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2013-03-27T22:12:09-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Maundy Thursday – John 13:18-34

Last updated on: March 27, 2013 at 10:12 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

John 13:18-34

Jesus says to you today: “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” “Maundy Thursday” comes from the Latin words mandatum novum, or “new commandment,” taken from this verse (John 13:34.)

Now why is love a new commandment? The commandments to love God and love your neighbor as yourself come from the Old Testament. But they are hidden away among 612 other commandments. Each of these is either about loving God or loving neighbor, and yet it is easy to miss. So Jesus gives us a new commandment – in fact, the commandment above all others: the commandment to love. He gives it in a new way because it is through Jesus Christ Himself that we see the love incarnated that we are commanded to have.

On Maundy Thursday, in John 13, even before the ultimate story of love found in Good Friday, we find a complete teaching on love. For on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gives us the example of love, the commandment of love, and the strength to love.

Though the entire life of Jesus was an act of sacrificial love, on Maundy Thursday, Jesus gave His disciples – and that includes us – a striking example of love. For on the night in which He was betrayed, He did not demand that His disciples serve Him . . . . He didn’t pamper Himself . . . . He didn’t give His body rest and luxury to prepare for the exhausting and most trying day ahead.

On the night in which He was betrayed, which was also the night He was tried and sentenced, before He did anything else . . . He washed His disciples’ feet.

Now we may not appreciate the significance of this job in 21st century America, but in Jesus’ day, this was one of the lowest jobs around, reserved for common servants. You may not appreciate how humbling it is to wash another person’s feet, especially in a culture where sandals were worn every day and baths were only as frequent as new moons. But feet in the 1st century – who are we kidding? – feet in every century – are dirty, stinky, and smelly. As a parent of young children, I see that every day. (That’s right, blame the kids!)

I remember once in eighth grade when I was on a youth leadership retreat, and the leaders of the youth group decided to have a foot-washing ceremony one night. Earlier that day, I had gone off by myself to explore and play. I seem to remember something about a tire swing on a tree and a bunch of really wet mud all around it. But I digress.

We gathered in a circle to wash each other’s feet. Slowly, the bowl and towel passed around the circle, until it was Christina Cathcart’s turn to wash someone’s feet: mine. When I took off my shoes and socks, I embarrassingly discovered a ring of black all around my ankles and suddenly remembered the tire swing and pool of mud. I may have been embarrassed, but Christina Cathcart was mortified. How humbling to her, and yet more than anyone else that night she had an opportunity to understand love.

But what if the person washing your feet were Jesus Christ Himself, wiping your feet with His own clothing? This was only one among many acts of love He performed in a life that was a living, walking advertisement for love. As John writes of Jesus, “having loved his own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.”

When Peter learned the lesson of love, He asked to have not only His feet but His whole body washed. And we, who are His disciples, are to have our whole bodies and souls washed by Him. This is what He does for us in baptism, coming to us in love, and offering to cleanse us. This is what He does in the Lord’s Supper. In the Prayer of Humble Access we pray: “Grant us, therefore, gracious Lord, so to eat the flesh of thy dear Son Jesus Christ, and to drink his blood, that our sinful bodies may be made clean by his body, and our souls washed through his most precious blood.”

Here, on Maundy Thursday, then, we see both Baptism and the Holy Communion, as Jesus offers Himself to us that we might live in love.

How humbling, that the Lord who washed His disciples’ dirty, stinking feet in the upper room, has washed your sinful soul – much, much dirtier and stinkier than feet can ever get. How humbling, that the King of Glory should come to His disciples this way, and dirty Himself with the stains of our darkest sins, day after day, broken commandment after broken commandment of dirty, slimy sin!

Notice that Jesus gives the example of love first, and then the commandment – as if to say to us: “anyone can tell you to love, but let me show you first that you will truly understand.” Which is easier? To say “Love one another” or to actually love and then say “Love as I have loved you”? Jesus follows up His humble example with a concrete commandment, John 13:34 – “A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

It’s not enough for us to simply have our feet washed by our Lord: He washes us so that we might become like Him. He washed their feet, so that they might learn love. And He washes your body and soul, so that you might learn to love and serve, as He did.

This love that was so real in the life of Jesus must be made just as real in the life of His disciples. Palm Sunday taught that the Kingdom of God is a Kingdom of humility, service, and love. And Jesus says “If you want to be great in the Kingdom of heaven, then learn to be the servant of all.” “No disciple is greater than His master but strives to be like Him in all things.” And now: “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

It is your Christian duty – and a duty that should proceed spontaneously from a washed soul – to wash the feet of the saints. “Love one another, as I have loved you.”

Look for opportunities to serve; make yourself the most humble person you know; take the lowest job in the room. Anoint the Body of your Lord Jesus Christ – anoint His Body, the Church – by loving one another, as He first loved you. The new commandment to love one another begins by loving God but must continue by loving the saints. But it must conclude by loving those not like you. Love those who are not like you and who may not reciprocate the favor. Love those who hate you. Remember that Jesus washed the feet and offered His love feast to the very one who betrayed Him.

If we keep opening our arms and doors of our churches, God’s communities of love, we will get some different, strange people come through those doors – and we must love them. We might get some teenagers and young people who don’t dress quite like us or talk just like us or who might say or do some startling things. And we must love them. We might meet neighbors who will eat our food, and play our games, and hear our music – and never even think about coming into God’s house – and we must love them too.

“As I have loved you, you also love one another.”

But how shall we ever find the strength within ourselves for such an impossible task – to love as our Lord loved us? Jesus was able to love perfectly, in spite of the pain He endured, in spite of being rejected, not just because He was God but because His human nature actively choose to obey the Father and was sustained by the Holy Spirit. That is where He found His strength.

We can only obey this great commandment of Jesus – to love as He loved us – through the same strength that Jesus Christ found: the strength of God the Father through Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit.

There are many ways to find the strength of God, but all of them are only through Jesus Christ. But Jesus gave His disciples a special way to celebrate His love and be strengthened to love with His love and power: His supper. After Jesus had shown His disciples the example of love, and after He had given them the commandment of love. He gave them the power of love through the sacramental meal He ate with them. He gave Himself to them, just as He would on the Cross a short time later.

Here before us, on the Lord’s Table whenever we partake, is liquid and solid love – given for you. Here is the power to keep His commandment. And here before us every day, in all of the ways that Jesus offers Himself to us each day, we have Jesus Christ, love incarnate and the power to love.

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”

Prayer: Father, as You have loved us by sending Your Son; Jesus, as You have loved us by giving up Your life for us; so may You give us the gift of love through Your Spirit that we may obey Your commandment to love and be made like our Master in all things. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

1. As you meditate on the Gospel narratives of Christ’s betrayal, Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection, meditate on the love of God as He gives them through the life of Christ.

2. As you prepare to partake of the Lord’s Supper this week, take extra care to prepare yourself by meditating on the Lord in His Supper.

Resolution: I resolve to find one specific way to love today.

Book of Common Prayer

2013-03-25T23:05:20-05:00

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Tuesday Before Easter, 6th Sunday in Lent – John 15:1-16

Last updated on: March 25, 2013 at 11:05 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

John 15:1-16

In John 15, Jesus teaches us that we are to abide in Him as the branches abide in the vine. This is an image of the continuous life of feasting on Christ that we are to have, and there are 3 main truths about abiding in Christ for us to eat this morning.

First, abiding in Christ means feeding off Him. As the branch only has life as it comes from the vine, we only have our spiritual life to the degree that it is Christ who lives in us. He is our heavenly food, the Bread of Heaven, as He offers Himself to us each day. If we feed off Him, then we become spiritually alive and healthy and bear fruit. But if we don’t, then we are like the dead branches we’ve all seen on trees that are still attached to the tree and look like they’re alive, but when you touch them you realize they are dead and brittle and will soon be broken off.

Sometimes, we seem to assume that this abiding in Christ by feeding will happen automatically, without our choosing to eat Christ. But in the Christian life, there is no IV drip, which enables us to lie comatose so that Christ feeds us regardless of our efforts to seek Him. As with the manna in the wilderness, we have to go out and gather it daily.

It’s true that by the grace of the one who planted us in Christ, we have a direct connection to the Vine who is the source of our life. Jesus Christ is in every sphere of our lives, offering Himself to us that we might abide in Him and be fed by and become like Him. But we have to come to Him in order to abide in Him.

Rather than seeing each day as something that just happens or as something that we ourselves direct, what if we began to see each day as the daily bread that Christ is giving us? Furthermore, what if we learned that each day, and all of its events, is the very way that Christ comes to us?

When we awake in the morning and when we go to sleep in the evening, Christ is there to greet us, offering Himself to us as our daily bread, our heavenly food. And we insist on choosing coffee and toast or milk and Lucky Charms instead. Every earthly food that we eat is to be a reminder that Christ is feeding us and that we must lift our mouths and eyes and ears to Him to take Him into us so that we might become Him. And so some of us remember to give thanks for our earthly food, that we might feed off Christ.

But it’s not just the eating of food where Christ is present but every activity of your every day. Each new activity of every day is an activity to which Christ is calling you and is one of His means of feeding you, if only you will abide in Him. It’s been my intention to offer a brief prayer before I begin every new activity of the day so that I may continually feed off Christ and see Him in all things. I realize how imperfectly I’ve been doing this the last several weeks, and so I’ll begin again.

Andrew Murray wrote: “We begin to number our days not from the sun’s rising over the world, or by the work we do or the food we eat, but the daily renewal of the miracle of the manna – the blessedness of daily fellowship with Him who is the Life and the Light of the world.”

Second, abiding in Christ means being pruned by the Father (verse 2.) God’s pruning of us, also known as His loving discipline, and which comes in the many species of suffering and not getting what we want – is to teach us to abide in Him and to help us to bear more fruit. Without the suffering in our lives, we are much too likely to think that we have gotten the good things in our lives by ourselves – that we are autotrophs who produce their own food. If God doesn’t prune us, we grow chaotically for the sake of growth, and all of our growth is self-directed; all of God’s good gifts go to make us obese on His goodness because we have not expended His heavenly food on others, which is the fruit of love.

The suffering in your life is one of the greatest ways to abide in Christ and live in Him. If it’s true that our life is in Christ and that He abides in us and we in Him, then we get all of Christ: the glory, yes, but also the suffering. This week above all other weeks should remind us of this principle: first comes the suffering of the Crucifixion, and then the glory of the Resurrection. First comes Good Friday, and then Easter.

The suffering that is in your life is the suffering that God has assigned you. It is a personalized cross, lovingly measured and handcrafted by the Master Carpenter just for you. Your cross, the suffering in your life, becomes the means of participating in and abiding in Christ and His Cross, to which you are united. But only if you seek Christ through it; otherwise, suffering is just suffering (which stinketh!)

Therefore, when you see suffering in your life, greet it as Jesus Christ Himself, who is coming with His Cross for you.

Finally, abiding in Christ means bearing fruit. “As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me” (verse 4.) “By this is My Father glorified, that you bear much fruit; so you will be My disciples” (verse 8.)

A vine is planted for the fruit it yields, and it is judged on this basis. The vine and the branches do not exist only for themselves. What, then, is the fruit of which Christ speaks and which we are to bear? Primarily, it is to be made like Christ in all things. If you abide in Jesus Christ and feed off Him daily and minutely, then you will bear fruit because Christ will be living in and through you. In fact, if you are abiding in Christ, you can’t help but bear fruit. On the other hand, if your life seems dry and not to be bearing fruit; if you are not becoming more like Christ; if you are not sowing His seeds among others: then the odds are you haven’t been abiding in Him as much as you should.

There are many fruits that abiding in Christ yields. Chief among these is the abiding itself, the union with God through Christ that is the goal of all mankind and our greatest dream. Abiding in Christ, living with God, is nothing less than heaven itself.

But there are other magnificent fruits, such as the fruits of the Spirit that are increasingly manifested in us. When we abide in Christ, just as His suffering becomes our suffering (and vice versa), His joy becomes our joy (verse 11.) His love becomes our love (verse 12.)

How was it that the life of Jesus Christ yielded such abundant, sweet, and nourishing fruit? Because He abided in the Father. How did He do this? By perfectly obeying the will of the Father. This, too, is the way we feed off Christ and yield fruit: to obey His commandments. “If you keep My commandments, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in His love” (verse 10.)

Ultimately, love, that topic which I can’t seem to escape in my meditations on Christ and the Word, is the measure of how much we are abiding in Christ. Love God, obey His commandments, and love your neighbor by serving Him, and you will be abiding in Christ. To the degree that we are obeying God every moment and living in His presence, we will be abiding in Christ. To the degree that you abide in Christ, you will bear fruit, the fruits of love and obedience; of joy and the other fruits of the Spirit; of feeding others in love and spreading the Seed of Christ across the earth; and the most blessed fruit of all: His life-giving, awesome, ecstatic presence with you.

Prayer: Father, I thank You for uniting me to Your Son Jesus Christ and giving me life in and through Him. Lord Jesus Christ, I thank You for feeding me with Yourself, my daily manna from heaven. I ask that You will give me an increased desire to abide in You that I may bear the fruits of the Spirit in my life, and especially the fruit of love, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

1. Meditate more deeply on the way you have chosen to abide in Christ today. Prepare to feed off Him in this way. Remember Him in this way throughout the day.

2. Renew your vows for Lent one more time, using them as a means of abiding in Christ, and not allowing them to become routine or thoughtless.

Resolution: I resolve to practice one way of abiding in Christ today: seeing Him in my daily life; turning more frequently to Him in prayer; accepting my suffering as His cross for me; giving up myself for another; etc.

Book of Common Prayer

daily devotional

obedience

suffering

the vine and the branches

2013-03-17T16:16:22-05:00

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Monday of 5th Sunday in Lent – 1 Corinthians 15:12-19

Last updated on: March 17, 2013 at 4:16 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

1 Corinthians 15:12-19

“Theology’s not important.” I’ve heard a lot of statements to that effect before.

Well, here’s a little theology: Jesus Christ is risen!

No, not a little theology, a lot of theology. So central is the Resurrection of Jesus Christ which we will celebrate in Easter in two short weeks, and which we celebrate every Lord’s Day, that without it you don’t have Christianity.

The Resurrection is so much at the crux of Christianity that without it, our entire theology – our knowledge about and belief in God – completely evaporates. In fact, so important is the doctrine of the Resurrection that those who deny it should not properly be called Christians, except in terms of being apostate or heretical Christians.

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of Christian theology and if you remove it, then the rest comes tumbling down like a house of cards. Here are just a few of the consequences that Paul mentions that inevitably follow if Jesus was not raised from the dead:

1. Our preaching is in vain (verse 14). Everything you’ve been told about who God is, what sin is, and how God has taken away the sins of the world through the sacrifice of His Son is a lie. Everything you’ve been taught that’s connected to this, the moral teaching, the teachings about love and self-denial, the teachings about us being one Body of Christ – all of it is in doubt.

St. Chrysostom said: “Logically Paul would have said that if Christ had not been raised, historical facts would have been denied, but instead he says something which is much more relevant and indeed frightening to the Corinthians. For if Christ had not risen from the dead, then Paul’s preaching would have been useless and their faith would have no meaning.”

2. If our preaching is in vain, then we are made out to be liars or at best terrible deceivers whose wisdom is of no value to you.

3. Your faith is in vain (verse 14.) What you believe, not having seen, is also a lie. The life you’ve built on what you believe is a lie as well. Your body will become worm fodder after you die, and that’s it.

4. We are misrepresenting God (verse 15.) If God exists, He doesn’t have a Son; He isn’t the Trinity; His Son didn’t become man; His Son didn’t rise from the dead; and He hasn’t paid for the sins of the world. Either we’re speaking falsely about God, or else there isn’t a God at all.

5. You are still in your sins (verse 17.) Jesus Christ isn’t really lord of anything: He couldn’t even save himself, so how could he save you? Since Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection are the salvation of the world from sins, there would still be the sentence of death over us. Darkness and decay and death would hold illimitable dominion over all.

6. Those who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished (verse 18.) Remember all those people you thought you’d see again in heaven? Dream on! I won’t see my daughter Veronica or my grandparents or St. Paul or John Keble in heaven because there is no resurrection of Christ and therefore there is no resurrection for us. All those who have gone before have simply returned to dust. We shall never see them again.

7. We are of all men most to be pitied (verse 19.) Our religion really is just an opiate for the masses, only without the fact of the Resurrection, the power of this particular opiate would be gone. Living out ridiculous fables, resisting a powerful culture for no reason any longer, and believing in a better life in eternity when this life is all there is, we would be pathetic.

8. There is no heaven and no eternity in the presence of God. As St. Chrysostom wrote: “If the body does not rise again, the soul remains uncrowned with the blessings stored up for it in heaven.”

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then I might as well quit writing these stupid little meditations on a false work of fiction. And you should stop reading them and get on with your life, since there’s no Resurrection and no salvation. I should quit being a priest and a pastor and stop counseling people on the basis of Jesus Christ. I’m not sure anymore what I’d tell them about suffering, I guess that it’s just a natural part of the world as it has evolved and to go and work out your own existential, atheistic salvation with fear and trembling because I’m out of answers and I don’t know anyone who has any.

I guess I’ll go back to teaching. Of course, I couldn’t go back to teaching in Christian schools because they’d be based on a lie, and all the students would go back to the public schools. Literature and history would lose some of their appeal for me, and even science would be shaken.

My family life would have to be renegotiated, since I couldn’t be sure of anything St. Paul or the other patriarchal, sexist, racist, homophobic dead white males wrote. And I’d have to reconsider love. Would it really be worth denying myself all sorts of things, since there is now no Christ to carry my Cross or command me to carry it with Him? Doing what’s good for others would only be valuable to me if I saw its benefit for me.

I’d have to come up with an entirely different basis on which to judge my thoughts, word, and actions. Most probably, I’d seek to maximize my own pleasure. Having chronic fatigue, this wouldn’t be so much fun, and I think I’d become bitter and grumble: “Why has God . . .” I mean “Why do I have this? It’s not fair, and it makes my life miserable. Hey, I’ve heard of a few good ways to dull the misery . . . .”

If Jesus didn’t rise from the dead, then my life is a tragic mistake. No, it’s not tragic after all, because there would have to be something noble and worthy of having fallen in a tragedy. I would become like the other, pitiable zombies who are really the living dead and have only a short time left (except I wouldn’t be pitiable because my empty existence just is, and I can’t attach any real judgments on it, such as “pity.”)

It’s a good thing that theology does matter!

Thank God for theology.

Thank God for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ, His Son!

Prayer: “O God, Who for our redemption didst give Thine only begotten Son to the death of the Cross, and by His glorious resurrection hast delivered us from the power of the enemy: Grant us so to die daily unto sin, that we may evermore live with Him in the joy of His resurrection; through the same Thy Son Christ our Lord. Amen.

Resolution and Point for Meditation: I resolve to spend some time today meditating on the Resurrection of Jesus Christ and its importance in my life. You might meditate on some of the points above, or you might choose to follow an idea that the Spirit is especially impressing you with today. Since we will be meditating on the Resurrection for the rest of 1 Corinthians 15 (and during Easter), you’ll have plenty of time to meditate on a single point in detail today.

Book of Common Prayer

2013-03-05T21:11:34-05:00

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Wednesday of 3rd Sunday in Lent – 1 Corinthians 10:14-22

Last updated on: March 5, 2013 at 9:11 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

1 Corinthians 10:14-22

You are the Temple of the Holy Spirit, which means that God has chosen to dwell with you.

But how this happens is a mystery. I can’t explain how the Holy Spirit could overshadow Mary and so incarnate the Second Person of the Trinity. I can’t explain how the Holy Spirit could live with me, not only since I’m a mere man but also a sinful one at that. And I can’t explain how Jesus Christ is present in the Lord’s Supper and gives Himself to me so that I really partake of Him in it.

And yet I know that all these things are true.

“The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?” (verse 16.) St. Paul believes that partaking of the Lord’s Supper makes us a partaker of Jesus Christ Himself, especially in His Body and Blood. He argues that among Israel and the Gentiles, those who eat of the sacrifices are partakers of the altar. If this is true, then it must also be true (even more true) that Christians who eat the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper are made partakers of Christ. Those who partake of the sacrifice of demons are having fellowship with them (verse 20), and so Christians who partake of the sacrifice of Christ have fellowship with Him.

Rather than raising up our defenses about centuries’ old arguments about exactly how Christ is present in His Supper, we should all affirm what St. Paul and the Church until the 16th century universally taught: that Christ is truly present in the Sacraments. And this has wonderful consequences for our lives – if we eat faithfully.

The blessings that God brings to us through feeding off His Son are numerous and immeasurable. The most important blessing is, of course, that God truly gives us Himself. Again, don’t ask me how this exactly works. For that matter, don’t ask me how it exactly works at Baptism or when I say the Sinner’s Prayer. But God gives Himself to His people at His Supper, and we are to faithfully feed off Him.

If we do, then we truly become a part of Him, and He becomes a part of us. This isn’t so strange, since Paul has already taught this before, in relation to our being the Temple of the Holy Spirit. If you’ve been reading Give Us This Day for a while, you might remember my discussion of the doctrine of perichoresis, which is that in the Trinity, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit all inter-penetrate each other and participate in each other’s person. In Jesus Christ, we could say the there is a perichoresis of God and man, and with the coming of the Holy Spirit to live with us, there is a perichoresis between God and us.

This actual participation in the life of God and being united to Him, brought to us through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, is our salvation. God and made are made one: God with us, “Immanuel.”

Paul uses a wonderful illustration of how we are made one: since we are all partakers of one bread, we are all one body, even though we are many (verse 17.) The Didache, a mid to late 1st century Christian work that is the oldest outside of the New Testament, elaborates this idea. The Didache says that “As this broken bread was scattered upon the mountains and being gathered together became one, so may Your Church be gathered together from the ends of the earth into Your kingdom.” (For those of you familiar with the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal, see hymn #195 – “Father, We Thank Thee Who Hast Planted.”) St. Augustine takes this and runs with it and explains that the separate grains of wheat we all once were are only made bread after a certain amount of crushing (which he relates to fasting but which I liken to our sufferings) and being joined with water (baptism.)

The Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, the Eucharist, the Mass indeed presents a sacrifice of which we partake. I don’t believe it is a re-sacrificing of Christ, but I do believe it is a re-presentation of that once for all Sacrifice of Christ’s. Jesus Christ, as the Lamb of God who was slain to take away the sins of the world is truly present with His people who faithfully partake of the Passover. Being made one with him, by the grace of the Sacraments, we receive the blessing of union with Him.

Again, bread is a good picture of this participation. When we eat earthly bread, our bodies digest it until we are able to absorb it, and the bread physically becomes a part of our body. When we eat the heavenly bread which is Christ, our souls digest Him, and He becomes a part of us. By this one common participation in Christ, we are not only made one with Him but also one with each other, for there is only one Body. And so this perichoresis, it turns out, extends even to us, so that you and I are truly part of each other. For this reason, St. Luke often records that the early Church was of “one mind” and “one accord,” for this kind of visible unity should flow from the actual but invisible unity we have as the Body of Christ, which we become through a faithful eating of the Body and Blood of Christ.

You are the Temple of the Holy Spirit. As St. Ambrose said, “Every soul which receives the bread which comes down from heaven is a house of bread, the bread of Christ, being nourished and having its heart strengthened by the support of the heavenly bread which dwells within it. Hence Paul says: ‘We are all one bread.’ Every faithful soul is Bethlehem.”

What a wonderful idea – that you and I, especially together, are Bethlehem, the “House of Bread” which is made a fit home for God by partaking of Jesus Christ through His Body and Blood. You and I, each time we faithfully partake of the Lord’s Supper, are once again “Bethlehem,” the House of Bread, the place where Jesus Christ is born to save the world!

What other response could there be than Eucharist, “Thanksgiving,” which is shown by going out and living with Jesus Christ and living as Jesus Christ?

Prayer: Almighty and everliving God, we thank You that You feed us through the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of our Savior Jesus Christ and through them assure us of Your favor toward us. For these gifts make us truly thankful, and through them make us truly the House of God, the Body of Christ, that we might live in love and unity with both You and all the saints. Amen.

Resolution and Points for Meditation:

I resolve to meditate more faithfully on the Lord’s Supper, especially the day before and the minutes before (and after) I partake of Jesus Christ.

Some of the things you might meditate on are:

1. The work of Christ, especially His Crucifixion and Resurrection

2. that you are an actual partaker of Jesus Christ and made one body with Him

3. that God actually dwells with you

4. the remission of sins that God offers

5. the grace and benediction that God gives

6. that you are a member of the Body of Christ

7. that He preserves your body and soul

8. that you are an heir of salvation

9. the holy fellowship and unity you are to have as Christ’s Body

10. the communion with the Saints of all times and places that comes through Him

11. the grace to do the good works that He has prepared beforehand that you should walk in

12. the peace of God that passes all understanding

Book of Common Prayer

daily devotional

Eucharist

Perichoresis

Temple of the Holy Spirit

thanksgiving

the Didache

2013-01-15T18:57:27-05:00

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Wednesday of Epiphany 4 – Colossians 2:6-19

Last updated on: January 15, 2013 at 6:57 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Colossians 2:6-19

I don’t think we really understand the magnitude of this New Life that we have in Jesus Christ. Growing up, sometimes it’s easy to hear about how to be a Christian and to even continue going to church and praying and reading our Bibles, and yet still the spiritual truth of our life in Christ is remote and weak.

But some of the things St. Paul says here in Colossians 2 help me to understand how dramatic and powerful my life in Christ really is – even when I don’t acknowledge it to be.

We have received Jesus Christ through baptism and faith. Just as the Israelites were required to be circumcised in order to be brought into covenant with God and were also required to have faith (the life of Abraham demonstrates both), so we are brought into a New Life with Jesus Christ in baptism and through faith. How these 2 work together would require more of a theological treatise than I have time to offer.

But Paul does say a few things we should notice. First, we are buried with Jesus Christ in our baptism (verse 12.) As we are buried with Him in baptism, God puts off the body of sins of the flesh, a cleansing that is represented by the waters of baptism. But sometimes we forget that in baptism we are also raised with Jesus Christ through faith in the working of God, who raised Him from the dead (verse 12.)

Paul’s point is that once we were dead but now we have been resurrected to the New Life in Jesus Christ. Having been baptized, and having faith, you are complete in Him, in whom dwells all the fullness of the Godhead (verse 9.)

But even having said this, it would be too easy to go on with the rest of my day today as if nothing extraordinary had happened.

But something extraordinary has happened!

Take a closer look at what Baptism into Christ makes us heirs of and what union with Christ through faith actually gives us.

When Jesus died on the Cross (and we died with Him), Jesus took away the condemnation and judgment we faced under the Law. We are all sinners and guilty of breaking God’s holy Law and spitting in His holy Face. For this, we should die.

But on the Cross, Jesus erased or tore up the handwriting of requirements, or the accusation of the Law, against us. No, He did more than this – Jesus took this certificate of death and nailed it to the Cross, putting it to death instead of us. Pontius Pilate had the Roman soldiers nail a sign to the Cross saying that Jesus was the King of the Jews. But Jesus nailed the condemnation of the Law, sin, and death, to the Cross. Maybe that’s why Jesus the carpenter spent all those years learning His trade from His father Joseph: so He could know how to nail the condemnation of the Law to the Cross!

Jesus did more than this at the Cross, though. At the Cross, Jesus disarmed the Evil Empire, the armies of Satan. Sometimes, in our hurry to find the evil that still lives on earth, we forget that Jesus defeated Satan once and for all at the Cross. Jesus disarmed the principalities and powers (verse 15), that is, He stripped Satan and His minions of their weapons and power, and whooped them.

At the moment of the Cross, Satan thought that in the cosmic wrestling match between him and God that he had pinned and defeated Christ. So he had the Romans strip Jesus Christ and humiliate Him, before they put Him to death. But in the most dramatic reversal in history, Jesus Christ actually stripped Satan and His forces, disarming them to some degree at the present so that He might finally destroy Him in due time.

Just as Satan humiliated Christ and had Him carry His own cross in a mock procession of shame, in reality Jesus Christ humiliated Satan and his armies at the Cross. He “made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them in it” (verse 15.) The image is of a Roman triumphal procession, with the victorious general leading the humiliated and defeated enemy behind him for all to see.

While we may not always see this “public spectacle,” I’m sure the angelic citizens of both Heaven and Hell didn’t miss it. This seems to be why Paul has the principalities and powers in mind in particular (verses 10, 15, and perhaps 8 and 20.)

We hear so much about how Satan is alive and well and living on planet Earth. The reality is that Satan is a serpent who has had his skull crushed and is thrashing around in pain for a few millennia until he finally realizes he’s been defeated.

Do you remember the prophecy of Genesis 3:15? “He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel?” At the Cross, Jesus Christ definitively bashed Satan’s skull in. How do I know? Not only because of this prophecy and many other Scriptures, but because both Calvary and Golgotha mean “The Place of the Skull.” How fitting that Satan’s head was crushed by Jesus Christ on the Cross at the Place of the Skull.

This – this nailing to the Cross of the sentence of death upon us, this disarming of the demonic forces, this crushing of Satan’s skull, and this triumphal procession – this is what you have been made a part of by participation in Christ through baptism and faith.

Paul urgently urges the Colossians not to let anyone “cheat” them through philosophy, empty conceit (verse 8), legalism (verse 20ff), etc. I don’t think the NKJV translation here as “cheat” captures the idea well enough. Paul is saying “don’t be taken captive” or, the interpretation I like best: “don’t be kidnapped” by false teaching.

I urgently urge you, too, to not be kidnapped by false teachings, of which there are many in the church today. I can’t help but think of the many Christians who are being deceived by such false teachings as The DaVinci Code, The Gospel of Thomas (and movies that glorify such heretical teachings, such as Stigmata), the “Lost” Teachings of Jesus, the “Lost” Books of the Bible, teachings about angels*,* that Satan is still ruling over earth and not Jesus Christ, and on and on and on.

In baptism and through faith, you have died to the false teaching of the world. Therefore, do not live by these false teachings and the worldviews of the world. But as you have therefore received Jesus Christ the Lord, so walk in Him, rooted and built up in Him, and established in faith, as you have been taught, abounding in it with thanksgiving” (verse 6.)

Prayer: Praise be to You, O Christ, because You have nailed the penalty for sin to the Cross, taken away my sins, disarmed the principalities and powers, and made a public spectacle of them. Help me to live in union with You through faith by which You have given Yourself to me, so that I may walk in Him and His holy ways. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

1. Meditate on your deliverance from sin and death. Find time to give thanks to God today.

2. Imagine Christ as a conquering hero over Satan and His army. Sing a song of victory to Him.

Resolution: I resolve to meditate on Christ’s triumph over Satan at the Cross, as well as His victory over sin and its penalty, death.

Book of Common Prayer

2013-01-04T18:00:34-05:00

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January 5 – 1 John 5

Last updated on: January 4, 2013 at 6:00 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

January 5 – 1 John 5

St. John wants you to know something. He wants those who believe in the name of the Son of God to know and remember that you have eternal life, and he wants you to continue to believe in the name of the Son of God (verse 13.) This is the same John who wrote in his Gospel, “but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name” (John 20:31.)

John is so concerned that you not only believe on the Son of God but continue to believe in Him that he gives many different ways of knowing that we abide in God.

In the first place, John reminds us that the entire Trinity bears witness to itself: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. While John’s clearest statement of the Trinity, verse 7 of Chapter 5, is disputed and is not in the earliest manuscripts, the fact that there are three in heaven who bear witness to the Truth – the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit – is still true. We seem, however, sometimes to focus on the work of the Son, apart from that of the Father of Spirit. But John is clear that all three work together to bring us eternal life and all three bear witness to the Truth. John speaks about the Father who is light (1:5) and love (4:8). He teaches that we have fellowship with the Father through the Son (1:3), and that the Father has love for those He makes His children (3:1.) It is the Father who sent the Son to be the propitiation for our sins (4:10), and believers abide not only in the Son or Spirit but also in God, which in this case must refer to the Father (4:15.)

The Spirit gives witness by helping us to know that God abides in us (3:24), and from other passages we know that the Spirit does this by dwelling in us. The gift of the Spirit in us is itself one of the ways we know that we abide in Him (4:13.) Here in Chapter 5, verse 6 we read that it is the Spirit who bears witness because the Spirit is truth. The Spirit bears witness not only in heaven but also on earth (5:8.)

But John reminds us that there are even more things that testify to God in us and to the eternal life we have in the Son. On earth, we have the testimony of the Spirit, the water, and the blood (verse 9.) The Spirit we have already talked about, but what about the water and the blood? God has testified to us about Himself and His work in our lives by the baptism of Christ (the water), by which the Christ was anointed and by which He began His public ministry. God has testified as well by the blood of Christ that was shed on the Cross (the blood.)

The entire life of Jesus Christ, therefore, is a testimony to you. But since these things are past, how can they still testify to us? John himself, an eyewitness of the Son, has written to us that we might know the truth, that we might have fellowship with God, and that our joy may be complete (1:1-4.) Through the Gospel of St. John, in which we read of the life of Jesus Christ, we have a perpetual testimony of the work of the Trinity in our lives. For this reason, we should read the Bible every day because it is one of God’s appointed means of abiding in us and we in Him. In the Scriptures, we still hear God’s testimony about His Son, just as we heard from the beginning. How, then, can we ever give up reading and living by the Scriptures?

To help us participate in the life of Christ, the Church has instituted the Church year, in which we celebrate the life of Christ throughout the course of an entire year. Today we are at the end of our celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ (tonight is 12th Night!); tomorrow, we will be celebrating the Epiphany of Christ to the Gentiles, and after that we will celebrate Christ’s fasting in the wilderness for us, and of course after that the Last Supper, the Crucifixion, and the Resurrection.

But God testifies to us by the water and the blood in another powerful way: through the Sacraments. Through the water of baptism we are given the privilege of being brought into covenant with God and made heirs of salvation. By baptism, we are brought into the life of Jesus Christ. By the Lord’s Supper, we continue to participate in that new life that God has given to us, and we feed off of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ. What powerful, continuing witnesses!

To these witnesses we must add the witness of the Church itself, which is the Body of Christ on earth, and through which all of these other witnesses are mediated.

But of all the witnesses that John records, by which we may know that we have eternal life in the Son, John spends the most time teaching us about love. We should not forget that love is a testimony of the presence of God in our lives. John’s constant message is that if we love God we will keep His commandments, for only those who love God will keep His commandments without sin. If we love God, we will love the brethren as He first loved us. By this love, we ourselves and the world will know that God abides in us and we in Him.

On this 12th Day, on this last day of the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, remember the witnesses that God has given you of His abiding in you. Whenever you are weak or forgetful, remember the ways God comes to you to remind you of His presence and actually bring Himself to you. It’s easy to get distracted in life, and it’s easy lose courage in our spiritual life.

But rejoice! for God has called you His child. He has given you eternal life, He has sent His Son to be the propitiation for your sins, and He has promised to abide with you if you abide with Him.

Thank God for St. John, that he wrote 1 John so that he might bear witness to us of the Word of life and of our fellowship with God and that our joy may be complete.

May we, who are the children of God as John was, who have the testimony of God as John did, who have eternal life as John did, bear witness to Son in the world. May we be the light of the world as Jesus was the light of the world. And may we do this by loving one another as He first loved us.

Resolution: I resolve to spend some time remembering today the fellowship I have with God and the means by which He comes to me.

Prayer: Father, thank You for sending Your Son to be the propitiation for the sins of the world; Jesus, thank You for cleansing me from sin by Your blood and for giving Your life for me; thank You Spirit for abiding in me and testifying to the Truth. Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, may I bear witness to you in love as St. John did before me, that I and others may have fellowship with. Amen.

Point for Meditation:

Make a list of the ways in which God has testified about Himself to you (see those listed in today’s meditation). Look over this list throughout the week and especially before you go to church this Sunday. Consult it during the week at times when you are weak or forgetful.

The Trinity by Andrei Rublev

Give Us This Day

Anglican

bearing witness to Christ

Bible commentary

Bible devotional

Bible study

Book of Common Prayer

testimony of the Spirit

the Trinity

2012-12-04T17:16:32-05:00

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Wednesday of First Sunday in Advent – Mark 1:29-39

Last updated on: December 4, 2012 at 5:16 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Mark 1:29-39

Why did Jesus Christ come into the world? Sometimes we think it was only to die on the Cross, and of course the Crucifixion and Resurrection are central to understanding the ministry of our Lord.

But if all He did was come to die on the Cross, then why did He spend three years ministering publicly before then? It’s important in the work of Jesus our Lord that we don’t separate one part of His ministry from the others. Jesus came to die on the Cross to save sinners, but how could He die on the Cross unless He were first born and took on human nature to redeem it? And it’s not as if He only took on human nature only so He could die – He came to redeem our fallen nature, and this relates to His whole ministry.

The birth of Jesus, His public ministry, His death, His Resurrection, His Ascension, His sending of the Holy Spirit, and His session and ruling at the right hand of the Father are all part of the same ministry of reconciliation and redemption. Returning to our idea of perichoresis, we might see all of the parts of the ministry of Jesus Christ as interpenetrating all of the others.

Therefore, what Jesus did for three years, even before His path to the Cross is important for us and instructs us. And what do we find Him doing? He is baptized, or anointed as God’s Messiah. He is tempted and defeats the Devil. But especially He comes to teach about Himself. This teaching takes two forms that also must never be separated: His words and His deeds.

Verse 28 of Mark 1 is a fascinating verse. After Jesus has just cast out a demon, the people don’t just say, “Wow! What is this new power you have?” Instead, they say, “What new doctrine is this?” In their minds the miracles Jesus performed were clearly related to what He taught regarding Himself and His Kingdom. When Jesus taught in verse 21 in Capernaum in the synagogue, the people were astonished at His teaching, for He taught as one having authority. This authority and teaching was then confirmed by the miracles of Jesus, especially in casting out demons (Jesus has authority over Satan and His forces) and in healing (Jesus has authority over creation and human bodies.)

Therefore, in today’s lesson, we find Jesus healing again and teaching.

When Jesus healed, therefore, He healed because He came to redeem the world, including our sick bodies. But He didn’t heal everyone. In fact, He couldn’t have healed everyone even if He had wanted to because He was limited to being in one place at a time.

In our lives, Jesus is not obligated to heal our bodies, even though we know that ultimately because of His life on our behalf we shall all be completely healed in heaven. But He heals us sometimes that our faith might be increased. His work in our lives is primarily to proclaim Himself to us. As in His day, this comes through the words and deeds He performs in our midst.

In fact, if we look for it, we will see that Jesus is constantly at work in our lives. Sometimes, when we have had minor illnesses (even as I originally wrote this, my parish was being wiped out by a stomach virus), Jesus heals us, and we don’t even notice because it naturally would have gone away. But isn’t it His grace the same?

Often, when we withdraw to a solitary place to pray and offer up our problems to Him, He heals us. And often we don’t return thanks because we haven’t seen it as His work.

How many times does His Word come to you each day? If you are reading your Bible every day, He comes at least once every day. But doesn’t He also come to be with you and redeem you throughout the day, as the Scripture you have ingested and digested becomes a part of you and feeds you throughout the day?

I’m convinced that for those who have been faithful Christians for a long time and have faithfully maintained the godly habits of Bible reading and prayer, that Jesus proclaims Himself to you in silent ways that are subconscious because He has become so much of a part of your life. Through the testimony of the Holy Spirit, as He permeates your being, your natural habits are trained to become godly habits. Each of these is, in reality, Jesus speaking and ministering to you through His Spirit.

Sometimes I lament the lack of miracles in my own life (the advent of Jacqueline, my wife, is the one exception). But then I remember that Jesus is with me through His Spirit in a more powerful way. Instead of having one dramatic moment with Jesus, He offers me a continual feast with Him. When I accept the invitation, we eat together throughout the day in a quiet way with very little drama but a high degree of satiety.

What’s even more amazing is that because He has sent His Holy Spirit to us, He can work in all of our lives at once and is no longer limited to just Capernaum or Jerusalem at a given moment.

The same Jesus who came with such authority to Capernaum and Peter’s mother-in-law and the synagogues of Galilee is here with us today. Let’s respond with amazement, praise, and obedience.

Prayer: Praise be to You, Lord Jesus Christ, because You have come with authority into my life. Thank You for ministering to me every day, through Your Word and through Your actions on my behalf. Give me eyes to see You again, and heal me, that I may arise and serve others in Your name. Amen.

Resolution and Point for Meditation: I resolve to meditate today on the ways Jesus Christ reveals Himself to me each day. I further resolve to seek His presence each day and to acknowledge the ways He has come to me. If possible, I will re-discover one way He has been coming to me that I have been ignoring.

Give Us This Day

Bible reading and prayer

healing

Jesus casting out demons

Jesus’ miracles

Perichoresis

2012-11-26T16:36:41-05:00

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Tuesday of Sunday Next Before Advent – Revelation 1:9-20

Last updated on: November 26, 2012 at 4:36 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Revelation 1:9-20

Who is Jesus Christ?

There are many ways in which He has revealed Himself to us, and all of these are important. Sometimes I think the dominant way contemporary Christians see Jesus is as a good friend. He’s kinda just one of the guys, though definitely the leader of the pack. We can almost picture Him in blue jeans, and we’re sure He would never be caught dead wearing vestments! At other times, particularly in contemporary praise choruses, it’s almost as if He’s our lover, and we sing passionately about our feelings for Him.

But I like St. John’s way of seeing Him. Now before we see Jesus as John saw Him, we should remember a few things about John. This is the same John who Jesus saw fishing with his brother James and father Zebedee when He called John to Himself. This is the John who spent 3 years of his life following Jesus as His disciple and the same John who saw the many miracles of Jesus and heard His teaching. He is the John who saw Jesus transfigured in all His glory on the mountain, the John who witnessed His Crucifixion, and the John who took Jesus’ own mother in with him to his home. He is the disciple whom Jesus loved and who reclined intimately on the breast of Jesus at the Last Supper.

Because John hung out with Jesus for 3 years, and was one of the 3 closest friends of Jesus, we might expect John to see Jesus as He appeared to him when He was still on earth. We might expect him to see Him as the one who now called Him “friend” and no longer a slave or servant.

But how Jesus Christ actually reveals Himself to John is so glorious, so awesome, so terrifying, that John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, when he sees Him falls at His feet as if dead. This is not a conscious act of prostration before Jesus that John commits: it’s an unconscious, involuntary reaction that St. John has when he sees Jesus Christ in His glory. It is a reaction of fear, the kind of fear that makes a grown man who has seen persecution and has been exiled to Patmos quake in his knees and lose control of his bodily functions.

What was it that John saw? Why would he have this reaction to one he loved so much and was so intimate with?

What John saw was Jesus Christ as He is. What he saw was one like the Son of Man, clothed with a garment down to the feet and girded about the chest with a golden band. What John saw was One whose head and hair were white as wool and as white as snow, and whose eyes were like a flame of fire. He saw One whose feet were like fine brass as if refined in a fiery furnace, and what he heard was One whose voice was the sound of many waters. He saw the One who had seven stars in His hand and a sharp two-edged sword that is living and powerful and can pierce, even to the division of soul and spirit, of joints and marrow, and can discern the thoughts and intents of the heart.

John saw all this and One whose countenance was like the sun shining in its strength. So he fell at His feet as if dead.

Is this the way we see Jesus Christ? Is this the way we come into His presence? I don’t think it is most of the time, or, for some of us, ever.

It’s important to realize that John was in the Spirit on the Lord’s Day, and, as other parts of Revelation make clear, he is partaking of a heavenly worship service. John is seeing a vision of Jesus Christ as He is when He comes to us in our worship on the Lord’s Day.

But is this how we see Him? “Come as you are,” we’re told. “We’re a church that’s for people just like you. Come in your blue jeans, as Jesus would come. Come slurping your Starbucks, and come at the last minute. Come with your head filled with your plans for what you’ll do with what’s left of your weekend. Come and sing happy, uplifting songs that will make you feel good about yourself and get you in the right mood.”

“Come, sit casually, and listen to a lecture about how to lead the good life or an inspirational talk about how you can solve life’s problems and help yourself to the good and successful life. Come be entertained by our light rock band and preacher who knows a lot of good jokes and anecdotes.”

The Jesus to whom John came – the Resurrected, Ascended Christ who sits enthroned on the right hand of God and is the King of kings, surrounded in glory by the 4 Living Creatures and 24 elders and a rainbow and lightnings, thunderings, and voices – is the same terrifying God that the Old Testament prophets saw. This Jesus Christ is the God of Glory who Moses saw on Mt. Sinai, when He saw the God of Israel, under whose feet was a pavement of sapphire (Exodus 24:10), and who made the top of the mountain a consuming fire (Exodus 24:17), and made Moses’ face shine. The Jesus Christ that John saw was the One who holy Isaiah saw, surrounded by cherubim and seraphim, the sight of which made Isaiah cry out: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips. For my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts” (6:5).

This is the Lord of Glory who Ezekiel saw, the One sitting on the throne, surrounded by angels and the living creatures, lightning and the noise of many waters, and fire all around. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the Lord. When Ezekiel saw it, he fell on his face (1:28).

This Jesus Christ who John saw, and whose presence made John fall at His feet, this Jesus Christ is the Resurrected and Ascended Lord who we worship. Let us come into His presence seeing Him for who He is!

This is the Lord who has revealed Himself to us. Mercifully, He is also the same Lord who laid His right hand on John and said to him: “Do not be afraid.” And so, knowing that we come before a Terrible, Consuming Fire who makes us want to fall down dead, we also come boldly before the Throne. This same Jesus who is the Shekinah Glory and is Heaven itself, is also the One who was born a baby and made man for us.

Let us come before Him today and every day with both fear and trembling, with praise and thanksgiving, and with quiet confidence in His mercy and goodness to us.

Resolution and Point for Meditation: I resolve to spend some time today meditating on who Jesus Christ is, especially as He has revealed Himself in glory. As I do this, I will listen for His voice and what He is telling me today is pleasing in His sight.

Prayer: O God, who on the mountain revealed to chosen witnesses Your only-begotten Son, wonderfully transfigured in dazzling clothes and burning fire; Mercifully grant that we, being delivered from the distractions of this world, may be permitted to behold the King in His beauty, who with You, O Father, and You, O Holy Spirit, lives and reigns, one God, world without end. Amen.

David Miles – Revelation 1 One Like a Son of Man

Give Us This Day

Jesus in heaven

prostration before God

Revelation of Jesus Christ

St. John’s vision of God

the glorified Christ

2012-11-20T10:39:15-05:00

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Wednesday of Trinity 24 – Matthew 27:45-56

Last updated on: November 20, 2012 at 10:39 am By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Matthew 27:45-56

So this is what it has all come to. Three years of teaching about and living in the Kingdom of Heaven, and this is what it has all come to. He wasn’t kidding about going up to Jerusalem to be delivered to death, a death on the cross. Not just three years but 2000 and three years. All of the promises made to Abraham, everything revealed to Moses, and all of the promises made to David. They all converge here, and it seems as if they have come to nothing.

Out goes the Light of the World, and darkness envelopes the world for good. He who was divine seems to be abandoned by God, and He cries out, helpless after all.

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

In the rematch of the ages, God vs. Satan, it looks like Satan has won again.

And often our lives look and feel like Good Friday or Holy Saturday. Jesus has died, and that’s that. Yes, we know all about the promised Resurrection, but today all I see is the death of the Lamb of God. And I think: “Is this all there is?” It seems to me like much of life, where death still seems triumphant and like something has gone tragically wrong. Some of us may feel this way especially on a day like today, when the fate of the nation seems to hang in the balance, and the balance seems weighted the wrong way.

How powerful sin and death must be, that they were powerful enough to kill the King of Glory! How powerful that they seem to separate even Father from Son, Son from Himself, and body from soul. So powerful are they that they must have their Day, and it is a long and dark one to me.

But even here, even on Good Friday (an ironic name indeed!), there are hints of victory. Even in death and dying, there are hints of the resurrection to come. Nature seems to be God’s harbinger. Did you notice how it was dark for 3 hours before Jesus died? It’s as if Nature were telling us what would happen. But did you also notice how the earth quaked and the rocks split? It’s as if they were dying with Jesus and showing how great that death was. But it’s also as if they are showing us that the old world was about to be torn in two so that a new world can come. Did you notice that?

Did you notice what else happened when He died, when the darkness was at its greatest? The veil of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. This veil was the enormous, thick veil that separated the Holy Place from the Holy of Holies. How embarrassing it must have been. It’s almost as if the Temple itself had ripped its pants in the most embarrassing parts of its anatomy!

In fact, the ripping of the veil was a symbol and harbinger of what would happen in 40 years, just as Jesus had prophesied, when not only the veil but also the entire Temple would be destroyed. It’s as if immediately, when Jesus died, the Old Covenant began to die as well. Like a bad Hollywood actor of old, it took the Old Covenant a long time to die on stage, but it began to die at the moment Christ died. For at that very moment, the old was being torn down to make way for the new, even if few could see what was really happening.

And did you notice how when the rocks were split, so did the graves, those markers of death? It’s as if, unbeknownst to just about everyone, Death itself had begun to die and from this time Death was a marked man. At the moment Christ died, the saints of God began to be resurrected. Coming out of their graves after the resurrection, they went into the holy city and appeared to many. St. Matthew can’t keep the Resurrection out of the Crucifixion, for they hang together!

And something else amazing happens, in the midst of all this death: a pagan comes to know the Son of God. As a result of the earthquake and other things that happened, the death of Christ brings a Roman centurion to exclaim, “Truly this was the Son of God!”

Often to me, this life seems like a Good Friday. There is still so much suffering and dying and death. How powerful sin and death must be that they still have the power over all of us in this life, 2000 years after the Crucifixion. It still appears as if Jesus is locked in mortal combat with sin and Death and Satan.

But that’s not true. How powerful the death and resurrection of Jesus must be, that 2000 years later the graves of the saints of God cannot contain them and one day there shall be a resurrection of body and soul. And pagans are still coming to Christ, 130 million in China alone, according to the latest reports. The earthquake that is Christ, who destroyed the Old Covenant and Temple so that He might create the New and better ones, is still rippling through the universe. And a strange earthquake it is, whose vibrations and power do not abate but only seem to grow stronger.

And so in this life of death and suffering, we cry out with a loud voice to God, and yielding up our spirits to Him, He receives us. He receives us because there is one who was born that He might die and who died that we might live.

The 2000 and three years were not a waste after all: it’s just that we’ve been blind.

“On the tenth of this month every man shall take for himself a lamb. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year. Then the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it at twilight. And they shall take some of the blood and put it on the two doorposts and on the lintel of the houses where they eat it. Then they shall eat the flesh on that night, roasted in fire, with unleavened bread and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. For I will pass through the land of Egypt on that night, and will strike all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast. Now the blood shall be a sign for you on the houses where you are. And when I shall see the blood, I will pass over you; and the plague shall not be on you to destroy you when I strike the land of Egypt. So this day shall be to you a memorial; and you shall keep it as a feast to the Lord throughout your generations. You shall keep it as an everlasting ordinance” (Exodus 12).

This Passover is an everlasting ordinance, as He promised. It’s one that we still celebrate today: “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us: Therefore let us keep the feast, not with old leaven, neither with the leaven of malice and wickedness; but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth” (1 Corinthians 5:7-8).

In that death which seemed so dark, He gave us His Body and Blood. Having made all things ready the night before, at the Last Supper, He prepared Himself to be a perpetual Passover for us. What else could He have done? In spite of His impassioned pleas in Gethsemane, what else could He have done? He who had made Himself a living sacrifice His entire life could only make Himself a living sacrifice in His death.

That sacrifice, that offering, that death, still lives in us today.

Therefore, regardless of how dark today may seem, we shall not fear.

Therefore, let us keep the feast by offering ourselves up to Him, crucifying our flesh and offering ourselves as living sacrifices, joined in death with Him that we may be joined in life!

Prayer: I earnestly desire thy fatherly goodness, mercifully to accept my sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving; most humbly beseeching thee to grant that, by the merits and death of thy Son Jesus Christ, and through faith in his blood, I, and all thy whole Church, may obtain remission of our sins, and all other benefits of his passion. And I offer and present unto thee, O Lord, my self, my soul and body, to be a reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice unto thee. And although I am unworthy, through my manifold sins, to offer unto thee any sacrifice; yet I beseech thee to accept this my bounden duty and service; not weighing my merits, but pardoning my offences, through Jesus Christ my Lord; by whom, and with whom, in the unity of the Holy Ghost, all honor and glory be unto thee, O Father Almighty, world without end. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

1. What signs and symbols of the resurrection do you see, even in this life of suffering and death?

2. Take time to meditate today on Christ’s death on the Cross for you.

3. In what ways do you still need to die to self?

Resolution: I resolve to find one way to die to my self today, that I might be better united to the death of my Lord today.

Give Us This Day

Crucifixion and death of Christ

Good Friday

Passover and Last Supper

tearing of the veil

2012-11-14T16:01:48-05:00

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Thursday of Trinity 23 – Matthew 26:47-56

Last updated on: November 14, 2012 at 4:01 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Matthew 26:47-56

Today we come to the Word of God.

When we say “the Word of God,” we often use it in 2 different senses of the Word. We say, on the one hand, that the Bible is the Word of God. In its strongest sense, we see this when the prophets say things like, “Thus says the Lord.”

We also use “the Word of God” to mean the Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Word made flesh. In both cases we have the revelation of God to man, and the two are joined more intimately than we can imagine.

But today, I see before me a strange dance. I see, on the one hand, the Word of God, those ancient prophecies of the Israelites, spoken by the prophets of old. Matthew, especially, pays attention to the fulfillment of Scripture, especially at both the beginning and the end of His Gospel. “So all this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Lord through the prophet, saying, ‘Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and bear a son, and they shall call his name Immanuel,’ which is translated, God with us” (Matthew 1:23, quoting Isaiah 7:14). Matthew also draws attention to the fulfillment of Micah 5:2, about the shepherd who would come from Bethlehem; to the fulfillment of Jeremiah 31:15 and lamentation of Rachel weeping for her children at the slaughter of the innocents; and to John, the voice of one crying in the wilderness spoken of in Isaiah 40:3.

Something interesting happens in Matthew 26: we see Jesus, the Word of God, choosing to lead a life that will fulfill the perfect will of the Father, as spoken through those ancient prophecies. Here, in Matthew 26, we see the ancient, immovable, written Word of God spread out before us. And here, in Matthew 26, we see the living, incarnated Word of God changing the steps of His life to be in perfect harmony with the Word, the will of the Father, spoken by the prophets.

This conforming of the will to the will of the Father is no easy thing for Jesus, and we’re mistaken if we think it is. Have we, like the disciples, fallen asleep so soon? Don’t you remember the agony of the Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane, immediately after which the betrayer and the armed multitude came for Him? He’s just asked for the Father to take this terrible cup from Him.

Leave it to Peter to offer a way for Jesus to avoid the will of the Father. Good old Peter. The one who would not have his feet washed by his Master, the one who denied that the Son of Man should ever go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, is now the one who would stop this prophecy one way or the other. Poor Peter! One little sword among so many swords and clubs and men. It’s a good thing Jesus intervened. Little did Peter know that Jesus could have defended Himself very easily. He could have called twelve legions of angels to protect Him.

But there’s that little matter of the Word of God, which Jesus knew must be obeyed. How could the Scriptures be fulfilled, if Jesus had delivered Himself? How could the will of the Father be kept if He chose His own will instead?

Jesus seems almost amused by what is happening. Was it really necessary, He asks them, to bring so many men, with swords and clubs? He was theirs for the taking any time earlier. Aren’t these rather bizarre circumstances under which you’re arresting Me? It’s as if Jesus is, even at the last, teaching, teaching them that the secret betrayal and seizure at night, all the Mickey Mouse trials He’ll undergo, the Crucifixion – all of it– suggest that something very strange and momentous is taking place.

Even the end of verse 56 is a fulfillment of the Word of the Lord, even if it’s only me and not St. Matthew that’s pointing it out. “Then all the disciples forsook Him and fled.” “Strike the shepherd, and the sheep will scatter.”

It’s tempting to admire Matthew’s cleverness in putting together a story that manages to cobble together so many different Old Testament prophecies. What an insightful writer he is! Of course, it was Matthew who learned to correctly understand the Old Testament from Jesus, and not the other way around.

What strikes me today about how Jesus the Word of God submits to the will of the Father through the written Word of God of the Scriptures is this: that because He knew the Scriptures, He knew what He had to do. And then, knowing and loving the Father, He did it.

The same is true for you today. If you know the Word of God, intending to do the will of the Father, then you will know what you need to do. I’m not saying that if you randomly open up your Bible to a verse that you’ll suddenly be enlightened as to what to wear this morning or whether you should get the grande or the venti at Starbucks. But if you know the Word of God, then you will know the will of the Father in all of the important things.

In fact, since I’m assuming that many, if not most, of you know your Bibles well, that if you just sit still for a few moments, God’s will for your life would come streaming into it. Probably more than you want it to. I’m not saying it’s magic, but if you put together the written word of God and an honest heart that truly desires the will of the Father, there’s a good chance you’ll end up with wisdom, and the blessing of having done the will of the Father.

This provides an enormous incentive to know the Word of God better. It’s no use cutting corners, and a lazy hermeneutics that reads verses out of their larger context have often gotten men into trouble. But as you learn to read the Word of God richly and deeply so that it gets into the fibers of your muscles and the fissures of your brain and the blood of your heart, then learning and following the will of the Father becomes possible. For when you read the Word of God in this way, you are united to the Word of God, the incarnate One who not only perfectly understood but also perfectly obeyed the written Word.

When you submit yourself to the Word of God, seeking the will of the Father, then you, too, will be enabled to endure the Gethsemanes God has willed for your life.

Prayer: Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever. Amen.

Points for Meditation:

1. Meditate on your life in reading the Word of God. Is there some aspect of reading, studying, or meditating on God’s Word that He is calling you to work on?

2. What aspects of His perfect will does the Father seem to be impressing on you today through the Holy Spirit?

Resolution: I resolve to read the Word of God tomorrow (you’ve just done it for today!), looking for His will for my life.

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