Day1 Weekly Radio Broadcast - Day1 Feeds

For several years when I was a young pastor, I taught a fifth and sixth-grade Sunday School class, and I would often ask my students if they knew what a covenant was. "A covenant is a promise," they would answer, in unison--those kids had been well taught! "Just any kind of promise?" I would ask. "No, a special kind of promise," they would answer. "Can you give me an example?" I would ask. "Like a wedding," they would answer. And they would be right. A covenant is like that very special promise made by two people when they get married. "John," the minister asks, "will you have Jane to be your wife?" "I will," John answers. "Will you forsake all others and be faithful to her only as long as you both shall live?" "I will," he says. "And Jane," the minister continues, "will you have John to be your husband?" "I will," Jane answers. "Will you forsake all others and be faithful to him only as long as you both shall live?" "I will," she says. And at the end of the ceremony the minister pronounces them husband and wife. It is not unlike that covenant made between God and his people at Mount Sinai, that "wedding in the wilderness," where God took Israel by the hand and said, "I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not bow down to idols or worship them, for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God (Ex. 20:2-5). Do you understand?" And the people of Israel, like a bride blushing behind her veil, said, "We do."

  Of course, I wasn't there, but there has been some tension again over at the house before Jesus even gets to this suburban Bethany home. After doing all the shopping and gathering the water from the well early that morning, perhaps Martha has just finished shaking out the old carpet and inhaling its dust before she goes back inside and sweeps out the house. Her sister Mary goes into the freshly cleaned main room and trims her nails, then sands and smooths out the rough edges while humming tunelessly--tunelessly humming, over and over in "that way" that Martha can't stand to hear.  Martha begins dinner preparations by building up a fire. She hoists a heavy pot and sets it on a hook over the flames. Though every muscle in her body is sore, she fills the pot with water she carried in a jug from the well. She turns now to making sure that the table looks warm and inviting with fresh bread, fruit and olives. Martha slices vegetables, gets out the wine, puts the meat on the long skewer, gets out the box of "Goat-Helper," which she has hidden away.  While she is thus engaged cooking dinner, there is a knock on the door, and even though Martha has taken pains to place her door on the "Do Not Knock Registry," a marketer is now asking to speak with the head of the household and mispronounces the name, "Lazarus." While this is happening, the cat pounces through the door with something twitching in its mouth, the water is boiling over, and Mary...Mary is languidly applying a coat of nail polish to her nails in a shade of blue that doesn't exist in nature. She is now whistling tunelessly--endlessly whistling, like that guy you once worked with, trapped on a floor of an office building with nowhere to escape the piercing intrusion into your personal space.

  I expect if there is one story in the New Testament that is familiar to most everyone, it is this story from Luke that includes the parable of the Good Samaritan. I have watched many children act out this story in Bible School or as a Sunday School skit. The simplicity of the story allows the children to enter into the story with imagination. While it is a fun story to enact, I wonder how many of us grasp the impact of Jesus' parable. "A lawyer stood up to test Jesus...." At the time Jesus lived there were hundreds of laws governing most every aspect of life. The question posed to Jesus by the lawyer was one many have wondered about: "What must I do to win the prize of eternal life?" Typical of Jesus, he turns the question back on the lawyer. "What is written in the law?" The lawyer knew in theory the foundation of all laws could be traced to the Ten Commandments. In response the lawyer recited the summary of the Law. "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind; and your neighbor as yourself." The lawyer was in the position of most of us; he could recite what the law said. He decided to take his question one step further: "And who is my neighbor?" "Who is my neighbor?" This is a central question in the church today and one that is even discussed in the life of our nation. It is a question that surrounds the talk about immigration laws. It is a question related to how we treat each other from the corporate executive to the homeless person. "Who is my neighbor?" raises questions about race and sexual preference. During this election year, it centers on party affiliation and how we respond to those who choose to have a differing opinion. "Who is my neighbor?" touches every aspect of our lives.

  Jesus sent out seventy people in pairs empowering them to bring peace, to cure the sick and to proclaim the kingdom of God. Initially, he sent them to every town and village where he intended to go, saying, "The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few...." I believe this particular story in the life of Jesus and the early Christian Church has implications for our own communities of faith today. Jesus came among us to preach, to teach and to heal. He came to reconcile human beings to the God of all creation and to each other. Jesus reminded his followers that God's love surpasses their understanding and the importance of living into that love by engaging the ministry of justice and mercy for all. Jesus said to the seventy, and in our own day he says to us, "Go." As Luke recounts the story of Jesus' life, Jesus began his ministry of teaching and healing alone. After his baptism by John the Baptist in the Jordan River, his forty-day discernment in the wilderness and temptation by Satan, Jesus returned to Nazareth where he had been brought up. He went to the synagogue on the Sabbath as was his custom. He was given the scroll of Isaiah the prophet to read. The portion Jesus read was about the expected Messiah. After reading, Jesus sat down, as was the custom. With the eyes of all upon him expecting a word of explanation, Jesus said, "Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing." At first people were amazed, and then it sank in what he had said. This was Joseph, the carpenter's son. Who did he think he was? They got up and drove Jesus out of town.

  A few years ago our family--my wife and our two sons--took a road trip from Pennsylvania to Tennessee. Plotting the drive, we decided to break up the trip, spending one night in Winchester, Virginia. Playing a key role in both the Revolutionary and Civil War, this small town possesses sites and stories of great historical consequence. One of those sites is a tiny log cabin that from the fall of 1775 to Christmastime 1756 housed the military offices of one George Washington. That cabin is now part of a museum dedicated to Washington's time in Winchester. We decided that this would be the site we would visit before we got back on the road. Walking from the hotel we came to the museum from what I later discovered was the rear of the building. There were no signs marking an entrance or hours and no one was there to meet us. We simply walked in through an open door. After about five minutes exploring the exhibits, we heard an indignant and aggressive voice directed our way, "What do you think you are doing?" We turned and standing there was a woman with a nametag indicating that she worked for the museum. "We are visiting the museum," I said. "Well, I can see that. But are you going to pay for your visit?" I responded, "I didn't know there was a cost. The door we came through had no sign saying there was a fee." She said, "Maybe so but the front door has a sign and had you come through that door you would have seen that you had to purchase tickets." After trying to explain--to no avail--the efficacy and practically of having signs on all the doors that are open, we purchased tickets and enjoyed the rest of the museum.

  Some time ago, a wise person told me to be careful how you treat people because you never know the things that they are going through. This advice has stuck with me throughout my years, and I've done my best to live into them daily. All people, regardless of race, class, or situation, deserve to be treated as children of God and nothing less. If we are not extremely careful, before we get to hear a person's story, we can categorize and ostracize people that are different from us. It is, admittedly, easy to write someone off as bad or crazy or not with it. It's easy to say that they don't care, which makes it easy for us not to care about them. That being said, I believe very strongly that, at the core, human beings are good. That ultimately we want what's best for ourselves and others. Somewhere along the line, however, we are conditioned to act otherwise. At some point we learn to take care of ourselves instead of community, we learn to ignore the needs of others, and we learn to separate ourselves from what God expects of us. In today's Gospel Jesus models and gives us a refresher course on our responsibilities towards people that are in need. We are told in scripture that Jesus has barely set foot on shore and a man possessed with demons greets him. This man is described as a man that "for long time has worn no clothes, and that he did not live in the house but in the tombs."

The Mt. of Olives--the traditional site of Jesus' Ascension--is some 2500 ft. above sea level at its highest peak. So before he was lifted up into the clouds, Jesus led his followers up a mountain. I wasn't exactly a Boy Scout as a child, so among other things, that meant that my first extended hiking trip didn't occur until the summer after my senior year of college. Some friends and I had planned a trip right after graduation--a week on the Appalachian Trail with our favorite philosophy professor, Dr. T. Perry Hildreth, or "T" as we called him. It was to be a rite of passage. For me, it was just six weeks before my marriage to college sweetheart, Jenny, and just a few months before a move to North Carolina, the beginning of divinity school, the start of a new job, and my entry into that "real world" that I had heard so much about somewhere out in the distance beyond the safety of Palm Beach Atlantic College. Now "T" was a steady and experienced hiker, so as Trail Boss he advised us as we prepared. He helped us know what kind of supplies to buy, what kind of menus to plan, and he taught us key insights like pass on the protein bars and bring Snickers instead. He also insisted that we spend some time before the trip getting accustomed to carrying 50 lbs. uphill. So ridiculous as it felt, we obliged him a couple times in stairwells and parking garages on campus. And sure enough, as we started the hike, we were prepared. All was smooth. We made steady progress up the trail. We left "T" and his fancy hiking poles behind on the ascents. At times we raced uphill, wagering our Snickers bars on who would win. And by Day 2 we made it to one of the highest peaks on the southern Appalachian: Roan Mountain. We felt satisfied; we enjoyed the amazing views and relished accomplishment around our campfire.

  The main road leading south out of Damascus is a dangerous thoroughfare these days. We know enough about the Syrian war to not want to be anywhere near that road. Well, it just so happens that the same road was dangerous in a different way a long time ago to the man we meet in the New Testament named Saul of Tarsus. In one of the most well-known of biblical stories, Saul was stricken by a light from heaven while traveling on that road. The light knocked him to the ground and blinded him. The background to Saul falling flat on his face is recorded in words from the ninth chapter of the Book of Acts: "Saul, still breathing threats and murder against the disciples of the Lord, went to the high priest and asked him for letters to the synagogues at Damascus, so that if Saul were to find any individuals who belonged to the Way [that is, the Christian community of the day], men or women, he might bring them bound back to Jerusalem." Saul was Enemy #1 of the church. People knew well of his violent and murderous tendencies. Male and female believers alike would be seized from their homes and synagogues without notice and hauled off to prison, or worse. Saul was not without religious belief. He grew up in Jerusalem, a devout Jew. But Saul's version of Judaism made him full of hatred for the Christian community. Let's turn to the realities of hatred for a moment, especially with Saul on our minds today. Hatred is one of those subjects that is hard to wrap our minds around. It's too profound a mystery to understand and yet too shallow a one to bear much analysis. We all know the malignant attributes of hatred, one of which, most certainly, is grounded in fear.

  "When we lift our hands in praise and worship, we break spiritual jars of perfume over Jesus. The fragrance of our praise fills the whole earth and touches the heart of God."  - Dennis Ignatius The smell of chlorine wafts through the air. Suddenly, you recall childhood memories of summers spent in a swimming pool you haven't seen in years. Or perhaps it's a whiff of apple pie or the scent of the perfume your grandmother wore or maybe incense from an old church, and memories come flooding in. Scientists say that while words go to the thinking part of the brain, smells-fragrances--go to the emotional part, the amygdala. That's why a whiff of Grandma's perfume brings Grandma herself back for a brief moment, and for some, why a bit of incense is the smell of the divine. This passage from John's gospel is a "fragrant" text. Jesus' friend Mary--she is only named in John--takes a box of very expensive perfume and with it she bathes the feet of Jesus. Scholars say that the perfume was worth in today's currency as much as $10,000. It may strike us as strangely sensual when Mary wipes the perfume into his feet with her long, flowing hair. It's an amazing scene. Matthew in his gospel adds a memorable remark from Jesus: "I tell you the truth, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will be told in memory of her."

  A few weeks ago, I received a video link from a friend. In the video, a young man performed a small-scale experiment, a "social experiment" if you will, on the streets of New York. As he sat on the sidewalk by himself, leaning up against a storefront window, the young man held a sign that read, "Homeless: need money for weed, drugs, and alcohol." As people walk by in the video, numerous people stopped to give him money. Some of the people who toss money into his cup say things like, "Stay high man, stay high," and "make sure you get a big bottle." After collecting a meaningful amount of money, his cup filled with cash, the screen goes dark. The video returns to the same young man dressed the same way, but this time he has a small girl next to him. The young girl is lying on the sidewalk with her head in his lap. The sign he is holding now has changed and it reads, "Homeless: single father, need money for family." This time, the response is a deafening silence. As people walk by, his cup sits empty next to him. As the little girl coughs, people step around them, trying not to look at them. Finally, and after an hour of being completely ignored, a woman stops. The woman bends down with a small amount of cash; and as she puts the money in the cup she says, "This is all I made today, but you need it so much more than I do." Then the woman, who we learn is homeless herself, asks if she can say a prayer for them. She offers a beautiful prayer, asking God to look out for them and keep them safe. As she walks away, the young man jumps up and reveals that he was conducting an experiment and that her kindness was the most beautiful thing he had seen all day. As he thanks the woman for her amazing gift, handing her a whole lot more money than she offered him, he is genuinely touched by her generosity, calling her a "hero." The video ends with a quote on the screen that reads, "Sometimes those who have less are the ones who give more." [“Homeless Drug Addict VS Homeless Father (Social Experiment),” accessed August 5, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ilxjo5RlzFc.]

1In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. 2 He was in the beginning with God. 3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being 4 in him was life,[a] and the life was the light of all people. 5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. 10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. 11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, 13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. 14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. 16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace. 17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ. 18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father's heart, who has made him known.

  Colossians 3:16 Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly as you teach one another (in all wisdom and with gratitude in your hearts), singing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God. The grammar of the gospel gives first place to the verbs: create, elect, redeem, save, justify, call. These are the locomotives that propel the saving, redeeming purpose of God through the centuries and around the world. These powerful verbs pull with them, like box cars, the nouns that adorn the doctrines of God: spirit, peace, mercy, promise. In these beautiful words we live and move and have our Christian being. But today I draw your attention to those small words that connect these wonderful words of life. Often overlooked, ignored, demoted to last place in the grammar of grace, the little preposition. You know these words, especially if you have ever diagrammed a sentence: of the gospel, in the kingdom, with the Lord, by the Spirit, between heaven and earth, over, under, around, through.  These are prepositions. And in our Word from the Lord today, there are three of these little words, three words with a total of seven letters that come to us today to teach us about singing.  I summarize our one verse of Scripture in this way: Sing psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs to God, about Christ, for each other. TO God. ABOUT Christ. FOR each other.

One of the beauties of the Christmas season is all the baby imagery. Everywhere we look there are pictures of those new parents, Mary and Joseph, all smiles. And shepherds and wise men kneeling before a sleeping Infant, even though we know the wise men didn't actually arrive until a couple years later. But during December, why bother with little exegetical details? Wise men are part of the crèche we put on the altar; why not let them stay there? In some artwork depicting the events in Bethlehem that night long ago, even the animals have halos. And then, of course, there is the centerpiece, the Baby, smiling even as he sleeps--also, of course, with a halo adorning him. Really, what's not to like? We all love soft, sweet, innocent baby stories. My friend Helen told me of the birth of her son when she was thirty-eight. The doctors had given her reason to think she could never conceive. She and her husband had been unsuccessful at doing so for eight long years. But just when they were about to give up, like Abraham and Sarah of old, along came the child they had waited and prayed for. Helen told me of the night when she sat in her hospital room holding that baby in her arms.  The door of the room opened and in walked her pastor. She said to him, with a smile a mile wide: "I don't want to sound sacrilegious, but I don't think that even Mary the mother of Jesus could have been happier or more proud of her child than I am with mine." Well, of course. Most new mothers know that feeling. So do most new dads. But I asked Helen: "And when your son reached his teen years, were you still convinced that even Mary the mother of Jesus could not have been happier or more proud of her child than you were with yours?" She answered quickly: "Oh, no. Unlike Mary the mother of Jesus, when my son became a teenager, every time he left the house I gave serious thought to changing the locks on the doors!"

Many years ago, when the late Dr. James Cleland was Dean of the Chapel at Duke University, he preached a sermon entitled "Bedlam in Bethlehem."  You have to wonder, how could there ever have been anything even approaching bedlam in a sleepy little out-of-the-way community like Bethlehem? Jerusalem, yes. That was the big city. The capital. The center of politics, finance, and religion. I live in New York City. It bustles with activity all the time...from the good activities of tourism and Broadway and Madison Square Garden to the occasionally frightening activities associated with sirens and violence, with social injustice and discontent. Every December, our streets are seas of humanity, with visitors from all over America and all over the world, inching their ways down 5th Avenue and Madison, standing in mass outside the windows at Bloomingdales or Lord and Taylor's or before the tree at Rockefeller Center. Simply walking outside my office in Manhattan in December, I experience an ancient Jerusalem kind of moment--a busy, vital city teeming with people and all the hustle bustle movement and electricity in the air. But Bethlehem, as Micah put it, was "small among the clans of Judah." It was more Mayberry than Manhattan. Not many people in Bethlehem--and not much mischief to get into. I grew up in a small Southern town like that. It had blue laws, preventing the sale of anything considered non-essential on Sundays. You could go to a drug store on Sunday, but only for a prescription. If you wanted makeup or toothpaste or a new hairbrush, you had to come back on Monday for that. In the entire county where I was reared, you couldn't even buy a beer, let alone anything stronger. When I was a teenager, my mother used to say to me: "Son, you are a good boy for lack of opportunity." And that's how it must have felt in Bethlehem, that little ancient Mayberry a few miles down the road from the big city of Jerusalem. There wasn't much trouble to get into in Bethlehem. So, how could there have been bedlam?

Several years ago, I travelled to Northern Island with a group studying conflict resolution. We spent most of the time talking with leaders who worked on understanding the conflict between Protestants and Catholics. We wandered through neighborhoods in Belfast, which were still clearly divided between those historic and bitter rivals. But the most difficult moment for me came on one of our free days. We were driving along the northern coast of Ireland, stunningly beautiful scenery. We climbed up to the top of a cliff to get one of those views that makes you know that there is a divine creator. There was a huge rock island just yards away from the cliff, and the best view was at the edge of that island. The only thing standing between me and the best picture ever was a rope bridge with wooden slats. I really didn't think much about it until I started across, happened to look down, and by the middle, realized that the bridge had begun to sway with the movement of my fellow travelers. That's when I grabbed the ropes on the side as if they could save my life when the whole thing broke through and plunged to the rocks below. I silently counted the number of slats between me and the view. There were about 20 of them, which was just enough to keep my conviction of a dramatic death alive. The problem was that the people behind me were coming. Actually, they were waiting for me. I felt their presence just over my shoulder. Even though I was too afraid to turn around and look, I knew they were there. And there was only one direction to go--forward.