love is kind. Love isn’t envious, doesn’t boast, brag, or strut about. There’s no arrogance in love; it’s never rude, crude, or indecent—it’s not self-absorbed. Love isn’t easily upset. Love doesn’t tally wrongs or celebrate injustice; but truth—yes, truth—is love’s delight! Love puts up with anything and everything that comes along; it trusts, hopes, and endures no matter what. Love will never become obsolete. Now as for the prophetic gifts, they will not last; unknown languages will become silent, and the gift of knowledge will no longer be needed. Gifts of knowledge and prophecy are partial at best, at least for now, but when the perfection and fullness of God’s kingdom arrive, all the parts will end. When I was a child, I spoke, thought, and reasoned in childlike ways as we all do. But when I became a man, I left my childish ways behind. For now, we can only see a dim and blurry picture of things, as when we stare into polished metal. I realize that everything I know is only part of the big picture. But one day, when Jesus arrives, we will see clearly, face-to-face. In that day, I will fully know just as I have been wholly known by God. But now faith, hope, and love remain; these three virtues must characterize our lives. The greatest of these is love.

 

What did you hear in these words?  I want to know.  Email me sharing how this evokes and provokes new thoughts on how our church might embrace and embody these words might be lived together.  May these words disrupt, interrupt, and stretch us to be the church that lives the ethic of love in these days.  Amen.

Blessing the House of this Year

 

The year as a house ~  A Blessing — Jan Richardson

Think of the year as a house: door flung wide in welcome,
threshold swept and waiting, a graced spaciousness
opening and offering itself to you.
Let it be blessed in every room.
Let it be hallowed in every corner.
Let every nook be a refuge and every object set to holy use.
Let it be here that safety will rest.
Let it be here that health will make its home.
Let it be here that peace will show its face.
Let it be here that love will find its way.
Here let the weary come,
let the aching come,
let the lost come,
let the sorrowing come.
Here let all find their rest
and let them find their soothing
and let them find their place
and let them find their delight.
And may it be in this house of a year
that the seasons will spin in beauty,
and may it be in these turning days
that time will spiral with joy.
And may it be that its rooms will fill
with ordinary grace and
light spill from every window

New Year Blessing