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Morning Devotion for Lent
March 26, 2025
Reading: Matthew 5:17-19
‘Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets; I have come not to abolish but to fulfill. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth pass away, not one letter, not one stroke of a letter, will pass from the law until all is accomplished. Therefore, whoever breaks one of the least of these commandments, and teaches others to do the same, will be called least in the kingdom of heaven; but whoever does them and teaches them will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.
Meditation: Jo Ann B. Jones
Jesus’s teaching concerning the law serves as a thread connecting past and present. What is important here is that for Jesus the law is so sacred that the smallest detail of it will not be lost or come to and end. Here one may consider the law to include the Ten Commandments, the Pentateuch, the Law and the Prophets and the Oral or the Scribal Law. In Jesus’ time, this was the most common and this is what Jesus is speaking against. The Scribes and Pharisees operated in the area of the Scribal Law and prescribed the rules for people to follow in multiple situations.
Jesus came to fulfill the Law - to reveal its true meaning, that is that humankind must seek God’s will in all things and then obey God’s will. Jesus’ teaching should be understood as the foundation upon which all of his subsequent instruction rests.. Considering the Ten Commandments as a whole, note that they point to reverence for God. That reverence is what Jesus came to fulfill and what that looks like in life. The reverence can never pass away. It is the permanent part of man’s relationship with God and with humankind’s relationship with all persons. It endures.
It has been observed that in human affairs the present grows out of the past. Winston Churchill famously said, “If we open a quarrel between the past and the present, we shall find that we have lost the future.” Considering the selection of this passage in remembering Richard Allen today one notes that Allen did not seek to destroy the past but to build upon the foundation of the past. So he built a new expression of Christianity for African Americans. He was both moved and motivated by love. The Christian seeks to express his gratitude (here in worship) for God’s love for humankind. The Christian endeavors to express this gratitude for God’s love always. For love is not limited by time or in eternity. With the realization that God loves us, comes the desire to answer wholeheartedly to that love. What a challenge. What an extraordinary means to have life. What a great and glorious gift.
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, the power and the glory,
for ever and ever. Amen.
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