Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost
August 12, 2022
Invitatory
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength and my redeemer.
Glory be to the Father, and to the Son: and to the Holy Ghost;
As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be: world without end. Amen.
Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness: Come let us adore him.
Reading: John 4:46-54
Then Jesus came again to Cana in Galilee, where he had changed the water into wine. Now there was a royal official whose son lay ill in Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come from Judea to Galilee, he went and begged him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Then Jesus said to him, “Unless you see signs and wonders you will not believe.” The official said to him, “Sir, come down before my little boy dies.” Jesus said to him, “Go; your son will live.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him and started on his way. As he was going down, his slaves met him and told him that his child was alive. So he asked them the hour when he began to recover, and they said to him, “Yesterday at one in the afternoon the fever left him.” The father realized that this was the hour when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” So he himself believed, along with his whole household. Now this was the second sign that Jesus did after coming from Judea to Galilee.
Meditation – Peter Vanderveen
Near the very end of John’s Gospel, Jesus appeared to his disciples – after his crucifixion and after his resurrection. The first and last word he spoke to them was his pronouncement of peace. This, Jesus said, was their new reality. A peace that even death could not take away. Famously, Thomas, one of the disciples, was not there. And when he was told of this encounter, he insisted that he could not believe Jesus’ words until he was given clear evidence of Jesus’ wounds. He demanded a sign. For only when he saw this dead man walking would he give credence to what he had said. It’s a common trope in John: for so many of those around Jesus, seeing was the sole way to believing. We often share the same conviction. Words are meaningless until they are substantiated in action.
At best, this might be considered a realist’s position. But it takes the potential and the beauty of promise out of play. Because promise depends upon a mutual trust that words themselves are believable – even when they seem contradicted by all that’s happening in the moment. A promise is potent. Words break the tyranny of what is by opening up the freedom of what could be. A promise sets a direction. It extends the world in a specific way, leading change by intention rather than by happenstance or accident. Words don’t depend on or wait upon what is for their meaning; quite to the contrary, it is words that give meaning to what is, as well as to what was and, vitally too, to what is to be.
Jesus gave his word to the official who came to him; and what had seemed dead-certain before was made incomprehensibly different. And Jesus wanted to impress on the official that belief is far greater than seeing; for it expands the world by the infinite ability of God even to bring something out of nothing – which we cannot do or in any way adequately imagine. The grace of God’s grace will come. It will be revealed in astonishing ways, always as a victory of life over death and the many synonyms we have for death, by which we make our world smaller and uglier and chilling: pettiness, resentment, suspicion, anger, and hatred, to name a few.
As the way of beginning all that is, God spoke and the world came to be. Word’s came first. Each day of creation was concluded with God attaching words to what had been done. All was said to be “good” and “very good.” Words came last. And when we had done everything possible to eliminate God from our lives, executing him, God responded with a word that announced the impossible promise of forever. “Peace,” he said, declaring what will be, against all odds, in spite of all opposition.
Belief in God is our admission that the world does not end at the limits of our sight. Thank God. Why, however, is this so difficult to concede or even to entertain as possible? – especially when promise is so much more extravagant and inspiring, and when, ultimately, it gives God and God’s world its truest measure. There’s no answer to this, because God is not an issue or a question or a problem. God is the word for which we listen in prayer and in worship, who, there, makes our world larger, both in mystery and destiny.
The Lord’s 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.
