Saturday April 12

I am in my office preparing for Sunday's services. I have been reflecting on several things that people have said to me over the last few days. I have also been thinking about what it means to live faithfully in the post-resurrection and post-modern world that we currently are living. One way of being faithful is to take time each day to spend in quietness and prayer. In this hectic world it is easy to find oneself constantly bombarded by interruptions in our ability to take a Sabbath time to be with God. Even on my day off I am often interrupted with phone calls that have nothing to do with my life. It seems that any time I make the effort to find some quiet time the phone will ring and it is some telemarketer trying to sell me some extended warranty on my car or have we got an offer for you that will make your life better. Maybe that is why I spend so much time in sermons and scripture pointing that there is a difference between living a life based on the world and a life based on God. Religion is not immune to this dualism. Holiness sometimes is a product that is for sale, offered as entertainment, and if one is holy one will be prosperous. In looking at the passage 1 Peter 1:17-23 that I will preaching on, the author writes that it is not gold or silver that is our salvation but the sacrifice of the living word of God, Jesus. What will feed us? Broken bread and a poured out life. And how are we to respond by loving one another.
Another aspect that is important to me as a United Methodist is looking not just at Scripture but also how others have reflected on those Scriptures. Maybe people will criticize me for looking at John Wesley and the ideas that he had but that is what we are about. He stated that scripture was the primary source of what we should use to make decisions regarding our lives. He also stated that we can be informed by tradition, experience and reason. I believe that God continues to speak to us today as much if not more than 2000 years ago. I believe it is important that we remember that our God is not dead, on vacation, or is absent from our lives. God continues to present to us. We are called to live a holy life as God is holy. Today that matters as much as it did when the Christians were a minority group persecuted by the empire that surrounded them. Christianity at the very early post-resurrection days was not about power but about salvation and love. I believe many great theologians talked about that from Augustine, Aquinas, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Barth, Gonzales and others. To not spend time listening to them is to deny their insights that may be very helpful for us in our faith journey. Much like reading modern insights such as the Last Lecture.
I have been rambling on but I have been seriously reflecting on what it means to live faithfully and the struggles that we have. I don't buy into the "prosperity gospel movement" or totally into the entertainment mode. I do believe in being accountable to each other and to God. We are constantly facing choices between what the world says and what God says. As I continue to look at 1 Peter and the post-resurrection life, this struggle is not new. It comes down to what is it we see as a priority in our lives and what will we choose.