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Morning Devotion for the Season after Pentecost

September 7, 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 11:1-6

Now a certain man was ill, Lazarus of Bethany, the village of Mary and her sister Martha. Mary was the one who anointed the Lord with perfume and wiped his feet with her hair; her brother Lazarus was ill. So the sisters sent a message to Jesus, “Lord, he whom you love is ill.” But when Jesus heard it, he said, “This illness does not lead to death; rather, it is for God’s glory, so that the Son of God may be glorified through it.” Accordingly, though Jesus loved Martha and her sister and Lazarus, after having heard that Lazarus was ill, he stayed two days longer in the place where he was.

Meditation – Peter Vanderveen

It’s fiendishly difficult to express many of the core truths of Christian faith and not have them sound like clichés. This slip often occurs when we confuse an approach or an expression of trust with a rule. (This distinction alone would save us from a lot of seemingly endless arguments and polemics) For the Bible is not an instruction manual, from which we can pull standards and regulations that have objective power and, thus, can be blindly applied across all circumstances. More than all else, the form of the Bible is narrative. It is a long story of a relationship between God and creation and God and human beings. And precisely as a narrative, it must be read with an eye and an ear set to every nuance and shift and variation due to change. Contradictions abound, as do unceasing occasions of scheming and politicking and, across a vast spectrum of importance, the work of persuasion. Time affords the opportunity not only for development and decay in our covenant with God, but, above all else, time provides us reason to bend what had been considered unbending.

But when it comes to God, we want rules. We want the world to be drawn in absolutes. And when this is put into words, what is said can run roughshod over what is actually being experienced. Clichés don’t care about circumstances. They’re simply stated as what is taken to be the case. Always. And religion is rife with such clichés, especially when faith is used as a convenient way for us not to see what has happened or what is happening and to whom. Instead, we make reference to a contrary reality that we blithely assume God will impose or secure, where death is not really death, and the troubles of the world have no lasting effect, and in some way and some manner God is the answer to just about every problem. Which, ultimately, makes faith seem either vapid or cruel.

I want to say that the short portion of the story of the raising of Lazarus printed above reflects a serenity that characterizes nearly all of Jesus’ actions. But I’m aware that serenity is a word that can easily be misunderstood. It can become a cliché, as if faith is really just a form of willful ignorance and an unattached dreaminess. Taken as a rule, serenity is one’s decision simply not to be bothered.

Throughout the whole of John’s Gospel Jesus shows a remarkable serenity. He is fully aware of all that is happening around him. Almost every encounter revolves around some agitation. But through it all, as unrest swirls around him, he seems able not to be caught up in it – even when he himself is on trial and destined for execution. For he holds to a larger vision, which is that God will be glorified – and not by some, and not by whatever seems right and good, and not by that which aligns with God’s desires. God will be glorified through all that happens in the world, for it will all be subject to God’s redemption.

Jesus never tells us what this will look like. He didn’t know. It is strictly the Father’s prerogative to disclose. We wait upon this, as did Jesus too. Serenity couldn’t, then, be a rule that he could employ, perfunctorily; it was, rather, a confidence, deeper than words, through which he could see everything and see everything differently, bending even the worst evils toward God’s capacity and promise to redeem them, in ways beyond the reach of our imaginations – which is God’s glory.

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.