Grace for All

The writer then names the disciples, and included in verse 4 is this:

This passage reminds us that Jesus called Judas to be one of his disciples. Judas was given the same authority as the other disciples and “was allotted his share in this ministry.” Jesus saw value in him. Scripture doesn’t tell us a lot about Judas except that he betrayed Jesus and later repented (Matt. 27:3).

In his book Peculiar Treasures, Frederick Buechner tells us of a tradition in the early church. Judas’ suicide was based on hope, not despair. Judas knew where he was going but that God in his mercy would be there to meet him and others in a last effort to save them. So, he once again met Jesus. This time, it was Jesus that delivered the kiss, but it wasn’t the kiss of death. It was the kiss of life.

Christianity is not a religion but a personal relationship with the living Christ. Jesus had a personal relationship with Judas and so can we. But just as with Judas, it is our decision as to how we will respond.

Today’s devotion was written by Alvin and Marjorie Jenkins, and read by Joey Smith.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Against a painted landscape rich with vibrant autumn hues of orange, gold and red, it rises, erect, a formal display in sharp contrast to its natural surroundings. It seems so out of place, this giant green cone, methodically hung with perfectly-spaced large, shiny silver and red orbs goofily dwarfing the star on top.  If I am generous, it looks like a child’s crayon drawing come to life. I confess that more often, lately, I am not generous. I am mostly inclined to describe it as a gaudy, taunting eyesore.   

“You are no Christmas tree,” I want to say out loud. It is neither a herald of Christmas, nor a tree, as evidenced by the lovely, gentle trees surrounding it, calling its bluff. 

Perhaps I have driven by this “un-tree” hundreds of times or more, in years past. Whether it is the same tree used year after year in this space, I cannot say, because I have never given it much notice or attention. But something about it caught my eye this year. This year, every time I drive past, I feel sad and frustrated, and maybe a little bit angry and cynical. 

It's not so much the commercialism of Christmas that bothers me. I am used to that.  It’s that I blame the “un-tree” for stealing Advent from me, for trying to rush me past the season of preparation, on to the gift. I am not ready for Christmas.

Advent has always been meaningful to me. The small Presbyterian church of my childhood did not rely heavily on the liturgical calendar. I was unfamiliar with Lent before I went to college. But Advent has always helped to ground me. Peace, hope, joy and love deserve my attention more often than four Sundays each year. Still, without the church calendar and the Advent wreath I might not stop to contemplate them, one by one.   

This year, especially, hope beckons me. I need this season of waiting, not only of waiting but of waiting expectantly, for something new. And that ugly tree mocks me. It mocks my hope.

I long to anticipate birth and life, to believe that the world’s groans, deep and long and insufferable, are nothing more than labor pains, that they represent the agony which ushers in the world’s redemption. I long to believe that this is not the end of something, but its beginning.  

Today’s devotion was written and read by Greta Smith.

Grace for All is a daily devotional podcast produced by the members of the congregation of First United Methodist Church in Maryville, Tennessee. With these devotionals, we want to remind listeners on a daily basis of the love and grace that God extends to all human beings, no matter their location, status, or condition in life.

If you would like to respond to these devotionals in any way, we would enjoy hearing from you. Our email address is: [email protected].

First United Methodist Church is a lively, spirit-filled congregation whose goal is to spread the message of love and grace into our community and throughout the world. We are located on the web at https://1stchurch.org/.

Join Greta Smith and Jim Stovall as they discuss how Grace for All: The Devotional Podcast came to be.

In this devotional, Bible verses from the previous week's devotionals have been woven together to encourage us.

Our scripture today is the 23rd Psalm.

When my grandson was born, in one of the many conversations I had with my son (his father), we talked about where the baby would sleep and what kind of a setup the parents had for him in their house. The parents wanted the baby to sleep in a separate room, but they were putting a video camera there so they could keep watch over him. My son mentioned that the child would inevitably grow up in a “surveillance society.” 

I think about that occasionally when I hear Biblical phrases such as the one in this famous Psalm about the Lord being a shepherd who watches over his sleep.

If we are trying to live within the Kingdom of God, we too are living in a “surveillance society” – one that is watched over by God, who doesn’t need a video camera. He is always there with us. No matter where I am, God is there. It is one of his consistent promises throughout all of scripture. Just as the parents provide and care for a new infant, the Lord is indeed our all-seeing shepherd, and we shall not want for whatever we truly need.

What words do you associate with the word, “go”? Go home? Go away? Go ahead? Go back? 

Do you envision a crowd shouting “Go!” at a sporting event, cheering on your favorite team? Do you think of places you want to visit, of going on a trip, or a vacation? 

Chances are that these associations to the word “go” are much more likely to come to mind than the concept of being sent. But when God instructs God’s people to go, it is almost always a “sending to,” and not a “sending to” a place as much as a “sending to” a person or a people. 

This is the message of Christ to his disciples when he appears to them after the resurrection. Remember, he says, that God sent me to you. And now I am sending you so that the grace of God will be multiplied. And he breathed on them, saying Receive the Holy Spirit. By the power of the Holy Spirit, then, we are moved. We are sent.

As God sent Jesus into a world in need, and as Jesus throughout his earthly ministry personally touched people in need, God sends us as the Body of Christ to serve one another in love, to reach into the loneliest and lowliest places, to continue to minister to a world in need.  

In this season of life, where and to whom are you being sent?

Lord Jesus, love of God in the flesh, you were sent to do for us what we could not do for ourselves. Now send us to those who need an extra measure of your grace this day. Amen.

We know, from the last chapters of the book of Genesis, which immediately precede this passage, that Joseph had saved the Egyptian nation from starvation. He was honored among the people and revered by the pharaohs.

The family of Joseph had come to Egypt. They had settled in, and as far as we know, from this account, they were industrious and unoffending. After a couple of generations, however, Joseph and what he had done for the nation had been forgotten. The children of Jacob had become numerous among the Egyptians. But they were different. They had different habits and rituals. They worshiped a different God.

What might’ve happened had the leaders of the Egyptian nation looked upon these people and said, “Let’s make these folks are friends.“? Unfortunately for everyone, they took a very different path. They let their suspicions, their ignorance, and their fears overcome their better natures. These people were different. If war comes, they will betray us. Let us oppressed them now while we have the chance.

And so they did. Can we draw any conclusions from that ancient story about our world today? Do we allow the fact that some people are different to dominate our thinking, to arouse our suspicions, to lead us into believing they need to be oppressed or put down?

This passage calls us to examine our own attitudes and actions toward people who are not like us. Despite our enlightenment from the teachings of Jesus in the New Testament, too often we react like the Egyptians of old.

Today we should call upon God to help us formulate attitudes of love, caring, and compassion that will replace our attitudes of suspicion and fear.

The Egyptian leaders, in trying to protect their nation, gave in to their hate and fear. In doing so, they ultimately brought plagues, tragedies, and destruction to their land.

What if they had chosen love instead of hate?

To the Ends of the Earth

In the opening of the book of Acts, the apostles are waiting in Jerusalem as they have been instructed, gathered in one place. Suddenly, like a mighty wind the whole house is filled with the power of the Holy Spirit and the believers begin to testify. The sound is so powerful that it attracts the attention of a host of people who have come to Jerusalem, and they form a crowd around the apostles. Remarkably, though these people speak different languages, each hears the message in their native tongue. They had come to Jerusalem from different places. Still, they were united in that moment because they all heard the same message. 

That is what stands out here. That when the Holy Spirit is given, the people are moved to proclaim the gospel. And when the gospel is proclaimed, it doesn’t matter that we come from different places or speak different languages. It is, as Luke observes, bewildering, and amazing and astonishing and yet somehow true, that the good news of God’s redeeming love and grace transcends our differences, crosses barriers, unites us as one in the Holy Spirit, and breathes life into the universal church. 

When the gospel is proclaimed, the kingdom of God expands. That is the story of the book of Acts, it is ultimately the story of the proclamation of the gospel resulting in the expansion of God’s kingdom, to include more people and more peoples, and more and more.

When God says, “go,” it is to expand God’s kingdom, to enlarge God’s family. Where do we have an opportunity to grow the family of God? Who else needs to be included?

Our scripture today comes from the Gospel of John, chapter 14, verse 27.

Most of us pray for peace at some point in our lives. The prayer for “peace on earth“ is one that we echo from what the angels sang at the birth of Christ. We wish the tribes and nations, including our own, would be more peaceful. We wish that armies would stop fighting each other.

In our political and social lives, most of us crave peace. We wish to see an end to the bickering, the backbiting, the fighting, and the constant divisions with which the news media bombard to us every day.

In our personal lives, we wish that family members, again, including ourselves, could just learn to get along. Family gatherings of any type should be a time of peace. All too often they are a time of conflict.

Jesus, in this verse, has promised his peace, and we want to cash in on that promise. We are likely to skip over the part where he says “my peace“ is what he is giving us. We tend not to think very deeply about the words “I do not give to you as the world gives.“

So what is it that Jesus is offering us? It certainly is not the peace of our definition, the “peace on earth“ that we so desperately seek at all levels. The peace of Jesus is something different, something else, something very special.

It is the peace of the Kingdom of Heaven, which Christ came to declare in his ministry on earth. It is the peace of knowing that whatever wars and conflicts are occurring around us, we can have the peace of Jesus with us to calm the storms, not on the outside of our lives, but those storms that are in our hearts.

For we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do. Ephesians 2:10 (NIV)

You were created to do good works. Let that sink in. God formed you by God’s own hand, and prepared in advance for you to do good works. No matter what kinds of things you have or have not done in your past, God still has good works prepared for you to do in your future. 

This is the grace of God. Earlier in this passage from Ephesians, Paul reminds us that it is not by our own merit that we are saved, but because of God’s love and faithfulness, freely given. Our good works are not meant to earn God’s grace. Our good works are meant to be evidence of God’s grace. 

This passage also reminds me that God has prepared good works in advance not only for me but for others. Not every good work is mine to accomplish, and it is important for me to seek discernment, to ask God to show me which good works are prepared for me. If I go about saying “yes” to everything that seems good, I become vulnerable to burn out, but I also become vulnerable to depending on my own accomplishments over God’s grace. 

In this merit-based world, I’ve been taught to earn my way, so it’s not easy to get my head around the difference in God’s economy. It’s not easy to receive grace as a gift I did not earn and do not deserve, and to think of good works as a response to grace rather than an attempt to justify it. But this is what God means for us to do, good works prepared in advance by God’s grace, so that no one can boast.

As we go through this day, let’s be alert to the good works God has prepared for us to do, but also to those he may have prepared for someone else. And let’s give thanks to God for the grace in both.

Creator of all things, remind us that you have orchestrated good works for all your children, that we would find joy in ours, and in others’. In Christ’s name we pray, Amen.