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Morning Devotion for the Season of Easter
April 19, 2024
Invitatory
On this day the Lord has acted; we will rejoice and be glad in it.
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.
Reading: Luke 12:35-40
“Be dressed for action and have your lamps lit; be like those who are waiting for their master to return from the wedding banquet, so that they may open the door for him as soon as he comes and knocks. Blessed are those slaves whom the master finds alert when he comes; truly I tell you, he will fasten his belt and have them sit down to eat, and he will come and serve them. If he comes during the middle of the night or near dawn and finds them so, blessed are those slaves. “But know this: if the owner of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would not have let his house be broken into. You also must be ready, for the Son of Man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”
Meditation - Peter Vanderveen
When I was in college, I came home after studying late at the library and discovered that my apartment had been burglarized. The front door was slightly ajar. I knew I had locked it. Inside, all the rooms had been ransacked. Near the back door, neatly stacked in the hallway, were many items that the burglars had intended to take. The police surmised that I had interrupted them, arriving while they were still inside. They advised not only that I change all the locks but that I change my habits of being away as well: the probability of the burglars returning was high.
I will never forget the sense of violation that I felt. I wasn’t much concerned about what had been taken, nor about what remained. Oddly, my possessions, which were the reason and the objects of the burglary didn’t matter much. The wound, which was acute, was the invasion of my personal space. I had never felt so vulnerable and threatened. I sat in a chair until morning, as if waiting for the burglars to return. Every sound that broke the quiet seemed foreboding. And in that dead dark, if someone had said to me that God would come “as a thief in the night,” I would have said that this could be no God at all.
Isn’t it strange that we read Luke’s verses in stride, as if it’s simply God’s prerogative to play us, waiting for the moment when we are most vulnerable to pounce, thereby crushing us with anxiety. Is it God’s desire to worry and frighten us? Many would say yes. I think this is simply wrong.
Luke’s words are not prescriptive and meant as a warning to us. They are, instead, descriptive, telling us that the people of Jesus’ own time had no idea who he was. They were unaware that God himself was present, in their midst. Nor could they foresee in what manner God would reveal himself. They expected God to come in glory and power. He showed up in the least imaginable place, as the victim of their violence, who then forgave the perpetrators. And in so doing, the only thing that God stole away from us, his great act of thievery, was robbing us of the very idolatry that keeps us in fear and bondage – which is our conviction that we must somehow, and demonstrably, earn our salvation by never, for a moment, failing to be ready. This is an impossibility. And only in admitting this can we realize God’s true grandeur.
For God comes not to judge but to redeem. It’s not the hour of his coming that’s surprising or unsettling; it’s the manner of his coming. It’s not intrusive, but a grace, even when nothing about our lives shows any alertness.
Instead of inflicting anxiety, God gifts us with peace.
Prayer
Risen Christ, in the midst of grief and despair, at the very point when all seemed lost, you stood in the midst of your friends in the fullness of your resurrection reality and proclaimed your peace; a peace that reorders and renews all things.
May the same peace find a home in us and, at the urging of your Spirit, may we be today and every day bearers of hope and enablers of peace in the power of your name.
The Most Rev. Frank T. Griswold
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