Sent into the world, but not owned by its priorities

Morning: Psalms 5, 6; Daniel 2:1-16; I John 2:1-11

Evening: Psalms 10, 11; John 17:12-19

Jesus’s followers, he says, do not belong to the world, but they are sent there. In other words, you’re not owned by the priorities of the wider society, but you still live there intentionally seeking to live in the way of life that Jesus embodied.  It’s not about being pious and world-denying but rather loving the world so much that you want it to be full of life and health. With hatred, denial, greed and self-serving ways being so prevalent, the world needs healing doses of love, realism, generosity and humility to help it towards a more salutary future.

Love is only love when it is given equally to all

Morning: Psalm 1, 2, 3; Daniel 1:1-21; I John 1:1-10

Evening: Psalms 4, 7; John 17:1-11

Deadly incidents of sectarian violence in Muslim mosques in New Zealand, Christian churches in Sri Lanka and Jewish synagogues in America are all fired by religious extremism and hatred. Near the end of his life, Jesus prays for his followers to be one, as God is.  I am sure Jesus wants this loving solidarity not only for his followers, but for all humanity.  Leo Tolstoy wrote: “Love is only love when it is given in the same degree to outsiders, to the adherents of other religions, and even to the enemies who hate us and do us harm.”

Believing springs from being loved

Morning: Psalms 146, 147; Isaiah 43:8-13; I Peter 2:2-10

Evening: Psalms 111, 112, 113; John 14:1-7

Belief is fascinating.  Religion, science and law all rely on belief of sorts.  Probability and reasonable doubt are about evidence being insufficient to prove something completely, so belief kicks in.  When Jesus invites belief in God, Thomas is skeptical.  Now you may believe, even with no evidence.  Or you may call something ‘evidence’ when others say it isn’t ... you believe one thing, they believe another.  For the record, the saying, “Seeing is believing”, is about knowledge not belief.  When you see, you know some facts.  Belief, on the other hand, springs from the experience of being loved.

A new world

Morning: Psalm 145; Isaiah 25:1-9; Acts 4:13-21

Evening: Psalm 104; John 16:16-33

“In the world you will face persecution,” Jesus says, “but take courage; I have conquered the world.”  Will only his followers face persecution?  No, sadly, sometimes they will dish it out.  There are myriad examples of persecution in Christian history, often of one Christian group by another.  Unfortunately, Jesus’s followers, like all humans, do not always treat one another with Love.  So, when Jesus says, “I have conquered the world,” what does he mean?  Is it not this ... Jesus has overcome the Love-denying power of death; and now Love will be the lifeblood and breath of a new world.

The Spirit of Truthf Truth

Morning: Psalm 136; Daniel 12:1-4,13; Acts 4:1-12

Evening: Psalm 118; John 16:1-15

Last night CBC’s ‘As it Happens’ featured an Australian documentary film about an aboriginal boy’s healing gifts.  When this boy heard a white ‘western’ teacher ridiculing ‘the Great Spirit’ in the classroom, he protested and said: “But the Great Spirit is real.”  The boy did not fare well in that school.  Jesus warns his disciples that those who persecute them will think they are doing the world a service.  But Jesus promises his disciples that the Spirit of Truth will come to guide them.  When people ridicule others’ reliance on the Spirit, they actually admit that the Spirit has power.

No room for naivety about Love

Morning: Psalms 146, 147; Ezekiel 37:1-14; Acts 3:11-26

Evening: Psalms 148, 149; John 15:12-27

Jesus’s famous command to love one another as he loves us is credible because he loves us.  But loving one another is hard.  Jesus warns ... Love may even provoke hatred because Love inevitably confronts those powers that are accustomed to getting their way through violence.  Those who love power hate those who love and strive for justice and peace.  Jesus does not want us to be naïve about the tremendous risks and challenges of loving one another.  Yet he still commands us relentlessly to love one another.  Love’s benefits outweigh its risks.

Abide in Love ... know joy

Morning: Psalms 97, 99; Micah 7:7-15; Acts 3:1-10

Evening: Psalm 115; John 15:1-11

We do not learn Love from someone telling us to be loving, but from the experience of Love.  We catch Love.  Love is transmitted to us by the loving actions of others and we pass Love on through loving actions towards them.  Jesus is a source of Love, as are those who love us from birth, who act in a Spirit of Love ... Jesus says he is a vine and we are branches.  Love flows into us through our connection to ‘the vine’.  Love brings joy just as sap gives dry branches life.  Abide. Stay connected.

Jesus: Loving me will help you to love others

Morning: Psalm 103; Isaiah 30:18-21; Acts 2:36-41

Evening: Psalms 111, 114; John 14:15-31

When Jesus says, “If you love me you will keep my commandments”, you can understand it in one of two ways.  The common way actually makes Jesus sound whiny, like ... Show me you love me by doing as I say.  But I can’t imagine Jesus ever being peevish or sulky.  So, I have to make sense of it differently, something like this ... If you love me and everything I stand for, you will then be able to live a life of Love without even trying; it will just come naturally.  That sounds to me much more like Jesus.

The Way of Jesus demands we build bridges

Morning: Psalms 93, 98; Jonah 2:1-9; Acts 2:14, 22-32

Evening: Psalm 66; John 14:1-14

Yesterday, religious extremists killed over 200 people in Sri Lanka, some of them Christians.  Recently, in New Zealand, Muslims were killed; before that in Pittsburg, it was Jews.  All were at worship.  Certainly, our religious paths are very different.  But the Way of Jesus demands that Christians take initiative to bring people together, making it safe, listening to one another and building a community where all can live in peace.  We may believe differently, but every human life is sacred.  Sectarian violence contradicts the Way of Jesus ... Love is the Way.  It’s time to build bridges, not walls.

The journey to knowledge and understanding

Morning: Psalms 148, 149, 150; Exodus 12:1-14; John 1:1-18

Evening: Psalms 113, 114; Isaiah 51:9-11; Luke 24:13-35

Two disciples walk dejectedly on the road to Emmaus. They meet the risen Jesus but do not recognize him.  His teaching moves them, but only when he breaks bread do they know him.  I may have ideas about Jesus or images of him in my mind’s eye.  But would I recognize him if he appeared to me in the flesh?  I may have to walk with him on a long, life journey and listen deeply to him before the light goes on and I realize who Jesus is.  He moves me, though, so I will go with him.

Resurrection

Morning: Psalm 88; Job 19:21-27a; Hebrews 4:1-16

Evening: Psalm 27; Romans 8:1-11

The first verses of Romans 8 are a powerful summary of Christian faith.  It is impossible to do them justice here.  They describe God’s answer to human helplessness before the law, which makes us despair of living well ... because we can’t seem to follow the law.  But the Spirit – God’s presence in the human heart – offers hope that we can indeed live well when the Spirit is at work in us.  Resurrection, for St. Paul, seems to mean our transformation – from our life-denying misuse of the gifts and wonders of the natural, material world towards what is life-giving.

Disciples of Jesus, though in secret

Morning: Psalm 22; Genesis 22:1-14; I Peter 1:10-20; John 13:36-38

Evening: Psalms 40:1-14, 54; John 19:38-42

The Good Friday story says Jesus’s immediate followers did not bury him, but instead, Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, his “secret” disciples, who kept a low profile for fear of persecution.  Sceptics still persecute followers of Jesus for all kinds of reasons, and surely there are still secret disciples of Jesus who keep their loyalty to themselves.  Joseph and Nicodemus probably had a small, supportive community of discreet friends who loved Jesus and who, through quiet acts of love, reflected the Spirit of Jesus as surely as any public declarations of allegiance.  I’m sure Jesus still has many secret friends.

Jesus’s prayer ... that they may be one

Morning: Psalm 102; Jeremiah 20:7-11; I Corinthians 10:14-17; 11:27-32

Evening: Psalms 142, 143; John 17:1-11

Here, close to the end of his life’s work, Jesus prays.  His prayer points to his being at one with the source of all things.  He also prays that those to whom he has entrusted his Good News might also be one.  Jesus’s prayer for oneness in the Cosmos is a kind of manifesto of the movement of reconciliation and justice that his life sets in motion ... When we trust the movement of history that Jesus inaugurated, his Way of Peace, we move the world in the direction of Peace.

The rumbling sound of transformation

Morning: Psalm 55; Jeremiah 17:5-10, 14-17; Philippians 4:1-13

Evening: Psalm 74; John 12:27-36

Jesus is caught in the very human struggle between wanting to avoid danger and stepping right into it.  When he does submit, knowing he must, he says, “Father, glorify your name”.  Then thunder sounds, or is it God’s voice?  In the 1970s, I was a leader at a youth conference ... someone prayed about the nuclear crisis.  Immediately, the rumbling of thunder broke the silence. The leader responded, “Well that prayer got through!”  Everyone laughed.  Thunder greets Jesus’s submission to the growing risk ... It’s as if the thunder says: Momentous change is coming; follow this Jesus and see what happens.

Do we really know what Jesus stands for?

Morning: Psalms 6, 12; Jeremiah 15:10-21; Philippians 3:15-21

Evening: Psalm 94; John 12:20-26

“Some Greeks” want to see Jesus.  They want to know what he stands for.  Jesus’s response is intriguing.  He says a grain of wheat must die in order to bear fruit.  Jesus often talks this way.  He is anticipating his own death.  He is also speaking about us, that we must die to ourselves if our lives are to be fruitful.  We become our true selves when our egos no longer drive us.  This a profound shift, a death and rebirth.  This is what Jesus stands for ... the radical transformation of humanity, a movement from death to life.

Humble leadership attracts our loyalty

Morning: Psalm 51:1-18; Jeremiah 12:1-16; Philippians 3:1-14

Evening: Psalm 69:1-23; John 12:9-19

After raising Lazarus, Jesus becomes a target for the religious authorities, who are afraid of his power.  But rather than seize power from the Romans – as many expect and hope he will do – Jesus rides into Jerusalem on a donkey! ... demonstrating that he is a king like no other.  It is his kind of humble leadership that will ultimately set the world to rights, not raw power.  And the people know it – they welcome him with shouts of praise.  Ironic, eh? ... It is humble leadership that attracts our loyalty, whereas, as Proverbs says: “Pride goeth before a fall.”

What’s Jesus about anyway?

Morning: Psalm 24, 29; Zechariah 9:9-12; I Timothy 6:12-16

Evening: Psalm 103; Zechariah 12:9-11; 13:1, 7-9; Matthew 21:12-17

Messages whispered in just a few ears get garbled.  It's no surprise, then, that Jesus’s story, after 2000 years, is distorted, individualized, and domesticated.  But the Gospel clearly shows Jesus challenging relentlessly corruption and abuses of power. For this, they arrest and try him on trumped up charges.  His message may have been distorted, but – reading carefully – it’s clear that Jesus is about something much bigger than individual transformation or moralizing sermons.  His quest endures in us too, if we are faithful: to root out injustice wherever it thrives and to seek to build all human endeavours on strong foundations. 

The power of death does not rule; Love rules

Morning: Psalms 137:1-6, 144; Jeremiah 31:27-34; Romans 11:25-36

Evening: Psalms 42, 43; John 11:28-44

Passion, like Love, loses its rich meaning by becoming almost entirely associated in our times with romantic or sexual feelings.  But Jesus’s Passion is his suffering.  His Compassion is his readiness to suffer with others, with us.  Today is the Eve of ‘Holy Week’ ... In this week, we accompany Jesus in his Passion, the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Suffering.  After Jesus brings Lazarus back to life, the religious authorities plot to kill him.  But the raising of Lazarus declares that the power of death does not rule the Cosmos; Love rules, and Life.  There is yet hope.

faith looks forward to a new creation

Morning: Psalm 22; Jeremiah 29:1, 4-13; Romans 11:13-24

Evening: Psalms 141, 143:1-11; John 11:1-27

Jesus often surprises people and overturns their expectations – he doesn’t come when called, or he steps in when they warn him it’s dangerous to do so.  He encourages people into the daylight that he brings ... like, ‘stick with me and you’ll see the way.’  Mary laments, ‘if only you had been here, our brother would not have died.’ But Jesus directs people not backwards in a lament for what might have been, but forwards to a future grounded in the faith that ‘if Jesus is who he says he is’, a new creation is being born.

One with everything

Morning: Psalms 131, 132; Jeremiah 26:1-16; Romans 11:1-12

Evening: Psalms 140, 142; John 10:19-42

A man orders from a Buddhist Pizza Parlour: “Make me one with everything.” He complains when shortchanged ... the proprietor responds, “Change must come from within.”  Get it? ... Seeking ‘oneness with all things’ is the quest of every mystical religious tradition.  Of course, when Jesus says “The Father and I are one”, he claims identity with God; that offends the sensibilities of the pious types.  But if they listen deeply to Jesus, he also opens up the possibility that they too might find harmony with the wisdom of the Universe ... when they trust him.

What kind of leadership leads to life?

Morning: Psalm 119:145-176; Jeremiah 25:30-38; Romans 10:14-21

Evening: Psalms 128, 129, 130; John 10:1-18

Our culture characterizes great leadership by qualities like efficiency or organizational skills or being directive.  Jesus, ‘the good shepherd’, practises leadership based on ... knowing your people, making it safe for them and protecting their best interests.  Ancient shepherds slept across the entrance to the sheepfold to guard against predators.  Why is Jesus a ‘good shepherd’?  [Remember: Israel’s first king, David, was a shepherd, but there had been a lot of bad kings since.]  Jesus is saying, in effect: the king who leads as I do is, finally, the One whose Way will bring you to fullness of life.

Certainty is no guarantee that you are right

Morning: Psalms 121, 122, 123; Jeremiah 25:8-17; Romans 10:1-13

Evening: Psalms 124, 125, 126: John 9:18-41

Why do people hang on to mistaken convictions no matter what the evidence?  For instance, thoughtful people deny climate change even when Canada’s Arctic is warming three times faster than the rest of the world.  Why?  Or, in Jesus’s story, religious leaders – of all people – doubt that God has intervened to heal the blind man.  Is it fear that drives people to ‘absolute certainty’ against evidence to the contrary?  I suppose sometimes we just can’t see the wood for the trees ... Or if fear blinds us, maybe Jesus can help us find courage to admit our mistakes?

wake up and smell the coffee!

Morning: Psalm 31; Jeremiah 24:1-10; Romans 9:19-33

Evening: Psalm 35; John 9:1-17

The Bible’s stories are many-layered.  The healing of a blind man points beyond the miracle to the kind of world Jesus ushers in.  The blind receive their sight, but sighted people are still so blind that they get distracted by arguments about the sabbath.  Jesus’s point is that he wants even them to see that what’s really important is a world where all are awake.  To be ‘blind’ is to be asleep, to live unconsciously, serving false ideals that dehumanize others.  To receive your sight is to wake up, smell the coffee, and get busy with the work of healing.

discipleship ... a walk into danger and risk

Morning: Psalm 118; Jeremiah 23:16-32; I Corinthians 9:19-27

Evening: Psalm 145; Mark 8:31-9:1

Many people – police, firefighters, coastguards, soldiers – step often into danger.  Jesus teaches that if the world is to be set right, he and his disciples must be ready for danger too, even death.  Just so that their expectations are clear ... they must know that the deep-rooted evil in the world will be not be defeated without risk.  Bishop Tom Wright writes: “Jesus is not leading us on a pleasant afternoon hike, but on a walk into danger and risk.  Or did we suppose that the kingdom of God would mean merely a few minor adjustments in our ordinary lives?”

Jesus ... bridge from flesh & blood to mystery

Morning: Psalms 107:33-43, 108:1-6; Jeremiah 23:9-15; Romans 9:1-18

Evening: Psalm 33: John 6:60-71

Jesus is a leader who blows holes in your beliefs about life ... it’s hard to follow him.  Perhaps as a result, his followers are divided.  Many expect religion to be ‘spiritual’.  But John’s Gospel goes to great lengths to make clear that Jesus is earthy, God’s Word in flesh and blood.  One hard thing about Jesus is that he claims to be a bridge between this flesh and blood reality and the mystery of the Cosmos.  In effect, Jesus says: “Can you take in and accept who I am? If you do, your life will be extraordinary.”

‘chew over’ the gift of Love, accept it and take it in

Morning: Psalm 102; Jeremiah 23:1-8; Romans 8:28-39

Evening: Psalm 107: 1-32; John 6:52-59

Some say that when Jesus talks about us eating his flesh and drinking his blood, he means the communion of bread and wine that symbolize his body and blood.  But why?  In one of the stories of King David, some soldiers risk their lives for the king ... and for David, ‘drinking someone’s blood’ means benefitting from their self-sacrifice ....  Therefore, eating and drinking Jesus’s body and blood means accepting the benefit of his self-sacrifice.  Thomas Cranmer said communion is “chawing on the Passion of Christ”, ‘chewing over’ Jesus’s self-giving Love, accepting it and taking it in.

“eat this bread ... live forever”

Morning: Psalm 69; Jeremiah 22:13-23; Romans 8:12-27

Evening: Psalm 73; John 6:41-51

If Jesus is bread, what does he mean when he says: “Whoever eats this bread will live forever”?  The bread is everything that Jesus represents, chiefly his suffering.  Through Jesus’s suffering and death, by a mystery, others truly live.  Jesus suffers not to appease an angry God – a perverse idea – but because healing brokenness is costly.  Compassion (suffering with someone who suffers) is the spirituality of Jesus. When the Spirit leads your life into compassion, though you may suffer and die, what you’re living for (which is Love) endures.

What is it that feeds your soul?

Morning: Psalms 101, 109:1-30; Jeremiah 18:1-11; Romans 8:1-11

Evening: Psalm 119:121-144; John 6:27-40

Jesus says he isn’t providing bread, but that he himself is bread, “the bread of life,” the creative, nourishing energy of the Cosmos.  What is your spiritual hunger?  Mine is for the world to make sense.  Someone (maybe Einstein) said there is one crucial human question: “Is the Universe a Friendly Place?” That question feels important to me. And Jesus helps me with an answer ... If I trust what I experience in him and in the world, I do reply, “The Universe is indeed a friendly place, built on Love.”  And that feeds my soul.

Is what you’re looking for what you need?

Morning: Psalms 97, 99; Jeremiah 17:19-27; Romans 7:13-25

Evening: Psalm 94; John 6:16-27

After the miracle of feeding 5,000 people, they came looking for Jesus – he challenged them that they were just interested in getting more bread.  As a teenager, while travelling in the US, I stayed in a few Salvation Army hostels.  In one, to get breakfast you had to listen to a sermon.  I recall being deeply affected by the sermon, but the breakfast was so terrible I couldn’t eat it.  The thing you seek may not be the thing you need.  As Fred Buechner writes somewhere: You may be looking in the fridge for a cure for spiritual hunger.

What if Jesus makes possible a new world?

Morning: Psalm 89:1-18; Jeremiah 16:10-21; Romans 7:1-12

Evening: Psalm 89:19-52; John 6:1-15

They say that Jesus’s ‘feeding of the 5000’ is either a miracle of bread multiplied to feed a lot of people; or, inspired by a miracle of generosity of spirit, people share their bread.  But what if a miracle is not the main point?  The story takes place at Passover, the Jews’ day of liberation from slavery.  What if the story wants to broaden our expectations beyond one meal?  ... Could the Good News be that, when we offer ourselves to the kind of transformation Jesus brings, even though we may think ourselves insignificant, a new world is possible?