One Life to Live

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Hebrews 9:23-28 (NRSV)

Thus it was necessary for the sketches of the heavenly things to be purified with these rites, but the heavenly things themselves need better sacrifices than these. For Christ did not enter a sanctuary made by human hands, a mere copy of the true one, but he entered into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God on our behalf. Nor was it to offer himself again and again, as the high priest enters the Holy Place year after year with blood that is not his own; for then he would have had to suffer again and again since the foundation of the world. But as it is, he has appeared once for all at the end of the age to remove sin by the sacrifice of himself. And just as it is appointed for mortals to die once, and after that the judgment, so Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin, but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him.

You may think “One Life to Live” is a long-running soap opera. It’s been around a lot longer as a biblical concept, though.

Christianity, unlike a lot of religions, is about singular moments. Cyclical sacrifices were an important part of Jewish ritual, of course, but they merely foreshadowed the only sacrifice that would matter. Jesus Christ died on the cross to give us the gift of eternal life.

These verses from Hebrews also remind us of how singular each of our lives is. We are not caught up in endless cycles of misery, moving from lifetime to lifetime with little memory of what we have learned. We have one life, one death, and one hope for eternal life in Jesus.

How rare we are! How precious our lives are, each as unique as a snowflake. The eternal nature of God’s mind means our maker never has to repeat an action.

People may seem similar, but even twins are never truly identical. They can never inhabit the exact same point in space and time, and therefore, the universe God has placed them in will give them at least slightly different perspectives and thoughts, making each twin unique.

We move toward a unique moment, too, when Jesus Christ returns to make the relationship with those who have accepted his grace into something full, complete and eternal.

We will be judged as individuals, and the moment will be like no other, in that we will finally know ourselves and value ourselves as fully as God knows and values us.

Lord, help us to better appreciate the gift of life. No matter how broken, every human has the potential to be in relationship with you through Jesus Christ, and therefore every human is at least a smoldering ember ready to burst into a holy, eternal flame. Let us treat each other as such. Amen.

You Are That Temple

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

1 Corinthians 3:16-17 (NRSV): Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy that person. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Some ideas we considered in last week’s devotionals (and Sunday, if you worshiped with my church, Holston View UMC) come together in a personal way for us in today’s verses from 1 Corinthians.

Last Thursday, we heard the Apostle Peter tell us to behave like “living stones,” joining together to build a spiritual house, with Christ as our foundation. If you heard Sunday the story in the Gospel of John about Jesus cleansing the temple, you should have been reminded of the holiness of that place, and a need for zeal now in regard to the holiness of God.

Today’s reading in this season of Lent tells us that just as Jesus’ body became the new temple, destroyed but rebuilt in three days, the Christian church now acts as God’s temple on earth. The collection of people calling themselves Christian is where God’s Spirit resides and can be met by those seeking God.

The metaphor easily operates on both the corporate and individual levels. If something is holy, every part of it is holy. If it is God’s intent for the church to be holy, it is God’s intent for each individual in the church to be holy.

We of course cannot achieve holiness on our own; that is the purpose of Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, to make us holy despite our sin. We believe, and it is so. We need to cling to that belief, however, and live in awe of God so that we are making every effort to avoid sin, asking God to give us the power through his Holy Spirit to do so.

There is no doubt sin creeps into our lives and into the church. Satan is relentless. Some of the stones resting on the foundation of Christ become fractured. Let’s go back to the concept of “living stones,” however—those fractures can be healed.

The trick, it seems, is to not crumble in a way where we threaten the holy structure. Church leaders, we who are preachers, teachers and administrators, take special note!

We are trying to use these Monday LifeTalk articles as an opportunity to establish a spiritual practice for the week. This week, let’s do a very Lenten thing. Asking God to guide us, let’s search our souls thoroughly for the sins we need to surrender, making new space for God to be at work.

Not only will we strengthen ourselves, we will strengthen the church as a whole, the temple in which we play an active role.

Lord, we surrender to you. Make us whole and holy so that we may better work with the living stones around us. Amen.

The Good Wife

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 3 Comments

Proverbs 31:10-11 (NLT)
Who can find a virtuous and capable wife?
She is more precious than rubies.
Her husband can trust her,
and she will greatly enrich his life.

Indulge me a little, please. I need to take a moment to celebrate the good wives of the world, in particular the one who celebrates her 55th birthday today, my own Connie.

There’s a lot in the Bible about the value of sacrifice, and my wife has sacrificed much through the years. She’s sacrificed the fulfillment of many of her personal desires while her journalist husband pursued late-night stories, her corporate husband traveled and came home late, and her pastor husband sometimes put the needs of the church ahead of hers.

For the record, she’s been married to just one man. Connie has put up with a lot of career transitions over the last three decades, raising three great children through it all.

People don’t immediately realize what a good Christian leader she can be. She knows her Bible, but she also knows how to help others grow in faith without beating them over the head with her Bible.

I would invite you to wish her a happy birthday on Facebook, but you won’t find her there. She once jokingly said it is “of the devil.” I think she was joking, anyway. There are days I also think she was right. Regardless, one of the things I’ve always admired about her is the way she does not worry about what is popular.

She may want to beat me with a stick for making her the focus of a devotional, but it is safe to say I would be a very different man, much less of a man, without her.

Happy birthday, sweetie. I hope what I’ve said today reminds others of the good Christian women they have known.

Lord, thank you for the blessings of womanhood and long relationships. Amen.

Living Stones

~ Chuck Griffin ~ 1 Comment

1 Peter 2:4-5 (NRSV): Come to him, a living stone, though rejected by mortals yet chosen and precious in God’s sight, and like living stones, let yourselves be built into a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.

These two verses serve as a meditation point regarding our role in Christ’s church. I’m going to raise some questions, and we can each seek our own answers.

What does it mean to be a “living stone”?

What sort of usefulness do I provide to Christ’s spiritual house?

How do living stones work together, and how well am I working with the ones around me to support and build the house?

What does it mean to think of Jesus Christ as the cornerstone? How does that truth define my role?

The metaphor shifts to that of “priesthood.” What does it take for a group of people to act as priests to the world, and how does that concept tie to the “spiritual house”?

What spiritual sacrifices have we made, and must we still make?

Lord, may the answers we find today move us toward holy action. Amen.

Compromise

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

John 12:42-43 (NLT): Many people did believe in [Jesus], however, including some of the Jewish leaders. But they wouldn’t admit it for fear that the Pharisees would expel them from the synagogue. For they loved human praise more than the praise of God.

These words are part of a longer reading for today found in John 12:36-43. Here we see a continuation of John’s theme that Jesus is the light, and that there is a need to acknowledge and follow the light, a step some took.

There also is mention of those who were unable to believe despite witnessing great signs and miracles.

And then there was this in-between crowd, mentioned in the focus verses above. They believed, but secretly, because open belief might have cost them too much in terms of what they had gained in this world.

These people are sometimes remembered positively in Scripture; a couple of them take on the task of burying Jesus. But most of us, I think, would rather be remembered for being bold.

I suppose we are encountering one way to interpret life. It can be viewed as a series of compromises connecting those purer moments when we follow God to the fullest. The Christian pursuit of holiness would be an effort to avoid compromise.

What we learn from this passage becomes more important each day as the world in which we live becomes increasingly secular. As peers, bosses and leaders frown upon scriptural principles more and more, we may find ourselves wanting to compromise.

I pray we don’t.

Lord Jesus, you were not ashamed to come among us, bringing the light of holiness to a broken world. For our sake, you did not flee a shameful death, despite having the power to do so. We are sorry for the times we compromise; may the Holy Spirit fill us and make us courageous. Amen.

Forward Looking

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Hebrews 11:13-16 (NRSV)

All of these died in faith without having received the promises, but from a distance they saw and greeted them. They confessed that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth, for people who speak in this way make it clear that they are seeking a homeland. If they had been thinking of the land that they had left behind, they would have had opportunity to return. But as it is, they desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one. Therefore God is not ashamed to be called their God; indeed, he has prepared a city for them.

At this point in Hebrews, “all of these” means the ancestors of the Israelites. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and others were promised much by God regarding what would happen to their line over thousands of years.

As today’s Scripture notes, these were big-picture people, loyal followers of God who thought about more than their immediate needs. They are examples for all of us.

Ultimately, those big promises were fulfilled long after their deaths when God came among us in flesh through that line of Israelites, as Jesus Christ. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice willingly offered on the cross, all the world has been blessed, given the potential to overcome the devastating effects of sin through simple faith.

By virtue of living so much later, we have been blessed with a clearer understanding of the work God is doing. Even we should not get too comfortable, though—our individual decisions to follow Christ make us strangers in this world. We hope for so much more, and we invite others to see more than what is obviously before them.

Like any traveler on a trip, we have to eat and find places of shelter. We are never truly home, however.

This sense of disconnectedness from the place where we were born could make us a little sad, until we remember something important: We will go home. God has prepared a city for us, too, and once there, we never again will feel displaced.

Lord, help us to treat this world on a daily basis as a place to offer grace from on high and promises of a better life. We are grateful for the occasional tastes of home we receive now as we align our hearts with yours. Amen.

Important News Item

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

I’m very excited to share some news with LifeTalk readers this morning. The name and look for a new traditional Methodist denomination has been announced.

The news release can be found here. The name of the denomination, not yet activated, is the Global Methodist Church, and here is its very Trinitarian logo:

As the news release makes clear, the denomination is not active until the United Methodist Church holds a General Conference and approves formal separation. It also could become active if a current agreement outlining the details of separation loses support of the progressives and centrists who worked with traditionalists who crafted it.

Because of the pandemic, the General Conference that was to be held in 2020 has now been moved to 2022.

Let’s be in prayer as this well-developed effort continues to take shape.

Those Ordinances

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment

Mark 9:28-29

And when [Jesus] had entered the house, his disciples asked him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?” And he said to them, “This kind cannot be driven out by anything but prayer.”

It’s Monday, and we continue our devotionals that point to spiritual practices we can develop throughout the week.

The previous two Mondays, we explored the first two General Rules for traditional Methodists, do no harm and do good. Today we’ll look at the third and last rule, “attend upon all the ordinances of God.”

A United Methodist bishop named Rueben P. Job, a former editor of The Upper Room publishing house, boiled this rule down to “stay in love with God.” That’s an excellent starting point for understanding what John Wesley was saying in his 18th-century way. The third rule is about what we do to maintain the relationship with the one who creates, redeems and sustains us.

By “ordinances,” Wesley meant those spiritual activities we do methodically so we position ourselves to meet God, receiving God’s constantly available grace.

Wesley specifically listed what he thought of as ordinances: the public worship of God; the ministry of the Word, either read or expounded; the Supper of the Lord; family and private prayer; searching the Scriptures; and fasting or abstinence.

Our challenge this week is simple. How many of these have we incorporated into our lives? Are there new practices we can add?

I used the Mark passage today in association with this third rule because our relationship with God gives us the power we need to participate in kingdom building. We contend with unseen powers that would do the world harm. We need to tap into what God offers us if we are to carry out the Christian mission.

Lord, as we go to those places where you say you will meet us, may we receive new understanding and new grace. Amen.

Bad Timing, Bad Results

~ Chuck Griffin ~ Leave a comment
“Hagar and Ishmael Sent Away,” woodblock print, Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860.

Genesis 16:1-6 (NRSV)

Now Sarai, Abram’s wife, bore him no children. She had an Egyptian slave-girl whose name was Hagar, and Sarai said to Abram, “You see that the Lord has prevented me from bearing children; go in to my slave-girl; it may be that I shall obtain children by her.” And Abram listened to the voice of Sarai. So, after Abram had lived ten years in the land of Canaan, Sarai, Abram’s wife, took Hagar the Egyptian, her slave-girl, and gave her to her husband Abram as a wife. He went in to Hagar, and she conceived; and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. Then Sarai said to Abram, “May the wrong done to me be on you! I gave my slave-girl to your embrace, and when she saw that she had conceived, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me!” But Abram said to Sarai, “Your slave-girl is in your power; do to her as you please.” Then Sarai dealt harshly with her, and she ran away from her.

This piece of a larger story can sound foreign, but there is a behavior within that should be familiar to us.

In the previous chapter in Genesis, we hear the Lord make powerful, ceremonially bound promises to the man we now know as Abraham, including the promise of a son. This son was to result in an uncountable multitude of descendants.

While no details were given regarding how the son would be born, there also were no codicils added to the promise—God simply told Abraham, “No one but your very own issue shall be your heir.”

Rather than simply accepting the promise, the ancient man and his old wife, who believed she was far beyond child-bearing years, tried to figure out what they must do to make the promise come true. The plan to impregnate a young servant sprang from Sarai’s mind, but her husband, who had witnessed God’s dramatically presented covenant, did nothing to dissuade her.

What ensues is a story of rivalry, jealousy, and some painful choices that have to be made once the real child of promise arrives.

Need I say it? God’s timing is what matters, not ours. In our haste, in our eagerness to see things the way we want them to be, we may take some of the shine off the miracle that will eventually happen.

It seems to me that the best strategy is to be faithful in our everyday tasks, trusting that God will lead us to better places and situations than we could ever devise on our own.

Lord, we are all afraid to pray for patience, but we do need it. May we rejoice one day in how perfect your timing has been throughout history. Amen.

All

~ John Grimm ~ Leave a comment

Romans 3:21-26 (NRSV)
But now, apart from law, the righteousness of God has been disclosed, and is attested by the law and the prophets, the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith. He did this to show his righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over the sins previously committed; it was to prove at the present time that he himself is righteous and that he justifies the one who has faith in Jesus.

Politicians and social media participants happily point out which group is at fault in these divided times.  No matter where we are on the political spectrum, we can blame the other side for the wrongs done in our society. In doing so, we might even feel as if our very existence has been justified.

When our local church reopened for in-person worship recently, we tried something different for the pews.  We decided to use ribbon to mark off which pews we can use.  The ladies who tied the bows for the ribbons did a marvelous job, but after thanking them for their work, I noticed something peculiar.

Earlier, when I had shown them what I envisioned, I had used a roll of blue ribbon to demonstrate.  They had other colors available, too: pastel green, pastel pink, and red.  When they were finished, we ended up with blue ribbons on the left side and red ribbons on the right. It was not a preplanned political statement; it just happened that way.

I mentioned this when we were back in our first in-person worship service.  I lightheartedly said that the Democrats did not have to sit on the left, nor did the Republicans have to sit on the right.  I finished my remarks by saying, “All sinners are welcome here.”

The only way we can be justified is by faith in Jesus Christ.  All of us, no matter the political persuasion, can receive redemption that comes through him.  Being lumped together by faith in Jesus Christ surely gives us a different perspective on life, even our political life.

Lord God, you want all to believe in Jesus Christ so all may be in your kingdom.  Our arbitrary divisions of political class do not change the fact that all of us are sinners.  Use the righteousness that you have given us through faith in Christ to heal the relationships in our local church, our community, and our nation.  For we realize we can only be found in your kingdom by being in Jesus’ name.  Amen.