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2016-03-18T12:15:35-05:00

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.

Saturday in Lent 5 – John 13:1-17

Last updated on: March 18, 2016 at 12:15 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

John 13:1-17

This meditation is really a Maundy Thursday meditation, but here it is on the Saturday before Holy Week.

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” (John 13:34). This name, “Maundy Thursday,” comes from the Latin words mandatum novum, or “new commandment,” taken from John 13:34.

Now why is this a new commandment? The commandments to love God and love your neighbor as yourself come from the Old Testament. It is new because the commandments to love God and love neighbor are hidden away among 612 other commandments. Each of these was either about loving God or loving neighbor, and yet it was easy to miss. New, because it is through Jesus Christ Himself that we see the love incarnated that we are commanded to have. New, because Jesus is about to demonstrate with His life the love that He teaches with His mouth.

So Jesus gives us a new commandment – in fact, the commandment above all others: the commandment to love. On Maundy Thursday, even before the ultimate story of love found in Good Friday, we find in John 13 a complete teaching on love. For on Maundy Thursday, and every day of our lives, 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 also 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 so 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 His disciples’ 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 teaches 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. 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 also 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.”

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

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.

Give Us This Day

anoint the Body of Christ

as I have loved you

example power commandment of love

2016-03-02T17:17:03-05:00

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Thursday of Lent 3 – Mark 11:12-26

Last updated on: March 2, 2016 at 5:17 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Mark 11:12-26

Mean, mean Jesus! Who does he think he is – causing a fig tree to wither? Obviously, he wasn’t environmentally friendly. Maybe we can wish this side of Jesus away by taking our Jeffersonian scissors to the parts of the Bible we don’t like and neatly excising them.

Mean, mean Jesus!

If our reaction isn’t necessarily one of disdain for the one who withers trees, it’s likely at least to be confusion. Maybe we’re not perturbed that Jesus withered the fig tree, but we might be questioning why.

The truth is, once again, that you are the fig tree in this story. It’s amazing how many times God has written you into the Bible, hidden in the symbols and stories of Scripture. But here we all are, and we should not be surprised at what the Lord has to say to us, if we know Him.

When Jesus first spotted the fig tree, He noticed the leaves on it, and from a distance it looked like a healthy fig tree that was bearing its fruit in season. In ancient Israel, fig trees would bear fruit before their leaves, and so when Jesus saw the leaves, He assumed that He would find fruit.

What He found, however, was a barren tree but one that should have produced fruit. Therefore, Jesus cursed the tree, and there’s the problem. I can’t believe in a Jesus who would curse a poor innocent tree. We have a problem with God cursing things, it seems.

So why does He cause the fig tree to wither? Are we to imagine a scene from Bruce Almighty in which Jesus points His finger randomly at bits of His creation and causes them to blow up – just because He can?

The fig tree, of course, is not just a fig tree. It is the nation of Israel, God’s tree that He had carefully planted and cultivated. But in the end, Israel bore leaves but no fruit, and now God had come to judge His people.

Why should this surprise us? Isn’t this the message of the very first Psalm?

“He (the wise and righteous man) shall be like a tree

Planted by the rivers of water,

That brings forth its fruit in its season,

Whose leaf also shall not wither;

And whatever he does shall prosper.

The ungodly are not so,

But are like the chaff which the wind drives away.

Didn’t John try to warn us that when the Christ came this is what He would do? “And even now the ax is laid to the root of the trees. Therefore every tree which does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire” (Luke 3:9).

If you’re offended that Jesus cursed a fig tree and it withered and died, then I’ve got some bad news for you: you’re not going to like the Final Judgment and may not be too crazy about eternity. Shouldn’t we expect that a righteous, faithful, and holy God would follow through on the promises He made to us? That He would bless those who were faithful and bore fruit and would curse those who didn’t?

From the beginning, John tried to warn us: “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” The King is here, and He has His winnowing fork in His hand to separate the wheat from the chaff. The King is coming, and when He comes again to judge both the quick and the dead, some will wither before His holy Word!

Do not think it strange that Jesus curses the fig tree on the Monday before His Crucifixion, for He has come to remove the curse upon mankind and the earth.

“Do you see that fig tree?” He is saying. “That fig tree is all of you. If you fail to produce good fruit in this life, then I shall make sure you never produce fruit again! But that fig tree is also Me. Because none of you can produce good fruit on your own and all of you are doomed to die and be thrown into the fire, I am going to be that tree for you.”

“By the fruit of a Tree you died, and by the fruit of a Tree you shall live. When you presumed to feed yourself and give yourself life, on that day you surely died. But on the day when you die to yourself and bend to feed off Me, on that day you shall surely live.”

“Cursed is everyone who shall hang on a tree (Galatians 3:13; Deuteronomy 21:23). And so I shall hang on the Tree for you and bear your fruitlessness for you, for my leaves are for the healing of the nations (Revelation 22:3). I will become for you the fruit that hangs on the Tree, the Cross, and I will be for you the Tree of Life. Eat of my fruit and become a part of me, and you shall have life.”

Therefore, bear fruits worthy of repentance. You have had Advent to prepare for the Life which is Christ, and now you also have Lent. Hear, then, the words of our Lord Jesus Christ, how He said, “A good tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor can a bad tree bear good fruit. Every tree that does not bear good fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire. Therefore, by their fruits you will know them” (Matthew 7:18-20).

Seek Jesus, the Tree of Life. Seek to be united to Him today, and so shall you be made into a tree of life that bears good fruit when He comes.

Prayer: Grant, we beseech thee, Almighty God, that the words which we have heard this day with our outward ears, may, through thy grace, be so grafted inwardly in our hearts, that they may bring forth in us the fruit of good living, to the honor and praise of thy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Point for Meditation:

Meditate on your being the fig tree that deserves to be cursed and die and how Jesus has turned you into a tree of righteousness fed by Him.
Praise God for the fruit that He has caused to grow in your life.
Consider in what ways you have been barren before the Lord.
Practice thinking of every event you encounter today as an opportunity to either bear fruit in Christ or to prepare yourself to bear fruit.

Resolution: I resolve to find one way to consciously seek to eat of the fruit of life, Jesus Christ, today and to prepare the ground of my heart so that He may bear His fruit in me.

Jesus curses fig tree

Mark 11

planted by streams of living water

Psalm 1

Tree of Life

2016-02-22T12:27:03-05:00

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Tuesday of Lent 2, 2016 – John 10:1-30 – Part III

Last updated on: February 22, 2016 at 12:27 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

John 10:1-30 – Part III

Jesus Christ, the Good Shepherd, both knows and leads His sheep. But this knowledge (which is love) and this leading (which is love by serving) means that the Good Shepherd also gives His life for the sheep (verse 11 and 15).

Jesus, the Good Shepherd, loves His sheep: He loves you more than father, mother, husband, wife love you. Ultimately, He loves you and leads you by being willing to die for you. He gave His life for you by becoming like you. The Incarnation is not merely a necessary stepping stone to the Crucifixion. God gave His life for you by becoming like you that you might become like Him.

The entire life of obedience of the Son, even the 30 years before His public ministry, were given for you that He might fulfill the Law for you and become obedient that you might become obedient. This life is not a life of obedience by compulsion, as if He were forced to obey, and it wasn’t a life of automatic obedience, as if since He was also God the human Christ didn’t have to choose to obey. No, this life of obedience was a life of love and submission, willingly undertaken for the joys set before Him. One of those joys was our redemption that we might join Him in His life.

But He also did give His life by becoming obedient, even to the point of death, even the death of the Cross. The Good Shepherd sacrificed His life that the bad sheep might become good sheep and live.

But this life of love, this knowledge of us and service for us cannot be one-sided. What should be the response of the sheep whom He has delivered from wandering and starvation and wild beasts, from sin and death and Satan?

If we want to be His good sheep, we must follow Him in all things. All things. This means the Resurrection and heaven, but it also means the Cross and humiliation. To follow the Good Shepherd, you must be willing to follow him even to the point of death, even if you don’t feel like it.

You want to know something? He didn’t “feel” like being crucified either. He asked for the cup to be taken from Him 3 times, and 3 times the Father said “No.” Do you think it felt good to be nailed to the Cross and have the blood and life drain from you? Do you think He had a good time when He took upon Himself the sins of the world? But in spite of His own desires and human feelings, He obeyed the voice of His Father. He could have said, “Because I don’t feel like it, I won’t do it. Let men die in their sins – but not me.”

The Cross which you see in your church and on your Bibles and in your lives is Christ’s shepherd’s staff, turned into an instrument of death . . . but then into an instrument of life. The Cross, wherever you see it, is a symbol of Jesus Christ your Good Shepherd.

But now you must be the good sheep. As He gave His life for you, you must give your life to Him. It’s unlikely that you will die a martyr’s death for Him: most are not called to this. Instead, you are called to something much more difficult: to learn to love and serve Him as He has first loved and served you; to obey the will of the Father as Christ and the angels and saints in heaven obey it; and to stop wandering and going your own way each day but instead follow wherever He leads you.

Jesus Christ is your Good Shepherd, who knows you better than you know yourself. There are many dangers in this world – and many of them lie within ourselves. But the Good Shepherd will lead you safely through all of them. Learn to hear His voice and learn to follow. But follow, wherever His steps lead, even if they lead through the valley of suffering, because He will lead you to greener pastures on the other side.

Yes, the steps of your Good Shepherd led to the Cross, but it is by following those same steps, that you shall also follow Him into heaven. And there you will find heavenly food and living water to refresh you. There you will find safety and peace forevermore.

Prayer: Lord Jesus Christ, the good Shepherd of the sheep, who came to seek and to save that which was lost; I beg you to be present today in your power with the sheep for whom You gave Your life. Show forth Your compassion to the helpless, enlighten the ignorant, protect those in peril, and bring home the wanderers in safety to Your fold. Feed those who hunger and clothe those who are naked, with the food and clothing that You are; who lives and reigns with the Father and the Holy Spirit, one God, world without end. Amen.

Point for Meditation and Resolution: In what ways in the Good Shepherd asking you to lay down your life for Him? It might be in the sins that He is directing you to repent from during Lent. There might be some thing in this life that you are too attached to that is distracting you from Him. There may be some form of seeking and worshiping Him that He is calling you to. Choose one of these and resolve to follow Him in laying down your life for Him today.

2018-02-08T16:38:18-05:00

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To Boast in Someone not Yourself

Last updated on: February 8, 2018 at 4:38 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

To Boast in Someone not Yourself – Galatians 6:11-18

“God forbid that I should boast except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (verse 14).

I’d like to talk about boasting this morning. Sorry, guys, but I’m going to start with us. We just seem to boast a lot more noisily, obviously, and in your face than women do. What’s the first impulse of a guy who’s just scored a touchdown? There’s a reason the NFL has had to enact fines and penalties for celebrating in the end zone. It strikes me as a little odd, not to say humorous, that in a high testosterone sport where “killing” the other guy is kind of the point and crippling injuries are routine that there would be a penalty simply for celebrating in the end zone. Isn’t that every man’s right after a heroic conquest? And isn’t that what sports, especially like football, are about?

And don’t get me started about the trash talking in the NBA! Isn’t it natural for men to boast about their exploits and even to exaggerate them?

Guys like to boast. I imagine that when Alexander the Great won the battle of Gaugamela and the treasures of the Persian Empire were opened to him that he celebrated. I’m sure he was whooping it up with the boys and boasting about his exploits. Even the Israelites were known to boast. Even the Israelite women danced and sang as they boasted that “Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands. Whooo-aaahh!”

Lesser mortals find lesser ways to boast. I remember playing Nerf basketball in the basement of our house in Long Island growing up, imaging that I scored 30 points in a game and celebrating every Nerf basket as if it were the real thing. Although I rarely boast publicly, I still find petty ways to boast to myself, which is where I usually do my best boasting because there is no one other than myself to say, “Get a life!” Often, my tendons and ligaments and muscles ache from patting myself on the back for my small conquests. After Jackie has gone to bed and a few dishes haven’t been done or the trash emptied, and after she has done the lion’s share of the work, I secretly complete the job for her and whisper to myself, “What a good boy am I!”

More seriously, we all find ways to boast in our own accomplishments. The bewitchers of the Galatians at least partially wanted the Galatians to return to the bondage of the Law so that they could boast. Even when we perform good works for the Lord, or, more properly, He has performed His good works through these imperfect vessels, we boast as if we are the ones who have done it. I believe this is a temptation once we begin to keep score at home about how many people our church is now attracting or how many people we have led to Christ or witnessed to.

Paul, who humanly speaking had reason to boast on account of his extraordinary missionary work and heroic exploits, refused to boast in anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul is poetic in his expression; it’s a thing of beauty and a joy forever to see how he takes the sinful human tendency to boast and allows one ironic exception. That one exception is that we get to boast in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. Ironic, because we get to boast, not in ourselves but only in our Lord. Ironic, because the one thing we get to boast about is the suffering of our Lord and our suffering with Him.

Whooo-aaahh!”

Sorry guys – and girls – as Christians there’s only one thing you get to boast about – and that’s the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ. But what a wonderful thing to boast about! I get to boast that I was a miserable sinner (and still am) but that through this Cross, which has become the Tree of Life, I now live. I get to boast that I get to boast about my God who loved so much that He became a man and loved so much more that He was born in a humble birth and kept on loving to His death, even the death on the Cross.

I have a choice: I get to boast as a Christian about the many things Christ does for me or boast as a non-Christian about all of the selfish things I’m able to do without Him. Let me see. . . what to choose . . . what to choose? . . . . Don’t rush me!

The truth is that being a Christian means that I have died and it’s now Christ who lives in me. Therefore, He is the only person I can boast about, and His deeds the only deeds of which I can boast.

The really cool thing, however, is that I am now, if I lay down my life and my boasting, a participant in those glorious and heroic deeds of His. Everything He has, He shares with me, and this is precisely the kind of heroic love that is worth celebrating: God become man to share Himself with us and redeem us.

I have a part in this Person worth boasting about: His Cross is my cross, and my cross is His Cross. This means, however, that I must die. I must mortify the Old Man, I must crucify the boaster within me. It means that as He lived and died and lives for me, I must die and live for Him, and that comes at the cost of the Cross. I, too, will experience suffering on His behalf. But even this is part of His Cross that I will boast in.

To boast in Christ and His Cross is to mock Satan and fallen men, who cannot understand such wisdom. “Look at the girly-men,” they say. “All they have to boast in is defeat and love and slavery to God.” To boast in the Cross, the way of the Cross and Jesus Christ, is to boast in the most heroic thing a human can do: to choose to serve God instead of self. Any girly-man can be selfish. Some, like Alexander and Napoleon and Hitler, may boast in their conquering vast portions of the world; some, like Donald Trump, Warren Buffet, Carlos Slim, and Mukesh Ambani, may boast in their conquering of the financial world; some boast in their mock-heroic athletic exploits; and some boast in their Nerf-basketball conquests or the equivalent.

But this is easy to do, to boast in something that makes you feel good and is all about yourself. If you want to be a real man, then pick up the Cross daily and when God performs His daily miracles through you give all of the glory to God. If you want to be a real woman – do the same.

Boasting in self is for girly-men and weak women. If you want to be a true man or woman, that is, one re-united to God through the Cross and the Resurrection, then boast only in Christ and His Cross.

Whooo-aaahh!”

Prayer: Grant, O Lord, that as we are baptized into the death of thy blessed Son our Saviour Jesus Christ, so by continual mortifying our corrupt affections we may be buried with him; and that through the grave and gate of death, we may pass to our joyful resurrection; for his merits, who died, and was buried, and rose again for us, the same thy Son Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Point for Meditation: What does it mean to “boast” in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ? What are some practical ways you could celebrate Christ and His Cross today?

Resolution: I resolve to find one way today to pick up the cross that the Lord has given me. In doing so, I resolve to boast or rejoice in the Cross that Christ bore for me.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license
Read more at http://www.patheos.com/blogs/giveusthisday/search/crucifixion+/#gsv7vUFbz6SokhOL.99

2018-01-21T20:43:13-05:00

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3 Definitions of Love

Last updated on: January 21, 2018 at 8:43 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

2 Corinthians 12:14-21

Would you like to know the secret to being a successful minister of the Lord? Would you like to know the secret to being a successful church?

I just underlined in red the relevant phrases in my Bible – something I never do anymore.

It is all right there, in verses 14, 15, and 19. How much clearer could St. Paul make it?

Verse 14: “for I do not seek yours, but you.”

Verse 15: “I will very gladly spend and be spent for your souls.”

Verse 19: “But we do all things, beloved, for your edification.”

This is the secret to being a Christian, which is to be a minister in God’s kingdom. I can name that secret in 4 letters: L-O-V-E.

And I can’t think of a better person to have written the extended definition of love in I Corinthians 13 than St. Paul.

Paul doesn’t even come right out and say that it is love that motivates him to labor for the Corinthians (though he does call them “beloved.”) Instead, he shows it by his actions, and he gives us three related definitions of love.

“For I do not seek yours, but you.” This is such an outstanding definition of love that I don’t know how I missed it all these years. One of the dangers of reading too much Scripture too rapidly is that you miss some of the most important things God is saying. This is one reason that the slow, formative reading of the lectio divina is so important to us all. Another reason I think I missed it is because it is not the overtly didactic teaching in which one says, “Now get out your red pen because this is the definition of love I want you all to know.”

“For I do not seek yours, but you.” It appears as if Paul has been accused of taking advantage of some of the Corinthians or of ministering for his own personal gain. Paul is trying to clear his name, but he is also doing so much more: he has given the Corinthians and us a definition of love. “I’m not after all your neat junk,” Paul says. “I’m not after your money or possessions or prestige.” Instead, what Paul wants more than anything else from the Corinthians is the Corinthians themselves.

In this, Paul is like God Himself. Yes, God requires and demands that we spend the good gifts He has given us on Him and His kingdom. But God isn’t after the “neat junk” that he’s given us. No, God is after much bigger fish: He’s after you. We all remember the war posters of Uncle Sam pointing directly at us and saying, “I want you.” Like Uncle Sam, and like God, Paul says to the Corinthians, “I want you.”

How does Paul want the Corinthians? Not as a ravening wolf, and not as someone he can mooch off of. Paul wants the Corinthians so he can present them spotless before God. He wants the Corinthians so that he may present them “as a chaste virgin to Christ (11:2.) Paul understands that the goal of human life is union with God. He understands that the God who gave Himself for us in love wants us to give ourselves back to Him in love.

In this, Paul is like a parent, who spends his life serving the lesser child so that the child may grow to a healthy maturity. In our human kingdoms, the lesser and the weaker serve the greater and stronger. But in the Kingdom of Heaven, the greater and stronger serve the lesser and the weaker. This is the pattern that Jesus Himself laid down for us, it is the pattern that St. Paul has laid down for us, and it is the pattern that all Christian leaders (parents, pastors, etc.) are to set for those they shepherd.

“I will very gladly spend and be spend for your souls.” This is Paul’s “affirmation” to himself each day. Not the kind of self-affirmation we are used to such as Coue’s famous “Every day, and in every way, I am becoming better and better.” St. Paul’s daily affirmation is more like: “Every day, and in every way, I spend myself for the good of Corinthian souls.”

This is the affirmation we need each day – not the inflation of self and ego, but the emptying of self in humility as a minister of Jesus Christ. Remembering Paul’s litany of sufferings from 2 Corinthians 6 and 11, we know that Paul is not a hypocrite and that he truly gave his life for the good of the souls of others.

And this, too, is the definition of love.

Far from ministering to the Corinthians for his own personal gain, Paul loves to spend himself and his resources on their behalf. He does this, he says, gladly, because he knows that God loves a cheerful giver (2 Corinthians 9:7.) As wonderful and inspiring as all of this is, the second half of verse 15 is like a dagger in the heart. After 12 chapters, essentially, of showing his labors of love, Paul writes: “though the more abundantly I love you, the less I am loved.”

“Uuuuuungh!” says the heart to the dagger that has crucified it.

This is not so much a definition of love as the very incarnation of it. Paul’s love, which is God’s love, is so big for the Corinthians that even when his love is not requited, even when his love becomes an object of extreme pain because the beloved does not return his love, he still loves.

Finally, Paul says in verse 19, “we do all things, beloved, for your edification.” Paul’s goal is to have every part of his life and ministry be used to edify or build up the Corinthians. There is no “Yeah, but what about me?” in Paul: there is only a “But what about you?”

Here, near the end of 2 Corinthians, we realize that St. Paul himself has become God’s love letter to the Corinthians.

Under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit he has written this letter so that we might imitate him and also become God’s love letter to our own local church and others.

Prayer: Father, I praise Your holy name because out of Your love You sent Your only Son. Jesus, I thank You that You came not to be served but to serve, and I thank You that Your love was incarnated in the life of the apostle Paul. Send to me this day, through Your Holy Spirit, Your love that seeks others and not my own good and that is willing to cheerfully be spent on behalf of others, as You first spent Yourself on me.

Points for Meditation:

Review Paul’s ministry to the Corinthians and look for ways in which he acted in love.
Examine yourself in terms of what prevents you from more wholly giving yourself for others.
Memorize one of Paul’s 3 “definitions” of love (verses 14, 15, and 19) and carry them with you throughout the day.

Resolution: I resolve today to find one practical way (in which I am not already engaged or likely to be) that I can spend myself on another.

Crucifixion of Christ, Matthias Grunewald – in U.S. Public Domain

2018-01-19T16:23:42-05:00

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Do I Want to be Like Paul?

Last updated on: January 19, 2018 at 4:23 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

2 Corinthians 12:1-13

Sometimes I want to be the apostle Paul and other times I don’t. Who cannot but hope for such visions and revelations as Paul had, and who cannot help desiring to be caught up into the third heaven? Of course, with such visions and revelations go the kind of persecution we read about yesterday, as well as Paul’s infamous thorn in the flesh.

I would talk more about Paul’s visions, except that I’ve had none like them myself and neither have most of you. In fact, the more I study the life of St. Paul, the more I realize that there are certain aspects of his life that we should imitate (which he himself tells the Corinthians to do in 1 Corinthians 4:16), and there are other aspects we shouldn’t attempt to imitate.

One of the dangers some Christians face is in seeking after the visions and revelations that St. Paul the apostle had, when God never intended for most of us to have such visions. To seek after such visions is, in fact, a matter of pride, for these visions are not something we can produce ourselves and are not necessary for a faithful Christian life. As far as Paul’s revelations go, next time God has ordained you to be an apostle and writer of Holy Scripture, let me know.

Or take Paul’s conversion. Most of us will not be knocked down and see a vision of the resurrected Christ who gives us an explicit commission. We make the mistake of thinking that our lives in Christ will be dramatic as was Paul’s. But what do we do when it turns out that God’s will for our lives is something much more mundane and less exciting? Do we feel cheated, or do we seek after excitements and entertainment? God forbid!

But there are parts of Paul’s life which we can imitate, and one of the chief of these is in the way he accepted and used his suffering. Wouldn’t you know? We get to be like Paul in his sufferings but not in his conversion and visions and revelations. But isn’t it interesting that Paul doesn’t boast about his visions or conversion: in fact, he veils these extraordinary experiences. He says, in essence, “I have this friend, yeah that’s right, this, uh, friend, who had visions and revelations . . . .” But of his suffering he says, “Therefore most gladly I will rather boast in my infirmities.”

Why is this? Paul is very concerned that God and God alone will receive the glory for what He has done in Paul’s life, and not Paul himself. If Paul persists in glorying in his own extraordinary experiences, there will be a temptation by all (including Paul) to become proud and to look at man instead of God. But when it comes to suffering and weakness, it is clear, suddenly, that it is all of God. This is why Paul spoke at length of the earthen vessels in Chapter 4 and why he goes back to the same theme here.

Unlike Paul’s ecstatic visions, there is a lot we can learn from Paul’s thorn in the flesh. We learn, first of all, that there will be suffering and trouble in the life of the Christian. We learn, second, that while some of the suffering in our lives may be messengers of Satan, it is used by God to produce humility in His saints. Once again, I find this principle at work: what Satan and men mean for evil, God means for good in the lives of His saints.

Notice, too, that St. Paul, the same Paul who was an apostle and who had seen these visions and been given these revelations, a mighty man of prayer, prays three times for the thorn in the flesh to be removed. And God doesn’t do it. What else are we to conclude about such suffering other than that God has a holy and loving purpose in it, to produce in us humility, faith, and all of the other fruits of the Spirit. When, however, we attempt to escape suffering, we hinder the very work of the Spirit in our lives, which so often works in and through suffering, and not apart from it.

Therefore, Paul boasts in his suffering, not saying, “Hey, look at me – I’ve suffered more than all of you girly-men put together!” but to say “Look at your own suffering and weakness, and in it see the strength of the Lord.”

The bottom line is this: God’s strength is made perfect in your weakness. Therefore, never forget how weak you are. But since we will forget this, left to our own, God gives us His holy messengers of pain and suffering, which is the feedback mechanism of his spiritual nervous system, to keep all of us lepers from losing pieces of ourselves because we couldn’t feel the danger we were in.

More than this, Paul takes pleasure in his infirmities! Is Paul some kind of holy masochist? What’s going on here? I don’t believe that Paul takes pleasure in the pain and infirmities themselves but in the presence of Christ who comes to him in strength, when he cries out in weakness. Paul can take pleasure in his suffering and weakness, because it is in that suffering and weakness that Jesus Christ comes to him, suffering with Paul and asking Paul to share in His suffering.

Therefore, let us imitate Paul in learning the lessons that God’s grace is always sufficient for us; that God’s strength is made perfect in our weakness; and that when we are weak we are strong because Jesus is with us once again.

Prayer: O Lord Jesus, thank You for speaking through Your holy apostle Paul to me this morning. Thank You for appearing in my life, even if often only in a small, still voice. Thank You that no matter how weak and suffering I am, that You promise to be with me, if only I will accept Your strength that comes in the form of my own weakness. Give me the strength to see You in my weakness today.

Points for Meditation:

List the ways in which you are weak or suffering, and do one or more of the following:
Meditate on how God has kept you humble (or offered to keep you humble) through them.
Meditate on how God has shown His love and strength through each.
Offer up each one to God as a means of submitting yourself to the loving care of the one who is redeeming your suffering.
Use each to remind you that God is calling you back to Himself.

Resolution: I resolve to accept my suffering, troubles, infirmities, and weaknesses as a thorn in the flesh that, regardless of their immediate cause, are messengers of God to remind me of His grace and strength and my own humility.

Cruxifixion – Creative Commons Attribution-Share Generic 2.0 license

2018-01-15T18:23:10-05:00

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To Take is Human: to Give is Divine

Last updated on: January 15, 2018 at 6:23 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

2 Corinthians 9

“God loves a cheerful giver.”

We’ve all heard this before, usually at the very time we are not being a cheerful giver and don’t want to hear it. But it’s true: God loves a cheerful giver.

This simple but powerful statement could be used as a blunt instrument to pressure someone into giving – but then the giving probably wouldn’t be done very cheerfully. I happen to think God likes uncheerful givers, who at least are giving when they know they should. But I know that He loves cheerful givers.

Behind this statement lies a truth even more fundamental, and it is this: that God is the Original Cheerful Giver. In asking us to be cheerful givers, He is only asking us to be made like Him, which is the goal of salvation anyway.

It is in God’s nature to be a loving giver, and when He gives, He gives with joy. Think of how much God has given you. It was God who gave you life and placed you in His wonderful world. It was God who gave His only-begotten Son to suffer and die for you and your sins. It is God who provides for your every need. Even in those things that we can do for ourselves, who do you think created you with those abilities or put you in the circumstances of your life?

God, therefore, is the pattern of cheerful giving. He is the Original Cheerful Giver. Think of how much God has given you, and then of how much you have withheld from Him. Thank God He is not more like us! What a contrast, from a God who has given us all, when we deserved nothing, to humans who owe God everything and give Him next to nothing.

For the last few chapters, St. Paul has been speaking of the giving of the Macedonians, Corinthians, and others. I hope their cheerful giving challenges us all. And here is Paul again, challenging us to rethink our tithes and the giving of other gifts to God. God wants His children to give not just their money cheerfully but also the thing that money stands for: their wealth, their power, and especially their lives.

In our giving, we become like God. God wants to change us from Ungrateful Takers to Cheerful Givers like Himself. Just as when God cheerfully gives, the world is blessed, so is the world (including ourselves) blessed when we give cheerfully. One of the laws of God’s kingdom is that if you sow sparingly, then God will bless you sparingly. But if you sow bountifully – greatly – then God will bless you greatly.

In robbing God, then, by withholding what we should give Him, we are only hurting ourselves. By withholding our gifts to God, we are, in essence, asking Him to withhold His blessing from us. God has so connected us to Himself that what we do in this spiritual life (and life is all spiritual) has consequences for our relationship with God, and therefore consequences for the blessings we receive from God.

We might even say that God loves and blesses Cheerful Givers but He is displeased with and withholds His blessing from Ungrateful Takers.

The blessings that God has in store for the cheerful giver are, naturally, not only for the giver himself. If this were the case, it’s all too possible that the giver would then give only in order to get more, and this would subvert the loving nature of God and His kingdom. When we give cheerfully, we give not only for our blessing but also for the blessing of the whole Church.

The blessings that Paul reports have come from the cheerful giving of the Corinthians are not primarily blessings they themselves have received. In verse 11, they are indeed blessed: they are “enriched in everything for all liberality.” In other words, their blessing is to be able to give generously, not a blessing that they get to hoard for themselves!

But the rest of the blessings Paul lists seem to be for others. God Himself seems to be the prime beneficiary. In verse 11, the giving of the Corinthians results in thanksgiving to God. What an incredible blessing! To think that my meager gifts to God’s people will be the cause of more thanksgiving to God! In verse 12, the gift of the Corinthians blesses other Christians because it “supplies the needs of the saints.” Again, how blessed to be able to act like and with God in supplying the needs of the saints. Again, Paul mentions how this too results in thanksgiving to God, from those whose needs have been met.

In verse 13 we find that in all of these things, which are the “proof of this ministry,” God is glorified. Whenever we act as God’s ministers, by being cheerful givers, God is glorified. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism reminds us, this is the chief end of man – to glorify God. By our cheerful giving, others see the grace of God in us (verse 14). As I keep discovering (especially when I read St. Paul), it is through us that others see God and respond to Him. When we give, God is glorified and His people blessed. When we hoard, God is dishonored and His people not blessed as they could be. Finally, Paul reminds the Corinthians in verse 14 that because of their giving others begin praying.

This is an amazing list of blessings that result from our giving cheerfully. The one blessing that Paul directly states is that we receive the grace to be able to give even more. But the greatest blessing of all is implied: that by giving cheerfully, we are made like God Himself, the Original Cheerful Giver, and are participants of Him through His Son.

To take is human: to give is divine.

Prayer: Praise be to You, O Lord, for You gave Your Son, the greatest riches in the world, when I deserved nothing. Thank You for Your heavenly gifts to me every day. By the gift of Your grace, allow me to become more like You in Your cheerful giving. Where my heart is stingy and miserly, make it more generous, and where it is still selfish, fill it with love.

Resolution and Point for Meditation: I resolve to meditate today on being a cheerful giver, on both being a giver and on doing it cheerfully. Though I may not have an obvious opportunity to give today, I want to be so ready in my heart that every gift I give from now on will be motivated by God’s gifts to me and the blessing my gift will be to others. If I hear the Spirit speak, I will act in the specific ways He is telling me to act.

Crucifixion of Christ, Matthias Grunewald – in U.S. Public Domain

2015-08-30T21:24:47-05:00

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Monday of 13th Sunday After Trinity – 2 Corinthians 1

Last updated on: August 30, 2015 at 9:24 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

2 Corinthians 1

“As you are partakers of the sufferings, so also you will partake of the consolation.”

In verse 7 of 2 Corinthians 1, St. Paul gives us the pattern for the Christian life which was also the pattern of the life of Christ: if we partake of suffering, we will also partake of glory and consolation. Now taken out of context I suppose this could be something a good Buddhist could say. For Buddha, the fundamental truth was that life was suffering; suffering is caused by desire; and therefore if you extinguish desire you will escape suffering and in a way receive consolation.

But what a contrast to true consolation, and, Yes!, even joy and glory which God promises to those who are His faithful children. This was the pattern of Jesus’ ministry: that He denied Himself and obeyed the will of the Father so that others might be comforted, healed, and saved. He sacrificed Himself for us, not just on the Cross but also during His entire public ministry of service, humility, and obedience, that we might receive God’s blessing. He was cursed that we might be blessed; He suffered that we might be consoled; He died that we might live.

But after His self-denial and suffering, He was raised to glory and exalted to the right hand of the Father so that every knee should bow and confess Him Lord of glory.

And this is to be our pattern: we suffer with and for Jesus Christ that we might also be raised and glorified with Him. What St. Paul is getting at, then, is nothing less than participation in Jesus Christ.

Every day we have many opportunities to be united with Jesus Christ and experience life with Him. Most of the time, however, we are looking for that mountaintop experience, that really good devotional time, that extra measure of blessing that we know to be the Lord’s.

But have you ever considered how many opportunities God is giving you each day to be a partaker of His Son by sharing in the sufferings of Jesus?

If this was the pattern for the Son, who is our example in all godliness, then why do we work so hard to avoid the suffering God permits? I know the human answer: we humans are averse to pain and suffering, and in one sense we should be. But as Christians, we must understand that though the suffering itself is not good and the ultimate cause of it is our sin, that what man means for evil God means for good. It was and is through suffering that the world is redeemed. We had a part in bringing in the suffering: how blessed that God allows us to participate in the redemption of suffering to save the world!

And this is exactly Paul’s point: that what Jesus Christ did in His earthly ministry He continues to do through His Body the Church. Where He preached the Gospel and served bodies and healed souls, His Body the Church is to do those same things now, by the grace of the indwelling Holy Spirit of Christ. Where He bore our sufferings that we might bear His triumph and glory, the Church must do the same thing today.

Here is what God is teaching us this morning. First, in verse 4, that God comforts us in our tribulation. We’ve all experienced that before. But God has more to tell us. One of the reasons He has comforted us is so that we may be able to comfort others. This is the same pattern we have seen before and will see again: God makes us disciples so that we can make disciples; God builds His Temple of living stones so that they can help build the Temple; and God comforts us in our suffering that we might comfort others.

This is exactly what Paul did. In verse 6 he says that he and others are afflicted for the consolation and salvation of the Corinthians. This consolation and salvation are “effective for enduring the same sufferings,” so that the Corinthians might be able to comfort others. Jesus began it all by suffering so that we might be saved; Paul suffers so that the Corinthians might be saved; and we suffer for Christ and others so that they might be saved.

How blessed to be actual partakers of the ministry of reconciliation, healing, comfort, joy, and glory of our Lord!

Do you see in this God’s call to suffer on behalf of others? This means that we must not mope and complain about our own suffering but share it with the Church. And we must not simply bear our own sufferings or rejoice in our own blessings but share those same sufferings and blessings with other believers.

We are the Body of Jesus Christ that He has commissioned to continue His ministry of suffering and consolation and salvation. But if we keep it all to ourselves, then how can Jesus minister through us? We are His appointed means of ministry in the world. And this is why it is important to share both suffering and consolation with each other, because this is the ministry of Jesus Christ.

Therefore, consider your suffering to be a participation in Jesus Christ and His suffering, in the hope that you might also participate in His consolation and glory. Look for ways that you might participate in the sufferings of others so that Jesus Christ, through you, might console and save His people.

We are partakers of Jesus Christ, but only to the degree that we also are partakers of one another, in both suffering and consolation.

Today, do not deny either yourself or others that most beautiful of blessings: participation in Jesus Christ our Lord through participation in one another.

Prayer: Lord Jesus, I thank You that you willingly suffered for me and that You allow me the privilege of suffering for You. Thank You for Your consolation that has helped me in my times of suffering and sorrow. Help me to look for ways in which I may suffer with others that I may share Your consolation with them. Direct my life and prayers today that I might become Your minister of grace today.

Points for Meditation:

Meditate on how God has consoled me.
Meditate on how I might console another.
Meditate on how I might help bear the suffering of another.

Resolution: I resolve to see today’s sufferings as a participation in the sufferings of Jesus. I further resolve to receive the consolation of God today that I might console others and share in their sufferings.

Give Us This Day

13th Sunday After Trinity

Book of Common Prayer

Buddha

consolation

Fr. Charles Erlandson

Give Us This Day daily devotional

glory

Partakers of suffering

2015-08-26T21:03:01-05:00

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Thursday of the 12th Sunday after Trinity – Luke 23:50-24:12

Last updated on: August 26, 2015 at 9:03 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Luke 23:50-24:12

I love Joseph of Arimathea!

It would be easy in this passage, with the empty tomb just around the corner, to completely forget about Joseph of Arimathea and what he has to say to us this morning. I love the roads less traveled in Scripture because they contain so many scattered jewels that I have not stopped to appreciate before.

One of the most important things we first realize about Joseph of Arimathea (from St. Matthew’s account) is that Joseph was rich. I mention this because usually Jesus is giving the rich a pretty hard time: it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. And yet what do we discover about this rich man Joseph? He was “waiting for the kingdom of God.”

On his own, a rich man has about as much chance of seeing God as a camel does of passing through the eye of a needle. But becoming spiritually poor for the sake of the riches of God, a rich man has exactly as much chance of entering the Kingdom of Heaven as a poor man.

The second strike against poor Joseph is that he was a council member of the Sanhedrin. Throughout the Gospels it is particularly the leaders of the Jews who hate, reject, and conspire against Jesus. In fact, it is the Sanhedrin that has just met and sentenced Jesus to death. But not Joseph of Arimathea.

Already, Joseph is so unlike other rich rulers in Israel, but there is more. Like Simeon and Anna back in Luke 2, Joseph was waiting for the Kingdom of God, and when he heard that Jesus had died, he went looking for it (him.)

Now Joseph could have been like any of the 12 disciples who were at this time nowhere to be found. He could have lurked about at a distance, not daring to openly profess his hope in Jesus of Nazareth. He could have secretly hired someone to find the body of Jesus so that his hands could remain clean.

But this is not what Joseph does. Making use of his God-given human authority, he marches right up to Pontius Pilate (of all people!) and asks for the body of Jesus. Now Pilate, who had already acceded to the demands of the Jews to gain favor for himself, something Joseph knew full well, might easily have not wanted to get involved. He may even have become angry. It probably took courage for Joseph to ask: in fact, Mark 15:43 says that Joseph had to “take” courage.

After Pilate had given Joseph permission for Jesus’ body, Joseph “took it down, wrapped it in linen, and laid it in a tomb that was hewn out of the rock.” How amazing that this rich man who could have ignored Jesus’ dead body, or at least had the propriety to hire someone to do his dirty work, goes and takes care of the body of Jesus himself. We must imagine the details here. Most of the time, if you’re like me, you’re in such a rush to have Jesus be resurrected that you don’t meditate on the fact that He must truly have been dead. We rush to the Crucifixion, spend some time there, and then rush to the Resurrection. But Jesus is here in His death as well, and Joseph teaches us this.

With a fatherly love, Joseph takes down the Body of the Son from the Cross. At this point Jesus’ Body is still showing the evidence of the crown of thorns, his intense flogging, his hours of agony on the Cross, the holes in His Body where the nails held Him to the Cross, and the puncture wound in His side. His Body is bloody and bloodless at the same time. It is limp and white and humanly speaking ghastly and disgusting.

This is the body this rich man himself takes down from the Cross. Joseph must take down the Cross, take out the horrible nails still in the body, and unloose the ropes that would have held the body to the Cross. Next, Joseph wraps this disfigured Body in linen, surely his own, and himself carries the Body to an expensive tomb cut out of rock. This is Joseph’s own tomb that he lays Jesus in. How symbolic! Joseph takes the dead Jesus, puts Him in his own tomb, and out of Joseph’s tomb Jesus’ resurrects. This is a picture of salvation and entrance into the Kingdom of God for all of us: Jesus dies in our place and is resurrected so that we might live with Him.

How blessed it was for Joseph to have Jesus die in his tomb! How blessed for us to have Jesus die in our place!

But what Joseph did we must also do. Joseph used the human authority God had given him and took the courage the Holy Spirit offered to ask Pilate for His Body, and we must use all that God has given us each day and seek Jesus, with courage and without regard for what others might think. Joseph himself found Jesus and took hold of His Body and carried it, and we must take up Jesus, our Cross, daily, and carry Him each day. Joseph spent his own resources, the ones God had blessed him with, and provided a place for Jesus, participating in His death that he might participate in His Resurrection. This rich ruler was not above getting his own hands bloody and dirty: no wonder that there is a tradition that Joseph of Arimathea was one of the 70 disciples.

Our challenge this morning is to be like Joseph: to seek Jesus with courage, to use the gifts of God to seek Him and serve Him, in the hope that by seeking the Kingdom of God we might, with Joseph and the thief on the cross, also enter into Paradise.

One of the primary ways we honor the body of Jesus today is to honor the Body of Jesus on earth, His Church. His Body is precious to Him, and His Body requires care. His Body is in need, and He has given each of you His riches with which you may care for His Body. More than just having a few minutes’ meditation on the need to seek Jesus in our hearts, we must seek Him in His Body, the Church, and care for it as we would the bloodied body which Joseph of Arimathea cared for.

Some in the Church are poor and weak, some are bloodied and lifeless. We all need to be ministered to with the care shown by Joseph of Arimathea.

Our goal each day should be to be with Jesus in His life; with Jesus on the Cross; with Jesus in the tomb; with Jesus in His Resurrection; and with Jesus in heaven in the presence of the Father. We do this not only in our own hearts but also in our lives, in His Body the Church, and in the world.

Prayer: Lord, I give you thanks this morning for making me rich beyond all earthly measure. I ask that by Your grace You may encourage me to seek You with those gifts and to use them to glorify You. Help me to seek You not only in my heart but also in Your Church, that I, like Joseph, may tenderly care for the Body for which You died.

Point for Meditation: In what ways has God enriched you so that you might give back His gifts for His kingdom, to care for the Body of Christ?

Resolution: I resolve today to seek Jesus with the riches God has entrusted to me. With courage and without regard to the cost to myself, I resolve to lay hold of Jesus in at least one of the ways He is calling me to serve Him today.

Book of Common Prayer

burial of Jesus

Fr. Charles Erlandson

Give Us This Day daily devotional

2015-08-09T21:00:00-05:00

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Monday of Trinity 10 – Luke 19:29-40

Last updated on: August 9, 2015 at 9:00 pm By Fr. Charles Erlandson

Luke 19:29-40

The appropriate response to being in the presence of Jesus is joy and praise. Both of these things are needed, and both are present whenever Jesus is present and is received with faith.

It seems odd to be reading about the Triumphal Entry of Jesus on Palm Sunday at the end of summer, in the middle of the long season of Trinity that doesn’t have the landmarks of other seasons like Christmas or Easter. But the Triumphal Entry is a scene that Christians ought to re-enact every day of the year, and so this is a passage for every day of the year and not just one day, just as Christmas and Easter are here every day of the year and not only one.

The truth is that Jesus rides into your life every morning. The question is not “Will He come today?” but “How will I respond when He does come?” Every day we are part of the multitude of disciples in verse 37, some of who rejoice and praise God with a loud voice for all the mighty works they have seen. Jesus had done no fresh miracle on Palm Sunday: what is notable is that the multitude of disciples chooses to respond this day to the mighty works they had seen. And if you are a Christian, you too have seen the mighty works of God. You, too, by faith are a witness to the birth of Jesus Christ, the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ, and the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. You, too, have seen how God has taken the sick and sinful people in your life and healed and saved them. Like me, you have seen the mighty works of God in your own life.

So what is your response today?

That multitude of disciples on Palm Sunday responded with the loud voice of joy and praise because both joy and praise are necessary. Joy comes in and praise goes out of Jesus’ disciples. Joy is subjective (though it has an objective cause: the presence of Jesus) and inward: it is the personal response to the presence of Jesus in your life, through His life, His Word, and His deeds. Joy is for our benefit, but it is a sign to God that we have responded in faith. It is just such joy that has characterized the saints of the past whenever they see Jesus. One of my favorite responses to the presence of Jesus is that of the wise men, who showed by their response both their faith and wisdom. In Matthew 2:10, we read that when the wise men saw the Star which stood over where the child Jesus was “they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.” Not simply “they rejoiced” or “they rejoiced greatly,” but “they rejoiced with exceedingly great joy.”

That is to be the first part of our response.

The second part is praise. Praise is outward in nature, for it is not what comes into us but what comes out of us, out of our encounter with Jesus and out of our joy. Unlike joy, which is partially for our benefit, praise is entirely for God’s glory. There is no other motivation in praise than to give to God the glory that is His.

Sometimes the world wants to silence our praise. “Teacher, rebuke your disciples,” the Pharisees tell Jesus.

But Jesus’ response is “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones themselves would immediately cry out.”

You can’t contain the joy of God’s people or the praise of God’s creation. Silence His disciples if you can, but try shutting up the sun and the moon. “The heavens declare the glory of God and the firmament shows His handiwork. Day unto day utters speech, and night unto night reveals knowledge. There is no speech nor language where their voice is not heard” (Psalm 19.)

So let us join our voices with the multitude of disciples in saying this morning: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in heaven and glory in the highest!”

When you do, even if you are alone in rejoicing and praising this morning, you are never alone. You are always part of the great multitude of disciples, called the Church, who rejoice and praise God every day. These are the saints around the world who sing God’s praises, and they are joined by those who have passed into heaven before us. To their voices and ours are added the voices of the angels and archangels who never stop rejoicing and praising.

Joy comes in and praise goes out of Jesus’ disciples whenever they truly meet Him. Seek Jesus today, rejoice, and give praise to God!

Prayer: Lord, may I, your humble servant like Zacchaeus, seek and find You today. May I remember Your mighty works both when You were on earth and those You have done in my life. When I see You today, as many times as I see You, may I rejoice with exceedingly great joy and cry out with loud praises to You.

Point for Meditation: Joy and praise are intimately connected and effect each other. 1. Spend some time praising God today and expect to experience joy in the process. Sing some of your favorite spiritual songs: better yet, gather some of your friends and sing them together with gusto!

Find a favorite Psalm and recite it aloud with emphasis.
Find a part of God’s creation that brings you joy and experience God through it today.

Resolution: I resolve today to bring to mind the might things that God has done. I resolve to respond with joy and praise, even if these might be small in the beginning.

Book of Common Prayer

Fr. Charles Erlandson

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