Monday - January 15, 2024
Thomas Riggs
SCRIPTURE
Deuteronomy 34:1a, 4-5
Moses went up from the plains of Moab to Mount Nebo, to the top of Mount Pisgah east of Jericho, and there the LORD showed him the whole land … Then the LORD said to Moses, “This is the land that I promised Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob I would give to their descendants. I have let you see it, but I will not let you go there.”
So, Moses, the LORD’s servant, died there in the land of Moab, as the LORD had said he would.
WORDS OF HOPE
The day before his assassination in 1968, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. gave what would be his final speech in Memphis. In that speech, King described just how far their movement for civil rights had come. Acknowledging that there was still much work to do, he rejoiced in what God was doing in the hearts and minds of people around the world.
He referenced a scene where God showed Moses the Promised Land. Although Moses would not enter the land himself, this passage from Deuteronomy tells of how Moses could see the promise unfolding before him. With sad irony, King laid out how he too could see the promised land on what would be the day before his death. Like Moses, King was also not to enter that Promised Land.
It’s been over 55 years since King made that speech at the Mason Temple in Memphis and many still believe that King would still be waiting to enter that promised land. For many, the day of entry has been further delayed because of the events of this period in our history.
From the banning of books in public schools to the closing of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion offices in public institutions of higher education, the dream of the promised land is being delayed even further. From banning healthcare for transgender teens to banning reproductive choices for women, the distance to the promised land gets further and further away.
What did King have to say about this? What is the answer? He laid it out in that Memphis speech:
“Now, what does all of this mean in this great period of history? It means that we've got to stay together. We've got to stay together and maintain unity. You know, whenever Pharaoh wanted to prolong the period of slavery in Egypt, he had a favorite, favorite formula for doing it. What was that? He kept the slaves fighting among themselves. But whenever the slaves get together, something happens in Pharaoh's court, and he cannot hold the slaves in slavery. When the slaves get together, that's the beginning of getting out of slavery. Now let us maintain unity.”
On this day of celebration for the life of Martin Luther King, Jr., we are called by God to take to the streets, to queue up at the voting booth, and to advocate for those on the margins. We are called to see each other’s struggles for freedom as our own struggle. We must and always see not only to our own causes, but to see the causes of our brothers and sisters and non-binaries as our own. We are called to unity. For only in that moment, can we take our steps to enter the Promised Land.
PRAYER
A prayer by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. :
O God, the Creator and Preserver of all mankind; In whom to dwell is to find peace and security; toward whom to turn is to find life and life eternal, we humbly beseech Thee for all sorts and conditions of men; that thou wouldst be pleased to make thy ways known unto them, Thy saving health unto all nations. We also pray for Thy holy Church universal; that it may be so guided and governed by thy Spirit, that all who profess and call themselves Christians may be led into the way of truth, and hold the faith in unity of spirit, in the land of peace, and in righteousness of life. Amen.
DEVOTION AUTHOR
Thomas Riggs
Need Some Inspiration? Read our Daily Devotions
SCRIPTURE Isaiah 51:1 Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, you who seek the Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. WORDS OF HOPE Knowing where I came from is important, especially in my faith journey. Isaiah speaks of the “rock from which we were hewn” and in my case I feel that is my history being raised as a Jew. My family were Reform Jews. We didn’t keep Kosher and our brand of Judaism was what we would call Progressive today. My mother was raised Christian and she converted when she married my father. She did her best to become a Jewish Mother, sometimes almost stereotypically so. But, the unique blending of faiths gave me a surprisingly strong foundation to build on. What I tell people now is that since converting to Christianity and joining Cathedral of Hope I have become a better Jew. What I mean is, Jesus was teaching Judaism. He was a Jew. He is often referred to as “rabbi” in scripture if you are looking for proof. Jesus was the first progressive Jew, and that’s why his teachings resonate with me so strongly. As I head into the Lenten season, the ashes on my forehead remind me of the quarry from which I was dug and the dust which someday I will again become. It is not a bad thing to know our impermanence. It reminds us of that which is eternal and something that transcends all divisions and descriptions. PRAYER May we build our faith on a strong foundation and understand that God’s grace will support us in whatever we do. DEVOTION AUTHOR Hardy Haberman
SCRIPTURE Galatians 3.28 There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. WORDS OF HOPE Understanding On this Black History Month, we see a lot of division in our country, but we also are experiencing a time of quest for unity. If humanity is to come together, then it will be with the effort of humble people who try to understand one another. When you try to understand others, those same people will try to understand you. Most friendships that last happen because of the effort that was put into the relationships. Whatever you give is what you eventually get back. Someone who seeks to understand you is that much more likely to get your understanding than someone who shows little interest in your thoughts and feelings. The many who spend their lifetime trying to be understood often never get anywhere because if everyone is speaking at the same time, then there is no one listening. Wanting to be understood is not bad, but if your happiness depends on another’s approval, then what will you do when they criticize you? There are great people who are never understood in their own lifetime, and after they are re-discovered by the next generation, are spoken very highly of. The more you are able to understand others, the more you’ll be able to speak to your generation. Being understanding is not about what you know as much as it is about your attitude. By listening often, you show that you value others and teach others to do the same. It is extremely lonely when no one around you understands you, but it is not something you can force. If you never listen to others, then who will listen to you? Listening is not just about being silent; listening in making an effort to see what the other person is seeing. It does not mean that you must always agree or never have something to say. Instead, show that you care. This may mean that you have to wait a while to be understood, but don’t give up hoping that you will be one day. You may find only one person who truly understands you and you’ll be doing better than some great people who never found anyone who was able to. Always remember, God understands you, and you never have to go far to find God. PRAYER All knowing One, You are not understood by many, and yet, You love us. Help us to be as patient. When we are overlooked and criticized falsely, please remind us of our own worth. Bless You Spirit, because You know who we are. May we feel the love You have for us, and may we be at peace within ourselves. Bless You Jesus, the One who knows what it means to be misunderstood. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Jonathon McClellan Order of St. Francis and St. Clare
SCRIPTURE Acts 7:33-34 Then the Lord said to him, ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground. I have indeed seen the oppression of my people in Egypt. I have heard their groaning and have come down to set them free. Now come, I will send you back to Egypt. – WORDS OF HOPE In the seventh chapter of the book of Acts, the disciple known as Stephen is brought before the Sanhedrin and made to testify. For the length of the chapter, Stephen tells God’s story of salvation from Abraham to Joseph to Moses, including Moses encounter with God on Mount Sinai. It’s a familiar story to us, especially if you’ve seen Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments or sang the song We Are Standing on Holy Ground while holding hands at the end of Cathedral of Hope’s worship service. For Black theologians, the concept of Standing on Holy Ground isn’t necessarily reverential or worshipful. For Howard Thurman, James Cone, and other Black theologians, “standing on holy ground” is not a call to retreat from the world, but it is an awakening to God’s presence in the midst of struggle, suffering, and resistance. God says to Moses that she has seen the oppression of Her people in Egypt. He has heard their groaning. They have come down to set the people free. The burning bush appears while Israel groans under Egypt’s whip. For the disinherited, standing on holy ground means reclaiming dignity when the world says you have none. The ground becomes holy, says Howard Thurman, when a person refuses to accept degradation and listens for the divine underneath the noise of oppression. For James Cone, Black suffering in a racist society is precisely where God speaks and acts. Holy ground is slave quarters, jails, protest marches, and halls where truth is spoken to power. The ground is holy because God shows up where pain is real. It’s where God identifies with the oppressed. I have seen them. I have heard them. I am coming to set them free. In the Black church tradition, holy ground is communal and embodied. And you don’t go tippy-toe on it; you testify on it. Shoes come off to acknowledge that God has already claimed this space. God is already present where liberation is being demanded. In these days where Minnesotans toes are freezing, that ice covered sidewalk is holy ground. Wherever Black men and women have stood before the baton and the dogs, that street is holy ground. The question is this: When and where are we being called to stand in solidarity with God, remove our shoes, and stand on holy ground. PRAYER Holy God, you see the suffering of your people and hear every groan, and you make holy the ground where courage, resistance, and hope take root. Open our eyes to recognize your presence in places of struggle, and give us the courage to stand in solidarity, to remove our shoes, and to refuse the lie that any person lacks dignity. Send us, as you sent Moses, to stand where liberation is needed, to testify to your justice, and to walk with you until all your people are free. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Thomas Riggs
SCRIPTURE Mark 12:28-31 One of the scribes came near…and asked Jesus, “Which commandment is the first of all?” Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one; you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.” WORDS OF HOPE If You Want to Love Others, Love Yourself Very Well Empathy—the ability to understand and to share the feelings of others—is essential to the development of the human condition. Respected anthropologist Margaret Mead knew this. When Dr. Mead was once asked what she considered to be the signs of the beginning of civilization, she pointed to a healed femur, the large thigh bone. It had been uncovered at an ancient archeological site. Someone had broken their femur, which meant certain death. They couldn’t run away from predators, forage for food, or go to water for drink. Someone had to care for them for the many weeks it took the femur to heal. Compassion, empathy, steadfast care are marks of civilization—humanity at its finest. Various spiritual traditions have known that too. For both Judaism and followers of Jesus, the greatest commandment is to love God and to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. The healthy child that has been nurtured and loved has an innate gift of self-love, compassion, strength and empathy. Sometimes, childhood wounds can cause us to shrink under the weight of shame. When we are burdened by childhood experiences of doing wrong or being deeply wounded by others, this weight can be carried well into our adult life. This requires mindful self-compassion. Our intentional focus of healing ourselves through grounding, connection, seeking help, and letting go. When we are consciously caring for ourselves, both physically and emotionally, we strengthen our connection with our Higher Power and with others. From there, empathy, compassion and love can grow and flourish and we become healthier, attractive and more fulfilled human beings. Such work can transform a community, a nation, a world. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. uplifted the identity and value of people of color as equally worthy of respect and dignity. His wisdom was not merely about lifting the lives of black people. Dr. King aimed at liberating society and culture from oppressive beliefs and systems that kept civilization from flourishing. It is an ongoing journey and each of us plays a role we dare not forget. If you want to love God and others, love yourself very well. PRAYER Holy One, may I love myself well enough today so that my self-acceptance spills over to uplift the life of someone I know or meet. May it be so. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Rev. Dr. Gary Kindley, LPC Pastoral Psychotherapist drgk.org
READING “We who believe in freedom cannot rest until it comes.” Ella Baker “Justice cannot be attained until those who are not afflicted are as outraged as those who are.” Ella Baker WORDS OF HOPE Born in 1903 in Norfolk, Virginia, Ella Baker is known as the Mother of the Civil Rights Movement.* Her inspiration to stand strong in the face of oppression came early in life hearing the narratives about her maternal grandmother “Bet” Ross who was born into slavery in Halifax, North Carolina. One impactful story was how her grandmother refused to marry the man her slave owner had chosen as her husband, an act of personal integrity and resistance she would pay for with a beating and a sentence of hard labor in the fields. But it did not break her. She could always rally herself to attend to the celebrations at the plantation and dance until the early hours of the morning--evidence that her spirit was unbowed. Her mother set an early example of activism in her work with the Black Baptist Women’s Missionary movement, women who aspired to the values of strength, humility, piety, and selfless service. The values imprinted themselves in Ella and her siblings traveled with her for meetings. In high school and college at Shaw University in Raleigh, North Carolina, Baker would distinguish herself, graduating as Valedictorian and already engaging in resistance against unjust policies. In a time when the voices and vision of male leaders overshadowed women, she became a power and presence. In the 1920’s she traveled to New York to engage in social justice work and was swept up in the fervent artistic and intellectual life of the Harlem Renaissance. She held offices in the NAACP whose 117 th anniversary we celebrate today, becoming the highest-ranking woman as National Director of Branches, but she felt the organization was too bureaucratic and out of touch with the lives of ordinary black people. Later she helped organize the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King. After the Montgomery Bus Boycott in 1955, catalyzed by Rosa Parks’ refusal to give up her seat to a white passenger, Baker co-founded In Friendship to help support activism in the South and provide for the needs of those who had been incarcerated in protests. She did not forget “the nameless cooks and maids who walked endless miles for a year to bring about the breach in the walls of segregation.” Throughout her life she dedicated herself to the economic struggles of ordinary people, securing voting rights, nonviolent resistance, and organizing at the grass roots level. Developing young people’s gifts and skills for leadership was another of Baker’s passions. Rather than encouraging the young black college students who had protested segregated lunch counters in Greensboro, NC, to join SCLC, as Rev. Dr. King envisioned, she invited them to a meeting at her alma mater Shaw University, a gathering which would lead to the formation of The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). Such notables as Diane Nash, Marion Barry, and John Lewis were among these next generation leaders and all found her extraordinarily compelling. Howard Zinn, another of the respected elders of SNCC, remembers that one day as protesters were being released from jail, he saw Baker not exercising her rhetorical skills in the media spotlight, but sitting alone at a table, talking to each person, asking What do you need? Do you need a meal? Medical Care? Funds for being off work? In SNCC they spoke of her as Godmother and Fundi, a Swahili term that translates one who passes along skills from one generation to another. In a time when many political leaders are practicing erasure of the past of people of color and LGBT+ folks, let it be an act of resistance that here we resurrect the memory of this remarkable leader of the Civil Rights movement. PRAYER Grandmother, let your voice and vision come to us today, guiding us in the path of justice and non-violent resistance. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Dr. Pat Saxon
READING … Don't speak of love while practicing hate with tools of fear…. Rev. Gerald Dillenbeck WORDS OF HOPE I looked at the prompt for today’s devotion, “All the News That’s Fit to Print Day,” and thought to myself, “Well, this is going to be a very short reflection.” It is easy to make a list of what I consider “news” that is unfit for print; what do I consider print-worthy news? What do I consider “good news”? My thoughts went immediately to the Good News given to us in the Gospels of Jesus. Perhaps the most important good news that Jesus shares is the words of The Beatitudes (Matthew 5:3-10), spoken during his Sermon on the Mount. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Shortly after his baptism and temptation in the wilderness, Jesus spoke the words to a crowd, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” These words mark the beginning of his life as a preacher. The Sermon on the Mount, however, is said to be his first sermon. This led me to try to understand the difference between preaching and sermonizing. The two actions are used synonymously by many. Some say, however, that the distinction is that both are persuasive speaking, sermons are specifically delivered by a clergy person in a religious context. I then found an explanation that seemed to clarify things a little more for me. Preaching is intentionally persuasive and plays to our emotions. Sermons, on the other hand, are intended to convey information, facts, without the specific intention of eliciting an emotional response. I don’t know how accurate this distinction is, but it makes sense to me as to why Jesus’s words in Matthew 5 are called a sermon. They are informative words that Jesus is imparting to the crowd. They are the good news, the news worth printing. In these words of the Sermon on The Mount, or The Beatitudes, Jesus makes eight statements. He doesn’t use “scare tactics.” Jesus doesn’t speak of consequences. He simply makes eight statements. As we read them today, they are eight powerful statements, eight powerful statements that, if you think about it, are the sum of all of Jesus’s teaching throughout his ministry. Would the world perhaps feel a little more gentle and a little more hopeful if those who support public display of the Ten Commandments instead wanted to display, and more importantly to believe and live by, Jesus’s words from the Sermon on the Mount? PRAYER Dear God, let us give thanks for all those who were and are living examples of Jesus’s words and teaching, those who exemplify peace, pureness of heart, those who show mercy and a hunger for righteousness, those who mourn, those whose resilience rises as meekness. Today we remember with gratitude especially Richard Allen, Absalom Jones, James Varick, Harriet Tubman, Booker T. Washington, Mary McLeod Bethune, Marion Anderson, Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ruby Bridges, Fannie Lou Hamer, Barack Obama and all those brothers and sisters of color whose lives have made our world a better place for all of us. Amen. DEVOTION AUTHOR Kris Baker Order of St. Francis and St. Clare