Monday Morning Music Ministry

8-28-23

Nothing in the Holy Bible is an accident. Every word of Scripture has application to our lives. That we are not nomads or shepherds is irrelevant. Truth, sin, purity, love, and God’s sovereignty are matters as pertinent to us today as to any people through past centuries and many lands. The smallest details are as important as the larger narratives.

In that perspective I invite a look at the first of Jesus’s miracles. In the second chapter of John’s Gospel we have the account of the Wedding Feast at Cana. It is where Jesus turned water into wine as the feast ran short.

This is the first of Jesus’s recorded miracles. We may marvel, as the wedding couple and the guests did. The important point is to focus on the miracle, not specifically the wine (for all its symbolism, I suppose Jesus might have made a miracle at the wedding feast of bread or fish or… wait; that’s for later). But The miracle itself was intended to impress the guests. Jesus’s actions have significance. His presence as a “mere” guest affirms His own humility, the “servant king.” And so forth.

But let us pause with those who focus on the role of wine at this event. Many people – and multiplied-more others – have lives that are scarred by alcohol abuse. It was the case in my family, and probably the same with most of you readers. It is a weakness in the human condition; and although specific to wine and liquor, I am persuaded that many people are basically addicted to being addicted; alcohol is the tendency or “flavor” or option of many self-destructive life-choices.

Virtually every addict, no matter the frequency or pleasure of the “highs,” regrets the addiction… sometimes (or repeatedly) seeks release… grieves over the consequences. Relationships, jobs, family, career, health, life.

Stick with me, please. The focus of the Water-Into-Wine miracle should not be the food or wine, nor even the miracle itself… but the Miracle-Maker.

Let us say that you have an addiction. We all do, in myriad ways, even to the common addictions to sinning, transgressing, pride, not fully serving God. Many believers – and I address well-meaning Christians – often pray that we be freed from bondage to this or that temptation. But those prayers are often in this context: “Help me be strong, Lord, that I can battle these problems. Watch me!”

As God reads our well-meaning hearts, we often mean: “Get me to that point, Lord, where I can resist these challenges on my own.” And it’s likely we really mean: “I want You to be proud of me, Lord. Give me wisdom and strength that I can overcome these temptations by myself.” And we are in effect wanting to get to the point of saying, “Thank you, Lord! I will take over from here!”

That’s spiritual maturity, right?

No, that is spiritual immaturity.

Let us never forget the Biblical reminder that “we can do nothing except through the Christ who strengthens us.” Remember that Jesus wants to run with us, not watch us hand off the baton and then cheer from the bleachers. Why did God send the Holy Spirit except to be our constant Guide and Comforter and Wisdom and Strength?

Was Christ’s work on the cross something that we should regard as “finished” when we think we know how much to receive from it?

In the case of our focus here, sometimes for addicts the greatest miracle is not to be free of the alcohol… but rather to become addicted to Jesus. “I’ll take it from here, God…” is self-swindling. A greater personal “overcoming,” a greater miracle, is to change our lives that we learn to be dependent, not independent. To be dependent on Jesus instead of the bottle, our own wills.

We are impressed by the account of that miracle at the Wedding Feast, turning water into wine. In our own lives it would not be a matter of weakness, but of strength, if we were to plead for a different miracle. Many things we simply cannot do on our own. God, please turn the wines of our lives – our tendencies to sin; our disobedience; our addictions – back into water.

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Click: Wine Into Water

12-7-15

“God Won’t Fix This.” This was the four-word headline splashed over the front page of the New York Daily News after the terrorist attack in San Bernardino.

They printed four small photos, insets of public officials, with their quotations asking for, or offering, prayers. “Thoughts and prayers,” in the current parlance; and the News yellow-highlighted the word “prayer” in each instance. Their copy, on the front page and successive pages of the “news”paper, criticized Republican candidates for offering prayers “and not solutions.”

Put aside for the moment the point of view that prayers to God might be solutions, it was interesting – no, that’s not quite the precise word; ah, yes: disgusting – that the editors politicized the horror by ripping solely into Republicans’ statements. And noting that three Democrat candidates for the presidency did not ask for prayer or invoke God. And not mentioning that President Obama, whatever else he says, routinely assures the nation that “our thoughts and prayers go out” after such incidents. Politics 101? I give ‘em an F.

Personally, my spirit bristles when people talk about prayer and God in superficial ways. Prayer is a powerful tool designed to communicate with our Heavenly Father. “Our prayers go out” is so clichéd – often, but not always – as to weaken its sincerity. If a Christian proposes prayer, having God’s ear, so to speak, he or she should pray then and there. Not the Sinner’s Prayer, not necessarily a rambling list of petitions, but a “Dear God”… followed by the plea or praise… ending with an “Amen,” is sincere, sufficient to most occasions, and effective.

Even Gov. Huckabee, an ordained minister, used to end his TV shows with, “God bless.” Finish the sentence! Is it a request or a demand? God bless what, or who? A pose, a mask; get real!

But I digress. The Gospel According the Daily News was very significant. In journalistic terms, it was symbolic. The tabloid, founded in 1919 and for many years boasting the second-highest circulation in the United States, has fallen like a rock and has been up for sale for some time. Owned by the mogul Mortimer Zuckerman, it was on the auction block for months, reportedly at one point offered for a single dollar… if the new owner would assume the gargantuan debts. No takers. After firing entire department staffs and abandoning categories of coverage, it teeters between going digital and folding outright.

Mortimer Zuckerman’s property was launched by Captain Joseph Patterson, cousin of the Chicago Tribune management. For decades both papers were two of the most conservative and traditional-values organs in the nation. No more. It is tempting to think of cause and effect (crummy stands and low readership); evidently Mortimer Zuckerman does not.

Whether the blasphemy splashed across the paper’s front page was a publicity stunt or not – here we are, after all, discussing it — Mortimer Zuckerman’s disgraceful display is perfectly emblematic of a deep problem in post-Christian America. The mockery of the screaming headline was not so much directed at politicians’ statements, or their failures to join, lockstep, liberals’ solution of laws, laws, and laws, in the face of violence of Islamic terror.

No, the scorn was directed at peoples’ natural reactions to turn to God in crises and troubled times. Candidates, everyday citizens, neighbors, the wounded, the children and families of the dead – they (we) are ridiculous hypocrites or deluded wastrels in the eyes of contemporary society. Today’s reigning culture hates us.

More, the sacred institution of prayer, ordained of God; and God Himself, are the real targets. Scornful, mocking, blasphemous. America, 2015. We have laws – California’s among the strictest – but the impulse to seek God is “futile,” we are told in today’s secular sermons and front pages.

This just in: Next in the parade of the Misplaced Moralists was the News’ neighbor, the New York Times.In its Saturday, Dec 5, print edition, the “Paper of Record” printed a front-page editorial for the first time in 95 years. Publisher Arthur Sulzberger wrote that “America’s elected leaders” should be ashamed of themselves for “offering prayers for gun victims and then, callously and without fear of consequences, reject[ing] the most basic restrictions of weapons of mass killing.” By the way, the public scolding made no reference to Islam or Muslims, or jihadi terrorism; rather to do away with the Second Amendment, promote “reasonable regulation” and outright confiscation of firearms.

In the larger picture, we have barred God and the Bible from classrooms… and classrooms became incubators of rebellion and false values. We have stripped the public forums of our Christian heritage… and America enjoys (?) drugs, sex, abuse, violence, social dislocation of all sorts.

Some call this coincidence. People like Mortimer Zuckerman and Arthur Sulzberger do. I call it Judgment. “God is not mocked,” the Bible warns. Who are the hypocrites? I remember when Hurricane Sandy slammed New York City, flooded its basements and filled its tunnels, Mayor Bloomberg, who had been on a crusade to remove God from public events and public places, all of a sudden called on churches to come to the city’s assistance. Bloomberg and Zuckerman and Sulzberger, the New Prophets of the Religion of No Religion… until needed.

Is it an empty cliché to say “God has been barred from classrooms”? God, of course, is sovereign. He can be anywhere, and do anything. But He has principles and consistency as part of His person, too. God cannot contradict Himself.

When He became incarnate as the Christ, Jesus returned to His native Nazareth, as recorded in two of the Gospels. Not a happy homecoming: many of the people were scornful of Him and unbelieving of His divinity. Matthew 13:58 relates: “And he did not many mighty works there because of their unbelief.” That is the King James translation; in the Aramaic Bible in Plain English direct translation, we read, “And he did not do many miracles there because of their suspicion.”

Could Jesus have performed miracles? Of course. The incarnate Deity was sovereign. Was He scolding the population, petulantly withholding miracles to “get even” or teach them a lesson? Not likely. If He had performed tremendous, showy miracles, many people might have been affected.

But the ways of God are many, and mysterious, and just. “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts,” saith the Lord (Isaiah 55:9). After all, one lone Centurion who believed was blessed; the woman touching the hem of His garment was healed, and so forth. In contemporary America and its media and Hollywood elite, to reject prayer and a turn to God – by victims themselves – displays our society’s hard heart and stiff neck.

Where does this leave us, in this all-too-common environment of fear and terror? Let us pray: Not in the Councils of the Ungodly. Can we Americans be so arrogant to think that God owes us mercy or pardon, while we offend Him daily in so many ways as a society? Even the non-Zuckermans and non-Bloombergs and non-Sulzbergers among us have become content to place our affection with corrupt things; to put our trust in man’s laws; to have faith in worldly things.

Liberals might scoff and say we need fewer prayers and more rules, but, even objectively, why must they be mutually exclusive? Rather, we need more love and less hate; more sincere hearts than know-it-all heads; more prayers and fewer laws; more God and less government.

“God Isn’t Fixing This”? Can anyone wonder?

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/gop-candidates-call-prayers-calf-massacre-article-1.2453261

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Click: The Faith Of Our Fathers