Sunday, March 23, 2014

Lenten Devotional – Third Sunday in Lent

Q. 22. How did Christ, being the Son of God, become man?

A. Christ, the Son of God, became man, by taking to himself a true body and a reasonable soul, being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, and born of her, yet without sin.

“the Word became flesh and lived among us and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14)

The angel says, "Oh, God, please don't send me back to Earth again. It's terrible. What can I do with these people? Please don't make me go back again, please!...What? I don't have to go? You mean it? I don't have to go? Oh, thank you, God, thank you! What? What? You mean-you're going?!" -Madeleine L'Engle, Penguins & Golden Calves: Icons and Idols (Wheaton, Ill.:H. Shaw, 1996), 106.

WordFlesh  The affirmation that everybody is made in the image of God is supplemented in Christianity by the belief that God was somehow fully present in a particular human body that lived in a particular time and place, the body of Jesus of Nazareth. The church has used the word incarnation to describe the conviction that God was incarnate, enfleshed in a body that ate and drank, slept and woke, touched and received touch. This body also suffered a death as painful and degrading as any human beings have devised. Early Christian testimony that this body also lived again after death shapes a profound Christian hope that undergirds the practice of honoring the body. Whatever else it means, the resurrection of Jesus suggests that bodies matter to God. And they ought to matter to us, too. — Stephanie Paulsell, Honoring the Body

  There was a Benedictine Monastic community where no one came to visit. As the monks grew old, they became more and more disheartened because they couldn't understand why their community was not attractive to other people. Now in the woods outside the monastery there lived an old rabbi. People came from all over to talk to him about the presence of Yahweh in creation. Years went by and finally the abbot himself went into the woods, leaving word with his monks, "I have gone out to speak to the rabbi." (It was of course considered humiliating that a Christian community had to go back to the synagogue to find out what was wrong with them.)

  When the abbot finally found the rabbi's hut in the woods, the rabbi welcomed him with open arms as if he had known that he was coming. They put their arms around each other and had a good cry. The abbot told the rabbi that his monks were good men but they spread not fire, and the community was dying. He asked the rabbi if he had any insight into the work of Yahweh in their lives. The rabbi replied, "I have the secret and I will tell you once. You may tell the monks and then none of you is ever to repeat it to one another." The abbot declared that if they could have the secret, he was sure his monks would grow.

  So the rabbi looked at him long and hard and said, "The secret is that among you, in one of you is the Messiah!" The abbot went back to this community and told his monks the secret. And lo! as they began to search for the Messiah in one another they grew, they loved, they became very strong, very prophetic. And the old conference ends: "From that day on, the community saw Him in one another and flourished!" - Story told by Joan D. Chittister, OSB, Living the Rule Today: A Series of Conferences on the Rule of Benedict (Erie, Pa.: Benet Press, 1982), 98-99, as quoted on pp. 82-83 of Wolff-Walin

  Many people say that if Jesus came among us today, he would be among the poor, the forgotten, the lonely and the sick, indeed among ordinary people. This is, of course, only a half-truth because Jesus is actually among them now, today, in the power of his endless life. - Morris Maddocks, The Christian Healing Ministry (London: SPCK, 1990) 227.

  Ever wonder what is the #1 reason why visitors return to a particular church and eventually become members?  A survey of 26 mainline congregations in the U.S. revealed that the #1 reason is..."the congregation acts like it really believes Jesus is alive through a 'collective effervescence' that pervades everything that is done." - Ronald Scates, "Why They Come, Why They Stay," Reformed Worship, March 1996, 11-13.

  What action of the Spirit are we missing because we fail to find it among ordinary people and ordinary life?

Today’s Lectionary Readings
Morning Psalm: 28, 46
Evening Psalm: 71
Jeremiah 6:9-15
1 Corinthians 6:12-20
Mark 5:1-20

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