Eat it up...

Dear family,

Math and biology stump me. They do. I remember sitting in class and doing my best to pay attention and fumble through the assingments, only to feel so dense. It never made sense. I never had an aha moment. Time and time again, i would leave class feeling like i had to be the dumbest person in class, and perhaps i was. But nothing i did, no amount of reading, helped. I never mastered math or biology. They remain hurdles in my achievement for academic dominance. Thank God little math and less biology finds its way into seminary classes or theology classes.

My sense is that i am not alone in this struggle with one subject or another, am i right? In the scripture focus for today: Matthew 15: 1-20; Jesus tells a powerful parable about the what truly matters in making the person clean, and in the end the disciples just stare at Jesus. They stare at himk, and i am sure they are whispering to each other, you ask him, no you ask him, you ask him, and then, like the cartoon rehearsal of the scene, one says, the person who steps forward needs to ask Jesus, and they do it quietly, leaving Peter standing alone.

They didn't get it. They didn't understand what Jesus was selling, so they conned Peter into asking, and Jesus' response, "Are you so dull?" Meaning. Are you really this dumb? That probably didn't help their self-confidence, but Jesus was making a critical point here. After all the years of traveling with Jesus; the disciples still didn't get it. To be pure and clean had nothing to do with what what we ate or what we heard or what we touched; these things can't make us unclean. What makes someone unclean is what comes out of the mouth, because what we say reflects the status of our hearts.

If we love, we will offer loving words. If we are full of spite, well venom oozes from us. If we are full of insecurity, we will make everyone else feel small. If we are people of unfaith, we will make sure to push everyone else away from faith. If we believe in the almighty dollar, even over Jesus, then we will make sure our choices reflect where our faith lies. And if we have faith, hope, and joy then our words reflect that too. Out of the mouth; the faith of the person is revealed.

Are we hopeful? Then our words need to reflect that. Are we full of love? Then our words need to nurture and caress the other among us. Are we people of faith? Then our conversations with each other should enable each other to go deeper in our faith journeys. And are we Jesus people? Then what we say, how we say it, and what we do with it must rehearse the life, the teachings, and the commandments of Jesus. If we don't we had better have a heart check.

So eat it up. Not just whatever we can get our grubby hands on, but eat up every word, every teaching, every experience, and every song of Jesus, letting the Christ enter our soul and refresh us once again. Eat up opportunities to share the gospel with strangers and friends. And above all, so that we can be a healthy, holistic community, eat up the chances to gather together, as one body, so that we can be a haven, a refuge for the hurting of the world. Eat it up and experience the power of God's Spirit unleashed. Amen.


Shalom,
jerry