Wednesday, April 8, 2015

Acts 6:29-31a                                                               

But Peter and the apostles answered, ‘We must obey God rather than any human authority. The God of our ancestors raised up Jesus, whom you had killed by hanging him on a tree. God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior.

A joy beyond

There are truths that must be spoken, joys that must be shared and love that cannot be denied or held inside.

Peter knew. He knew a Life evil cannot kill, a Love death cannot destroy. He knew God keeps the promise of life and always will. And he had to speak. No human command or power could stop him.

That’s what I want for us all, O Lord. I want to know Christ alive and loving, resurrected and real. I want to know you in every love that comes and every day that dawns.

Knowing you fills my heart beyond its capacity to hold it in. Grace and joy, blessing and beauty flow from depths of my being--no, not from but through my heart from the boundless source of grace you are.

And in the speaking and sharing I know a joy beyond any other in life. It is the joy of feeling myself in this boundless flow of a Love that never runs dry.

I am part of this flow that carries me and all who know the Love you are through this life and into the fullness of your eternal embrace.

It is for this that you made us, Holy One, to know this Love filling and spilling from us so that we must speak and share the Love that cannot be denied.

It is the fulfillment of our humanity.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

2 Samuel 6:14-15                                                               

David danced before the Lord with all his might; David was girded with a linen ephod. So David and all the house of Israel brought up the ark of the Lord with shouting, and with the sound of the trumpet.

Carried away

The ark, symbol and presence of the Holy One, is carried into the city, but it is David who gets carried away. He dances in the street, his heart bursting with the uncontainable joy of knowing you, O Lord. 

I see him, and I know him. In precious moments, I am him. And every single soul of us is invited to join him in the dance. Sometimes it happens.

I lift my hands high on Easter morning surrounded by children. They lead the congregation calling out, “Jesus is risen.”

“Alleluia,” the assembly erupts in reply, and we are lifted out of our everyday selves into the fullness of the joy we are invited to know—not just on Easter, but every day.

Ecstasy is the word. We are raised out of ourselves, beyond preoccupation with what we know and how we look. Normal worries and cares evaporate in the warmth of communal joy as resurrected Love is known and shared.

Lifted out of ourselves, ironically, we become who we are. You transform us, Holy One, into the people of love and joy you made us to be when you formed us in the image of you who are Love.

And for one blessed moment, we join David in his crazy, holy dance and know what it means to be a human being.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, April 2, 2015

 Revelation 12:1-2

A great portent appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. She was pregnant and was crying out in birth pangs, in the agony of giving birth.

Pregnant with life

With each morning a challenge comes. Shall I rise above the lethargy that longs only for my bed, or shall I come here and seek you, Holy One? Shall I descend the stairs once more that my fingers may find the keys and my mind the words that open my heart?

Shall I come to this candle-lit space that I might know you and be raised from sleep once more?

Resurrection is not only an event but a practice to be renewed each day. Our souls are pregnant with life.

The One who is Love waits to be born again in us that we may know the exhilaration of love that is Love passing from the womb of our souls, through our lips and fingertips to speak and touch this world.

We give birth again to you whose birth within brings joy that shines in our eyes and spills from our hearts.  

These seem strange thoughts, but they are true to your people in every age. We, your people, are the woman clothed with the sun, pregnant with you.

Will is required for the new to be born and raise us to life, the will to pray or sing, to listen or see, to serve or to just keep trying to do the good when it is easier to quit. Such is the labor that delivers life.

For me, it requires the will to get out of bed listen again to your word (even strange passages like this one). I listen to you, to life and to my heart, and the birth of Spirit within my spirit comes.

You are born again in me, and I am alive with life that does not die. Resurrection comes once more with joy and hope so much brighter than my candles. 

That’s the way it works. It’s why I come here.

Pr. David L. Miller

Tuesday, March 31, 2015

1 Corinthians 5:7-8

Clean out the old yeast so that you may be a new batch, as you really are unleavened. For our paschal lamb, Christ, has been sacrificed. Therefore, let us celebrate the festival, not with the old yeast, the yeast of malice and evil, but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.

As you are

Who are we?

We are not a people bound by the past, stuck in old sins and patterns that hold us fast in the mire of soulless living.

Resurrection power lives in our souls. Christ stirs within, raising our hopes and vision, transforming us into more than we ever thought we could be.

We are people of the resurrection, souls in whom the light of day casts out night. The joy of hope drives out despair and the presence of love awakens peace … and the passion to be the love we know.

Christ has broken death’s grip. He lives not far off but within the processes of history, in the fabric of life and in movements of our hearts.

He is the whisper reminding us anew, “You are more than you think. You bear the life who is life, the love who is Love.

“Lift yourself above the passion to pay evil for evil, beyond surrender to petty angers and grudges, above the anxious need to prove you are important. 

“And do not diminish yourself or what you can do. For you are a vessel of my life with the power to bless and lift others into the fullness of who they are as my blessed children.”

“The festival of life has come. All things are new, including you.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, March 30, 2015

March 30, 2015

Luke 24:1-3

But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they came to the tomb, taking the spices that they had prepared. They found the stone rolled away from the tomb, but when they went in, they did not find the body.

It’s dawn

It was dawn when they went to the tomb to care for their friend’s body. It was dawn when they discovered he was not there.

It was dawn. But they didn't know it was a new day when the promise of life was fulfilled.

Now every new dawn is new. The weight of yesterday need not encumber the freshness of morning. Fear of tomorrow need not cloud the horizon.

Each day is new. Each is laced with hope for the fullness of the One who always was and will be is present and can be known in every love, every beauty and every grace that touches our flesh.

Every morning glimmers with the dawn of eternal light, of everlasting day because the One who is Life and Love lives.

Today … whatever it is and brings … can be embraced in hope with love for we know that whatever else it holds … it holds you, Holy One, and you hold us.

Amazed, Peter ran to the empty tomb. But amazement is not enough and not nearly what you want for us. Amazement is not joy. It is not trust and anticipation that the Risen Love you are will meet us on the way, making each day new not just a weary repetition of what was.

You rise to make us new, transformed by Love into the Love that rises anew every day.

It is dawn. Tomorrow has come. The future has dawned. Eternity appears now in the crazy, complicated mess of living.

It is dawn. The promise of life shines fresh.  Give us the eyes to see and the heart to know you, the morning light of eternal Love in each new day.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, March 28, 2015

Matthew 27:59-60

So Joseph took the body and wrapped it in a clean linen cloth and laid it in his own new tomb, which he had hewn in the rock. He then rolled a great stone to the door of the tomb and went away.

Salvation had come

Care and sorrow … I am not sure which most moves me. Joseph tenderly wraps Jesus broken body, covering the oozing wounds, a final act of love for someone he barely knew—a man who had awakened a hope in his heart he did not understand.

He seals the body in a tomb, behind a great rock, with even deeper sadness. The flame of hope Jesus sparked now gone, extinguished, his word, all he was, soon to be forgotten. Buried hope.

Care and sorrow. They are not two emotions but the expression of a single truth. The love that filled Jesus awakens an answering love in those willing to hear and feel what was in him. Make that who was in him.

This is the way it works. The Love who fills Jesus awakens the Love that is God’s presence in the lives of those who listen and hear.

Maybe Joseph was moved by the dignity of Jesus presence, undeterred from his mission by the powers that would crush him. Maybe his hope was stirred by Jesus vision of another kind of world, a kingdom ruled not by love of power but by the power of love.

Maybe Joseph didn't have a clue what moved him to care for Jesus and grieve his destruction.

What is clear is the love Jesus awakened in his depths. And with that love, salvation had come to him, even as he tenderly wrapped that broken body and anointed those terrible wounds.

Joseph could not have known his buried hopes were about to be born.

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, March 26, 2015

[Good Friday thoughts a little early]

John 19:30

When Jesus had received the wine, he said, ‘It is finished.” Then he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Not finished … ever 

Well, it’s done. Over. Finished. A long day’s dying is complete, and the forces that that refuse the One who is Love have won … again.

The world stays the same. The attempt to force the wheel of history to a course beyond the constant,  cycle of living and dying, gaining and losing has lost. And the cynics are correct. The more things change, the more they remain the same.

Nothing has changed.

Our hopes for something truly new under the sun and in our hearts can be sealed in a tomb and locked away. We can try to forget the fire of passion Jesus awakened in our breasts and go on living, doing the best we can, knowing tomorrow is not a new day but the same old day over and over again until the grave finally swallows us up, too.

He is gone and too soon is all we see and love. It is finished.

No … never. For the Love that was … and is … in Jesus the Christ has completed its course of loving this world … and us … to the end, giving itself to reveal and glorify of the Love who is always and always will be.

The Love Christ is has reached the depths of human experience and revealed the height of the Love our minds and hearts cannot imagine.

What is finished is death. What is finished is guilt and shame. What is finished is our separation from the Love whom our hearts require to be full and whole.

What is finished is all the sin and pain that mars the wonder of creation and our precious lives. It is defeated by Christ who absorbed it all and gave back only the beauty of One Love who filled him.

What is done is the need to wonder if Love or death reigns. We have seen Jesus dying on the cross where Love is crowned and the glory of God made clear.

Soon the world shall see … a new day is about to dawn. It’s still Friday, but Sunday is coming.

Pr. David L. Miller

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

1 Corinthians 11:26

For as often as you eat of this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.

Circle of hope

My favorite experience of the Eucharist occurs every summer when we move our early service from the church building to a nearby park. Gathering under 100 year-old oaks in a grassy field, we form a circle around a table—one people, around one table with one loaf, one cup at the center.

Standing beneath those old trees, we hear birds sing as early morning sun warms our cheeks. We soak in the greening of creation, knowing all we are and see is a gift beyond our making. And we receive the bread that makes our circle a holy place where we know who Christ is and what heaven is like.

The great giving of Christ comes alive. It is the reason we are there, standing with open hands to receive what he freely gives. Standing together, we are connected to each other and millions more in a great circle with Christ at the center, a community of hope.

That circle is our hope—and God’s holy dream for all creation. We hope that every soul of every land and time will be drawn into this circle of sharing to know loving union with Christ and all that Christ loves.

No one ever asks if Christ is present in our Sunday circle. There is no need. We just look around … and know.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday March 23, 2015

Isaiah 49:6

It is too light a thing that you should be my servant
   to raise up the tribes of Jacob
   and to restore the survivors of Israel;
I will give you as a light to the nations,
   that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.’ 

In your eyes

I imagine your eyes, Jesus. Sometimes I truly see them and know what is there.

The tenderness in your eyes when you held and blessed children brings tears. But I also love the fire and anger there when you threw money changers from the temple and railed against arrogant Pharisees who parsed the law but cared nothing for the poor.

It is easy for me to see compassion in your eyes as your head turned side-to-side surveying the longing crowd, who were like sheep without a shepherd. Your eyes reveal your frustration over the dullness disciples who failed to understand you. And I see the quiet that filled them as you prayed by the lake.

Most painful is the desperation and pain as they tied you to a stake and whipped you bloody. I can barely look into your eyes then.

You are so real to me, and your eyes are lights into your soul, no, into the soul of the Loving Mystery who filled you.

Your eyes are a light, revealing the heart of the One who longs for us.

I look into your eyes and know what I need to know. But the mystery I see in you shines, too, in other eyes that glisten with the light of God, speaking a surprising love that finds and fills me even in these morning hours.

Two words: Thank you … for what I know in your eyes.

Pr. David L. Miller

Saturday, March 21, 2015

Isaiah 42:1

Here is my servant, whom I uphold,
   my chosen, in whom my soul delights;
I have put my spirit upon him;

He will bring forth justice to the nations.

Our hope

The Spirit of God’s Holy Presence is gentle and strong, tender to the weak, challenging to the oppressor and a word of hope for we who hunger to see and know God in our lives.

We see the Spirit of the Holy One in the lives of those who know how to love, how to give from their heart.

We know God not in acts of power that protect us from the normal troubles of life, but in the lives of those who lift the hearts of those beaten down by disease, prejudice and forces of history they cannot control. We see the Spirit in those who seek justice for those denied the blessings God intends for every human soul.

They radiate the beauty of God. They give hope where it is failing. They are a light amid the darkness that sometimes engulfs human hearts.

The Spirit is the presence of the Love God is, healing broken hearts and standing with those oppressed.

There is a new atheism taking hold in western nations that rejects God as unreal. But the god they reject is not the God we meet Isaiah, the One who sends his servant to bring freedom to an enslaved people and who tenderly cares for the weak.

They do not see Jesus as that Spirit-filled servant of the One who refuses to pay back evil for evil, but who loves amid the forces of rejection. This God is God, our hope.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, March 16, 2015

Luke 22:19

Then he took a loaf of bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and gave it to them, saying, ‘This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.’

For you

I feel your heart, Jesus, and more than anything I want all who are near to feel it, too.

It happens most every week. I hold high the loaf and repeat your words. “This is my body … broken … for you.” Some days I can barely say them as tears of knowing fill my eyes.

I know you as the words cross my lips and I break the bread. If I should be so bold, I feel what you felt. I know your desire. I know what you wanted your friends to know: “This is my life, my love, yes … the infinite love of God … for you.

“It is my delight and deepest desire to give you this life. I want you to break bread, remember and know … there is a Love who always wants you, always treasures you, a Love who has known you since before the birth of time. Always know.

“Oh, you will forget. You will get lose yourself in the details of living. You will know hurt and shame and disappointment and begin to doubt that my love is real. You will fail me … and yourself. Sometimes, you will feel lost and a million miles from me. And the deep desires of your heart will not always come true, perhaps not ever.

“But even then, especially then … hear my words, receive this bread … and know what is in my heart … for you.”

Pr. David L. Miller

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Matthew 1:18-21

Now the birth of Jesus the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, ‘Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.’

Believe the dream

Thanks, Joseph. Thanks for believing the dream. Your dream is a gift to me. It lives in me, no … in us.

You dreamed that God truly is the Love who conquers the distance between our souls and the Soul of God—that we may know the fullness of God’s loving presence.

But your dreaming is even more audacious, for you dream that your quiet little life will serve a role in making God’s dream come true.

You believe it, and do what needs to be done to protect Mary and the child who is the presence of God’s heart on this earth. You did what God’s dream called you to do and because you did … we know the heart of God.

Joseph never speaks in the Bible, not one word. He appears at this important point in the story of Jesus birth then disappears from the scene. He is not around when Jesus is dies on the cross. He certainly never knew of the resurrection. By then he had finished his job likely had died long before.

He is like so many of God’s people who live quiet lives serving their church, sharing the love that is in them through their jobs and families, faithfully worshiping, giving to causes that serve the needy.

Their efforts, often in the background, keep Christ’s church alive and ticking so that it can love and bless God’s world in ways they may not ever see.

But they do it anyway because they believe God is working … even through them … to make God’s holy dream come true.

Pr. David L. Miller 

Tuesday, March 10, 2015

 Philippians 2:5-6

Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, 
who, though he was in the form of God,
   did not regard equality with God
   as something to be exploited, 

The gift of Love

Moments come when I am aware of Christ’s mind within my own. I do not possess it, nor do I do anything to create it. It is just there, a Great Heart within my own, filled with love, pulsing, warm and wanting to be given away in love for this crazy world and its myriad needs.

Sometimes it comes in the presence of someone’s need. Sometimes it is awakened by the painted sky of a spring sunrise, brush strokes of pink and purple over a pale blue horizon.

At other times, the mind of Christ fills the heart when one knows great love, a love that is the gift of the One is the Great Love.

Bible stories say Jesus sometimes slipped from the crowds and his friends to be alone, to listen to the waves, to watch the moon finish its course and to hear to the Heart within his heart. He went to pray and know union, holy communion, with the Love that filled him, the Love he called Abba, Father.  

Oneness with the Love God is set Jesus free to give himself to the purpose of God. He surrendered to suffering and a brutal death not as an act of will but from the fullness of heart that comes when one knows God’s all-surpassing love.

The mind of Christ is the gift of the Great Love. It blossoms as we take time and make space to listen for the Heart within our own heart … and know the Love who holds us.

Pr. David L. Miller

Monday, March 9, 2015

Psalm 31:14-16

But I trust in you, O Lord;
   I say, ‘You are my God.’ 
My times are in your hand;
   deliver me from the hand of my enemies and persecutors. 
Let your face shine upon your servant;
   save me in your steadfast love.

Always, with hope

I saw Bette today, and I blessed her but not nearly as much as she blessed me.

She will soon pass into your arms, Loving Mystery. Blessing her was not hard, for she is dying the same way she has lived—with grace and great love for her family and friends.

She opens her arms to receive me, filled with loving gratitude for the beauty of life and the rich goodness of all she has received in her 87 years.

She knows what Jesus knew as he faced the end of his ministry—her days and years, moments and final hours rest … always … in the hands of grace immeasurable, love unspeakable, beauty indescribable.

We sing Amazing Grace and say the Lord’s Prayer, and she receives the blessed sacrament one more time. Marking her head with the sign of the cross, I remind her … one more time … that she is yours, Holy One … in life and death.

All is well, even here as she lies in the bed from which she will soon pass into your arms. She knows your loving face has shined on her even in her most difficult moments and years … and always will.

The grace she has received fills her with grace even now.

Blessed are your saints, Loving God. They teach us how to live--always with hope, knowing … our times are in the hands of a Love greater than we know.

Pr. David L. Miller

March 2, 2015

Mark 6:30-34

The apostles gathered around Jesus, and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, ‘Come away to a deserted place all by yourselves and rest a while.’ For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a deserted place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they hurried there on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them. As he went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and he began to teach them many things. 

Come close … and know

Sheep without a shepherd do not know where to find food or safety. So I suppose it is not surprising that these few words are followed by the story of Jesus breaking bread and giving it to the crowd. There was enough for everyone with plenty left over.

That’s the point. Jesus has enough for me, for you, with plenty left over, and the bread he breaks is the teaching, words of truth and grace that come from his depths … and give us his life.

His invitation is the same today as then: “Come close … and know me. You will know a glow of grace that illumines your soul and tells you your life is treasured and safe in the arms of the Mystery who made you and all that is.

“Come close. That which is in me will feed you and fill the empty place within, the lonely place where you do not know who you are or what life is about.

“Come close … and know … there is a love and mystery here that defies every attempt to explain it, a Presence that revives the soul and makes every day fresh and new, filled with hope.”

Life and hope start by coming near, bringing the hunger of our days … and hearing what he says, so the emptiness within may be fed and filled by him.

That’s is why I am here again by radiant candle. It’s an old story by now. I come to be fed, my soul made alive, filled with light and my eyes with tears by this Jesus who looks with compassion not only on crowds long ago but on me.

Every morning he invites me to come close and know. So I pray and write, I read of him and find him, too, in the wonder of full hearts … who know what I know, who know who he is and feel the wonder of what is him.

I come close … so I may always know and never forget.

Pr. David L. Miller