Lent 22

For the couple of people who actually follow this, my sincere apologies for posting a day late. It was like a Jewish Lent or something this week, taking a Saturday sabbath. Anyway...

On Thursday, I read about another of Glenn Beck's inflammatory tirades on his Fox News show and was more than a little displeased with what he said. Part of me says, oh that's just Glenn Beck being Glenn Beck, but the other part of me knows that a whole lot of people take him seriously. And this time he went after an area that I care a whole lot about, and that is, the church being about the business of the gospel. Glenn Beck says that if you belong to a church that cares about social justice, then you belong to a church that is using code words for communism and Nazism. I belong to a church (not just a local congregation, but a denomination) that over and over again affirms our commitment to social justice.

This morning, Rev. David Jones of Glenn Memorial UMC in Atlanta delivered a sermon in his sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. The topic this morning focused on the prayer's petition for the Lord to "give us this day our daily bread." Bible scholars let us know that the daily bread is a reference to the Israelites in the Exodus wilderness receiving daily manna that they were to gather daily and only enough for the day. As David Jones continued to flesh out the history of the daily bread, he made a statement that struck me deeply. He suggested that Jesus is not just teaching us a prayer in the Lord's prayer but teaching us about all manners of things. And one of the things we find when we pray--not to my father, but to our father--is that around God's table we should be learning to pass the bread from our father to our brothers and sisters.

When Jesus was asked, "Teacher, what is the greatest commandment?" his answer seemed like two separate things, but he was drawing the two together so that they could not be separated. First, love the Lord with all your heart, mind, and soul, and second, love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:36-40) The love of God and the love of neighbor cannot possibly be separated. To love God means to love neighbor and to love neighbor is an act of devotion towards God. When David Jones said this morning that the church ought to see itself as a bread truck, he got an Amen from me.

So, Glenn Beck, if you think me a communist, then so be it.