Archives for April 2009

Luke 24:29-31

But they begged him to stay the night with them, since it was getting late. So he went home with them. As they sat down to eat, he took a small loaf of bread, asked God’s blessing on it, broke it, then gave it to them. Suddenly, their eyes were opened, and they recognized him. And at that moment he disappeared!

We come to the end of this long season of Lent.  Forty six days we have been waiting, waiting, waiting.  The evening has come and the day is now far spent.  Today we open our eyes.

Can we see Jesus?  We know the story.  We have seen artist renderings. We have imagined the unfolding events with a quickened pulse.  But there is something more to be had than imagination.

The risen Jesus is among us just as He was alongside Cleopas and his friend, walking with them, bumping shoulders, kicking pebbles, discussing the Old Testament Scriptures.  But their eyes were kept from recognizing Him.  How could they not see Him at whom they were directly looking?

The same question applies to us!  Jesus is alive and here among us.  He is walking and talking.  And we feel the bump of His shoulders and see the tumbling pebbles at our feet, and still we see Him not.

It was not until Cleopas saw Jesus’ face directly behind the blessing and the breaking of the bread that his eyes were opened.

Try something.  Stare hard into the blessings and the breakings that fill your life today.  Behind them is Jesus, sitting with you at your table, staring back at You with deep care and great affection, blessing You with breath and a beating heart and gifts too many to count.  And there He sits, unfussed, carrying the weight of all that is broken in your life, promising by His touch to somehow, someday redeem all of it.

And then He vanished from their sight.  Ah, yes, but now everything else looked so different!  Here then is the sign of seeing the risen Jesus.  Everything else in the world becomes glazed with a hope that refuses to fade away.

Oh, to see this world in the light of seeing You first, risen Jesus.

Dialog discuss: Jesus gave a great many other signs in the presence of His disciples which are not recorded in this book. But these have been written so that you may believer that Jesus is Christ, the Son of God, and that in that faith you may have life as His disciples. John in the 20th chapter of his Gospel, Phillips Translation

Romans 8:1-4

Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of life set me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful man to be a sin-offering. And so he condemned sin in sinful man, in order that the righteous requirements of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.

Some would say that the Apostle Paul’s writing is difficult and dense.  In his Letter to the Romans, his manifesto for the Christian faith, it is certainly compact, hard-hitting and highly theological.  But he’s working with a code, which connects with an all-pervasive theme:  the violent clash of Laws.  Law, in Paul’s language, is domain and power, framing God’s order.  To catch Paul’s meaning, consider these competing authorities.

As in …

1. The Law given by God to Moses at Mount Sinai:  specifying God’s righteous requirements, the commands that define a way of life that honors God and edifies all human relationships.  Let’s try…

2. The Law of Sin and Death: when we disobey God, when we oppose his will, when we ignore his moral mandates … we deserve his judgment.  That’s the Law and there’s no getting around it.  Let’s die …

The Law, perfect as it is and demanding perfection, was provided as a good guide to help us, and it turns against us when we fall short.  The Law, intensified and enforced by The Law of Sin and Death, exposes our self-centeredness, our “flesh,” our sinful nature, for the disaster it is.  It prepares to exact the extreme punishment that is then due us — until, unexpectedly, another law is introduced …

3. The Law of the Spirit of Life that sets me Free!  This Law, conceived by God’s mercy, meets the requirements of The Law that ultimately gives up on us.  It satisfies The Law that demands my death for my sin by sending Christ to die on my cross.  It empowers us by implanting the Spirit of the Risen Christ in our hearts as the impetus to live in the freedom of surrender to God.  Let’s fly …

Lord, I cannot meet the requirements of your righteous Law, but Jesus did!  I can’t face the consequences of my sin, but Jesus did!  And so now I live by the Law that lifts me into the freedom of my new calling as your beloved.

Dialog discuss: Jesus was a wild man…If your answer to the question “What would Jesus do?” is that he would be conventional, safe, respectable and refined, then we suspect you didn’t find that answer in the Gospels. Michael Frost, Alan Hirsch – ReJesus

John 13:36-38 (NLT)

“Simon Peter said, “Lord, where are you going?” And Jesus replied, “You can’t go with me now, but you will follow me later.” 37 “But why can’t I come now, Lord?” he asked. “I am ready to die for you.” 38 Jesus answered, “Die for me? No, before the rooster crows tomorrow morning, you will deny three times that you even know me.”

Peter didn’t know himself very well — not nearly as well as Jesus did.  Peter thought he was “all that,” one of the inner circle of the handpicked disciples of the Messiah Himself!  Dude, he was in!  And, as he said here, he was ready to go for it!

Yet Jesus knew that Peter, just as he was, was no match for what was about to happen.  And he surely wasn’t.

But later, when Peter had been refined by tragedy, bewilderment, and terror as Jesus was crucified; when he had eaten with and touched and worshipped the resurrected Jesus; when he was filled with the Holy Spirit—then he became a force with which to be reckoned!  Then he became someone who went with Jesus wherever Jesus went—even to death.  He did, as Jesus had promised, “follow Me later.”

We can’t really know ourselves, not the way the Lord does.  He sees us inside and out and knows what we are made of.  But if we will let God do the work in us that needs to be done—refining, shaping, pruning—then we will become someone who will follow Jesus wherever He goes, able to stand fast, able to carry the burden, able to be true.  If you want to be true, if you want to go all the way with Jesus, let God do what He needs to do inside you.

Jesus, I want to go with You; I want to be true.  Please do the work in me that is needed.

Dialog discuss: “If anyone wants to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all.” It all boils down to this; you stand before people through self-assertion or self-less-ness, promotion or humility. Isn’t it interesting how many followers of Jesus revert to “power plays” of the world instead of the “humility of servanthood?” Bob Roberts, Globalization.

Have you tried servanthood? How did it go? Is that bad? Have you tried self-assertion? How did it go? Is that bad? Lord, continue to lead my heart into encounters and discoveries with you that make my faith contagious!