9/1/2023

TODAY’S SCRIPTURE READING:

“Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Acknowledge Him in all your ways and He will make your paths straight.” (Proverbs 2. 5-6)

“After the two days Jesus left for Galilee. He himself had pointed out that a prophet has no honor in his own country.” (John 4.43-44)

“Jesus said, ‘My kingdom [home] is not of this world. If it were, My servants would fight to prevent My arrest by the Jewish leaders. Know now, My kingdom is from another place.’” (John 18. 36)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

Remember where we were yesterday? Somewhere along the coastline of the Sea of Galilee we find seven of the disciples gathered together fishing; if you could call it that. Peter and Andrew, James and John, Thomas and Nathanael and one other whom John did not identify were drawn in by the closeness of “home and hearth.” There was so much to sort through and process as they considered the last three years of their lives. Struck in fear and wonder at Jesus’ crucifixion and then His resurrection, they had walked for forty days and forty nights in the mist of grief and joy. Just as they had thought Jesus would no longer be with them, He was. “On the third day, as He said,” Jesus appeared to them in the Upper Room seemingly out of nowhere. And He didn’t do it just once. It was something akin to when Jesus appeared to them on the water in the midst of a great storm declaring “Peace, be still.” And yet, as wonderful and relieving as His appearance had been they were struck by His teaching of the prophets which told them about the course of events which had played out. They remembered His words six weeks prior when He said them during the Seder, “I AM going away to prepare a place for you.” How they must have hoped His crucifixion and resurrection was the fulfillment of that prophecy which He uttered. Yet, there was a sense that it pointed to another time and another place. The disciples were waiting for for the proverbial “other sandal to drop.”

Now, forty days after His resurrection, Jesus appeared to them near their home (at least the home of Peter, Andrew, James and John). They had gone home because it was safer than Jerusalem. We always feel safer at home in familiar surroundings. Home is where the heart, soul and mind are more genuinely focused on “us.” No one needed this more than Peter, I would imagine. In that fruitless moment of the sun rising in the east, Jesus appeared. I have to wonder if it wasn’t the first day of the week. Sabbath had ended at sunset the day before. As fishermen went out at night to fish, it could have been the first day of the week. Jesus appeared freed from the grave on the first day of the week. He was liberated from sin and the grave. He was now enacting that liberation of the disciples and all followers from the same. Jesus had an eye to the future and not the past. Jesus was not about what was or is but what will be. Let His statement to Pilate reverberate in this moment of remembrance, “My Kingdom, My home, is not of this world.” There was another statement He made which had to have echoed in the memory of the disciples, “A prophet is not welcome in his own home.” But, this is exactly where He found this community of disciples- at home. Even there, they found only what they had left behind: a longing for meaning and purpose, empty nets and a sense of something more. When they were with Jesus, all of this seemed to have been forgotten or passed away. Now, these things crept back in like a ravenous lion crouching at the door waiting to devour them. Jesus had been reminding them of that future for forty days but there must have been “one thing they, especially Peter, lacked.”

Remember that wording in the dialogue between Jesus and the rich Young Ruler who was seeking the answer to “How can I inherit eternal life?” Jesus allowed him to affirm his affinity for the commandments and the process he went through to “keep them.” Such things did not satisfy his hunger for the “something more.” Jesus went straight to the “heart” of the matter. He said, “Then there is one more thing you must do to be perfected!” Eagerly the young man asked, “What?” Jesus replied, “Go, sell all that you have and follow Me.” Where did that young man go? He went home to his house, property, belongings and worldly connections. He found comfort in them and challenge in Jesus. Had the disciples done a similar thing, especially Peter? It was there by the sea where the grains of sand were as numerous as the stars in the sky that Jesus redirected Peter. Had Abraham visited that place remembering the promise which God had made him? Did Jesus stoop down and write three times in the sand for Peter as He did in the Temple courtyard for the accusing temple leadership who sought His life and the woman caught in adultery? And if He did write, what was it? We know the words and that is enough: “Do you love Me?” Three different words pointing in the same direction: the future. Jesus pointed Peter straight to his future. It was not in his own hometown. It was not in the Temple. It was not on this mountain or that mountain. It was wherever people gathered to worship God in spirit and in truth. Having thus given Peter his “oar, rudder and sail,” Jesus sent Him and the other disciples back out into deep waters to “fish” as they were called to do. They were directed to cast their nets and gather in the people of God but not as prisoners of the business of men. Rather, they were prisoners, bondservants and slaves of faith. They were not intended to be held at the whim of a community feigning righteousness. They were intended to build up a community proclaiming righteousness. They were intended to declare “Repent, be baptized and make strait the path of life for the coming of the Savior!” Yes, the heart of the gospel was not that “Jesus came” but that “He is coming again.” We need to get that strait and straight between us and the world.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN LIGHT OF GOD’S WORD:

Father, You have revealed to us best in Jesus the Christ. By Him and Him alone shall we gain the eternal life and our place in eternal rest, living for You always. Show us more and by Your Holy Spirit instruct us in the way we should go, the truth we should reveal and the life we shall live with you forever. In Jesus’ name, we pray. AMEN.