Devotion - Monday, December 1

We have started a new year!  The Church Year begins with the First Sunday in Advent - yesterday.  So today is the second day of the new year.

During this season we prepare.  We prepare for the arrival of Messiah.  How do you prepare for guests?  How did your family prepare for any guests who came for dinner last Thursday?

The prophet Isaiah tells Israel to prepare by returning to the ways of God.  The opening chapter of Isaiah acknowledges that Israel goes through the motions (holding solemn assemblies, carrying out religious holidays) but Israel has neglected the weightier matters.  Here is what he says:

When you spread forth your hands, I will hide my eyes from you;

even though you make many prayers, I will not listen; your hands are full of blood.

Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove the evil of your doings from before my eyes;

cease to do evil, learn to do good;

seek justice, correct oppression;

defend the fatherless, plead for the widow.

Those last three lines are the ones which caught my attention this morning.  There are many many more intent on teaching us to do evil rather than attendees at classes learning to do the good.  Where is the justice in Furgenson, MO - and I am not stating an opinion on the Grand Jury decision but addressing the underlying racism which made those events such a flash-point.  Our Lutheran Social Services is working with the unaccompanied minors coming across the boarder and the stories these "fatherless" children tell break the hearts of their caseworkers - but few of us lift up our voices in defense of them.

It is said that young adults are leaving the Church in droves.  I guess that is true; I see so many of you each day that it is tough for me to be the judge of what is happening across the country.  When i do hear the questions of "Why are they leaving?" the answer I have experienced is that the Church has become a place of solemn assemblies and empty professions.  "Where is the passion?  Where is the action, associated with the stated beliefs?"

This is both a warning a a plea:

First, the warning - unless we prepare and receive Messiah anew the Church will arrive at the same future as the Israel to which Isaiah spoke.  They were overtaken, their Temple destroyed, their witness so lost that when Ezra and Nehemiah found the ancient books of Moses they had trouble interpreting them.

Second, the plea - do not allow your devotion to become empty.  Never separate your following of Messiah from your beliefs about Messiah.  Jesus' first followers were called "The Way."  It was the way they lived their lives which distinguished them.  

Many will work to teach you "evil."  It is all around us.  Together, we can learn to do good.  But we will have to work at it, and we will have to be intentional about it.