Today’s Readings: Psalm 150; Numbers 24:12-25; Matthew 23:13-22; 1 Thessalonians 2:14-16; Psalm 13
Being a teacher is an incredibly demanding calling. Anyone who has done it will undoubtedly agree with me. Teaching is demanding for lots of reasons. One of those is the challenge of dealing with developing minds who are often looking for a way out (or – at the very least - a way around) the things you might ask of them. This can be tremendously taxing on the teacher. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I taught in a juvenile corrections facility so we had to be pretty strict about the behavioral rules in the classroom. One of those rules in the school was “Do not get out of your chair without permission from the teacher”. One day we had an emergency lock down due to an incident in the facility. When the alarm went off indicating student were to gather at their classroom door so they could be lead back to their cells, I was in the next classroom helping the neighboring teacher with something. Most of the kids in my classroom instinctively knew that the alarm meant they should line up at the door and get ready to move. One of my students, however, remained seated with a smug look on his face. When I returned to the classroom and asked him why he hadn’t gotten in line, he said: “The rules here say ‘do not get out of your chair without permission from the teacher’ so I followed them.” His words annoyed me because we both knew he wasn’t really trying to follow the rules; he was simply trying to get my goat. What he had lost sight of was the intent of the rule – which was to keep people safe so they didn’t get in trouble with other students while they wandering around. If he had truly understood the intent of the rules, he would have known what to do and not tried to slide by on a technicality. This is the same dynamic Jesus was trying to address in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew where he was addressing a group of people who were also looking for a way around things on technicalities. He got so frustrated that he called the group of religious authorities “frauds” and said: “Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom” (Matthew 23:13 from The Message). My situation with the student and Jesus’ encounter with the religious authorities remind me that its easy for us to become so enamored with the trappings of religion that we can lose sight of what’s most important – our living, breathing relationship with our Creator. Today, I would invite you to examine your life and see if there are places where you have lost sight of what really matters – places where you are trying to slide by on technicalities. My hope is that as you and I do our work today, there will be a few less roadblocks to the establishment of God’s kingdom. Til next time…
Being a teacher is an incredibly demanding calling. Anyone who has done it will undoubtedly agree with me. Teaching is demanding for lots of reasons. One of those is the challenge of dealing with developing minds who are often looking for a way out (or – at the very least - a way around) the things you might ask of them. This can be tremendously taxing on the teacher. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I taught in a juvenile corrections facility so we had to be pretty strict about the behavioral rules in the classroom. One of those rules in the school was “Do not get out of your chair without permission from the teacher”. One day we had an emergency lock down due to an incident in the facility. When the alarm went off indicating student were to gather at their classroom door so they could be lead back to their cells, I was in the next classroom helping the neighboring teacher with something. Most of the kids in my classroom instinctively knew that the alarm meant they should line up at the door and get ready to move. One of my students, however, remained seated with a smug look on his face. When I returned to the classroom and asked him why he hadn’t gotten in line, he said: “The rules here say ‘do not get out of your chair without permission from the teacher’ so I followed them.” His words annoyed me because we both knew he wasn’t really trying to follow the rules; he was simply trying to get my goat. What he had lost sight of was the intent of the rule – which was to keep people safe so they didn’t get in trouble with other students while they wandering around. If he had truly understood the intent of the rules, he would have known what to do and not tried to slide by on a technicality. This is the same dynamic Jesus was trying to address in today’s Gospel reading from Matthew where he was addressing a group of people who were also looking for a way around things on technicalities. He got so frustrated that he called the group of religious authorities “frauds” and said: “Your lives are roadblocks to God’s kingdom” (Matthew 23:13 from The Message). My situation with the student and Jesus’ encounter with the religious authorities remind me that its easy for us to become so enamored with the trappings of religion that we can lose sight of what’s most important – our living, breathing relationship with our Creator. Today, I would invite you to examine your life and see if there are places where you have lost sight of what really matters – places where you are trying to slide by on technicalities. My hope is that as you and I do our work today, there will be a few less roadblocks to the establishment of God’s kingdom. Til next time…
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