Eastertide
April 26, 2017
Scripture Reading: 1 Peter 1:17-23
If you invoke as Father the one who judges all people impartially according to their deeds, live in reverent fear during the time of your exile. You know that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your ancestors, not with perishable things like silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without defect or blemish. He was destined before the foundation of the world, but was revealed at the end of the ages for your sake. –1 Peter 1:17-20
If God is an impartial judge what are God’s expectations for us? Are our ways in sync with God’s? Do we ascribe high priorities to the same things God does? The Hebrew Bible tells us that the Israelites routinely fell into bad habits of placing priorities on things that did not matter while letting slip the things that did. Idol worship was offensive to God where God’s people were putting their trust in carved images. We think we are way past that sort of nonsense, but are we really? Where do we place our trust? Certainly, accumulation of wealth seems a source of salvation in our society. Power is another. Neither are guaranteed even in our own time much less for eternity.
God apparently thought we needed help in sorting out our priorities and sent Jesus to live among us, one human being modeling being human for the rest of us. He simplified priorities by having only two: loving God and loving each other with no strings attached, no tests for us to administer to determine who deserves either God’s love or ours. The job of judging was reserved for God only.
Loving God and loving each other is an impossible task for humans unless we are plugged into our relationship with God. We might tiptoe around the edges of truly loving another but all others, I doubt it. The potential for loving all others is in every human as we are each made in the image of God who is love. God can and will enable our ability to love like Jesus, when we open ourselves to the fullness of God’s love. Let it be so.
Prayer:
O love that wilt not let me go,
I rest my weary soul in thee;
I give thee back the life I owe,
that in thine ocean depths its flow
may richer, fuller be.* Amen
*First verse of O Love That Wilt Not Let Me Go by George Matheson (1882) see at http://hymnary.org/text/o_love_that_wilt_not_let_me_go