Monday Morning Music Ministry

4-13-26

In St Paul’s first letter to the Church in Corinth, he challenged believers to consider who they were, their identity as Christians… and, importantly, how to explore those vital questions.

Now you are the body of Christ, and members individually. And God has appointed these in the church: first apostles, second prophets, third teachers, after that miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, administrations, varieties of tongues. Are all apostles? Are all prophets? Are all teachers? Are all workers of miracles? Do all have gifts of healings? Do all speak with tongues? Do all interpret? But earnestly desire the best gifts. And yet I show you a more excellent way (27-31).

These questions are rhetorical: of course we do not all possess every secular or spiritual gift. And God has us not only desiring gifts – talents and ministries – but receiving them. We all have some special aptitude. God has not favored any of His children over others!

Continuing his analogy of the members of the body of Christ being as parts of a physical body, he wrote:

If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I am not of the body,” is it therefore not of the body? If the whole body were an eye, where would be the hearing? If the whole were hearing, where would be the smelling? But now God has set the members, each one of them, in the body just as He pleased. And if they were all one member, where would the body be? (15-19)

As important as, say, the brain is, or the torso, what functional benefit would there be if other parts were absent? As humans – as Christians in life – where would we be? Of what use to ourselves, to others, to God?

But now indeed there are many members, yet one body. And the eye cannot say to the hand, “I have no need of you”; nor again the head to the feet, “I have no need of you.” No, much rather, those members of the body which seem to be weaker are necessary. And those members of the body which we think to be less honorable, on these we bestow greater honor; and our unpresentable parts have greater modesty, but our presentable parts have no need. But God composed the body, having given greater honor to that part which lacks it, that there should be no schism in the body, but that the members should have the same care for one another. And if one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; or if one member is honored, all the members rejoice with it. (20-26)

Let us carry this forward from the First Century to our day, although the principles laid out by St Paul are pertinent to all people of all places and times. That is: I grieve that there are many Christians who grow comfortable – no matter how thankful they are to God, and perhaps a bit too humble – as they believe that Salvation is a way-station in their spiritual growth… but is sufficient enough to allow neglect of their spiritual growth. I am not arguing for a Gospel of works; Salvation is enough to secure eternity with God in Heaven…

But the teachings of Jesus, the commands of Almighty God, and the lessons of the New Covenant make abundantly clear that eternal security also frees us (and commits us) to “do these things that Christ did” – to be like Christ, to minister, to share the Gospel. He commanded us to “go into all the world.”

Oh? And do what?

The manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills (4-11).

The Lord has given us marching orders. Do we dare ignore them… think that they are not for us? You are a slacker, a deserter, AWOL, if you think that neglecting His gifts is OK! I sugget an agenda for Christians. Not my words, but Christ’s through these passages.

You have spiritual gifts – actually spiritual obligations. Even if it is “merely” one gift, identify it. If you can’t identify it from past experiences, then pray that God reveal it to you.

Once you have discerned what your gift is (and we mean ministry, not born-again Salvation, which we all share) step out and exercise it! You don’t have to stage-manage a script: God will provide opportunities before you blink.

“Step out”? Instead of praying for “God’s will” over a sick friend, pray for healing! What a concept! – God will do His will, after all, but He wants to receive the desires of our hearts. Speak wisdom as the Spirit inspires you! Don’t only pray for comfort: be comfort as only a Christian sister or brother can be! Be Christ to those who need Him. Obey God’s prompting!

My suggestion, by yourselves spontaneously or in your fellowship or congregations: Instead of pinning a name tag with your name, “Hi! My name is…” write your ministry gift. “Hi! I exercise my Gift of Hospitality!” or “Hi! Please call on me when you need prayer!” or “Hi! Can I share how God helped me overcome?”

There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. (5,6)

Included in these “Name-Tag” Suggestions,” by the way, are not instructions to see results or put notches in your belt. Those are the Holy Spirit’s proper follow-up duties. God wants us not so much to be “successful” but obedient.

And remember that what we might call “orders” or “instructions”… God identifies as gifts.

+ + +

Click: God Leads Us Along

4-6-26

But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. 2 Peter 3:8

My version of this basic truth is in a child-rearing context, that the days drag on, yet the years seem to whiz by. An anomaly. And for God, infinitely wiser and more just than any of His mortals, I wonder how He must be amused (or perplexed) that we seldom apply His perspective. He hears intense debates about whether His universe is 6000 or billions of years old; He must grieve that humankind has always speculated about life on other planets, but is so casual about killing lives on the earth He made for us.

Yet we go on our way. Have we learned bitter lessons? Have we learned from mistakes and horrible sins? Have we learned anything from the precepts of God that He has offered freely so we may be spared of consequences?

My framing of the question about condensed time is inspired by meditating on Holy Week… and from today’s headlines as well. The events – I should say the very fact – of Jesus’s earthly life is as fresh and relevant today as when the Incarnate Lord walked among mankind. And, of course, He lives today in our hearts and through the Holy Spirit. It is further the case that the truths He shared are not relics of other times and other cultures! It is, parenthetically, the reason in King James translations many of the verbs are italicized to read in the present tense: everything about the Savior is the same yesterday, today, and forever. “He changeth not.”

In a “micro” sense, to borrow from contemporary parlance, this week I am struck by the similarities between the few years encompassing the weeks of Jesus’s birth and Jesus’s death. Famously, Mary and Joseph found “no room in the inns” and Jesus was born in a humble stable – a gentle but striking representation of the Divine affinity with humanity; no respecter of persons, the Lord is accessible to all.

What are we confronting two millennia later? A raging bloodbath in the Middle East, including upon the very sand where Jesus walked. The footprints of Abraham, too, father of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Mohammad walked on those sands. And so many figures central to the world’s faiths. In the City of Peace. The region, however, has always endured anything but peace, and we know that “wars and rumors of wars” will beset us.

But these very days are very different. News reports are published and denied; press releases obscure facts; policies change when leaders are embarrassed. However the thrust of the horrifying news this week is literally unprecedented. I am a voracious consumer of news from various sources around the world – one has to be in the era of biased media – and the situation seems to be clear that a genocidal Israeli government, openly declaring a crusade for a “Greater Zion” that would stretch from the Mediterranean to eastern Persia (Iran) and from the Nile to Turkey, has attacked, and dragooned its client the US to join, in deadly attacks on neighbors near and far. Collaterally, it has just annexed southern Lebanon, a country with, by the way, a Christian president. (Many American Christians, who blindly support Israel’s government, are not aware that the leaders of Iraq and Syria, murdered under our interventions, were tolerant of Christianity compared to their Zionist-approved successors.)

Numerous countries around the world have accused Israel of war crimes and will arrest its leader Netanyahu if he travels to their lands. The holocaust in Gaza – 70,000 slaughtered in response to the October 7 slaughter of 1200 – is one pretext for the war that has drawn the mighty United States into the vortex that pulls others into the bloodbath as well.

Offenses to the spirit and soul can be as grievous as to the body. For the first time during its occupation of Jerusalem, or that of any power, free access to holy sites has been completely denied… even, or specifically, during Holy Week. Israeli authorities blocked access to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to three clergymen – not the throng of pilgrims who traditionally gather to worship this week at the spot believed to be where Jesus was crucified and buried, but merely three priests. They were willing to comply with the edict even to broadcast their modest ceremony to the world. But they could not. “Security concerns,” yet the priests were willing to risk falling shrapnel or whatever the police “protected” them from.

Muslims were prevented with similar restrictions from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque (a familiar ban) but 50 rabbis at a time are permitted to remove slips of paper from the Wailing Wall, an annual event at the old Roman edifice. Authorities have claimed to be reconsidering these bans on Christian worship, but the pilgrims will be prevented from retracing Jesus’s Walk where He carried His cross. These pilgrims are willing to face death, as Jesus did, to exercise their faith, but Israel wants to shield them from stray bombs, it says. (I am waiting for a “stray bomb” to somehow find its way to the Dome of Rock, so Israel may conveniently build its “Third Temple” in its place. (Christians – like the American so-called Christian Zionists mentioned above – have forgotten that Jesus declared Himself to be the Temple of prophecy, the fulfilled Seed of Abraham, not a new building).

In the meantime, returning to the nearby “yesterday” of history, how can we ignore the similarities between the persecution of Christ and His followers in that first Holy Week and current events? How can we not hear the guttural demands of crowds who ignore the many evidences of fulfilled prophecies before their eyes? – any convenient Barabbas will do today. Jesus is still being persecuted by those who have not given up; the main difference today is that multitudes of those who call themselves Christians are complicit! Heads of state, even of largely secular countries, have condemned Israel, but the American Ambassador Huckabee, an ordained Baptist minister, has only called the closing of the Holy Sites an “unfortunate over-reach.” Neither has President Trump condemned the bans.

Ecco Homo – “Behold the man,” Pontius Pilate said in a futile attempt to change the minds of the Jewish mob as Jesus’s death was demanded. This year, can we put aside bunnies and Easter-egg hunts and imagine, through space and time, whether we too would be spitting at the Prince of Peace, or serving Him. We still have that choice.

+ + +

Click: Please Bring Peace to Palestine