Narrative Lectionary Key Verse for Today
“Then the Lord said to him, ‘Now you Pharisees clean the outside of the cup and of the dish, but inside you are full of greed and wickedness. You fools! Did not the one who made the outside make the inside also? So give for alms those things that are within; and see, everything will be clean for you.’”
NL Daily Devotion for Tuesday, March 11, 2025
by R. M. Fergus, Clergy Stuff
Ritual cleanliness isn’t the thing. In other words, we can’t work to keep up the appearance of being “a good Christian” and at the same time continue to behave as if there is no God.
This was my life before I got into recovery. I had a vibrant religious practice, was active in my church (I’m a total church nerd. Always have been.), and thought I “got” God. But in my day to day actions, I was calling all the shots. I figured God was busy doing more important things and, after all, didn’t God give me my intellect and skills to use? But I was living entirely on self-will, basically trying to be god in my own life. And… um… it doesn’t work. No amount of intellectualizing God, nor of participating in a church community—an attractive “outside of the cup”—was a substitute for what was needed on “the inside of the cup. ”And what was needed was an actual relationship with God—vital and present and moving and mutual and active. It has only been when God is God and I allow God to “clean” and fill my “cup” that I have been able to show up for life and be of love and service to God, self, and neighbor in any sort of effective way. I am grateful, today, to have spiritual practices that are much more about what’s inside the cup than what’s outside it.
What does my “cup” look like, inside and outside? Does it need a good scrub?
