A Benediction Gone Wrong … Hello weekend readers. As you read this, I am leading a Women of the ELCA retreat today in Arizona. I love “my ladies” and have known many of them for a long time. It is an honor and blessing to be with them. Then, for the next four days I lead worship for a retreat with Dave Ellingson at Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center.

I share all this because years ago, I would never have thought myself doing something like this, but of course, God did and through the many years God has shaped my thoughts, my writing and my “faith-steps” in ways I never fathomed. And this brings me to a friend of mine who shared the funniest story about his first music-ministry job. Much has changed since then, but I think you’ll find yourselves in his shoes in some of your life’s hiccups.

My friend was nervous, but very excited for this new congregation. He hoped the worship would be a powerful and moving time for them and it was just that! However, at the end of the service, he was asked by the pastor to do the benediction before the last song, and that’s where everything fell apart. His parting words were, “Have a wonderful Sunday, you are all deceased.” Probably one of the most interesting dismissal words we’ve heard at the close of worship, right?!

But, isn’t that just how things happen when you think you have it all together? As I re-read this funny incident for “fodder for a devotion” one thing did stick out to me: we are all deceased—really, we are! The Apostle Paul said it boldly in Galatians 2:20-21 and Eugene Peterson’s Message translation says nails it:

“What actually took place is this:
I tried keeping rules and working my head off to please God, and it didn’t work.
So I quit being a “law man” so that I could be God’s man.
Christ’s life showed me how, and enabled me to do it.
I identified myself completely with him.
Indeed, I have been crucified with Christ.
My ego is no longer central.
It is no longer important that I appear righteous before you
or have your good opinion, and I am no longer driven to impress God.
Christ lives in me. The life you see me living is not “mine,”
but it is lived by faith in the Son of God,
who loved me and gave himself for me.
I am not going to go back on that.”

It’s so easy to get into ourselves and then when something doesn’t work, we feel depleted, demoralized, etc. Yet, we’re already dead to ourselves and alive to Christ so it’s OK, it’s really OK to screw up! Not intentionally, of course, if you want to live your life like that let’s just say that is another discussion indeed. But it’s the weight we put on ourselves that Paul tells us is not our burden anymore. The life we live is “not ours” but one lived by faith in Christ.

Yet, it’s easy to count our own sins. The other day I had such a screw-up day, I sat at my computer, trying to get a PowerPoint done for this Saturday, and found myself ticking off every box that I goofed up on. Did it make my day better-no! Did it give me inspiration-no! It did drive me to playing a lot of Solitaire online until the Holy Spirit gave me one of those: “kick-you-in-the-butt” wake-up calls, and I left my funk behind.

Paul’s words that remind us we’ve died to our own flesh and have been made alive in Jesus. This is something we need to imprint on our hearts and definitely in our minds so we don’t let sin hold us back. I have a “picture in my mind” of what it looks like to live by faith, but the struggle to do it is, for me and many of us, is much harder than I thought, because our minds have a tendency to work outside of what we want them to do!

Honestly, don’t we often say “I’ve lost my mind?” Some days I’m looking for mine! And again, when that happens, I forget who I am in Christ—a child of God, and the power of sin no longer has a hold on me, period.

So, what do we need to do? First, we need to get off that mental merry-go-round! Then we need to uncurl our tight-wadded fist and let go of the key that has locked our misgivings, screw-ups, failures, etc., in our mental warehouse. We can do this if we remember that we have resurrection power and Romans 8 says so:

“It stands to reason, doesn’t it, that if the alive-and-present God
who raised Jesus from the dead moves into your life,
he’ll do the same thing in you that he did in Jesus,
bringing you alive to himself?”

So, let’s celebrate that “benediction gone wrong” and remind ourselves daily that we are ‘deceased’—dead to sin but very alive in Christ Jesus our Lord. I’m thinking this would really give us a much better perspective for our day, don’t you? Oh, and another benefit—there is no funeral needed, AMEN!