Good Morning!
For today’s worship and prayer help we are going to go back to the basics. It is important for us every now and then to ask the simple questions. I can remember one time asking a coach why we spent so much practice time working on footwork and not using a soccer ball. Seems like if we were going to play soccer we might want to use the object the game uses to score goals, and the thing I was tasked with making sure didn’t make it into the back of the net. Yet his response stuck with me in a way that had nothing to do with athletics or really what we were doing that day. He said, “If you have to spend time worrying about what your feet are doing then you aren’t going to have time to focus on what’s going on around you.” It was one of those sayings that hit me hard and something that has stuck with me twenty-five years later.
My coach’s words of wisdom can be applied to a lot of activities, even to the Christian life. The stuff we do every day prepares us for the difficulties of the future. In the Marine Corps we referred to it as muscle memory. Drill could be mesmerizingly boring, yet in the field it made all the difference. If you can’t fix your rifle under the pressure of a D.I. questioning your parentage, then what hope would one have under fire? This is why daily devotion, the time we spend in the Scriptures, the moments spent in prayer in the presence of God Almighty affects so deeply how we deal with tragedy, especially when it is unexpected. The Apostle Paul when he commends the faithfulness of the Thessalonian believers makes a point to declare that it isn’t the big stuff that marks them out from their brethren, it is the simple piety of their daily lives which receives his blessing.
Our culture (and the church is no different) loves the big, the wow factor, the amazing. It is always looking forward to events. It finds no satisfaction in practice, only in the game. There is also a distinct dislike for hard work. We want the victory without sweat. We want the big paycheck and the house that comes with it, yet scoff at putting our hand to the plow and putting in the time necessary to earn it. To meddle a little bit we want Christmas and Easter without the Sabbaths of July and August. Of course there is a reason why traditionally in Presbyterian circles we didn’t observe special days. It wasn’t because we didn’t like fun, it had more to do with what my coach was talking about in that response to my question. If we don’t think we need the Lord in a random Sunday in the “off-season” then we aren’t really going to appreciate the weight of the cross and the beauty of the nativity. They become about pageants and bunnys rather than what those who advocate for them intend. If that is what we want then it testifies that our love for the Lord is based on Hallmark, not on the manna of the weekly remembrance of the Resurrection. Why do we do all we can do to not miss worship in December, but think little of taking a break in the summer? Part of it comes from not understanding what is happening in the corporate service on the Lord’s Day, but it also is a sign that we are more influenced by the “everyone gets a trophy” mindset than we’d like to admit.
In our Monday morning devotion this week from the book of Mark you hear the sons of Zebedee ask to sit on the right and left hand of Christ when His kingdom arises. Jesus warns them noting that they don’t really understand what they are asking, and of course the rest of the disciples get angry at James and John about their presumption. But their displeasure is just that the other two asked before they did. They were all thinking the same thing. They were still under a mistaken impression that the Lord’s kingdom was of this world. In their minds eye the disciples saw themselves in the court of the emperor basking in fortune and fame. Their flesh would be filled with all they could ever want. However, Christ busts their balloon. He says to James and John that they are going to drink the cup of persecution and eat the bread of affliction. They will be baptized in fire and reviling. It is important to remember that this warning comes right after Jesus’s third prophecy of His death and resurrection. Yet all the disciples heard was that they were going up to Jerusalem. Kings were made in the capital and most assuredly they would then receive their reward. But it wasn’t going to work like that. In a matter of days these men who had followed Christ for nearly three years would see the world turned upside down. All things would be different. Though as the day approaches it is the simple, basic, regular which marks out the life of Christ. He continues to heal, to preach, to teach, and witness the gospel to all around Him.
To skip ahead a little bit in the history of the Twelve (less Judas) when it comes to the days after Pentecost what is it that enables them to continue in the calling that the Lord had given to them, now that they understand what Jesus was talking about in the above chapter of the Book of Mark? It is the coming together of the people of God to break bread, to worship on the Sabbath Day (Acts 20:7, 1 Cor. 16:1-2, Rev. 1:10), and the regular meeting to hear the words of eternal life. That was what motivated the missionary labors of the Apostles in the days after Christ’s resurrection and ascension, and it was this basic, simple, weekly foundation of the family of God gathering for worship that aided all these men and women to remain faithful when they began to be baptized with the baptism that Jesus was baptized with.
To go back to the military analogy, we are in a time where the cold war has turned hot. It was never really “cold” of course, but the residual holiness of thousands of years of Christian civilization in the West kept the devils at bay. However, we like Israel have abandoned the old paths and have sought out the gods of materialism, sensualism, getting ahead at all costs, and childish greed and are reaping the whirlwind. We must be taking seriously the footwork of filling our hearts with gospel truth and being enriched with the words of Christ and we must be doing this together on the ordinary Sundays as long as the Lord allows.
Here is some reading today to help us think more on this work:
https://banneroftruth.org/us/resources/articles/2007/the-lords-day-sabbath/
Blessings in Christ,
Rev. Benjamin Glaser
Pastor, Bethany ARP Church