God in Everyday Life
According to no less authority than Wikipedia, Christ’s Transfiguration is counted among the five most significant milestones in His life after birth: the other four are Baptism, Crucifixion, Resurrection, and Ascension. Yet, along with His baptism, its significance seems less intuitively understandable than the other three. I can understand Christ’s suffering an especially painful execution for what He and His ministry meant as a challenge to worldly values and power structures, and His resurrection and return to Heaven were necessary to fulfillment of His role as God’s Son. The importance of His baptism has been questioned—He was sinless, after all—but it set an example of what follows from repentance, redemption, and obedience to God’s will. Also, it set an example which Christians have followed ever since and which has become perhaps the most prominent among what we could call Christians’ shared experience, including Christ’s.
We can all identify with those four events as central to our faith, but the necessity of transfiguration is less clear. It occurred in the midst of Christ’s ministry and seems like a kind of “authentication” of that ministry by God for this is the point where God closes a rare direct utterance with: “Listen to Him!”
Among others, White notes that Matthew and Mark describe the Transfiguration with the Koine Greek root for the word “metamorphosis” which suggests a change in Christ that is described dramatically but only briefly. Perhaps authentication is enough of a rationale, though one wonders if Jesus would have been “unqualified” without it since God had already confirmed Christ as his Son at His baptism, and Jesus was well along in His ministry. Perhaps the Transfiguration was critical for the final embodiment of Christ’s ultimate authority to highlight the world-changing tragedy of His impending crucifixion—an interpretation that helps explain why we celebrate Transfiguration Sunday immediately before Lent.
Scripture is full of examples of events that puzzle me or that I do not understand—yet. Also, my reflections are culturally influenced by my North American Protestant background. Wikipedia notes the special importance of the Transfiguration in the Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and similar churches.
I wonder if Frederick Buechner—a theologian whose understandings and explanations I tend to respect—might share some of my curiosity about the Transfiguration. In his Beyond Words: Daily Readings in the ABC’s of Faith (Harper Collins, 2004), he includes it as one of his 366 “beyond-words” that “point to the realm of mystery and depth that lies beyond our ordinary experience and thus could be called beyond-words.” (p. viii) Two of his three paragraphs on the subject summarize today’s scripture from Mark 9, but his last paragraph claims that we also experience “something like [the three disciples’ awe]…once in a while” in the face of someone we might see on any day: “Every once and so often, something so touching, so incandescent, so alive transfigures the human face that it’s almost beyond bearing.” (p. 393) It is so rare, but I can relate to that; and I shall understand better if and when it happens next.
Buechner also discusses the beyond-word “revelation”—the concept, not the book in the Bible—and the difference between “found out” knowledge from reasoning and “occurred to you” knowledge which is given, not earned through reasoning: “Revelation means knowledge as grace…Classic Christianity…is not primarily reasonable. [It] was born when it occurred to some…that [Christ’s] kind of life was the only kind of life worth living…a revealed religion.” (pp. 344-5; emphasis his) Let us acknowledge the limits of our reasoning and this gift of grace.
It is noteworthy that the disciples’ reaction as they witnessed the Transfiguration was “awe”. Awe occurs infrequently in the Bible only under very special conditions, and arguably the Transfiguration defines the kind of rare circumstances that warrant awe. The close connection of awe to scripture has been recognized: “The current sense of "dread mixed with admiration or veneration" is due to biblical use with reference to the Supreme Being.” (https://www.etymonline.com/word/awe ) Following no less a faith leader than U2’s Bono (PBS interview, 1 November 2022), I am disappointed that awe seems clichéd in current usage. So little of what is described every day—at least in the US—as “awesome” seems to qualify for that. On the other hand, perhaps its popularity is a veiled and haphazard but massive acknowledgement of God in everyday life.
Our parent in Heaven, thank you for the gift of your Son whose model of life we hope is our model of life and whose teachings are an anchor for our faith. Be with us and guide us as we seek to understand the scriptural foundations of our faith and grant us peace but persistence as we continue. Thank you for those who seek with us and who share what they find, and thank you for those glimpses of your presence when we spot transfiguration in others. In Christ’s name, we pray. Amen.
Denton Marks
The Greater Picture
Before I reflect on this bible verse, we have to imagine this scene. Although the exact setting is uncertain, we know that Jesus was with his disciples and foreshadows what will happen to him. In short, he tells them that he will be killed and rise again.
Imagine how the disciples are feeling at this time. After years of being their mentor and shaping them, being some that they can always rely on, the Messiah tells them that he is going to die. Even though the details of what he said are unclear, it is shown that He doesn’t say He wants to die, He doesn’t say how, and He doesn’t say why. And what exactly is meant by ‘rise again’? I’m sure it would be hard for you to imagine someone so close to you telling you that they are going to die with no further explanation.
We can infer that this feeling of disbelief is what causes Peter to ‘rebuke’ Jesus. Or we could just imagine that Peter feels the world would be a worse place without him. It is true, Jesus had changed the lives of many through His preaching and healing throughout Israel. He had healed the blind, deaf, sick, fed 5000 people with five loaves of bread and two fish, and raised a saint from the dead. He was the Son of God! Why would He need to die now?
But here is what Jesus is saying: these endless questions and concerns that Peter has are ‘human things’; they are things that are of no value in the Kingdom of Heaven. In these next few days, Jesus was about to complete the mission that He was sent on. He would defy death and prove to everyone for the final time that He was the Messiah. He would start a movement that would change the world to this day, making his name known to everyone, and bringing glory to God.
Dear God, please allow us to see the greater picture of work that you are doing in our lives as we fail to notice. What may seem to be vain and misfortunate is sometimes your work disguise. Amen.
Kirsten Bowles
Abraham’s Gift to Us
I was looking in my computer files for these Lenten Devotionals and saw that I have been undertaking this privilege for many years. This passage, however, is one of the most challenging, yet encouraging passages that I have ever pondered. The simple message is that our faith in God through Jesus Christ is a wonderful gift, not something we need to do anything to receive.
Let’s unpack that gift. The promise to Abraham and followers is not through the law, that is rules and regulations for living, but through what the writer names as “the righteousness of faith”. It doesn’t mean that there are no rules for living, because “where there is no law, neither is there transgression.” I think he’s saying that we need both law/rules for behaviour AND faith. This makes sense to me. As an on-call classroom teacher, it is clearly evident when the classroom has clear expectations and rules, but it is also clear when students are trusted and cared for – treated with faith in good behaviour, and the rules are then adhered to by the students with a greater sense of joy.
The key phrase in the whole passage is “The righteousness of faith”, the concept of which was confusing to me, despite a life-long connection to the faith community, so I checked out some references. Looking up the word “righteousness”, I found the following definitions,
Oxford dictionary: “The quality of being morally right or justifiable.”
Merriam-Webster: “Acting in accord with divine or moral law: free from guilt or sin”
Cambridge: “Morally correct behaviour, or a feeling that you are behaving in a morally correct way.”
Wikipedia: “Righteousness or Rectitude is the quality or state of being morally correct and justifiable.”
OK, but this was not elucidating this concept for the passage fully for me, so I explored a little more and found a summary, by Kevin Watson from Candler School of Theology at Emory University, of a sermon by John Wesley, one of the founders of the Methodist tradition, which is one of the founding denominations of the United Church of Canada. It was a comprehensive summary, but the lines that caught my attention were,
6. The righteousness of faith is the new covenant which God has established with sinful people through Christ.
7. By righteousness of faith is meant the condition of justification which was given by God to fallen people through the merits and mediation of his only begotten Son.
8. The covenant does not say to sinful people, perform unsinning obedience and live.
9. The covenant says: Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
Moving on, the passage says, “For this reason the promise depends on faith, in order that it may rest on grace, so that it may be guaranteed to all his descendants, not only to the adherents of the law but also to those who share the faith of Abraham.” This section makes me wonder how we can have had the Holocaust and the terrible anti-Semitic actions we hear about on the news these days - slaughtering those who share our inheritance. Next, the writer carries on with the ideas of “Hoping against hope”. We all ‘hope against hope’ when things are tough in our lives, such as when we get the frightening health diagnosis, the natural or human-caused natural disaster, the accident, etc. Yet Abraham believed that he would become “the father of many nations,” even when he was childless and had an aging body “which was already as good as dead (for he was about a hundred years old), and the barrenness of (his wife) Sarah’s womb.” Like Abraham, we are being asked to bring our weaknesses, not just our strengths, to our faith journey.
What is the final message? I believe that the writer is encouraging us to use the example of Abraham’s astounding faith to receive the wonderful grace that is given to us in Jesus Christ. Thanks be to God through Jesus!
Help us, O God, to have the solid faith of Abraham as we receive the grace you share with us through the life and sacrifice of Jesus, our Saviour. Amen
Barbara Fraser Tilley
In this beautiful Psalm we find the confluence of three metaphors or images that capture that heart of the faithful life: Learning, Walking, Remembering.
Learning
This Psalm reminds us that faith is learned. Unlike the philosopher Plato who said that knowing is a matter of remembering what we have always known but have forgotten, as Christians we must learn a new way of life.
Jesus called his followers disciples – mathētai, “learners” -- from which our English word “mathematics” is derived. (This always makes me think of the line from the old hymn, “Lowly and humble, a learner of Thee.”)
Even though we are created in the image of God, living according to that image is not something we know how to do instinctively or naturally. It needs to be learned. And learning almost always involves “unlearning” – learning to break those habits and relinquish patterns that alienate us from God, others and our truest selves.
Walking
Biblical faith is not a theory we formulate or a vision we acquire, but a road we travel. And learning, discipleship, has the sense of being shown the way. The great Hasidic theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel said that the best English translation of the Hebrew word “Torah” (usually rendered “law” or “instruction”) is “Way.” “Stand at the crossroads and look, and ask for the ancient paths, where the good way lies; and walk in it,” the prophet Jeremiah said (Jer 6:16) Jesus called his disciples, not to contemplate, but to follow. The Book of Acts calls the Christian life “The Way.”
So, our Psalm invites us to walk the “paths of the Lord” which “are steadfast love and faithfulness.” (Psalm 25:10)
Remembering
Without memory we could not learn. We lose our way when we forget where we have come from or where we are meant to be going.
Psalm 25 is an acrostic poem. Each of its twenty-two verses begins with a different letter of the Hebrew alphabet. This is a memory device. It is a Psalm that is meant to be memorized, to be taken in and carried with us.
The memory of who God is, how God has commanded us to live, and how we have failed to do so, are vital components of our faith. Even more important is the memory that God is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. This is also a prayer to God, not only that we may remember, but that we may be remembered. “Do not remember the sins of my youth [but] according to your steadfast love remember me.” (Psalm 25:7)
Paul Miller
That Kind of Trust
This passage always puts me in mind of my father-in-law, Ridley Miller. He was an only child, and still single into his thirties, not a great prospect for being an “Abraham”, father of many. But God blessed Ridley and Jean with four children, seventeen grandchildren, and now, ten great grandchildren, including one named “Abram”.
The God who is revealed in scripture makes a bit of a specialization of this, lifting up those without great prospects to move forward the salvation plan. To bring all of the world back into right relation, to undo the terrible effects of the fall from paradise, the unlikeliest people and peoples are chosen for covenant bond and the tasks of the kingdom. Moses was plucked from obscurity to lead Israel from slavery to the promised land. A peasant girl, Mary, risked everything to bear the saviour of the world into the world. Saul, committed persecutor of Christians becomes Paul, the proclaimer of the hope in Christ to those not yet in the covenant.
God gives Abram (‘exalted father’) a promise: he will be Abraham (‘father of many’). This is the everlasting covenant now extended to us. The covenant is our primary metaphor for understanding our life in God: “I will be your God, and you will be my people”. The covenant brings us hope, it defines our identity and tells us who we really are, it creates a place of true belonging and provides us with our vocation, our calling.
You are called into the covenant through the waters of baptism, into secure hope, sustaining community and life abundant. For Abram and Sarai, the new life was marked by a new name. As a child of the covenant, what is the name you are given? A Puritan custom was to give children names to live up to: Fortitude, Patience, Endeavor, Honor, Joy, Hope, Prudence, Increase.
This Lent, spend a moment thinking on a name God might be calling you to live up to: Grace? Perseverance? Surely Abram must have been granted these in great measure to trust in God’s salvation plan when he was almost a hundred and his wife not much younger. Yet trust they did in God’s promise of fruitfulness and legacy, a promise secured by the covenant.
Can you live in that kind of trust?
Lord, help us to live with that kind of trust. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Diane Walker
All Are Called
I am struck by how different an approach Mark takes to “presenting” Jesus compared to Matthew and Luke. It’s only been a couple months since we revisited Christ’s birth at Advent and Christmas. In Matthew and Luke we have a cinematic origin story. Jesus was divine from birth (immaculate conception, a star, herald angels), but the reader must wait for Jesus’ adulthood for the teachings and the miracles that fulfill the prophesy. In contrast, the first chapter of Mark reads like a job application proving Jesus’ credentials: letters of recommendation from Isaiah, from John the Baptist, and even from God; successful completion of 40 days in the wilderness, including resisting all its satanic temptations. These fourteen concise verses in Mark confirm that Jesus is qualified, indeed God-sent, and from there Jesus begins his ministry in Galilee.
But maybe these two different approaches reflect the fact there are many different ways people come to know Jesus. Jesus’ calls on us to “believe in the good news”, but does not say there is only one way to come to believe. The quick, the slow, the open or the skeptical, are all called.
Help us rejoice in the Word that is heard and heard again by many different ears. Amen.
Michael Moll
God has Other Plans
Remarkable: God makes a covenant not only with a particular nation, or with humans, but with “all flesh that is on the earth.”
I know that detractors of the Christian faith claim that “God” is only used by Christians to claim special status, “God is on our side”, and, in truth, there is much they can point to in our history to support their complaint. The temptation to claim God as our ally and cheerleader is powerful; always has been.
But here, as the story of Noah and the Ark draws to a close, we are reminded that God’s covenant relationship is not only with us, not only with our allies, not even only with all humankind, but with “all flesh.” Noah might be the one who hears that good news and passes it on, but God’s promise is for all, including all those mammals and reptiles and birds and all other manner of beasts that emerged from the ark, and all the fish and sea creatures and water life that swam under it. God’s covenant is with all of God’s creation.
As a sign of that covenant God hangs up that weapon of war, the bow, up in the sky so all can see it just hanging there and remember. God is not holding the bow; that formidable weapon is retired. God’s enmity with the sin of the world will no longer result in warfare; no longer will it be destruction. The retired bow in the sky means God will not act with violence and destruction. If it happened in the mythical past, it will never never happen again.
In fact, Christians know that instead of the bow God acted through the cross. Instead of destruction God chose self-giving. Instead of killing God chose to be killed. Instead of exterminating all flesh God chose to become flesh and give life to all flesh.
The bow in the sky is the assurance that even when life seems poised for destruction, when it feels like the flood gates have been opened and we will surely drown, God has other plans. The cross reminds us that even in those dark days when death seems so obvious and assured, the God of covenant and promise actually joins us… and when God joins us, the surprise of resurrected new life just might be around the corner.
God of life: your rain-bow is a brilliant sign that not only will you never destroy the earth but you have entered into a saving promise and covenant with all that lives. In Jesus Christ you have joined us as one of us, flesh of our flesh. You would rather die on a cross than see your beloved creation destroyed. Enlarge our imaginations, hearts and minds to embrace your promise so we might live rainbow-hued lives of hope and resurrection. We pray in the name of the incarnate One, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Doug Goodwin
A Daily Gift
Many things come to my mind when I read this passage from Peter. During many years I had the opportunity and grace to be part of a team in the Diocese of Lund in the Church of Sweden. Our task was to help the parishes to focus on baptism and to find ways (old and new) to speak of baptism among the parishioners. One goal was to “increase what the consciousness of our baptism means to our faith”. We found that we often tend to think of baptism as something that happened to us once (often when we were babies) and that we seldom think of being baptized as a daily gift.
Here Peter points out to us this daily gift and that our baptism is inseparable from Christ’s suffering and death and his resurrection. Peter also reminds us of the ark built by Noah that was saved through water. This is a prefiguration of our baptism! Baptism saves us from eternal death. We are through baptism, concrete or figuratively, drowned with Christ into his death. And in the same way we are lifted out of the water and incorporated in his resurrection. Every day we live in this pattern: from darkness to light, from death to life, from Good Friday to Easter Sunday. This is what Martin Luther had in mind when he, in times of doubt and trouble, repeated to himself: I am baptized in the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit.
As a prayer I would like to share a verse from a hymn written by the Swedish bishop Jonas Jonson (my translation, and without Jonson’s rhymes):
If your faith withers, worn down by doubt and fall from grace, words failing and your prayer is getting cold. Then your heart will remind you that you were baptized into his death, to a life abounding.
Karin Sundmark
from Sweden
Amazing Grace
I remember when I first truly encountered Psalm 51. Rabbi Martin Cohen was team teaching with me in VST’s summer school. The course was called “Reading in Each Other’s Light.” Each day in class we read scripture over one another’s shoulder. On Tuesday we each chose a Psalm central to our tradition. I selected Psalm 22 - “My God, why have you forsaken me”. Martin chose Psalm 51. Here, he taught us, lies the heart of the Hebrew scripture. Here is the Psalm read by all Jews on the holiest day of the year - Yom Kippur - the Day of Atonement.
I wondered why I had rarely encountered Psalm 51. Then I noticed that following the lectionary means one hardly ever reads this central Psalm in worship. It is, however, always read on Ash Wednesday. Alas, this had not been a day regularly kept in my United Church upbringing. It turns out that the 51st Psalm holds a special place in Christian tradition as one of the seven penitential psalms. It is also the source of the haunting setting of "Miserere Mei" by Allegri that was memorized and transcribed by a teen-age Mozart in the Sistine Chapel.
Since that day with Martin I have grown to cherish this Psalm of aching repentance. It is set on David’s lips in the midst of his debilitating guilt (2 Samuel 11-12). It reminds me of the Prodigal Son burdened by shame as he returns home. This is the song in the Bible’s hymn book intended for those weighed down by wrongdoings. This is the Psalm for us to sing and to pray in light of the stories unearthed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Psalm 51 is a crucial prayer for those who find themselves struggling to break free of all manner of addiction and the damage it has led them to inflict on themselves and others.
Psalm 51 begins by naming the truth about God who is full of “steadfast love” and “abundant mercy”. Then it acknowledges that to wrong another person is to break faith with God. Sin not only breaks human relationships, it breaks relationship with God. Confessing this brokenness is crucial. Now the penitent wait before God, praying for a “clean heart”, a new beginning that can only created by the God of amazing grace. This is the starting place of Lent, the place where we are ready to meet Jesus - the One who calls us into a new life on the other side of forgiveness.
Prayer: “Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love ... Create in me a clean heart, O God, and put a new and right spirit within me.”
Ed Searcy
Public or Private
Here we have Jesus Christ, the marketing manager. Not.
For most modern Christian churches, the idea that we wouldn’t discuss money, that donations are secret, that prayer should happen behind closed doors, these are not the way of the current church. Praying on street corners? Maybe not. But not hiding away either. Clearly things had got out of hand.
And more: there are some churches around Vancouver where folks check in with the stewards table before coming in to worship. Attendance and offerings are ticked off the master list. I haven’t experienced what happens when showing up become irregular or the money doesn’t meet the target. Let your imagination wander in the direction of a visit by the minister and a couple of stewards, asking pointed questions and wondering out loud if there are problems in the household.
Obviously, Jesus had seen enough nonsense that he felt compelled to speak. Piety in public. Not having. And no trumpets, figurative or otherwise.
The obvious message here is “Stop showing off!”, which seemed to have become the standard for religious behaviour, at least in front of Jesus. But we are all post-Victorians, so we know better.
The thing is, prayer, donating, fasting, not accumulating stuff, these are properly between each of us and God. Whether our neighbours are impressed is not part of the deal. What we say to God in prayer is ours alone. And how God answers us is also ours. It’s important to be in community – see the second chapter of Acts – but the direct link to God? That’s the real business of worship and prayer and giving.
Lord, lift up our spirits and hear our voice. Know that it is from within ourselves that we praise you. Amen
John Culter
Unfathomable Love
What great, unfathomable love this is! Do we catch that when we read this piece of Paul’s appeal to the church in Corinth? It’s well worth re-reading the text with that in mind:
First, the great, unfathomable love of God with us and for us: For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. In Jesus, God has accomplished what we could not: reconciling us to God so that we can be with and for God.
Second, the great love of Paul, grounded in the love of God, who will not stop at anything— including enduring hardships, embracing the fruits of the Spirit, and embodying the paradoxes of faith—to proclaim God’s good news in Christ Jesus. Reconciliation with God is available to grab ahold of and live from now: See now is the acceptable time; see now is the day of salvation!
In fact, Paul has laid out for us a step-by-step guide to faithful discipleship for the church:
1) Ground ourselves, each and every day, in the great, unfathomable love of God and what that love has, astoundingly, accomplished. God has done it! (a good, daily mantra)
2) Share this good news with others, no matter the cost.
3) Faithfully live together in the ways, small and large, that commend this good news to others, trying and trying again not to place any obstacles in their way to taking up and living God’s good news.
For the love of God and what God is up to for the sake of the beloved world, shall we use this Lenten season to (re-)commit to this discipleship guide? Besides challenges and much needed transformation, there is the promise of rest, peace, shared joy, healing along this Way—of finding life that is truly life.
The Way forward to You has been cleared by You. Help us to grab ahold of this Way, to live from it, and to share the good news of it with others. Amen
~ Janice Love
We Know Our Iniquities
This seems to be a good reading for Christian Saturday, a period of reflection and waiting. I would think that Saturday would also accommodate hope, but Isaiah doesn’t seem to offer much hope in this passage. Here, God is invisible and inactive and the reason for this appears to be the transgressions and sins of His people. This seems to me to be the state of the world today. We have drifted away from relationship with God and in return, God has become hidden from us. God is so absent, that many cry out that God must not exist. Isaiah makes the nature of our sins clear to us, and there are indeed many to recognize. The outcome of our sin is God’s inaction. We wait for justice and light, but neither is close at hand. All in all, this is a depressing story.
Lent is a period during which Christians reflect on our transgressions and ask for forgiveness, looking forward to the hope of Easter. For me, today’s reading emphasizes the many ways in which we sin and the damage that we inflict on our relationship with God. As a consequence, peace and justice elude us and we exist only in darkness and gloom. It would seem that it is up to us to make amends to God, and to each other. I guess that we could begin with the words of the New Creed whereby we promise to “celebrate God’s presence, to live with respect in Creation, to love and serve others, to seek justice and resist evil”. Because “God is with us. We are not alone.”
Thanks be to God.
In Your mercy, help us to feel Your presence in our lives and in the world. As we wait, let us wait in hope for the blossoming of peace, justice, and light. And may we see that hope in the promise of the resurrected Christ. Amen.
Ash Wednesday, 2024
The prophet Joel kicks off our Lenten journey with a bang. Trumpets blaring, alarms sounding: God is on the move! God is determined to show up here and now, get ready! Because this is not a holy social call, not a bit of divinity to brighten our days. This is the One who comes in holiness that shakes mountains and melts even the most fearless hearts. This is the One who comes as both saviour and judge, and there is much to judge.
In this passage, God’s people have chosen just about any other way than God’s. They have not loved their Lord with everything they’ve got, they have not loved their neighbours—those who bear God’s own image. They have not sought justice, or loved kindness, or walked humbly. They have trampled the poor, and they have forgotten their commission as a people meant to be God’s light for all nations. They have not done what they are made to do. And the day of reckoning is upon them.
We don’t tend to like the idea of God’s judgment. We much prefer to talk about God’s love, and so we should. And yet, Scripture refuses to separate God’s love from God’s judgment. God will get the world God wants, and that will require a radical change, not only for the obviously wicked, but for all of us. And if we believe that, why do we imagine that our behaviours that are contrary to the love and justice and righteousness that God wants will go unchallenged?
It would be utterly bleak, hopeless, except that Joel is convinced that God is merciful and gracious. And what God ultimately wants is not us grovelling in fear, but to receive him with open hearts: hearts torn open for the hope, peace, joy, and love of God for this world.
May this be a season when we are willing to rend our hearts, that Your grace and mercy would pour into us, and through us to the world. Through Christ, our judge and our hope, Amen.
Aaron Miller
Easter Sunday
The first Easter started in an isolated corner, in a graveyard, in the quiet of an early morning just as darkness was slowly transforming into light. But then note how the cast of characters and action quickly builds. It is almost cinematic.
First it is two women walking through the dawn, a gentle beginning. Then…an earthquake, and an angel resembling lightning, or maybe snow. The guards, hired to ensure the dead man in the tomb remained dead, now become “like dead men” themselves. Tomb, women, brilliant angel, men lying like dead: the scene begins to fill.
But there is no time for lingering here. An angelic exhortation not to fear, then a brief speech by the angel (which means “messenger”), perhaps a hurried look “where he lay”, then quickly off to tell the disciples, who are out of the scene but now part of the story. Then Jesus appears, it doesn’t matter from where because the action points forward, what’s next, rather than filling in all of the backstory details.
Jesus, too, does not say much but echoes that angelic admonishment not to fear but to keep moving on and out, to the disciples, to “my brothers and sisters”, to the neighbouring country of Galilee… and later in the gospel story far, far beyond that.
There is nothing more still and peaceful, unchanging and rooted in place, than a grave… and there is nothing more dynamic and growing, restless and expansive, than resurrection.
The boundary between the two would seem to be unbreachable; Jesus breached it. The grave with all its many faces, as very real as it is, is not the last chapter of the story but just its beginning. The grave gives way to resurrection.
The power of fear and death could not hold Jesus entombed. Thanks to him, it cannot hold us, either.
Thanks be to God on this blessed Easter Day!
Life-giving God, whose child Jesus broke the bonds of death and scattered the powers of sin: fill us with such faith in him that, facing injustice and death, we may overcome as he overcame, Jesus Christ, our hope and our redeemer. Amen.
Resting in Our Need for Grace
I have been wondering what the first Good Friday was like for Peter…
The night before, Peter had bravely followed Jesus to Caiaphas’ house after his arrest. But then, outside in the courtyard while inside Jesus was interrogated, slapped, and sentenced to death, Peter vehemently denied even knowing Jesus. This despite being one of Jesus’ key disciples—the Rock on whom Jesus had said he would build his church. When the rooster crowed at dawn on Friday, Peter realized he had betrayed Jesus. He left the courtyard and wept bitterly.
To truly know our need for grace can be a fearful place.
I have been wondering how and when I betray Jesus…because, if I am honest, I know I do: when I do not seek justice for my neighbour, when I stay silent so people don’t think I’m one of those Christians, when I am stingy with my love, when I try to stay in control of everything so that I can remain safe.
The truth is that following this wild God revealed in Jesus is not ever about remaining safe. It’s about trusting in God’s promises and steadfast love.
Even now, on this dreadful and fearful day of knowing completely our need of grace, there is a glimmer of hope. It’s there in the very existence of this story. Peter became the Rock Jesus hoped for, and yet the story of Peter’s betrayal remains in all four gospels—because it’s not a story of how Peter got it right, but of Jesus’ forgiveness and Peter’s acceptance of that grace.
I am grateful for this story, for its inclusion in the good news of Jesus, the Christ, in all its terrible honesty about our fickleness, our brokenness, our cowardice. In all it’s assurance, if seen more clearly looking back, of Jesus’ willingness to forgive and work with Peter, and me, and us for the sake of the beloved world and the glory of God.
We confess that we have betrayed You, in thought, word, and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We ask for Your forgiveness and loving grace. Work with us so that we may be who You need us to be. Amen
Janice Love
Today you are invited to read through this passage, and spend some time reflecting on what comes up. You may want to have something with which to record your thoughts. Take what stands out, and use it to shape a prayer.
You may want to follow the pattern of Lectio Divina (holy reading)
Reading
Meditating (reflect on the passage as a whole)
Praying (craft a prayer out of your meditation)
Contemplate (simply sit in silence, and let the passage sink more deeply in)
Lectio Divina
Today you are invited to read through this passage, and spend some time reflecting on what comes up. You may want to have something with which to record your thoughts. Take what stands out, and use it to shape a prayer.
You may want to follow the pattern of Lectio Divina (holy reading)
Reading
Meditating (reflect on the passage as a whole)
Praying (craft a prayer out of your meditation)
Contemplate (simply sit in silence, and let the passage sink more deeply in)
The Mind of Christ
Writing this devotional has been far tougher than I thought it would be. I've rewritten this more times than I care to admit, always fixating on saying the right thing about Jesus' humility and its implications for us. But this whole time, I should have been practicing what I read in Philippians 2: 5-11. Paul tells us to adopt the attitude of Christ, to cast aside ourselves and serve others' interests before our own. Yet, instead of emptying myself to write the reflection that stuck with me through prayer, I found myself continually writing and erasing every natural thought that came to me while chewing on the text. Even worse, I knew the hypocrisy of my doing so, but still, I struggled to put myself aside—my need to try to be perfect—and write this unimpeded.
How much harder must it have been for Jesus to have emptied himself of his divine privilege and assumed a human form? He is a member of the Trinity, love beyond proportion, yet in service of God the Father and us, he humbled himself to our fallen condition and accepted a criminal's death on the cross. Consider what it would mean for you and me to take up his yolk and act in service of another. What does it mean to serve God?
Heavenly Father, I'm trying to empty myself for you, but I keep failing. I pray that you make me humble. Work in me to make room so that you can work through me. I want to put you first in my life, to be of like mind to you, Lord Jesus. Illuminate the areas of my life where I am hypocritical to that desire. Drag me to the cross with you this Lent so that those parts of me can be crucified.
Strengthen my faith. I know that by emptying myself to you, I will be filled with something far greater, yet still, I hesitate. Why?
Because I'm imperfect.
Because I am fallen.
But you don't care! You surround me with grace nonetheless. Erase my internal lie, that I need to do something worthy of your grace to receive it. Change me so that I might be a vehicle for your will. In your name, I pray.
James Riddell
Lectio Divina
Today you are invited to read through this passage, and spend some time reflecting on what comes up. You may want to have something with which to record your thoughts. Take what stands out, and use it to shape a prayer.
You may want to follow the pattern of Lectio Divina (holy reading)
Reading
Meditating (reflect on the passage as a whole)
Praying (craft a prayer out of your meditation)
Contemplate (simply sit in silence, and let the passage sink more deeply in)
Lectio Divina
Today you are invited to read through this passage, and spend some time reflecting on what comes up. You may want to have something with which to record your thoughts. Take what stands out, and use it to shape a prayer.
You may want to follow the pattern of Lectio Divina (holy reading)
Reading
Meditating (reflect on the passage as a whole)
Praying (craft a prayer out of your meditation)
Contemplate (simply sit in silence, and let the passage sink more deeply in)