Devotional 4-19-14

 “Family Dinner”

Please read   Exodus 12:1-4; 11-14

I don’t know anyone who doesn’t like a good meal. Sometimes we joke that one of the symbols of the United Methodist Church is a casserole dish, a nod to the importance of food in our various celebrations throughout the year. We enjoy big dinners at home and in church throughout the year, whether we are celebrating Valentines’ Day or the end of summer at a church picnic.  Do you have any special memories that you associate with food?

This Scripture lesson describes the very first Passover dinner. It was a meal that the Hebrew people were to eat on the last night of their captivity in Egypt. There were particular directions on how the food was to be prepared and how the people were to eat it. They were to be ready to go to the next laces God called then to go. They were going back home. It is the most important feast in the Jewish religion today still. It has been celebrated yearly for millennia.

As Christians, we celebrate the Passover meal every time we have Holy Communion. When Jesus ate the last Supper with his disciples, it was the Passover meal they ate.  So whenever we celebrate Holy Communion we are remembering how God delivered the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt. We also remember how Jesus instructed his followers to continue this practice in memory of Him. It reminds us that even though relationships between Jews and Christians may have started rather shakily, we still have a great deal much in common.

I invite you to think of Holy Communion as a family meal. We gather together as people do at any dinner. Some of us are joyful. Some worry. Many are struggling over who knows what-name a problem of contemporary society and someone is dealing with it as we come to the Lord’s Table. But that’s exactly what it is: the Lord’s Table. We are invited to eat the sacred meal with Jesus and those very human disciples who were there that night. Like them, we argue over who is important. Like them, we often promise our unswerving faith in Him. Like them, we betray Him in countless ways every day.  Jesus said to remember Him as they ate that meal in the future. He wants us to remember Him as well.

In our human family, we all need spiritual nurturing. One of the things we can do as we are fed  on this Holy Thursday in the Sacrament of Holy Communion is to remember this is a meal more special than any other family gathering we’ve ever been to. We remember how God was with those early Hebrews as they prepared for freedom and what they didn’t really understand was going to be a long arduous journey to get there. Jesus knew on the night of the Last Supper what was happening, and that God would see him through the hardest journey anyone would ever have to make. On that night, the disciples may not have understood what was really happening to them and to their leader, but as time went on and they experienced forgiveness for their inaction and action that night, they remembered that Jesus’ grace was with them. After the day of Pentecost, when they began going on their separate ministry journeys, they remembered that he would be 

As I said earlier, we all bring something different to the table as we feast together and remember what God has done for His people in the past5. Whatever challenges we face, we too can remember that God has always been with us in the past, caring for us, feeding us and nurturing us in a variety of ways. God will be there in the future as well .

Rev. Dorcas Conrad

Devotional 3-30-13

On my charge this year, I am leading Adam Hamilton’s “24 Hours That Changed the World” Lenten study. This is the second time I’ve used this resource. The first was two years ago in Fairmont. As always, I am struck by how much differently God speaks to me from one time in life to the next. I think that is true of familiar Scriptures, ones we have heard many times, like the Scriptures that describe the passion, death and resurrection of Christ. There is perennially something new. This year as I work with this study, I wonder which group of people who were involved in the last days of Jesus’ life I would fit it with. I invite you to think where you would be.

Would it have been with the Scribes and Pharisees who were so threatened by a theology which was different from theirs that they wanted to destroy the Theologian? Was this even a spiritual, doctrinal question for them, or did they just know that Jesus was more popular than they? Would we be a part of the Roman army, who were so secure in their worldly positions and possessions, and had so much faith in their place in the world, that they did not recognize God among them? In fact, they mocked Him at every opportunity. Confronted by Jesus, would we be like Pilate: on the fence, waffling, refusing to take responsibility for anything, lukewarm in our faith today? The disciples, most of whom had run when their Lord needed them most, going back to the way things had been, because following Jesus didn’t turn out to be as easy as they hoped? Would we be like those who stayed until the very end?

I think that we are all of those people from time to time. We are faithful one minute and not the next. I do not know what any of those people were doing on the Sabbath between Good Friday and Easter morning. Maybe they rested. Surely they were moved by the events of the last week. Perhaps Holy Saturday is not a day many of us think too much about. We may spend the day buying new Easter outfits, hunting for Easter eggs, and getting a jump-start on the big Easter dinner. I know I certainly love to do those things. But this year, I am going to try and do something more. I want to take this quiet in-between day to think about where I would have been in that time and in that place. I want to look at where I am now.
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Instead of a prayer, I submit this poem for your reflection. It is from “Faces at the Cross: A Lent and Easter Collection of Poetry and Prose”.

Holy SaturdayJ Barrie Shepherd

The echoes of this intervening day
tremble between bloodshed and birth.
Full Friday’s passion now is laid away.
These hours are for the proving of its worth.
In darkness will it ripen to a gay
garden scene of festival and mirth,
or in the deadly juices of decay
dissolve into the daily dust of earth?

Rev. Dorcas L. ConradWest Liberty Charge, West Liberty, W.Va.

Devotional 3-26-12

Mark 11:11 “Then Jesus entered Jerusalem and went into the temple; and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the Twelve."

Use your imagination! The day we now call Palm Sunday was coming to a close. What did Jesus think about when he went to the temple and looked around at everything? Was he remembering the crowds crying “Hosanna!” that morning? Was he thinking about the children laughing and waving palm branches? Was he remembering when he was a boy and he stayed behind in the temple after his parents had gone back home after their Passover celebration? He would have been considered a young man by twelve, so perhaps he was recalling the time he spent with the scholars and the priests until his parents found him. Did they punish him in some way and was he reminiscing about that? Was he thinking about other Passovers of which we have no written record? We know he loved God’s house.

I believe he was thinking about all of those things, but also how quickly those adoring crowds would be yelling “Crucify him!” just a few days later. I think he did know the future, not in some magical, mystical way, but primarily because he was an astute judge of human behavior. Past experience with his disciples revealed they would betray and desert him. He knew the women who followed him would not leave his side until the very end, and they would be the first to learn of his resurrection and share it, even when it seemed “an idle tale” to the men. He knew Judas would betray him somehow and that Peter in his impetuousness would deny ever having known him.

The seminary I attended placed a great deal of emphasis on Mark’s Gospel and the reality that discipleship is hard and that we have to choose every day whether or not we are going to follow Jesus, no matter how difficult the journey. As he faced the last week of his earthly life, surely Jesus was thinking about his calling to be the Messiah and how different his idea of that was from the people who were still seeking earthly power. No matter how many times he told them that he was not that kind of Messiah, they couldn’t get in their heads that he wasn’t talking about a kingdom here and now which they would benefit from.

Of course I don’t really know what he was thinking, but I wonder if at least some of his thoughts centered on how God had sustained him in the past. God never let go of him and Jesus stayed focused on his Father no matter what happened. He knew that God would be with him in the events of the week ahead as surely as God had been with him in the past. When we fear the future, when we face trials or times of uncertainty, it is good to remember how God has been there for us in the past. God does not let go of us, any more than he let go of Jesus. God was behind us in the past, with us and strengthening us in the present, and leading the way into the future that He has planned for us. Jesus kept faithful. My prayer is that we can do the same.

Rev. Dorcas Linger Conrad
Highland Avenue UMC
Fairmont, WV (for now)

Devotional 4-15-11

It seems appropriate to me that for a devotional that is going to be published on April 15, we take a look at Matthew, the tax collector. Tradition says that he wrote the first Gospel. We know that he lived in the region of Galilee. The people who lived there were not important in the eyes of the world, farmers and fishermen, regular folks. Unfortunately, the position that Matthew held in society was one of the most despised ones in all of Israel. He was a tax collector, also called a publican. Tax collectors were hated by all of Jewish society, even more than the Romans who occupied Israel at that time.

Publicans bought tax franchises from the Roman emperor and then extorted money from the people of Israel, money that was added to the Roman treasury and also padded the publican’s own pockets. Tax collectors were considered lowlifes and were treated as such. For a Jewish man like Matthew to be a tax collector was even worse. He was a traitor to the nation, a social outcast. He was also a religious outcast. He could not go in any synagogue. He was forbidden to worship and sacrifice at the temple in Jerusalem. In terms of religion, he was worse than a Gentile.

But God had other plans for this man. Matthew 9:9 says “as Jesus passed on from Capernaum, he saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. Jesus said to him, ‘Follow me.’” So Matthew got up and followed him without thinking. He put his old life aside and followed Jesus. He did not lie about his past. He did not try to hide anything. He did not make any excuse for what he did or what he was doing. He just agreed to follow Jesus.

Even though he lived on the fringes of respectable society, I think he must have known the Scripture well, because in his Gospel, he quotes from it time after time, the Law, the Psalms, the Prophets, every section of the Hebrew Scriptures. Since he couldn’t hear the word in any place of worship, he must have studied it on his own. I have no idea what went through Matthew’s mind when he decided to become a tax collector in the first place, something that he must have known was wrong for a pious Jew. Whatever prompted that choice, he believed in God and through his study of the Scriptures was waiting for the Messiah. He must have heard about Jesus long before me ever met him. He learned about the miracles, the healings, the teaching. So when Jesus asked him to follow Him, Matthew had enough faith to drop everything and follow. Then he invited all of his friends (tax collectors and other sinners) to meet Jesus. Of course the Pharisees found fault with that.

I think this is a great story for Lent because these are supposed to be forty days of discipline and examination. I wonder sometimes if these stories have not lost their edge over the centuries as the Christian church has become more and more a part of mainstream society. Many of us would be Pharisees who criticize Jesus for being with the sinners and outcasts of society. Today that means the homeless, the child abusers, the drug addicts, the people that I often think I’ m better than. But if Lent is a time when we examine ourselves honestly, we have to admit our own sinfulness, our own poor choices.

At my church in Fairmont I have been doing a preaching series called “Fearless, the Courage to Question” for Lent this year. It’s about not being afraid to take anything to God. Anything, the things we’re proud of, the things we’re ashamed of. Anything. I am trying to honestly look at my life right now. What relationships are important to me and which ones aren’t anymore? If they are important, what lengths am I willing to go to maintain them? I am also looking at the lifestyle choices I’ve made. Am I treating my body well? Am I on Facebook and the Internet too much? Spiritually, I am discerning if God is leading me on the same path that I’ve been on for years, or should I go in a new direction? And, oh my, what if I did make those changes? What would people say?! I don’t know what goes through your mind this year, but I am convinced that there is nothing we cannot take to God.

Matthew took himself with all of his flaws and offered them to Jesus for His use. Jesus used him. He can use our brokenness, our completeness, our joys and our sorrows for his service. Lent is a time to remember that in spite of our sinfulness, God still uses us, just as he used that tax collector Matthew.

Rev. Dorcas Linger Conrad
Highland Ave. UMC
Fairmont, WV

Devotional 3-29-10

Please read Matthew 25:14-30

I grew up in a family that was critical. My parents saw criticism as a way to make sure their children did not become braggarts. While not truly cruel or unkind, I felt that no matter want I did or did not do, there was always room for improvement. What I did just wasn’t quite right. I was afraid to try new things. I was certain I would make a mistake. The parable of the ungrateful steward suited me to a tee. People told me I was intelligent, and creative, but I was still afraid to use my gifts.

One summer, my husband Tim and I had a bumper crop of tomatoes. They were beautiful, round and red. I prepared them in every way I knew how. I didn’t want to waste any. I got out a cookbook and found a recipe for tomato casserole. It looked complicated but sounded good. Tim is the gardener in the family, but he was gone. I was afraid. I love to cook, but I had never prepared fresh tomatoes before because I knew that cooking them was a lengthy process. What if I made a mistake? What if it didn’t turn out right? Drawing a deep breath and praying a prayer for courage, I picked the tomatoes from the vines and took them into my kitchen. (I much prefer to stay inside my house, so even this was a bit new for me.) Then I boiled water to remove the peels, squeezed out the seeds, cut the tomatoes up and layered them in a casserole dish with cheese, onions and breadcrumbs. It was a messy job and by the time I was through there was tomato juice all over the kitchen!

I thought of the many times I sensed God calling me to do something new, but I was afraid. This small act of getting out of my comfort zone felt freeing. I tried something I had always been afraid to try. The casserole turned out well and tasted so good that my husband told his parishioners about it. He insisted I make it again and take it to church for Wednesday night snack supper. People called me for the recipe.

Now when I am afraid of a new direction that God is calling me in, I remember the day I tried something new, something that I had been afraid to try and how it turned out well. It may seem small, but it wasn't to me. I am learning to trust my gifts and talents, and not hold back in fear. God wants that for each of His children.

Rev. Dorcas Conrad

Devotional 3-3-09

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
(from Sarai's perspective and in modern language)

I love surprises, particularly when I know exactly when they are going to happen and exactly how they're going to be. I might be a bit of a control freak. But who really likes uncertainty? Not me. Last night when my husband returned home, he told me the craziest thing. OK, I know he talks to God sometimes, and that's good. But apparently God has been talking to him, and I don't like what God had to say. We are in our nineties and we've never been blessed with children, but according to Abram (who is now insisting on being called Abraham) we are going to be parents. In fact we will be the ancestors of multitudes of nations. God says that I will have a son, and that over time, kings of nations will come from me. This is the most ridiculous thing I have ever heard in my life, and I have lived a long one. It's just not possible. There is no way we can be parents. How is this going to take place? When is this going to take place? Why is Abraham (notice how I'm playing along) changing my name too, from Sarai to Sarah?

What's next? Moving? With my luck, the next time Abraham comes in from one of his talks with God, God will have told him to pack up all our belongings, our animals, our servants, everything we own and go somewhere else. We won't even know where we are supposed to go, how to get there or anything. I want to know exactly what the future is bringing and I want to know now.

Prayer

There is always uncertainty about the future, loving God, but it seems especially so now. People are losing their jobs and many wonder how they will provide for their families. Some have to relocate. Many don't know how certain their futures are in this economy and with the world the way it is. We thought we were safe. We liked our predictable lives. Help us to trust that you are present throughout the changes and in the midst of the uncertainties we all have. Help us to remember and find comfort and assurance in the words of Jesus when he told his followers that worrying does not decrease the size of the problem, whatever it is, and that we will be cared for even as the flower and birds are cared for. We pray in his name. Amen.

Rev. Dorcas Conrad
Dillon Chapel UMC

March 3 Mission Prayer/Response: Donate a dime for every can of food in your pantry. (But only if you like food)