Havel havelim, says Qoheleth. Vanities piled on top of vanities. Emptiness. Nothing. Vapor. All is vanity. Wealth, fame, celebrity, power…all of it. Vanity. Nothing. Chasing after the wind.
You build a business and a fool takes it over and drives it into the ditch of bankruptcy. You amass a fortune and are buried next to a poor man, and your children and grandchildren squander every one of your hard-earned pennies. Vanitiy of vanities.
I've incorporated the psalms into my daily prayer practice in a more intentional way. The monastics pray the entire psalter weekly or monthly; I'm content with two to three psalms per day; four if they're short. There are 150 psalms in the psalter (151 if you use the Apocrypha), so that will keep me going for a couple of months. This week, I hit Psalm 119.
“When you pray, say: Father.” (Luke 11:2)
And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, “Abba! Father!” (Galatians 4:6)
There are two kinds of prayer - the prayer of unbelief and the prayer of fait; the prayer from the spirit of old Adam and the prayer of the Spirit of Christ.
It's good to be home again. After a week of rain, humidity, and heat in Tampa, FL at the synodical convention, it's good to be home. I'll be home just long enough to wash my clothes, prepare a sermon, and head down to Irvine for the last of the Higher Things Concordia conferences. All things considered, I'd rather be at a youth conference than a synodical convention any week of days.
The Jesus of today’s gospel lesson is the Jesus who is Guest and Host. So when we ask, which one is he, the answer is a resounding “yes,” as it is whenever we ask which one he is in our divine worship – what we celebrate with each other on every Lord’s day, the Lord being present with us.
Something amazing is happening at Holy Trinity. A random, ragtag bunch of kids from the neighborhood - our summer camp and preschool - have become a little worshipping community.
A priest, a Levite, a Samaritan. Three men had an open window of opportunity to be neighbor to the man who fell among thieves on the road to Jericho.
Which one is not like the other two? The priest and Levite are clergy, religious leaders, pillars of their community. The Samaritan is a nobody, an anonymous Joe on the road. A Samaritan, despised by Judaean and Galilean alike who considered Samaritans to be half-breeds and heretics. They wouldn't greet him on the road or talk to him at the town well. He’s not like the other two. The genius of this parable is that it forces a religious Jew, a synagogue lawyer, an expert in the intricacies of Torah, to identify with this Samaritan. You can almost hear the resigned reluctance in the lawyer's voice when he has to answer Jesus' question - Who was neighbor to the man who fell among thieves?
I already knew the outcome, thanks to a passing glance at Facebook, but I watched the women’s World Cup final on DVR delay from beginning to end anyway. It was a great game, well played and exciting. Soccer is not my first choice for sports, but I’ve grown to appreciate the skill and stamina of its players, and, fair-weather fan that I am, I almost always show up for the final.
In Nomine Iesu
Today’s Gospel of the sending of the seventy speaks to the church and her mission. It is a preliminary sending, the church’s “vicarage” so to speak, prior to Jesus’ death and resurrection before the big sending with the disciple-making mandate to baptize and teach the nations. This episode is told only in Luke, for whom Jesus’ mission to the Gentiles, the non-Israelites, was a very big deal. Jesus is more than the Messiah of Israel, He’s the Savior of the world, the promised seed of Abraham through whom “all nations” of the world would be blessed. His cross extends in all directions, to the ends of the earth, to all peoples everywhere, to those who have heard and those who have not heard, to everyone you meet and everyone you know.
I was visiting a young family who lived two short blocks from the ocean. "You should go take a walk on the beach," the wife suggested as I was leaving. I was pressed for time, and rush hour was fast approaching. But it was a beautiful day, and I could smell the ocean breeze. "Why not, " I thought. What's an extra hour in traffic on a Friday afternoon anyway?