On The Road Again

Willie Nelson sings it.  I’m sure some of you’ve sung it, too, but not like Willie.  I want you to know  that I don’t live in the world of country music or the world of opera; however, I can recognize that the story line in both is often the same.  It’s the story of love and loss, pain and suffering, shattered dreams and courageous perseverance--life in the raw, life as we experience it.  On the road again is not a happy experience for most of us.  Being on the road is often symbolic of being lost, loneliness, frustration, no-direction, little or no hope.

I don’t know a better image to describe the experience of Cleopas and his companion, in the Gospel story of Luke, than Willie’s refrain, “On the Road Again.”

The Gospel story in Luke is one of the great stores in all of literature.  It tells of two men walking along the Emmaus Road. The waves of heat simmered above the dusty road as they put Jerusalem farther and farther behind them.  As they walked along, they spoke of the events which had taken place in the Holy City. So much had happened in just a few days.  In fact, everything happened so quickly that it all seemed like a terrible dream.

 

There had been Christ’s triumphant entry into the Holy City.  Then, the joy of that moment gave way to fear as a net of intrigue was woven around the Nazarene.  The agony of the crucifixion at Calvary still haunted them.  They had seen the dead, limp body of Jesus removed from the cross and laid in the borrowed tomb of Joseph of Arimathea.  And yet, there were now whisperings and rumors spreading throughout Jerusalem that Jesus was alive.  These were the things that Cleopas and his companion talked about on the road to Emmaus.

 

The more they talked, the more engrossed they became.  Suddenly, there he was walking with them.  The stranger asks, “What are you talking about to each other?”  Amazed, Cleopas and his companion answer by saying, “You must be the only visitor in Jerusalem who does not know the things that have happened there recently.”  And the stranger asks, “What things?”  And they began to relate the sad events of Jesus. Then he began to discuss Moses and all the prophets and explained to these two men on the Emmaus Road all the scripture that referred to Jesus.

 

 

 

The conversation made the 7.5 mile walk pass quickly. When they reached the city of Emmaus, the sun was sinking fast in the western sky, darkness was approaching and they invited the stranger to spend the night.  When they sat down to eat the evening meal, Cleopas asks the stranger to give the blessing of the meal. There was something in the way he gave thanks.  There was something in the way he took the bread and broke it.  There was something about his gestures that were recognizable.  Perhaps, the folds of his robe fell back and they saw the livid red marks of the nails in his hands. Whatever it was, in that instant, they knew him.  In that moment they recognized him.  In that fraction of a second they knew that their encounter with a stranger had been an encounter with the risen Christ.  And he was gone! It wasn’t possible.  It couldn’t be, but they had seen him with their own eyes and heard him with their own ears.  They got up and ran the 7.5 miles back to Jerusalem to tell the other disciples the incredible news of their encounter with a stranger. 

 

What can we learn from this story?  Until my next blog….

Go With God,

Pastor Qualley

Listen to Your Life This Lent

“Listen to your life. See it for the fathomless mystery that it is. In the boredom and pain of it, no less than in the excitement and gladness: touch, taste, smell your way to the holy and hidden heart of it because in the last analysis all moments are key moments, and life itself is grace,” wrote writer and theologian, Frederick Buechner in his autobiography Now and Then.

The season of Lent is a journey. It’s a time, if not physically than spiritually, to go for a walk in the wilderness. In the wilderness, there is space to wander and let oneself be in tune with all that comes from God. In the wilderness, we see the hand of God upon all things because it’s time apart from the hurry and rush of life. In the wilderness, there is room to contemplate and examine our paths to which we are called.

 

 

Lent is a time of self-examination, of putting on glasses to see clearly our sin and how we stray from God. Lent is a time where we can listen to our life; reflect on our relationship with God; and recognize, as Buechner suggests, that all of life is a gift of God’s grace.

Listening to our lives, journeying with Jesus to the cross, can be troubling and exhilarating both at the same time because the Spirit is moving within us and our sin is laid out before us. But when we reach the cross where Christ takes on our sin, we find that the end of our journey is not really the end. The empty tomb is just the beginning.

 

God's Peace,

Pastor Percy

 

Living Water and the Woman at the Well

 

During Lent we hear powerful stories about people encountering Jesus such as Nicodemus, the blind man, Lazarus, and the woman at the well.  Like Nicodemus, the woman’s encounter with Jesus changed her life.

 

In Samaria there is a town called Sychar, where Jacob’s well is located. On a journey from Judea to Galilee, Jesus came across the well and rested, tired from his journey, when a woman of the village walked up. Jesus addressed her, “Woman, give me a drink of water.”

 

She was taken aback that Jesus spoke to her for two reasons.  First, men did not publicly speak to women. Secondly, she was a Samaritan and Jews had no dealings with Samaritans.  Jesus had crossed both a gender and a racial line by speaking to this person.  She replied, “How is it that you, a Jew would ask a drink of water from me, a woman of Samaria?”  Then in a sudden change of direction, Jesus startles the woman and asks her to go get her husband. “Go and call your husband,” Jesus told her, “and come back.”

 

She is uncomfortable when Jesus brings it up because she had been married five times. But Jesus doesn’t judge her, he offers her what she needs the most, Living Water.   “Whoever drinks this water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water that I will give him will become in him a spring which will provide him with life-giving water and give him eternal life.”  

 

There is so much to this encounter at the well. First, Jesus loved this woman at the well and Jesus wants us to love her as well. Jesus had compassion for her and Jesus wants us to have compassion for her as well.  It would have been so easy for Jesus to condemn her, but he didn’t. From the first moment Jesus was with her, you sense the tenderness towards her. 

 

Secondly, Jesus gets personal, asking about her husband. She is embarrassed and tries to change the subject and talks about religion.  She didn’t want Jesus to get personal; but, Jesus wanted to talk about her personal life because he wanted to free her, forgive her, and shape her life into a new direction.  Jesus wants to offer this woman the living water.

 

Finally, in this encounter, Jesus reveals himself.  For the first time the great messianic secret has been revealed.  This is one of the most dramatic moments in Biblical history.  Jesus lets his true identity be known. The woman said to him, “I know that one day the Messiah, the one who is called Christ, will come and He will tell us all things.”  Jesus answered, “I am he, I who am talking with you.” (John 4:25-26)  

 

Why does Jesus choose to reveal himself to her, a gentile, and an outcast among a people of outcasts. I don’t know. The woman at the well wasn’t looking for Jesus.  She wasn’t out searching for the Messiah like Nicodemus was.  She was just out living life. She was just out getting her bucket of water from the well.  She wasn’t especially looking for Go.  While she was not even looking for it, Jesus said, “I would like to give you some living water.”  She didn’t even ask for it, and Jesus offered her the very best gift in the whole world, at a time in life when she really needed it.

 

Jesus does the same for you and me.  We may not be looking for God.  We may just be living our lives, day by day, and Jesus says to us, “Whoever believes in me, I will pour into him, into her, the living water, and out from his or her heart shall flow rivers of living water...”  Christ makes the same offer to you and me, whether we are looking for it or not.

 

So where do you get the living water?  There are four river channels.  The first channel is through the Word, the Bible. Immerse yourself in the Word of God.  The second channel is through worship, Baptism, and Holy Communion.  Third, we find the living water through prayer.  Fourth, we find Jesus and his gift of the living water through conversations and community with Christian friends. During this season of Lent, remember the woman at well and what Jesus offered her.

 

 

 

Living Waters for Thirsty Souls

Water is an essential part of our very lives.  It never ceases to amaze me that my body is seventy percent water.  It is hard to imagine that seventy percent of my flesh is water. 

There are two and half quarts of water in my blood.  There are 15 quarts of water in the extra plasma in my body.  There are 30 quarts of water in the cells of my body, allowing all the little cells to grow.  It amazes me that I am 150 pounds of living water.

 

 

It amazes me that I cannot live without water, that water is more important to my diet than food.  It amazes me that I can exist for 30 days without food, but that I can’t exist more than one to four days without water.  It amazes me how absolutely necessary water is for my body to exist.

It is also amazing that during our first nine months of life, we were in the water of our mother’s womb.  We began in a bag of living water.  We could not live without that water surrounding us.  The water around us was truly the water of life.

Water is part of our everyday life.  Water is part of our essential life.

 

It is with these images that we hear the great words of Jesus when he says, “The water I give is living water.  Whoever drinks of the water I give will never thirst. He who believes in me, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.  The rivers of living water I give will become a spring of living water, welling up into eternal life.

What is this living water? The living water is the Holy Spirit.  The living water is the Spirit of Jesus and his love.  Jesus answers this clearly in John 7.  The living water is the Spirit of God himself.  And the person who believes in Christ, the Spirit of God and the Spirit of God’s love comes and lives in that person.  The living water is the spirit of the living God, the very essence of God, God’s love, God’s forgiveness, God’s words, God’s wisdom, God’s feelings, God’s attitudes, and God’s actions. It is the very presence of God.  It is the very presence of Jesus.

 

What Jesus wants for us is that he will pour into our hearts rivers of living water and out from you will also flow rivers of living water.

 

 

This Season of Repentance Find New Courage.

At first, repentance appears simply to be an "owning up" to one's obvious shortcomings. One discovers that some behavior, attitude, or inclination is not what it should be. It needs to be admitted, and then identified as undesirable, one way or another, and for a time it is burdensome, but eventually gets on with his life, often simply adding to a growing awareness of general shortcomings that keep recurring.

As life wears on, repentance comes at a higher and higher price. Repentance means more than admitting a mistake, or two. It has more the flavor of changing sides in the struggle over what would dominate one's life. Changing one's mind is not some easy act of the will, but sometimes an excruciating confrontation with a failed promise or a squandered enterprise. The painful reality dawns on us that the stakes have gone up when we realize that we have likely become the victim of own deliberate choices.

It becomes clear that repentance is not a short-cut simply to go back and get a fresh start. To repent, one needs to deal with all the unwanted momentum of a direction that has to be abandoned, or a habit that has to be rooted out. Sometimes our companions and associates do not tolerate or understand the changes, and are not either sympathetic or pleased.

There are some things that repentance cannot alone undo. One cannot get back the days wasted, or restore the opportunities lost. Life emerges as a once-only trip, and repentance does not mean that resources would be quickly restocked for another try. Repentance is far more than mere remorse...it has to do with reclaiming some good that has been lost... right directions from which one has wandered.

For Christians, it means to claim in Christ the life-changing allies and resources that loosen the grip of regrets and uncertainty, and doubts about the ways of God. It means to be able to break through the societal habits of our time and the mind-bending weight of the troublesome messages that fill our senses and intimidate our spirits. It means to soak our consciousness in the majesty of God's word in Christ.

This coming Lent, we are invited to explore the ‘seven wonders of the word’, to reach into our hearts this season of repentance and find new courage and purpose to equip ourselves with the candor we need for repentance. We need to put life-giving hope and trust in God's grace through Jesus Christ, our savior and powerful ally, offering a new grasp to our situation and our way through the broiling tumult of these days.

In Christ,
Pastor Jansen

Reborn by the Holy Spirit

 

Jesus finished with Nicodemus telling him that he must be reborn and renewed by water and the Holy Spirit. In John 3:16-17, Jesus said to Nicodemus, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.” 

 

Jesus did not say that God so loved the church, but that God so loved the world. It is our task to take that message to the world. We receive more than we can imagine from the bounty of God’s grace, and we are expected to pass it on to the whole world.  “God so loved the world that he gave…” People of God are expected to be givers and share the good news with one another.

 

I like the story of the little boy who came to his pastor with an important question.  “God is everywhere, right?” “Yes,” said the pastor.  “And God is big, right?” “Yes.” “Bigger than my dad’s garage?”  “Yes.” The boy asked, “Bigger than the mountains?”  “Yes.”  And God is inside me, right?”  “Yes,” said the pastor.  “Then why doesn’t he stick out more?” the boy asked.

 

Renewed life through the power of the Holy Spirit not only means receiving an unbelievable gift from God; it also means “letting God stick out” by giving witness that others will know the power of His love through the cross.

Was Nicodemus reborn? Yes. He was reborn on Good Friday as he and Joseph of Arimathea retrieved the body of Jesus and prepared it for burial. They anointed it with one hundred pounds of perfumes and spices, and wrapped it in a linen shroud. Nicodemus was there for this sacred ritual, and Nicodemus was reborn in his relationship with God.

”God so loved the world that He gave…” Ponder the wonder of the meaning of it all.  

 

 

                                               Go With God,

                                               Pastor Qualley