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Good Shepherd Lutheran Church Today's Frontline Devotion March 10, 2009 |
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Frontline Devotion for Tuesday, March 10, 2009 by Matt Pensinger
1st Corinthians 1:26-30 Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God. He is the source of your life in Christ Jesus, who became for us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification and redemption, in order that, as it is written, ‘Let the one who boasts, boast in the Lord.’
I often find myself thinking, or conversing with other people, about history and historical figures. It feels right now like we’re living through times that are historic, or of historical significance… and not so much in a good way! Tough times. Looking at and thinking about history, there have been lots of tough times, times that must have seemed bleaker than bleak, and times that seem to us looking back like, wow, how could you ever fix or fight or just live through THAT? And what I think we then sometimes do is say, those people that lived and worked and led the way then must have been special… tough people for tough times. They must have had something special, some mettle stronger than we know, some ability that’s beyond our reach, some secret that’s been lost to us. They must have been smarter, or more capable, or just plain tougher. We look back on those people with wonder, in awe… we raise them up, we overlook or quietly brush away their imperfections, we gloss over their struggles and confusion and fear. We make them superhuman. We deify them.
And of course, we’re mostly wrong to do that, as anyone who’s faced tough times or tragedies, worries or wars can attest. Such things aren’t faced and overcome by extraordinarily tough or gifted or powerful people, by any standard of worldly measurement – that’s what I glean from thinking about and talking about and studying history. Even people and ideas and writings and works that seem especially brilliant or prescient or far-thinking to our hindsight probably didn’t FEEL that way to those people, most of the time… they probably felt more like, we’re trying our best here and muddling through, and it feels adequate some days and less than adequate other days. They probably felt, in other words, like we feel… their times and lives probably felt to them not dissimilar from the ways that our times and lives often feel to us. Those special extraordinary people, those people who were way tougher, those people whom we can’t imagine being, those were people that were a lot like us.
One of the most powerful and resonant themes in the entire Bible is the theme that’s elucidated perhaps most clearly right here: God chose what is weak. God’s power, God’s life, God’s presence, God’s message comes through what is small, and weak, and foolish, and broken, and inadequate by all human standards… what even sometimes seems and feels barely adequate, even to the people who are living it out. Paul was writing to people who were conflicted, probably over differing opinions over how to order their community, over how to choose and to show respect for their community leaders, and over how much to concede to the norms and behaviors of the larger society. Reading between the lines, it seems that the most impressive and persuasive arguments were winning out, and that their leadership and life was bending towards the things that were more “worldly,” more respectable in terms of social standards, more conventional in terms of the common wisdom of the time and place. Paul wrote to remind them of what God did and does: God chose to work through you, all of you, through even people who others see as lowly, who others despise, who see THEMSELVES as lowly and despised. God chose to work through YOU to set a new standard, to impress upon the world how the power of God working through love can heal, can redeem, can change, can set free. God chose to work through you, to make all things new. This reminder comes after a long discourse about the message of the cross, the ultimate foolish shame, the ultimate exaltation, now worn casually by entertainers and removed or minimized in churches but no less true, no less powerful in its reminder: God chooses what is foolish in the world to shame the wise, what is weak to shame the strong, what is despised to remind and spur repentance in and give life to all.
And Paul’s reminders to the community at Corinth still ring true for us, living in chaotic historic times: God is with us, and God is working through us... and God chooses what is weak and foolish and of no real account to show forth God’s spirit that is as close as breathing – the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of toughness and trying again, the spirit of muddling through and trying our best, the spirit of making the attempt even when we feel inadequate to the task, the spirit of looking out for the lonely and lost and least, the spirit of finding the right words when we need them and getting enough help when it hurts and remembering that we’re loved and that we love, the spirit of making it through together. Let the one who rejoices, rejoice in the Lord… and let us look to the cross and be reminded that we are the weak ones that God is using to show God’s power and presence and purpose in the world.
Show forth your strength, Lord God, and renew in us your spirit: the spirit of wisdom and understanding, counsel and might, knowledge and fear and trust in your gracious presence and your unfailing love. Amen.
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All are welcome to join and share in our Devotional Ministry on the "Frontlines" of the world. Frontline Devotions are sent via email daily. Sign up by clicking on the box to the left. Pastor Dave welcomes feedback. Contact him at pastordave@goodshepherdonline.org. |
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