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2017-04-14T12:32:31-05:00

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.

Good Friday – The Gospel of Suffering, Part II

Last updated on: April 14, 2017 at 12:32 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Crucifixion - real The “Gospel of Suffering” which I began in my last post is this:

That far from being a sign of God’s non-existence, apathy, or impotence, human suffering is transformed by Christ’s Incarnation into a sign of God’s presence, love, and power.
That because Christ has become man and suffered to redeem man, suffering is a primary means of participating in God’s nature and being united to Him.
That as Christians partake of Christ and His suffering, their own suffering is transformed by God into glory and joy.

In this post, we’ll look at Part II.

II. Because Christ has become man and suffered to redeem man, suffering is a primary means of participating in God’s nature and being united to Him.

But God’s presence, power, and love would not be given to man unless by some means the life of Christ, including His suffering, were communicated to His people. This means of communication is the Incarnation of Christ, in which the divine and human nature are joined together forever. All that Jesus accomplished through His suffering, including His exaltation and glorification in His Resurrection and Ascension, are now communicable to man.

So closely has God come to man that St. Peter teaches that we have become partakers of the divine nature (2 Peter 2:14). Jesus shares this new, “divinized” human nature with the Church, who partakes of Christ and has a blessed union with Him. The Church is called “The Body of Christ,” for Christ is truly in us through His Spirit. We have become “one flesh” with Him so that we are not only the Body of Christ but also his Holy Bride.

After Jesus’ human nature ascended into heaven in Acts 1, He sent His Holy Spirit into His Body to make it the living Body of Christ on earth. All throughout the book of Acts, therefore, the Church teaches and does what Jesus taught and did, since Jesus is living in and through the Church.

When the Church in the book of Acts and the Church today (for the Church is one) suffer, they suffer as Jesus Christ*.* The language Jesus uses when He called St. Paul on the road to Damascus is striking: “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me?” (Acts 9:4.) So closely does Jesus identify with His Body and Bride the Church that even though Saul is persecuting the Church, Jesus ask Saul why he’s persecuting Him. The Church, therefore, as the Body of Christ and in union with Christ, suffers for, with, and as Jesus Christ.

We are especially united to Jesus Christ and His suffering through the sacrament of Baptism. St. Paul teaches: “Do you not know that all of us who have been baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his” (Romans 5:3-5.)

But when we are united to Christ in Baptism, we are united to all of Christ: first His suffering, then His death, and then His Resurrection and Ascension. Recapitulating the life of Christ, we suffer afflictions, and trials which then ultimately lead to glory and joy. For this reason Peter teaches: “But rejoice insofar as you share Christ’s sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed” (1 Peter 4:13).

At your baptism, the sign of Christ and His suffering was place upon you in the shape of the Cross, which also represents the Name of the Holy Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. At your baptism, Christ shared His Cross with you and has bound you to Him by it.

Because we are spiritually and mystically united to Christ, we will suffer as His Body. The suffering of the Church is, therefore, a sign that she belongs to Jesus Christ. We might even say that suffering is a sacrament of God’s presence. When the Church suffers for Jesus Christ, it must be because the Lord who suffered for us is very near.

The suffering of the Church is sacramental because it is a true participation in Christ and His sufferings. Our suffering is Christ’s suffering, and His suffering is our suffering. His Cross is our cross, and our crosses are His.

When we suffer, as members of His suffering Body, we each carry with us a splinter of the One True Cross. Unlike the medieval forgeries of the splinters of the Cross, however, each Christian who suffers is carrying a holy relic, a splinter of the suffering of Christ on the Cross.

God’s blessed and mighty redemption for us is, therefore, something He not only does for us but through us, for we are the Body of Christ, and God has made us partakers of His nature and redemption.

If God’ redemption were simply something He did to us, we’d be rocks.

If His redemption were something He did for us, we’d be children.

If God’s redemption were something He did with us, we’d be men.

But since God’s redemption is something He does through us, we are members of Christ’s Body.

Because of this, the Church also suffers as Christ, united to Him as His Body.

Many Christians believe that their suffering doesn’t count – that somehow the suffering that “counts” is only the suffering of those who are persecuted for Christ’s sake. But Christ has come to redeem all of our suffering, and all of our suffering is united to Christ by His suffering.

There is no suffering so small that it doesn’t count. All Christian suffering counts and is being redeemed by Christ!

Because Christ has become man and suffered to redeem man, suffering is a primary means of participating in God’s nature and being united to Him.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license

2017-04-13T15:59:36-05:00

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Good Friday – The Gospel of Suffering, Part I

Last updated on: April 13, 2017 at 3:59 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Crucifixion - Grunewald As a Holy Week meditation, I want to present what I call “The Gospel of Suffering” in 3 parts. Part 1 is for Good Friday.

Introduction

Christians, above all other men, should know the mysterious meaning of suffering. Too often, however, popular Christian theology and music is incapable of dealing with suffering, promising instead a magical peace, happiness, and better you. But just as a good story can’t be told without conflict or tension, the good news of Jesus Christ can’t be told without suffering.

So crucial is suffering is to God’s revelation of Himself and His love that we might even dare to speak of “The Gospel of Suffering.”
While suffering is often seen as a reason to reject the existence of a good and loving God, a study of God’s revelation of Himself in the Holy Scriptures yields 3 incredible, transformative insights, which, together, constitute “The Gospel of Suffering.”

That far from being a sign of God’s non-existence, apathy, or impotence, human suffering is transformed by Christ’s Incarnation into a sign of God’s presence, love, and power.
That because Christ has become man and suffered to redeem man, suffering is a primary means of participating in God’s nature and being united to Him.
That as Christians partake of Christ and His suffering, their own suffering is transformed by God into glory and joy.

Hear then, the Gospel of Suffering.

Far from being a sign and symbol of God’s non-existence, apathy, or impotence, human suffering is transformed by Christ’s Incarnation into a sign of God’s presence, love, and power.

Many people have honest questions about human suffering. However, many assume that suffering is a proof that God doesn’t exist or is not good or powerful enough to do something about human suffering. But God does exist, He is loving and good, and He has powerfully done something about human suffering.

And what He has done is to send His Son into the world to take on human nature, suffer for us, and redeem this suffering. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (John 3:16).

When sin, evil, and suffering entered into the world, God did not sit idly by and watch His children suffer. In the fullness of time, God the Father decisively entered into human suffering and showed His Fatherly love by sending His Son to take on human nature and its suffering, redeem human nature, and restore it to union with Him.

In assuming human nature in order to redeem it, God revealed His essential goodness. God is, indeed, very good – so good that His nature is always to take evil and transform it into good. As Joseph told his brothers, whose evil had caused him so much suffering: “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, to bring it about that many people should be kept alive, as they are today” (Genesis 50:20).

Christ suffered for us, that we might be united to God and experience the joy of

God’s presence once more. Everything that Jesus did as the Christ, He accomplished as the prophesied Suffering Servant who suffered whenever He deprived Himself of the good things that were rightfully His. He experienced every genus of human suffering and truly suffered when He:

– emptied Himself and took the form of a helpless, infant human

– was homeless and hungry, tired and poor

– was tried and condemned unjustly

– endured mocking, spitting, hitting, and scourging

– was rejected, betrayed, and abandoned by His countrymen and closest friends

– died an excruciating death

Jesus Christ endured and took upon Himself all human suffering: He suffered and died to redeem every bit of human suffering.

Suffering, therefore, is how we see Jesus, for it is how He has revealed Himself to us. If you want to see God the Father and know His kingdom, power, glory, and love – then look at Jesus Christ, who is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1:15). For Jesus says, “Whoever has seen me has seen the Father” (John 14:9). When we see the Suffering Servant, we are seeing the face of God, the glory of the invisible God made visible in the anguished visage of Christ, the Son.

The Father’s love has a form, and that form is Jesus Christ, the Son. The Son’s love has a shape, and its shape is that of suffering. Christ’s suffering, therefore, is a sign of the presence of God in His power and love.

The Crucifixion of Christ, the incarnate God, is the worst thing man has ever done.

But the Crucifixion of Christ is the best thing God has ever done.

What man means for evil and which causes suffering, God means for good and transforms to glory and joy.

And what does this Cross lead to for the human nature of Christ? St. Paul says that Christ “humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Philippians 2:8-10).

Because the Son obediently offered Himself as a sacrifice for the sins and suffering of mankind, God the Father exalted Him to glory. By His suffering and death, the Suffering Servant has established His everlasting Kingdom and dethroned the usurpers – sin, death, and Satan. What Satan meant as a way of humiliating and harming Christ, the Father meant as a way of glorifying Christ and exalting His human nature to His right hand, where glory and joy abound forevermore.

Far from being a sign of God’s non-existence, apathy, or impotence, human suffering is transformed by Christ’s Incarnation into a sacrament of God’s presence, love, and power.

The Crucifixion by Matthias Grunewald – U.S. Public Domain

2018-03-28T15:47:23-05:00

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Maundy Thursday – The New Old Commandment

Last updated on: March 28, 2018 at 3:47 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Maundy Thursday – The New Old Commandment

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.

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:

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.
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.

Jesus Washing the Disciples’ Feet – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

2017-04-07T22:52:33-05:00

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Luke 12:49-59 – The Price of Peace is the Prince of Peace

Last updated on: April 7, 2017 at 10:52 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

** Crucifixion - Grunewald **For being the Prince of Peace, Jesus sure knows how to stir up trouble!

The truth is, of course, that we are the ones who have disturbed the peace of the cosmos. We are the ones who have broken the law and are to be hauled into court to pay our debt. We are the ones who are at war with God and therefore at war with one another, at war within ourselves, and at war with nature. In fact, the traditional list of three kinds of conflict that literary textbooks talk about – man vs. man, man vs. himself, and man vs. nature – is incomplete, for it leaves out the most important kind of conflict of all: man vs. God.

We expect that when God walked into the world that everything would be made better immediately and without any fuss. We thought that we could start a war against God, change sides in the war, and then there would be no more war. As violently as the war began, we would have liked to believe, is how peacefully it will simply ebb away.

But the problem is that this isn’t the case. To bring peace to a war at world with itself, war must be waged, and as General Sherman said, “War is Hell!” To turn an upside down right side up again requires a cataclysm that is violent and very disturbing. And to make known the reality of this war and the two opposing sides, it was necessary that the Light of the World illuminate the fundamental division that exists in the world: the division between sheep and goats, disciples of Jesus Christ and rejecters of Jesus Christ, and the children of light and the children of darkness.

The disturbing, violent nature of the cataclysmic work of redemption reverberates throughout the end of Luke chapter 12: in fact, it’s been thundering all around us ever since Peter made his confession in Luke 9:20 and Jesus began to teach about the real nature of what the Christ of God has come to do.

We hear it in Jesus’ voice when He says in verse 50, “But I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how distressed I am till it is accomplished.” Jesus knows the terrible price that must be paid to bring peace to the earth and to humans once again. He knows, and He sets His face like flint to obey the will of the Father. And He is greatly distressed while He waits to pay that terrible price. As He gets closer to the Cross, that Cross begins to get heavier and heavier upon Him. This is the deeper magic of Tolkien’s The Return of the King, in which the closer Frodo gets to Mount Doom to destroy the Ring, the heavier it gets.

We feel Jesus’ distress and the shaking of the earth as Jesus reveals the growing chasm between Good and Evil. “Do you suppose that I came to give peace on earth? I tell you, not at all, but rather division,” He tells us in verse 51. Even families are divided by the coming of the Christ of God because some will accept Him and some will reject Him.

And then Jesus directs our attention beyond His own pain and conflict, and beyond our present pain and conflict, and to the end of time instead. Even time is disturbed by the coming of the Christ, so that the great dividing line in history is time Before Christ (B.C.) and time In the Year of Our Lord (Anno Domini, or A.D.) Time is also divided because within any given time period, some will not discern the time and will be unprepared for the coming of the Judge, while others will redeem the time. Some will settle with the Judge by accepting His terms of peace, and others will never make peace with Him and will therefore be thrown into the prison of Hell.

This is the terrible war and earthquake and apocalypse of the Christ of God!

And yet for the Christian it is a message of peace, and He truly is the Prince of Peace. The violence and divisions and mighty motion is all necessary to bring peace, but in the end, there is the offer of peace from the Prince of Peace. The terms of peace are to accept the terrible price that was paid to buy peace for us. The terms of peace are unconditional surrender to the One who has conquered for you: the terms of peace are to allow the Prince of Peace to conquer you.

To receive this peace, therefore, we must be united to the Prince of Peace. And here is where we sometimes don’t understand. Being united with Jesus Christ means we partake of all of Him. Will we be baptized with the same baptism with which He was baptized? The baptism He is talking about in verse 50 is His Passion and Crucifixion for us: it meant His death. And if we want to be baptized with Him we must also die, but die to self that we might be raised to life with Him.

This is sometimes a deeply disturbing and terrible thing. You won’t hear many TV preachers – or preachers anywhere – talk about this. It may not be a popular teaching, and yet we all know in our hearts that it’s true. But making peace with Jesus Christ may actually be painful and difficult. Making the choice to do the will of the Father and give up self causes a great deal of turmoil in our souls. It hurts, it disturbs me, and it’s sometime odious to turn from what I want to do in order to serve God. And making a choice to love and serve God with all of your heart and soul and mind when others around you are not making this choice will be the source of distress in your life.

But do not be afraid. When your soul is in trouble over the things that God has asked you to do, be at peace, knowing that you are at peace with God through the Prince of Peace. The Christ who suffered for you also rose for you, and the Christ with whom you must suffer is also the Christ with whom you will be raised up.

For the world which still rejects the Prince of Peace there can be no peace on earth. But blessed are the peacemakers, those who seek peace with God, for they shall be called the sons of God!

Prayer: Father, may You, through Jesus Christ the Prince of Peace, give to me the peace that passes all understanding and keep my heart and mind in the knowledge and love of You and of Your Son, Jesus Christ. May Your blessing, the blessing of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost be with me and remain with me always. Amen.

Point for Meditation: Examine the causes of distress in your life. Which ones are caused by running away from God like Jonah? Which ones are caused by the worries and cares of the world? Which ones are caused by the heaviness of what God has asked you to do?

Resolution: I resolve to settle with God whatever I know is not settled with Him in my life. Choose the one thing that most distresses you in your relationship with God and in the things He has asked you to do, and offer that to Him as a peace offering.

2017-03-30T21:00:16-05:00

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Luke 9:46-62 – The Next Stop on the Glory Train

Last updated on: March 30, 2017 at 9:00 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Crucifixion - real “But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.”

Well, that seems like a petty reason to reject Jesus! To understand what this means, especially to us, it’s always wisest to look at the larger context. At the beginning of Luke 9, Jesus sent out the 12, which is, in itself, a step up in the process of discipleship to which Jesus calls His disciples. After they have returned, He recruits them to help Him feed a hungry world (the feeding of the 5000), and then Jesus ups the discipleship ante again. He asks the disciples who they say that He is. No sooner has Peter made his profession that Jesus is the Christ of God than Jesus immediately begins to speak of His death and resurrection. Matthew and Mark’s Gospels record how Peter responds so contrarily to Jesus’ teaching that Jesus says to him, “Get behind me, Satan!”

Though Luke doesn’t record that part of the incident, it’s the same rejecting response that Luke is ultimately interested in. To make plain that it is not only the Master but also the disciples who must suffer, be rejected, and be crucified (in a manner of speaking), Jesus begins to teach as well that “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me. For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake will save it.”

Having thus dropped this bombshell on the disciples, Jesus proceeds to be transfigured before the three closest disciples, confirming the kingdom and power and glory of Jesus, but also perplexing the disciples in the utmost. “Let me get this straight,” I imagine them thinking. “You can feed 5000 men from a few loaves of bread and a few fish, you can restore people to life, and you are the Christ, the Messiah. But you’re also going to Jerusalem to suffer and be killed? And now you’re as blinding as the sun?”

After the Transfiguration, Jesus again predicts His death, after which the disciples commence arguing about who the greatest in the kingdom will be. I told you they were confused!

And then we come to the part I really want to focus on: “But they did not receive Him, because His face was set for the journey to Jerusalem.” Who’s the “they” in this passage? It’s the Samaritans, the same Samaritans who were the half-breeds to whom Jesus showed so much compassion and love, even when no other Jews would. The same Samaritans from whom He chose the good guy in the parable of the Good Samaritan.

When Jesus passes through Samaria on His way to Jerusalem, what is the response to the Samaritans to Him? They rejected Him or “did not receive Him” because He was going to Jerusalem. The Samaritans, having developed their own place of worship and own rituals, apparently didn’t think too much of the fact that Jesus was going down to Jerusalem instead of staying with them.

When His disciples James and John (two of the three who had seen Him transfigured) saw this, they were indignant and asked if they should command fire to come down from heaven. They’re mad at the Samaritans for rejecting Jesus.

Now the really intriguing thing to me is that I think it’s the also disciples of Jesus Christ who are the ones who reject Him because He’s going to Jerusalem. The disciples don’t reject Him because they think Samaria is better or because of Jerusalem itself: they reject Jesus as He goes down to Jerusalem because the road to Jerusalem is the path to the Cross.

It was Peter, the Rock, and not just the Samaritans, who rejected Jesus because He set His face to go to Jerusalem to suffer and die there. It’s the would-be disciples who ask to bury their dead parents and other things before they follow Jesus. It’s the would-be disciples who ask to first bid farewell to the guests at their house.

But it’s not just the Samaritans or would-be disciples or disciples of the 1st century who reject Jesus because He went to Jerusalem: it’s also His would-be disciples in the 21st century: it’s us.

Be honest: what’s your first thought whenever Jesus says, “If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow Me”? Can you honestly say that you joyfully and immediately want to follow Jesus on the road to Jerusalem? When Jesus says that it is not only He Himself who will give up His life but that we also must give up our lives to Him as a living sacrifice, are we still willing to follow Him? Or do we turn on the excuse-making machine that we keep warmed up for just such an occasion?

Aren’t there times, after Jesus has commanded us to leave everything and follow Him, when we still argue about who’s the greatest? And don’t we still often walk away sad, like the rich young ruler, because of what the Master has commanded us to do? Before we point the finger at those foolish Samaritans and disciples, we’d better dig that thumb that’s looking back at us out of our own eye!

Jesus has set His face to go to Jerusalem, and He’s commanded you to follow Him there. His Cross must become your Cross: He who gave up His life for you did it so that you might be able to give up your life to Him.

But it isn’t all the Cross, is it? We must go to Jerusalem with Jesus first, but that didn’t become His permanent home, did it? For after He went to Jerusalem to be crucified, He was raised from the dead and ascended to heaven, where He now lives. And after we go to Jerusalem with Jesus to crucify ourselves as living sacrifices, He will raise us up with Him and make His home with us.

Jesus is leading us on the glory train to heaven, but the next stop is Jerusalem. Who’s coming with Jesus?

Prayer: Father, as you led Your Holy Son Jesus to set His face to go to Jerusalem to do Your holy will, I ask for an increase of Your Holy Spirit in my life that I, too, might be willing to obey You in all things. Keep me from making excuses, and encourage me by Your Spirit that I might not turn back from what You have called me to do today, through Jesus Christ. Amen.

Point for Meditation: What excuses have you been making for not following Jesus in particular ways?

Resolution: Resolve to follow Jesus to Jerusalem today. What is one difficult, sacrificial thing that Jesus is asking you to do? Resolve to do it today.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license

Give Us This Day Devotional

Uncategorized

Good Samaritan

Jesus going to Jerusalem

2017-03-30T21:00:25-05:00

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Luke 9:18-27 – Who am I?

Last updated on: March 30, 2017 at 9:00 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Peter receiving the keys at confession “Who do you say that I am?”

I want you to try and answer Jesus’ question today, but without words. You can’t say, with Peter, “The Christ of God” or “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” You can’t say, “He is the second person of the Trinity, both God and man.” And you can’t say, “My personalLordandSavior.”

I want you to see if you can answer Jesus’ question, “Who Am I?” by reflecting on your deeds or actions. You will have to act it out for everyone to see. For no sooner had Peter taken the next step in his discipleship class by confessing Jesus to be the Christ, when Jesus commands His disciples, who have confessed Him with their lips, to show their faith with their lives.

You remember how Jesus, when healing the paralytic man, asked, “Which is easier, to say ‘Take up your mat and walk?’ or to say ‘Your sins are forgiven.’” It’s easier to say, “Your sins are forgiven” because it’s easy to say these words and much harder to prove that you have the authority to say them by actually being able to heal the body as well as the soul.

In a similar way, which is easier, to say, “Lord, I love you with all my heart,” or to take up your cross daily and follow Him? Anyone can confess with his mouth, but fewer confess with their deeds as well. It is the difference between an easy and verbal “faith” and a difficult and active faithfulness.

“Who do you say that I am?”

God is constantly speaking to you and calling to you to follow Him in a myriad of small ways each day. In countless invisible ways, God is asking you to sacrifice yourself to Him that you may be joined to His sacrifice for you. For what the Lord who hung on the Cross for you wants from you is that you should hang on your little crosses for Him and so be united to Him.

Several times an hour, or more, you are asked to give up your things for the good of God and for His glory. How you answer God’s call in your life is your answer to who you say that He is. Here are some of the many ways in which He may be calling you to take up your cross, follow Him, and deny yourself. He may be calling you:

to turn from your thoughts of how you can earn for yourself one more dollar and to consider how you may give back to Him one more dollar
to work diligently and faithfully for your employer, parent, or teacher
to deny yourself the daily latte or new car or phone or other gadget or trinket so that you might pay off your debts
to deny yourself your lustful thought about that person
to play what your playmate wants to play (adults too)
to share your toys with others (adults too!)
to get off the computer/phone/TV/video game and spend more time with your family
to give up that extra hour of sleep and finally make it to Sunday school
to give up that extra hour of leisure and read your Bible or pray
to turn off the filth that is entering through the holes in your head
to relinquish your fears and worries
to sacrifice that dream for what you know He really wants you to do
to deny yourself your comfort zone and dare to mention His Name to someone else
to give up your right to complain when things don’t go your way today
to deny yourself your right to speak and to choose to listen instead
to reject your anger and choose peace and thankfulness instead
to do what He brings your way today instead of what you had planned
to accept with thanks what He has given you instead of complaining about what you didn’t get

In these ways and many others, the Master is giving you the opportunity to learn to deny yourself, to take up your cross, and to follow Him. “For whoever has, to him more will be given; and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have will be taken from him.”

It was by a thousand self-denials of Himself for 30+ years that Jesus Christ was prepared to deny Himself to the point of the Cross. It was by a thousand lesser self-crucifixions that He prepared Himself for the one Crucifixion that took away the sins of the world.

If you would like to follow the Master and be His disciple, and if you would like to be united to His one all-sufficient sacrifice, then follow Him in His sacrifice of Himself to the Father. For if you lose your life in this way for His sake, then you will have saved it.

Prayer: Father, I thank You for sharing Your only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, for my sake. Jesus, I thank You for denying Yourself and taking up Your Cross for my sake. By Your Holy Spirit give me the grace to follow You by denying myself and taking up my cross. Help me to find my daily bread in doing Your holy will on earth as it is in heaven. Amen.

Point for Meditation: Think about one way you could build in daily reminders to turn away from self and towards God.

Resolution: I resolve to find one key way in which my Master is asking me to deny myself for Him and to practice taking up my cross and following Him today by denying myself this one thing. I will not try to use my own will power to deny myself this thing, but instead turn to the will power of the Father, through His Son, and by the Spirit.

Peter Receiving the Keys at His Confession – U.S. Public Domain

Give Us This Day Devotional

Uncategorized

Christ’s self-denial

personalLordandSavior

2017-03-30T21:00:47-05:00

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Luke 7:11-17 – God Has Visited His People

Last updated on: March 30, 2017 at 9:00 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

** Widow of Nain **In the Beatles’ song, “She Said, She Said,” John Lennon sings, “I know what it’s like to be dead.”

I, too, know what it’s like to be dead. Maybe not quite. I may not know what life is like for the dead (there are several ways of answering this). But I do know that sometimes my life feels as if it were dead. There are times when I’m physically too tired to do what I would like to do or should do, and, since the body is connected to the soul, a spiritual narcolepsy often accompanies my bodily fatigue.

And sometimes it is my mind that feels like it’s dead. Sometimes I get defeated by the events in my life that threaten to overwhelm me and drown me. Other times, it’s my soul that’s in mortal danger because it has grown weak since it hasn’t fed on the spiritual food of Jesus Christ enough.

In reality, my physiology, my psychology, and my theology all interact, and it’s hard to know where one begins and the other ends. Rather than confusing me, I know in my heart (and in my head and in my hands) that this is the way it’s supposed to be. So I know what it’s like to be dead, and I’ll bet you do, too. Some of you may feel like you’re dead this morning and may, in fact, be in various stages of dying.

But Jesus is coming! Did you remember to flag Him down when He passed by You yesterday? Why not?!

“God has visited his people.” That’s what all the people said when Jesus came to heal the widow of Nain’s only begotten son.

“God has visited his people.” That’s what all of the Gospel writers have shouted to us, beginning with the birth of Jesus Christ and continuing to His public ministry and then through His Crucifixion and Resurrection and now through His presence among us.

You may feel as if you’re in the coffin today; you may feel as if you’re being carried out and ready to be buried. But Jesus Christ is passing by you today. In fact – Look! There He is!

Jesus is standing over you this moment, looking into your sad and weary eyes. The One who is Eternal Life is looking into the death of your eyes. He is unafraid, for He has seen death before and has conquered it.

Look! He’s reaching out His hand! And now He’s calling to you, saying, “I say to you, arise!”

What will you do? You are not really dead but only feel like it. What will you do? Jesus is offering you life once again. Jesus is calling you to respond to Him with faith.

What will you do?

Prayer: Father, I thank You for loving the world so much that You sent Your only-begotten Son to live and die and live again for me. I ask that through Him you might give me everlasting life today and life more abundantly. Kill the death that lives within me, and help me to choose life by choosing Your Son, Jesus Christ, in whose name I pray. Amen.

Point for Meditation: Make an honest assessment of your life. On a scale of 1-10, how spiritually alive are you? What practical steps toward seeking life has God been asking you to take (which, perhaps, you have not yet taken)?

Resolution: I resolve to cry out to Jesus today as He passes by me. I resolve to ask Him to heal me from whatever it is in my life that is making me feel like I’m dead.

Raising of Widow of Nain’s Son – U.S. Public Domain

Give Us This Day Devotional

2017-03-03T19:15:15-05:00

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Luke 4:42-5:11 – How the angels obey

Last updated on: March 3, 2017 at 7:15 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

** Jesus Calls Peter **We all like success stories, and we all seek success. Hundreds of books purport to tell us hundreds of different secrets of success. When really, it’s quite simple.

One example of a man who was successful by many human standards was Howard Hughes. Hughes became by turns a Hollywood movie producer, aircraft inventor, mining mogul, and casino owner. An avid pilot, he set world flight records, including his 1938 flight around the world in just over 91 hours. In the 1960s his business dealings paid off so handsomely that his wealth reached one billion dollars. That’s pretty much the American Dream – isn’t it?

But the last years of Hughes’ life were spent sitting naked in his white leather chair in the center of the living room – an area he called the “germ free zone” – his long legs stretched out on the matching ottoman facing a movie screen, watching one motion picture after another, addicted to codeine and Valium (that’s pretty much the new American Dream – isn’t it?) A doctor who examined him at the end of his life likened his condition to prisoners he had seen in Japanese prison camps during World War II. In the end, all merely earthly success doesn’t amount to much more than this.

This morning’s lesson from Luke 5, in which Jesus appears to His fishermen disciples, is really the simplest of success stories. Peter, a skilled fisherman, and his professional associates had been fishing all night. In fact, they consider that their work is done, because in verse 2 they are washing their nets to put them away. They had caught nothing all night, which to a fishermen means they were at that time failures.

But in verse 4 a certain rabbi comes to the professional fisherman in the morning and tells them that they should try again. After they have already washed their nets. After they have worked hard all night. Knowing that night was the best time for fishing with nets and morning was the worst.

Now Peter is a man who in the Gospels is always doing things his way. This time he is justified, because he’s competent to fish and judge when, where, and how to catch fish. Remember: he does this for a living. So we’d expect Peter to raise objections to this foolish idea from someone who’s not even a fisherman. To our surprise, in verse 5 Peter, with only a brief pause, obeys this strange command. To his and his friends’ surprise, he and his friends catch more fish than their nets can even hold.

Peter found that the secret of success was simple, but the success he found was much more than success in catching fish. He had discovered the secret to true success in all of life, and that secret was simply to obey the Master.

Let’s examine Peter’s obedience in more detail. Peter was faced with a commandment that didn’t make sense. At the moment of obedience, Peter didn’t know the outcome of his obedience. For all he knew, it would just be that much more weary labor after a full night’s work. It took faith for Peter to do what didn’t make perfect sense to him, for, you see, the true test of faith and obedience is not when the commandment makes sense or when it is what you want to do anyway.

The true test of obedience and of your faith is how well you obey . . . when you don’t want to.

Why was Peter able to do something contrary to his own intuition and his own desire? Because he loved the Lord and submitted to His command. Though he raised an objection, he immediately overcame it with his faith. Here’s Peter’s attitude: “We have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing. Nevertheless, at thy word I will let down the net” (verse 5).

Of course the result was a catch of fish so large Peter and his friends couldn’t handle it. Peter had discovered that the secret to success is obedience to the Lord Jesus Christ.

How often are we like the disciples in their failure? How often do we fail when we try things on our own power? Now Peter wasn’t being sinful by fishing and not catching anything, but Jesus uses this failure to teach that we must trust Him for all things. Peter’s failure teaches us that even in your occupation or calling, you should remember that it is only God who gives you this ability. More than this, our Lord Jesus Christ is the master of all callings: fisherman and all manual laborers, teachers and managers and all white-collar workers, parents and pastors and all leaders.

Peter fished all night on his own power – and caught nothing. The question for you is: in what area of your life are you fishing on your own power – and catching nothing? I’m willing to wager that each of you has one thing, one area (and probably more!) where you are still going your own way. Some thing that you know isn’t working because you have not submitted to your Lord. Maybe it’s a relationship you know isn’t right. Maybe it’s a besetting sin you keep promising you’ll work on tomorrow. And I’m sure the Lord is calling you to greater prayer and good deeds.

It’s time, like Peter, to hear the voice of your Lord this morning – and obey.

How many times must you learn the same lesson – that God’s way is better than yours? It reminds me of New York pizza boxes, where it is written: “You’ve tried all the rest, now try the best.” Haven’t you tried your own way long enough? Isn’t it time to try the Lord’s way?

Though we are too often like Peter in his failure, thank God that we are also like Peter in his success. We shouldn’t measure our success by how smart we are (that is, how intelligent God has created us to be), nor by how strong we are (that is, how much strength God gives us). You may never own half of Las Vegas like Howard Hughes; you may never set a world record; you may never lead a mass of people to make a decision for Jesus Christ. But that’s OK, because that’s not how God measures success.

True success in life is measured by your obedience to God. True success is measured when God’s will is done on earth as it is in heaven. When this happens, then the Kingdom of heaven comes to men, and that’s what I call success!

When the Lord gives you commandments in your life – the big ones that are obvious, and the small ones that we so easily ignore each day – how do you respond?

I tell my kids that “thy will be done” means four things: there are four parts to your obedience:

Speed – Like Peter, you should obey God immediately, and not only when you find it convenient.
Quantity – Like Peter, you should obey God completely.
Quality – Like Peter, you should obey God to the best of your ability.
Attitude – Like Peter, you should obey God cheerfully.

All of this obedience requires that you are actively listening to the voice of God. You must be in such close communion with your Lord that you are able to hear and thus obey His voice, whether it comes through His Word, through your conscience, or through the counsel of others. Remember who it is that is commanding you: it is the Lord!

You must accustom yourself to the voice of Jesus Christ in your life, and this means tuning your spirit to the voice of the Holy Spirit. This obedience requires that you forsake all and follow Christ – even when you don’t understand (verse 11). In a similar way, Jesus Christ commands those who want to be His disciples, in Matt 16:24, that we must deny ourselves, take up our cross daily (which means submitting our wills to His in all things), and follow Him. This is the way the original disciples followed Jesus Christ, and it is the way His disciples today must follow.

If you obey, you will see the Lord bless you beyond your imagination, as Peter did. For Peter, this meant a miraculous catch of fish. For you, it might mean greater peace with yourself or your friends and relatives: it will certainly mean a closer fellowship with your God. Success for Peter meant that impetuous Peter became Peter the bold.

Success in God’s eyes often looks like failure in man’s eyes: remember John the Baptist and the Crucifixion of the Lord. And success in man’s eyes is often failure: remember Howard Hughes.

But in the eyes of the Lord, obedience is always a success because obedience is always the goal for the disciple of Jesus Christ all along.

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.

Point for Meditation: Meditate on one way in which God has given you spiritual success, even when it didn’t (or doesn’t) look like it.

Resolution: I resolve to listen today to what the Master is telling me in one area. I further resolve to obey His commandment immediately, completely, to the best of my ability, and cheerfully.

Calling of Peter and Andrew by Duccio di Buoninsegna – U. S. Public Domain

2017-02-13T17:14:58-05:00

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Mark 15:16-32 – The King on the Cross

Last updated on: February 13, 2017 at 5:14 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

“Aha! You who destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself and come down from the cross!”

In this way, those who passed by Jesus while on the Cross mocked Him and “wagged” their heads at Him.

It all seems so wrong, this Crucifixion thing. It doesn’t seem to make sense. Surely it could have been avoided, surely there was another way, another plan. It just doesn’t seem right.

So you think you’ve had a bad day? Then maybe it’s time to put things in perspective by reliving the events of Good Friday.

Frankly, I’m exhausted by Mark 15 and by the scenes leading up to the Crucifixion. It’s all downhill after the Last Supper. Even the Last Supper is the time and place where Satan entered Judas. What should have been the ultimate Happy Meal was marred by the satanic attack.

And then it gets worse. Jesus goes and prays but finds that even in prayer His disciples will not remain faithful to Him. His soul is in anguish and can find no relief, except from the interlopers who have come to take Him away forever. His own friend, the one with whom He had just broken bread, comes to betray, armed with an army of malefactors. He is betrayed by a kiss and then led roughly away.

If you think anyone is going to intervene in this ultimate mockery of justice and all that is good and holy, you are wrong. He endures a bogus trial by the Sanhedrin, after which He is betrayed again, only this time by the one He had hand selected to be the Rock. But the rock crumbles into pebbles.

And then another trial, so that the Gentiles can also be equal partakers in declaring war on the Prince of Peace.

Have you ever been picked last in a game or in a P. E. class? Do you remember that feeling? What if your own countrymen chose Barabbas, a notorious murderer and thief, over you?

And then it gets personal. The Roman soldiers mock the King of kings and crown Him with a crown of thorns. They strike Him in the head and spit on Him and mock-worship Him. Has anyone ever spat on you? Can you imagine how that feels? Surely, someone has mocked something good that you’ve done or mocked you for being or doing good. Have you ever been beat up or physically abused?

What if all of this happened to you on the same day? It’s almost as if Jesus had to endure every category of humiliation for us all in one day.

And then on the Cross itself the very people for whom He is hanging on the Cross begin to mock Him. This hurts in a special way because of the kernel of truth contained in it. He will indeed destroy the Temple and raise it up in three days, and He could indeed save Himself and come down from the Cross. He had the power to do so.

How the words of the chief priests must have hurt when they said, “Let the Christ, the King of Israel, descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.” Isn’t that exactly what Jesus would have desired – to conquer the Cross by coming down off it and demonstrating His power and authority so that all who saw might believe?

Here we see Satan pulling out all the diabolical stops, tempting one last time with the most reasonable and holy temptation of all. Come down and show everyone you’re God so You can save them.

That’s what I would have done, which is precisely why it’s a good thing I’m not God. It also explains why I am so spent after having read Mark 15. It all seems so wrong. It’s not the way I would have written the story because it’s not the way I want the story of my life written either.

I’ve always wanted to be a writer. I get a lot of practice on my own life, imagining how things might have turned out differently. Without meaning to, I get a lot of practice in telling God how to run His business.

Jesus should have come off the Cross to show everyone who He was, at least the way I want to tell the story. And in my life I am constantly pleading with Jesus to come off the Cross and save me. There are many things I want to be delivered from, and I want to be delivered from them when I ask Jesus to deliver me.

And so often He doesn’t. Why does He do this? Why won’t He come off the Cross for me today? I’ve had a pretty rough spell in my life the last six months, and sometimes I feel as if I’m going through Mark 15 in microcosmic form. And so I ask Jesus to come down off the Cross from me.

Unwittingly, I am like the passersby and chief priests and scribes when I ask/command Jesus to come down. I am better than they, in that I am not mocking Him and I ask from belief. And yet when I insist that God come down to me in my time and in my way, am I not, along with them, violating the second commandment? Am I not, with them, worshiping God in my own way, a way that He has not commanded?

The fact is that Jesus doesn’t come down off the Cross. Instead, He patiently endures it and sees it to its crushing end. Worse, for my way of thinking, He resurrects offstage. He doesn’t come down from the Cross where everyone can see Him, at the time when they are looking for Him. When He comes back to life, no one is there to witness the actual Resurrection.

Instead of a flash of glory that no one could deny, we get evidence that Christ was resurrected. It’s true that the disciples see Him in person, but all we receive is certain kinds of evidence that require faith to connect the dots. It’s as if He wants to involve us in the work of making Him known and as if He is making faith an irreducible necessity.

What I really want to know is why does He seem to work offstage in my life as well? He doesn’t come down right when I ask Him, in the time and manner of my choosing. Instead, He works secretly and mysteriously, so much so that I’m prone to miss Him altogether.

Why does He do this? Wouldn’t it be better for my life if I were healed this moment from all my fatigue and confusion and fears and doubts and worries? Wouldn’t it be better for my faith if I saw Him work with a more direct response to my requests?

No.

God frustrates my attempts to manage, direct, coerce, cajole, and imagine Him into doing what I want Him to do. He wants me to learn that He is in control, and not me: He will not come down off the Cross just because I want Him to. He will do so because He wants to. It is I who must come and climb up on the Cross with Him, to go wherever He is.

I have a new favorite film, one that has actually dethroned Cool Hand Luke as my all-time favorite film. It’s Diary of a Country Priest, directed by Robert Bresson and based on the novel of the same name by Georges Bernanos. I consider it to be one of the best films of all time and highly recommend it as possibly the most spiritual film ever made (I still have a lot to see before I can make this judgment, and I am flush from having just experienced it.) In the movie, Bresson has the frustrating habit of purposely holding out the resolution of a scene until after the scene has ended and another scene has begun. We want there to be a one-to-one correlation between what is being said, what is happening, and what we are experiencing, but they don’t all align and adhere until later.

I think maybe Bresson took directing lessons directly from God, for this is how He directs our lives. (I also like the way that God, like Bresson, uses real people and not actors in His stories!)

And so where am I in today’s scene in God’s mystery play?

I want the Resurrection, but am I willing to be with Him through the humiliation, Passion, and Crucifixion? Do I really want Him – in the way and time that He desires to give Himself to me?

That’s the question for me and for you today.

I know what I’ll do: I’ll go and rewind to Mark 15:29-30 and find myself at the foot of the Cross again. But this time I will not tell God what to do. Instead, I’ll humbly make my request known to Him and entrust the next scene to the Author of Life, letting God tell His Story the way He wants to tell it to and through me.

Prayer: Prayer for Acceptance of God’s Will

O Lord, I do not know what to ask of You.

You alone know what are my true needs.

You love me more than I myself know how to love.

Help me to see my real needs, which are concealed from me.

I do not dare to ask either for a cross or for consolation.

I can only wait on you. My heart is open to You.

Visit and help me, for the sake of Your great mercy.

Strike me and heal me; cast me down and raise me up.

I worship in silence Your holy will and Your unsearchable way.

I offer myself as a sacrifice to You.

I have no other desire than to fulfill Your will.

Teach me to pray. Pray You Yourself in me.

Amen. (Prayer of St. Philaret Patriarch of Moscow, Russia)

Point for Meditation:

In what ways am I dissatisfied with the way God is telling the story of my life? Which of these ways are due to sin in my life, and which are due to a lack of faith?

Resolution: I resolve today to practice entrusting my life, my troubles, and my requests to God, allowing Him to tell His story in His way.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license

Diary of a Country Priest

Good Friday

King of kings

the Cross

2017-02-06T14:33:28-05:00

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Mark 14:12-26 – Mystic Communion

Last updated on: February 6, 2017 at 2:33 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

****What is this thing that Jesus does, this Last Supper, which is the Church’s first Communion?

I love a number of Communion hymns, but one that creates chills and goosebumps in me is “Come, Risen Lord” (this happens to me only when it’s sung to the “Edsall” tune.) The words that get me most are: “we meet as in that upper room they met.” Sometimes when I sing that hymn I am aware of a mysterious connection between myself, the worshiping parish I’m in, the disciples in the upper room at the last supper, and the church universal.

Sometimes in this life I find that there is a mystical connection between one thing and another. I’m not a very good mystic, even though I’ve read some of the mystics, but I’ve had a few quasi-mystical experiences. One of my favorites was in 2006 when I was visiting “Bede’s World” (Bede’s World, Bede’s World!) in Jarrow. There I was able to put on a monk’s garb, as if I were putting on the spirit of Bede. At the time, I was finishing my Ph. D. and working on Give Us This Day from a small Reformed Episcopal Church parish in Hot Springs, Arkansas: St. Chrysostom’s.

After leaving Bede’s World, I visited Bede’s tomb at Durham Cathedral. As I was thanking God for his life and work and asking for guidance in my own, I became aware of a close connection between the Venerable Bede and myself. He seemed to be telling me that it was a good thing for me to be in a small place with a small window on the world because often that provided just the kind of clarity and focus one needed to see the invisible in the visible. He told me that if he could be the most learned man of his day, never having strayed far from Jarrow, that I could likewise serve God from a small parish in a small town. Finally, he communicated to me that I could be of similar service to God if I would continue to humble myself before Him in the small things of life.

Sometimes in this life I find that there is a mystical connection between one thing and another. And so it seems sometimes as if Jesus’ disciples are present with us at the Lord’s Supper and as if I am present with them at the Last Supper. The Holy Communion has a way of translating us into God’s time in which time does strange things in this post-Einsteinian world.

Here, in the Lord’s Supper, Holy Communion, Eucharist, or Mass, we are united to Christ; here, we are made the Body of Christ again. Here, gathered together around the Table to unite in fellowship, are all the great events in the life of Christ: the Incarnation, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost of Christ.

“And as they were eating, Jesus took the bread, blessed, and broke it, and gave it to them and said, ‘Take, eat; this is My body.’”

Here is the pattern of all life and creation, made manifest by God in His creation and here in His re-creation: He takes hold, breaks, distributes, evaluates, and then enjoys.

In a moment of time, as Christ breaks the bread, He has broken it, He breaks it, and He will break it: time takes the form of ancient and venerable history; it smacks me in the face as a present force; and it whispers deliciously to me of what will always be.

As I see Jesus take the bread in Mark 14:22, I see Jesus’ birth and Incarnation. God takes hold of His Creation and becomes a part of it so that He might redeem it. As I see the priest take hold of the bread, I see Jesus take hold of the bread. The Incarnation is present here at the Eucharist, and God once again pronounces over His creation, “It is good, it is very good!”

As I hear Jesus bless the bread, I sense His holy and perfect life. The birth of Christ is forever connected to the life of Christ: God blesses what He took hold of for us, whether human life, or the bread of the earth, or the Bread of Life that unites them both. The Son didn’t become man only to die but also to live, and by that holy life which He took and lived we are made holy as well.

As I see the bread be broken and hear the snap of its moment of brokenness, I hear and see the coming Crucifixion. Here, as the bread is broken, the body of the Bread of Life is also broken. Broken 2000 years ago in Mark 14, broken today in Mark 14, and broken forever as the one, sufficient, and perfect sacrifice for the life of the world. Here is Christ’s sacrifice: once broken and always broken; once offered and always offered.

As I feel the bread as my turn to partake arrives, I feel the Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost of Christ. Here is the life of Christ, who though He was dead now lives again. Here is the Resurrection, promising that after the life of Christ has been offered and taken, He will take it up again. Here is the Ascension, promising that the human life which Christ took hold of has now been glorified and has entered heaven so that the divine and human may dwelling together forever. Here is the Pentecost of Christ, the life of Christ given for the Body of Christ: as Christ is broken and ascends into heaven, He is miraculously multiplied as the members of Christ are knit together into the one Body by His Spirit.

In the beginning, God commanded Adam and Eve not to eat of one tree. But now He commands us to eat of one tree, Jesus, the Tree of Life. Christ is the food on which and by which His Body lives. In the Lord’s Supper, He has given, He gives, and He will give Himself to us as the heavenly food, so that He might be with us and we in Him forever.

Here, not only past, present, and future meet; not only the Incarnation, life, Crucifixion, Resurrection, Ascension, and Pentecost of Christ meet; but also God and man.

If all of this is too abstract, and it probably is, then remember this: that Jesus Christ offers Himself, all of Himself, to you in His Supper. If you’re having trouble seeing, hearing, and feeling Him today, then make it your intention to partake of Him more frequently and more faithfully. This will require planning and preparation, meditation and memory, but it’s the most important thing you can do this week.

Like the disciples, let us go and eat Jesus Christ today and, having eaten, go and sing a hymn of eucharist!

Prayer: All glory be to thee, Almighty God, our heavenly Father, for that thou, of thy tender mercy, didst give thine only Son Jesus Christ to suffer death upon the Cross for our redemption; who made there (by his one oblation of himself once offered) a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world; and did institute, and in his holy Gospel command us to continue, a perpetual memory of that his precious death and sacrifice, until his coming again.

We most heartily thank thee, for that thou dost vouchsafe to feed us who have duly received these holy mysteries, with the spiritual food of the most precious Body and Blood of thy Son our Saviour Jesus Christ; and dost assure us thereby of thy favour and goodness towards us; and that we are very members incorporate in the mystical body of thy Son, which is the blessed company of all faithful people; and are also heirs through hope of thy everlasting kingdom, by the merits of his most precious death and passion. And we humbly beseech thee, O heavenly Father, so to assist us with thy grace, that we may continue in that holy fellowship, and do all such good works as thou hast prepared for us to walk in; through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom, with thee and the Holy Ghost, be all honour and glory, world without end. Amen. (From the Prayer of Consecration and the post-Communion Prayer from The Book of Common Prayer)

Points for Meditation:

How does Jesus’ Last Supper relate to my life outside of the hour of the Lord’s Supper? How does He come to me through the things of this life? In what ways is the Lord using the things of creation to unite me to Him?
How can I more faithfully seek the Bread of Life today?
Plan to sing at least one hymn of praise to God sometime today.

Resolution: I resolve to prepare adequately for the next time when I will partake of the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Communion.

Last Supper – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license

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