Saturday, the second week of Easter

John 16:16-33

 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

I always find the beginning of the last part of today's gospel reading to be a little funny.  The disciples, after years of misunderstanding and messing things up, suddenly declare, "Oh! Now we get it!"  I can just see Jesus, his hand on his forehead, with more than a hint a doubt in his voice "Do you now believe?"  Of course, the disciples don't really get it at this point, even if they think they do.   They don't really understand what exact hour it is that has indeed come, what the next few days exactly have in store for them.  And Jesus knows it.  He knows that the hour will be to much for them, that it will scatter them like dry leaves in the wind.  He knows that for Himself, one of the greatest torments of the days to come will be abandonment, since it is only in utter isolation that he  can achieve the work set before Him.  Yet, Jesus' concern is for them.

I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace.

Jesus, in the very moments before His sorrowful Passion, wants to give His disciples, who will very soon abandon Him, peace.  Peace, is after all what Jesus has come to establish.  His life, death and resurrection are really at root about breaking the hold of chaos and establishing God's peace, his great Shalom, in the cosmos.

Peace was a loaded word in those days, as it is today.  Peace has been promised by many, not least of which the Romans.  Whole peoples, entire civilizations, had submitted to Roman rule because of the promise of the pax romana, the Roman Peace, the stability which came from being part of the world's only great power.  The logic was that if everyone only came under the Roman umbrella, then war would cease.  If there was only one power, there would be no one to fight with.  Of course we know that that was a thinly veiled lie.  The solution to all the world's problems could never be so simple.  Today we hear similar lies.  If only people were educated enough, healthy enough, rich enough, free enough then hate and strife would end.  Since the beginning we've been fooled into believing that the great peace we all desire is just beyond our reach, that there is only one thing more needed to achieve it.  Once that thing was piece of fruit, once it was a Roman world, today it seems to be a different thing everyday.  The lie however is the same. 

The truth is that peace, true and lasting peace, can come from nowhere but God, and no one offers God's true and lasting peace except Jesus.

We who have that peace can take heart, can be of good cheer, even while the tribulation rages around us as it has since Jesus first spoke these words.  Because our peace is the invincible peace, the unassailable peace, the peace of Jesus, who has overcome the world.

Friday, the second week of Easter

I Peter 3:13-4:6

Now who is there to harm you if you are zealous for what is good? But even if you should suffer for righteousness' sake, you will be blessed. Have no fear of them, nor be troubled, but in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, having a good conscience, so that, when you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ may be put to shame.

You would have to be completely disconnected from the world to not have realized by now that we are living in a contentious season in American life.  The whole population seems to be engaged in one fight or another, to be vigorously defending some stance or another, and it only promises to get worse. 

What is the Christian's place in all of this?  For many this is a no-brainer, but for different reasons.  There are those who feel like it is the absolute duty of Christians to be deeply engaged in the political process, to lobby and campaign and protest, to vehemently fight to sustain the so-called "Christian values of the Founding Fathers."  For others, political involvement is not the purview of Christians at all.  There are those who would find even a Christian voting to be at best a waste of time and at worst inappropriate involvement in the sinful world's business.

Well, it seems to me that, as with most things, the right answer is somewhere in between.  Like all things, the Christian's involvement in politics is a matter for discernment.  St. Peter gives us a good framework to think about how we should be involved in society. 

We should be zealous for what is good.  We should lend our support to good causes and raise our voices against evil.  There are issues worth fighting for.  We are called as Christians to defend the defenseless, to bind up the broken, to set free the captive, and if political action is required to do those things then we should engage in it.  However, It takes serious discernment to decide what those issues are.  Abortion, for instance, is certainly one.  Tax reform, however, probably isn't.  Where do things like same-sex marriage, health care reform, jobs, war, education, and entitlements fall?

What we must realize, however, is that our job is not to police the morality of the population.  We cannot expect to stop sinners from sinning by enacting laws.   We live in a society which at best only ever had a Christian veneer, which may have in the past agreed to follow a standard of morality that was Christian-like, but not one that was ever a society that as a whole was dedicated to Jesus Christ.  (I hate to burst bubbles, but the Founding Father's were not Christians.  If you want proof look into Thomas Jefferson's version of the New Testament.)  Now, to make matters worse, even that standard of morality has been thoroughly abandoned.  Yet, we make a serious mistake when we use our energies to try to claw our way back into that Christian veneer.  We should not expect to be able to make our society truly Christian.  Read the Gospel for today, what we should expect is to be hated and ill treated. 

We cannot make the world or our society Christian, we can however with God's help change people's hearts.  Our earliest Christian ancestors transformed the violently pagan Roman world (one much like our own) not with rallies or revolts or elections or legislation, but by bearing witness with gentleness and respect, even on the floor of the Colosseum.  They never strove to institute their beliefs or morality by gaining political power, but rather fearlessly asserted the power of the Risen Christ which was theirs, and which overcomes the world and death itself and thereby they won countless millions.

Our job is not to hold signs or wear buttons or shout slogans, it is to be zealous for what is good, to be ready to make defense for our hope and to suffer for righteousness, to do all things with the gentleness and respect that we see in Christ, and to await the day when Our Lord will indeed make all things new, when every knee will indeed bow and every tongue indeed confess. 

Thursday, the second week of Easter

John 15:12-27

I have called you friends...

Can we really grasp what that means?  What it means to be a friend of Jesus?  I don't think we really can, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try.  We spend a lot of time calling ourselves Christ's humble servants, as rightly we should, but so little time contemplating and reveling in the fact the we are also His friends, and not just any friends, but ones He loved with the greatest love by giving His life for us. 

It is probably easier for us to imagine ourselves as servants, beloved and well-treated servants, but servants nonetheless.   There is an equality inherent in friendship that we just can't imagine sharing with Jesus.  We are after all just human beings and miserable sinners at that.   And don't get me wrong, we are miserable sinners, and will never attain to any kind of equality with the Son of God.  There are also plenty of times in the Scripture where we are also called the slaves and sheep.  The Master, may love and care for his slaves, the Shepherd may give his life for the sheep, but the Master and the slave cannot be friends, no more than the Shepherd and the sheep.  Yet, Christ calls us friends.

Our friendship with Christ says nothing about our worthiness or fitness but everything about Christ's love and mercy.  We can be his friends because he condescends to us, comes to us, takes on our humanity.  He is the Master who truly befriends the slave, the Shepherd who calls his sheep into a relationship.  We can be his friends only because he declares it to be so.

How this fact should change our lives!  We are friends of Jesus, friends of Him through whom all things were created and in whom all things hold together.  Now this friend of ours surely deserves our worship and adoration, but he is also one with whom we have a relationship.  He laughs with us in our delight, and holds us in our sorrow.  He provides for us in need and protects us in danger, and shares with us in plenty and rests with us in safety.  We share every moment of our lives with Him.  He is closer to us than any human friend.  There is nothing which can come between us, or cause him to reject us.  Nothing!  He is our friend, the best one we'll ever have.

Friendship with Jesus does change us, however.  Such a relationship cannot leave us the same!  The friends of Jesus obey his commandments, we bear fruit for Him, we love His other friends like He loves us.  There is also a price to pay.  The friends of Jesus are hated by the world, because Jesus is hated by the world.  Yet, what a small price to pay this is however, for such a gift!  And besides, Jesus does not leave us alone in the hateful world, but sends us the Helper, the Holy Spirit, to sustain us.

What a difference this is from every other system of belief in the world. All the false gods of the nations (and by this I mean everything from the traditional notion of god to the "universe" of the New Agers or even the riches, comfort and pleasure worshiped by the materialist and hedonist) may be creator, they may be sustainer or guide or even bringer of some prosperity or happiness, but they are never friend.  The gods of the nations are not dedicated to their devotees, they may be tolerant of them, or impressed by them, but they do not love them unconditionally.   No one, other than the Christian, can know God as friend, can live in the surety of his love.  No one, other than the Christian, even knows that such a relationship is possible.  

For us, this should be the greatest truth and joy of our lives, and the greatest reason to share our Friend Jesus with those who do not know the abundance of life with Him.

Wednesday, the second week of Easter

Exodus 15:22-16:10

They went three days...

Three days!  Three days after the Lord triumphed gloriously!  Three days after they saw the glory of Egypt drowned in the sea!  Three days and they were thirsty and they grumbled.

Some times the people of Israel are unbelievable.  Were they really so hard hearted that after only three days they began to doubt God?  Could they really have believed that the one who parted the sea for them would abandon them to thirst after only three days?

Then God makes the water sweet.  Then he promises to be their healer.  Then he brings them to Elim with its twelve springs and seventy palms.

Then on the fifteenth day of the second month, they grumble again.  They complain that God did not kill them in Egypt.  They whine that they have to starve to death, when they could have died in Egypt with plenty to eat.

They never seem to learn the lesson that God will provide.  There seems to be nothing that God can do to convince them that He loves them and will care for them, to convince them that they are indeed His people.  Not the plagues, not the freedom, not the parting of the sea, not the destruction of the Egyptians, not the cloud or the fire, not the sweet water, not the promises, not the beautiful oasis.   Nothing seems to get it into their thick skulls, that God will care for them.  As soon as they're hungry, they assume God will let them starve.

We wag our heads at them. What fools they were!

 Would we really have done much differently though?  Are we really any better?  Don't we doubt God's love every time it gets tough for us too?  Every time we worry about the future, we add our voices to the chorus of Israelite grumbling.  No matter what God does for us, no matter how many times He proves Himself, we doubt and worry and fret over the smallest things.  We act as if our financial woe, or relationship problem or health concern is all of a sudden an insurmountable task for Him who parted the sea, for Him who rose victorious from the grave.  In a way, we are worse than the Israelites, for we have Christ, we know the extreme lengths that God will go to out of his love for us.  We have the Spirit, God lives with in us and we within Him, and still we worry.

It took them three days to forget and to grumble.  Sometimes I am blessed if I make it three hours between a blessing and the next moment of worry.  What a fool I am!  What fools we all are, grumbling against the Lord.

Tuesday, the second week of Easter

Exodus 15

I will sing to the Lord, for he has triumphed gloriously; the horse and its rider he has thrown into the sea.

Our existence as Christian is sometimes confusing.  We say we are saved from sin and death, and yet we still sin and die.  We say that Christ has triumphed, yet the battle still seems to rage.  We say we live in God's presence, but we are still so bound to this world.  This is the "already-and-not-yet" of the Christian life.  It is why all these statements are indeed true.  It is how we were saved at the cross, are being saved today, and yet will be saved on the last day.   It is how we can seem to sit on both sides of the Red Sea, how we can say that "God will fight for us, we need only to keep still" and yet confidently declare already that "God has triumphed gloriously."

Now this may seem at first like a topic for philosophers and theologians to debate in ivory towers, but in reality it has great implications on our every day lives.  What wonderful comfort it is to be able to know, when caught between Pharaoh and the sea that the great work is already accomplished, our enemies already defeated, that we are indeed victorious even while the battle rages.  It is for this reason, the fact that we are already seated in the heavenlies with Christ, already a party to His Easter triumph, that we can face all conflicts no matter how hopeless. 

In our life there should be, can be, no hopelessness,  because even though we can't always see it, the victory is won, the issue is decided, God has triumphed gloriously, the horse and its rider have been cast into the sea!

Monday, the second week of Easter

Exodus 14

The Lord will fight for you, and you have only to be still.

We hear a lot about the Red Sea in Eastertide.  The Exodus event, Israel's liberation from slavery in Egypt, is the great foreshadowing in history of the even greater liberation from slavery to sin and death which we have in Jesus Christ.

Christ, our Passover, has been sacrificed for us.  We have been spared the destruction which we deserved.  Yet, our former enslavers, sin and death, like Pharaoh before them, still pursue us.  In the Resurrection Christ opens the way of escape for us and leads us through.  We, however, often find ourselves, there on the shore of the sea with our enemies bearing down on us.  Yet, like Israel, the way of escape lies before us in Jesus and the life he offers.  We would see this and embrace it more often if only we did not allow our fears to blind and distract us.

All the fights of our lives are the Lord's if we are His and surrendered to Him.  We need only to be still.  We need only to trust him, all him to reign in our lives and he will triumph gloriously on our behalf.

How often, however, do we, in our fear, try to take over the situation?  How often do we try to plan and scheme our way out of trouble instead of letting God carry us through it?  How often do we allow ourselves to think nostalgically of our days in Egypt and the false security they offered?

The Egyptians we see today, we will never see again.  The Lord will fight for us.  We need only to be still.

The Second Sunday in Easter

I John 1:1-7

 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.


I Want to Walk as a Child of the Light
by Kathleen Thomerson


I want to walk as a child of the light;
I want to follow Jesus.
God set the stars to give light to the world;
the star of my life is Jesus.

In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.


I want to see the brightness of God;
I want to look at Jesus.
Clear Sun of righteousness, shine on my path,
and show me the way to the Father.

In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.

I’m looking for the coming of Christ;
I want to be with Jesus.
When we have run with patience the race,
we shall know the joy of Jesus.

In him there is no darkness at all;
the night and the day are both alike.
The Lamb is the light of the city of God:
Shine in my heart, Lord Jesus.