Brown's Daily Word 2-15-13

Praise the Lord for this Friday. Those of you live in the region join us for our weekly Friday TV outreach on Time Warner Cable Channel 4 at 7 PM. One of our ministry teams will prepare and serve a special at the historic downtown First United Methodist Church at 12 noon. Jesus, who dined with lepers, joined in these gatherings as He share the meal with the least of "His brethren". Once again we will gather at the Union Center United Methodist Church at 5:30 PM to share another special meal. Jesus, who loved eat with sinners and saints, will be there too. We are so excited.

The coming Sunday is the First Sunday in Lent. One of the readings for the first Sunday in Lent centers on the temptation of Jesus our Lord. As it is written in Mark 1, soon after the Baptism of Lord He was driven by the Holy Spirit to the wilderness. Our Lord found himself in a most ugly, spiritually dangerous, place. He found himself in the company of the devil out in the middle of the wilderness, which is the biblical symbol for all that is chaotic about and wrong with this fallen creation.

"He was with the wild animals, and angels attended him." It's no surprise to learn that the wilderness had wild animals in it. In fact, the animals in question were dangerous animals, threats to life and to human flourishing. These were not squirrels and raccoons, but lions, jackals, and other predators. Again, in the Bible wilderness is shorthand for chaos, for the precise opposite of the cosmos God created in the beginning. In God's cosmos, he was careful to carve out a safe haven where life could flourish undisturbed and unthreatened. Jesus was with the wild animals. We read in Isaiah where the prophet predicted that when shalom returned to this world, the wilderness would bloom and become a place of verdant life, not a threatening place of imminent death. What's more, when that happened, the lion would lay down with the lamb and even small toddlers would be perfectly safe making mud pies right next to the hole of the cobra. In shalom, all creatures and all people could be with each other in harmony and goodness and without peril.

Jesus, our Lord, was tempted relentlessly and He won. He overcame the tempter. In the Garden , the first Adam lost to the Tempter. The Second Adam, Jesus, our Lord, overcame the devil not in the garden, but in the wilderness of the desert. We are tempted. We are tossed. We are tested. Praise the Lord that we can overcome because we serve under a captain who has never lost a battle.

One of my favorite preachers is Dr. William Willimon. He taught at Duke University. He is a Bishop in our United Methodist Church in Alabama. Years ago Willimon was the pastor of a medium-sized suburban church. Every week during the Lenten season he led the women's Bible study group and always enjoyed the gathering of those saintly pillars of the congregation, most of whom were well into their retirement years. At one point, Mrs. Donaldson began to bring an African-American woman with her to the group. Shirlene was very much from the other side of the tracks having grown up in the inner-city projects. But she and Mrs. Donaldson had met when Mrs. Donaldson had volunteered in a local clothing ministry and so she gave Shirlene a nice new Bible and began to take her along to Bible study, where she was warmly enfolded into the group.



One week the topic of discussion was temptation. Rev. Willimon led the ladies in a review on the nature of temptation and how to rely on God to resist it. Then he asked that most typical of all Bible study-like questions, "Does anyone want to share a story of a time you felt tempted but were aided by God's strength?" One kindly soul piped up to say, "Yes, Reverend, I have one. Seems last week at the Piggly Wiggly supermarket there was some confusion in the checkout aisle. They were training a new girl and, well, next thing you know there I am in the parking lot with a loaf of bread I hadn't paid for. Now at first I thought, 'Well, it's not my fault and anyway it's only 99 cents.' But then I thought, no, that would be wrong, so I went back in and paid for it." Everyone nodded and smiled. Then Mrs. Jenkins said, "Last week I overheard a couple of folks sharing some gossip about someone. It just so happened that I, too, had recently heard a few juicy tidbits about old so-and-so and this was right on the tip of my tongue to say to these other people when something stopped me and I decided, no, I won't share in this rumor mill." More nods.

It was quiet for a moment before Shirlene cleared her throat and said, "A couple of years ago my boyfriend and me--he's the father of my youngest child but not of the older two--anyway, him and me were big into cocaine. Well, you know how that stuff messes with your head! So one day we're in the pharmacy and my boyfriend all of a sudden decides to tell the cashier to give him all the money in the cash register. And she done it. It was like takin' candy from a baby. So we ran out of there real fast. Then we see this 7-11 down the street a ways and he says to me, 'Let's knock that over, too.' But something in me kinds snapped and I told him no. I robbed that pharmacy with you, but I'm not doing no 7-11. I was glad I resisted. Made me feel like somebody."

No one nodded this time. After fidgeting nervously with the cover of his Bible for a few moments, Rev. Willimon weakly said, "Yes, well, that's rather what we've been talking about today. Shall we close now in prayer!" Willimon later berated himself for not being more compassionate at that time. He, and the other members of the group, were simply not prepared for the Holy Spirit to toss the real, messy, ugly world smack into the middle of their tidy meeting. But that's what the Holy Spirit does.



In Christ,

Brown

http://youtu.be/JZBPD-T20t0