Repentance And Renewal
Stories
Object:
Contents
"Repentance and Renewal" by John Fitzgerald
"Decently and in Order" by C. David McKirachan
"Skull and Crossbones" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Repentance and Renewal
by John Fitzgerald
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Have you every wondered what it would be like to discover an original copy of the Declaration of Independence? An event of epic proportions such as this is recorded in our Bible. Second Kings 22/23 and 2 Chronicles 34 tell us about a historical find that changed the nation of Judah.
The biblical story informs us that King Josiah commanded a remodeling of Jerusalem's Temple. Temple workers tore down old walls and stumbled upon a scroll containing God's Law. We recognize this scroll to be the book of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy outlined the history of God's people and set down divine commandments by which they were to live. This vital work had been lost for centuries. When King Josiah and his subjects entered into a reading of Deuteronomy it transformed the nation. Repentance from evil deeds and a closer walk with God immediately flowed from the king and people. Judah took on a new moral fiber and adopted laws which reflected divine will.
We could only hope that such a wonderful thing could happen in the United States. Surely our nation is in dire need of moral and ethical reformation. A document that would lead us to a new standing with God can only produce benefits and blessings.
Ash Wednesday is a turn toward the national repentance and renewal akin to what happened in days of King Josiah. Church teachings implore Christians to mark their foreheads with ashes in a sign of mourning for personal sin and a craven nation. This also begins the forty-day Lenten season which invites renouncing self and preparing for receiving the joy of a resurrected Lord on Easter.
Our scripture lesson from 2 Corinthians helps us to move into the Spirit of Lent. Paul writes in this passage that God says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." In receiving this divine grace, the apostle states, "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor now is the day of salvation."
There is no other time than the present moment to receive a gift of God's salvation. Ash Wednesday calls us to renounce sin and move into the saving love of Christ. This is the day to examine where we have fallen short of God's standard and new practices to implement for a closer walk with the Holy Spirit.
Oftentimes people pledge to give up certain habits during Lent. It is good to think upon behaviors and thought patterns that impede our relationship with Christ. The Holy Spirit may be nudging you toward a particular self-discipline which will encourage your spiritual life.
Salvation as the Bible talks about it means we have been rescued from an old sinful nature in order that God's light can shine more brightly through us. The word "Lent" means more light. Days of sunshine will increase as we head toward Easter. The light of Christ Jesus will illuminate our pathway.
Saint Paul also says in our text from 2 Corinthians that "we are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."
It is a beautiful notion to think that we can be an ambassador for Christ Jesus. God carries his message through us to the world like an ambassador who meets with other nations. The role of ambassador is to solve problems through diplomatic relationships. We carry the good news of Christ who brings peace to a violent world through his presence.
It is a special privilege to be an agent of Christ's peace for folks all around us. We bring the good tidings of reconciliation which only Jesus can provide. The world teaches conflict and strife. Christ preaches reconciliation to all who are at war.
The ministry of reconciliation includes war and strife within our family circles and communities. The Jesus who died at Calvary in self-giving love is intended for any place where conflict is present. To be involved in reconciliation means we must take up our cross daily and be agents for divine love wherever sin and violence are present.
Ash Wednesday provides an opportunity for us to pray about where we can be an ambassador for the ministry of reconciliation. Troubled relationships within our families, difficult situations at school, and changing dynamics in our place of employment may be occasions that God can use us. Even the church might arise as fertile ground for God's peace.
In the biblical era of King Josiah, sparks of national repentance and renewal flew from people's adherence to a single scroll found in God's Temple. Our prayer is that a similar torch might be lit in America of today by a return to scripture.
John Fitzgerald lives in Leesburg, Ohio, with his wife Carolyn and has served as pastor at the Leesburg Friends Meeting for the past 27 years. Cornfield Cathedral (Fairway Press, 2013) is the second book authored by Pastor Fitzgerald. John has earned a Master's of Ministry Degree from the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
Decently and in Order
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
My father told me that for a church to be truly Presbyterian, you have to be able to ice skate down the aisles. We come by it naturally. Scholarship is our bread and butter. We have to study languages, theology, history, biblical interpretation, polity, psychology, pastoral care, spiritual development, homiletics, symbolism, architecture, and more. Then we have to be judged to be sane, pass the muster of a bunch of committees, and get a job in the business before we're given a license to drill spiritual teeth.
After making it through all of that, you don't have much room for warm and fuzzy party guys. Spontaneity ain't our long suit. Neither is dancing in the street. So ice in the aisles might not be far from the truth.
If we wanted to melt the ice, it would be simple to dismiss all of the preparation. But it is actually a very humbling part of listening for the living word of God. So how do we have a chance at allowing ourselves as the Body of Christ to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit, including joy? Probably Jesus was dealing with that same issue in his teaching about fasting and prayer. The purity cult of his time was a pretty rigid trip, demanding a movement away from the spontaneity and warmth and love that the Lord placed at the center of his teaching about that very nature of God.
As I got deeper into the ministry I realized it's not our theology that keeps us from expressing joy. Life has a lot of edges. It's hard. If we deny that we're liars or fools. A faith that doesn't take the pain of life into account isn't a real faith. We need a great amount of perspective if we are to stay close to the Lord of love. We need to be involved in a spiritual discipline that allows us to find something other than a grim and rigid observance of ritual. It's more than a matter of relaxing. It's as much a discipline as is study, prayer, fasting, or tithing. We are not called to make our faith a distant, hierarchical, gray shuffle. We are called to allow the gift of life to sing to us and to dance to it.
Perhaps during Lent we should consider giving up some of our stiffness, finding a song, a dance, a moment of glory. Each day we could give up some of the grimness and shine with the presence of the living Lord in the midst of life's pain. It's at least as good as giving up chocolate. But we've got to do it decently and in order. That's Presbyterian.
Skull and Crossbones
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 51
Pirates have been romanticized by so many authors and actors that even the romantic prototype has begun to evolve. I heard that Jonny Depp used Keith Richards and the cartoon skunk Pepe le Pieu as models for Captain Jack Sparrow. I guess it worked. Now they’ve got rides at Disney with him in it. I read Stevenson’s Kidnapped with my father. He’d read a chapter to me, then I’d read a chapter to him. He was running a scam. It worked. But it was far from the dishonesty of the skull and crossbones guys.
Even as a child it was clear to me that pirates were anything but romantic, or even smooth scam men. They were brutal in their endeavors. They did not take prisoners except for use. They might kidnap, but they rarely could be trusted to keep a victim safe until they were ransomed. They chose leaders that were brutal. Fear was one of their weapons, and they sharpened it with their actions.
My father told me that one of their titles, “blackguards,” had as much to do with their hearts, their sense of values and loyalties as anything else. Their hearts, the place where their decisions and values were founded, had become stained. Light had no access to that kind of stain. Tillich said that “Jesus is the clear window in the wall of mortality, through which shines the light of God.” So when we are stained, when our hearts, the foundations of our decisions and values are anything but clear, we block the light of God from shining into this world. We become part of the wall of mortality, of death.
The psalmist is very clear about who is able to “create a clean heart” within us. He prays to the source of all gifts and blessings. But from Stevenson to the screen writers of Pirates of the Caribbean, we see a source of God’s healing and cleansing power, more powerful than Oxy Clean of the heart. Some pirates, black hearted as they may have been, when exposed to love’s power are led beyond their amoral brutality to care for more than their own appetites, to rely on more than their own strength and ruthlessness. Another person becomes valuable to them, light shines for them through the dark wall of this world’s laws of death, revealing life abundant.
I don’t know too many Captain Hooks. But I have known quite a few poor souls who have run their lives, relying on the strength of their own resources and had very little faith in anything else. Maybe it’s our job to shine on them, even if they do smell and have parrot poop on their shoulders. Arrrgh!
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 5, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
"Repentance and Renewal" by John Fitzgerald
"Decently and in Order" by C. David McKirachan
"Skull and Crossbones" by C. David McKirachan
* * * * * * *
Repentance and Renewal
by John Fitzgerald
2 Corinthians 5:20b--6:10
Have you every wondered what it would be like to discover an original copy of the Declaration of Independence? An event of epic proportions such as this is recorded in our Bible. Second Kings 22/23 and 2 Chronicles 34 tell us about a historical find that changed the nation of Judah.
The biblical story informs us that King Josiah commanded a remodeling of Jerusalem's Temple. Temple workers tore down old walls and stumbled upon a scroll containing God's Law. We recognize this scroll to be the book of Deuteronomy.
Deuteronomy outlined the history of God's people and set down divine commandments by which they were to live. This vital work had been lost for centuries. When King Josiah and his subjects entered into a reading of Deuteronomy it transformed the nation. Repentance from evil deeds and a closer walk with God immediately flowed from the king and people. Judah took on a new moral fiber and adopted laws which reflected divine will.
We could only hope that such a wonderful thing could happen in the United States. Surely our nation is in dire need of moral and ethical reformation. A document that would lead us to a new standing with God can only produce benefits and blessings.
Ash Wednesday is a turn toward the national repentance and renewal akin to what happened in days of King Josiah. Church teachings implore Christians to mark their foreheads with ashes in a sign of mourning for personal sin and a craven nation. This also begins the forty-day Lenten season which invites renouncing self and preparing for receiving the joy of a resurrected Lord on Easter.
Our scripture lesson from 2 Corinthians helps us to move into the Spirit of Lent. Paul writes in this passage that God says, "In the time of my favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you." In receiving this divine grace, the apostle states, "I tell you, now is the time of God's favor now is the day of salvation."
There is no other time than the present moment to receive a gift of God's salvation. Ash Wednesday calls us to renounce sin and move into the saving love of Christ. This is the day to examine where we have fallen short of God's standard and new practices to implement for a closer walk with the Holy Spirit.
Oftentimes people pledge to give up certain habits during Lent. It is good to think upon behaviors and thought patterns that impede our relationship with Christ. The Holy Spirit may be nudging you toward a particular self-discipline which will encourage your spiritual life.
Salvation as the Bible talks about it means we have been rescued from an old sinful nature in order that God's light can shine more brightly through us. The word "Lent" means more light. Days of sunshine will increase as we head toward Easter. The light of Christ Jesus will illuminate our pathway.
Saint Paul also says in our text from 2 Corinthians that "we are therefore Christ's ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf: Be reconciled to God."
It is a beautiful notion to think that we can be an ambassador for Christ Jesus. God carries his message through us to the world like an ambassador who meets with other nations. The role of ambassador is to solve problems through diplomatic relationships. We carry the good news of Christ who brings peace to a violent world through his presence.
It is a special privilege to be an agent of Christ's peace for folks all around us. We bring the good tidings of reconciliation which only Jesus can provide. The world teaches conflict and strife. Christ preaches reconciliation to all who are at war.
The ministry of reconciliation includes war and strife within our family circles and communities. The Jesus who died at Calvary in self-giving love is intended for any place where conflict is present. To be involved in reconciliation means we must take up our cross daily and be agents for divine love wherever sin and violence are present.
Ash Wednesday provides an opportunity for us to pray about where we can be an ambassador for the ministry of reconciliation. Troubled relationships within our families, difficult situations at school, and changing dynamics in our place of employment may be occasions that God can use us. Even the church might arise as fertile ground for God's peace.
In the biblical era of King Josiah, sparks of national repentance and renewal flew from people's adherence to a single scroll found in God's Temple. Our prayer is that a similar torch might be lit in America of today by a return to scripture.
John Fitzgerald lives in Leesburg, Ohio, with his wife Carolyn and has served as pastor at the Leesburg Friends Meeting for the past 27 years. Cornfield Cathedral (Fairway Press, 2013) is the second book authored by Pastor Fitzgerald. John has earned a Master's of Ministry Degree from the Earlham School of Religion in Richmond, Indiana.
Decently and in Order
by C. David McKirachan
Matthew 6:1-6, 16-21
My father told me that for a church to be truly Presbyterian, you have to be able to ice skate down the aisles. We come by it naturally. Scholarship is our bread and butter. We have to study languages, theology, history, biblical interpretation, polity, psychology, pastoral care, spiritual development, homiletics, symbolism, architecture, and more. Then we have to be judged to be sane, pass the muster of a bunch of committees, and get a job in the business before we're given a license to drill spiritual teeth.
After making it through all of that, you don't have much room for warm and fuzzy party guys. Spontaneity ain't our long suit. Neither is dancing in the street. So ice in the aisles might not be far from the truth.
If we wanted to melt the ice, it would be simple to dismiss all of the preparation. But it is actually a very humbling part of listening for the living word of God. So how do we have a chance at allowing ourselves as the Body of Christ to demonstrate the fruit of the spirit, including joy? Probably Jesus was dealing with that same issue in his teaching about fasting and prayer. The purity cult of his time was a pretty rigid trip, demanding a movement away from the spontaneity and warmth and love that the Lord placed at the center of his teaching about that very nature of God.
As I got deeper into the ministry I realized it's not our theology that keeps us from expressing joy. Life has a lot of edges. It's hard. If we deny that we're liars or fools. A faith that doesn't take the pain of life into account isn't a real faith. We need a great amount of perspective if we are to stay close to the Lord of love. We need to be involved in a spiritual discipline that allows us to find something other than a grim and rigid observance of ritual. It's more than a matter of relaxing. It's as much a discipline as is study, prayer, fasting, or tithing. We are not called to make our faith a distant, hierarchical, gray shuffle. We are called to allow the gift of life to sing to us and to dance to it.
Perhaps during Lent we should consider giving up some of our stiffness, finding a song, a dance, a moment of glory. Each day we could give up some of the grimness and shine with the presence of the living Lord in the midst of life's pain. It's at least as good as giving up chocolate. But we've got to do it decently and in order. That's Presbyterian.
Skull and Crossbones
by C. David McKirachan
Psalm 51
Pirates have been romanticized by so many authors and actors that even the romantic prototype has begun to evolve. I heard that Jonny Depp used Keith Richards and the cartoon skunk Pepe le Pieu as models for Captain Jack Sparrow. I guess it worked. Now they’ve got rides at Disney with him in it. I read Stevenson’s Kidnapped with my father. He’d read a chapter to me, then I’d read a chapter to him. He was running a scam. It worked. But it was far from the dishonesty of the skull and crossbones guys.
Even as a child it was clear to me that pirates were anything but romantic, or even smooth scam men. They were brutal in their endeavors. They did not take prisoners except for use. They might kidnap, but they rarely could be trusted to keep a victim safe until they were ransomed. They chose leaders that were brutal. Fear was one of their weapons, and they sharpened it with their actions.
My father told me that one of their titles, “blackguards,” had as much to do with their hearts, their sense of values and loyalties as anything else. Their hearts, the place where their decisions and values were founded, had become stained. Light had no access to that kind of stain. Tillich said that “Jesus is the clear window in the wall of mortality, through which shines the light of God.” So when we are stained, when our hearts, the foundations of our decisions and values are anything but clear, we block the light of God from shining into this world. We become part of the wall of mortality, of death.
The psalmist is very clear about who is able to “create a clean heart” within us. He prays to the source of all gifts and blessings. But from Stevenson to the screen writers of Pirates of the Caribbean, we see a source of God’s healing and cleansing power, more powerful than Oxy Clean of the heart. Some pirates, black hearted as they may have been, when exposed to love’s power are led beyond their amoral brutality to care for more than their own appetites, to rely on more than their own strength and ruthlessness. Another person becomes valuable to them, light shines for them through the dark wall of this world’s laws of death, revealing life abundant.
I don’t know too many Captain Hooks. But I have known quite a few poor souls who have run their lives, relying on the strength of their own resources and had very little faith in anything else. Maybe it’s our job to shine on them, even if they do smell and have parrot poop on their shoulders. Arrrgh!
C. David McKirachan is pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Shrewsbury in central New Jersey. He also teaches at Monmouth University. McKirachan is the author of I Happened Upon a Miracle and A Year of Wonder (Westminster John Knox).
*****************************************
StoryShare, March 5, 2014, issue.
Copyright 2014 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
